THE MORGUE
Purcell Carson, director/producer. Remco Bikkers, cinematographer
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The Morgue is a short documentary—an orphan story, a detective story and a call to action—about the fate of U.S. newspaper photo archives, repositories of collective memory of our cities. The film explores the significance, loss, and potential recovery of one newspaper photo archive, the 120,000 surviving photos collected by The Trenton Times in New Jersey. There are forty more such archives that could be saved.
Over the past century, photographers in Trenton chronicled the city, delivering their work to be marked-up, printed, and stored—sometimes carefully, sometimes not—in the Times's morgue. Through interviews with newspaper photographers, archivists, and scholars, as well as community members who appear in these irreplaceable photographs, The Morgue bring this archive to life. And tells the story of how this collection, until recently, seemed to be lost.
This documentary, then, is the story of orphan. It traces the journey of these ever-more-tattered black-and-white glossies of Trenton across the decades, as the newspaper is sold, microfilmed, sold again, and broken apart. It chronicles how the decline of local newspapers has decimated this visual record, as corporate disinvestment and real estate speculation forced this collection, like so many others, into boxes and distant warehouses. The Morgue is also a detective story, leading viewers to a strip-mall warehouse in Memphis, Tennessee, where a charismatic junk dealer sells off the prints, piece by piece. Against the odds, an unexpected twist creates the possibility for the photos tofind their way home. The Morgue chronicles this journey, while highlighting the urgent need to rescue similar collections.
Drawing on more than sixty oral histories collected over the years, we at The Trenton Project are uniquely positioned to tell this story. By connecting the voices of present-day Trentonians with photographs of their younger selves, the film captures the lived experiences of growing up in Trenton, recollections of pivotal events, and reflections on life’s challenges. Their words breathe new life into the images, reanimating not just the photos, but the city itself.
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But time is running out. In 2025, many other local news archives stored in Memphis are set to be sold again—their fate is uncertain. However, there is hope. By collaborating with national organizations of scholars and archivists, The Trenton Project is working to reconnect these collections with institutions in their communities of origin, while other groups develop financial strategies to bring them home. This film is not only a documentary—it’s part of a larger effort to preserve history and restore community memory.
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*The images above are a quick example of our visual approach from our first shoot in November.
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