What Am I Doing Here?
To me, the period of America's history from the mid-1800s until the mid-1900s is most interesting in terms of social and industrial development. Therefore, the imagery presented in a vast number of early photographs has always caught my eye and attention. A few years ago, to capture a small bit of the original physical embodiment of that history, I started to collect 70-100+ year old glass negatives, the first medium upon which early photographic images were recorded. The glass negative had been developed in the early 1850s, and then supplanted 70-80 years later by Eastman and others' celluloid film. In turn, we are now in the period in which celluloid film stock is largely being kicked to the corner by the digital age, with the exception of those relatively few stubborn and artistic photographers that have kept to their film cameras.
The printing of colored photography, other than by hand-tinting the negative or positive print, began in a greatly limited fashion at the end of the 19th century. But, due to the high cost and complexity involved, the making of colored prints was not commercially widespread until sometime in the late-1940s. Therefore, most photographs we see pre-1950s were not and could not affordably be taken in color. So, the vast majority of photographs taken in my favorite era of history could only be captured in black and white. Of course, those old scenes depicted in black and white were in real, living color, but unseen or captured on the glass negative and early film stock.
Now for the how did I get there and what am I doing here answer:
The images I color and present here were never seen in color, but for an instant through that antique lens of that long-departed photographer. I then began to Imagine (thus, the John Lennon song heard here) what the scenes might have looked like had color stock been available to that photographer. My practice has been that I stay away from colorizing any black and white photograph where color film was readily available and the photographer likely made the artistic choice to proceed in black and white capture. There are so many great, exquisite and artistic black and white photographs out there that cannot be improved upon and should never be messed with or re-interpreted. None of my collection of glass or other negative materials that I choose to colorize poses that tension, as they are all pre-1940 images.
What I do here is best described by a young, talented fine art photographer from London. Pamela Jane Wheeler, whose website is found at http://www.pamelajane.co.uk, was introduced to glass negative imagery as a student archiving the glass negative photographs taken by an early 20th Century photographer, David Knights-Whittome. In describing her fascination with the glass images she was introduced to, Pamela eloquently summed her thoughts on the nature of those fragile, but persevering objects:
"...I am compelled to animate these new photographs further, physically. It is not enough to have these transformations purely in my mind - I want to express to others my imagination and personal connection to these original traces. Creating a new negative, and subsequently a new photographic print, secures my attachment. But it is the application of colour that breaks the static of the moment. It reinstates the photographs' physicality as moments taken from time, gives them a quality of reality. Gives them animation." (cf., p. 13, "Animate: the David Knights-Whittome Archives", Pamela Jane Wheeler).
So, here I sit in front of my computer monitor, as content as the proverbial "pig in slop", spending more hours than I will ever admit to, re-Imagining a colorized vision of a once-black and white world.
Alan Friedman
April 2015
The printing of colored photography, other than by hand-tinting the negative or positive print, began in a greatly limited fashion at the end of the 19th century. But, due to the high cost and complexity involved, the making of colored prints was not commercially widespread until sometime in the late-1940s. Therefore, most photographs we see pre-1950s were not and could not affordably be taken in color. So, the vast majority of photographs taken in my favorite era of history could only be captured in black and white. Of course, those old scenes depicted in black and white were in real, living color, but unseen or captured on the glass negative and early film stock.
Now for the how did I get there and what am I doing here answer:
The images I color and present here were never seen in color, but for an instant through that antique lens of that long-departed photographer. I then began to Imagine (thus, the John Lennon song heard here) what the scenes might have looked like had color stock been available to that photographer. My practice has been that I stay away from colorizing any black and white photograph where color film was readily available and the photographer likely made the artistic choice to proceed in black and white capture. There are so many great, exquisite and artistic black and white photographs out there that cannot be improved upon and should never be messed with or re-interpreted. None of my collection of glass or other negative materials that I choose to colorize poses that tension, as they are all pre-1940 images.
What I do here is best described by a young, talented fine art photographer from London. Pamela Jane Wheeler, whose website is found at http://www.pamelajane.co.uk, was introduced to glass negative imagery as a student archiving the glass negative photographs taken by an early 20th Century photographer, David Knights-Whittome. In describing her fascination with the glass images she was introduced to, Pamela eloquently summed her thoughts on the nature of those fragile, but persevering objects:
"...I am compelled to animate these new photographs further, physically. It is not enough to have these transformations purely in my mind - I want to express to others my imagination and personal connection to these original traces. Creating a new negative, and subsequently a new photographic print, secures my attachment. But it is the application of colour that breaks the static of the moment. It reinstates the photographs' physicality as moments taken from time, gives them a quality of reality. Gives them animation." (cf., p. 13, "Animate: the David Knights-Whittome Archives", Pamela Jane Wheeler).
So, here I sit in front of my computer monitor, as content as the proverbial "pig in slop", spending more hours than I will ever admit to, re-Imagining a colorized vision of a once-black and white world.
Alan Friedman
April 2015