With years of photography under my belt, I find myself the caretaker of a colossal collection of negatives, slides, prints and various digital files, haphazardly stored in boxes, drawers and multiple data storage devices. Annually, as the nights begin to creep in, I set about the daunting task of sorting what I humorously term my “photo archive”. Lingering at the back of my thoughts is the objective of one day presenting a comprehensive display of four decades of my work, be it in a book, an exhibition or any other format.
Although the initial steps in this endeavour are carried out with fervor, my interest inevitably sags around the time the radiators roar back to life in early October, and before I am aware of it, another year has slipped by unnoticed. Hoping to motivate myself, this year I am making my intentions public, inviting colleagues and friends to hold me accountable and push me to keep my resolve.
Among my collection are envelopes containing film negatives with a corresponding contact sheet attached. Produced by placing negatives onto photosensitive paper and exposing them to both light and chemical treatment, a usual contact sheet reflects a negative roll of 36 exposures in a convenient six-by-six format.
I must admit, though, that most photographers from my epoch involved in daily reporting rarely had the time for contact sheets, even during the film era. The process chiefly involved processing the film strip, drying and gauging it against the light or feeding it through an enlarger, picking out a handful of frames for printing.
The romantic picture of a photographer leisurely sifting through a contact sheet with a magnifying loupe and a coffee in hand, though visually appealing in cinema, was rather scarce in my peak working period. Nevertheless, I have managed to create a decent number of contact sheets, primarily during my university days or for personal assignments where there was no rush.
A single photograph might encapsulate the essence of the story being told, but the contact sheet provides the broader context, revealing a timeline of scenes prior to and following the selected frame. This precious tool offers an insight into the photographer’s thought process as they change their subject matter – it exposes the botched shots, the unsharp and underexposed, the so-called flaws. On revisiting these sheets after several years, one tends to spot overlooked nuances, leading to an altered selection than what was originally chosen.