The date on this sleeve is May 29, 1982. There are a total of 5 negatives in this sleeve, all depicting Lake Tahoe and Fannette Island. Joel has photographed this before, but all we got to see where snapshots with friends and family.
Joel is using multiple lenses to obtain the ratio he wants or needs for a large print. In the end, all the 4×5″ negatives we found in sleeves are for print purposes, these were the best of the best.
Either Joel submitted these for exhibits or contests, or Joel would occasionally be selling prints.
Emerald Bay was declared a National Natural Landmark in 1969 by the Federal Department of the Interior.
In 1994, California State Parks included the surrounding water of the bay as part of the park as well, making Emerald Bay one of the first underwater parks of its type in California, which also protects the various treasures hiding at the bottom of the bay.
Emerald Bay is a short drive from South Lake Tahoe. It is the only inlet on the lake and is home to Lake Tahoe’s only island, Fannette Island.
Emerald Bay is located within Emerald Bay State Park, just south of Duane Leroy Bliss State Park, and spans 1,533 acres.
It’s unclear if Joel used different lenses to achieve these different perspectives, or if he simply enlarged and cropped his negatives. All these negatives have different and unique elements in them. So they were all photographed at different times.
These negatives are also the last 4×5″ negatives from the Jessica Fong Collection of Dardis negatives. We’ve looked during the past few weeks at over 300 images in this series.
Joel did photograph in color, mostly slides in various formats, as he could project those to show.
The printing technology for color however was still in its infancy, and color prints would fade quickly. It was also not possible prior to the 1980’s to print in color in a basic darkroom lab. But B&W printing was something Joel felt quite comfortable with, and he continued his printing practice and associated experiments for a long time.
Our blog post programming will continue with many more images out of my own collection. Stay tuned !
Cheers !
Finding Joel Pahl Dardis 