ARE THESE PEOPLE SUPPOSED TO BE IN THE PICTURE?

I find myself drawn to photos, where there are other people in the photo besides the intended subject.  Sometimes the witness to the photograph is the most interesting part of the picture.

THE OLD SWIMMING HOLE by Brooks Peters

Swimming holes are part of our national consciousness, our mythology, our folklore. Back before central air, electric fans, indoor plumbing and private pools became common household amenities, most overheated sufferers had to content themselves with a trip to "the old swimmin' hole." Whether a creek (always pronounced "crick"), a pond or a rocky gorge, the old swimming hole was a universal playground for rich and poor, old and young, male and female, and the clothed or unclothed. It became part of the fabric of our lives, as American as apple pie or Huckleberry Finn.

At the turn of the last century, swimming holes became a source of nostalgia, a symbol for Americans of the price of progress, of all that had been lost thanks to modernization. Every town and village in the country sent out photographers to take pictures of their local swimming holes, putting them on postcards that visitors and residents alike sent to friends and family. I began to collect some of these souvenirs a few years back when I stumbled across an old photo postcard of a Hudson River scene at an antique store. It reminded me of my early summer days at camp where my cabin buddies and I would slip off to one of the rocky slopes along a lake, strip down to our birthday suits, and climb a weathered old piece of rope that flung us out into the crisp rain-fed waters of an old pond. Over the years, I've collected dozens of Swimming Hole images on postcards, stereoscopes, calendars, jigsaw puzzles, magazine covers, printing blocks, matchbooks, ashtrays, glassware, handkerchiefs, medallions and, of course, old photographs. There was even a film in the 40s called The Old Swimmin' Hole, starring Jackie Moran. Its lobby cards and posters turn up occasionally on eBay.

What these bits of time-worn ephemera represent to me is a mirror into our past, a kaleidoscope of more innocent times and carefree days. Most of these mementos feature bathers, skipping across the edge of a creek, throwing themselves into the water. More often than not, the subjects are nude, or "nekkid," as we used to say. Some who have glanced momentarily at my collection have raised their eyebrows with suspicion. Aren't these images somehow a bit risqué? That to me is a sad comment on the times we live in today. For when these postcards and trinkets were published no one thought there was anything even remotely inappropriate about the subject matter. Magazines as mainstream as Life, Collier's, Saturday Evening Post, Liberty and Popular Photography often plastered their covers with images of young kids diving au naturel into swimming holes.

Famed artist J. C. Leyendecker did numerous swimming hole images for the Post. Norman Rockwell, who more than any other artist represents the heart and soul of American wholesomeness, was commissioned to do a dozen or so swimming hole-themed magazine covers. Some of his most cherished art works depict nimble youths dashing into streams, creeks and lakes without fear of censure or opprobrium. Even the Boys Scouts, that rigid symbol of good Christian virtues and cleanliness, thought nothing odd in publishing images of skinny-dippng boys on their fraternal journals and inside their magazines. Thomas Eakins painted perhaps the most famous version of the Swimming Hole; it now hangs in the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

What is remarkable in looking back over the vast variety of Swimming Hole ephemera is how much humor there was in it. Rockwell was best at capturing the unbridled glee of youths shirking their menial duties while grasping an hour of free time at the old "hole." Other cards and advertisements focused on the good clean fun of bathing regularly (at a time when most people only took a bath on Saturday nights). Ads for Ivory Soap, Crisco, Cream of Wheat and motor oils emphasized the hygienic benefits of swimming regularly. In later years, soda companies like 7-UP underscored the sheer exuberance of the experience.

During the Second World War, the Swimming Hole came to symbolize the comfort of home, and seemed to represent the very ideals the soldiers overseas were fighting for. Cannon Towels did a series of several ads in the 40s showing buff soldiers recreating their favorite swimming holes in far-off lands in India, Africa and the Far East. The Swimming Hole served as a touchstone of sorts of male bonding and camaraderie

Recently I've read that the Swimming Hole is in danger of disappearing for good. Property owners have put up signs forbidding trespassers from accessing their lands. Insurance costs have skyrocketed making liability too dangerous a proposition. That won't stop people from slipping past the signs and escaping the watchful eye of state troopers and local sheriffs. If one can't strip off one's clothes and dive into a crystal clear lake anymore, just because someone is afraid you'll sue them if you slip and fall and break your neck, what's the point of living in the country anyway? We might as well all move to law school and spend our time in the stacks reading torts.

Here are a few parting words from James Whitcomb Riley, the author of the famous poem "Ye Ole Swimming Hole."

Oh! the old swimmin'-hole! When I last saw the place,

The scenes was all changed, like the change in my face;

The bridge of the railroad now crosses the spot

Whare the old divin'-log lays sunk and fergot.

And I stray down the banks whare the trees ust to be --

But never again will theyr shade shelter me!

And I wish in my sorrow I could strip to the soul,

And dive off in my grave like the old swimmin'-hole.

Even when he wrote this touching bit of colloquial verse, he knew the swimming hole was fading fast. For most of us now, it is just a wisp of a memory, a souvenir of times past, but a world of comforting recollections well worth collecting.

Brooks Peters Blog
Click here for more information on Brooks Peters

4 PHOTO SHOWS IN APRIL - EAST AND WEST COASTS

There are four shows this month that feature photographs that may be of interest to many of you.   I will be set up at The All Image Show in San Fransisco on April 18th and The Allentown, PA Paper Show on April 24th - 25th.      All of the shows feature fine dealers including Greg French, Thomas Harris, Sabine Ocker, The Waters Clan, Stu Butterfield, etc.

Sunday, April 11th

Boston Antique Photos Show

10am - 3pm (early admission at 8:30)

Westford Regency Hotel Ballroom

I-495 Exit 32

go 1 block to Route 110 W

Sunday April 18th

All Image Show  San Francisco

10am - 4pm (early admission at 8)

Hilton Garden Inn, Emeryville
[was the Holiday Inn]
1800 Powell Street
Emeryville, California

PHSNE Photographica 73

9am - 3pm

Americal Center Wakefield MA

467 Main Street in Wakefield MA

Photos and Cameras

Saturday April 24th - Sunday April 25th

Great Eastern Antique Advertising 

Book & Paper Show (and lots of photos)

9am - 5pm on Saturday

10am - 3pm on Sunday

Agricultural Hall

Allentown Fairgrounds

1929 Chew Street

Allentown, PA

WHY WERE THESE PICTURES TAKEN? by JOEL ROTENBERG

There’s really no excuse for being interested in snapshots unless we’re interested in something that only snapshots can give us.

This is why it seems to me that many subject interests mix rather uneasily with snapshots. How is a snapshot of a dog inherently and significantly different from a conventional photo of a dog? But it may be that what we’re really intrigued by is the family dog, in his native habitat. Here we are entering true snapshot territory. Snapshots of the family dog bring us something that doesn’t exist to the same degree outside snapshot photography, certainly not in photography that doesn’t owe a great deal to snapshot photography.

But it’s the formal properties of snapshots that are most attractive to some of us. The sloppiness of snapshots, for example, can only exist in a medium in which almost no one worried about it too much. And that same sloppiness, of course, produced some wonderful things.

What can we do with snapshots that really takes advantage of the form? That’s the collector’s question.

I want to point to a class of snapshots that has no analogue in other kinds of photography. Snapshots were usually taken for a clear and simple purpose--to get a rough-and-ready record of the subject. Nevertheless, there are snapshots whose purpose is fundamentally mysterious. That class is to be distinguished from joke shots, accidents, and arty experiments. Why were these pictures taken? The question goes well beyond the related question “What’s going on here?” And I stress that (unlike “What’s going on here”) it can only arise in snapshots. The same question asked of a mysterious art photo, for example, would have a clear answer: to be mysterious and to be art.
 
Unlike the cooked-up mysteries of art, these are real mysteries. No one is being cute or deliberately obscure; no one is posing questions at all. We may enjoy these pictures, but we didn’t play a role in why they were made. They weren’t taken with us in mind. If we’re curious about why they were taken, it’s not because we’re wondering about something an artist wants us to wonder about. We’re curious about historical reality--about the actual events represented by the photos themselves.

Another Snapshot Article by Joel 

Joel's site on eBay Out.Of.Frame 

Click here for more information on Joel Rotenberg 

HOUSE OF MIRTH GIVEAWAY!

House of Mirth Photos is holding it's first giveway! Win a signed edition of American Photobooth by Nakki Goranin, a  limited edition 17" x 22" poster for the book, or a $25 Gift Certificate to my website www.houseofmirthphotos.com    There will be three winners and the first selected gets first choice, etc.  Here's how to enter:

1. Comment below telling me about the last photo you bought.
2. Follow this blog.
3. Follow me on Twitter @houseofmirthpix

Choose all three and be entered three times!   Winners will be selected on Thursday, April 8th.   Good luck!

A SEA OF SNAPSHOTS

Paris Photo 2009 performance fabien breuvart from Fabien Breuvart on Vimeo.

Craig McNeer recently told me about a video on YouTube, where Fabien Breuvart, in a bit of performance art, dumped garbage bags of anonymous found photos at the entrance of this past November's Paris Photo on opening night. He announced that they were free for the taking and stopped people in their tracks. Many people opted to go through these snapshots, delaying their entrance to view the fine art photography and sip champagne. Just the image of a sea of snapshots gives me goosebumps. Nothing makes me happier than a fresh lot of vintage snaps to sort through...Well, maybe a glass of wine to enjoy while I’m doing so. I started googling for more information on this event and found several other blog posts, in which some people called these snapshots "worthless." Whatever Breuvart’s intention was in this display, it certainly gets one thinking. Art is in the eye of the beholder and it is certainly true that "one man’s trash is another man’s treasure." I’ll take these treasures any day of the week.

ANONYMOUS SNAPSHOTS FROM THE HALF FRAME CAMERA by MARK SULLO

A fellow collector, much more avid than myself, saw some of my collection of half frame photos and said that he'd never come across anyone who sought them out. That got me wondering just what this attraction might stem from, and my immediate realization is that my own use of the half frame camera has tuned my eye to them. Any photographer who is accustomed to working from a contact sheet, more a rarity as time passes, has inevitably been in the habit of working with the juxtaposition of two images on a page. More than a few "art" photographers were intentionally using the Olympus Pen camera, which originated in the 60's and gave twice as many frames per roll of film, to create diptychs… These were simply created in the darkroom by using the entire opening of a 35mm negative carrier frame while including the outer edge of the film. This practice easily fit into the discipline of sequencing images, an essential element of visual thinking, being offered in photography programs… The half frame camera also became a source for the "happy accident" or serendipity of two frames resulting in an unintended composition. These were often far more interesting and enjoyable than the deliberate attempts at pairing images.

 

I suppose it never dawned on me until much later, that countless examples of these diptychs were being created automatically in photo labs along with the gazillion other snapshots being produced. Most labs never adjusted for this change in format. Photos came back with two images on one print and perhaps many people just cut them down… or went back to the lab with the preferred image and had it enlarged. I started noticing these fortuitous pairings along with the many elusive gems of anonymous images that are so rewarding to find while engaged in the process of collecting vintage photography. As already pointed out on this blog in prior posts, the accidental and unintentional is often a matter of intrigue while collecting photographs. Many an amateur photographer, however, was clearly aware of the unusual and arty approach they were creating with the hobby of photography. My own fascination is piqued when it's hard to tell if the photographer was at all aware of the visual satisfaction of their results. Most collectors of vintage photography, especially snapshots, would probably concur that this dividing line can be blurred to the point that all that remains is the beauty of the image itself.

I've been particularly amused by the discovery of these unintentional diptychs that bring two separate pictures together as a dynamic pair, while remembering the pleasant surprise of finding one on a contact sheet from the half frame camera, or trying deliberately to create one.  It's also helped me with a realization that the satisfaction of looking for "keepers" and "gems"  can rival or outdo the pursuit of my personal artistic photography… mostly due to the charm of an image on paper with a quality that could never be matched intentionally. The fact that this realm of paper imagery, which has changed with some uniformity over the past 150 years or so, will have no identifiable equivalent in the future only fuels the fire…

For a great list of half frame cameras, follow this link

Mark Sullo's Web Page
Lovely Water Parade Blog 

Click here for more information on Mark Sullo