Sometime during the fall I begin working on my once-every-year project: our Christmas card. This is an old tradition in the Watson family, started by my father in 1950. My father was an architect and very good at drawing so his cards were all drawings. I am a photographer and when I started making cards in 1970, I used photographs. The only rule is that they must be accompanied by a quotation from the gospels, though sometime I must admit the connection is not so clear.

This card was made for Christmas 1975 and is from Luke 2:10 ”behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy”. The tidings of great joy were for us the birth of my daughter Elisabeth. I learned my lesson: I got very tired of telling people in the US what it said and now have the source in the card so the English speakers could look up the text. Things were very primitive in those days. I took the picture during a field trip my photo class took, the subject being those new-fangled lasers. For some reason they were all red and I took a lot of pictures just to have. Later I was looking around for a picture and picked this negative.

I put the negative in the enlarger and projected it onto a contact frame. The photopaper was put in the contact frame and on top of it was a piece of plastic (overhead film) that I had written the text on with a felt tipped pen. Then I exposed and printed about 50 or 80 cards. There was always a lot of spill involved in making cards.

 
My insistence on or need to always take pictures is a strain on the people around me. I am always wandering off, or falling behind, or running ahead, sometimes all of these at once. I therefore remember the vacation my wife and I took in Rhodes in 1973 with great fondness. I would get up early, around 5 or 6 and walk around town for an hour or two looking and taking pictures. Then I would wander back to the hotel, put away my Rollei and go down to breakfast and spend the rest of the day with my wife. A great vacation!

This is a real old negative, from the second roll of film I ever took. I was taking a basic course in photography at the University of Miami and we had the assignment to take portraits in a working environment. I went to my father’s office and took 11 pictures of 11 people. Wow! Almost a whole roll! I didn’t take the whole roll of 12 exposures because there weren’t 12 people working there. But I had to finish the roll and get back to school and develop it. So I took this picture. Her name is Lois Sargant and she was the daughter of my father’s secretary. I think she was at the office because she had a cold or something.

I made a print of the best working portrait and left in the assignment. I made a print of Lois and gave it to her mother. I went on to other assignments. Recently I was looking for an old negative when I found this one instead and decided to scan it in for my ”Something Old” section of my website. The note with the negative says that it was taken on November 2, 1963 and I scanned it 51 years later to the day. In 1963 digital meant something to do with fingers to me. I wonder what we can do with the negative in 50 more years? Assimilate its DNA and clone a new Lois? Don’t laugh.

This is the only negative I have from this roll. On the roll was also Joseph Amanzio who worked for my father at the time. A few years ago I gave him the other negatives because they meant more to him than to me.

In the summer of 1981 I wanted to continue a project from the year before, which resulted in the book "Juli 1980", and at the same time expand it. Between the 17th of May and the 8th of September, I worked in the same way — I didn’t plan my thinking or my photography. I worked instinctively and, as a complement to the pictures, I wrote a diary and poetry. In an attempt to give the pictures another feeling than those in "Juli 1980" , I used a different camera, a pocket camera from the 50's, a Folmar Automatic, giving a 6X9 centimeter negative. This picture was one of the first pictures in the project. Back then it never got past the contact stage. It was first when I was working on the book that I came across this negative and liked it. Why do I like it so much now and not as much then? I guess quite simply I was a different person now than 32 years ago. This picture is also unique (for me) in that I scanned the negative direct for the book and never have made a print of it. I’ll have to do that some day.

I taught photography in Uppsala, many different courses over the years, between 1972 - 2009. At the end of each course, I gave each student a present, a so-called "Gåvobild", to thank them for the course.

This was, I found out, the very first photograph I gave away, in the Spring of 1973. I dug out my old printing notes and find that it was taken on the 15th of May 1973 at Mariefred here in Sweden. I printed it on my old Leitz IIA (THAT was a long time ago!) on Agfa Brovira Normal paper, developed in Agfa Neutol at a temperature of 21.5°C. I hadn’t the faintest remembrance that I once upon a time took the temperature of a black and white developer. Yet another sign that it was a long time ago!

One of the side effects of teaching (at least for me) is that I have acquired a lot of knowledge and experience that aren't directly related to what I really do with photography. This photograph incorporates two of them: pinhole photography and toning. I was teaching a short course in pinhole photography for Lasse Mellberg's course at Nordens Folkhögskola at Biskops-Arnö. Lasse, who is a maestro at toning, intoduced me to thiocarbamid toning. Such a beautiful combination. It's a pity this is not my real calling. Life is just too short, I guess, or perhaps we need more of them.

Since “Something old” was for Limbo pictures, this photograph is perhaps a little out of place on this page. Taken in the summer of 1981, it has lived on in my Elisabeth and Christine series. However I am working on a book, “Summer 1981” and I pulled the print out of its box and scanned it. It was taken in July at our summer cabin and, even if I don’t give my pictures titles, is archived under the code name “Gulliver”. Elisabeth, who was then going on 6 years old, is now going on 35. We still have the boat, “Erik” and maybe Elisabeth’s son, Isak will play with it this summer.

In the fall of 1965 I received a scholarship to study Radio and Television Production at The American University in Washington D.C. One of my duties connected with the scholarship was to take pictures for the University. I may even have been The Photographer, but I’m not sure. One of my first jobs was to do a little feature for the magazine on the activities of the school theatre group. For some reason, I decided to use the school’s 6X6 camera, a format I hadn’t used for two years. Of course I had in that time managed to forget all about lining up the arrows on the film with the arrows on the camera and this was the result. Luckily there was no deadline on this project and I could go back and get the pictures I needed. I printed this picture just to see what it looked like and the editor liked it so much he used it on the table of contents page! It is also distinguished in that it is one of two negatives I have managed to lose in my “career” as a photographer. I keep hoping that it’s just misplaced in those tons of negatives I have in my basement.

On November 18, 2008, my grandmother would have been 128 years old. I decided it would be nice to send a picture of her to all her descendents, my relatives. I knew almost exactly when I took it, November 1963, and a 5-minute trip to my darkroom brought it to the light of day. It was on a roll with 11 horrible exposures but I was lucky, this was negative number 12, perfectly exposed and in perfect shape after 45 years. As I was scanning it in to send it off I mused if anyone could find a digital picture that easily and if all the 1s and 0s would fall into place in the year 2053.

I took this photograph of my foot and some cobblestones one sunny day in Uppsala, 1977. I liked the picture (still do) and thought I'd do a series of similar pictures with the code name "Mimosa Kiel" after the name of the photopaper I printed it on. The project never really went anywhere and my paper got older and older. I learned a lot about projects, the need for a goal, a statement and that a loose concept never usually leads anywhere. The following year I started another project, that, one thing leading to another, has kept me busy up to the present day. So "Mimosa Kiel" wasn't entirely wasted. Sure was a lovely photopaper though!

I have two daughters, Elisabeth and Christine. Aside from the "project pictures" (Elisabeth and Christine), and all the family snapshots, I have had another project "monthly pictures". Every month, since June of 1980 when Christine was 6 months old, I have taken a picture of Elisabeth and a picture of Christine, on Polaroid SX70. Then I wrote on the back of the picture a little summary of what we did that day. Elisabeth would get the picture I took of Christine and vice versa.
We often have great fun taking out the pictures and looking at them and reading the text: "OK, pick a date!" This time it's the first of August 1981. I wrote on the back: "We went out walking to get some pine and spruce trees to fill out in front of the cabin. On the way back, Christine stopped and said "Mamma, mygg illa ögon" (Mommy bug hurt eye). And it swelled and turned bluish-pink. Later she lay on the sofa."

After I finished my first photo courses I suffered from "lack of darkroom" disease. So I joined the University of Miami's press corps. My first photo assignment was to photograph this lovely young lady. On the back of the contact I've noted that her name was Barbara Biggart and it was taken for the school magazine "Tempo". My next assignment was to photograph the Beatles as they came through Miami to or from the Bahamas where they filmed "HELP". No wonder I thought I wanted to be a photojournalist!

Towards the end of my first term of photo studies (the fall of 1963), I was asked by a fraternity to take some pictures of a float they were building for some parade (I don't remember which parade). A real novice, enthusiatic and insecure with my photographic responsibility, I took three rolls of 120 film, a huge amount for me then. I took lots of people posing and working, but I also took "artistic" shots.

I thought my artistic shots were good but the fraternity had no use for them, nor did the pictures fit into an assignment, so they never got printed. When looking for them I found I didn't even have a contact, so I had a merry time holding my negative sheets up to the light one by one, the whole fall of 1963 passing before my eyes. I found them, December 10th, and scanned in this picture. I'll probably never get around to printing them (I have lots of other negatives waiting in line), but at least I have it here!

In 1998 I was invited to participate in a self-portrait project with 8 photographers from different countries in Europe. I had never taken self-portraits before so I of course said yes. I got to meet a lot of interesting people, especially the "LeMans crowd", some really wonderful people!

We were to take a self-portrait on the last day of every month and this is for March. I am at school helping Linda Romppola (on the left) with her portfolio, she was applying for Nordens Folkhögskola. Her friend Angelika Klang is busy being generally amused.

In the fall of 1965 I was studying, and working, at The American University in Washington D.C. I was studying Television and Film Production and working as the University's photographer. I was given a huge amount of left-over black and white negative film stock. I don't know how much it was but the can it came in seemed about a foot in diameter (30 cm) and I had three of them. I never used it all up but passed it along down the line.

I took my bulk film loader and rolled till my arms ached. Then my friend Don Siegal and I headed for New York for the weekend and I hung out the car window and took roll upon roll as we drove around. Then I took roll upon roll as we walked around till it was all used up and we went home.

Well, my percentages were not all that good. Actually they stank and I only ended up printing three pictures of which this was one of them. We had fun though!

For a case of old wine in new bottles, see: something new.

In the summer of 1974 I attended the Ansel Adams workshop in Yosemite. I don’t remember how long it was but it seemed to go on forever. It was very good and I learned a lot. Mostly I learned what kind of pictures I didn’t want to take.Towards the end of the course there was a "meet the guru" photo op, where everyone got to pose ALL BY HIM(HER)SELF WITH ANSEL! Poor Ansel, there must have been nearly a hundred people in that workshop! At first I didn’t want to do it, it was a bit like an audience with the Pope and I felt a bit foolish. But then I thought "oh, what the hell…..". After I got my camera back I turned and saw Ansel rushing away and snapped this picture. This one I printed, but not the one with me in it.

This is my very first contact print, done when I took a photo course at the University of Miami. It is of interest to note that this is NOT the first roll of film I took. Apparently I didn’t like making contact prints any more then than I do now. Two things are apparent: I wasn’t so good at taking pictures of people and I liked reflections. This holds true even today (see "something new").