MATERIAL GIRL

 Photographs as material culture

 “Touch has a memory.” 

John Keats

Photographs as material objects, as stuff, where the visual qualities of the image are secondary to the tactile. The idea scarcely exists today but at the turn of last century and the introduction of the postcard all things seemed possible. Around that time the Japanese Novelty Company in Rhode Island applied for a patent for postcards on balsa. The usual cursory search shows the company had bases across the U.S, from Rhode Island to Iowa and Texas, sending teams of salesmen out to lure customers in with cheap amusements, including balsa postcards that people could insert their own photos in. They are rare these days, not because so few were produced but because the wood was fragile. Also, it has to be said, if the card above is any guide, the company wasn’t at the high end of the art market. It probably gave most of its products a year’s life span at best, but that was ok. If it had loyal customers they’d be back for more. A lobster was slang at the time for a shiftless and unreliable type.

We know more about Isaiah Taber, a photographer who began in the era of the daguerreotype, made a name for himself in San Francisco during the gold rush and went on to open studios in London and England. The 1906 earthquake destroyed his studio and much of his work and he died six years later. Today his name means something to photo-historians of the American west but few others, which is too bad because he was not only prolific, he had one of the sharpest minds when it came to business.

There is some confusion about the Taber bas-relief process. It is on record that Isaiah’s brother Freeman applied for the patent for the process but being the photographer, Isaiah took a lot of the images that would be turned into bas-reliefs, inevitably leading some to assume he was involved in coming up with the idea. It isn’t just historians. Advertisements in the Sydney Morning Herald during 1899 credit Isaiah with the process. According to one ad from June 5 that year, “the result has been pronounced by judges and connoisseurs of the art to be the perfection of photography … and it is morally certain that this new style … will win the custom of every person of artistic tastes”. Further on, the suppliers (Eden Photo Studio) threaten legal action against several companies infringing on their copyright. This is a version of the line, ‘beware of imitations’, suggesting theirs was the only company in town capable of producing proper results.

So what was all the fuss about? As the name suggests, bas-reliefs had a tactile, three dimensional quality produced by placing the image over a stamped impression. It is more difficult than it sounds. The image was being stretched over the impression, and as these examples indicate, each portrait had to be embossed individually. It was one more attempt to enhance the already lifelike qualities of photographs. Though actresses and royalty were popular subjects, ultimately the process would quietly disappear. Like the balsa wood postcard it turned out to be a novelty with brief appeal.

  

The last set of postcards were produced during the dying days of the Art Nouveau movement, when that had ceased to be an exclusive mark of wealth and elegance and filtered down to the hoi polloi. Alongside cheap, mass-produced Charles Rennie MacKintosh look-alike lamps and kitchenware, the middle classes could buy postcards that distinguished them as lovers of beauty without the financial commitment that usually involved.  

The cards were mostly published in Germany and France. Producing them would not have been difficult as appearances might suggest. Once the card stock was selected and cut to size, the design was stamped in and coloured then the portrait cut out and pasted in. The most difficult part would have been the colouring of the embossed surface. 

Though the photographers aren’t identified, the portraits are vaguely familiar. They are of theatre and opera stars and if not from the Reutlinger or Walery studios, from one of their rivals. Ordinarily however studios of their reputation would have put their signatures on the front. That they didn’t suggests that other companies had some arrangement to use them or else, in an age when copyright was still nebulous, simply cut out the parts from photographs that they needed and added them in.

The woman in this card is the same as in the card above, taken at the same photo shoot. This one however was posted in Chile. Presumably the originals were distributed from Paris or Berlin to points around the globe at which point local companies could add whatever details they wanted. Incidentally, the back of this postcard bears a stamp and postmark and a woman’s name (Alicia) but no address for her. Was the image too upfront for the Chilean post office? Or was it customary to have the postcard stamped then placed in an envelope to protect privacy? 

One thing about Art Nouveau that is easy to overlook these days: at the time it was modern – by definition - but it was also essentially nostalgic. Everything about it evoked an earlier age, often as not one lost in the mist of ancient history. Coming of age at the dawn of the automobile, the telephone and powered flight, the art nouveauists had to embrace technology even though it was in conflict with their aesthetic sense of unhurried elegance. The ideal woman wrote long letters, she didn’t sit on the phone, and she preferred the hot air balloon to the aeroplane. A plane after all was good for flying from point A to point B – which at that time wasn’t very far – but a balloon ascended to the heavens. 

If the definition of a photograph is anything that includes one, then that is what these postcards are, but they exist at the fringes, owing more to jewellery, graphic design and even architecture than they do photography. Even if some of these have a sophistication and imagination that makes them almost beautiful, it is more their curiousness that is eye-catching. The idea wasn’t exactly original; Victorian photo-collages used a similar idea of mixing photographs with drawings and some tintypes came in elaborate sleeves that were meant to be part of the whole image, but whoever first came up with this idea didn’t have to see any precedents. The notion of combining portraits of noted Parisian beauties with the iconography of what was still considered beautiful design was as inevitable as it was logical, as was its essential failure.

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MATERIAL GIRL

FRAMED

Decorative borders around 1930s snapshots

 “Art is limitation. The essence of every picture is the frame.”

G. K. Chesterton

 During the 1930s it was fashionable for labs to print snapshots within decorative borders. We can be more specific about this. The earliest example in the collection comes from 1930 and people appear to have lost interest in the idea about 1936. More than that, it seems particular to North America. I haven’t seen examples from anywhere outside the US or Canada. These things happen. In the mid 1970s the colour print with the satin finish and rounded corners was the in thing, but that had the effect of making every print look drab and uninteresting –similar to what happened around the same time to anyone who wore a safari suit. These decorative borders on the other hand could enhance a photo. With some of these images the borders belong to the extent it is hard to imagine the photo without it, let alone improved by its absence.

 

Part of that has to do with the way the border encloses the image; everything happening off camera is shut out. I think this is the point that Chesterton was making in the quote above. The frame contains the work so the world beyond it ceases to exist. The borders in these snapshots do that but at the same time they don’t intrude on the image. 

As a topic of research in the history of photography you feel that certainly these borders deserve attention, though preferably from someone else. Where would you start? There are dozens and possibly hundreds of designs. Some are distinctly Art Deco, mirroring the age, while others are more traditional but is that important? Did labs carry several templates and ask the customers which they preferred? Does that matter? It is intriguing how an idea catches on then suddenly vanishes, suggesting this one wasn’t that popular to begin with. Alternatively, the major companies like Kodak decided it wasn’t worth the time or expense and shelved it.

What we like isn’t just the visual effect but the way these borders place photographs in a particular time. This one of four men outside a Quebec petrol station can only belong to the 1930s (Note the Marvelube sign on the pole the man on the left is leaning against.) 1930s Men in overcoats and hats will always look shifty.

Another photo from Canada (as I think most of these are). I particularly like the way you need a moment to realize what the man is doing. You’ll also notice the actual print doesn’t fit square within the frame created by the border. This makes me think the designs might have been pre-exposed on the paper before the lab printed it. The alternative would have been a template on clear gel that was placed over the print.

The border seems especially suited to this beautifully hand-coloured snapshot. It is also one of the most intricate. It looks like a typically romantic scene but zoom in and there is something unsettling about her stare.

One of those images that grows stranger every time you look at it. Obviously, some parents were prepared to buy detailed and expensive cubby houses for the kids, but these children’s poses and the boy being dressed in a suit and tie makes the scene just a little disturbing.

As the very precise information on this one tells us, this was taken on Saturday afternoon, July 21^st, 1934, at Orchard Beach in Maine. The women are E Taylor and Z Baxter. 

  

And this one was taken three weeks earlier (July 1) at the same beach. The women are not identified but note both photos have the same decorative border. Presumably they were taken with the same roll of film though it may have been that the lab used that design in preference to others.

This is the earliest, dated 1930, but while we describe these as belonging to a particular age, this man’s pose and general demeanour look to be a generation ahead of his time. Maybe there is a story about Canadian folk music we haven’t heard yet.

Decorative borders similar to these were used on some large format studio portraits in the 1910s and 20s but it was only when the idea was taken up for snapshots that it really transformed images. A really good snapshot is about something everyday that most likely has a simple explanation but it transcends that. The obvious is dissatisfactory. We are convinced that more than meets the eye is going on.

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FRAMED

THE WAR TO END ALL WARS

Some portraits from World War 1, most with a sense of tragic irony

“One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.”

Otto von Bismarck (1888).

There’s a painting by John Singer Sargent at the National Gallery in London called General Officers of the Great War. Twenty two of the British and Allied commanders are standing together; William Birdwood, Douglas Haig, Edmund Allenby, George Milne and so on, and unless you still get teary at the idea of the British Empire, you have to ask; did any of them feel just a twinge of shame at being asked to pose? Too bad Winston Churchill wasn’t asked to join in. Then Sargent could have titled his painting 23 men whose ignorance and incompetence led to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands, but that’s perhaps a bit unwieldy. 

Here’s one of the French culprits; well he looks like he had a walk-on part in Kubrick’s Paths of Glory, which was incidentally based on a novel, itself drawn from actual events when four soldiers were executed for mutiny. For the record, Australia was the only country in the First World War that did not have an official policy of executing deserters or soldiers accused of cowardice. The British executed 306 soldiers, including 25 Canadians, 22 Irish and 5 from New Zealand. The Americans executed very few (so too the Germans) but US High Command wasn’t averse to punishments of public humiliation, including sentencing deserters to wear placards. The French outdid everyone. Over 600 soldiers were shot. Worse, there was a policy of decimation in place, which meant that when a unit rebelled and refused to follow a reckless order, one of every ten men could be shot as punishment for all. The most infamous case was on December 15, 1914 in Flanders when several French-African soldiers were executed. To make things even worse, in the French and American armies the soldiers called on to carry out executions were most likely to come from the soldier’s own regiment. They were his brothers in arms.

The mythology that England, France, Germany, Turkey and Australia have developed around the First World War reduces the enemy to simple terms. If you were Australian he spoke German or Turkish. The fact he may have been Bulgarian gets lost in the lack of detail. Bulgaria’s part in the war has been discussed in earlier posts but it is worth reiterating. After all, in the First Balkan War of 1912 Bulgaria was allied to Serbia and Greece against the Ottomans, went into the second Balkan War against its earlier allies and by 1915 had joined the First World War on the side of the Ottomans. There’s a tendency to describe Balkan politics as complex, as though too much thought went into them, but there’s another possibility; they were as thoughtless as they were self-serving, visceral and absolutely lacking in foresight. These men, photographed in 1916, are cannon fodder.

The Americans came in late, or as they would put it, to clean up the mess. They weren’t there at Gallipoli, Ypres or the Somme, which explains why there is no great American novel about the war. This may not be a bad thing. There’s been a proliferation from Britain in recent years and the plots quite frankly have become predictable: Irish boy goes off to fight for England and returns to the troubles at home - The Soldier's Song, A Long Long Way – episodic narrative of young soldier’s road to awakening and disillusion – Birdsong, Regeneration, etc. Worse, they appear to have identical covers of soldiers silhouetted on a ridge. Nothing so odd as this photo then. Not that there was anything at all strange about a soldier having his portrait taken before he shipped out, but it is somewhat to pose in front of a painted backdrop of a military barracks, and he has the expression of the rabbit in the headlights.

Something similar is going on in this portrait of a nurse. Was she put in front of the backdrop of the military tents because it needed to be reinforced that she was going off to the front? For a long time, at least up to the mid-1980s, the idea that nurses also served in battle wasn’t taken too seriously, as though having to tend to soldiers who’d been shot, gassed, had bits blown off or were suffering shell-shock was all in a day’s work. Read some of the nurse’s accounts from Gallipoli: working for days without rest while a stream of the wounded poured in and knowing there wasn’t much they could do for a lot of them. All that while an officer was screaming that they weren’t doing a good job. Something like 400 American nurses died at the front, though only very few from weaponry. Disease killed most of them. 

Fraulein Feldweber: Miss Sergeant. She’s not one of course. She represents the cause the Germans were fighting for, or so they were told. There are a few postcards floating around with this same portrait although the backgrounds are different. She was probably one of the faces of the home front, mailed out to the troops to remind them what they stood to lose if the enemy succeeded in its aims.

On the back of this postcard the author has written: “A ma chere Marraine Alda Drouin Souvenir de guerre de votre petit ami Belge”, which translates as “To my dear godmother Alda Drouin, a souvenir of the war from your little Belgian friend.” Presumably it was taken in Belgium but the soldier, whose signature in indecipherable, is Canadian. The card is undated but join the dots between Canada, Belgium and World War 1 and the conclusion is almost certainly Ypres. In the first battle between October 19 and November 22 1914, over 170 000 were killed on both sides. During the second battle, April 22 to May 25 1915 the Canadians took the brunt of the first poison gas used in war. It was a Canadian, John McCrea, who wrote In Flanders Field, probably the most famous poem to have been written in World War 1. He wrote it for a friend who was killed at Ypres but in that perverse way things work it was used in Britain to recruit soldiers. 

“Men, I am not ordering you to fight, I am ordering you to die.” This was Mustafa Kemal’s command to his soldiers on the morning of April 25 1915, and that is pretty much what his soldiers did. Turkish casualties were higher during the Gallipoli campaign than the Allied losses (approximately 250 000 opposed to 208 000), but who was counting? Victory or defeat has never depended on the body count. There’s something in this photo that tells you what was at stake for the Ottoman Empire - dignity if nothing else. Of the options open to the Ottomans at the start of the war, neutrality or alliance with either the Allies or the Central Powers, it chose what now looks like the worst but in the end the other two would have only changed the timing of its inevitable collapse. When this photo was taken these two must have known the writing was on the wall for empire. Would that have influenced their willingness to die for it? 

This snapshot was taken at Camp Cody, Deming, New Mexico in 1918, then the training headquarters for the 34^th Division. The Division arrived in Europe in October 1918 and wasn’t involved in fighting. That would have to wait until the Second World War when its soldiers made up the bulk of William Darby’s Rangers. Was this boy, clearly enjoying his role as camp mascot, among them? He looks to be about seven or eight and that would put him in the age bracket. 

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THE WAR TO END ALL WARS