Transparent secrets

First glass negative, 9x12 cm
family on a drasine by Hilda Bonin

I started learning photography as a child in a family where almost everybody learned this craft. At that time, two old relatives of mine were still alive at a very old age, and gifted me a vast collection of vintage negatives.
Ella Bonin (b. 1897) was a pianist and teacher, a student of Béla Bartók, and an amateur photographer in most of her very long life. Her younger sister, Hilda Bonin learned photography in the beginning of the 20th century and worked on large formats before the WWII. We have developed a good number of their negatives in 1989, but unfortunately their memories started to fade.
The Bonin Archive is vast and little documented, but I believe it is an almost unique treasure of Central European middle class photographs. After a lot of hesitation and preparation I started to digitize, research and document it in 2012.
The Bonin Archive consists of various, European-format large format glass negatives, a few vintage prints and some 6x6 medium format film from Hilda Bonin, and a vast collection of 6x9 medium  format amateur fim negatives shot by a Zeiss Ikon by Ella Bonin.
With a lifelong passion for photography, I always had a calling for this. However, the first re-opened glass negative was a love for the first sight. I decided to collect glass material, blog about my research and hope to find collectors, enthusiasts, collaborators.
I write a parallel Hungarian-language blog.
I am ready to share ideas about technology, scanning, and post images upon request. I maintain the Hungarian version to encourage people in my country to go out and find their visual heritage in their homes.