Bags’a'negs
So it seemed like a bright idea at the time.
You phone up your agency, you chat, be nice, be polite, then get to the point, “Can I get all my negs back please?”. Cue silence, sharp intake of breath, slow exhalation of breath, then hesitation, “Eh, that’ll be a big job. I’ll have to see if there’s someone can do it…”
And then months later a phone call, it’s done. All your negs, about 12 years worth of colour negs, shot for stock, shot for fun, shot on assignments, all in the agency archive filing cabinets, have all been retrieved. There’s a big box ready for dispatch, and then hey presto, a year or so after first mentioning it,they’re dispatched.
And then you see them for the first time, hundreds of brown envelopes, all with your name, your code, subject description ( or not), file numbers, all wrapped in clear bags. Like some sort of drugs consignment, only at today’s rates not as lucrative.
And then the good bit, you open the bags, you peruse the names, Michael Caine (“care for a plum ?”), Wilfred Thesiger (3 frames), John Major (“Sorry, I can’t speak right now I’ve a mouth full of peanuts”), Tom Jones ( did I do him ?), Shirley Bassey ( 3 songs, no flash, no.3 was Goldfinger…), Bob Geldof (didn’t like him), underage drinkers ( profitable little shoot), Cannes (sunny), heroin addiction (not so sellable as I’d imagined), Eternal (?), Portishead (I hated her after that gig), U2 (numerous times), Tony Blair (Dundee), Nelson Mandela (2nd time, in prison), Istanbul, Alberto Alessi (with iconic orange juice squeezer on his head), Sir Clive Sinclair (when was that ?), Patsy Kensit (nearly got punched by Liam), John Irving (which time?), Irvine Welsh (in the pub? Which session?),…..it goes on…..Hundreds of them, all in brown envelopes. Jobs you remember vividly, jobs you don’t remember, people you remember shooting, and people you never knew you’d shot. All comes back to you. And you sift though them, yes, yes, yes, yes, nope, nope, yes, nope, yes…
And then there’s a new pile, the ones you want to scan. Thankfully it’s smaller than the big pile, the ones in ideal world you’d like to scan but don’t have a couple of years to donate to the project.
Andiamo avanti, like a donkey under a tonne.
