I was cleaning out my mom’s house, we’re selling it, and I came across a tea kettle I got from China. In 1988 I spent the summer in China, it may be hard to believe but it was the era of glasnost and China was similarly opening up, even talking about past tragedies like the Cultural Revolution. This wouldn’t last. In 1989, well, a bad thing happened and we got the China we have today. I was a freshman in high school and I really didn’t understand what I had witnessed until the next year when I was glued to CNN. In China, I had a Nikon Coolpix point and shoot and I took so many pictures, maybe 15 to 20 rolls of pictures from the Forbidden Palace and Tiananmen square (yeah about that) to the Great Wall to the Terra Cotta soldiers to the Yurts of Inner Mongolia to the hustle and bustle of the emerging super city of Shanghai. I went everywhere. We left for Hong Kong back to the states and I dutifully stuffed my film in my checked bag, so the film would not be subjected to the X Ray machine. I would never see that bag or my film ever again. I’m mostly venting, but I bet there were some amazing photos on that film, those pictures documented a China flirting with openness, that seems so far off now. Anyone else lose photos that meant a lot to them?
Oddly, I have a situation that is the diametrically opposite of yours: in 1995 I went on solo bicycle trip across vast areas of China in 3 months. I carried two Nikon FM-2 bodies, one was always loaded with slide film, the other with b/w. I also did lots of sound recordings there. While I created a carefully curated slide show for private audiences, all I did with the dozens of b/w rolls was to develop & archive them. I didn't even produce contact sheets of them for a cursory examination. I just have that hidden treasure. I can't explain.