THE GEORGE FULMER PHOTO ESTATE OVER 100,000 PHOTOGRAPHS PHOTOS IMAGES NEGATIVES

Description: George Fulmer. Photographer for the city of Clearwater for over half a century. A Navy enlisted official photographer during WW2 who afterwards, served the city of Clearwater for another 55 years until his passing in 2015. Aerial photographer for Pinellas County & so much more!!  You are buying the photographs we extracted from his estate. My best estimate, well over 100,000 images. You can’t count them. There are currently just over 500 of these photographs listed either individually or in small lots but mostly individually.  This lot includes THE ENTIRE CONTENTS HELD BY US. This includes photos, negatives, press packs, slides, film, unclaimed photos, historical photos pertaining to our city, a few full length 16mm fils, and any other photographic content that has remained together since the extraction. Less than 200 photographs & few lots of negatives have been sold away from this collection just recently on eBay in an effort to bring recognition to the estate.  To get just a sampling of what’s here please look at the currently listed items as they will continue to be listed until the estate has been placed  It is basically untouched. A 10’ x 15’ storage unit holds the contents of this massive collection. It is time for us to get these to someone or to an organization that has more time, experience & more equipment to properly deal with this. We have learned a lot but we are not photographers nor are we photography experts. This collection should be digitized & preserved. There’s no way to show you this entire estate & everything you are buying in 24 photographs here on eBay. Additionally I may modify the ad as we move through the estate to add more information as I need to, or as things come up. Ebay won’t let us push you off site for more information so it has to be here.  If you are interested in this estate as a whole, you will probably need to visit us in Florida OR at minimum, arrange a video conference to see it. 90% of it remains in storage.  Proof of funds for either entry or video conference showing the unit contents, will be required. No exceptions.  Here’s the story behind how we saved & preserved most of the contents of this unbelievably important estate, when it was tragically, destined for the landfill.  In early 2014, my business partner & I were asked by a friend, (a friend of George’s that PURCHASED the photo studio building & on a separate contract, THE REMAINING CONTENTS) to enter the abandoned photo studio / photo development center & attached home (7000 sq ft) to see if there was anything inside worth saving before the demolition.  He SAID he thought there were “some valuable dishes in there” he might want from the kitchen upstairs for purposes of reselling, but I think he knew all along what he was getting us into.  We later discovered no one had taken any interest in doing what we ultimately did ourselves, because of the labor it involved, as it was AN ENORMOUS TASK. George, the photographer, was already 94 and though he knew what was about to be lost, there was no way for him to do anything about it. His family had taken what they wanted & the people running the History Society here were very old, lacked money, time, and honestly seemed to have ABSOLUTELY no interest in doing anything to save anything, or to even have interest in what was there, believe me, I begged. Nobody was proactive.  George had lived & operated his business there since the1950s. It had already been abandoned for several years when we arrived in 2014. Dolly, his high school sweetheart, had passed 10 years earlier, and from my observations, just what we saw in the home, he never recovered from the loss.  Our friend & at the time, landlord of the commercial building where we ran our antique business, had purchased the studio / home building, and the contents, and had scheduled the demolition of this nearly historic building & favorited photo studio, and home of the photographer & friend to our community for over half a century.  Having put him off on entering the building for months, as we were busy setting up a new business at that time, and honestly weren't excited about doing him this "favor" (I don’t like selling dishes on eBay)  in February 2014, we had a few extra minutes in our day, and nothing has been the same since. Neither of us had any idea what we were about to walk into that day, what was there, or how it would change our lives forever.  Walking inside was like going into a time capsule. Everything we both knew and had learned growing up in a family of antique dealers, suddenly became more important. Cabinets from the 1950's, vintage photo advertisements still hanging by the customer service counters & old cameras & undeveloped film lying all over the room, in stuffed & stacked closets, all with layers of dust which made it apparent that very little if anything had been moved in a while.  There was no electricity & it had surely been that way for some time upon our arrival. The place was locked & boarded up for the most part, chained in some places, and entry at first through a back door proved almost dangerous with the attempted blockades that had been put there to deter breaking in, yet there were certain signs of homeless having come and gone since everyone else left, years ago. The building seemed enormous & concrete blocks walls had been added downstairs throughout the studio & developing areas over the years, making it almost maze like. In the dark, having no light coming into the extensive areas for development & storage, it was even eerie, but for the most part, it was like George just walked out one day leaving most everything behind. It was strange.  With only vintage camera stands & brochures left inside the mid century modern cabinets & pegboard displays still in tact with old and even vintage inventory, a variety of cameras were strewn about the main retail area as if they had been pilfered through, irresponsibly, perhaps more valuable ones had been stolen or removed.  Older items of less relevance to the 2000s photography industry, were stored in the remaining antique furniture, drawers & closets or even in bedrooms in the upstairs home or in one of the 2 attached apartments that had been over time, FILLED with nostalgia, unused or no longer relevant equipment, old unclaimed photos, boxes & boxes of slides, projectors, cameras, vinyl records (about 8000 of them), tube radio cabinets, phonographs, record players antique to modern, and no less than 15 sets of speakers wired up & distributed through the building downstairs where George & his deceased wife Dolly apparently filled every room of the facility with music daily. Remnants of old train sets, dolls, and home made pottery were left about nearly every room not occupied by photo collections or photo equipment. Upstairs in the home, a library of books that took years to sort, not to mention art pieces and other photo collections that were obviously kept for historical value had been forgotten and left, as though someone intended to come back, but never did.  Mind blown, after about 2 hours of literally being lost in time, completely forgetting about the dishes, and at some points simply LOST in the dark maze of developing & storage rooms downstairs, which were oddly still cold with the cement walls that had been added to obtain that environment, coupled with 60 to 70 years of history & important vintage items, we called our friend. Both of us, completely confused as to how everything here was literally abandoned & left to decay, asked for the demolition to be called off immediately.  We were even further dumbfounded when our friend explained that he was paying someone a handsome fee to "clean out the garbage" & take it all to the local landfill” before the building's destruction, which was scheduled only weeks away. A huge chunk of our city's history, and George Fulmers's life work, was about to be forgotten forever.  Over the following 35 days, after contacting anyone and everyone we could think might & should help with this enormous but very necessary task, with ZERO INTEREST from anyone, including the local museums or historical society, we closed our business to accomplish it ourselves. We hired help & worked around the clock to save the items you’ve started to see here.  35 days later, we had saved a massive amount of local history, as well as some of George’s favorite photos, many unclaimed photos, and a wide variety of photographs that had been left with him over the years for one reason or another.  10 years after the extraction, while continuing to run our other businesses, the photos have stayed in storage while antiques, art, records & books have been sold & placed & the photograph collection, very intentionally remained completely intact & together until this last year, when we started to place just a few photos to help cover the continuing costs of storage, which over the years have now easily surpassed $50,000.  There are still images in the collection that have not been viewed by us. Not as many now, but still some. George passed away in September 2016 about 2 1/2 years after we cleaned out the building. He was well aware that we were recovering everything that we could and was very happy that we were able to do that as his family was not, or had already gotten what was “important” out of the building. The historical society said they had taken everything that they wanted and would NOT help us. It was apparent they lacked the interest or manpower to even try. To this day I still can’t figure out what they actually did take.  We are looking to place/sell the ENTIRE estate to a group or an individual that can continue with the placement of these photos individually & in the appropriate lots. Someone who will care for it as we have over the last decade. Someone who understands that EVERY LITTLE PART of what’s here, has value and has a place it needs to be.  The photographs we hold from this estate, include everything you would've expected a city photographer to have been present for; from weddings, to new construction, aerial photographs, sporting events, school events, press photography, police, Jaycees, and a really nice, but VERY LIMITED collection of nude photographs, some possibly from a nudist camp that is still in operation here today. Even more limited, there were a handful of his war era photographs, and copies that he had made for himself, that we were able to save. Not many. George was a Navy enlisted photographer and everything from the war had been handed over to the Navy after the war.  The photos that are being offered here, were well preserved, found inside the home and studio, in a cool, dry, cellar type setting.  George did a lot of work for the newspapers so you'll see things pertaining to Clearwater Florida, much of it from the early 1950s.  Being in the same location next to the Clearwater courthouse for over half a century, he was also entrusted with and gifted many photographs that go back to the late 1800s that were left behind and are currently in our collection. Some of those will be offered here as well.  We have started the listing & now over the last 3 months, the selling process on eBay, to give an introduction to the estate, and to start to determine the overall value of what’s here, monetarily of course. The collection as a whole, you just can’t put a value on this man’s life work, or the history that’s here.  But what we have done here is listed a VERY SMALL percentage of the contents & will continue to list & sell & update THIS LISTING as time passes. At this time, there are less than or about 500 photo items listed, representing only about 2-3% of the estate, is my best estimate. Over time, less than 200 items / and a few small lots have been sold here on eBay & you can see those by filtering to my sold items. This will give you an idea of what is selling & how I’m selling it.  If you want to see only the photos on my eBay go to my store & look in the George Fulmer category so you can see them all in one place. There are well over 100,000 photos, images, slides, negatives & film items in this collection.  If you happen to know a person who would like to make an investment into the entire collection please feel free to contact me. Thank you for your interest in the estate.  Shipping will have to be handled by a professional service. We have used these in the past and depending on where it’s going we can get you a quote. If you prefer to purchase this site unseen we will gladly pack everything up properly and have it shipped or either deliver it to you ourselves in a U-Haul truck

Price: 375000 USD

Location: Saint Petersburg, Florida

End Time: 2024-12-30T23:08:41.000Z

Shipping Cost: N/A USD

Product Images

Item Specifics

All returns accepted: ReturnsNotAccepted

Unit of Sale: Lot

Antique: Yes

Size: everything

Signed: Yes

Material: Cardboard, Paper

Original/Licensed Reprint: Original

Framing: Unframed

Subject: Actors, Adventure Time, Aircraft, Automobile, Baby, Ballerina, Baseball, Basketball, Boys, Children & Infants, Costumes, Family, Fishing, Football, Hobbies & Leisure, Horse, Horse Racing, Hotels & Restaurants, Men, Seafaring, Seaside, Silhouettes, Spirit of Ecstasy, Sports Cars, States & Counties, Sunsets, Swimming, Tanning, Tennis, Vogue

Vintage: Yes

Type: Photograph

Format: photos negatives slides film

Year of Production: 1950

Photographer: George Fulmer

Autograph Authentication: THE ENTIRETY

Number of Photographs: Over 100,000

Theme: Americana, Automobilia, Cities & Towns, Community Life, Continents & Countries, Cultures & Ethnicities, Domestic & Family Life, Fire Department, History, Hobbies & Leisure, Law Enforcement, Leisure, Love, Maritime, Militaria, People, Politics, Portrait, Social History, Transportation, Travel, Travel & Transportation, Working Life

Style: Documentary, Figurative Art, Landscape, Photojournalism

Features: 1st Edition, Limited Edition, Numbered, One of a Kind (OOAK), Press Photograph

Featured Person/Artist: GEORGE FULMER PHOTOGRAPHER

Time Period Manufactured: 1940-2010

Country/Region of Manufacture: United States

Unit Quantity: 1

Production Technique: everything you can imagine