Marta Stasiukiewicz, owner of a photography shop in the Majorcan town of Campos, recently bought a second-hand video camera at a flea market. Despite being an apparently everyday event, the new acquisition awaited a surprise: the device contains hundreds of videos and photographs belonging to a family whose trail the new owner is now trying to follow. “Quite a few people have called me interested in the images, but at the moment none of them are the original owners. I would love to find them,” says Marta in statements to elDiario.es.
Walking among the stalls at the Campos market is like stepping into another era. Historically dedicated to agriculture, numerous farmers sell fruits and vegetables collected from their own gardens, although they are not the only merchants who gather in the center of the municipality.
Mainly on Saturdays, when the market takes on a more festive and crowded atmosphere, in addition to attracting the seasoned gaze of tourists looking for a souvenir to take back from the island. Clothes, books and antiques appear waiting for a new opportunity. And Marta found her last March.
While walking among the numerous stalls, the woman, of Polish origin, noticed a JVC Everio video camera. Without thinking, the photographer paid the 20 euros that the seller asked for it and took it home. Despite himself, the battery was damaged and, after several months, he managed to repair it. And that was when he discovered that the device contained countless videos and photographs from 15 years ago, most of which show a family gathered around a table in a Majorcan house, in the communion of the youngest of the family as well as a trip that all of them made to Andalusia during Holy Week.
Stasiukiewicz has decided to make the story known and has set out to find the owners of the images by mobilizing the discovery on social networks. The new owner of the camera is not sure if it was stolen at the time or directly sold even with the footage inside, but she assures that she would love for the protagonists of the images to be able to reunite with those old memories, convinced of their incalculable value. sentimental.
The old photos that inspired a book
In recent decades there have been many cases in which, with the expansion of the Internet and online shopping, collectors around the world have acquired cameras containing old undeveloped photographs. One of them was Alex Galmeanu, a Bucharest-based photographer who in 2016 bought a camera that housed a film of photographs taken 45 years ago, which led him to try to find their original owners.
Galmeanu, as he explained in his bloghad acquired a Baldix Shelf manufactured until the 1960s, and, to her surprise, she found in it a roll of old film, exposed, but undeveloped. “Of course, I developed it immediately and, to everyone’s surprise, I was able to recover 10 good quality images, especially considering their age,” he said.
In recent decades there have been many cases in which, with the expansion of the Internet and online shopping, collectors around the world have acquired cameras containing old undeveloped photographs. One of them was Alex Galmeanu, a Bucharest-based photographer who in 2016 bought a camera that housed a roll of photographs taken 45 years ago, which led him to try to find the original owners of them.
The images revealed a discreet wedding in some small town or rural area of England, a fact that he deduced from the appearance of the cars that appeared in them – one of them, an Austin Maxi manufactured between 1969 and 1981 – as well as the surroundings and the people who appeared in the photographs. “We managed to process a 43-year-old negative and recover some images whose sitters had never even been able to see. Images that survived for decades in a camera that has not been opened in all this time,” said Galmeanu, who also discovered that the camera had been sent from Southam (United Kingdom), where it remained for years on the shelf of a local collector. “Of course, this is a great experience for a photographer like me, considering the fact that I was able to develop an exposed roll film five years before my birth,” he stressed.
Galmeanu’s adventure inspired the Spanish writer years later Sònia Valientewho contacted the Romanian photographer to tell him in detail how everything had happened. “It seemed like a powerful story to me,” the author confessed at the time, who finally published her book in 2023. Twenty three photographsin which a young woman acquires an analog camera in a Madrid flea market and, upon developing the film, discovers twenty-three photographs that show a couple’s wedding, setting out to investigate the trail of her protagonists.
Images of an era that “disappeared a long time ago”
A similar story happened to Sarah Evanswhen in April 2024 he bought an old camera for eight pounds in a charity shop in Aberdare (South Wales) and, upon taking it home, discovered a roll of film inside. “A few weeks ago I bought this old camera in a local charity shop. When I got home, I opened it and found a movie inside. I developed the film and today I received these photos,” he said on his ‘X’ account, showing some of the images that emerged after the development: they showed two women, probably a mother and a grandmother, holding a baby next to two sitting children They had been taken more than 70 years ago.
“It didn’t look like it would work, but I just wanted it for decorative purposes anyway. It never occurred to me that there would actually be something inside,” Evans later told the BBC. It was a Conway manufactured by Standard Cameras Ltd, based in Birmingham, which was in operation between 1931 and 1955. Given the obsolete characteristics of the model, developing the images was not going to be an easy task, but, finally, a specialized company managed to the objective. Now, the woman wants to find the descendants of the former owners: “I would love to send these photographs to them or one of their relatives. “They are a true vision of an era long gone.”
The discovery that had a happy ending
The most recent case took place in Wichita (Kansas), where a camera purchased for five dollars at a clearance store made it possible to recover family memories whose trace had disappeared more than twenty years ago. On this occasion, the buyer did manage to contact the family to whom the photographs belonged. The new owner, Seth Boles, found the artifact at Moler’s Camera, which had been open since 1946 and where he went, faced with its imminent closure, attracted by its offers. Among the discounted items was the prized camera, which he purchased without realizing that it still contained a roll of film.
After developing it, he verified that the photographs showed a family Christmas gathering, probably from December 2000: children appeared opening gifts while relatives were gathered in a cozy living room. The story was told in a report broadcast through the KSN channelit so happened that the former director of the station, Kevin Crockett, recognized his family in the images and was able to contact Boles. “It was a great moment for us to be able to remember that family moment at Christmas. It was very nice that that man took the time to reveal them and see what would happen,” he confessed.
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