This is beautiful:

The above video is early test footage of Kodachrome color movie film from 1922. Kodak’s blog has more info about the film. It predates the first color feature film by 13 years.

In other Kodachrome news, you probably have already heard about how Steve McCurry was given the last produced roll of Kodachrome and shot it for National Geographic, and that the last place to process Kodachrome will cease processing the film in December 2010.

In other test footage news, here’s some early improvisational camera test footage of Kermit the Frog and Fozzy Bear.

The Online Photographer and Peter Turnley published this week a two-part story on the life and career of master printer to the stars Voja Mitrovic. A Yugoslav immigrant to France, Mitrovic began working at the famous Picto lab in Paris and became essentially the personal printer to such greats as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Josef Koudelka. The piece in part one and part two provides a terrific backstory to Mitrovic’s own life and his role in printing some of the most famous photographs of the last century.

Peter Turnley, Josef Koudelka, and Voja Mitrovic at Picto, Paris, 1996

He indicated to me that the three most important things involved in being a great printer are patience, developing a good dialogue and communication with the photographer he is printing for, and knowing how to read a negative. It is most important to know the photographer, to know what he or she wants, and to be able to read the image—like photographers, some people see things, and others don’t! Great printing involves knowing how to choose the right paper, having technical skills, and a strong artistic and aesthetic sense. He feels that it has helped him very much to have been himself a photographer, in order to understand the goal of a photograph.

Photographer Aaron Huey has been doing great stories for years, especially with his work on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. In this recent TED talk he describes the long lines of history and bad faith that has led to what he calls the genocide of the Sioux people in and around Pine Ridge, alongside a slideshow of his work. Affecting, and shows the great lengths journalism and informed photographers can go.

(h/t Melissa Lyttle and APAD)

Bulgaria - from the Wonderful World of Albert Kahn

I’m a sucker for vintage photography, and the Albert Kahn Collection is no exception. From the website:

In 1909 the millionaire French banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn embarked on an ambitious project to create a colour photographic record of, and for, the peoples of the world…. Kahn used his vast fortune to send a group of intrepid photographers to more than fifty countries around the world, often at crucial junctures in their history, when age-old cultures were on the brink of being changed for ever by war and the march of twentieth-century globalisation.

This project resulted in some 72,000 autochromes, most of which have never been published. The BBC has produced a 9-part series on the collection, as well:

Newsweek is up for sale, after two years of staggering losses. After a redesign hoped to reinvigorate the weekly magazine in the era of internet-speed news delivery, the publication saw declining ad rates, declining circulation, fewer pages and pictures in each issue, much less original reporting, and substantial staff cuts. James Fallows, of the Atlantic, has a great perspective of what place Newsweek holds in the news magazine ecosystem and why an Economist- or Atlantic-like strategy won’t work for the magazine.

The current problems faced by the newsmagazines remind me of an item published on the New York Times’ Paper Cuts blog about the founding of Life magazine, ‘The Show-Book of the World’: Henry Luce’s Life Magazine Prospectus. Of particular note in the prospectus is the second section, which addresses the need for thoughtful visual journalism, and it rings even more true today:

Pictures have become a dynamic power in the Fourth Estate of the Twentieth Century. But, although people demand and get pictures in nearly every periodical; although the gravure section of the New York Times is the section most “read” by the distinguished clientele of that journal; although pictures have made FORTUNE famous; and although the superlatively successful Daily News is commonly regarded as a picture paper…

Nevertheless, people are missing relatively more of what the camera can tell than of what the reporter writes. With more or less success they “follow” the news–i.e. the written news. They scarcely realize how fascinating it can be to “follow” pictures–to be for the first time pictorially well-informed.

For this there are many reasons. Pictures are taken haphazardly. Pictures are published haphazardly. Naturally, therefore, they are looked at haphazardly. Cameramen who use their heads as well as their legs are rare. Rarer still are camera editors. Thus, many a newsworthy picture which can be taken is not taken. Thus, too, only a fraction of the best pictures of widest interest are brought to the attention of any one alert U.S. citizen. And almost nowhere is there any attempt to edit pictures into a coherent story–to make an effective mosaic out of the fragmentary documents which pictures, past and present, are.

The mind guided camera can do a far better job of reporting current events than has been done. And, more than that, it can reveal to us far more explicitly the nature of the dynamic social world in which we live.

-Henry Luce, June 1936 ‘The Show-Book of the World‘

Change a few words here and there, mention the ubiquity of photos on the internet, add a bit about the shift of news reporting from facts to opinion, and Luce’s prospectus could easily describe something missing and much-needed in the current mediascape.

Determining the date of historical photos

All the shadows in the picture-those of Mr. Top-Hat-and-Tails, his dead horse, the buildings, and the man with his dog-stretch directly across the street. Since S. 8th St. (then Griffith St.) runs north-south, the shadows point almost exactly east-west. There are only two days in the year when this occurs, the Spring Equinox (March 19-20) and the Fall Equinox (September 22-23). On these two occasions, the night and day are of equal length everywhere on earth, as the sun rises due east and sets due west. On other dates, the sun rises either north or south of east and sets either north or south of west, as the days become longer or shorter and the seasons change. Considering a top hat and tails are not the appropriate attire for Sheboygan in March when the average temperature is about 32°F, the date the picture must have been September 22-23.

I don’t know how I found this document a few years ago, but the previous post jogged my memory. Historical analysis of photography fascinates me. Errol Morris’ recent investigative blogging about photography for the New York Times is a prime example. In A Dead Horse of a Different Color by Colleen Fitzpatrick and Andrew Yeiser (PDF), we get a similar walkthrough of the process of determining the facts behind a photograph, in this case, the exact time and date of a photo from 1871. By analyzing shadows and investigating the history of photographic lenses and cameras and researching the history of railroads in Wisconsin, the researchers determined that the photo was likely taken September 24, 1871 at 4:30 pm by either Wolfgang Morganeier or his two apprentices, George and Edward Groh.

And if you’re into this sort of thing, there are weekly photo quizzes at Forensic Genealogy.

(I linked to this in the previous post, but felt it should be a post of its own…)

“Reopening of the South Fork Bridge after flood in Nov. 1940. 1941 (?)”

This has been around for a couple of days, but I just saw it today. While poking around the photo galleries at a Canadian museum’s website, somebody noticed a man whose clothing and camera look conspicuously out of place for a scene from the 1940s. A time traveler! Look at his shirt, which looks like a modern logo stamped on a t-shirt; look at his jacket, which looks like a hoodie; look at his camera, which doesn’t look like a big bulky press camera (nevermind the Brownie or early Leicas); look at how everyone else is dressed so differently; look at the glasses, which look like our current styles! Likely not a time traveler, of course. The sweater seems to be pretty standard (see the guy on the right here), the glasses are protective gear, the camera could easily be any of the compact cameras available at the time, etc. If nothing else, it’s a great exercise in historical forensic analysis of photographs (PDF).

Charles Moore - Powerful Days

One of my favorites from the old guard of photojournalism passed away on Thursday. Charles Moore, whose name you might know but whose photos you’ve definitely seen, created a striking and complete visual history of the American Civil Rights movement of the 1960s through his work with Life magazine and other publications. John Kaplan (as part of a 1998 project for his Ohio University Masters of Science Degree in Journalism) has written a great history of Moore’s Civil Rights work that is not to be missed. Represented by Black Star throughout his career, Matt and I both got a chance to work with Moore’s negatives while interning at the agency a few years back. Seeing those negatives firsthand was a visual education like no other. His Civil Rights work was eventually collected in the 1991 book Powerful Days, still available on Amazon for a reasonable price.

100eyes - Haiti / William Coupon - Jacmel Portraits

For some cultural perspective on contemporary Haitian culture, 100eyes has a strong presentation of work by Alice Smeets, William Coupon, Edwine Seymour, Rex Curry, Jan Sochor, David Zentz, Aurora Photos, Polaris Images, and Andy Levin. Well worth a look.

By the way: Huffington Post has a huge round-up of ways to help the relief effort in Haiti.

Girls walk through a neighborhood in Port-au-Prince, Haiti - December 2005.

“There is no one, nothing, no medicines,
no explanations for why my daughter is going to die.”
— Jeudy Francia, outside St. Esprit Hospital in Port-au-Prince, in the New York Times

Coverage of the earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, has been ramping up as responders have been able to get a perspective on the tragedy. Of particular interest, the New York Times’ Lede Blog has been compiling breaking news (1: huge amount of info, still being updated, 2, 3) in addition to what can be found on twitter and other sources for news on the ground beyond what the paper’s own reporters send back. Lens has photos from Tequila Minsky, who was in Haiti when the quake struck, and some historical perspective by Maggie Steber, who’s heading to Haiti on assignment for the Times. The Big Picture has a huge selection of photographs showing the devastation. The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting has a special report on Haiti, “Despite Years of Crushing Poverty, Hope Grows in Haiti“, produced last year. And Mother Jones has a piece about the problems caused by looking at Haiti only after disaster strikes, focusing particular blame on the Bush Administration’s relationship with the country (via dispatches).

Additionally: Here’s 6 ways you can help by donating (via Luceo).