It’s been over a week since my last post and so much has happened between then and now and I don’t even know where to begin. First my personal life has take a huge hit. Working on recovering from that – but I’ll know we’ll come through it ok – stronger and better.
Second I have been crazy busy. And I have even been making any art! And the weird thing is that I don’t even care at the moment. I have a new obsession.
I have been wondering for a while the origins of the glass negatives that I have in my possession. I decided to make an appointment with the photoarchivist at the Albuquerque Musuem of Art and History. Said appointment was last Wednesday. The archivist, Glenn, was very enthusiastic about my finds and was amazingly helpful. We looked at old phone books and found a few of my people!! We established that the numbers written on some of them are definitely dates. We also sifted through some of their own glass negative archive – so many amazing images! He also gave me some online resources to look through. Looking online I believe I have discovered the studio that produced my images. And researching further I believe these were taken by a woman – who owned the studio during the time the photos were taken. I shared my findings with the woman I bought the negatives from and my lovely friend Paula and I ran up to Santa Fe on Sunday to buy the rest of the negatives. Based on the info we have so far these negatives are from a “missing” period in Albuquerque’s photographic history. We don’t want the rest of these to become more scattered. I have been obsessively scanning my half of the negatives. I am planning on going to a few places next week and doing more research – on the studio I believe these are from and on the people who are named in the negatives. My goal at this point is to find descendants of at least one person and see if they have an actual copy of the photograph I have a negative for. Most photographs from this time would have a stamp from the studio on the back and this would be ultimate confirmation of the studio they came from. As it is I am already 95% sure I am correct – this would be the cherry on top. Goals for the future are getting a show together showing the negatives themselves, prints of the images on them, and the artwork that has been created using the negatives (there are about 2000 negatives that went through my friend in Santa Fe to artists all over the state) – hopefully a joint show with several museums involved and a book. Today I have to write a small article about the research I’ve been doing that will be published in a local magazine.
Besides going to Santa Fe my weekend also included selling at an art market on Saturday, going out with my friend Susan Saturday night and drinking, going to another friend’s birthday party on Sunday, and helping another friend design biz cards and postcards (on Sunday also). By Monday I was exhausted!