STOCKTON, Calif. — When he is not sitting in a button-up shirt in his Silicon Valley office working as vice president of technology for a tech company, Rudi Blondia spends his days and nights in his darkroom in Stockton.
"I make a living as a technology scientist, but photography has been a passion of mine for a long time," Blondia said.
The negatives Blondia has been processing in his room lately have been developed into positives, helping tell the story of local photographer Joel Pahl Dardis and the city of Stockton alike.
"After looking at some of the negatives, I figured out that this gentleman had been working his whole life in photography, he was 100, his first photograph days were from when he was 18 years old," Blondia said. "From my perspective, with no kids, and nobody taking care of his legacy, they deserve to be retained."
The mission started with a simple text. Blondia says he has met fellow photography history enthusiasts since moving to Stockton in 2016.
One of his connections tipped him off via text about an estate sale featuring unprocessed images from Joel Pahl Dardis, a local man who devoted much of his life to photography.
"I headed over there immediately and walked in and the room was full of a lot of negatives and chromes. And so it took me a few minutes to take it all in and go through some boxes," Blondia said. "It was kind of exciting. I picked up one of the old cameras on a tripod. His name was on there, it was clearly the camera he shot all this early work within sheet film."
When he arrived at the sale that Saturday, Blondia saw what many collectors can only dream of: hundreds of boxes of undeveloped negatives, film and sleeves.
For Blondia, the discovery led to more questions and was only the start of his mission of finding out who Dardis was.
"I've seen a few estate sales, this was the richest when it comes to the amount of slides and negatives in large format," Blondia said. "I also know since looking at them that he had an artsy side, a whimsical side too. So exploring all these aspects, from my perspective is worthwhile."
The decision that Saturday at the Walnut Street home was an easy one for Blondia, he knew it was up to him to keep the photographer's legacy alive. Blondia purchased around 200 boxes.
"With about 200 boxes, on average, about 20 [negatives] in there, and probably about 300 sleeves, I would say anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 negatives," Blondia said. "I believe it's important that communities understand what's living in them what happened, it's a discovery. This man may not have had the means to promote or self promote."
According to his obituary, Dardis, an award-winning Stockton-based photographer, died Oct. 9, 2021, at the age of 100. Dardis attended St. Mary's High School before graduating from the "College of the Pacific"- now called the University of the Pacific.
After conducting genealogy research, Blondia learned Dardis had no children or living immediate family members. That information fueled Blondia's desire to finally, publicly display Dardi's work.
"It's a discovery, right? That's why I started a blog and I called it 'Finding Joel Dardis' because you're finding out about somebody. What does his eye look like, meaning what caught his attention," Blondia said.
Blondia hopes to document all of Dardis' thousands of negatives by publishing them on his blog and adding anecdotal stories from people who may have known Dardis.
He says many of the photos included shots of different areas of Stockton from the 1930s to the early 2000s. Black and white images, processed so far by Blondia, show steamboats floating down Stockton waterways and scenes from inside area classrooms.
"With a whole number of probably thousands of local negatives from the local community, local history, there will be some worthwhile items in it," Blondia said. "This will take time, it's not going to happen overnight. That's why I opted for a blog rather than just a website."
Eventually, Blondia says he hopes to open an in-person gallery displaying the artist's photos and allowing the community to learn more about the history of their own city.
For now, Blondia will continue researching, developing and posting to his blog and Facebook page with one clear goal, to put a spotlight on the fallen photographer and share one-of-a-kind images that chronicle the city of Stockton.
"We'll have to print them large and do all that good stuff," Blondia said, "You know, to put a spotlight on the man since there's nobody else doing it, somebody has to do it."
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