“The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.” — Andy Warhol

I am trying to use my furloughed time usefully. Tackling those jobs that I have put on hold due to lack of time. So I felt quite self-righteous when I decided to go head-long into one of those tasks. My mission? To sort out and repack all our photographs. However, it is taking me much longer than originally planned...

This is possibly because we have alot of photos. Infact we have photographs all over this house. Years worth of polaroids loitering in various locations:
  1. photo drawers in the spare bedroom
  2. Under the shelves in our bedroom
  3. Around the house
I think that covers all known domestic sites. 

At the beginning of the week, I ordered some jazzy photograph boxes (so they all look nice and neat when the task is finished) to push me into undertaking this task. I planned to do this job in the evening so it didn't tempt me away from hoovering or making tea. So last night, I ventured into the spare room to remove packets and packets of pictures. As I started to remove them, I began to realise just how big an undertaking this is going to be...

So these are packets of photographs, which have now been suitably replaced by digital images. Remember those heady days of taking a film, yes a film, into your local Boots or photographic shop to be processed? Or sending them off in the post in a special envelope to Truprint or an equivalent postal photographic service? They then came back in one of those folded shiny paper packets with your negatives in the little pouch inside. Sometimes they came back with a small contact sheet showing you all your photograph as a tiny, not even thumbnail, picture on one photographic sheet. Well, its those photographs that I have kept. Complete with packet, contact sheet and negatives. All stuffed in two drawers or under the shelves in our bedroom.

Opening the first packet was quite exciting. What memories were going to be contained in here? The problem is, of course, that you start to spend time remembering where and when the photographs were taken, bringing back such recollections of times past. Of course, the packets were all mixed up. One moment I was on holiday in some exotic location then I was the mum of a small child. There were friends' children, now all grown up, but pictured as wee toddlers, there also Christmas's past and the familiary faces of family members who are no longer with us. At times if felt like a photographic holiday brochure with photos of India, Sri Lanka, USA, Prague, Barcelona, Dublin and London all reminding me of wonderful vacations. There were plenty of reminders of gorgeous friends including a beautiful photo of our friend Mohan, in our front garden, laughing with a very young Naomi. As he is now in New Zealand with his lovely family, it made me realise just how far away some of our friends are.

My initial reaction was to keep all of the photos but let's be pragmatic here, I need to do some serious culling. Sixteen shots from different angles can be seriously reduced to a few photographs for storage. I was always guilty of clicking away quite happily on the off-chance that a couple would be in focus or even half decent. What I didn't do was sort them out when I brought the processed pictures home. Which is why I now have a living room floor full of photos piled in different categories - friends, Christmas, family, holidays, Girl Guiding. Well that is how I have started this task, condensing negatives down and ditching the contact sheets, getting rid of any out of focus or unrecognisable. This is my first trawl and has taken a good few hours. Second trawl will need some serious decisions to get the numbers down. Good plan.

The problem is that I am only half-way through one drawer. At this rate I will be knee high in photographic paper and negatives before I have emptied the two drawers, and I have not even started on the shelves in our bedroom yet! Of course, the real reason it is taking me so long is that I am enjoying a trip down memory lane. I even started to photograph some of the pcitures on my phone and sending the digital copy to friends around the world! At this rate, there will be second or third copies of the processed photos clogging up my phone. Yep, I can already see what my next task might be...

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