Articles
Lost & Found: forgotten memories
- Details
- Category: Magazine
- Published: 15 August 2011
- Written by Dominique Musorrafiti
- Hits: 40622

What happens if some old films are found in the debris of a city ?
In this period Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province, is working hard for changing the skyline. Everyday there are new construction sites and old urban area get quickly demolished. In the city there are also huge work in progress for the new, first underground line. While walking near a small river in the north est area of the city without surprise I found out a street, once used by cars to reach some fishing facilities, was turned into a green area and all the facilities were demolished. Walking around the ruins I saw a 35mm film and I took a picture of it, but after a while I saw there were also a lot of others negatives and some 120mm. This was really unexpected because walking randomly in China I always see on the ground playing cards, toys, shoes, never negatives. Usually I don’t pick up things that I find on the ground, but in this case I thought “If I don’t pick them, of course they will be destroyed since they were already abandoned by the owners.” All the120mm and 35mm films were in terrible conditions, covered by dried mud, dust. Some pictures were broken, scratched, erased ... I put everything in a plastic bag and I brought it home, washed the films with liquid soap and water, dried gently with fingers and roll out drying. It works perfectly with the 120mm but on the 35mm the emulsion on the negative get out, I was able to recover only few photos, so I stopped because afraid to damage the others 35mm pictures (So I still have the plastic bag full). As you can see the recovered 120mm pictures seems to be taken around '70s or early ‘80s, maybe an honeymoon ... only one seems to be older: a school trip. The 35mm recovered pictures are all portrait of a woman, clearly the same woman from the honeymoon in Beijing, maybe 10 years later. I gave a quick look to the others 35mm negatives and it seems that in the plastic bag I have all their photo life: I saw a little girl growing up … unfortunately I don’t know how to save these negatives without erasing the photos. I’m sad about it. When I see this plastic bag with all these negatives, now I know that there is inside an entire family life, I hope to save this films an maybe one day I can give the recovered photos to the original owners. We are in internet era so everything is possible. Who knows!!!











































