Man seeks answers about mystery cache of photos from the 1960s

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Bill Delzell has a massive and mysterious collection of photos. There's no doubt about the time and place: San Francisco in the 1960s. The mystery is who the photographer was and why did they leave behind hundreds of rolls film never developed? John Blackstone has the story.  "CBS Evening News" delivers the day's most important stories, delivering context and depth to bring greater understanding to your world. Check local listings for "CBS Evening News" broadcast times.  Subscribe to the "CBS Evening News" YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/CBSEveningNews Watch full episodes of "CBS Evening News": https://cbsnews.com/evening-news/full-episodes/ Follow "CBS Evening News" on Instagram: https://instagram.com/cbseveningnews/ Like "CBS Evening News" on Facebook: https://facebook.com/CBSEveningNews Follow "CBS Evening News" on X: https://x.com/CBSEveningNews Download the CBS News app: https://cbsnews.com/mobile/ Try Paramount+ free: https://paramountplus.com/?ftag=PPM-05-10aeh8h  For video licensing inquiries, contact: licensing@veritone.com

Transcript

00:00We reported a few weeks ago about a photographic mystery in San Francisco.

00:06For tonight's In Depth, CBS' John Blackstone puts one man's search for clues into focus.

00:14This is the further bus.

00:15This is kind of exciting.

00:16Oh, yes.

00:17Bill Delzell has a massive and mysterious collection of photos.

00:22There's no doubt about the time and place, San Francisco in the 1960s.

00:27Jerry Garcia, I think this was in Golden Gate Park.

00:31The mystery is who was the photographer and why did they leave behind hundreds of rolls

00:37of film never developed.

00:39Somehow the work ended up in a storage unit.

00:43That storage unit was abandoned.

00:45A picker bought it, sold it to a collector.

00:48What's interesting about this is this film was completely unprocessed, so these rolls

00:53of film were discovered in a box or bag, and none of these photographs were ever seen

00:58by the photographer that made them.

01:00The collection passed through a couple of hands before Delzell, a professional photographer

01:05himself, had a chance to see them.

01:07What did you think when you first began to look at these photos?

01:10I was literally stunned by the quality of the work.

01:14The unknown photographer seemed to capture every element of an energetic and turbulent

01:20time in San Francisco.

01:22From free concerts and spontaneous celebrations to civil rights marches and demonstrations

01:28against the war in Vietnam.

01:31All that, along with famous faces of the 60s counterculture.

01:35Some people speculate that's the best portrait ever done of Timothy Leary, and it's not posed,

01:40but it's captured at a really exciting moment.

01:43They literally seem to be everywhere all the time.

01:47Delzell is now on a mission to identify the photographer and perhaps discover why these

01:53images were forgotten or abandoned.

01:56And so to think that someone spent five years capturing these iconic moments in time and

02:02then to have lost the work just hit me really hard.

02:05It was really unimaginable how that could have happened.

02:09And the mystery gets even deeper.

02:11There are still hundreds more photos that have never been seen by anyone.

02:16So this is 75 rolls of film that remain unprocessed.

02:19You know, these canisters haven't been opened for 60 years.

02:24Delzell raised money on Kickstarter to pay for processing the final parts of this photographic

02:29time capsule.

02:30It could be up to 2,700 images.

02:33If they're anything like the images that we have already processed, it's going to be a

02:37spectacular collection.

02:39So with more photos to come, you could say this is a developing story.

02:44John Blackstone, CBS News, San Francisco.

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