While looking through his aunt’s attic, Soren Larson found a remarkable collection of New York street scene photos from the 1950s taken by his grandfather, an amateur photographer named Frank Oscar Larson.
(via New Yorker Discovers Collection of 1950s Street Photos in his Aunt’s Attic | Popular Photography)
This Week in Photography History
San Francisco in Ruins taken by George Lawrence on May 28, 1906. Mr. Lawrence was an innovative photographer, experimenting with aerial photography using kites and balloons and constructing huge cameras and lenses. Six weeks after an earthquake and resulting fire devastated San Francisco, he mounted a 49 pound camera on a train of kites to take this 160 degree panorama from 2000 feet high.
This Week in Photography History:
Death of Hippolyte Bayard on May 14, 1887, a French pioneer of photography. He is credited with presenting the first public photography show and with the idea of combining two exposures for landscape photography, one for sky and the other for land, now known as High Dynamic Range photography. He also created the first controversy in photography and the first staged photograph. After claiming that he had been tricked to allow Daguerre to claim the crown of photography’s inventor, he passed around a staged photo of himself with a note on the back, saying: “The corpse which you see here is that of M. Bayard…the Government which has been only too generous to Monsieur Daguerre, has said it can do nothing for Monsieur Bayard, and the poor wretch has drowned himself.”
With an 18MP Monochrome sensor, the Leica M Monochrom is the world’s first digital rangefinder with a black and white sensor. While the sensor comprises the heart of the camera, it is also characterized by a 2.5” TFT LCD Display and a maximum ISO 10,000.
“I have inspired many persons to take up photography. As a matter of fact, I inspire myself. When I take a good picture I give myself a bonus.”
– Arthur “Weegee” Fellig (1899-1968, photographer)
“Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it may be.”
– Edward Weston (1886-1958, photographer)
This Week in Photography History:
Birth of Jacob Riis, pioneer of flash lighting and social documentary photography, on May 3, 1849. He was the first to put a German invention of pistol-like flash lighting to practical use in photography, and used that artificial lighting to illuminate the dark streets and rooms of New York City’s slums, previously impossible to document in natural light. His campaigning earned the friendship of Teddy Roosevelt and is credited with the installation of parks in poor neighborhoods and the demolition of slum tenements, including police lodging houses where he had personally suffered abuse as a child.
This Week in Photography History:
The Valley of the Shadow of Death (top) is taken on April 23, 1855 by Roger Fenton, the photographer of the Crimean War working on behalf of the British government. While earning distinction for being the first compelling image of wartime photography, this image has also gained notoriety due to speculation, beginning in 1981, that the cannonballs on the road were staged. Filmmaker Errol Morris confirmed this speculation in a 2007 series for the New York Times, using the second photo (bottom) taken earlier by Fenton, a visit to this valley in the Crimea and consultation with image analysis experts.
“Why don’t you put that old print on the floor and I’ll step on it for you and make it even more vintage.”
– Brett Weston (1911-1993, photographer)
