Unknown Photographer - The Alaskan Collection
Scratching the Itch
The Unknown Photographer is a project that I have been contemplating to do for the last few years. I love photographing abandoned areas, wondering what the story is, like who built the area and how it ended up in that state.
If you go on eBay, you can find many people selling negatives that were taken by others. The negative lots have no ownership description other than some wild guesses about what is on them. When I see them, they just seem abandoned. If you read the description, these negatives were abandoned. Now I say someways because it appears in some cases that they came from old storage lockers.
When I started to get into film photography and looking for film gear, I came across processed negatives, which intrigued me.
To Be Clear
I want to be 100% clear here: the pictures in THIS collection were NOT originally photographed by my hands. The only ownership/rights I can claim are that the negatives are in my possession, but they were taken by someone else, the unknown photographer.
I have scanned, edited, and uploaded the pictures to this website, but that does not mean they are free for anyone to use. When doing any research, the common refrain is that if the original photographer shows up, they can get them back. I cannot profit from these particular images, but that is okay in my book.
Most likely, nobody will make a big fuss about these images. However, I am not a lawyer and only slept at a Holiday Inn.
My End Goal
What intrigues me about this project is the ability to save these images from the landfill. I aim to buy what I can and try to organize and save them in a much better format than I got them in.
My bigger dream is to be able to give these images back to the original owner if they ever do show up. How will I prove the original owner? Who knows? But I am guessing they'll have enough images showing proof and, most likely, an interview.
With luck, I'll be able to keep the images online with their approval, and perhaps I can use what I have scanned with other venues. Ultimately, I suspect this project will be more about a labor of love than images I can scan and sell to make a profit. However, creating a book about the bygone era would be fun.
I guess some people will be upset that I am posting the images and some faces included in the photos, and I am sorry about that. But without posting here on the site, I'll have zero hope of ever getting these negatives back into the hands of the original owner or family.
The Alaskan Collection
The unknown photographer project has to start with a collection, and the Alaskan collection is the one to launch the project. When it arrived, it was in a box with over 500+ slides, all mounted and packaged in the shipping box. The box was about the only protection offered with these images.
From what I can tell from the eBay description, this was a one-off collection and not part of a considerably bigger lot. I have seen sellers selling up to 80 lots with many pictures per lot. I have learned a lot from buying these negatives, that I might need to avoid these sellers.
That said, when I started scanning the collection, the negative saw a lot of mileage over the years based on the wear and tear. The best I can tell is that the collection years range from 1959 to 1976. I am not sure I'll ever be able to accurately guess the year since most of my investigation for this collection is limited to stamps on the slides that I hope the original owners added for reference.
The next step was to organize the collection. In this case, I organized by the slide holders. My hunch is that when someone was putting them in the holder brands. The slide holders not only contained the year but also a numbered stamp. By using this organization, they were organized into smaller contained lots. As it stands today, in Lightroom, that is how I have them organized, and they are now organized and saved with plastic sleeves in a closed three-ring binder.
What is funny about this collection is that it contains tourist-type slides. I think they were sold in gift shops to show different images of the general area back in the day. These images were of terrible quality with a very red tint. Although I did scan them, I do not plan on posting them.
The Families
When I started scanning, it was clear they were not always in Alaska. I think one of the families lived in Oregon, and I am leaning toward Mississippi for the other half. The family in Oregon appears to have been lower middle class, while the family down south was upper middle class and borderline wealthy.
Much of what I am writing is pure speculation based on what I see in the photographs. The family in the south appears to have had a maid with what seems to be a sizeable, well-manicured yard. They also appeared to have owned two boats, one a party boat and the other for jet skiing.
The family in Oregon lived a more remote life and spent a lot of time traveling with a camper on the back of their truck.
Both families appeared to have enjoyed traveling long distances. The Mississippi family, in one set of pictures, from what I can tell, ended up in Cape Code, Massachusetts, and Arizona. The family in Oregon traveled plenty to British Columbia and ultimately made it to Fairbanks, Alaska. I have a hunch that the Oregon family did a lot of hunting and had family in Alaska.
The southern family seemed to have their life revolve around what I think was the Air Force. One of my pictures shows someone in the cockpit of a jet, which was pretty cool to discover. They have many other pictures of them hanging around an officer training school if I understand the pictures correctly.
I'll say I leaned toward the Oregon family as having my favorite set of pictures, but that is probably closer to my style of living. It was funny; I kept chatting with my wife as I scanned the images and learned bits about their life and following their journey. For a while, I didn't think they would ever get to Alaska, but they ultimately did.
I think I rambled enough about the family; let us discuss a few of the images
The Images
I did my best to restore the images to their former glory, and I think, in some cases, I pulled out more data than anyone had seen in the past. I used a little bit of Lightroom magic to remove some of the spots, but not all. The dust, noise, and scratches add an element of vintage to the images.
Stopping on the Road
One of the first images I liked was this one. Most likely, this is in Canada or Alaska, but I enjoyed everyone stopping all over the road to get pictures of the Bighorn Sheep. Looking at the cars, you can see that this image was probably taken in the early to mid-1970s.
Two Campers in the Woods
This photograph might be my favorite image overall from the collection, and it was when I realized that this family lived in Oregon. I am unsure where the picture was taken, but I loved the image's clarity and the colors popping off the trucks. Again, it just shows the simple life with simple living.
The Bird Lady
I have zero idea if the woman in the photograph is family or just someone they found interesting. But it shows a moment in time in this tiny trailer park. Take note of the "Don't Tailgate" bumper sticker on the camper.
The Mountain Scene
The final image to discuss is this mountain scene. I spent so much time staring at it and picking out the details. You can see a bit of smoke if you look to the right on the river. The highway shows off to the far left with a dirt road that seems to follow along. Although it is a bit cropped out, there is a sign at the bottom indicating it was Juniper Beach Campground, located in British Columbia, Canada.
If you want to see the rest of the images, I have posted them in this gallery. Just go to "The Alaskan Collection".
Till next time,
The GenX Photo Guy