FOR BETTER OR WORSE by STACY WALDMAN

Did they have happy lives together or did they feel trapped?   Here, some share a joke and others appear stern, à la American Gothic.    We'll never know what their lives were like, but we can imagine.

FOUR SHOWS ON THE EAST COAST WHERE YOU CAN COME BUY PHOTOS IN PERSON

Below are four shows where I'll be setting up in the next few months.    Other Photos dealers that you may see at one or more of these shows are: Erin Waters, David Chow, Stu Butterfield, Glenn Vogel, Thomas Harris, Richie Hart, etc.  Hope to see/meet you there:

1.  DC Antique Photo Show, Sunday, March 13th antiquephotoshow.com 

 2.  NYC Photo Show, Saturday, March 19th usphotoshows.com

3.  Allentown, PA  Paper Show - Saturday, April 30th and Sunday, May 1st. www.allentownpapershow.com

 

4. Boston Book & Paper Expo, Saturday, May 7th www.bookandpaperexpo.com

JUST A BUNCH OF PEOPLE STANDING AROUND by JOEL ROTENBERG

 

Not much to see here but a lucky arrangement of otherwise uninteresting elements.

In his recent post, Robert Jackson mentions the psychological resonance that double exposures can have: as with classical surrealist disjunctive imagery, the viewer can’t help trying to relate the component images.

The snapshots shown above are simpler. Though what I am about to say is far from completely true of all my examples, ideally this class of picture has no psychological resonance at all, no mystery, nothing to make you think, no thematic content—none of that stuff that other kinds of photos have. And they’re not freaky; they don’t bomb you with strangeness. So what’s left? I chose them because they’re little more than accidental compositions. I tried to get rid of everything else. If they have a subject, we’d have to say they’re about accident itself—about what’s at the heart of the snapshot. These are snapshots purged of everything irrelevant, stripped down to what is snapshottiest. From a certain point of view I think they are about as pure as snapshots can be.

Though so mundane that they are essentially empty, at the same time they are as statistically improbable as any good snapshot. Cases differ, but in a general sort of way we might say that what is most fortunate in a good double exposure is the choice of the two superimposed images; their precise registration is less important. But an accidental composition is all about precision. A fraction of a millimeter’s change in the position of the elements could very often destroy it.

Click here to find out more about Joel Rotenberg

THE DOUBLE-EXPOSURE by ROBERT E. JACKSON

 

A photographic double-exposure is created when the same piece of film is exposed twice, such that two images are superimposed on top of each other.   This often occurs because of a mistake in the manual winding of film to the next frame.  As found in the snapshot, the result can be the creation of an amazing piece of unintentional genius which is viewed as an artistic achievement by many collectors.   But the double-exposure, accidently created via the mechanics of taking a photo, is more often than not removed from any real artistic inclination on the part of the photographer.  It is not related to what the photographer saw, but rather to what the camera saw.  In other words, the photographer took the photo (or photos), but the camera made the resulting double image.  And yet it is the snapshot collector who provides the final stamp of approval that the mechanical “mistake” is worthy of being sought after, bought, and elevated to a proud place in his or her collection.  Of course the mere fact that the photograph still exists is due to some sort of selection process in which the snapshooter engaged—that is the decision to keep the photo instead of throwing it away. However, one should be cautious about giving the original owner of the photo too much credit.

In any case, these mysterious and enigmatic photos thankfully remain to be appreciated and read as strange photographic hieroglyphics-the viewer having often to visually decode the piece in an attempt to appreciate it as more than the sum of its parts.   The viewer sees in the double-exposure what is desired to be seen.  The result is a more personal and subjective response to the visual information provided within the photo than is often found within the straightforward narrative of the snapshot.  Thus, in my mind, the double-exposure has the distinction of being the rarest and most visually complex image found within snapshots.

But outside of a small group of passionate collectors, there is not much critical interest in this snapshot genre.  Museum curators, while they might like the images personally, are not really ready to devote much wall space exclusively to the images; and academics are not inclined to devote much critical thought to the subject of double-exposures.  This is because the images were created by a mechanical failure of a machine and as such are immune to some visual or historical context in which the curator or academic can place them.  The double-exposure image is an accident, pure and simple (and one has to be careful to distinguish a double-exposure from a trick photo where there was true intent by the photographer involved).  You cannot compare such photos to imagery which the photographer might have seen and thus imply that they are historically relevant in some manner.  These photos don’t have a sociological basis for their creation.  They aren’t tied to some cultural influence.  They don’t speak to the emergence of an awakening of creativity and empowerment related to gender identity or sexual preference. They didn’t happen as a response to the emergence of the American Dream and the economic impulses to document wealth or status.   In sum, they exist apart from history itself.  Yes, they might resonate via the accidental strains found in the art of Surrealism and Dadaism and the shifting planes of imagery as seen in Cubism and photocollage, but such visual precedents perhaps only account for why the double- exposure has been saved and appreciated.  It doesn’t explain why they exist and can be so haunting and compelling.  Thus they provide the community of academics and museum curators with a problem related to artistic intent and influence.  They are pure imagery in its most basic form.  And they can be unlike anything found in the photographic world.

For more on Robert E. Jackson, click here. 

CONDITION SCHMONDITION, PART II by PAT STREET

Here are a dozen more images in poor condition that made it into my collection — some of them precisely because they were damaged.  These show additional types of damage, several of which were inflicted by well-meaning people who believed they were enhancing the photographs.

 

13.  Here’s a sweet real-photo postcard (RPPC) of a young couple. Someone, probably the young woman in the photograph, has cut slits around the oval image and woven a pink silk ribbon through the slits, finishing with a bow.  A charming touch, but many serious collectors of photographs would dismiss this one.

14.  Once people were able to take their own snapshots, many amateurs gave hand-tinting a try.  Here’s an example from the 1930s of amateur colorizing gone wild.  The artist was quite careful about it — note the turkey’s head meticulously separated into two red blobs by the small tree on the left. But the vivid red he or she chose makes those turkey heads glow like neon. I love the effect.

 

15.  Here we have a cabinet card of  “Mr. Walter L. Martin at the age of 10.” This is a drastic retouch job done with an opaque paint, possibly gouache, and ink. His eyes, nostrils, and upper lip have been inked in (see detail), and someone (the photographer or an artist in his employ?) decided the portrait would look better with extreme shading of the background: darker on the light side of the head, lighter on the dark side. They were right, but they should have thought of that before making the exposure, and a steady hand with the paintbrush would have helped.

16.  When you collect ephemeral items like antique and vintage photographs, you often have to rummage through bins or boxes of unsleeved images.  Of course, these photos suffer additional damage every time someone looks through them.  Other images, like this one, perhaps spent fifty years or so in this shop’s junk drawer, accumulating scratches and scuffs every time somebody looked for a screwdriver.  If perfect, this RPPC would go for a couple of hundred dollars. It’s so worn that it’s limp, but it’s still a fabulous interior shop image.

17.  Decisions, decisions. My imagined narrative here is that this guy’s wife left him for another man. Then this guy angrily thought about throwing away this RPPC portrait, but wait, he really liked how he looked in this portrait of himself, so he cut his wife out of the image.  He wanted his entire body in the part he kept, which meant he had to keep his wife’s hand on his shoulder, and had to keep enough of the writing on the back to still say “Mr. and Mrs.”

18.  Severe fading in a photo often makes it lose its power, but in this 1893 cabinet photo of Ava and her dog, it adds a dissolving, ethereal quality.  I like Ada’s focus on the dog and the dog’s focus on the ball.  Life is transient; let’s play.

19.  Many an old silver print has been “ruined” by silvering, but sometimes the effect is quite beautiful. Here’s a young cowboy and his dog. There’s lots of silvering, which shows up blue in a scan. The image is underexposed: possibly in a studio, but I like to imagine that they’re sitting by a campfire. The sidelighting is evocative.

20.  Insect damage can take several forms.  Here’s an example of an RPPC damaged by flyspecks. I often see this kind of damage on images of African Americans.  I hope these two well-dressed, self-possessed boys did well in life despite thousands of small slurs and setbacks.  

21.  Here’s another RPPC with insect damage. Not only have insects nibbled off much of the surface of the photograph, leaving a lacy effect, but they’ve tunneled right through the card (and possibly through other photographs in a stack). I gave this one a red backing so you could see the insect holes. Often insect holes are perfectly round (see hole at bottom), as if made by a tiny hole-punch.  

22.  Trimming counts as damage, but I love this RPPC image and I also love that someone else appreciated it enough to trim it to fit in a frame. 

23.  This RPPC  has an undivided back, so it’s from before 1907 when, by law, only the address could be written on the other side. This meant that the message, if any, had to go on the picture side. Sometimes people came up with creative designs for their message, so as not to obscure the photograph. This arrangement of writing gives an almost woven effect.

24.  This RPPC was torn right in half when I bought it. I love the little tableau it shows. The donkey is glaring at the photographer; the boy is pleased as punch; the mother is proudly looking on from the doorway; and inside the shop window, behind a row of sample cabinet photographs, two women are watching the entire proceedings.

So: What condition is your condition in?  Writing these posts has made me examine my collection in a new way.  Don’t  waffle about buying a great photograph just because it has damage. And keep your eyes open for images with condition issues that actually enhance them.

For more information on Pat Street, click here.