Category: early b&w

Dreaded Boxes, 2021

The Dreaded Boxes project is renewed for the new year. You may recall previous entries.  This weekend’s efforts have revealed a few new discoveries, again probably of interest only to siblings and offspring.

Here, myself at an alleged eighteen months of age, interacting with a dog of forgotten name, with my parents’ circa-1934 Chevy in the background, with Cousin Anita nearby and some hint of perhaps Aunt Libby, assuming that the photo was taken by my mother, Thelma. (One of my favorites yet unearthed, just on the basis of its compositional photographic value, subject matter aside.)  The locale seems to be the Onawa, Iowa farm owned by one Doc Martin, my parents’ then-landlord:

Next, I found some early evidence of the family poet, my brother Dennis:

Dennis, Age 16.5
Dennis, Age 2.5

Land Rover (1972)

Today, revisiting the dreaded storage boxes stashed in my work space, I came upon a previously-rejected polaroid print (made in 1972 with my ancient 4×5 view camera to which an equally-ancient manual wind-down mechanical shutter delay release had been attached) of my 1963 home-market English RHD (right hand drive) Land Rover, parked in Santa Monica.

Yosemite Reflection (1973)

Digging through the ancient archives of unprocessed and forgotten negatives again.  Most of the new finds are headed for HappyHogRot, but here is one that might be suitable for a broader audience.  Taken in January on a warmish day when snow melt was producing some pools of water.  In Yosemite National Park, where I was interacting with Ansel Adams and other photographers.

Yosemite Reflection (1973)

The Bisbee Matter, Rediscovered

I had expected to be doing this clawing and sorting through boxes of old negatives and slides and a lot of whatever during the upcoming winter.  But unexpectedly losing the use of my main camera has led me to this alternative.  And something of at least minor interest is coming up every day.

This morning I find negatives, previously thought to be lost forever, that further document an infamous road trip in 1977.  Three photographers, Lee, Maureen and myself, left Venice, California in a Volkswagen bug, bound for the tiny almost-ghost-town of Bisbee, Arizona, to meet up with bartender/writer/philosopher Harold and join him and his girlfriend to press on into Mexico.

Lee was a photographer in the employ of the Los Angeles Times and had hatched this plan that we would combine our shooting results from the trip and present in a group show, and he would develop all the negs in the Times darkroom.  While the show did in fact later materialize, some rolls of film were thought to have been lost, so their prints never were exhibited.  But, somehow — I found at least some of the negatives buried in an unmarked box within a box within a box.  Here is a sampling.  (And if you want to learn more about the Bisbee/Naco road trip, I am adding some more of the new finds to my own existing record of the trip at HHR.)

1969: Wilt Chamberlain and the Lakers

Further unpacking from our recent move revealed this (among many more) photograph — if you can call it that, given the horrendous lighting conditions, my slow and unsharp lens and the work I had to do to coax any detail to speak of out of the thing — taken during my attendance at a 1969 L.A. Lakers game.  I’m pretty sure it shows Wilt Chamberlain doing some damage against the Boston Celtics.  I saw some of these live games from time to time as one of my co-workers had season tickets.

Watts, 1969

Something I came across this past weekend while sorting through old 50-year-old-ish stuff in the process of moving.  These kids, with three very distinct kinds of expressions and reactions to me, were playing on a Sunday morning at a schoolyard near the Watts Towers.  My friend Roz took me there to see where she worked as she was a teacher at the school.