black photos.

A package arrived in the post. My slide film I took in Edinburgh last trip. I ripped the cardboard open, there is the film strip, all folded neatly. I can remember some of the shots but I'm looking forward to re-remembering all the shots I have no memory of taking. The many hued green corridors, the white operating theatre.I took lots of double shots 20cm apart on a horizontal plain to make stereoscopic images. Okay, need to be prepared for some of them to be rubbish, blurred, too dark. No, I unfold the film to reveal... nothing... black film, nothing to be seen but black film. All those photos I took, don't exist, they are a mere memory, a possibility, but only in my mind's eye. Photos that were dead before they hit the light or was it too much light? film fault? camera fault? lens fault? my fault. I finished the film off with lots of photos of my sun filled house in early March. Black film. black photos. I had less emotion than a film full of half good photos, I suppose because that would have deemed me a bad photographer. I put the film in the bin and said, "oh well," did a small calculation on how much I had spent and walked away.