ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610040078
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
Thomas Throckmorton once saved Roanoke.
Part of it, anyway. A nephew of the late photographer George Davis was clearing out the old man's house on Day Avenue. Throckmorton, a photographer himself, came looking for some photo equipment to buy - and saw boxes and boxes of old glass plate negatives on the basement shelves.
They were images - a whole pickup truck's worth - of the city's past.
"They were destined for the garbage truck," said Throckmorton, who works for American Electric Power. "I bought them for a song."
Throckmorton later sold the photographs to the Roanoke Public Library, after making duplicates of the best prints for himself. The negatives that were saved by chance from the city's landfill are now the Davis collection in the library's Virginia Room.
Throckmorton estimated there were "thousands and thousands" of negatives. Library officials say the figure is about 1,000.
Either way it is a lot of negatives. Library officials concede the job of cataloging and printing the negatives, bought some 15 years ago, is not complete.
"We just have not had the resources to really do a thorough job of that," said Dan Jones, head of technical services for the library.
Many of the photographs are "schlock commercial stuff" of little general interest - photographs of supermarket employees and the like, said Jones. He also said some of the glass plates are broken - although they still may be used to make prints.
But there are also many gems. The collection even includes some huge, 18-inch-by-12-inch glass plate negatives (the typical Davis negative was 8-by-10), including one the library just had printed of Natural Bridge. "They're just absolutely magnificent photographs," Jones said.
He said all the glass plate negatives are in protective sleeves and packed away beyond harm's reach.
Throckmorton said he sold the photographs to protect them for posterity. He also said they were not all taken by Davis himself, as is evident from the signatures on some of the negatives. "There were some there from other photographers," he said.
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