A Look Back at Photo Magazines

By Ken Tanaka

Mike's article (just below this one) on photography magazines was coincidentally timely for me. Throughout this summer I've been up to my waist in a research project involving photo hobby magazines of the 1950s and 1960s, specifically U.S. Camera magazine. I'm particularly interested in this period for two reasons. First, because it was a relatively prosperous, relatively peaceful, and generally optimistic time in America. Second, because it was also the period just before electronics deeply penetrated cameras. Photography was still a largely mechanical and chemical undertaking that did not demand the prerequisite aptitudes that later eras would require. (That's a significant point, more closely related to my project, which I'll discuss in greater depth in a future article.)

My moldy magazine musings have treated me to many collateral retro delights thus far, some of the best of which I plan to share with fellow TOP readers in the coming weeks. But here are just a few gems to get started.

Let's begin by cutting straight to the chase of photo mags, shall we? If you were following photo mags you know where you usually started your monthly reading, don't you? That's right, you probably started reading a photo mag by perusing the ads in the back. They were troves of tiny-print "deals" on photo hobby treasures (right, from U.S. Camera, August, 1955).

Photography in that period was far more gadget-laced than it is today (if young people can imagine that). In addition to "best prices" on cameras there were mountains of darkroom gadgets all of which promised to help make you a star in your camera club.

The next attraction was the product ads. Magazine ads were the primary ongoing promotional vehicle for camera companies during this period. Television was still new in the 1950s. Kodak ran some television ads, usually near summer and the holiday seasons, in the 1960s. Of course radio was useless for promoting photo products. So we see a variety of large ads for new products each month. This was how folks learned of new products.

Ad designs seemed to be straddling styles much the same way that art of the 1950s and 1960s seemed to straddle the old and new. For example, we see a rather instructional ad for the Rolleicord V (the consumer version of the Rolleiflex) in simple pen-and-ink.

From U.S. Camera magazine, August 1955

Just a few months later, in February, 1956, we see this ad for Nikon’s S-2 rangefinder:

From U.S. Camera magazine, February 1955

Note not only the "modern" design of the ad but also the selection of the photographs that the silhouetted figures are viewing. That image of what appears to be a Mies van der Rohe building really jumps out at me as an icon of "tomorrow." This was a period in which contemporary art was beginning to emerge as a powerful force not just in the art world but also in graphic design. Nikon's clearly trying to make a statement that it's the brand for the future.

Finally we get to the actual editorial content. Yes, there were plenty of "how-to" articles in each issue. But there were also frequent articles dealing with broader and deeper issues of photography in general. U.S. Camera, in particular, often held symposia featuring many of the noted photographers of the day. For example in this same 1955 issue we have such an article titled "Interview with Three Greats" in which Dorothea Lange, Imogen Cunningham an Ansel Adams discuss topics such as "What are the important trends?" and "What did the F/64 group mean?"

From U.S. Camera magazine, August, 1955

The caption reads: "HERE is a picture of the symposium held in Dorothea Lange’s studio for U.S. Camera. The people left to right are Herm Lenz, moderator, Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams."

Photography had widely recognized "greats" still living in the 1950s and 1960s and U.S. Camera seemed to exploit them well for such discussions. By contrast, today we really don't have many such figures left. Many of today's best known photographers are principally photographic artists who really have little relationship to photography per se. We do still have treasures such as Bruce Davidson (who recently offered some thoughts about his work on Leica's blog) but they're not being replaced.

One last point worth noting: the camera magazines of the 1950s and 1960s looked terrible compared to today's magazines. The type is rough, the graphic line screens are coarse, the layouts are often nutty and the paper can be frail. Comparing a 1950s photo magazine to, say, an issue of today's British Journal of Photography is a breathtaking object lesson in the progress that printing and repro technologies have made in 60+ years. Really remarkable.

The future of photo magazines
There's little. It's no secret that magazine sales, in general, are in decline, with 2011 newsstand sales reported as being down between 8.9% and 9.2% (depending on the reporter). There's no question that (to cop a line from the film Men in Black) "that ain't gonna grow back." The Web and the growing list of "app" magazines are certainly responsible for part of the decline of photo magazines. The paper publishing medium is relentlessly giving way to the digital medium—which, frankly, is a win-win. With such high-resolution displays flooding the marketplace, and the common availability of relatively cheap broadband data transmission, publishers can produce and distribute a much richer product more quickly than ever. Readers reap great benefits. Advertisers reap great benefits. The planet's environment gets a much-needed break. Printers, paper companies and magazine distributors are the losers. Oh well.

Ken

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Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Ed Cornachio: "U.S. Camera? How about Issue #1 when it was spiral bound, and Ed Steichen was one of the editors. (Number 2 was the last to be spiral bound.) I have issues 1 through 15 (missing #4). Interesting stuff."

Featured Comment by Jim Hughes: "Ken: Thanks for giving U.S. Camera its due. As you may know, I started my career in photographic publishing at U.S. Camera Publishing in 1966, when I became editor of its smaller circulation (and by then, more serious) magazine, Camera 35 (my contribution was to try to make it even more serious by putting even greater emphasis on portfolios and photo essays).

"U.S. Camera began as a high-quality spiral-bound Annual in 1935. Photographs were printed well, and large. Tom Maloney, a young advertising man with the vision to put Edward Steichen in charge of choosing pictures, said he lost $5,000 on that first edition. I have copies of the first few Annuals on my library shelves (protected in plastic bags!) and I still regularly study them. In 1938, Tom decided to add a periodical, and started U.S. Camera the magazine as a quarterly in the fall of that year. The 11.5x12-inch publication was priced at 50 cents, and sold out its entire run of 25,000 copies. At the beginning of 1939, with the second issue, the magazine became a bi-monthly. I am fortunate to possess two bound volumes representing the full run of the bi-monthlies, which to my mind represent a high point in photo magazine publishing.

"Indeed, it was the high standards of those early magazines that in great part inspired the objectives I set for myself, years later, as editor of the original Camera Arts magazine, which remains my proudest accomplishment.

"But it is Tom Maloney who remains one of photography's most unsung of heroes. He helped establish Ansel Adams' Yosemite Workshops. He published Ansel's book on the Japanese-American detainment camps, Born Free and Equal. He suggested Edward Weston for a Guggenheim and published his California and the West. He was responsible for Edward Steichen becoming director of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art. I could go on, but you get the idea....

"And Maloney did all this in his spare time. His primary business was advertising and public relations. Remember Sylvania's 'Blue Dots for Sure Shots'? How about Sherwin-Williams 'We Cover The World'? Those were Tom's campaigns. And it was his advertising work that supported his photographic 'hobby.'"

Comments

[Bill Mitchell]

In those days (I remember them well), US Camera had degenerated into pretty much of a travel magazine. Pop and Mod were where we anxiously got the latest photography news (three months later).

[Tom Kwas]

Still think there's room for magazines...look at Garden and Gun, Oxford American, etc. They will be for narrow markets and walk a tight financial line, but they'll survive...Love all these old photo mags, try to pick them up when I can....

[MJFerron]

I no longer have much interest for most of the rags out there. 2 exceptions though. #1 LensWork which really isn't a magazine but a neat little, softcover photo book. I'm sure many folks here know how great the photo reproductions are. #2 The USA's B&W. A large well thought out publication that includes portfolios and good articles with information on the art side of photography.

[Softie]

Thanks, Ken. Now I really miss my Nikon SP.

[latent_image]

I've been following TOP since the beginning, and I don't recall even one mention of Aperture. I know it's not a typical magazine, but I think Aperture and the Aperture Foundation are worthy topics for an article someday.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

@ Bill: Indeed, at the end of the 1960's U.S. Camera found itself losing ground and took the move to broaden towards a travel photo magazine. American Express eventually bought it and it became today's Travel + Leisure.

@ Ed: That's a real keeper of an issue! But it's outside of my interest range. I'm really not collecting the magazine (all current evidence and bills to the contrary) but simply using them. I'll certainly eventually dump most of them at the end of the project.

@ Tom: Yes, perhaps a few titles will survive 10+ years but not many. The costs are simply too high and rising too quickly. Plus big advertisers are become very, very scarce as they're getting much better, and more accountable, results from electronic media.

@ MJFerron: Me either. But I do still subscribe to BJP (the best), PDN (digital version only), LFI (still have a bit of a Leica itch and I love the mag), and Aperture (mostly art rather than camera). I don't foresee dropping any of these in the coming year. But the hobby magazines such as PopPhoto are definitely like having a conversation with a parrot.

[ctein]

Dear Folks,

In **real** adjusted dollars (not COLI-adjusted $), you need to multiply the prices in those ads by 15-20X.

Kilobuck digitals start to look like really good deals.

pax / Ctein

[Marc Rochkind]

Well, as long as we're showing off, here's the first issue of Pop Photo from May 1937. Must have been pretty racy for 1937.

[Doug Howk]

A good magazine from the 1940s was "The Complete Photographer Quarterly" edited by Willard Morgan. It was eventually put together as the 20 volume "The Encyclopedia of Photography".
I personally prefer a printed magazine especially for visual arts such as photography.

[Bruce]

Hooley gallooley.... Fifty cents for a magazine in 1938 was an absolute FORTUNE !! Now at least we can get into photography without mortgaging the house! And the prices for cameras were also very high considering wages. But I bet half the cameras built in 1938 still operate, or can be made to do so by mechanically minded technicians. Try fixing a point and shoot today! Fascinating article, Ken

[Andrew Burday]

This is quite tangential to your main point, but the 50s and 60s were "peaceful"? I guess, aside from Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Guatemala, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Cuba (revolution, missile crisis, and Bay of Pigs), McCarthy, other domestic redhunters, and Cointelpro.

[Earl Dunbar]

Not a photo magazine, but for a stroll back, check this out. How we loved photo catalogs on paper!

http://www.retronaut.co/2012/05/seers-camera-catalogue-1961/

Tower chemistry, even!

[Derek Lyons]

"Comparing a 1950s photo magazine to, say, an issue of today's British Journal of Photography is a breathtaking object lesson in the progress that printing and repro technologies have made in 60+ years."

Some of that is because printing and repro technologies have advanced by leaps and bounds... Some of it is also because "hobbyist", "trade", and other limited interest magazines didn't generally get the top drawer treatment. Compare a National Geographic, or a Life from the same era to the camera mags, and you'll see a dramatic difference.

[The Lazy Aussie]

I seem to remember that photo mags in 80s mostly had articles like "Is A better than B? We don't know and tell you why."

[Andrew H]

If you want to see some really neat Kodak ads, I did a blogpost on them some time ago at

http://ajh57.wordpress.com/2011/10/16/fings-aint-wot-they-used-to-be/

These are from a magazine published in China in the 20s and 30s and they show there is nothing new in marketing.

[Richard]

The one thing that hasn't changed much is the price of cameras. I would have thought that in 1955 $150 to $200 would be a heck of a price. I think that relates to about a years worth of groceries for a family of 4.

[davesailer]

There is still hope.

Make Everything Ok -> http://www.make-everything-ok.com/

[Kevin Lloyd]

Aren't we told over and over that the best way to view an image, and perhaps assess it's quality is in print?
Referring to MJFerron's comment above, will there always be a place for magazines that show portfolios as their primary reason for existing?

[Roger Bradbury]

There was a time years ago in the UK when it seemed that every technical point was illustrated in the same way. For example, here would be an black and white illustration of the effect of an orange filter on blue skies. Oh look, it's a woman with no clothes on! Or, this is the sort of picture you can take with the camera's self timer. Oh look, it's a woman with no clothes on!

I quite like looking at pictures of women, but that's not what I bought the magazine for*. No names mentioned, but if you substituted the letters h,o,t, with o,r,n in those magazine's titles you would get their nicknames.

I still have a copy of Photo Technique from 1972 (It's not one of the magazines I refer to above) which I read again and again until it fell to pieces. It was one of the first couple of photo magazines I ever had.

*To be honest, I was a teenager and the pictures of undressed women might just have persuaded me to make the occasional impulse purchase. But it all got boring after a while.

[Mike Plews]

This made me flash on one of Fred Spira's 400mm F8 presets. The penultimate back of the photo book wonder.

[Ed]

"Photography was still a largely mechanical and chemical undertaking that did not demand the prerequisite aptitudes that later eras would require. (That's a significant point, more closely related"

I find that presumption a fallacy and the opposite of what is true. Getting good pictures nowadays is easier than ever and requires absolutely no skill or aptitude compared to the old days. Then, real skills were needed, nothing was automatic, and darkroom skills were necessary as well. Photography has been endlessly dumbed down in the years since, less skills and aptitude being required in each successive 'advance'.

[Alan Fairley]

I loved the Spiratone ads in the late 60s, every gizmo imaginable. I still have a metal Spiratone screw-in lens cap I used to protect one end of my stack of various types of fiilters.

[mbka]

"With ... high-resolution displays ... the common availability of ... cheap broadband data transmission, publishers can produce and distribute a much richer product more quickly than ever. Readers reap great benefits."
Is this really true? I sure would like it to be but remember what happened to cable TV? It seems that the exact same amount of meaningful TV content got diluted onto hundreds of channels instead of just a handful. Does easier transmission have any chances to improve the content or does it just make it easier for sub par content to get published?

[Richard Tugwell]

Thanks for this Ken - looking forward to the rest of the series.

I still use a Rolleiflex occasionally, and it was curious seeing the advert pointing out the multiple possibilities of a "waist level" finder.. A bit like the reasons people give for embracing articulated LCD's

[Robert Lowdon]

Interesting article.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

How long did US Camera last? I'm having trouble finding much information on it on the web, and I don't remember ever seeing an issue of it (and I started doing darkroom work in 1968, got my first SLR in 1969). I subscribed to both Modern and Popular Photography in the 70s.

I spent some time photographing ads out of some 60s through 80s photo magazines back in January. I'm amused at how similar the ads look to your 1955 examples (dealer ads, not the fancier manufacturer ads).

[Marco]

Slightly OT, but I was a bit annoyed by the excessive intrusion of Leica sponsorhip in Davidson interview. Is it just me?

[Larry]

I, too, fondly remember those days. When a new issue arrived I put everything on hold and read the magazine cover to cover.

I started getting serious about photography in 1958 and owned some of the cameras shown in the above ad. The Nikon S2 and a Rolleicord V-a, and the Exacta VX is sitting on my desk as I write this. It and my first Nikon F alternate as paperweights.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Easier transmission makes it feasible for businesses to fill some niche markets that weren't previously profitable. On the web, transmission is so easy that it's possible for hobbyists to fill niches that the businesses can't make a go of, too.

Which is not to say that below-par content isn't produced to excess; it is. That one will always exist, since that's a question of personal opinion, and we don't all agree. Sometimes a low level of writing that completely turns one person off is worth plowing through for the insights or information contained to another person.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Ed, I think the point is that getting a technically successful photograph used to be so hard that succeeding was often considered good enough. Today, in contrast, that's the minimum baseline from which everybody starts, and to succeed at photography today you have to do much, much, more than produce properly exposed, sharply focused shots.

[hugh Crawford]

"Then, real skills were needed, nothing was automatic, and darkroom skills were necessary as well. Photography has been endlessly dumbed down in the years since, less skills and aptitude being required in each successive 'advance'."

Yeah, ever since they started putting coupled light meters in cameras it's been ridiculously easy to take pictures. Just match the needle focus and press the button without even thinking about it. Whats the fun in that?

[Kenneth Tanaka]

@ Marc Rochkind: Geez, that is a rather racy cover on that 1937 Pop Photo! Hard to discern if the image is actually designed to promote (a) towels/shower caps, (b) tooth powder (they didn't have paste in '37), (c) preventative self-exams, or (d) tile caulk cleaner. But films of that "pre-code" era tended to be a bit racy, too.

@ Andrew Burda: Haw, indeed no, the world has never seen a year of real peace and the 50's / early 60's were no exceptions. But although the Korean "War" was bubbling from '50 to '53 and civil rights issues were rising most the U.S. was nonetheless in a post-WWII sense of ease and optimism for a short time.

@ Marco: Leica sponsored and produced the Davidson piece, so I think they'd be disappointed if he didn't endorse their products. But I also know that he used M cameras and lenses extensively, although not exclusively.

----
Although the following topic is outside of this article's discussion let me slightly clarify my remark: "Photography was still a largely mechanical and chemical undertaking that did not demand the prerequisite aptitudes that later eras would require." to avoid unnecessary debate.

In the pre-digital photo era there were no fundamental cultural or educational barriers to practicing photography. As Kodak's early slogan suggested, "You press the (shutter) button, we do the rest." It was an avocation equally open to plumbers and physicists and could be pursued to whatever depth one's time, finances and interests permitted.

The advent of the digital era imposed a fundamental shift away from that proposition. Entry into early digital photography required a degree of knowledge and comfort with personal computers and data storage concepts. That is, you needed a certain aptitude and/or pre-orientation to make your way into photography during that time. That had the effect of social-filtering new entrants and stifling existing practitioners from progressing. The physicist, who was likely comfortable with computers, would have little problem adopting digital imaging. The plumber, possibly not.

So what I'm really doing is trying to get some assessment of how the transition to digital photography has impacted various trajectories of avocational and art photography.

This is just a personal research project, not a doctoral thesis. ;-)

[Bintphotobooks]

See also a Set of images that would later become The Americans U.S. Camera 1958 Robert Frank by Walker Evans Photography http://bintphotobooks.blogspot.nl/2012/01/set-of-images-that-would-later-become.html

[Poagao]

While I'm sure the environment is better off with less paper consumption, I'm not sure if it will deal all that well with an unceasing flood of discarded monitors.

[MacCruiskeen]

"One last point worth noting: the camera magazines of the 1950s and 1960s looked terrible compared to today's magazines. The type is rough, the graphic line screens are coarse, the layouts are often nutty and the paper can be frail."

Well, sure, the paper is frail--it's 60 years old. They used cheap pulp paper--acid and lignin, it's going to rot over time. But the paper used today for most magazines is not much different. In 60 years, it too will be frail.

Today you are likely to see higher line screens--85 to 110 lpi, vs. less than 85 lpi that was common in the 50s. And full color. Color repro is definitely better now.

On the other hand, the switch to computer-based layouts has certainly enabled its share of "nutty" layouts in the magazine world. That's a function of graphic designers, not technology.