We rode our bikes to Old Town Farm to meet friends for breakfast. I took along my Minolta Hi-Matic 7s.
I'm still trying to get used to shooting my finely made but quirky Vito III. I loaded it with another expired roll of Gekko MW 100 and took a walk around the neighborhood and into Old Town
I went to Old Town on Saturday with the collapsible Industar 22 on my Zorki 6. A little rain and cloudy skies gave me some nice light for the Gekko 100 film.
A slightly overcast sky provided some nice light for an early morning walk through the neighborhood with the 35mm Jupiter 12 lens on the Zorki 6.
I've just about got the Zorki 6 sorted out. I put a plastic washer on top of the film cartridge and the images showed no tilt in the film gate. I'm not entirely sure that was the right solution, however. I noticed that I really also needed to push the film leader firmly downward on the take-up spool. So, I may just try that next time without the washer.
The Ilfotec DD-X was also a gift from a friend from about a year ago. I finally got around to trying it out because I noticed that it is one of the developers Ilford recommends for Kentmere, one of my favorites. So that is on the schedule too.
I used my Jupiter 8 lens on the Zorki 6 on this occasion. It is a Sonnar copy and maybe the best of the bunch of my Soviet lenses. I wish it had click stops for the aperture like the Industar 61-LD, but I can't complain otherwise. My plan is to move next to trying the Zorki 6 with the Jupiter 12 and either the collapsable FED 50 or the Industar-21. Those are both Elmar copies and seem just as sharp to my eyes.
I think the Zorki 6 is handsomely designed. It is probably not functionally superior to a lot a lot of similar rangefinder cameras, but I think that it incorporates a lot of the best features of the long Soviet Barnack line and it was the last model before the slr takeover. And, last but not least, thirty bucks!
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| Lee Marmon - ca.1990 - photographer unknown |
There is no arguing the fact that Lee Marmon, a native son of the Laguna Pueblo, had easy access to his Native American subjects which made them comfortable in front of his camera. Contrary to the assertions made in the exhibit, however, there is very little real difference between his photographic approach and techniques and those of Curtis and Lummis.
The exhibit material implies that Curtis and Lummis were condescending toward their Native American subjects, and that they misrepresented them as members of a disappearing race. I don't recall reading anything said by either that portrayed their subjects with any negativity. Curtis endured great hardship in documenting all the tribal groups he could find and never realized any significant income from his efforts. Lummis lived in the Isleta Pueblo and clearly enjoyed the trust and affection of his neighbors.
As for the portrayal of the American Indians as in danger of disappearance toward the end of the 19th Century, I think we can cut Curtis and Lummis some slack. The indigenous people of the country had by that time been subjected to a couple centuries of genocidal warfare. Additionally, it has become increasing clear that well into the Twentieth Century there was a concerted effort undertaken jointly by the government and religious organizations to stamp out indigenous languages and cultures by ripping the children away from their families and confining them in prison-like boarding schools. (Marmon ran away from the Albuquerque Indian School.)
The charge that Curtis and Lummis posed their subjects, sometimes using artificial lighting, simply overlooks the realities of 19th Century photography. Curtis and Lummis made their photographs on glass plates using large and cumbersome view cameras. Spontaneous snapshots of everyday life were not a practical option, though Lummis actually got pretty close to that with some of his cyanotypes.
Marmon made most of his pictures of Pueblo people in outdoor settings and had no need for artificial lighting. He did often use a somewhat cumbersome press camera, but it was loaded with film that was vastly more sensitive than those 19th Century glass plates of his predecessors. Marmon used flash for his commercial celebrity portrait work as was the custom in those days.
Curtis certainly did go to some lengths to portray his subjects mostly in traditional regalia which was not often seen outside ceremonial activities. But, guess what; most of Marmon's pictures of his people show them wearing traditional garb and jewelry which they clearly donned for the occasion. Not unsurprisingly, as the exhibit material points out, Marmon never had a negative thing to say about the photographic approaches of Curtis and Lummis. In fact, Marmon was doing his best to emulate the posing conventions of his day which were not all that different from the approaches of Curtis and Lummis.
It seems to me it should be possible to recognize what is unique and valuable in Marmon's accomplishments without trying to turn Curtis and Lummis into villainous antagonists in a way that Marmon himself never endorsed.
I took my Bentzin Primar plate camera to the Plaza Vieja to catch the old cars and a couple of the old car guys.
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The roll of Fomapan 400 was processed in HC110b. I was pleased with image quality from the low-cost Fomapan, but found I was really out of practice in using the plate camera. Both the wire frame finder and the little reflex viewer provide a somewhat vague idea of where the camera is pointed, and achieving sharp focus by estimation is always tricky at less than the smallest apertures. It took some careful cropping of the negatives to get some reasonable compositions.
