Welcome to the Retro Foto Film Podcast, where we break down 50 years of film and digital photography with a true renaissance man. Grab your favorite darkroom, it's time to talk photography with your host Al Thelin.

My name is Al Thelin and I'm a photographer, writer, and author, Chef, a baker reenactor and an archival preservationist, and you're going What the heck is an archival preservationist? That's a person who
wants to preserve what is here for the future generations. I know how to repair old photographs and how to preserve those old photographs, where to keep them and what to do with them, I can even recognize periods of time from where the old photographs have come from. So that's what an archival preservation is a reenactor. That means that I go to Mountain Man Rendezvous , to civil war events, and to French and Indian War events, and colonial war events and anything that is reenacting of history. I love to go to and photograph I wear the correct period clothing for the time, but I do not carry a gun, I carry a camera. And so when I go into a civil war battle, I'm got this big, lumbering, wooden tripod over my back covered in cloth so that you won't recognize it as a camera tripod, even though it is from the late 1800s. The tripod is just in case I need it. But most of it's all done shot by hand. And I have two cameras at 35 millimeter, and a two and a quarter camera. And now it's what I shoot with on the field. 

I was born in Canada, raised air to a teenager, and my parents moved to United States. My parents are both Swedish. They do speak and read and write Swedish. I lived in Sweden for two and a half years. After that I spent three years in the US Army, which was a lot of fun during the Vietnam era. I was a strange phenomena. I guess at the time, I was a chef for a two star general. So what that meant was that I went to work every day in tuxedo pants, and carbon and white shirts, and an officer's mess jacket. And I cooked cleaned and prepared food for the general and his family that was there. I mean, by cleaning I make cleaning his house and doing all the chores around there, which even ended up being washing their clothes, ironing their clothes and doing everything that the generals wife didn't really want to do. 

Even for example, when she had a tea once a month for all the incoming Officers Wives, which had to be a lot because there are always like 5060 women who showed up, I had to prepare French pastries, Danish pastries, and coffee and tea and goodies like that, and regular cookies for that event. And when he had dignitaries come like he had the Secretary of State come and I would fix dinner for them. And when it would come to fix dinner, it would be like we're tired of all the kind of White House cooking and crap. So why don't you just fix us a a normal kind of home cooked meal. So I did, I would always cook some kind of casserole or something really fun and really nice. They really enjoyed it. So for two and a half years, that's what I did in the army, serving a general nice family. But I also had orders for Vietnam, I think like seven times, when I went to work for the general, I was a two, which was very high rank. And from the time I started, then until I finished working for him at the end of my military career, which was only three years, I was an e6. Each time I would advance in rank, the general would come home from work and say, Oh, I just promoted you today you are this. So officially, here is your new rank here is this. So my uniform, never really had anything on it. 

Except just the uniform because I advanced so rapidly and I never wear the uniform. But that's what I did in the army. After the army. I spent three four years at the University of Utah getting a bachelor's degree, a master's degree. I after I finished with that I started a photo lab on campus for everybody to bring their photography to to be developed and printed and to do presentations and all kinds of things that didn't exist on campus before. And that led me to publishing a book on the history of the University of Utah.

was called remembering. I didn't publish it, by the way. I mean, it was the university published it. And I was just the photographer gather it took me 10 years to gather all the necessary negatives is what I did was I'd find the photographs taken to a friend of mine who had a makeshift lab then he'd set up and he do copy negatives on four by five film. So I have this vast amount of four by five negatives of all these different events in the history of the university. And then I started teaching at the university, and I taught for 18 and a half years, I taught photography, in all kinds of stages, beginning in advanced and specialty stuff, then I taught creative dramatics for children, and children's theater puppetry, you're going, What does puppetry have to do with photography? Absolutely nothing. If I was going to get a master's degree, I thought I had to get something. And it was fun, where I didn't have to write thesis and do all these crazy things. So I did. 

So I became a puppeteer. During the time that the Muppets were out. And it was fun. I spent years traveling around the state and a couple of other states nearby, just doing puppet shows for anything and everything. During all of this time, I raised seven children. And it was quite a feat. I had four boys and three girls. And unfortunately, they all were is wild. And as crazy as I was when I was a child. So pay back came back during the 80s, I opened up a darkroom supply store, where I sold darkroom equipment, enlargers, and papers and chemicals and everything that you need to open up your own darkroom in your own house. I even built a darkroom in the back of the store. So people could come in and use that if they needed to process or print their own pictures. I was selling quite a few photographs at a time from my collection of slides and transparencies. And I thought this is a pretty lucrative business. So I started a stock agency in Salt Lake City, the first stock agency and decided to have other people join me. So I solicit all kinds of people to come and give me their photographs. And I would put those in a market with mine and sell them. And I did that for quite quite a few years, actually. But again, I needed something more. So what happened was I was at the photo Marketing Association convention in Las Vegas, and I saw this huge big machine, which did one hour film processing. So you could have your film, processed and printed in one hour was like, Wow. So I thought I got to have one of these. So I came back and set up a campaign to try to find someone in Salt Lake City, who had $100,000 and wanted to go into partnership with me and open up this first one our photo film finishing processing in Salt Lake City. And I eventually did. And it worked. It was very successful. Of course, when our film processing went all over the world. Mine was not that great because I contracted hepatitis, and had to leave my photo business, my store and everything behind.

After the photographic store. I took a couple of years it just taught. And then I got the bright idea to do some advertising for a couple of companies. And it worked out really well. I did their photography wrote there's ads and everything for them. I thought this is cool. So in 1986, I opened up my own ad agency and called it Old Mill publishers. It ran really well because I had large accounts like Mrs. fields, and JBS big boys and newskin International, which is still a very large company. Actually, I started with them. They were my first account. But anyway, it was a fun thing. And I loved it. But advertising was a very fast paced moving, heart wrenching business. And after a small, tiny heart attack type thing. The doctor said, You know what, if you stay this near very long, you're gonna die. So I eventually gave up the ad agency, and move moved on and turn it over to my son. And my son said, this is really not fun stuff. I don't want to do this the rest of my life. And so he went into business in something else. It was 1989 world was changing. And communism was falling in the communist bloc. The Wall was coming down and the Eastern Bloc countries were kind of collapsing on how to go another way. And I decided that I needed to be there and see that collapse and photograph that so in December, I started to put together a trip
Back to those Eastern Bloc countries, and setting it up coordinating with University of Utah. So I could take my students with me.

And in March of 1990, we did and we drove through 11 countries in 14 days. Most of those were Eastern Bloc countries. And while we were in Yugoslavia, I met a very awesome couple. And that started an old other adventure, but for another time I had prearranged to meet with university or college or any kind of photo club within these different countries so that we could meet with them and exchange photographs, and see what they were doing and see what kind of photography they did and what we did. And so we did, one of the funnest places was in Prague, where we met, Prague had just fallen from the communists. And still, they were walking around with ak 47. And, and they were still very dangerous, but we could still walk around the streets. But we had to meet in secret with these people. And there were some University and some from photo clubs. Because if they saw that they were openly meeting with Americans, then they would track them down still 1991 I attended a mountain man rendezvous at Fort Bridger, Wyoming, and saw how incredible this rendezvous was, and loved what I saw. And the pictures that I took, were just a joy to my heart. So I decided this is something that I need to do and something that I would love to keep photographing. So that started my 30 year love affair with Mountain Men rendezvous is. 

And in that time of doing that, in 1995, I published a book, give Smith publishers here in Utah, called rendezvous back to a simpler time. It was fun and enjoyable. I took me one year of traveling, actually about a year and a half of traveling on the road to mountain man rendezvous all the way across the United States, to gather all the material that I needed for it and nothing but photograph to photograph, it was all done on film. Nothing was digital at that time. So I would go out for a period of time combat process everything else go back out, come back, process it, go back and shoot. And after that year and a half it was published was a fun and very successful book. The publisher liked that book so much. They asked me, have you got another book we can do? And I said, Well, there are Civil War events going on in the country all over. And so let's do one on the Civil War. So that started my next year and a half of traveling across the United States, mostly in the east and the south to photograph the Civil War reenactments. And that in itself was a complete education because I learned more about the civil war in that year and a half than I ever would have learned in any book because it was all taught by people who had been researching for years. And everything was authentic to the bone the same with with men rendezvoused. Nothing was out of place things like their tents that they stayed in the clothing that they wore, the rifles that they shot, the shoes that they put on their feet, even to the socks, everything was made exactly the way that it was during that time period. And so it was very enjoyable to be there and photograph and watch these reenactments. And when there was shooting going on, they were firing not at each other.

 They fired their weapons kind of up in the air it look like you're firing at someone, but they fired him up in the air because there was a blast of about 14 inches of powder flash that would come out of the end of the gun. In 1998. I was approached by a colleague of mine to work with a company called creating keepsakes and create a archival guidelines for the scrapbooking industry. And I have been doing archival work since the 1980s. And that, okay, this would be a fun opportunity. So I took that on with her and in 1999 we published a book called SOS saving our scrapbooks published by creating keepsakes magazine, and we then became the spokespersons for the archival industry in the scrapbook industry. We went to conventions and things like that for years teaching people how to preserve their scrapbooks so that they could be there for future generations and what materials to use in those scrapbooks so that they would laugh Because the inks that they were using, were not permanent inks, adhesives that they were using. Were not permitted adhesives. So it was a fun challenge and a great campaign. We did that for quite a few years, enjoying that whole success in the scrapbook industry. The scrapbooking industry basically fell away and but there are still small portions of it around. But it led me to the career path that I'm using now, where I am a photo conservator, and a book conservator. I repair old books and make boxes for those old books. And I repair old photographs. And now that the digital age has come about, I actually scan old photographs and repair those and bring them back to life. You have been listening to the retro Photo Film podcast, follow our Instagram and retro photo film to see all his latest photos and learn more about the stories behind the photos.