Quote and Credit

Quote and Credit

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Showing posts with label Camera. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Camera. Show all posts

Camera Era by Barbara Levine and Martin Venezky the Book



A beautiful little bound bundle of visions arrives by mail, a gift from pioneer vernacular photography collector Barbara Levine.  Camera is both catalog and book tied to an exhibition running now through Mid-May in Houston and a wonderful stocking stuffer for summer socks! 

Only Ms. Levine has the noogies (and has earned the rights) to name a book and project simply Camera Era.  She is one of the most important and prominent (thankfully) champions of the found photograph.  That this volume comes at a time when vernacular photography is finally being appreciated as something special is appropriate, as Barbara had much to do with the field being recognized.  Yes, there is a market for these once common, now extinct beautiful physical objects with surface, form,  wear and age.  There are images and there are photographs. 

Photographic images created digitally are void of much and will never achieve the same legitimacy or authenticity to me…digital images are mere pristine bits and bites which do not really exist.  Photographs bend and wear. It is how they show love.  

Camera Era is as much a book of photos as it is the standard photographic accoutrements.  Love notes, captions, lays to photograph claim and directions for appreciating an image from the long gone souls who took the originals.  Labels.  Quotes.  Arrows.  A comely young woman is labeled HOT DOG!  and the scribe is right.  I recognize at least one photo which has traveled the world wide web without her permission, Barbara now being the legitimate owner of it by her claim.  Finders Keepers, Finders Sharers.  Show Barbara some love.

Barbara Levine has a blog HERE which tells more about the book.  A slim volume big in punch.  Learn More about Barbara HERE.  Camera era is HERE.  Barbara is one of my heroes. 

Pair of ORIGINAL 19th Century Painted Photographer Studio Backdrops (For Sale)






I put together a book on Painted Backdrops and their use in the transitional period from painting to photography last year, it is a modest attempt at describing the relationship between the two art forms at the turn of the century. Having collected examples of tintype photographs with unusual backdrops (and photos of studios with them on display or being painted) I know how scarce original 19th century studio backdrops are.

A gentleman with two extraordinary ORIGINAL examples contacted me last week and asked if I was interested in obtaining these two remarkable survivors. I have moved on to other projects after finishing The Painted Backdrop...and since I have not the room to display these quite striking historical pieces, asked the owner if I could share them here (with his contact information for a purchaser.) I am very grateful, and hope this post helps these find a good home! ANY museum of photography or a serious collector knows how scarce these are.

Condition looks remarkable, and the owner even has an example of a photo taken here to show you one of the drapes "in use."
If you are interested in purchasing or asking questions about these early photographic backdrops, contact the owner at email nypopa@aol.com or I would be happy to forward your request for information to the owner.

I can tell you the price is QUITE modest, and these really should be in an institution or a very serious collection.
Thanks to the current owner for sharing, and to any photography collector who wants a wonderful addition to their collection, these are quite nice.

I hope they find a good home.


(For those of you interested in my book The Painted Backdrop: Behind the Sitter in American Tintype Photography 1860-1920 see it HERE)
See my published books

World's Largest Camera Redux! One Monster Lens and Big Bellows



A 1923 Newspaper Morgue Photograph of Linsenmeyer's big one...a three and one half ton camera. Hold on to your hat when the bellows moves!


See my previous post HERE for some other giant photographic constructions.



Original Press service photograph 1923 Collection Jim Linderman

The Invention of the Dashboard Camera Art Crime and Photography








By Jim Linderman from Dull Tool Dim Bulb
The mounted dashboard camera, as we all know from “America’s most horrible ruckus” on the flat screen, is de rigueur today for every cop car. Sideswipes, weaving drunks, runaway crackheads…we see them all through the electronic eye of the police car windshield. But did you know the apparatus was invented by a Weegee like ambulance chaser named Mell Kilpatrick who took accident photos for Los Angeles Newspapers in the 1940s and 1950s?
Mell Kilpatrick was a self-taught master photographer with Weegee skill and fortitude. In fact, the precious few times his name is mentioned, Weegee’s often follows. 

Living in Orange County when it was literally a county of oranges, Mell was attracted to photography young and certainly had the right eye. In the only photo I’ve found of him, he is posing as if squinting into a lens finder. Like a Weegee in sunshine, he traveled light…camera, flash, tripod and a trench coat when the road was slick. But he also had a camera mounted on his dashboard pointing through the windshield These photos were shot with it. Like a hard-boiled P.O, whenever California blood was spilled, he was there. Crime, Crash, Insurance Fraud…he squinted through them all in black and white. A James Ellroy with a speed graphic camera and a police-band radio. 

Mell is probably best known for the iconic photo “It’s lucky when you live in America” which depicts a car overturned in a field after having crashed through a billboard advertising a mountain fresh brand of beer. These photos of Mell’s skid marks, so to speak, are mild compared to the gruesome carnage shown in his work (and which should be shown to every driver using their cellphone)

In an extraordinary article which draws comparisons with the car crash silkscreens of Andy Warhol and the car crash fetishists of J. G. Ballard, writer Nathan Callahan attributes Kilpatrick’s vision to those he saw while working as a projectionist at the Laguna and Balboa Theaters in the late 1940′s, where he watched film noir masterpieces while waiting to change the reels. He learned well and got used to the dark. All these photos have his identification stamp or notes, but only one provides the time: 5 am.

Kilpatrick’s negative collection, well organized and labeled, sat for 35 years until being turned up by photography collector and dealer Jennifer Dumas. She compiled them into a coffee table book “Car Crashes & Other Sad Stories” in 2000 published by Taschen, linked below.

Remarkably, there was another side to Mell. As Orange County turned into Disneyland (literally) Mell turned his camera to the construction. Soon he was loaning his darkroom to other Disney photographers, and Uncle Walt himself granted him full access to the construction site. Mell’s granddaughter has published no less than five books of his early Disneyland photographs. As Callahan reports, she “sold the most gruesome ones…they brought a bad vibe to the house.”

Forensic Photography would seem to be a growth industry, what with all the teenage texting going on at 75 MPH. It was probably a good gig for Mell…even if most of them seem to have been taken at 5:00 AM.

Original Accident Scene Photograph by Mell Kilpatrick circa 1952-1953 Collection Jim Linderman 

VISTASCREEN! From the Littered Landscape of Photographica







The landscape is littered with camera technology failures. Something about capturing an image brought out the inventors, and today there is even a collector category known as photographica. They collect camera detritus. There is no shortage.

Competing technologies drive the market and pictures of pretty woman drive men.
Thus, the Vistascreen! An enterprising gent named Stanley Long in the UK decided to get into the three dimensional photographic business in 1956. View-master was up and running, but unlike Long...they were short on babes. The only thing better than a beautiful woman is one who is poking her whatnots out at you, so capturing a babe in 3-D has always equaled the moon shot as a noble goal for man. (Having just been to the Grammy awards and suffering a headache along with the rest of the well-heeled audience during the Michael Jackson "extravaganza" I can tell you not only has 3-D not progressed far, it certainly is NOT going to save Hollywood. 30 seconds into the flick, the stars were taking off their glasses to see what Celine Dion was wearing) But I digress.

Vitascreen faded with time and the Glamour shots Stanley took and sold faded as well. Today they are collector items...and guess what? REPRINTED. Modern re-issues of Stanley Long's Lifelike British Babes are available again, but the link doesn't work. I'll try to post it later

SIMULTANEOUS POST on VINTAGE SLEAZE