Single-Serving Photo

Today is Louis Daguerre’s birthday, and Google is helping to celebrate it by devoting their logo to him. Happy 224th, buddy!

Wait, are you really about to ask me who Louis Daguerre was? Hey, it’s OK, to be fair the guy has been dead for about 160 years… Even so, in this line of work I sort of expected more from you. Maybe you’ve heard the word Daguerreotype before? Even my browser spell-checker knows that word. That’s right, it’s a photographic process; that’s probably close enough for most tabletop trivia games.

Unfortunately, this blog is not interested in tidbits of trivia, so get ready for facts. Lots of facts. With historical context. (more…)

The goal of photography is to capture a moment, an idea, a thought, or an event and suspend it in time. Whether it is journalistic, editorial, representational, abstract, or artistic is not important in reaching that goal. Occasionally, as a photographer is striving toward their singular goal, they unwittingly meet another one.

Such is the case with these amazing depression-era color photographs published by the International Business Times; though they were taken at the time as recordings of events (though demonstrating the aesthetic sense of the accomplished photographer), the social and cultural distance between the depression and today has vaulted these images into pure artistry. They are truly breathtaking; scenes from a past world, a past America.

View the entire set of photographs on International Business Times: Rare Color Photos from Depression Era.

For fans of the hit AMC series Mad Men, or for fans of the ’40s and ’50s in general, here is a splendid little video called “The Girl on the Magazine Cover” that briefly investigates the world of modeling and magazine advertising photography around the 1940s.

Not only is it a glimpse into the harrowing business of commercial photography in those days when view cameras were the best you could get and subjects were all shot under hot lights, but also an entertaining look at the male-dominated professional world familiar to anyone who lived through those decades (or at least watched Mad Men).

As I’m sure you’ve heard, Dennis Hopper passed away just days ago (the 29th of May, 2010). As an actor, I personally loved his roles in such classics as Super Mario Bros., Waterworld, and Speed, though he is best known for Easy Rider, Rebel Without a Cause, Cool Hand Luke, and more. He certainly had a knack for the dramatic, but what I didn’t know was that he also had a knack for photography.

The “Chasing Light” blog has a wonderful post containing photos that Hopper took through the years (all of them black and white). I was very impressed with them; they show attention to composition and subject comparable to those of a seasoned professional or serious hobbyist. You could certainly call Hopper a serious hobbyist, though he was more widely known for his feature films than for his photography, painting, and sculpture.

Over at artnet, you can view (and attempt to purchase) 39 other photographs by Hopper that are held by various galleries.

Whether you are into Hopper’s photographs or not, let’s take a moment to remember a great actor and inspirational creator.

I have a question to ask you. What do Santa Claus, this portrait of Lincoln, and great daytime television have in common?

That’s right, they’re all mythical. Well, actually, the portrait is real inasmuch as it physically exists, but it’s one of the earliest (now rather famous) examples of photo manipulation. It turns out that although the photo seems to depict a stoic Lincoln standing beside a writing desk, the only thing in that photo that is actually Lincoln’s is his head. The body is that of Southern politician John C. Calhoun.

Apparently, so few “heroic” portraits of Lincoln existed (perhaps because Lincoln was weary of posing for them) that the only logical alternative was to fake it. In addition to pasting Lincoln’s head onto Calhoun’s body, the text on the papers visible on the desk were changed from “strict constitution,” “free trade,” and “the sovereignty of the states” to “constitution,” “union,” and “proclamation of freedom.”

So who needs Photoshop, anyway?

Via Museum of Hoaxes