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Time travel

The Outkast song says: “Shake it like a Polaroid picture”. According to the good people at the Impossible Project (in the meantime turned Polaroid Originals), shaking does absolutely nothing to speed up the development of an integral photograph.

I learned that at the old Polaroid factory in Enschede. Once in a while, there are visits where you can see how the building built in the 1970s has become a hub of hope for photography lovers once it was reoccupied by the Impossible Project. The company kept all the old machinery and re-employed its technicians in hopes of continuing to produce the miraculous and crazy thing that are these types of photos.

If at some point you have the chance to visit I can highly recommend it. It’s like paradise for photo geeks and proof that ambitious ideas are not that impossible after all.

(Enschede, October 2015)

More similar objects:

Object type: Photograph

Title: Japan: a curio shop selling traditional Japanese products like lacquer-ware, carved ivory and bamboo work; interior.

Maker: Felice Beato (English, born Italy, 1832 - 1909)

Date: ca. 1868

Medium: [Hand-colored] albumen print

Physical description: dimensions (sheet): 23,8 x 27,3 cm [Wellcome Collection] / 23,5 x 27 cm [Getty].

Part of “Views of Japan” album (page 21). View whole album here

Online records:

- The Wellcome Collection (Inv. n. 569395i), also on https://www.europeana.eu/item/9200579/wf898qe7

CC BY - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

- The J. Paul Getty Museum (Inv. n. 84.XO.613.12)

Difference in color of details

*Madeira in color*

September - October 1909 Autochromes by Auguste Léon inv. n. A 69 803 X / A 69 794 X / A 69 800 X / A 69 804 X Collection Archives de la Planète - Musée Albert-Kahn/Département des Hauts-de-Seine

More images here: http://collections.albert-kahn.hauts-de-seine.fr

providencepubliclibrary

Presto! The amazingly quick magic of the then modern Polaroid land camera. Received as a donation.

leniasbitsnpieces

Time travel

The Outkast song says: “Shake it like a Polaroid picture”. According to the good people at the Impossible Project (in the meantime turned Polaroid Originals), shaking does absolutely nothing to speed up the development of an integral photograph.

I learned that at the old Polaroid factory in Enschede. Once in a while, there are visits where you can see how the building built in the 1970s has become a hub of hope for photography lovers once it was reoccupied by the Impossible Project. The company kept all the old machinery and re-employed its technicians in hopes of continuing to produce the miraculous and crazy thing that are these types of photos.

If at some point you have the chance to visit I can highly recommend it. It’s like paradise for photo geeks and proof that ambitious ideas are not that impossible after all.

(Enschede, October 2015)

Katrin Pietsch and I were invited by Neon Art Conservation to give a lecture and a two-day workshop on the conservation of colour slides. It will take place next September in Portugal and will deal with the treatment of colour slides that have showed mould damage.

Check the images for more details & feel free to share this information with anyone you think might be interested.

#photoconservation

digitalpubliclibraryofamerica

Women’s History Month Spotlight: Margaret Bourke-White

Photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White, the first female staff photographer for LIFE magazine, documented industrial America, Soviet Russia, World War II combat zones, Mahatma Gandhi, & more. Explore her career in DPLA.

Selected images include:

Margaret Bourke-White with a camera, from the collection of Cornell University via Artstor

A photograph of Czechoslovakian Beet Field Workers by Bourke-White, from UC Berkeley, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive via California Digital Library

At the Time of the Louisville Flood by Bourke-White, from MoMA via Metropolitan New York Library Council and Empire State Digital Network

Bourke-White’s photograph of Holocaust survivors after the liberation at Buchenwald, 1945, from Duke University Libraries via North Carolina Digital Heritage Center

leniasbitsnpieces

The world as a funny place

Photographic images are everywhere. Most of them we will forget, but some of them are so striking that they become recognizable, even if we don’t know who created them. For me, this was the case with Elliot Erwitt. I recognized his work before I knew who he was.

I had the opportunity to visit the Kunstmuseum Picasso Münster in 2014, where at the time an exhibition called “Elliot Erwitt - Eine Retrospektive” was on show. While looking at his photographs I found myself cracking a smile more than once. It’s not easy allowing yourself do that when you are alone in a public space, but it was impossible not to do exactly that seeing these photos.

About a year later, I saw him in person during the Unseen fair in Amsterdam. He was there presenting the Elliott Erwitt Havana Club 7 Fellowship which encourages upcoming photographers to connect to Cuba. Erwitt himself has been going there for decades and a selection of his works showing life in Cuba was also on display.

It’s difficult not to admire his perspective on life, the endurance he has shown throughout his career and his willingness to pay it forward. But most of all, Elliot Erwitt encourages us all to take ourselves less seriously. And rightfully so.

[image credit]

(Münster, May 2014 & Amsterdam, September 2015)

leniasbitsnpieces

Photographic processes & personality types

As someone who is really into process identification (especially when it comes to photographs / photomechanical prints), I somehow came to the conclusion that certain process characteristics can be converted into a sort of personality test / description in certain moments of our lives.

The idea is to think about which process best defines a person’s traits, what would best personify the said person. Here are few examples:

- Daguerreotypes: for those to whom money isn’t a problem, and neither is some toxicity. For these people, nothing will ever be as fabulous as in the good old days and. A certain tendency towards being bipolar, depending on which angle you decide to approach them with.

- Paper negatives: for those with somewhat old-school socialist views of the world - good things should be accessible and therefore creating copies is a good thing. Also, not really for optimistic types. Regardless of their good intentions, they will only let themselves be seen in very select places.

- Albumen carte-de-visite: for those who are into pop culture, want to be social and connect with their friends. With time, if they are not careful, they can’t avoid showing how time has changed them and even cracked them.

- Cyanotype prints: for those who like to keep things easy but also have year-round winter blues. Probably those who like gardening and plant related memorabilia.

- Collodion P.O.P. prints: for those who are sharp and into detail. They avoid contact with others at all costs (out of fear of getting damaged easily).

- (Early) additive color photographs (e.g. Autochromes): for those who are old-fashioned yet have very colorful personalities. Always leave a sense of wonder behind, of being ahead of their time.

- Nitrate negatives: for those who see the world as a bad place and have short tempers that might blow off at any time.

- Acetate negatives: for those who are inherently prone to going sour, regardless of how well others treat them. In the worst cases, they will hold a grudge and never let it go to the point of self-destruction.

- Silver gelatine D.O.P. prints: for those who are versatile, somewhat mainstream, perhaps at times undecided and willing to go with the flow. Most of all, they might just want to try to fit in and be artsy in a conventional way.

- (Early) dye coupling prints (or so-called chromogenic prints): for those that were once colorful but life took over and their spark faded away a bit. Regardless, everything is always seen through rose-colored glasses.

- Instant color prints (e.g. Polaroids): for those with memorable people that are part of your daily life, with casual demeanors. These people have spontaneous, complex, layered personalities, who despite their quirks can still fill your life with color and surprise.

- Digital prints (e.g. Dye Diffusion Thermal Transfer): for those that seem very into the “now”. Difficult to pinpoint whether they are for real and honest or whether they are pretending to be what they are not and just want to trick you.

Of course, this can be refined and expanded upon. There are the super rare processes (to match really special people), for example. And then there are the ones that are so common you don’t even bother to think about anymore.

(Amsterdam, September 2016)

Madeira ca. 1910 in color

Autochromes & Paget plates by Sarah Angelina Acland from the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford

Click to view images:

http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/object/inv/29246 http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/object/inv/20827 http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/object/inv/18183 http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/object/inv/27429 http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/object/inv/24613

#autochrome #paget #colorphotography #madeira #funchal #early color

“Fixed in Time: A guide to dating daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes by their mats and cases, for historians, genealogists, collectors and antique dealers.“

by Sean William Nolan.

3rd edition, September 2017.

Check https://fixedintimebook.blogspot.nl/ for free pdf.

#daguerreotype #ambrotype #tintype

statelibrarynsw

Behind the scenes of the Digitisation of one of the largest wet glass plate negatives in the world, this one is over a metre long . These plates were the final and most challenging plates to be digitised from the World Heritage listed Holtermann Glass Plate Collection. It is comprised of around 3,500 negatives of varying sizes made from 1871-1876. You can read more about this process on our blog.

leniajof

Very impressive collodion wet-plate glass negatives from the State Library New South Wales, now part of UNESCO International Memory of the World Register.

harvardfineartslib

At Harvard, the team from Weissman Preservation Center (WPC) has been working on the Salt Prints Initiative, and they estimate about 15,000 salt prints university-wide. At the Fine Arts Library, we have over 800 salt prints. “The project has provided a unique opportunity for a fruitful exchange among Harvard conservators, librarians, collection managers, curators, scholars, faculty, students, and interns. This cross-disciplinary exchange provides invaluable insights into pioneering uses of the medium and opens exciting avenues for the creative use of Harvard’s photographic resources in object-based learning in the sciences and humanities.”[1]

For example, a portrait of Lewis Wallace (April 10, 1827 – February 15, 1905), an American lawyer and author of the historical novel, “Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ,” provides us significant information on coatings used in salt prints. In this half-coated print, we can study the clear contrast between the coated and uncoated surfaces. Read more about the Salt Prints Initiative at Harvard.

Source: Salt Prints at Harvard

[1] Taken from Salt Prints at Harvard’s website: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/saltprintsatharvard