Saving Valuable Negatives by Dominic Lee, AMPA
Wednesday, Apr 5th, 2006 in The IPWS Blog by Dominic Lee | 4 Comments
My wife tracked down and phoned the now retired photographer who shot her parent’s wedding and asked him if she could buy copies of the wedding photos. He barked out that he had dumped the negatives when he retired and put the phone down. It was clear from his reaction that this was not the first such call he had received. Was that an air of regret in his voice, did he realise that he could have charged the same price for 1(10×8) photo in 2006 as he received for the entire wedding album back in the 50’s? We will never know, and neither will he because he was foolish enough to dump the negatives.
Of course it’s a momentous task keeping all those files in a state of preservation and in a filing system, which would allow you to retrieve them. And realistically the money you get for the odd copy you sell to some deceased client’s relative is not worth the effort. But what you have could be of far greater value historically.
Portraits of children making their First Holy Communion; how long before that practise fades from the memory? I used to photograph 4 or 5 Priests Ordinations every year. I even photographed a Nuns Profession. I bet the new generation of photographers don’t get asked to cover many of those.
Bearing in mind that many couples find it hard to book a priest today to officiate at their wedding, it will soon be a reality that a lay person will be designated to perform this duty. So even photographs with priests in them will have an historic value in the not to distant future.
Likeise photographs of children swimming or playing football will be a thing of the past as a result of child protection regulations.
Old photographs sold at a Cumbrian auction for £75,000 last week after being valued at just £80 and now estimated to be worth £500,000 (see article on 31st March on The IPW). Yet large amounts of a valuable archive depicting life in Ireland over the decades are being dumped every year!
Have you sorted out what’s going to happen to your historic collection or are you leaving it to a member of your family to bury them along side you?
Dominic Lee, AMPA
4 Comments:
I agree with Dominic. We as photographers are sitting on insurance due to our past assignments and contributions as the images on negatives should be regarded as our past,our history and our culture and they need to be perserved and archived in some type of database system.
Dominic, this area of keeping negs is very important do you know that if a client of say 20,30 or more years ago ask’s a photographer to produce prints and you fail to do so they can take you to court, A photographer is obliged to protect negs for ever, I think it comes under contract law. I think wedding photographers should sell their negs after say five years or so to the B & G it gets rid of them but you must make sure they sign a receipt for them.
Excellent topic – I have all mine stored although not as well & safe as I would like.
Years ago there was an old photographer in Randalstown whose work was average enough, to be honest; but a few years after he died I asked his wife about his negatives with a view to buying them. Same response as the photographer on the phone – a very indignant ” I burned the bloody lot!”
Always wonderd what gems might have been there.
I hope I get around to properly cataloguing them & making some cash from them before I pop off.
Also a local lady brought me some old glass type negative positives (about 20 in a custom box), possibly Daguerrotypes which she asked me to have valued. I rang a dealer in London who estimated them at about £700 each. She eventually auctioned them at Christies for £25,000 about 5 years ago – dear knows how much they are worth now!!
It must be a nightmare for people wo are left with a collection of badly catalogued negatives when a photographer pops off this mortal coil. Storing negatives is becoming onerous just in terms of space.
The best example of the value of a negtive archive for me was seeing Brian Redmonds exhibition of his fathers work when it was on in Portlaoise – just the passport pictures alone were incredible – and some of the portrait out-takes were a howl, given how staid the actual portraits usually looked. There were also works outings and all manner of local events documented. The exhibition was given to the local Town Council if memory serves me. I hope the town knows how lucky they are.
I would say some of our older colleagues have tremendous archives of Ireland before the boom – I hope they are being aided to make some retirement money from them.