The negatives were purchased at a tag sale. Ten thousand or more negatives, carefully stored inside 10 yellowing shoe boxes, documented with detailed notes on the photographic techniques employed and the subjects captured in black and white. Longtime members of the Friends of Historic Kingston discovered the negatives at a sale, then kept them for years before donating them to the organization’s archives in 2018.
What the negatives revealed was a glimpse into post-war Kingston, photos of grand projects such as building the Thruway, constructing the County office building and creating Broadway’s railroad overpass; but also more intimate glimpses into daily life in the 1950s: Families watching a parade, harvesting vegetables in the garden, or preparing Sunday dinner. The photos were taken by Edward Budney (1920-1980), who lived with his mother, father, and younger brother in Midtown Kingston.
Taking and sharing photos is so easy today that it may be difficult to imagine how many hours went into photographing and developing this extensive collection during the `50s. Budney worked as an inspector at IBM and before that at Port Ewen’s Hercules Powder Company. Taking pictures was his hobby, something he did on his days off. And although Budney submitted pictures to a Times Union snapshot contest and had a few photos printed in the Daily Freeman, most of his work was not seen by the public. That’s about to change, since a selection of his many negatives have been digitized and now form the basis for the exhibit “Edward Budney: Photographer” at the Friends of Historic Kingston Gallery at the Fred J. Johnson House at 63 Main Street.
Finding the negatives was a lucky break, but exhibiting them involved many hours of painstaking work by Dean Engle, the museum’s recently appointed assistant director. When the museum’s director, Jane Kellar, suggested he take on the project, neither could imagine it would take a couple of years to sort through and digitize the images.
“Jane laid all the boxes out on a table after I’d expressed an interest in doing a show just like this, where we took a film archive that had never been digitized and curated a show around it,” says Engle. “Jane knew we had one such collection waiting for some attention.” Over 500 of Budney’s negatives were digitized.
“It’s overwhelming, really,” says Kellar. “The amount of time that he spent going through every envelope, which he had to open very, very carefully. They were all sealed.”
While assembling the exhibit, Engle sought to learn more about Budney, who died in 1980, but could only find one neighbor who remembered him photographing their family. Engle hopes the exhibit will inspire people to come forward with more information. However, the exhibit already says a lot about the photographer and the decade he photographed.
“When you take a picture at random, many of the images were either Christmas card related or a camera test of a flower or not necessarily identifiable or relevant to Kingston,” says Engle. “But in exploring the archive from beginning to end it offers this very warm view of post-war Kingston.”
“Edward Budney: Photographer” runs from May 2 through October 31. The museum is open from 10 am to 3 pm Fridays and Saturdays. Admission is free.
This article appears in April 2025.
