The mystery photographer of '60s San Francisco and undeveloped Kodachrome

[Archiver]

Professional photographer Bill Delzell was stunned when he came into possession of over 8000 photos of San Francisco from the 60s. Muhammed Ali, Carlos Santana, and Timothy Leary. The collection is a complete representation of SF of that era. But the kicker is that the photographer is unidentified, and Bill wants to develop the remaining 75 rolls of Kodachrome, and figure out who it was.

Can You Identify the Mystery Photographer Who Captured Thousands of Captivating Images of 1960s San Francisco?

Discovered in an abandoned storage locker, the 2,042 processed color slides and 102 rolls of black-and-white film depict key moments in the city's history

www.smithsonianmag.com

Comments on an Instagram post give many suggestions. One is that it was Agnes Varda:

"There is a theory that it's director Agnes Varda, and that makes the most sense. There is also a photo of the photographer reflection in a window, and it sure as hell looks like her"

Someone else wrote:

"maybe he went to Vietnam and didn’t come home? Sad to think that was the end to so many young lives."

Another suggestion:

"Maybe the mysterious missing Surfer Magazine photographer Ron Stoner took these.. He tripped out on acid and became schizophrenic in the end of the 60s and disappeared .. He was an excellent photographer and maybe one of the best surf photographers ever.. He would have had a press pass to get into all the events .. and possibly just left all the rolls sitting when he tripped out.. Nobody ever knew what happened to him."

Yet another suggestion:

"This looks like the work of Rowland Scherman. he was everywhere in the 60s took amazing photographs and didn’t develop many. At the time he just was looking for the money shot - the one he was going to sell to the magazine and didn’t pay attention to the rest. The famous album cover with Dylan just as a backlit silhouette is Rowland Scherman. He had pictures of bands and concerts and political people in the 60s"

Such a fascinating story!

 

[nightlight]

Thank you for sharing!

 

[wlewisiii]

Can't say about the photographer, but I've read that the best way to deal with old Kodachrome is to deal with it like HP5 that's sat around for however long. D76 (1+1) and times as appropriate for the age with the likelihood of base fog.

I'd like to see what might (emphasis on MIGHT) be salvaged from the rolls.

 

[santino]

Can't say about the photographer, but I've read that the best way to deal with old Kodachrome is to deal with it like HP5 that's sat around for however long. D76 (1+1) and times as appropriate for the age with the likelihood of base fog.

I'd like to see what might (emphasis on MIGHT) be salvaged from the rolls.

This is so rff 😂
I was about to say the same! Kodachrome caught my attention first.

 

[Archiver]

This is so rff 😂
I was about to say the same! Kodachrome caught my attention first.

Yeah, I figured using the name Kodachrome in the title was like waving a red flag at a bull here. 😆

 

[Timmyjoe]

Whoever it was, they were/are a talented photographer. And they witness history in the making.

Best,
-Tim

 

[dexdog]

I hope that the current owner can get that old film developed somehow. I miss Kodachrome.

 

[Freakscene]

Exposed Kodachrome develops very nicely as a black-and-white negative. The materials to develop it as colour film no longer exist. The saddest thing is the films could have been developed as colour slides when they were first found in the 1980s.

 

[Dervla]

Maybe ask Greg Gaar if he knows who the photographer was/is.

 

[bcostin]

Darn shame Kodachrome developing is no longer available, but fortunate that B&W images can be salvaged.

I've read of a few hobbyists who've had limited success reconstructing a color process using Kodak patents. That would be interesting.

 

[Archiver]

Exposed Kodachrome develops very nicely as a black-and-white negative. The materials to develop it as colour film no longer exist. The saddest thing is the films could have been developed as colour slides when they were first found in the 1980s.

Some are going to hate this, but those black and white images can now be accurately colourized using AI trained on Kodachrome.

 

[santino]

Accurately?

 

[wlewisiii]

Accurately?

They fool themselves that it is, but colorization is, always, the worst possible solution. AI or otherwise.

 

[Phil_F_NM]

Gray is gray. AI doesn't notice the difference between any color, if the values are gray and especially if they are matching. It may be able to approximate a skin tone, interpolate green foliage, dark gray asphalt, red brick, but otherwise, it's only artificial, not intelligent. After you plug an image into AI to colorize it, then you're just getting a guess done by a machine. We lasted plenty of years with only black and white images, and are still doing well there. Our brains are far better than a computer at filling in the colors if we choose to do so, but we have infinite imaginations and computers simply don't.
Phil

 

[boojum]

They fool themselves that it is, but colorization is, always, the worst possible solution. AI or otherwise.

OTOH we can't let perfect be the enemy of good. Even if after colorizing the color is lousy the mono negative will still exist so nothing has been lost. It s worth the effort.

 

[bcostin]

Some are going to hate this, but those black and white images can now be accurately colourized using AI trained on Kodachrome.

It can give pleasant results with plausible guesses for some colors, but I don't know if I'd say "accurate".

One of the pictures is of a big protest with various signs and banners, for example. AI by itself wouldn't know what color those were, but the colors likely tell part of the story about what was happening.

 

[bcostin]

OTOH we can't let perfect be the enemy of good. Even if after colorizing the color is lousy the mono negative will still exist so nothing has been lost. It s worth the effort.

That's a good point. My only worry is that someone might find the colorized version and mistake/misrepresent it as a color original. But that's a different problem, really, and it's much worse with completely made-up AI-generated photoillustrations.