Holding Time Project

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Holding Time Project - image by unknown photographer



Some time ago I discovered that there was a ready source of glass plate negative stock in the UK. The plates are produced in the States by J. Lane and imported into the UK by Analogue Wonderland, who supply a wide range of, well - analogue - photography gear and materials. I've bought quite a few rolls of film from them since I discovered them and find them the kind of small business I like to support. Please check out their YouTube live streams - well worth the time.


So, in preparation for the day when I stump up the cash for a box or two of plates, I found a parcel of old 5"x4" plate holders on eBay at a bargain price. These little beauts are the thick end of a hundred years old and I discovered that one of them had cut-film adaptors in either side (these being double dark slides), shimmed out with two glass plates to make them fit. One was an unexposed plate, but the other was an actual photograph. Unfortunately, the original owner had glued and taped the adaptor to the negative. Tonight I decided to part the plate from its prison of ninety-odd years.


I did the Holding Time trick of backlighting the neg and snapping it with the iPhone, then inverting the image to render it as a positive. The result is above. The coloured areas are the negatively rendered brown paper tape originally used to edge the whole affair, and you can clearly see where the four blobs of cement were that glued the plate to the adaptor.


I find the whole thing fascinating: here's a slice of someone's young life around a century ago. The young woman sitting in the window looks in her twenties and the car and house suggest that the image was made sometime prior to 1930 - cut film started to replace glass plates in the 1910s, which would be too early certainly for the type of car depicted or the hairstyle of the young woman. I find this totally bewitching. That image has been locked away since around the time my maternal grandparents were married; out of sight to the world, its maker and his subject long-deceased. Utterly entrancing.

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