The Lost Rolls, is the multimedia exhibition renowned photojournalist Ron Haviv is bringing to Australia for Head On, and is one of the highlights of the month-long photography festival being held in Sydney from 29 April. He will also be discussing the work at an event on 30 April.
Over the past two decades, Haviv has documented more than 25 conflicts in over 100 countries, and his work has been used at the International Tribunal in The Hague to indict war criminals.
In 2015, Haviv discovered over 200 rolls of film, taken between 1988 and 2012. And these were typically shot with a second or third camera. The body of work is “referencing the end of the analogue era”, and is about memory, and understanding how photography works with memory. “Most people who made pictures during the long analogue era, professionals and non-professionals alike, have their own lost rolls. Attics and drawers contain a treasure trove of human history,” he says.
The images cover political events, historical crises, and personal figures from Haviv’s own life. Spanning over twenty years, images cover everything from riots in Northern Ireland to gangs in El Salvador to refugees in Kosovo, from Palestinian protests to Bill Clinton and his family on vacation.
Photos have emerged that Haviv doesn’t even remember taking. “I was both surprised and confused by what I found on these rolls,” he says. “I’d always expected that when I saw a photograph I took, I could tell you where I was that day – that it would be a sort of trigger. Here I was looking at photos that I knew were mine because I physically had them, but I couldn’t remember locations, dates and even people that seemed to know me, and were posing. Having not seen it in a certain period of time, I’d lost the ability to create this memory foundation, so not remembering it is about growing old, and obviously my own memory.”
“Basically for me, as I was looking through all this work, I was having some incomplete memories completed and thinking, ‘Oh my god, I was looking for that image’, or ‘I remember now what happened that day’ and everything kind’ve comes together. Also, there’s very interesting imagery of situations where I had photo stories that were very well known and here was a different angle, locked away.”
United States President Bill Clinton in Germany, 1998. The Lost Rolls Project. © Ron Haviv.
In a series with the gangs in El Salvador, his memory had frozen into one 35mm widely published photo of gang members being arrested. Then, in a different format, suddenly he was looking at a panoramic version of that same image. Memories once broken are now complete, while memories once complete are now broken.
The photographs and the film itself are damaged as a result of light leaks, mould, and so on. Haviv commented that it was very disconcerting to see this work basically dying in front of him.
The Lost Rolls (#TheLostRolls) is available as both a magazine and a book, with each version offering a unique edit aimed at complimenting its specific format.
Pro-Arafat rally. West Bank, date unknown. The Lost Rolls Project. © Ron Haviv.
Films about The Lost Roll
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About Ron Haviv
Ron Haviv is an Emmy-nominated and award-winning photojournalist and co-founder of the photo agency, VII, dedicated to documenting conflict and raising awareness about human rights issues around the globe. He has published three critically acclaimed collections of photography, and his work has been featured in numerous museums and galleries, including the Louvre, the United Nations, and the Council on Foreign Relations. Haviv’s photographs are in the
collections at The Houston Museum of Fine Arts and George Eastman House, amongst others, as well as in numerous private collections.
