Checkered Past

Last week I finally developed an old roll of Kodak Tri-X that I removed from some old camera a while ago. It was a 20-exposure roll in the old green and yellow cassette that dates from the late 1950's to mid-60s. The film had quite a bit of base fog, but the negatives were easily scanned. After I viewed the dried negatives, I started laughing, as every person in the photos, except for an infant, wore a checkered, short-sleeved shirt. It was a back yard scene, set in June (based on a photo of a peony flower amidst the picnic photos)-- representative of blue-collar middle-class families of that period in time. The cars, late-1950's models, look fresh, so my guess is between 1958 and 1962. The place could be somewhere in the Detroit suburbs.


The fun thing in these photos are the people wearing the checkered shirts. Obviously done to possibly honor the grandpa, or else it's a strange cult. I'm betting on them having a laugh at someone's sartorial choice.


Family resemblance.

ace photographer

it was a vanilla world

I need more beer!

Developing found film and getting results like this makes it really worthwhile. I would say that it's a rarity, because all too often, a camera back gets opened in the intervening 50 years, ruining those latent images from the past.