Joan Ruppert`s father, Joe Tortorici, pictured in the late 1930s. This image, along with many others, was discovered in a trove of negatives and contact prints given to Joan by her mother.
When Joan Ruppert was handed a box of film negatives by her mother, she had no idea what to expect. What she found was a precious glimpse into pre-war Chicago, and a priceless insight into her father`s early life.
Thanks for speaking to us Joan. Tell us about the shoeboxnegs project.
Many years ago my mother handed me a shoebox - literally - a shoebox full of negatives and said `Your dad used to take a lot of photographs, he was an avid photographer`. Which I really didn`t know, and I was actually kind of flabbergasted by that. I`d just started taking a darkroom class, and seeing that I was getting interested in photography, my mom suddenly remembered about this box of negatives.
As the images were coming off the scanner, I was amazed. I had no idea what I had
Years later I pulled them out, and put them on my flatbed scanner and I realized that none of them were going to fit into the standard holders. They were odd sizes - either too big, or too small, or too bumpy, or too curled.
So then I decided to learn how other people had approached similar tasks, and I discovered wet scanning, and I started working on that. As the images were coming off the scanner, I was amazed. I had no idea what I had.
So I put a website together to showcase the images, and then I really got excited about sharing them with the world.
Street portraits, showing life in Chicago, dominate the collection.
How much did you know about your father`s early life before you started working on these images?
He died when I was very young. What I know is that he was a city kid, his parents were born in Sicily, so he was first-generation. His family came from modest means, so I knew he didn`t have a lot of expensive cameras, or access to a proper darkroom or anything ...
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