Stephen Sasson with his digital camera prototype © James Rajotte / New York Times For her New York Times article, At Kodak, Some Old Things Are New Again, Claudia H. Deutsch spoke with Steven Sasson, an electrical engineer who invented the “first digital camera.” When Sasson created his prototype at Eastman Kodak in the ’70s, [...]
I got an e-mail the other day from Eric Marth. At the end of his e-mail, Eric casually mentioned his “blog,” which he simply calls Pictures. “It’s updated as I find images,” he writes. “On occasion there’s the delightful accident like the pairing of Maude Schuyler Clay’s photo of Eggleston and one of Walker Evans’s [...]
If you haven’t heard of the Prelinger Archives, now is the time to familiarize yourself. Prelinger Archives was founded in 1983 by Rick Prelinger in New York City. Over the next twenty years, it grew into a collection of over 60,000 “ephemeral” (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films. In 2002, the film collection was acquired [...]
Alabama Farm Interior (Fields Family Cabin), 1936 © Walker Evans In hopes of sparking a discussion, I thought I’d share this essay that I came across recently by Caroline Blinder (lecturer in English and American Literature at Goldsmiths College, University of London) entitled “The Transparent Eyeball”: On Emerson and Walker Evans. Taking Emerson’s “Nature” as [...]
Bill Burke passed along an excellent article – the best I’ve read in a while, in fact – titled Robert Frank’s Unsentimental Journey, written by Charlie LeDuff for the latest Vanity Fair. Once you start, you can’t stop (it has a nice humor to it): Robert Frank, the photographic master, the last human being it’s [...]
loooking at a box of Emmet Gowin photographs in the Fogg’s Study Room On Friday, I made a quick stop into Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum to visit a friend working in the Study Room and take a peek at some work from the collection. This is a great resource to know about if you live [...]
Polaroid‘s television ads from the ’70s and ’80s featured “husband and wife” James Garner and Mariette Hartley promoting the new products. Here are a few where they advertise Polaroid’s Sun Camera (it’s alright if these bring a tear to your eye).
Sad, sad news released today: The company that pioneered instant photography is getting out of the film business to focus on digital imaging. Polaroid says it will close its two remaining film manufacturing plants in Massachusetts. The facilities in Norwood and Waltham employed about 150 people and made large-format film for commercial use. Polaroid has [...]
Bill Burke teaches a class at the Museum School that deals with the production of a photographic books and sequencing of images. Bill has experience with this, having produced a number of incredibly powerful and important photography books of his own, namely I Want to Take Picture (1987, reissued in 2007), Portraits (1987) and Mine [...]
L: Twin Infants in Coffins, 1886 R: Portrait of Man with Small Beard, 1897 © Charles Van Schaick / WHS Many of you know that Andy Adams is the editor behind the daily photography blogzine Flak Photo. What many of you might not know, however, is that Andy also has done work for the photographs [...]
