chase the light

Sometimes when I pop down to the States I hit an antique mall in Bellingham. After a visit with my sister I went to Penny Lane Antiques and had a mooch around. A few sellers had some cameras but I found an old Brownie Flash Six-20 with the actual flash unit. I played around with a bit and everything seemed to work. There were even batteries still in the chambers and they hadn’t leaked. Check out those old Eveready’s with the 9 lives cat on them! $20, why not?

I found out later I’d need a little adapter to be able to use the flash and tah dah thanks ebay! I have a box of vintage flashbulbs and I popped one in to test it. Snap crackle pop the flash fired in that glorious vintage way as smoke and the smell of something burning rose up. So cooool!

But, the most intriguing thing about the camera is it still had a roll of film in it! I checked to make sure it had been fully shot and I wound it forward and then nervously opened the camera! Success! The roll was rolled up tight and I sealed it off to get it ready for development. I toyed with the idea of developing it myself because rarely after all this time are there usable images. I’ve seen many a Reddit post about disappointing results after all these years, but I thought I’d take it to the lab and let them do it properly. I got the roll to The LAB and they were cool with attempting to develop some old film on 620 film and I went back the next day to pick it up. I didn’t receive a call from them saying nothing was on the roll so all seemed to go well. As I unrolled the negs on the light table the most amazing set of images lit up below me. All perfectly exposed and perfectly developed! Wow! Amazing. I couldn’t believe what I’m seeing. After closer inspection I could see all the clothing was probably early 60’s or late 50’s. The camera itself was made between 1946 and 1955 so I’m betting the roll was shot early 60’s and then forgotten about. Most people would have replaced a five to ten year old camera that is no longer made but they probably finished the roll and then forgot about it. For years and years and years and years. What’s trippy to think about is this camera has been sitting around somewhere with this roll of film in it for almost 60 years! Kennedy was assassinated and this roll of film might have already been shot. I was born and this roll of film already had images on it. The Beatles came and went. Men walked on the moon and this roll was sitting in this camera. The Vietnam War came and went and all of the 70s went by. Star Wars came out and so did Grease. Then the 80s decade came and still this roll of film sat in this camera in some house somewhere. I was sitting in Mr. Roger’s math class thinking how much I hated him and this camera was sitting somewhere with this very roll in it. Nirvana, 9/11, and here we are today with this undeveloped roll of film from yesteryear. Then very recently (it wasn’t there last time) someone decides to take it to the antique fair not realizing it’s actually a little time machine. Fortunately black and white film handles time very well compared to color film. Until I looked at the images on that light table no one had ever seen these images before. Not even the owners of the camera. So bizarre to think about and down below are the images the owners never even saw. A real life Don Draper right there.