This is a project that has been nearly 35 years in the making and probably never would have happened without the Internet. Carroll Welch was an avid photographer. However, it was not his love of photography that set him apart, but rather the detail with which he chronicled his work. For example, when Carroll took a photograph, he also wrote out a file card where he recorded the date, place, subjects, and even the light conditions (recorded with precision from his Weston Light Meter). How often have any of us looked at a photograph that we ourselves took and wondered where and when that picture was taken? I suspect that we've all had that experience, but thanks to Carroll we have all of the details of his photographs.
When Carroll died in 1969, his wife Bess asked me to help her clean out their house. When I came across the treasure trove of photographs (mostly just negatives and file cards) neatly organized in a file cabinet, I asked Bess if she would allow me to have the collection. She refused and, moreover, insisted that the entire collection be thrown out. I complied and threw all of the pictures, negatives, and file cards into big green garbage bags and took them to the curb for collection. However, rather than being collected by the Town of Huntington, I went back myself and collected the garbage bags in the middle of the night (I was much younger then). Over the next several weeks, I reorganized the collection back into its original form and placed the pictures into a new file cabinet.
At this point in the story it is important to understand a technical detail. Since these pictures were taken in the 1940s, the format of the negatives is very different from those produced by today's cameras. The negatives are much larger than anything used today and, thus, they cannot be used by today's photo labs unless the labs have special equipment (which is quite unusual). Moreover, Carroll experimented with several different formats, including some early color film, which makes the reproduction of the pictures difficult.
Over the years, I have wanted to make these pictures available to members of my family (my aunts, uncles, and cousins), because the people Carroll included in these pictures are their parents and grandparents (and now even great grandparents) and these pictures may well pre-date pictures that they have in their own scrapbooks. However, given the challenge of the task and the competition from other priorities, nothing ever got done, until mid-2003.
About one year ago, I asked Nick Ramirez (my sister Judi's oldest son, for anyone who is trying to keep the family tree straight) to consider taking on the project of making Carroll's pictures available through the public Internet. Luckily, he said yes before he fully understood the project's scope and he has labored for the last twelve months to get all of these pictures scanned and organized. This web site represents the fruits of those labors.
Since this is a web site, all of the pictures can be printed directly from your home computer on your local printer or can be copied for use in other documents. If you find anything of interest, please feel free to print or copy whatever you like. However, please be aware that the pictures posted here look similar to the way that Carroll first saw them sixty years ago. Nick has not used the benefits of modern technology to correct such imperfections as incorrect exposure. Even so, pictures that look good on your computer screen may appear grainy when printed. Indeed, because high-quality scanning takes both time and disk space, Nick has posted the pictures with a high enough quality to look good on the screen and be quickly accessible. However, since Nick has the negatives and the technology, he can make high-quality prints of any of the pictures shown here.
I sincerely hope that you enjoy Carroll's pictures and I hope that they make a meaningful addition to your family archives. If you have questions about anything on the web site, please contact Nick Ramirez.
Also, I would love to hear your comments about this project or these pictures. Please e-mail me at wtatob@optonline.net
Happy viewing.
Tom.
