An Envelope

A large manila envelope dating back to WW2. Itself containing many smaller envelopes that were used by photo businesses for storage of customer negatives and prints. The owner of the pictures was from Baden-Württemberg, southwest Germany. They show scenes whilst he was in the Wehrmacht, stationed in the Caucasus in Russia: a dusty road during a march; looking out of a freight train; reading a letter in a field of flowers; a downed plane; artillery.

Many of the photos are annotated on  the back in the then common Sütterlin script, mostly not legible for me.

"Perutz" is a brand of film that often comes up in these envelopes.  The verso of tiny vintage prints reveal paper names like Agfa Lupex, Agfa Brovira, Gevaert Ridax, Leonar. All brands that have been washed away in the tides of time.

The negatives for a lot of the more interesting pictures are missing.  And many of the 6x4.5 and 6x9 negatives are in poor shape. This 6x9 neg looked pretty good though, and I thought it deserved to be printed bigger...

...not least because the soldier who made this photo was my grandfather; a devout farmer, dragged against his will into hell, like millions of others. Wasting the best five years of his life, he would return with a damaged lung that would trouble him until his death.  Still, he was so lucky to be able to make it back and see his children and grandchildren.

Here he is on horseback. The photo is not dated, but he looks very much a teenager, so I presume it must be before the war.

SOS Covid

The pandemic with its lockdowns has seen the rise of the "Corona walk" of the troubled and socially distant photographer. I empathise with you, dear friend. It was hard not to lose heart; trying to stay calm behind your masks and fogged up eyeglasses, unable to see through your viewfinders; trying to neither lose sanity nor sanitiser. The invisible foe always seemed to be around the next corner.

This is a tiny summary of my nocturnal excursions from January to April 2021, between 7pm-9pm, before the 9pm lockdowns in Turkey. I would sling a Rolleiflex TLR around my shoulder and doggedly walk the same route in İstanbul over and over, only occasionally slipping into some side streets. The Rollei was usually loaded with Ilford Delta 3200, a beauty for night scenes with street lights; although you really have to know how to expose and develop D3200. 1/15th or 1/30th of a second at f/2.8 and the exposure was taken care of, and I could concentrate on the big struggle of trying to make something worthwhile.

At that time I was thinking about ways to handcraft books using real prints and mucking around with different options, one of which resulted in this mini-album. Obviously, being an experiment, it wasn't meant to impress. As you can see, it's as basic as it gets. Lowest grade cardboard for the covers, a sheet of A4 paper, some double-sided tape; and the five photographs of course, in this case 9x9cm prints on Ilford RC Satin (lovely paper).

I've also done a bigger version with different photos, but it doesn't work as well. Size really does matter with this type of folding design. I would say the same for accordion type albums.

And here's an exciting account on Ilford's  website about making a photobook from prints. Make sure you check out the video as well. Pretty cool, hah?