Dad and his Slides

Starting when he was in boarding school in the 1930’s and used a folding camera that took 120 roll film (a Zeiss Ikonta A that produced 16 4.5x6 cm negatives), my father was an enthusiastic amateur photographer. I believe he learned to develop and print black and white pictures in the boarding school darkroom. I don’t think he took that camera with him to the Pacific, where he served as a junior officer on a battleship during World War II, but I won’t know for sure until I sift through all of the boxes under the bed in the spare room. I may never know.

By 1958 (or so?), he went to Adler’s Photo in downtown Providence, RI (“You won’t get a lemon on Orange Street” was their slogan) and selected a new camera, the 35mm rangefinder Leica IIIg, complete with collapsible Summicron 50mm lens and various accessories. And he of course switched from black and white to color slides. The slides were positive transparencies that came back from Adler’s in 2”x2” cardboard mounts that Dad slid individually into little aluminum holders, which went into oblong magazines for use in an Airequipt projector.

I was born in 1961.

My father was in the prime of his life, serious and meticulous about caring for his photos. Here’s an example of the annotations on a paper insert to one of the Airequipt magazines:

My dad’s entire photo collection ended up in my hands — in several installments. The first installment was all of the slides: 30 or 40 Airequipt magazines in several attaché cases, and another 30 or 40 Kodak carousels. In fits and starts, I’ve been scanning his slides. I’ve tried a number of methods. At first I was a completist with the goal of scanning ALL of the slides. Progress has been extremely slow. Lately, I’ve adopted the strategy of looking at the slides on a light box with a loupe and selecting.

Is it strange for me to feel compelled to scan the pictures of family trips that I wasn’t on?

In the summer of 1962, my parents took my older siblings on a trip across country, and left me behind with relatives and a babysitter. I believe the trip included New York City, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Disneyland, various national parks in California and Canada, and several long train rides. They must’ve been gone a long time.

There are a few great shots from that trip. The Disneyland and Seattle World’s Fair shots are a lot of fun, but I particularly like the street scenes of San Francisco:

Inside the attaché case with the photos from this trip, was an envelope just big enough to hold a business card or some stray pieces of film:

And on the front of the envelope, this inscription:

I don’t recall doing this or being punished for it. But what toddler could resist grabbing some of his dad’s slides, and using his thumb to push the films right out of their mounts?!

Perhaps this transparency from the little envelope never saw the inside of anyone’s projector, but after scanning the film, it became a favorite of mine:

So much so, that I went to the trouble of figuring out the location (Commercial Street and Grant Avenue, San Francisco) and visiting there myself in 2017:

(Photo by Martha Edwards)

Thank you, Dad, for your legacy of photography.