Figure 1 – The world’s first color image, a picture of a tartan ribbon, produced by the three color method by Thomas Sutton for Sir James Clerk Maxwell (from Wikimedia and in the public domain)

As described in yesterday’s blog, additive color theory says that one can create any color by mixing the primaries from three projectors.  This fact was described by the great Victorian physicist, James Clerk Maxwell.  The critical point made by Maxwell was that the cells of the retina did not perceive color, rather color perception involved the relative stimulation of the red, green, and blue cone cells.  He predicted that  if three transparent (what we now call slides) black and white photographs of the same scene were taken through red, green and blue filters, and then projected in register onto a screen all of the colors of the original scene would be reproduced.

In 1861 such  a set of images, referred to as color separations, were taken by Thomas Sutton, who used them to illustrate a lecture by Maxwell on color.  The image was of a tartan ribbon and is shown in Figure 1, the worlds first color photograph. Maxwell commented on the inadequacy of the result, pointing out the need  for a photographic material more sensitive to red and green light.

Today photographic historians are puzzled by this image because the emulsion used by Sutton was insensitive to red light.  It is now believed that the red in the image actually results from ultraviolet sensitivity of the process.

Of course, these experiments soon faded into obscurity.  They were reinvented in the late nineteenth century.  We have already discussed the Lumiere brothers Autochrome invention – the first commercially practical color photography process

Figure 1 – Russell Lee “Portrait of the Jack Whinery Family, Pie Town, NM 1940” from the Library of Congress and in the public domain.

If we look at the image of the children at the Weill school saying the pledge of allegiance, we see what is our standard view of the depression – it is black and white.  The same is true with Ken Burns’ “The Dust Bowl.”  We have a black and white world, and by virtue of its being black and white we are somehow immune to it.

I have also discussed the Autochrome process, which brought images from 1907 – 1937 into a very spectacular and vivid color.  I also described how Kodak introduced Kodachrome in 1937 and a new age of color photography.

A reader has been kind enough to share with me an article in the Denver Post showing FSA photographs taken with the Kodachrome process from the collection of the Library of Congress.  Suddenly that world becomes rendered in the characteristically striking color of Kodachrome film.  It was hard to chose a favorite and representative image.  Finally, I settled upon the image in Figure 1 taken by Russell Lee in 1940.  It is a picture of homesteader Jack Whinery and his family in Pie Town, New Mexico.

I like the Whinery picture because it is so like the many black and whites that we see from these federal projects.  We can no longer hide in the security of monotone.  And, of course, the current recession 2008 – 2013 raises eyebrows and makes us question the fragility of our perceived distance from these souls and immunity from their woes.

Figure 1 – Dorothea Lange “Students at the Weill Public School reciting the Pledge of Allegence, 1942” Taken for the FSA, in the LOC, and in the public domain.

Yesterday we spoke about Ansel Adams’ photographs of the Manzanar Relocation Camp.  In that post I mentioned two other photographers Toyo Miyatake (1896-1979)  and Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) and I thought that it would be interesting to do some websearching for the photographs of each of them from these camps.

As it turns out, Toyo Miyatake Studios, originally founded by Toyo in 1926 in Los Angeles, was moved to the San Gabriel Valley in 1985.  It is still run by his family and remains a fluorishing and sought after portrait studio. On their website they have galleries of Toyo Miyatake’s photographs taken at Manzanar and also vintage photographs of the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics as well as vintage photographs of Los Angeles’ historic Little Tokyo District.  All of these can be found at the links I have provided and are really worth visiting.

As I discussed Dorothea Lange visited all of the internment camps.  Her black and white photographs of the Great Depression under the auspices of the Farm Security Administration are legendary.  Her photographs of the camps were also taken as part of her work for the FSA and, as a result, many of them were censored by a government, itself ambiguous about the relocation and internment of American Citizens.  Much of this work was not fully revealled until the early 1970’s.

Since they are in government possession there are currently several valuable archives to consult.  Check out:

• Public Intelligence
• The San Francisco Museum
• The library of Congress

As for Figure 1, this is an image by Lange taken on April 1942. and shows first graders at the Weill Elementary School reciting the pledge of allegiance.  Within days all of the students of Japanese descent had been relocated for the duration of the war.

Figure 1 – “Manzanar Girl with Volley Ball, 1943,” Ansel Adams from the Library of Congress.

I’d like to make people aware of a very remarkable collection of photographs at the Library of Congress taken by Ansel Adams in 1943 of the American Citizens of Japanese descent, who were interned in the Manzanar Relocation Center. This work of which Figure 1 is a beautiful example represent a major departure for Ansel Adams from his traditional Monumental Landscape work, being instead intensely intimate portraits and scenes of camp life. It is strikingly interesting how over the last few years the diversity and breadth of Adam’s work is slowly becoming increasing apparent.

These works were originally published in 1944  by US Camera with text by Adams in a book entitled “Born Free and Equal.” and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.   The photographs were donated to the Library of Congress by Adams in 1966.

Ansel Adams’ photographs at Manzanar were the result of an invitation by his friend Ralph Merritt, who had recently been appointed camp director. It is significant that two other contemporary photographers documented Manzanar.  The first was Dorothea Lange, then a staff photographer for the War Relocation Authority.  Lange visited all eleven Japanese-American internment camps. The third photographer was internee Toyo Miyatake.  Miyatake had been a studio photographer in Los Angeles. His first photographs were taken with and improvised camera that he built with smuggled parts.  His activities were discovered, but Merritt allowed him to continue work and even to have his studio equipment shipped to the camp.  Initially he would set up the photograph, but only a camp guard was allowed to press and release the shutter.  This, of course, speaks volumes about the injustices being meted out to loyal American citizens at Manzanar.

In donating these beautiful images and important historical documentation to the Library of Congress Adams wrote:
“The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment…All in all, I think this Manzanar Collection is an important historical document, and I trust it can be put to good use.”

William A. Bentley with his snowflake camera from the Wikicommons original source http://www.flickr.com
/photos/mobyd
/2908371931/
and in the public domain.

We cannot discuss the origins of photomicroscopy without mentioning the work of William A. Bentley (aka the Snowflake man)(1865-1831). Bentley was a self-taught Vermont farmer.  At age fifteen Bentley developed an interest in snowflakes. He learned to capture them beneath the lens of a microscope and tried to draw them in all their beautiful and unique detail. But he found that they melted before he could complete a drawing. If you think about it these are the most ephemeral of objects. Photomicrosopy was the obvious solution, but it still took Bentley two years to develop a camera and methodology.

Figure 2 – one of William A. Bentley’s snowflake photographs from http://snowflakebentley
.com/
snowflakes.htm and in the public domain

Today, of course, we recognize that this is an example of macrophotography.  With a 35 mm camera we would want to “blow up” the snowflake two or three times.  For a view camera this is more extreme, and that makes the required exposure somewhat demanding.  But for Bentley, it was all worth the effort.

Today, we learn as children that no two snowflakes are alike.  It was William A. Bentley, who made that discovery.  Today, as physicists, we are taught that this random uniqueness is characteristic of what we call fractal processes.  We should never dismiss the fundamental beauty of nature – even in its most fleeting processes.  Bentley recognized this important point.  He wrote profoundly in 1925:

“Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it  seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others.  Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated.  When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind.”

Bentley died in 1931 after contracting pneumonia in a blizzard.  But this was not before he left us a very rich legacy of some of the finest and most emotion filled photomicrographs ever created see Figure 2).