W.R. McKeen Jr., Kodak No. 2 negatives, ca. 1891
These envelopes, dated November 4, 1891, contained 87 “good” negatives and 12 “failures.” The negatives were from a No. 2 Kodak camera. After 100 exposures were made, the camera was sent to the Eastman Company for processing. In this order, only 87 prints were returned to the photographer. The “failures” were segregated into a separate envelope and not printed. The Eastman Company provided a list of possible causes of the “failures” and the corresponding pages in the manual to help prevent them.
Another example of this is here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bt3/sets/72157600237320419/
Those are great!
I like the long hair, double exposure, photo of photo, cute puppy…
Are those early John B. Trevor negatives?
(Maybe there are more “failures” on the Internet?)
Thank you!
Can we look forward to an exhibit of Photographic Mistakes?
I don’t know if ICP is planning on a “Photographic Mistakes” exhibition.
Of course there are a lot of photo mistakes or foto failures on the Internet. Flickr has a bunch of mistke or failure groups…
Thanks so much for posting these, Chris. What a treat to see these never-before-printed “accidents”!
You’re welcome.
Eventually it would be great to photograph the rest of the “failures” (there are more)…
Did you see Bronson’s “Cause of Failures” on Flickr?
More great “failures”…
Yes, I saw those! Being able to share common interests – another wonderful aspect of this post.