Another "What is that camera?"

These pictures are part of the exhibit about Albuquerque's Special Collections Library.  They are printed from a large group of negatives in the Albuquerque Museum Photo Archives.

 The relevant clues are the camera shape, the controls on the top deck, the black lens barrel and the dates in the captions and in the Albuquerque Tribune article.

What is your guess?

Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron

 

An article in the New York Times about an exhibition of the work of Julia Margaret Cameron at the Morgan Library & Museum was a nice excuse to look again at her work.  The reviewer is Arthur Lebow, who wrote an exhaustive biography of Diane Arbus.

Cameron has always been one of my guides to good portraiture.  It seems amazing she was able to produce such outstanding images so early after the invention of photography, and with such primitive equipment and techniques.

I think that the modern day appeal of Cameron's portraits rests largely on her posing techniques in which her sitters were placed very close to the camera and dressed simply in a way that minimizes the distraction of period styles.

There is a good selection of Cameron's work in Masters of Photography by Beaumont and Nancy Newhall. I have the first edition which was published in 1958.  Looking for the book on Amazon I found that there is a new edition.  The listing includes a long statement asserting that the contents are now in the public domain, which seems rather curious.  Perhaps the original publisher just abandoned the copyright?

Wikipedia has quite a thorough biography of Cameron and her career in photography which only began around the age of 48 when her daughter gifted her a camera.

Classic

 I only watched a bit of this PBS Masterpiece episode, but the beginning was interesting.

The scene shifted around quickly and I had some difficulty identifying the camera.  When she advanced the film and cocked the shutter with that lever, though, it was clearly revealed as a Zeiss Ikon Tenax I.

From Wikipedia:

The Tenax I is a 24x24 mm fixed lens camera by Zeiss Ikon launched in 1939.

The Tenax I was actually launched after the Tenax II. Like the Tenax II, it is a 24×24mm square-format camera taking over 50 exposures on a standard 135 film (35 mm), with a rapid-advance lever next to the lens. But it is a much simpler camera, with a completely different body, no rangefinder, a simple folding viewfinder on the top plate, and a Compur leaf shutter to 1/300". Most of them are equipped with a Zeiss Novar 3.5 cm f/3.5 lens. A smaller number have a Carl Zeiss Jena 3.5 cm f/2.8 Tessar.

Production began in 1938, and it was nearly halted in 1941. There was limited production during the rest of the war.

Spring Bloom

The yearly spectacle of blooming Yerba Mansa along the Rio Grande is something I always look forward to  It came along right on schedule this year at the beginning of June following some nice Spring rains.

Last year a little patch of Yerba Mansa I planted in our yard bloomed at the same time as those in the riverside forest.  That planting is spreading and looks healthy, but this year there are no blooms, or even buds. I'm wondering now if the lack of blooms is related to the fact that the plant is genetically incapable of self pollination. Perhaps I just need to provide a companion that is not directly related to my planting

There is some doubt about the origin of the plant's common name.  Yerba Mansa literally translated means Tame Herb, but what that might refer to is not obvious. An alternate name, Dragon Tail, would seem to be derived from the conical structure which bears the tiny flowers.

Yerba Mansa was used for medicinal purposes by all the indigenous people in the plant's western habitats. It would be interesting to know what names it was known by among  those people.

Screen Shots

Are you watching the growth of the falcons at Great Spirit Bluffs?

Here they are just a month ago:

 And today:

Arbus

 There is a big new show of Arbus work in New York reported on in The Guardian.

I hope it will travel.

Diane Arbus – self-portrait with 35mm, 1959. (The Guardian)

What camera is that?