The Dark Backward and Abysm Of Time

Rob and I have been looking through books of negatives to find photos we might use in the book. If a book contained a hundred negatives, it would be easy to create categories – sports, student life, classrooms, environment – assign the pictures to those categories and make a selection.

But we are looking at thousands! And they are not exactly what we want. Somewhere around a dozen or more large, green three-ring binders live in our Graphics Department cabinets. For each plastic sleeve of  35mm negative strips there is a contact sheet. And there are dozens and dozens of these sleeves and sheets in each volume.

Unfortunately for us, the dates on the green binders start at 1977 – six years after the opening of the College.

This six year gap brings up some fascinating issues. Why don’t we have pictures from the opening days?

A superficial excuse is because there was no specific photographer assigned to take “official” pictures. That assignment wasn’t made until 1977.

A more helpful excuse has to do with the way we take photos now and the way we took them in 1970. Now, of course, you point and shoot and cameras are ubiquitous. In 1970 if I wanted to take a picture, I had to find my camera, had to make sure it had a role of film in it and if not had to go to a store to purchase it. Next I would have to install the film – all of this just to get ready to take a picture. Oh, yes, if it was dark I had to find and take my flash attachment after making sure I had flashbulbs (repeat going to the store if I was out of bulbs).

I take the picture.

If color, I had to wait until all thirty-six shots had been taken, remove the role, place in tiny can (assuming I could find it), insert the can into a tiny, yellow sack with a label attached. Then, fill out the label, add postage or get it at the Post Office and send it.

Then wait at least a week to get your slides returned.

If B&W film, I would remove the film, take it to a drug store or place where they would send the film off, it would be put in an envelope for pick-up and wait for three days until the prints were returned to the store where I would pick them up.

Is it any wonder that photos were not shot and, hence, are not now available to me of events in 1970?
Also, I don't think that we thought that what we were doing was particularly photogenic, interesting or worthy of note. We met day after day to build a college. In hindsight, it was terribly important but once started, as I remember it, it wasn’t all that significant.

Photos were, of course, taken. I have the first Prospectus (1970) and the Prospectus from 1971. They both have “professionally” looking photos. Not one of them notes the photographer or date. I have not turned them up in any of the collections at the college so far. The negatives seemed to have been shot by a staff member, printed and, probably, then discarded.

The few of these that we have are halftone pictures which do not have the high quality that we want in the book. Yet, they are all we have.

So, we need to find original negatives – if possible – and that means hours looking through green, three-ringed binders.

This looking is somewhat troublesome, at least to me. First of all, there is no classification system. They are not organized by subject, date or place. Volumes are labeled by year but within that category, who knows how they were organized. How easy it would have been to have used the spaces at the top of each page of sleeves – Date, Assignment, Number – but these were seldom filled in. Organizing by subject would be immensely helpful now. I could have looked for pictures of faculty, athletics, buildings, the environment, Lake Fred, the Courts or any of the many features of the College.

But this didn’t occur. Now, each contact sheet has to be visually scanned (a loupe is essential) and when a desired photo is found, its page number must be written down (after carefully confirming that a negative for the photo exists in the sleeve) or confusion is added to confusion.

There is a “visual” thing going on as well. After about ten minutes looking at 35mm contact sheets, visual overload sets in. It’s as if a very long film has been cut into individual frames, randomly mixed and then edited into a linear form. There simply is no linearity in this process or, more precisely, no linearity for more than a very few frames.

All of this confusion has an impact on judgment. If I have even five 35mm negatives in a row – say, shots of a basketball game. You know the scene: lithe bodies levitating towards the basket while a forest of arms struggle to stop the motion. You can hear the camera shouting click….buzz….click….buzz….click…buzz...click; all motion captured but slightly different in each shot. Frames of a movie.

As I said, I can look at each frame making judgments about clarity, framing, are heads cut off, sharpness, etc. Knowing what I am looking for, I can make a judgment that frame four is exactly what I want.

But my judgment is impaired when I find two shots of the basketball game followed by a shot of six coeds walking through the halls to class followed by a shot of steel beams of a new building followed by a shot of two students in a canoe on Lake Fred. If I judge that one of these shots is good, exactly what I need, then fine. But if I have one or two of some person or activity, the narrative -- to me, at least -- seems gone. There is no encompassing context.

Now multiply this by forty-seven pages of sleeves each with thirty-five photos on each page. It isn't that the task is daunting – if not overwhelming. It’s that after ten minutes it is impossible to do.

Then, of course, none of the persons in these shots are identified. Identification is a central issue in history books, I have found out. Rob and I want to be able to show a picture of faculty from forty years ago and have clear identification of each. Much of the time I can identify who they are – after all I was there – but others can not provide identities and, therefore, such pictures simply become labeled “Faculty Members”. Tragically, their narratives have been erased though their faces remain. It's like going through boxes of old photographs without knowing the identity of any.

History, then, has been subverted and, as a result, of minimal value. Ken Burn’s genius is clear when he shows us a picture of what seems to be a nameless civil war soldier but then he adds the text of a letter and a name. We can connect that story with those eyes and history lives before us.

But what if you can’t do that?

We have worked very hard to provide both the picture but, also, the life of the narrative of that picture. Much of the time we have succeeded; some of the time we have failed. But that’s history too.