random wisdom

Well, Krugman is preoccupied with "the markets' sudden turn against emerging economies".  So I guess it is up to me to sort out what is happening in the old film cameras sector.

What is on everyone's mind, of course, is "Where are all the plastic Point-and-Shoot cameras?"

I used to be not very long ago that I could go into any one of half a dozen big junk stores and find a large bin of P&S cameras to paw through.  I brought home quite a few gems, including the Mickey Mouse.  I also picked up two or three Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim for a couple bucks at a time when they were going for $30-$40 on ebay.  I even came away with a few decidedly un-crappy cameras which I found buried in the plastic, including a couple Olympus mju and one very fine Olympus 35RC.

Now when I go to the same second-hand outlets, I'm lucky to find one or two uninteresting plastic cameras hanging on the wall over boxes of tangled electrical cords, sealed up in plastic bags, and way over-priced.  No more bins or boxes over-flowing with plastic-lensed treasures.  I'm a little afraid to ask the store clerks what happened for fear they are going to tell me that any plastic cameras that might come in are ending up at the curb in recycling bins.

There is probably no big mystery in any of the above.  Pretty much everyone these days has a phone/camera that makes ok photos which can be manipulated in Photo-Shop to look like they were made with real cameras.  Perhaps of more immediate importance, there are no longer any 1-hour photo processing places left in town, and film is just about gone from the shelves.

At the same time, strange to say, there are several junk stores in town in which are now displaying collections of non-plastic film cameras.  Mostly, these are low-end box cameras and simple old manual cameras, but there are also a few nicer items like Yashica tlr models.  The prices are generally competitive with ebay offerings.  I'm not sure what to make of this development, or to what degree the phenomenon extends beyond Albuquerque, though I suspect it has something to do with the general digital/no-film situation.

It has been quite a while since I have been able to talk myself into buying any cameras at ebay, but I still enjoy browsing the vintage cameras section just to see what is out there.  I believe I am seeing some softening of prices there, though that is purely a subjective judgment on my part.  The price softening seems to me to be most pronounced in the second-tier segment of the market which I generally have haunted over the years. For instance, I'm seeing the nice little Japanese Zenobia Zeiss-copies going for as low as $25.  I've also noticed some working Barnack Leicas selling for around $125.  The genuinely rare, higher-end stuff seems to be holding its prices, but in the ten years I've been following the market closely the collector items don't really seem to have appreciated in value, particularly if you take inflation into account.  So, that is not good news for those who have acquired old cameras as an investment, but maybe not a bad trend for those of us who value them primarily as picture makers.

Randall Davey

We had the good fortune yesterday to get a tour of the home of the Santa Fe artist, Randall Davey.  The occasion was a celebration of the 30th Anniversary of the bequest of the house and the property to become the headquarters of the Audubon Society in New Mexico.

Davey's house and studio was converted from an old mill in the hills east of Santa Fe.  The main stipulation of the donor, the painter's sister-in-law, was that the property be maintained in the condition it was in when occupied by the artist and his family.

There are quite a few nice examples of Davey's work in the house.  In addition to painting, he also did print making and sculptures.  He was known primariy for his portraits, mostly oils, but he also did quite a bit of watercolor work, including many depictions of horse races and polo matches in which he was an enthusiastic participant.

The bar at the back of the house is a windowless, cave-like room which speaks to the painter's bon vivant reputation.

The door to the studio was decorated by the artist with themes that are repeated in his work.

A big north-facing window in the studio perfectly illuminates a small stage where Davey posed his sitters.  

Randall Davey's art today does not command the prices of the iconic Taos painters, but he had a substantial reputation in the first half of the 20th Century.  In spite of that, and the fact that he was a very colorful character, there is not a lot to be found written about him.  His collected papers are in the Smithsonian awaiting the attention of some chronicler like Linda Gordon or Beth Gates Warren.

Photograph of Randall Davey in Studio;
photo by W. Eugene Smith, made for Life magazine.

I was particularly pleased to find this 1941 picture of Davey at the Smithsonian site as it shows that I was standing briefly in the same place to make my pictures of the studio as the greatest American documentary photographer, W. Eugene Smith.

AND,

it turns out Laura Gilpin shot the same scene in 1947:

Laura Gilpin, Randall Davey, gelatin silver print, 1947;
Bequest of the artist, © 1979 Amon Carter Museum.

At the Zoo

The three-month-old snow leopard twins have made their debut at the Rio Grande Zoo.  This is the sixth litter for the Zoo's very productive pair.

I was inspired to do some pictures by the acquisition of an old Sears/Ricoh TLS with a T-mount 400mm Vivitar lens.  The pre-set lens is pretty awkward in use, but it has nice sharpness, even at maximum aperture.  Certainly worth the ten bucks I paid for the outfit.

The combination of Tri-X and Rodinal wasn't one I was planning on, but I discovered to my dismay that Kodak HC-110 developer suddenly commands a sky-high price, and it can't be had locally at all.  Life is getting complicated for film photographers.

Time Out

I'm putting aside my photography for a while so I can focus on some other interests.  I'll probably get back to making pictures, but I'm not sure when that will be exactly.

Meanwhile, I'll post some thoughts about whatever I'm up to at the moment on my other blog, Everything Else.

C3 Wide

The first camera I bought for myself was an Argus C3.  That would have been about 1958 when I was just out of high school.  Argus was still making the camera, but I got mine used in a pawn shop.  I don't recall exactly what became of that first one; I've bought several more in the last ten years and have enjoyed shooting them again.

I found the 35mm Sandmar a couple years ago on eBay.  The maximum aperture is f/4.5; it's a little slow, but it is coated and reasonably sharp.  The C3 and the Sandmar always seem a good choice for shooting at car shows like the early Spring one I went to this morning in Old Town Albuquerque.

One of the two nearby Walgreen's Drugstores has stopped processing 35mm film.  The other is due to shut down its Fuji machines in a couple days.  It seems my C3 and I have come full circle.

The signal and the noise

I just read Nate Silver's book, The Signal and the Noise, so of course that allows me to steal his title. I'm not going to actually say anything much about the book except to note the phenomenon under examination is evident in the book's reception and reviews. I'm amused that the Republican pundits accused Silver of a liberal bias because he was predicting an Obama win. Given his faultless performance in both the national and state races, Silver is obviously a competent number cruncher; he also seems to me to be a pretty much standard-issue libertarian geek of the type one finds hanging out at Slashdot.

The signal to noise ratio is something we all must deal with constantly in all of life's aspects, but it's seeming more overwhelming the last couple decades due to the rise of computing and the internet. One sees the problem expressed very often in regard to photo history and criticism as bad ideas, bad history and bad analysis get propagated and reproduced at the speed of light. Of course, the origins of the problem are pre-computer age, but the exponential propagation takes us into new territory.

I got to thinking about this topic recently when I was writing about Edward Weston's life and work. I googled "f.64" which was the name of a group organized originally in 1932 to promote a photo exhibit of a half-dozen proponents of straight photography which included Weston. I was dismayed to see that the Wikipedia reference on the subject was a hopeless misrepresentation of history. The comparison with the earlier tradition of pictorialism was muddled by confusion over terminology, and the positions of predecessors and pioneers like Stieglitz was completely misrepresented. The so-called f.64 manifesto was featured as if it represented something other than exhibition hyperbole.
 i.e.:
"..Pure photography is defined as possessing no qualities of technique, composition or idea, derivative of any other art form..."

 I think Willard Van Dyke may have penned that; it has to be rated as one of the silliest things said at any place or time about photography. Ansel Adams, a smart member of the group, amended the statement to the point of refutation later, but that has not prevented it from being propagated ad nauseum.

 Weston wrote quite a lot about photography and much of that is well worth reading, but he had his blind spots as well, particularly as related to his own work, and those too have clogged both the analogue and digital channels of photography's history. For instance, Weston often referred to the reality and "thingness" of his subjects, but much of his most lauded work with nudes, nature and still life consists of abstract representations. Janet Malcolm laid out the issues around these conflicts between stated intent and execution in a review of a Weston retrospective which took place in New York in 1975:

 "The sight of these strange, strong compositions casts doubt on another accepted idea about Weston. This is his presumed role in the history of photography as a prime mover in the revolution that over-threw the "pictorial" approach of the Photo-Secession and established "straight" photography as the medium's legitimate mode. In actuality, what Weston did (as Paul Strand and Man Ray had already begun to do) was simply to bring pictorialism up to date: to replace the Impressionist, Symbolist, and Pre-Raphaelite models of the Photo Secession with those of Cubist, Futurist, Dadaist, Purist, and Surrealist art. Straight photography -- whatever it is -- is hardly exemplified by peppers like clenched fists...,thighs like shells, shells like vulvas, cloud formations like elongated torsos.., palm trunks like industrial smokestacks -- forms that Weston saw because he had seen modern art...
...The technical innovations of straight photography that were erected into a kind of religion by its practitioners -- the change from soft-focus to sharp lenses, from manipulated to unretouched prints, from warm and soft to cold and glossy printing paper -- were, again, changes dictated by the appearance of modern art rather than by the claims of "reality." Optical sharpness, after all, is more an attribute of the buzzard's than of the human eye; Stieglitz's blurry view of the thin Flatiron Building on a snowy day is surely a more literal rendering of "the thing itself" than Weston's razor-sharp close-up of a halved artichoke."

Weston 2.0

I thought Beth Gates Warren did a good job of recovering much of the substance of Edward Weston's early career which he had meticulously obscured. I think the limitations in her account of the period can mostly be attributed to the fact that she was trying to not go too far beyond her sources. I would guess the Weston family would not agree and would not be fans of Warren's book, though she was in my opinion overly generous in her assessment of Weston's work in his Los Angeles years. Warren's approach to critiquing the pictures from that period is primarily descriptive with interpretation mainly focusing on Weston's intentions for his compositions. She does, of course, report Weston's final self-assessment of that period in which he stated that he had lied to himself about the value of his work in the early period.

 The book is as much about Margrethe Mather and her personal and artistic relationship to Weston as it is about Weston and his evolution as an artist. Warren presents as good a picture of the enigmatic Mather as possible given the available records, except that I think a more critical aesthetic analysis would have been helpful in sorting out how Mather and Weston influenced each other. Looking at their pictures side by side when both were working primarily in the gauzy pictorialist style, Mather seems to me as good if not better than Weston in many instances, particularly in regard to the portraits. Mather's portraits show a real connection to the personalities she photographed while Weston's from that period often seem like caricatures.

 The works that Weston at the time portrayed as avant garde usually involved unconventional compositional balance in a manner which may have been more Mather's creation than his own. Ironically, he presented his work at that time as quintessentially photographic though it was obviously grounded in 19th Century painterly values. The cover photo on Warren's book looks back even further to the stylistic preference of the period for Japanese woodblock prints. The message those pictures by Weston mainly convey is one of conflicted intentions.

 While there was some aesthetic parity evident between the two artists, Mather's work doesn't seem characterized by internal conflict. She clearly didn't share Weston's level of ambition, and it seems her identity was not wholly tied to her art as was the case with Weston. While still together with Weston she seemed content to remain in the soft-focus mode when many of her peers in the wider world were moving toward the Straight Photography model. A good example of this is the work entitled "Water Lily" from 1922 which is transparently derivative from Baron Adolf De Meyer's still life compositions from 1908. It seems odd that Warren chose to include the picture in her book without commenting on that connection and its significance. Later, Mather moved away from the soft-focus style. She did a compelling series of close-up patterns of shells, cigarettes and other man-made and natural objects. Her pictures of hands and feet are evocative of the work of Stieglitz and a flower shot suggests the influence of Imogen Cunningham.

Given the history Warren presents of Weston, Mather and their circle of friends it doesn't seem surprising that Weston made the leap he did into a new life and a new photographic style, except for the fact that he was 37 years old at the time.  It does seem extraordinary that he was able to successfully recreate his career as an artist at that point, though not with the rapidity that he probably first imagined.    He did some exceedingly nice work in Mexico, but achieved little real immediate financial or critical success.  That would come much more gradually as he abandoned Modotti and the Mexican adventure and returned to California, ultimately hooking up with Charis Wilson when she was barely out of high school .  Charis' indefatigable support was clearly a key element in the arc of Weston's culminating accomplishment.  Of course when Charis demanded some public recognition of her creative contributions, that was more than Weston's ego could sustain and so she had to go too.

Personalities in Photography

I am midway through yet another book about Edward Weston, Artful Lives, by Beth Gates Warren.  It is a rather rambling account of his early, formative professional period around the time of the First World War.  Some of the same ground is covered in Weston's memoirs and in the book by Charis Wilson, but Warren's account provides some of the missing links needed to explain Weston, who went to considerable lengths to expunge crucial details of his early professional and personal life.

The thing that seems the most difficult to understand about Weston is his capacity to attract the affections of a string of extraordinary women coupled with an inability to to sustain a commitment to those relationships.  It appears that Weston learned a lot about life and photography from what he described as his first significant relationship with Margrethe Mather.  Weston then went on to teach photography to Tina Modotti who accompanied him in his fruitful developing years in Mexico.  Finally, he consolidated his photographic style  and his reputation as an artist with the assistance of Charis Wilson who was his model as well as an extraordinary writer, editor and publicist.  All of these relationships ended in shipwrecks on the shoals of Weston's egotistical competitiveness.

The subtitle of Warren's book provides an important clue to an analysis of Weston's life and personality: ...Edward Weston, Margrethe Mather, and the Bohemians of Los Angeles.  What that is pointing to is the fact that, while Weston nurtured a public image of domestic rectitude, his circle of friends was made up of a cast of characters for whom social non-conformity was the norm.  They were politically radical, promiscuous, assertive, and often very talented as artists, performers and writers.  A personality profile which seems a good fit with many of them can be found in some well-publicized recent psychology studies which focused on the attitudes and character traits of porn actors.

Of course, any discussion of porn actors is going to place a primary emphasis on sexuality, or more exactly sociosexuality which refers to a person's willingness to engage in sexual relations outside of a committed relationship.  However, there is a constellation of traits which accompany sociosexuality that is relevant to both the porn actor group and the early-Twentieth-Century cohort of Los Angeles Bohemians.

In a Psychology Today blog article, Scott McGreal says:

"A number of studies have also linked high sociosexuality and having a large number of sexual partners to certain antisocial traits in both men and women.  For example, people high in sociosexuality tend to rate themselves lower in the traits of honesty, humility, and agreeableness... Additionally, sociosexuality has also been linked to a group of traits known collectively as the "dark triad", namely psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism... Briefly, psychopathy refers to willingness to violate the rights of others, Machiavellianism to willingness to manipulate and use others, and narcissism to an inflated sense of one's own importance and superiority."

McGreal goes on to point out that the picture is not so black as it initially looks as there is actually a range of interpersonal warmth exhibited by the groups being examined which attenuates the antisocial aspects of the personality profile subsumed by sociosexulity.  It is not clear where Weston was to be found on the continuum of warmth, but he does seem to have had a talent for selecting partners who were at the warm end of the scale.

The psychological studies do not make a link to artistic creativity, though they may point to the propensity for self-promotion which is certainly a useful skill for people wanting to make a living from their art.  There is also another mystery in regard to Weston, which is how he made the leap from being a skillful hack to a sublime artist with the camera.  Perhaps I'll find some clues to solving that mystery from the second half of Warren's book.

Blogger Lightbox Fix

Clicking on an image in any of the preceding posts will display the full-sized image on a black background with the normal Lightbox display to which users are accustomed. The fix for the Lightbox display failure is a small script which is easily inserted in the blog's template.  The script and the instructions for inserting it will be found a the Real Blogger Status site.

Kodak Flash Bantam

I have added a page to my vintage cameras web site on what I've learned about shooting the Flash Bantam.

Here are three more Flash Bantam shots from my recent visit to the Botanical Garden.

I was going to include a link to the Wikipedia page about 828 film in my vintage cameras page about the Flash Bantam, but the information there really seems to miss the mark in my opinion.  For instance:

"828 cameras never achieved widespread popularity and the format had a rather limited run."

In fact, Kodak produced 828 film for 50 years, as well as half a dozen camera models in the Bantam line between 1935 and 1947.  The 828 format certainly did not enjoy the popularity and longevity of the 35mm cassette, but it did have a very respectable run, and it inspired some excellent compact camera designs including the Bantam Special which many consider the most beautiful small film camera of all time.

PS: I was looking for some film to shoot in the Flash Bantam today and came across some TMAX 100 for $2.99 for a 36-exposure roll at Adorama.  Ordered ten rolls, so I should be good for quite a while. 

The usual suspects

I've put six rolls of film through my Kodak Flash Bantam, and I'm pretty sure I've got all the issues sorted out.  What a great little camera.

I had some good luck with the first roll of Tri-X I used in the Flash Bantam and was able to see the potential of the little camera.  I then ran through five rolls of TMAX 100 with very mixed results.  Some images were very nice, but others lacked adequate contrast and sometimes showed a hot spot in the center of the image.  Between rolls five and six I finally figured out what needed fixing.  I'll try to put together a page for the Flash Bantam on my vintage cameras web site shortly to recount my experience with the camera.  Let me just say now that the problem was not the lens, the film or the processing.

Albuquerque Color

When I dropped off my film today at Walgreens I was told by the lady at the photo counter that they would be stopping film processing next month.  I'm not sure if that means all of Albuquerque, all Walgreens, or what.  I guess it's time to get serious about DIY C-41 color development.

It must be Spring.

Bosque Cottonwoods

I've been working on my Kodak Duo Six-20. I painted out the last pinhole in the bellows which gave me better image contrast. After removing and cleaning the lenses, I soaked the shutter in lighter fluid and got the B and T settings working properly. The solvent also floated away some of the black paint characters on the front of the shutter, so I may go back and try painting them back in.

About half the pictures from my last roll through the camera were grossly out of focus.  When I looked at the camera again I realized that I had set the focal plane target on the wrong rails, putting it about 2mm too far forward for proper infinity focus.  I've redone the collimation again, so we'll see shortly if I got it right this time.

Engine 4

The crew of Engine 4 often stops for coffee at La Cocina Azul a couple blocks from my place.  When I saw them there this morning, I grabbed some shots of the truck with my Voigtländer Brilliant.

The Voigtar 7.7 lens is a three-element Anastigmat design. It is a little lacking in contrast, but yields excellent sharpness across the frame if you can hold it steady at the shutter's maximum speed of 1/50.

Verichrome Pan

A row of fire trucks across the street from the BIA headquarters seemed like good excuse to use up my forty-year-old roll of 828 Verichrome Pan roll film in the Kodak Flash Bantam.

I shot at the rated speed of 125 ASA and processed normally in HC-110B.  The negatives were pretty thin, and I probably could have opened up a couple f-stops.  It is nice to be able to take advantage of the full frame area offered by the 828 format, but the little seventeen-inch strip of film only yields eight frames. In the next round I'll try some fresh TMAX 100.