The Online Photographer: March 2022

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March 2022

Saturday, 05 March 2022

Propaganda (Blog Note)

Interestingly, I got several propaganda comments on the "Inevitable Putins" post. We've all heard, of course, about foreign agents or bots spreading misinformation on the 'net, but this is the first time I've been aware of being the target of it. I got two; both seemed suspicious (I have pretty good "radar" after vetting 300k comments), but one of the "posters" seemed to have a track record here. (The other one was partially in Russian, which was, um, sort of a tip-off.) Ah, but I was fooled...when I check suspicious comments, the first thing I do is to check the past comments of the commenter to see if he or she is a regular. If they are, then even if the comment is sketchy I'll run it...don't want to be too quick to censor. I assumed that the compositor looked at all the identifiers when compiling the past comment list. But little did I know that it searches the comments only by name. So if the name is "Tom," then every comment from a poster named Tom will come up in the history, even if they're from different email addresses. So, live and learn...now I'll know that when I'm checking a suspicious comment, I need to do a separate search on the email address. I thought the program was already doing that, but no.

TOP, out on the remote fringes of current events...but not immune.

Mike
(Thanks to Matt Haber)

Book o' the Week

Ara Güler's Istanbul, one of the more amazing books in my collection. I'm also amazed it's still in print. Not only does it culminate a longtime habit and a vast body of work for the Turkish photographer of Armenian descent, one of the few world-famous photographers from Turkey—a labor of love—but it's a unique and wonderful example of bookmaking. If you don't buy this, at least see one sometime.

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Today at B&H Photo

Original contents copyright 2020 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. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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

Benjamin Marks: "Hmmm. I think the broader point is that no corner of the web, no matter how innocuous in its content, is free from being the next battlefield. My assumption, or perhaps simply my fear, is that AI's get more and more sophisticated that this space we have created will become more their domain than ours. I realize this comment has a HAL-9000 ring to it, but my sense has always been that TOPpers are a relatively small community compared to the Bigs, or the 'Net as a whole (also, more good-looking than average). If you are a spam-bot, modest size is no protection from notice and attempted interference, apparently. Welcome to the future."

Dan: "How flattering to be deemed worthy of response by the Puti-bots! Your reach and influence extend to the corners of the world!"

Mike replies: I'm actually pretty happy just to have a small corner shared with all you fine readers. :-)

Posted on Saturday, 05 March 2022 at 08:57 AM in Blog Notes | Permalink | Comments (8)

Thursday, 03 March 2022

The Box from the Junk Store

Guest Post written by Ernest Zarate

The musings Mike and others had about documenting one’s life brought something to mind for me. I attended eight different elementary schools, one junior high, and three high schools, in a variety of California towns, mostly along the Central Coast, from San Luis Obispo to Santa Barbara. My mom, who raised five kids on her own, was always one step ahead of bill collectors and landlords.

In 1973, as I entered college, I was given a copy of Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary. For some reason, I started writing down every address I lived at on the inside cover, from 1973 to the present: 24 addresses, 12 cities or towns, in three states, all in the USA.

Also in 1973, I met another photography student, Leigh, at Santa Barbara City College (still my dear friend). He suggested we go out on photo excursions, which I happily agreed to. Leigh enjoyed going to small towns and finding the local junk store. We’d go in and he’d rifle through their old 78 RPM records and old postcards. Then we’d go out shooting.

On one such trip, I was occupying myself by digging around in some boxes haphazardly stacked in the back of a store in Santa Paula, when I came across a box that contained a collection of exposed and processed 4x5 glass plates, along with printing frames, unopened boxes of dry plates, and some film holders. There were easily a hundred glass plate negatives, though a number were broken. Fifteen dollars, and the whole thing was mine.

Looking at them, it became quite apparent that this was the work of one dedicated amateur photographer. One ongoing subject reoccurred in many of the plates: exterior shots of a two story home, with its occupants sitting front and center. And the photographer returned time and again to recording this family in front of their homestead for many years. In the early photos, the people were young, strong, and proud, the men with defiant mustaches, the women holding infants and toddlers. The home, standing alone with no visible neighbors, was surrounded by empty space, save a few saplings, thin and spindly.

Early

Later

As the series goes on, the people grow older, the saplings get taller, and new young 'uns join in the picture. Vines start to overtake the wrap-around porch. Eventually, the trees are tall and stately, much of the home covered in ivy, those men become hunched over, with canes, seated, though still sporting their mustaches, the women looking just as worn, with a new generation around them.

If I was a gun enthusiast, I could maybe date that rifle our friend is so proudly displaying. Love the way that dog has its chest puffed out for the photo, too.

There are only horse drawn carriages, never any cars or other indications of modern conveniences. This photographer really wanted to document what must have been his family (I say 'his' because a couple of photographs include the shadow of the tripod, camera, and photographer, dressed in pants with a hat).

POP print

Dry plate photography got started in the 1880s and dropped off in the late 1920s, which would cover a span of time equal to what these photos show. When I was an undergrad at San Francisco Art Institute, I had an apartment with a tiny back porch. It only got an hour or two of direct sunlight. I purchased some Kodak POP [printing-out paper —Ed.], put a glass neg and a sheet of POP in the printing frame, and sat out on the porch keeping the frame in direct sunlight. (The photographer’s processing technique was haphazard, to say the least.) I’d crack open one side of the frame to monitor progress, and when the print looked good, I’d take it in and fix and wash it. Whiled away many sunny SF afternoons doing that!

I had to dig these plates out of The Shed. I've not looked at them in a very long time. At some point, around the mid 1990s, I tried to get some info on the photos. The Oakland Museum of California tried to help, but they came up empty-handed. I did get some RC prints out of the attempt.

I still have the glass negatives. Not as many as I used to—moving around is hard on these old negs.

It was such a serendipitous event to find these at a young age. I’m honored to be the trustee of this family’s history, though I’d gladly return the photographs to them if I could.

—Ernest

Book of Interest this Week

Gregory Crewdson: Alone Street. "Filmic" seems the best single adjective to describe Gregory Crewdson's work; his directed and carefully managed tableau are the still photography version of scenes in movies. As such they are hyper-real; more beautiful than life and more poetic, and more concerted. They're also very easy to enjoy and a pleasure to look at.