People I'll Never Meet
It started in October 2017, when I spotted a cardboard box filled with slides, negatives and postcards in a house clearance shop in North Shields. The type of shop filled with the belongings of people who have passed away, literally things carried out in boxes and just popped onto a table for customers to rifle through. At the time, I was scanning my own film so the negatives caught my eye, and I wondered what was on them.
I actually didn’t buy the box at first but later that evening, it kept playing on my mind. I’m so careful and protective of my own negatives… I keep them in labelled folders, going back years and years, and it made me feel sad thinking of another photographers work just sitting there. I rang the shop, asked them to not sell the box, and I went straight back the next day. I think it cost me about £20 altogether.
After sorting through everything, I discovered that the dates on the packaging were all between the 50s and 60s, and the negatives and slides varied between being in perfect condition, to severely water damaged. I decided to save what I could.
The packaging from the development of the film all had the same name on them, ‘Morley Ford’, or ‘M.W. Ford’ and I started to piece together his life, guessing who was who in the photos. I put out a post on a local Facebook group and learnt that Morley Ford had been an optician in the nearby village of Whitley Bay, and had met his wife, Johnny, there when she started working for him. They didn’t have any children, with his only family being his (or his wife’s, I’m unsure) sister who I’m guessing is the person who (spoiler) took the pictures of Morley’s grave that I ended up finding after a few more trips. For the next year or so, I kept stumbling upon more of Morley Ford’s photos in local markets and the same shop… almost like they were being trickle fed to me. I’d watch his wife and friends age and the types of film he used change as times progressed.
Morley and his wife come across as a happy, well-travelled couple who loved to dress nicely, laugh, enjoy life and document their adventures and day to day with a large group of friends. I know you could never know somebody just through the photos they’ve taken, but the way he seemed to constantly have a camera in his hand reminded me of myself, and I hope that if my folders of negatives were ever lost to a clearance shop, that somebody would rescue them too.
The box started me off on a new project of collecting any negatives, slides, and even eventually 8mm film (I bought an old projector and fixed it up so I could watch them on my living room wall), and I made a small photobook of my favourites, titled ‘People I’ll Never Meet’.
View the collections here…
