![]() I use to have the same problem, I stopped using my fingers to wipe the film and just hang dry straight from the photoflo and no more marks. Unfortunately it seems that as it dries I get a residue all over my negs that is visible in my scans and looks like the tide is coming in!! It can be wiped off but I find that scratches the negs.Īny ideas what I'm doing wrong? Do I need to use filtered water perhaps? 5ml to a litre of tap water as per the directions, and when the film is out I give it a shake to lose the big drops, and run it through pre-wetted fingers to get rid of as much of the liquid as I can. We had begun a restoration project and soon had beautiful fresh prints from Masterji’s old negatives.I'm using Ilford's Ilfotol as a last step in my process of b&w developing. Those tough times were captured on this film, and we were the ones responsible for securing this legacy. This is not an easy process when his medium format film had been clipped from its ‘real’ into a singular 6圆 format, making safe handling and drying without damaging the film's emulsion a delicate task.įor me, this was the most nerve-racking process, but I could see from Tarla’s expression it was painful for her to watch too – this was her father’s life work, an Indian immigrant who had refused the menial jobs for migrants to be an artist. Using a couple of droplets of photo-flow (fairy liquid original) and a little patience, Tarla and I began to first soak then gently wash Masterji’s old film. As with the majority of archives, Masterji’s negatives had not been kept in the most suitable of conditions: Tarla admitted that the archive was chaotic! ![]() Through his negatives, though debris was not visible to the naked eye, it had accumulated onto the surface of the emulsion. After the first exposure and development, it was immediately apparent from viewing the test strips that a thorough cleansing process was necessary. We dusted off her father's negatives with a soft brush and compressed air, and tentatively placed the first one (single cut) into the carrier. I was in luck that Tarla is a keen analogue printer. We began to sort through her father’s negatives on the lightbox. I began working closely with Masterji’s daughter, Tarla, in Coventry University’s darkroom. His considered assumption turned out to be spot on: whilst handling these rare artefacts, damage was always an ever-present possibility. A friend, the photographic historian Pete James advised that grandpa’s old negatives might print a little ‘soft’. I recently printed my grandfather’s seventy-year-old 35mm panchromatic safety film for exhibition. It's harder than you think, though no job properly done is ever straightforward. 2015 - Printing from Masterji's negativesĮven though I have been printing my own black and white photographs for thirty years I have little experience of printing from other people’s negatives. This led to a 1962 licence to start the Master’s Art Studio on Stoney Stanton Road, Coventry, which still exists today. Time spent on evening courses at Lanchester Polytechnic and weekend courses with the GEC Photographic Society led to work, including photographing the visit to Coventry of the Indian High Commissioner and then onto portraits of the burgeoning south-Asian community. Unfulfilled with his mundane day-job, Masterji soon sought the company of creatives and struck up a friendship with local studio photographer John Blakemore, who was at the very beginning his own illustrious photographic career. Masterji had been nurturing an interest in photography, bringing with him from India a Box Brownie camera he used as a hobby. This was not Masterji’s future– he had come across the world to make his mark. ![]() To earn enough money for food and board he took a factory job, sharing cheap accommodation with his Indian friends. He arrived in the prosperous English city of Coventry to meet up with friends and many other recent migrants from India in 1958. Masterji left his home and job as a mathematics teacher in Ahmedabad, Gujarat soon after India gained Independence from the British. It was not until 2015 I discovered that the diminutive and unassuming figure was Mr Maganbhai Patel, the photographer known as Masterji. Soon after leaving my staff photographer’s position on the local newspaper where I’d been employed for the previous 5 years and with the luxury of in-house film processing no longer a convenient option I began using my local city centre professional colour lab, in Coventry.ĭuring the accumulating hours I spent in that lab waiting for my 35mm films to process, watching small colour prints dropping from the conveyor belt from the end of the machine, I very watched a short Indian man shuffle in through the door of the lab collect a small package of photographs then shuffled back out again.
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