Retrospect: Old Nantucket Slides
When the rumblings of starting a hyper-local magazine for Nantucket began to fire around my brain, I wasn’t exactly envisioning myself writing about Bob Jordan, a mortgage banker from Newark, New Jersey. That changed real fast when I found out he was the man behind a new project that is preserving and promoting mid-century island history in a very unique way.
Take one look at his Instagram page, Old Nantucket Slides, and you might think it was the work of the Nantucket Historical Association; Jordan scours estate sales and online auctions to find, collect and ultimately digitize old slide-film photographs people had taken on island, resurfacing and recreating images (often times sitting dormant in cardboard boxes in attics and basements) from as early as the 1930’s. Many of these photographs may never have been seen again if it weren’t for him, so I don’t care if he’s a full-time islander or not. His work is more than worth writing about. He’s doing more to preserve a part of island history than most people who live here full time.
Bob lives in Bethesda, Maryland, and like many seasonal residents and exuberant vacationers, he feels a special connection to the island. His first ever visit to Nantucket was by way of his parents’ love of all things Cape Cod. A Kennedy-era couple, they were big fans of the President, enthralled with Hyannisport, viewing it akin to Camelot. “In the late sixties they came across the sign for the ferry and decided to check it out,” says Jordan. “They fell in love with it right away, and realized it featured an inexpensive lifestyle that would actually allow them to bring all four of their kids.” In the summer of 1969, they loaded Bob and his three siblings onto the slow boat for the first time.
For the first few years of vacationing on island, he and his family would stay at random houses in town. “A lot of homeowners would rent out rooms to make extra money. I guess today you’d call it an Airbnb, you rented a room or two and shared one big kitchen and bathroom,” he recounts, reminiscing about how much different the island was back then. “The real Nantucket was visible and vibrant. It was almost bohemian to me. You could see fishermen, you could see the whaling history… It was not upscale at all. There were candle and leather shops downtown. You really felt like you were roughing it in the late sixties and early seventies. It was simple fun.”
Bob’s parents discovered the West End soon enough, and the family began to stay out there. “Madaket was a different flavor,” he remembered. “It was even more of a laid back, slow lifestyle. You didn’t worry about TV or air conditioning. You brought a book and took it to the beach.”
The family decided they liked it best, and his parents subsequently purchased a timeshare as part of the then-new Tristram's operation. He’s been going back every year ever since. “I’m not an islander,” says Jordan, “but I find it fun to be a third generation summer visitor bringing kids. My wife and I bring our four daughters, and they’re now in love with it too.”
A mortgage banker by trade, maybe, but Jordan’s love of photography and art history has never left him. In fact, he majored in Art History at Seton Hall University and still has his original Nikon F3, a film camera he used frequently as a wide-eyed visitor to the island. Although he never shot slide film himself, he began to collect it decades later while living in NJ.
The good stuff — Kodachrome originals.
“One day I went down to a flea market in NYC, and a set of photographs caught my eye. They had bright red borders around them, and the colors were mesmerizing.” Bob inquired about them to the vendor, who was a photographer, and learned that the reason they looked so striking was because they were Kodachrome originals, some of the best and most authentic relics of slide film you can find. They have an extremely fine grain compared to the more popular color negative camera film, and thus produce much more vivid colors. Bob also learned this film was also only produced in the mid-century era, which brought him back to his favorite years spent on sleepy, old-world Nantucket. “They depicted mid century America, a by-gone era I had an affinity for, so I started to collect them.”
In 2010, Bob found himself at the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market in NYC. He was flipping through a freshly purchased lot of slides from earlier in the day, when he noticed something very special about them. “I vividly recall recognizing that some the slides had been labeled ‘Sconset’ by the original photographer,” he said. Bob was ecstatic when he realized he’d just purchased old slide photographs taken on Nantucket, and upon closer inspection revealed images of a rose-covered Sconset home. He was over the moon, and decided right then and there to start a sub-collection of Nantucket-specific slides.
Fast forward just over a decade, and that pursuit is alive and well. He spends time on it pretty much every day. Flea markets eventually proved themselves scarce, so Bob narrowed his focus to the internet. “A majority of the Nantucket slides in my collection are from eBay, and more often than not the seller is based in New England… It’s a constant search,” he told me. “I’m always on the quest to find more. A lot of the time, the slides aren’t even advertised as Nantucket. I’ll look at every listing that mentions Cape Cod and zoom in just to try and see if there was a day trip to the island. I’ll buy the whole lot of the slides, even though I just want the Nantucket ones.” A few sellers have even started sourcing them for Bob after realizing how much interest he has in them.
Surely, Bob’s quest for old Nantucket photographs would be much easier if he sought out other film formats, such as the widely-popular 35mm. When I asked him why he doesn’t include them in his collection, he responded candidly. “A slide is an original image, not a print from the negative, so what you got on the slide is what it was,” he said. “Other film photographs, like 35mm, are just prints of the film negative, and that photo could have been developed and reproduced any number of times, very easily. Slides are more of an original, and I like that.”
Slide film also demanded a more specific subject matter. “It was a much slower speed film,” Bob explained. “It wasn’t made for high speed subjects, so the shots people took with it were more static, like a street scene with people going about their daily business.” As a result, many of the slides he’s found are street scenes of iconic Nantucket buildings and signs, invoking memories from his instagram followers, as evident from the comments section on each post he makes. “I think I’ve struck a chord with people. They message me privately and comment publicly.”
“Kodachrome slides from the ‘40s and ‘50s are the true treasures,” he said, “but the main problem I find is that there are very few people left from that era who can look at them and say, “Wow! I remember that” or, “Hey, that’s me!” Instead, the slides that get the most comments are from the late ‘60s and ‘70s. “There are a bunch of people from that era who are now active on instagram and see something special that they remember,” Jordan said. “I try to balance my posts between my personal favorites from the older generation and the others that people seem to get more excited about.”
It’s like that old saying: If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? If these old slides are sitting in a cardboard box in the attic of an estate sale, destined for the dumpster, do they exist at all anymore? In a sense, Bob is creating these photos all over again by digitizing them for the world to see.
“I guess I’m trying to save something of a bygone era,” he explained. “These days, when Grandma and Grandpa pass away, a lot of the kids or grandkids just throw out that big old box of photos in the attic. The care and quality that people took in taking pictures of their trips to Nantucket might be in them, and it revives memories of my childhood on island at the same time… I feel a kinship to the people who took the photos. I may collect them, but they’re not mine. The people who took them are the unsung heroes. I’m just trying to bring them back into the world so we can admire their photography, as well as the old days of the island.”
Bob Jordan, the face behind Old Nantucket Slides.
With his retirement year approaching, Bob plans to spend even more time on this passion project — and it looks like he’s found his curator gig after all. Instagram is a major drive for Bob to keep at it, as it has proven to be a valuable tool for him to share a remembrance of the olden days on island with the rest of the world. Like many other quarantine-projects born out of a Covid-pandemic lockdown, Bob started his Instagram page in September of 2020. He’s posted around 120 “Old Nantucket Slides” so far, and he’s got about 300 more in his back pocket. He plans to post a new, original image every Monday, Wednesday and Friday around 7am, so keep your eyes peeled for his Nantucket-nostalgia.
His website will be up soon, but for now you can follow his latest slides on @oldnantucketslides, or reach him at oldnantucketslides@gmail.com
