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February 28, 2008
Last Dance
Posted by nick at 11:20 PM | Comments (0)
February 27, 2008
More African-American Portraits & Snapshots
I just revised African-American Portraits & Snapshots- splitting it into two parts so it'd load a bit faster. The first covers 1900-1950 and the second 1950-1980. Much to my disappointment no amount of fiddling around with it allowed me to add more than the one video clip that's in there and believe me I tried. Anyway, I took the opportunity to add almost 20 new photos so here are a few.
Posted by nick at 11:56 PM | Comments (0)
February 25, 2008
Above Aurora
From the Aurora (IL.) Beacon-News August 29th, 1929 (Photo is a snapshot from my collection)
ALL WORK STOPS HERE AS GIANT OF AIR CROSSES
Thousands in Streets and on the Housetops, Whistles Shriek, Bells Toll
Workmen dropped their tools and mothers abandoned the cradle to see the giant Graf Zeppelin sail majestically over Aurora yesterday afternoon, on its epic making voyage around the world. It was the opportunity of a lifetime and all the city’s thousands took advantage of it. Every business activity was at a standstill while the globe circling leviathan of the air crossed from the southwest to the northeast en route to Chicago, Cleveland, and Lakehurst, NJ., the end of its 25,000 mile journey.
... The ship was sighted about 3 45 o clock, a dark smudgy ball against the gray clouds. A bell at the city hall clanged a welcome and a notice to all that had been impatiently awaiting its coming to dash into the street to view it. A second later a siren, located on the Western United power plant shrilled its noisy greeting of approach of the big airship.
... And when the word passed like wildfire about the streets, all business ceased. Police rushed from their beats..., shopmen deserted the factories, the giant presses in the Beacon-News stopped whirring, switchboard operators deserted their posts, office workers tossed aside their pencils and left their typewriters and en masse the community sought vantage points where it could shout cheers to the great queen of the skies. Traffic was at a standstill in the down town streets, automobiles, street cars, and trucks halting, as drivers and operators craned heads skyward.
... [Quote from LeRoy Stevens “flying president” of the Aurora chamber of commerce who flew alongside the zeppelin] "When we reached Naperville [just north of Aurora], there were at least 15 planes from Chicago, most of them carrying newspaper photographers, diving and zooming around the giant bag. The photographers were clambering up in the cockpits, shooting the big envelope from all directions, seemingly unconcious of the danger of colliding with others in the air, on the same mission.”
... Appearance of the Zeppelin over the city "stole the show" from two policemen who were leading a prisoner with a shot gun to the city jail. Pedestrians stopped to stare at the coppers and their prisoner when someone shouted "there's the Graf." And all eyes turned from the policeman to the sky.
... The appearance of the zeppelin proved disastrous for Miss Olive Dittman, secreatry to Dr. George W. Haan, city health commisioner, in the Fox theater building.
In company with other employees in the building, Miss Dittman attempted to climb thru a rear window onto the lower roof where a better view of the giant airship might be obtained. She lost her hold on the window sill and dropped about six feet, severly cutting and bruising her knee on the sharp stones in the roofing material which covers the building. She refused, however, to pay any attention to her injuries until the Graf had passed out of sight, declaring that the sight was worth all it had cost.
The Graf Zeppelin completed its around the world trip in a world record time of 21 days, 7 hours and 33 minutes. Between 1928 and 1937 it logged more than a million miles in the air. Here are a couple of photos of the zeppelin labeled "Santa Rosa-Rio de Janeiro, 20 Juli, 1935."
The Graf was retired from service after the Hindenburg disaster in May of 1937. After a short stint as a museum the Zeppelin was disassembled in 1940, its aluminum used to feed the German war machine.
**Thanks to Mary Ann Pirone at the Aurora Public Library without whose help dating the first photo and tracking down the Beacon article would have been much more difficult.**
Posted by nick at 02:12 PM | Comments (2)
February 22, 2008
Excerpts From The Annals Of Aviation
Posted by nick at 11:29 PM | Comments (0)
The Past Is Always With Us
Posted by nick at 12:59 AM | Comments (1)
February 20, 2008
Noir (Chicago c.1950)
Posted by nick at 11:58 PM | Comments (1)
February 19, 2008
Some Final Thoughts On The Redesign
I promise this is the last post on the redesign until it's at least close to being finished so if you do have any comments/suggestions now's the time. I'd especially like to hear from anyone who's had a some experience managing tags/categories in Wordpress as I'd like to get up to speed as quickly as possible and avoid having to do a lot of re-tagging/organizing later on when there'll be 5,000 or 10,000 photos in the database. Also, if any knows of a photo archive, or really any kind of archive, of similar size (mine will eventually be around 10,000 photos) that they think is particularly well designed/organized and might give me some ideas let me know.
The redesign in a nutshell: Basically, the front page will be much cleaner than it is now with just links to a gallery section, the archive, and to this blog (and perhaps a video section as well). The gallery section will be more or less Square America as it now exists- it'll have a list of every show (though probably with multiple thumbnails as samples rather than one large photo). I'll also try to keep a running tally of the number of photos in each show and when it was last updated. The archive link will most likely take you to a page which just has the tag cloud and a search box and then a link to the current archive page which will allow you to see what's been added recently (as for the next several months I'll just adding stuff that's already on the main site there'll be no need to go there but once I get caught up that'll be where I put everything as I get it). As for this site: As I've mentioned I'm going to try to make it a bit more diverse- adding letters and perhaps other ephemera, home movie clips, and the occasional essay (I promise to get a short one up sometime this week that'll give you an idea of what I'd like to be doing). I'll also feature the best of the new arrivals. Once everyting else is taken care of I'll also do some much needed maintenance here- upgrading to a new version of movable type, adding tags, links, etc....
I'm also going to add a single uniform navigation bar that'll be at the top (and perhaps bottom) of every single page of each section of the site that'll hopefully make navigation a little easier.
I think it'll be 3 or 4 months before I implement any changes as it'll take me that long to get the archive even close to up to speed. Barring any complications I'm guessing I should have every photo on the site uploaded to the database and tagged in about 6 months (that's working on it about an hour a day). The bigger job is scanning in the 5000 or so photos in my collection that aren't on the site yet and getting those tagged and in the database as well. I'm guessing it'll take a year before I'm completely caught up. Obviously, this is going to be pretty tedious work but it needs to get done. My collection is no longer a couple of shoe boxes under my bed- it's "A Collection" and I need to get it organized. The way I see it using Wordpress to create a web-based database is no different than doing it with FileMaker and having it on my desktop. The truth is I should have started this process ages ago and now I'm paying the price for my laziness.
A couple people have mentioned that I could open up the tagging and let others help share the work load. For now I think I'm going to do all the initial tagging myself. One of the main reasons I launched the website in the first place was to force me to think about my collection as "a collection" rather than a series of discrete photos and I think that process has made me a better and more thoughtful collector/curator (whatever that means). I see the tagging as continuing this process. Also, I'm 42 and I think at this point in my life it's pretty safe to assume that I'm never going to write a novel or a symphony and assembling this collection is probably as close as I'm going to get to producing a work of art. I guess I see the tag cloud as hopefully becoming a Borgesian table of contents that will contain a discursive record of everything I've ever thought about snapshots (if not a discursive record of everything ever thought by anyone about anything). Of course, the other reason I launched the website was to make it public and let other people see the photos, people who may or may not see them the same way as I do. I have no doubt that there are narratives in the collection that I could never hope to see. With that in mind- my intention is that once I get the database deep enough to launch it officially, I'll just save a screen grab of the tag cloud for myself and then open tagging to everyone.
The bigger issue is now with Wordpress it's possible to allow others to upload their own photos into the database. I'm reluctant to do this for a number of reasons. One, bandwidth would be an issue- while I don't think that many people would be uploading photos, it's possible enough would that my hosting costs could increase significantly. Two, I don't want to have to spend my time policing what other people put up- deleting porn and possible copyright violations isn't my idea of fun. Three, I think it's important (to me anyway) that the site has an analogue in the real world- every photo that you see on the site is somewhere in my apartment. At the same time, for every great photo I have there are thousands of other out there in other collections so why not open the site up and make the database as dense as possible? At this point I'd have to say it's unlikely but you never know.
Finally, for those of you who are worried that with all the database work I'll let Square America slide, have no fear- I went out and bought Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (The first and hopefully last self-help book I've ever bought) so I'm sure I'll have no problems getting everything accomplished. Actually, I've already got three shows in the works that I'll be posting in the next month or two so you've got nothing to worry about on that front. And for those of you who made it this far- I haven't forgotten this is a photography site so here you are:
Posted by nick at 04:44 PM | Comments (3)
February 18, 2008
From The Vaults
I've been busy dumping stuff into the Archive and I came across some stuff that I originally posted to Bighappyfunhouse and Swapatorium, many of which never made it to Square America. Here are a few:
A lot of the other stuff I've added is from an old show "Highlights From The Semi-Permanent Collection that I've since taken down (though you can still find it if you look hard enough) so those of you who're new to site will find lots of great stuff that you may not have seen. Over the next day or so I'm going to try to concentrate on adding stuff from that either hasn't been on the site or is from some dusty corners that nobody's looked at in ages so head over to the Archive and let me know what you think. Are tag clouds the found poetry of the 21st Century or what?
Posted by nick at 10:30 PM | Comments (0)
February 17, 2008
Feedback Needed
As I've mentioned I've needed to do a redesign of Square America for a while now. I just downloaded wordpress and added a new section which should eventually have a tagged version of every photo so you'll be able to search by keyword. Basically, I don't have the money to hire someone to do a huge redesign and this seemed like the easiest (and cheapest) way to add a search function. Of course it's amazingly time consuming for me because I have to upload and tag everything.
I guess I need to know whether it's worth the trouble. Is the idea of being able to search for individual photos by date, location, theme, etc... appealing? I'd also appreciate any ideas you guys have for tags and anything else that you'd like to see in that section.
Basically the front page of Square America would remain the same- there'd just be separate section with a search function. This section will eventually become the largest part of the site- I've got tons of photos that I like but don't fit into any of the shows I have up at present.
You can see the beta version of the search section here. The design (color etc...) will change- I just wanted to put up a bunch of photos quickly so I could get an idea of how much work it'll be for me. I know I could probably do the same thing here- though I'd have to upgrade to a newer version of movable type (in order to create a tag cloud etc...) which I think would be more of a pain than doing the wordpress installation.
Of course it also means that this blog would probably become redundant- I wouldn't want to have to repost everything I post here over there so it's in the searchable database. At the same time, I'm going to be constantly dumping so much stuff in that section without rhyme or reason (at least for the next few months) I'd like to keep this blog so I can better showcase new arrivals. Anyway, take a look and let me know what you think.
Posted by nick at 10:36 PM | Comments (5)
February 16, 2008
Love Amongst The Reeds (Iowa 1905)
Posted by nick at 11:15 PM | Comments (2)
February 15, 2008
Woman of the Year
Posted by nick at 11:50 PM | Comments (0)
The Progress of Love
Posted by nick at 01:26 AM | Comments (2)
February 14, 2008
Happy Valentine's Day!
Posted by nick at 01:57 AM | Comments (0)
February 13, 2008
Bremo Bluff, VA. August 1920
Posted by nick at 11:53 PM | Comments (0)
February 12, 2008
Betty & Bob, Richard & I (New Year's Eve 1951, Coronado, CA)
Posted by nick at 08:58 PM | Comments (0)
February 11, 2008
Shirley & Eddie (Inglewood 1952)
Posted by nick at 11:22 PM | Comments (1)
February 10, 2008
On Beauty Grows
I just added 15 new photos to On Beauty (and It's Discontents). Here are a few of the new ones.
Posted by nick at 06:06 PM | Comments (0)
February 07, 2008
Paradise
Posted by nick at 09:56 PM | Comments (2)
February 05, 2008
Dice
Posted by nick at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)
February 04, 2008
Home Movies
As I mentioned on Sunday, I had to take down three of the four home movie clips from my African-American Portraits & Snapshots because they caused problems when the show was viewed with firefox. While I'm still hoping to fix the problem, in the meantime I've moved those clips here. I'm also considering splitting the show onto two pages (1900-1950 & 1950-1980) so it'll load a little faster though the second page would be a lot bigger than the first so it might seem a bit unbalanced. I do still have a few photos that I'll be adding in the next week or so (and possibly a few home movie clips as well). I also think that this is a show I'd like keep adding to as I get new photos- certainly I'd like to have a lot more pre-1930s stuff so I'll definitely be adding that stuff as I get it. Anyway here's a short clip of A Shriners' Picnic with some great dancing that I didn't use in the show.
Posted by nick at 11:25 PM | Comments (0)
February 02, 2008
African-American Portraits & Snapshots Has Arrived
I've finally got my new show, African-American Portraits & Snapshots up over at Square America. It's a lot bigger than I had planned- it's about 160 photos when I had originally planned on about 80-90. I'm still tinkering with it and will probably be making some minor changes over the next week or so. Because of the size of the show it takes a bit of time to load- about 45 seconds on my DSL line- but I wanted to keep it all on one page. I could have split it in two with the first section being 1900-1950 and the second section 1950-1975 but I find that when a show is on two pages only about 40% of people will click over to the second page and in a lot of ways the 50s and 60s stuff is the heart of the show. As I mentioned I did incorporate some home movie footage from my collection and I think it works pretty well. It's pretty neat to look at all these photos and then click on a film clip that sort of brings everything to life and certainly the film clips are far more interesting in the context of the show than they are on their own. I'll probably write a little bit more about the show tomorrow but until then here are a few more photos. **UPDATE** I had to take down 3 of the four video clips as they caused large grey boxes to appear elsewhere on the page when viewed with firefox. One of the clips doesn't seem to cause any problems so it's still up and running. I did try to embed the videos using vimeo rather than youtube but had the same problem. There were no problems when viewing the page with Safari. If anyone knows a quick fix to the problem please let me know.
Posted by nick at 05:37 PM | Comments (1)
February 01, 2008
Delay
I've got my new show finished but my server is having problems so I'm not sure when I'll be able to get it posted. In the meantime, here's another home movie- this one's of an art fair in the Lake Meadows neighborhood of Chicago's South Side.
Interestingly, this movie was screened once on the South Side and a woman in the audience yelled "That's Me!" when the little girl in the blue coat comes on screen at about 1:24. I think she said she was 6 or 7 at the time and today she works at an arts center on the South Side.
The film was transferred for me by the great folks at the South Side Home Movie Project, an organization dedicated to preserving home movies from Chicago's South Side and creating a digital archive of them. For those of you who may be from Chicago- if you have any 8mm or 16mm home movies with footage from the South Side you should definitely contact them- they'll transfer the footage and return it to you along with a dvd.
Posted by nick at 06:26 PM | Comments (0)