UKH

Found on Facebook and have no reason to suspect it's not genuine. Posting here as it might help to reach a wider audience:

A message from Rab Carrington 
Joe Brown’s missing negatives

A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from Zoe Brown, Joe Brown’s daughter with this distressed message:
'At some point about 20? years ago Dad lost track of his collection of black and white negatives which includes all his photographs from 1948 to probably the early 1970s. The Rock and Ice members were all in the habit of loaning their pictures out for people to copy for books etc but he has no idea as to where or who might have them, and our efforts to track them down have been unsuccessful. We are obviously hoping that they are still out there somewhere but are now at a loss. Very miserably most of the prints that would have come from them are now gone along the way as well. So we were wondering if there might be someway of publicising "The Hunt for Joe Brown's lost negatives" in the hope that it might jog someone's memory. Dad would obviously dearly love to get them back. And from a historic point of view, as Dad is now 89, it would be fantastic to get the stories behind the pictures before the opportunity is gone. They were last seen contained in a bound negative folder. Thanks'.

Zoe has for some years been working on the archives and a biography of the great Joe Brown. Who can forget those iconic photos of Joe below Cenotaph Corner after the first ascent, those images are the fabric of mountaineering heritage. It is crucial the missing negatives are located and put in a place of safety.

If you could put out an appeal on your website to your members and followers we would be most grateful. Anybody with any knowledge of their whereabouts should either contact the Mountain Heritage Trust on enquiries@mountain-heritage.org or, contact Zoe Brown on jbarchive@btinternet.com. Or leave them at the Joe Brown shop (Llanberis; Capel Curig) or The Climbers Shops (Ambleside; Stony Stratford).

I seem to recall that (about 20-25 years ago??) there was a big feature about Joe Brown in one of the climbing magazines, perhaps in several parts, spread over two or more issues (??). I wonder if Zoe has contacted all the ex-editors? 

Bump 

I wonder if that Rock Archivist chappie might have any ideas?

Geoff Milburn is someone with a vast archive. He might at least have some of the prints. ... But I think he may have died recently?

Phil Kelly

Not me bro! There are a few of us trying to help find them currently, for Zoe.

Geoff sold the vast majority of his collection a few years back, but in my meetings with him he never mentioned any Joe Brown pics.

i doubt very much if he had them or if he would have sold them if he did.

Wasn't implying about the negs, just that you're "that Rock Archivist chappie"

Hopefully they'll turn up somewhere; it'd be tragic if they've been accidentally thrown away by someone. 

never thought anything else

Ditto, I just thought you might know who might have used them in a magazine article or something.

This is going to be tricky, Joe is not famous for having a good memory!

No worries. There are some active lines of enquiry we’re following. Let’s hope it leads somewhere.

it has to be said though that there are other collections that have gone missing, besides this one.

Fingers crossed, would be a bummer if they end up lost.

However I reckon some sort of crowdfinding exercise could at least find copies of all the published pictures.

The problem would be to find high quality photographic prints as opposed to half-tone prints out of books and magazines.

OK I can see that it would be second best.

I think this story has legs though. Should be publicised widely.

It's great to hear there's a biography of Joe Brown in the works

Hey Phil - if you do find them I'm happy to talk about drum scanning a load. I live in Ballachulish and run two Heidelberg drum scanners as a business and scanned Hinkes' 8000 book. Get in touch and I'd be happy to help out ... (drumscanning.co.uk)

Maybe not Joe’s as such, but there’s definitely slides/negs etc at the RGS of him on Kanchenjunga with George Band.

Good to know that Tim. We’re trying to locate them for Zoe so it would be her making the request.

weve hi res scanned thousands of images over the years but always with permission to scan, not use. This is I think something that needs some better control moving forwards.

I think (not sure) that there’s another copy of those slides in existence.

Bump....

Any progress?