Worthy Causes

From the Costică Acsinte Archive

Down to the wire: My old friend Jim Schley of Jeffrey Levine's Tupelo Press—Jim is the Production Manager for our fledgling TOP Books project—has been working for several years helping to whelp a splendid new translation into English, by Mariela Griffor, of the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's masterpiece, Canto General.

They have reached the Kickstarter goal that will allow the project to come to fruition, but now they have only 10 hours left (as I post this) to reach their "stretch" goal of $35,000—which will allow them to add illustrations to the project. Personally, I really want to see this one done right, which of course includes the visuals! As of right now, they're almost there, with only $2,000 to go. But it's down to the wire! If you like poetry, please contribute a little if you can.

The biggest project ever for the small non-profit Tupelo Press, it will be the first translation of Canto General by a native Spanish speaker, the first translation by a woman, and the first by a native Chilean. Jim says the reward chapbooks are beautiful.

Costică Acsinte: Another worthy cause (photographic this time): Cezar Popescu is trying to rescue the archive of Romanian war photographer Costică Acsinte, who left behind some 5,000 glass plate negatives. Not every archive gets to survive, but as you can see from the Flickr page, there's a lot to look at in this one. Cezar's needs are modest, too—check out his campaign on Indigogo. He's well over halfway to his goal already. We can help put him over the top.

Type 55 type: Finally, readers Sylvain G. and Ozren Trupeljak want you to know about an effort to revive Polaroid Type 55 film. Type 55 (I did a project with it on a grant one summer, some of the pictures from which I've posted here on TOP). I have not investigated the effort myself, and I am certain I will never use a Type 55 type film again, but you can investigate Bob Crowley's New55 FILM yourself. Maybe those of you who are eagerly awaiting your Wanderlust Travelwides will be inspired to contribute!

Mike
(Thanks to Stan Banos, Sylvain Goffin, and Ozren Trupeljak)

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Ahem: "With the death of Fuji's instant film in 4x5 format (and other sizes?) New55 is the only option. I shoot Polaroids to keep my sanity in the studio; to ensure the lighting is correct, and that my PC port still functions properly. Others shoot Polaroids for the gratification of creating an instant photograph on site. Anyone who ever wants to shoot with this film should back it. If this fails, the project leaders have said they will drop it, as the whole purpose of the KS campaign is to gauge demand for the film. It is reasonably priced, and the project is something which every film photographer can appreciate."

Comments

[Stan B.]

I've just started to mine the plethora of incredible images to be found within the Acsinte archives- some of them ironically "enhanced" by the surreal effects unfortunately caused by their improper storage. I hope Mr. Popescu gets fully funded for his monumental effort to save these incredible images.

Would be great to have some on demand service publish one's personal favorites into book form.

[Popescu Mario-Cezar]

Thank you again, Mike, for your support of Costică Acsinte project.

[Greg Roberts]

I second the vote for the New55 Kickstarter. I really enjoyed shooting Polaroid Type 55 in the past, and would really like to work with a similar workflow again in the future. Unlike many Kickstarter campaigns that are simply pre-sales of a product in this case the project is really trying to Kickstart a production line with very large up front costs. So you have to ignore the cost per sheet in the campaign, and look at this as an investment in the future.

[Sylvain G.]

Thanks very much Mike !
They're still $115,000 short but anything helps, I guess.

Figure this nice Kickstarter trio :
Wanderlust TravelWide 90 (funded)
Lumu lightmeter (funded)
New55 sheets (backed by me at least)

You've got amateurs wanting film cameras, for sure !

Cheers,
S.