Cameras with black and white pictures are very, very special, and that seems to be the reason why Kati Dimoff collects such things.
Whenever she has the chance, Kati glances at these objects to discover “forgotten treasures.” That’s exactly what happened recently, when Kati went to a fair.
There, she found a camera that contained a roll of film. When she developed the film, Kati saw unique photos.
Kati managed to find a camera, an Argus C2, made in Michigan between 1939 and 1966.
When she went to develop the photos from the film, she had the chance to discover something completely and utterly interesting. There were photos of a cloud of ash floating over Portland 40 years ago.
Thus, most photographs were taken during the 1980 eruption of St. John’s Volcano. Helens. The eruption of the volcano in 1980 was the strongest in the history of the United States. The volcano, located in southern Washington state, but lightning and ash could be easily seen from Portland, a distance of thousands of miles.
The disaster then killed 57 people, and the eruption’s thermal energy was 1,500 times stronger than an atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
But the film in the camera did not only contain unique images of the volcanic eruption.
When Kati’s photos were published in a local newspaper, a picture of a family was included in the pages of the publication. Many readers then wondered who owned the camera, but the image of the family and a house helped solve the mystery. A man named Melvin Purvis was able to identify the former owner of the camera: it was his grandmother.
“The photo looks like it was taken in front of my grandmother’s house,” Melvin said. I clicked on it and when I went to the bottom of the photo, I realized that it was a picture of my wife, my grandmother, my son and me. “
Kati sent the man the original photo with the family.
“My grandmother died in September 1981, this is the last picture I have of her,” Melvin said.
The one who took the photo at that time was Melvin’s mother, who lost her life a short time ago.