Halcott Center: a Catskill Mountain Valley
I lived in Halcott Center, a valley in New York’s Catskills Mountains, from 1973 to 1975. The plan was to publish a book of this body of work after returning to San Francisco, and Ansel Adams wrote a generous introduction. A publisher agreed to produce the book, and Halcott Center: a Catskill Mountain Valley, was on their Spring 1977 list of publications. Unfortunately they went out of business in January. I finally self-published the book 30 years later.
Sad to say that many of the negatives from my years in Halcott have “vinegarized” at some point over the last 60 years. This is a phenomenon where the acetate base of the film crinkles and buckles, rendering it unprintable. The affected negatives give off a distinct oder of acetic acid, hence the term, “vinegarized”. All of these negatives were shot on Ilford FP4, which apparently has this issue on films manufactured in the early 1970s. (More recent Ilford films do not have this problem). On the bright side, many of the negatives I created during my Halcott years were made on different films, and have survived the decades unscathed. But a few favorites can never be printed again or even scanned. Also on the bright side, there are vintage prints of many of those “lost” negatives, and those prints can be scanned.
(Once you’ve clicked on one to view the photos at full size, hovering the cursor over the photo will reveal the title, but leaving it there will crop the bottom edge.)
