…negative archive thoughts….
Hiyah. How’s you? Good, I hope. Welcome back to another scurrilous missive from the sbh.
Thought it had been a while since I delved into the negative archive, so that’s what I’m gonna do. As a little history for those that don’t, the neg archive dates from around 1992 to early 2002 but is intermittent in places, there is a large chunk missing (due to various reasons and most of that was lost about 15 years ago.) The labelling of the negatives at the time was a little off so it’s reliant on memory to fill in the gaps, there is a lot that I don’t remember and cant place too, not sure my memory will get any better about that either, it’s much like the cd archive occasionally files won’t be able to be copied over so they lost and forgotten about, it’s done to data being corrupted although for both insufficient data may be a better term, it’s a good name for the archive (poss a book too)
Anyway so thought I’d delve into here and find something from the negatives archive, now it’s funny about this archive that there’s a real mix of straight and gay venues, probs more gay than straight tbh. With that in mind this time I thought I’d specifically looked for straight nights for this but from the negatives alone it’s a difficult spot, especially if like in a lot of negs there’s not much details to go on, ie mainly looking for background details like signs, posters, stickers etc. Without these they are all inherently the same, people enjoying their time in a club in the late 90’s early 2000’s, the thing that mainly stuck out was the smiles!!! Here's what I’ve found, there’s not much that link these nights together apart from a chance/interesting neg/feeling. I realise that that might not mean much to others, so I’ll explain
· Chance as in them falling together as I opened different bags of negs and they landed next to each other, sometime when you scan/photograph them they end up in the same folder and get placed next (above/below) to each other and I think oh that looks good.
· Interesting as in that ‘ooohthatlooksinteresting’ when looking through the negs I realise that I used to be able to convert negatives to positives in my head (same with convicting portrait to landscape shaped too) while I’ve lost that technique somewhat…I think that I can hit upon a good neg without converting it.
· Feeeeling. I put some tunes up via a youtube mix (old skool I know) which recaptured some of the vibes from those days so if a negative caught my attention, you could blame the tunes for some of these selections.
Enough lets look at the images:
Now I’ve split them into 4 groups
Smiles / Underwear / Groups / flash
First up is smiles, so when looking across the negatives I started to be drawn into smiles, people smiling, smiles, happiness etc this was an across the board look, there was a lot of smiling for cameras most of these are individuals but there are a couple of two’s, mainly these were taken as I travel through the dancefloor (evident in that last one) so as the crowd split I’d spot someone and make a picture, that’s what led me into my next set and that’s:
Underwear, now funny enough a lot of what popped up were girls in their underwear, I think that was a big thing in glam 90’s style clubbing. I will say that I may have been drawn to them BUT NOT for the obvious reasons but for the fact that the subject didn’t mind having their pictures made, there’s a lot of dancers in there and exhibitionists (and why not!) which as a photographer in a club you are naturally drawn too !!
Speaking of drawn to this leads into the next set which is groups. Now there’s a lot to unpick here, so in saying about being drawn to people, allied to that often I’d be asked/ask to make some pictures of people, these consists of dynamic and static poses, depending on the state/mood/vibe. Some of these shots of people (esp sat down) are a little boring and probably needed something a bit more dynamic to happen. I do have hundreds of these type of images, I’m really not sure what to do with them, as in showing the faces will out them completely and who knows what they up to now, they might be sat next to ex’s (we all hate to be reminded of those don’t we!) or it could be for worse reasons as well, so there’s that to take into account.
Speaking of embareesement then this is the last set is called flash !
Now explaining this I always think does anyone understand it? So there was a trend/fashion/action that went round, prob late 90’s to early 00’s of flashing ones bits to the camera, now remember this was back in the day of film, so there’s no instant gratification of seeing the picture, not many places would publish it, a lot of editors just wanted to see them. The practicalities of the action usually consisted of the chest areas occasionally a bottom and very occasionally a front shot of genitals (they were very occasional) and it was all done in utmost fun, judging by the smiles. I will put a provision in here, I never, ever, ever asked people to do this, it was something they did for the camera I was an almost innocent bystander!!! I have put these in a separate folder and could go into a book that could be published (very long after my death of course.) This may be interesting, or it may not but it’ll have to wait for a long time so as to save any embarrassment to the parties shown.
Again leading on from embarressemnet angle is the combined threat of what happens if I publish, there are some images that I would love to show but I just can’t. An absolute cracking one that illustrates this actually consists of two images. I’ll have to explain them now. Right let us picture the scene, it’s a dancefloor, somewhere in a loft of the north in the early 00’s scene, there’s a woman dancing, smiling, having a great time, she’s centre to the image but just to the right there’s a rather large presence of a chap, smirking, looming, approaching. Anyway in the next frame he’s next to the woman in the centre of the frame and he’s obviously said something to her as she’s now frozen, completely frozen still with wide eyes almost like a doll’s expression, completely shock shook. Not sure if this was a technique women used to fend off advances, but I’ve captured it quite well here. it’d be one for that chaotic clubbing thing that was trendy a few months ago but has now lost its legs…Anyway I think I recognise this chap, and as they used to say he’s a wrong un/not one to tangle with and I have no idea if he’s still in business but daren’t risk it in case he is…so no publish yet. It’s a really funny image representing that toxic male thing and very quite similar to the meme of the (Scottish) girl being chatted to in the club by a boy and she’s got that look too except my capture is a little more sophisticated, I think.
Part of the reason for the blur thing and one of the reasons I use it is (and binds these together) are that these negs have never seen the internet, they were used for the paper but they’ve got no presence digitally till I bring them forth so of course there’s all sorts of considerations, which I’ve mentioned (banged on about) previously, hence the disguising of people by blurs as I’ve no idea of the reaction if they see the internet without these.
Phew how’s them issues for a Friday afternoon, who needs it…lets speak of love…so that’s the archive shots for this month then, love ‘em or lathe ‘em. But speaking of love, this week’s Insta love spreads to two absolute icons with
Pammie in VB season 23 which is here
Also couldn’t leave out this beauty from perineal favourite Em Rata (strickly speaking non blonde but the vibes are present so we’ll overlook) it’s here at:
Thinking of an occasional tune recommendation to go with these pictures?
With these pictures in this blog in mind, how can we not go with this banger…
Thinking I may do a playlist but my criteria is quite strict, does that work these days?
Enjoy and as this is the season of love then lets spread some wherever we go, yes?
Ciao Bella.