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.

“In this period there was no electricity. It was before electricity was invented and consequently there was less light. Period movies should have less light. In a period movie the light should come from the windows because that is how people lived.” -Nestor Almendros, on filming Days of Heaven by natural light, as quoted on Wikipedia.

Rachel Hulin has a great post showcasing the cinematography in Days of Heaven. If you haven’t seen the film, you must. Terence Malick and Nestor Almendros, director and cinematographer, wanted to achieve a more natural look to the film, to approximate a look accurate with the period of the movie’s setting.

Hulin’s post reminded me of the technology behind Stanley Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon.” Kubrick, a photographer before he made movies, wanted to film scenes in the movie by candlelight. Existing motion picture lenses weren’t fast enough, so he worked with camera technicians and suppliers to develop a 36.5mm f/0.7 lens. The lenses, originally developed for NASA, were retrofitted to work with movie cameras, and allowed the director to film many scenes in “Barry Lyndon” by unaided candlelight, such as in the scene above.

This also reminded how strange movie trailers can be, especially old ones, since they rely on a cultural currency that is recognizable but so far removed from what we are used to; Barry Lyndon’s is weird, and A Clockwork Orange’s is brilliant (not safe for work or people suffering from epilepsy).

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:

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.

Image results searching for Che on bing.com

The Guardian has an interesting, if brief, backstory on a photographer’s heir trying to enforce copyright on the ubiquitous iconic image of Che Guevara seen on t-shirts, posters, and messenger bags the world over (above).

“For decades the Argentinian-born Guevara’s adopted spiritual home of Cuba did not recognise copyright. It was only following the collapse of the former Soviet Union that Cuba joined the World Trade Organisation and legalised copyright.” -Row rages over iconic image of Che Guevara in the Guardian

It’s now been 50 years since Cuban photographer Alberto Díaz “Korda” Gutiérrez, who died in 2001, made the image. Now Diaz’s daughter has been going after advertising companies in an attempt to recoup license fees for widespread usage of the image.

I always love knowing the stories surrounding iconic images…

(via Politics, Theory, and Photography)

Aaron Vincent Elkaim - Jewish Morocco

Photographing history is difficult. Photographing absence is even harder. When I first read Aaron Vincent Elkaim’s artist statement for his “Jewish Morocco” essay, I doubted a photo essay was the right approach to the subject. His approach is quite intriguing, combining moody set pieces of streets devoid of the stereotypical Moroccan hustle and bustle with straightforward images of documents/photos/worship areas left behind after cultural exodus, and I think it’s the beginning of a great story. Aaron says the project is inspired by his desire to discover his roots. From the statement:

This photographic project is an exploration of Jewish Morocco’s ghosts, artifacts, places and remaing lives. It is a study of the void that remains after this cultural exodus, a look at what has been left behind in the wak of Zionism as well as a retrospective of a time and place where Jews and Arabs lived peacefully as neighbours and as Moroccans.”

There’s been a significant Jewish community in Morocco for the past 2800 years, with as many as 300,000 in the 1940s. Now, fewer than 3,000 remain. Definitely an interesting subject, and a difficult one to photograph. Worth a look.

And just a reminder, if you’ve got a project you’re working on or recently completed, drop us a line here at dvafoto.

I don’t remember where I found these or know much about them, other than that they’re really interesting: World War I Color Photo Archive.

Anyone know more? Are they published anywhere? Would be a great book if printed well (they’re pretty bad scans online).

It also makes me think of the fourth series of Blackadder.

The New York Times Lens Blog has just published a heretofore unknown picture of the Tank Man from the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. AP reporter Terril Jones had been covering the demonstrations and snapped a picture of the famous confrontation between an unknown man and a line of tanks. The Lens blog has more details. I am quite surprised Jones had shown the picture only to friends previously.

Lens also interviewed 4 photographers who each got the iconic shot: Charlie Cole, Stuart Franklin, Jeff Widener, and Arthur Tsang Hin Wah. This is not to be missed; great behind-the-scenes stories about the shooting conditions and the difficulty of getting the pictures out (involving toilets and poorly-dressed hippies!). Youtube has video of the confrontation and the PBS Frontline documentary Tank Man explores contemporary Chinese perspectives on the famous photo.

James Fallows reports about his experience in Tiananmen Square the night before the 20th Anniversary this week and his wife’s the day of and Shanghaiist has video of plainclothes police interrupting international news reports with, of all things, umbrellas.

Meanwhile, BagNewsNotes has a dispatch from Alan Chin in Beijing on the Anniversary, ChinaBeat has a ton of contemporary and historical reporting on the 1989 events, and there’s plenty more. DanWei’s must-read China news is another great place for a variety of reporting and remembrance; I can’t link to search results, so you’ll just have to type in the words yourself. And here’s a couple of stories about information about 1989 slipping past China’s censors in the past couple of years. Magnum’s also got a small but interesting edit of a number of photographers’ pictures from Tiananmen.

Meanwhile, further south, it’s been a couple of days just like all others.