As a child my son’s passions were art, architecture and soccer, photography was his Dad’s domain. It wasn’t until I taught a pinhole workshop at his school that he made his first photograph. Later, I gave him a 35mm point and shoot which he personalized by covering it with bug stickers. I loaded it with a 36 exposure roll of film and not fifteen minutes later he was back for another roll. That little camera is still tucked away in a drawer in the kitchen.
I began experimenting with digital photography using a Nikon Coolpix. I later purchased a Canon D30 and gave the Coolpix to Wynn to preserve my film stash.
My strategy worked for a while. He’d shoot as much as he wanted then download the photos onto his Mac G3. Then one day I asked him if he needed fresh batteries because I knew the Coolpix was a power hog. He dug through his backpack but couldn’t find the camera. “ I must have left it at school,” he said.
A week later he came home and pulled the camera from his backpack. He told me he had it with him when he and his friends where hiking in the woods and that a girl had tripped and injured her knee. In typical Miquon School fashion everyone dropped everything and rushed thegirl to the office for first aid. The Coolpix had spent the week outside, along a trail in the woods, in the rain. I did appreciate his honesty.
The Coolpix survived a week in the elements, what did it in was a broken battery door from the toss of his backpack onto the sidewalk.
Later, Wynn got an iPhone and of course, aside from the ability to text and make phone calls, it had a built in camera. For several years the iPhone was all the camera he needed. With each new iPhone version the cameras got better and better as did the photography related apps.
When Wynn went off to college I gave him my old Canon 20D. Not wanting to give up any of my L series lenses I bought him a used 35-80 kit lens. Coming from an iPhone he found the 20D’s settings and menus confusing. The LCD was too small and the kit lens was too slow. The iPhone remained his camera of choice.
For the past couple of years I have been collecting film cameras. Some, people have given to me, others I find in thrift stores, flea markets and yard sales. I still carry a torch for film, especially black and white. I shoot with these cameras occasionally and still maintain a darkroom. You can see some of my recentb&w work “Thanksgiving Day Parade” in a previous post.
Wynn mentioned he had friends at RISD that had done film photography when they where in high school and that they would like to try it again. I sent Ryan a Pentax ME and an Olympus OM-2 to Skye for their birthdays.
This got Wynn to thinking maybe he’d like a film camera too and that maybe he’d like to have it for his trip to Paris over spring break. I thought it a bit risky, taking a used camera you have never used before on such an important trip. Then I decided, what the hell, he would be taking photos with his iPhone too.
While I had multiple cameras I could have given him all were 60’s or 70’s era manual cameras in need of some amount of restoration and I wanted to give him a camera with at least one auto exposure mode for insurance.
Detail, Eiffel Tower, Paris
Luckily, a few days before Wynn would leave on his trip, I found a Canon AE-1 program at the local thrift shop. It was in great shape and came with a fungus free, 50mm 1.8 lens. It even came with an owner’s manual. When I got it home I installed a new battery and everything worked perfectly. The program mode was a big plus, I would rather he concentrated on content, light and composition than on technical issues.
I shipped the camera along with five rolls of 36 exposure Tri-X which he could send back to me for processing, printing and scanning when he returned. For inspiration I sent him a link to photos of Paris by Andre Kertesz. I told him to not come back with ANY unexposed film.
It wasn’t until the day of his flight that i realized we had never had a discussion about flying with film and x-rays! I texted him while he was on the train to the airport and he texted back that the film was in his suitcase and that it would be checked. I told him that was the worst pace for it as the x-rays for check bags is much stronger and would surely fog the film. He removed it from his suitcase and at the airport he asked for hand inspection.
Here’s what Wynn had to say: Having the AE-1 Program in Paris was a blast, it really gave me the motivation I needed to go into full tourist mode. The AE-1 ended up giving me exactly what I needed, a camera that was super easy to operate, light and durable, and yielded exactly the kinds of photos I was looking for – images that look like they could be prints from IKEA. I’m excited to continue to use my new film camera but am hesitant to take it out without a special occasion. If you would like to send me a roll of film my address is 02 College Street, Box No. 0617 Providence RI, 02903
Check out Wynn’s website to see more of his work in multiple media @ Wynn Geary Design.
Why curate a photography exhibition celebrating a film format rather than a particular artist or specific genre? After all 35mm refers only to the physical dimensions of a piece of film and by default, the type of camera that uses it. What epiphany does Peter Barberie, The Brodsky Curator of Photographs, Alfred Stieglitz Center andAmanda Bock, Horace W. Goldsmith Curatorial Fellow in Photography, want us to experience while viewing this diverse body of sixty-six photographs by more than thirty photographers?
The significance of this exhibition is enhanced by the relatively recent yet ubiquitous migration to digital photography by professional and amateurs alike. What was the most widely used film format of the twentieth century now seems antiquated even archaic and has been placed on the shelf of our collective past along side the vinyl record and the typewriter.
To understand why 35mm became so popular we must consider what preceded it. From Joseph Niépce’s first photograph in 1826, View from the Window at Le Gras (Newhall 16) and for nearly a century after it was taken, making photographs was a slow and cumbersome process involving large cameras and multiple holders loaded with sensitized materials. Early photographs were either direct positives or negatives that would be contact printed so large photographs required a large camera. Though attempts were made to make cameras smaller and to simplify the photographic process little progress was made until the early 1900’s when Oskar Barnack, a designer at E. Leitz, (a German optical works famous for their microscopes), designed a radically new camera. “It was new because it tapped a great supply of fine and inexpensive negative material- 35mm motion picture film, universally available in a great variety of emulsions and because it functionally stored away an exposed picture as it placed a fresh negative in the film gate while it cocked the shutter for the next exposure. And for as small as it was it held the then unbelievable number of 36 pictures. (Morgan & Lester 5). The Leica could be hand held and viewing was done with the camera pressed to the eye making it an extension of ocular vision. Though the negatives the camera produced were small they could easily be enlarged thanks to the quality of the film stock and the camera’s exceptional optics. It was named the Leica, a contraction of Leitz and camera and was introduced to the public in 1925 as “the masterpiece of the miniature.” (Morgan & Lester 5) The miniature camera not only proved to be of great use to photojournalists, but it opened up new esthetic possibilities. The ease with which the camera could be handled freed the photographer to seek unusual viewpoints and to record segments of the flow of life. (Newhall 156).
The first image in the exhibition is not a single image but rather a contact sheet of Dominic Pasquarella’s 35mm negatives of Alexina Duchamp taken at her husband’s (Marcel Duchamp) exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. One can see the actual size of the small negatives. From the grid of similar yet different portraits it is apparent the images were taken in quick succession. Upon closer inspection one can make out sprocket holes, frame numbers and tiny letters that read Kodak Safety Film. Next, to illustrate the concept of enlargement as well as to spotlight two mainstays of photographic history we see a 9 ½ x 14-inch portrait of Alfred Stieglitz in repose, by one of 35mm’s most celebrated practitioners, Henri Cartier-Bresson. Above the enlargement hangs a contact print of four Agfa Isopan negatives Bresson chose from to make the enlargement.
The earliest photographs in the exhibit made in 1928 by Andre Kertesz, is a three photograph series of a vagrant on the streets of Paris. The series is notable as it illustrates the photographer’s newfound ability to shoot candidly. Kertesz was not only able to witness much of the beginnings of hand-held photography, but had a profound effect on it. With subtle and whimsical artistry, he took full advantage of a medium not yet sure of its own potential, and for that, contemporary photography remains in his debt. (PBS American Masters).
Armed with their diminutive cameras photographers began to exploit the photographic possibilities in the theater of the street and beyond. They have also stretched the parameters of the street itself so that it now includes the subway (and the interior of any other mode of public transportation), the park, the beach, the café-indeed any and every venue that can be though of as essentially “public.” (Coleman 160). Surprisingly, given it’s stature in photographic history, one of the smallest prints in the survey, measuring only 4 ½ x 7 inches, is one of Walker Evan’s 1938 Subway Portraits. When we think of Walker Evans we usually think of his Depression era photographs of the 1930’s shot with a view camera but for the subway series Evans hid a 35mm Contax under his coat firing the shutter with a cable that ran down the length of his sleeve and into his hand.
Political Rally Chicago, Robert Frank
Perhaps no one photographer has had a more lasting impact on photography than Robert Frank. There are few single works of art that have changed the direction of their medium. In 1959, one book dramatically altered how photographers looked through their viewfinders and the way Americans saw themselves. (NPR) On display are three images from The Americans: Political Rally-Chicago is a vertical frame of a man standing on the ledge of a building, shot from the street below. The man stands triumphantly, arms raised in the air, fists clenched and shouting in support of his candidate. He stands in stark contrast to the expressionless ornamental stone face carved into the building façade below.Elevator-Miami Beach, In a horizontal and canted wide-angle frame, blurred figures exit an elevator passing by the young female operator. She looks tired. Her head is bent down, face void of expression as she looks up at one of her passengers moving just out of frame. It is an image punctuating the difference between the classes in America, the haves and the have not’s. Saint Petersburg Florida: Five senior citizens sit on benches, back-to-back, gazing in different directions while waiting for a bus. In the background a passing automobile becomes a metaphor for lost youth while commenting on American’s infatuation with the automobile.
New York 1972, Garry Winogrand
On a lighter note Garry Winogrand’s New York, 1972, which appeared in Women Are Beautiful, is playful, naughty and just plain fun. Like Frank’s Elevator the horizontal wide-angle frame is canted and features a young woman in an enclosed space, only this woman is in a telephone booth. She is wearing a short skirt and has one leg propped up inside the booth innocently offering a peep show to anyone who would care to look and Winogrand is all about looking. Luck is in Winogrand’s favor as her vision of him and his camera are blocked by one of the horizontal slats that make up the booth. Two of the five pedestrians passing in the background are aware of the joke but only one, a woman wearing glasses, is in on it. Winogrand embraces disorder and vulgarity like long lost brothers, and often compounds the chaos of his pictures by taking them at radical angles. (Malcolm 36)
To ground the exhibit in Philadelphia, aside from the self referential images of Alexina Duchamp taken at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, there is Eric Avery’s “Hands Healing: A Photographic Essay,” shot at the Philadelphia University of College of Medicine, Lamani, Belize, by Michael M. Koehler, who grew up and worked in Philadelphia, Champa, a Transvestite Madam, in the Doorway of his Cage by Mary Ellen Mark, born in Philadelphia and educated at The University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, and natives: William Brown, South Street Window, Laurence Salzman , At DayBreak, Al Amanecer, and Ray K. Metzger, Couplets: New York City.
35mm: Photographs from the Collection is on display through May 27th, 2012 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art- Perelman Building, Fairmount Ave. Philadelphia, PA 19130.
Works Cited
Coleman, A.D.. Depth of Field. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000.
Print.
Evans, Walker. Subway Portrait. 1938. . Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia. Philadelphia Museum of Art -On View: Current Exhibitions. Web. April 27 2012.
Frank, Robert. Political Rally, Chicago. 1956. Art Blart. Archive for the Robert Frank Category. Web. April 27 2012. frank/>
Harry Ransom Center. The University of Texas At Austin. Exhibitions, The First Photograph. Web. May 06 2012.
Kertesz, Andre. Street Scene. 1928. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia. Philadelphia Museum of Art -On View: Current Exhibitions. Web. April 27 2012.
Morgan, Willard D. and Henry M. Lester. Leica Manual. New York: Morgan & Lester, 1951. Print.
Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography. New York: The Museum of Modern
Art, New York, 1964. Print.
Thirteen, Educational Broadcasting Corporation. PBS American Masters, Andre Kertesz, January 13th 1999. Web. April 29 2012.
Winogrand, Garry. New York, 1972. Fans in a Flashbulb, Images from the collections of the International Center of Photography. I Wonder Who She’s Talking To… Web. April 27 2012.
