I was scanning this negative yesterday and as I started to clean the negative I noticed those markings were not random. This negative had been retouched. How weird, I have retouched a million digital files and a bunch of prints but I never knew how or had any reason to retouch a negative. This is a negative that was taken for the yearbook in 1986. I was in 10th grade back then. I now have a daughter that is in 9th grade. I am getting old. Back to the topic, negative retouching is a lost art these days with computers. I still can't imagine having to retouch negatives and how tedious that must have been and what did the retouching accomplish? It scanned perfectly and it was confirmation that out of the one proof and four negatives I had picked the correct negative. It is sad to think that looking at negatives might be a lost art one day.
1 comment:
Hi Jeff,
This is Ron Pacheco. I believe that would have been the year I was a photographer for the Petit Jean. This photo didn't strike a chord with me, but I can absolutely answer the question about why this photo was retouched even if I wasn't the one who actually did it. My film photography and developing experience ranged from 1978 until around 1986. Actually that year on the Petit Jean was the last regular contact I had with developing and printing film. In those twelve years I retouched quite a few negatives and became fairly skilled at doing it. The reasons for retouching a negative, though, are fairly straightforward: either to correct an issue with the negative itself, such as a scratch, or to enhance something about the photo. And in both cases, it was only done if the photo itself was to be printed multiple times as it would much easier to correct a single print than a negative.
I recognize the type of retouching here, and I believe it was done for a very specific purpose: to diminish the effects of aging in a portrait photograph. Look closely at where the retouching has been done. It's mostly in places where you'd find age lines. The other places could be moles, freckles, scars, etc. It even appears the retoucher has removed both glare and shadow from the lenses of the glasses. Whoever did this was an experienced retoucher. It appears to be a professional portrait, which means that the negative was probably printed multiple times, possibly in several different sizes, and retouching each individual photo would have been impractical.
I am rather surprised that you found a retouched photo in the Petit Jean files, though. It seems clear that it's a professional portrait, but anyone shooting for the Petit Jean would certainly not have bothered with retouching. This in turn would imply that this photo might have come from the subject's own personal collection; he'd had a portrait made and at some later time gave the photo to the Petit Jean. Even that doesn't completely make sense to me though, because usually the subject wouldn't have the negatives to his own portrait, and if he did and he allowed a publication to use it, wouldn't he want it back? So, while I can tell you why it was retouched, that actually only seems to raise more questions! LOL!
Feel free to email me at ron@pacheco.net if you want to continue the discussion.
Cheers,
Ron
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