Lost Films

Paul Schwartz over at Kodak's great A Thousand Words blog was kind enough to link to my Found Film archive in a post about the subject of finding long-forgotten films in antique cameras. It's probably one of my favorite moments with a camera I've bought on eBay. The anticipation of what could possibly be on that fifty year old roll of film.

In Paul's post, he is also linking to this amazing collection of found film. I just spent a substantial part of an evening looking at all these pictures. The photos in this gallery together with the thoughtful writing by the nameless owner of all these cameras is a meditation into the fleeting nature of our lives. We see pictures of old people who must have died a long time ago and also snapshots of young children who by now must have grown up and whose own children are probably already in their twenties.

Photography can be harsh in its unwavering look at our aging faces, but then again photography is the only thing to bring back memories of lives well spent.