Albert Einstein – 1950
Toronto. Just a brief reminder to join the Daguerreian Society at its New York Photography Fair today, April 6th, 2019. Lots of stuff to see and buy – like this 1950 gelatin-silver print of Albert Einstein.
You can enjoy April in New York City while helping the Daguerreian Society and augmenting your image collection.
an Orb Spider and her web
Toronto. My title of this post is with apologies to musician Lou Reid and Author the late Nelson Algren (Walk on the Wild Side). The world wide web (WWW), conceived by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, was presented in 1989 using the Hyper-text Markup language (HTML). The web was initially designed to share scientific papers amongst universities over the internet. It went live in CERN in 1990 and outside CERN in 1991.
Five years later, in 1996, we had our first web site live. Most members were puzzled. At our February meeting in 1997, I did a talk called “Take a Walk on the Web Site” to introduce computers, the internet and the web to our members who for the most part left computers to their children or grand children.
Today, the web has been inundated by commerce, porn, social sites (Facebook, Youtube, Pinterest, etc.), search engines (Google, Bing, Duck-Duck-Go, etc.), and more. It is rapidly becoming passé especially to the younger generation who are into texting, twittering, and video gaming. Continue reading
Moyra Davey Photo
Toronto. A Survey exhibition of New York based and Toronto born photographer Moyra Davey (winner of last year’s Scotiabank Photography Award) runs from May 1st to August 4th at Ryerson’s RIC.
If you miss CONTACT elsewhere, at least take in this exhibition at the downtown Ryerson Image Centre.
Portraits of a Digital Canada
Toronto. On April 24th, an exhibit opens at York University featuring photographs from the IBM Canada Archives which were donated to the university by IBM Canada, incorporated back in 1917. The images illustrate the technological and social landscape of our country over the past century.
Included are mostly photographs taken by PHSC member George Dunbar. George was the IBM Canada staff photographer from 1957 to 1989. He spoke to the PHSC and showed some of his photographs at our October 2000 meeting. Details of the coming exhibition are included here.
Come out and see the talent hiding amongst our members!
Anthropocene by Burtynsky
Toronto. Until I saw Manufactured Landscapes at TIFF in September 2006, I had never heard or knew about Ed Burtynsky. His large format photographs were an eye-opener. I later saw one of his huge prints at the AGO during a PHSC evening hosted by photography head and PHSC member Maia Sutnik.
Drop by Indigo’s main store at Bay and Bloor at 7 pm today to hear Heather Reisman in conversation with Ed Burtynsky on his latest coffee table size photography book Anthropocene.
Margaret Lansdale’s book
Toronto. In the November-December 1995 (volume 21-3) edition of Photographic Canadiana president Les Jones announced the PHSC Awards program due to begin in 1996. Les was an innovative force in the PHSC with this enduring program being just one of his accomplishments.
In recent times, the Awards program was augmented by an annual thesis award granted to a Ryerson post graduate student for his/her winning thesis in the Masters degree program for Photographic Preservation and Collections Management. The PHSC makes the final choice from the top three theses as selected by Ryerson.
Two of our earliest non-thesis awards went to Margaret Lansdale and Robert Gutteridge for book publication/research. Ashley Cook of the PHSC executive committee administers the awards at the moment.
The thesis winner is usually a speaker at one of our Toronto meetings and his/her thesis is summarized in Photographic Canadiana. A full version is retained by Ryerson. If you or anyone you know is working on an aspect of photographic history – especially Canadian – drop me an email. Details are noted in Awards on our website.
Brownie Holiday Flash camera using 127 film.
Toronto. In mid last century amateur photography was quite different than today with ubiquitous smartphone cameras. The small camera phase (mincam) was in full swing. Black and White films ruled – colour was very expensive and even slower than B&W. In fact, the slow speed of fast B&W film meant most amateur photos were taken outdoors.
Colour film and flash bulbs were common to professionals but amateurs still favoured B&W films, usually without flash and its relatively expensive one-use bulbs. The manufactures tried to persuade amateurs to move to smaller cameras, colour film, and flash. An example is this 1955 LIFE magazine ad (page 27) for the so called Brownie Holiday Flash camera – simply a dressed up pre-war Baby Brownie with a flash gun bolted on the side and shutter synchronization. Like all Baby Brownie’s the diminutive camera used 127 film – a slightly wider “35mm” film without the sprocket holes – and a curved film plane to help correct the lens geometrics (curvature of field) just like the far more expensive Minox camera. While the cameras were small, they were just box cameras with a flash gun feature.
A big thanks to George Dunbar for spotting this marvellous advertisement amongst the pages of the July 4th, 1955 LIFE magazine.
PHSC News – a free newsletter for all fans of photography
Toronto. Journal editor Bob Lansdale created the PHSC newsletter in November 2001 to promote the monthly meetings and other current events between journal printings, plus offering a more economical means to publish articles better suited to colour images. The newsletter is distributed free each month in pdf format both on our web site and to a growing number of folk who have submitted an email address.
To increase distribution, we began to solicit email addresses at our events using a form created by Bob Lansdale. I did the distribution via my own email. At one point the distributions stopped and I contacted Bell Support. The company had unilaterally decided to block all emails exceeding 100 addresses. If a customer wished to exceed the limit, blocks of 100 addresses were allowed every 24 hours. Fortunately Support gave me clearance for up to 5,000 addresses per document. Continue reading
Photographic Canadiana
Toronto. No matter where you are; who you are; what you are, communication is important. October 23, 1974 at an informal meeting in Toronto, a small group of collectors met. It was decided then and there that Canada was ready for a photographic collector’s organization and the Photographic Historical Society of Canada was born.
The following March 1975, a key element saw the light of day. Volume 1-1 of the newsletter Photographic Canadiana was mailed to members. It was a typewritten, mimeographed document folded in thirds for mailing. The editor of the first two volumes was member Terry Wedge. Mostly text, the articles were single column, spanning the width of the letter sized paper. That year, 10 issues were distributed. The following year, the newsletter dropped to six issues. The tag line was “The Newsletter of the Photographic Historical Society of Canada“. It was very important to advise all members of events, ads, and society activities making the newsletter a critical part of the fledgling society. Continue reading
Julia Austin c1900
Toronto. You really do have a time machine – its your camera or smartphone! Really! Think about it. For example, if someone didn’t have a camera, Carol would never have known what her great grandmother (her father’s grandmother) looked like, or that she was an aspiring thespian. Less than a decade after 1900, Martha Julie Austin, as she was named when born about 1849, was photographed in costume as a character in what looks to be a Shakespearean play. Carol’s great grandmother Julia lived to an age of 80, dying in the fall of 1929 at Bury St Edmonds in England.
A few years after 1839, when the negative – positive process was announced, it became possible for the average soul to purchase a print of a famous person, event, or just a workaday scene. For the first time in history, almost anyone could have a likeness done at a reasonable cost. Before 1839 you had to have some wealth to afford the cost of a unique painting, even a miniature. And the larger the painting, the greater the cost.
Once photography thrived, and technology and invention enabled a decent half-tone process, illustrated books, journals, newspapers, etc. became commonplace (there was a broad overlap with woodcuts of illustrations as well to capture distant events, people, celebrities, etc.).
For future generations, be sure you take your camera/smartphone with you and record everyday scenes at work and at play, people important to you, special events, ceremonies, etc. Some day when you have departed this existence, others will discover your efforts and be thrilled to see what it was like in years gone by. You can help by making an eye-friendly print of selected images rather than relying on future generations being capable of reading today’s media and file formats.
EVENTS
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Stan White – Poems & Photos
Mise Au Point – sur la photographie Quebecois
