Heil!
from Universal Photo Almanac 1944
We're only in it for the money
In offering this first issue of what is planned to be our annual publication, the UNIVERSAL PHOTO ALMANAC AND MARKET GUIDE, the Falk publishing Company is attempting several things. First, to supply a definite gap in the photographic publishing field. Second, to make available to the vast army of camera owners everywhere specific information in concise form which is either not offered in other publications or scattered in such amanner that the amateur has difficulty in finding it. Third, to give definite suggestions whereby the camera owner who is capable can use his camera profitably.
This publication makes no pretence at being “high-brow.” It intends to be practical for practical men and women, and it is hoped that the contents will by virtue of their value, aid readers to be more conscious of the camera as a means of making extra money.
In its first edition, the UNIVERSAL PHOTO ALMANAC AND MARKET GUIDE aims to be useful to all camera users. Obviously, however, there may be several things missing which you might consider useful in these pages. Should this be the case, we would appreciate any comments and suggestions which you feel can be incorporated in future editions for the benefit of the majority of readers. Through your cooperation in this matter, we can produce a bigger and better ALMANAC next year, and give you exactly the kind of book you want.
We hope this new publication will please you. This has been our aim, and with the splendid cooperation of the advertisers who have made the publication of this book possible, we present the ALMANAC to you with the sincere hope that it will benefit you in your photographic activities.
Our thanks are hereby extended to the advertisers who have generally purchased space in this book to call your attention to their wares. When corresponding with them, won’t you please say that you saw their advertisement in the UNIVERSAL PHOTO ALMANAC AND MARKET GUIDE? They—and we—will appreciate it.
Samuel F. Falk, “Foreword,” Universal Photo Almanac 1937.
The Dance
Educational Appliances
I noticed this ad in Anthony & Scovill’s The American Annual of Photography (Times-Bulletin) For 1903. We have Photo Era (1898-1920) in the rare books room of a library here; I should take a look. Maybe there will be fascinating insights into this new “multi-modal literacy” that everyone is on about. After all, photography is placed on an equal footing with the spelling book.
A person just can’t have enough educational appliances.
Bubley
from Universal Photo Almanac 1951
A person could spend a lot of time exploring the Esther Bubley site.
Pricey
via NEWSgrist
RP: I'm not sure what "digital theory" is. I don't know who Gene Youngblood is. I never read Baudrillard. I read Christian Metz. I read Truman Capote. When my little girl falls on the pavement and her teeth go through her lower lip and I have to take her to the hospital and watch her get stitches, I don't really think about "almost real" or "really real". I don't think about what's real anymore.
interview
See also: The Unmasking of JT Leroy: In Public, He's a She via Working Blue.
Vociferous Color
From This is Photography: Its Means and Ends by Thomas Miller and Wyatt Brummitt (1945)
Pitchers
Oh, the photographer’s art is a wonderful thing
You sit on a bench while he pulls the string.
You’ve got a cramp in your neck and a pain in your liver
And your right eye develops a miserable shiver.
You think of an Aunt who died long ago
And weep for the loss of your childhood beau.
Your hair comes uncurled on the side of your head
And your nose gets all puffy and lumpy and red.
There’s a snap and a rustle—the thing has been “did”;
In the camera your likeness is carefully hid.
When you see the result you immediately faint
And declare most emphatic you “positively aint”
Gonna pay for such junk—and there it all ends
When you order six dozen to give to your friends!
Jean L. Allen, Camera Craft, vol. 34 no. 4 (April 1927) p. 168.
On the Fly
Mary had a little Kodak,
A little Kodak had she,
And everywhere that Mary went,
Little Kodak you’d see.
So gratefully it always swung
By gentle Mary’s side,
That Kodak, in its leather case,
Was Mary’s darling pride.
Kodak she took to school one day,
Which was against the rule;
For all the children wanted one
When home they went from school.
Now Mary was just sweet sixteen
And full of girlish glee,
So when the teacher to her came
She did not from him flee.
But gently took it from the case,
As quick as you can think;
Then, while her teacher blushing stood,
She cried, “please do not wink!”
“You see kind sir,” the madam said,
With laughter in her eye,
“Although you seek to punish me,
I’ve caught you on the fly.”
And so it proved in latter years
When each the other wed;
That Kodak did the business
So all the neighbors said.
Mary Randolph, “Mary had a Little Kodak,” St. Louis & Canadian Photographer, vol. 8 no 2 (February 1890) p. 75 qtd. in Camera Fiends and Kodak Girls II
In case you missed them, I did post some Kodak snapshots of this vintage a few days ago.
T.H. O'Sullivan
T.H. O’Sullivan, Soda Lake, Carson Desert. (1867).
The nineteenth century believed—as perhaps at bottom we still believe—that the photograph did not lie. The photographers themselves, struggling to overcome the inherent distortions of their medium, knew that the claim, strictly speaking, was false; yet, with skill and patience and some luck, the camera could be made to tell the truth, a kind of truth that seemed—rightly or not—to transcend personal opinion.
What was new in the work of the frontier photographers grew in part from this faith that what a good photograph said was true, and that what was true was both relevant and interesting. It is difficult to imagine a painter of the period being satisfied with a picture so starkly simple in concept and image as Timothy O’Sullivan’s Soda Lake. But we are convinced that this is the way the place was. Sharing O’Sullivan’s faith in the magic of the camera, we find the picture’s emptiness eloquent; this minimal image hints of a new sense of scale between man and earth. Mark Twain had crossed the same country six years earlier, in 1861, and he saw a similar picture: “. . .there is not a sound—not a sigh—not a whisper—not a buzz, or a whir of wings, or a distant pipe of a bird—not even a sob from the lost souls that doubtless people that dead air.”
Of the half-dozen photographers who worked with the Government Surveys (geographical and geological) of 1867 to 1879, T.H. O’Sullivan was perhaps the one with the purest, the most consistent, and the most inventive vision. Nevertheless, the general level of the Surveys’ photography was remarkably high. With no academic authority looking over his shoulder, the photographer was free to give his camera its head, free to discover how it could see most clearly. At best, his solutions were original, functional, and uncomplicated by concern for artistic fashions. He was true to the essential character of his medium, and true also to the requirements of his job. His primary aim was not to philosophize about nature, but to describe the terrain. The West was a place to span with railroads, to dig for gold and silver, to graze cattle, or perhaps sell groceries and whiskey. Occasionally—and remarkably—an especially extravagant sample of spectacular landscape would be set aside, sacrosanct, for the amazement of posterity, but this was neither the first function, nor the first interest, of the Surveys.
John Szarkowski, Introduction. The Photographer and the American Landscape (1963).
January 6, 2006 1:32 PM | Comments (1)
Kodak #2
You Push the Button We Do The Rest — image size approximately 2 1/2 inches in diameter (c. 1890)
