Eve Arnold is known for her celebrity photographs, and perhaps most known for her photos of Marilyn Monroe.  This is how I, as a woman with an obsession with Monroe, discovered Arnold.  After reading my last book on Monroe, I had decided to swear-off my obsession and stop buying more Monroe stuff — at least books.  But then I discovered Eve Arnold’s book of Monroe photographs…

Full of photos — nearly 100, including 48 previously unseen — yes; but it’s the quality, not the quantity.

Arnold’s photographs of Marilyn are unique.  Unusually benevolent, these intimate photos of Marilyn Monroe expose the icon’s personality rather than her flesh.  In these photos we see a person, not a sex object; a human, not any kind of object at all.  And while I could go on and on about them, the important thing to know here is that these photos are different for several key reasons.

One is the all important matter of timing — and developing.  The two met at a party and forged a wonderful friendship that would last a decade.  As Arnold says, “We were both at the beginning of our careers, and I believe that neither of us knew precisely what we were doing.”

At the risk of more bad-pun-making, I’ll say what allowed the friendship to develop was the chemistry between the two.  While many dismiss Marilyn’s intelligence, Eve didn’t.  Both women knew what effect being a woman had on the world around her, and as Eve says, “We could make use of it, or we could let it be.”

Arnold would later say, “I didn’t want to be a ‘woman photographer’. That would limit me. I wanted to be a photographer who was a woman, with all the world open to my camera.” (And more recently confirms this belief, saying in a BBC interview, “No, I am a photographer. And you don’t say, a man photographer. So it seems likely that I am a photographer.”) This certainly puts the the two women on decidedly different paths, at least in appearance; yet it would stop neither’s success.

Arnold was the first woman to be nominated for membership in Magnum in 1951, and became a full member in 1957.  In 1995 she was made fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and elected Master Photographer, the world’s most prestigious photographic honor, by New York’s International Center of Photography; and in 2003, she was awarded an honorary O.B.E. (Order of the British Empire) by the British Government.

Looking at her photographs, you can see why.

Through her photos of celebrities, we see more than famous people, more than a time capsule of “us” or “society”.  Even with such famous & familiar faces, we see something — someone — new.

If the mark of a really good novel is that you think of the characters long after the book ends, then photographs of people ought to do the same. Eve Arnold’s photos do that.  Even if you think you know the people in the portraits.

And when you don’t know the people in the photographs?  You long to…

In fact, if I have one complaint about Arnold’s works, it’s that I can’t find out enough.  I know that photographers believe that a photo is worth a thousand words, but often they do not seem to document the details which I long to know…  A perpetual problem for me, I know; but still, why can’t I find out more about Charlotte Stribling aka ‘Fabulous’?  Or Girl Holding Head, Insane Asylum, Haiti 1954?

The titles are stark, in such contrast to such compassionate, deep, rich images.  Perhaps this is by design, so that I, we, move past words and labels into what seeing and feeling.  But I still want to know more about Charlotte and Girl Holding Head.  For now, all I can do is stare at the photos and wonder.

Along with her famous celebrity protraits, there are a few others we can learn more about. Such as the Veiled woman, Muscat, Oman 1969.  She, and others, can (presumably) be seen in Arnold’s 1969 film about Dubai, Behind the Veil. This film is said, not only to capture “a traditional Muslim society just as it begins to become modernized, but also the antagonism between Islamic and Western societies that has been the stuff of news stories throughout the first years of the 21st century.”

I bet it’s amazing.

If there’s one thing I’ve read which seems to sum up the brilliance of Arnold’s photos, it’s this quote from the artist herself: “If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.”

This is the gift of this talented photographer.  A gift no doubt noticed & appreciated by Monroe, allowing such a friendship, but by all who were before Arnold’s camera.  Indeed a gift she shares with all who see her photographs.

So now I’ll collect Eve Arnold works — likely in books, due to my modest means.  Not because she knew Marilyn; but because she knew how to take pictures of her.  And of everyone she photographed.

PS  Through June 14, the David Gallery exhibits All About Eve, the single largest collection of vintage and period Eve Arnold prints available for acquisition.  I wish I were close enough to see it.  If you go, I’m accepting souveniers.

Over the past few years, I’ve been working out a creative impulse that’s been haunting me for far longer than I can remember. See, I have this dream of traveling across the United States and photographing its aging amusement parks - and while digital photography is great for quantity and clarity, nothing captures the true atmosphere of a dying carnival like a Polaroid. Yeah, I’ve worked out some tricks in Photoshop to make regular photos look Polaroid-y, but there’s nothing like holding one in your hands.

Of course, I always knew that I’d have to get to these amusement parks before they were completely destroyed or rebuilt - which is why I visited Coney Island last year when its de- and reconstruction became inevitable. I spent a hot summer day holding hands with a nice girl, utterly destroying her at air hockey, and taking a great deal of Polaroids of odd details here and there. I did the same thing in Wildwood, NJ a little later that same summer, but while I was still plotting a path of creation for this upcoming summer, I got the bad news.

Polaroid is going to stop making their instant film. The end. My Spectra AF Instant Camera, instrument of so many eerie and beautiful images, would be rendered obsolete. My creative aspirations would be cut short by this older technology being phased out. According to the Polaroid website, the official last expiration date of all Spectra film is August 2009, while it has already stopped manufacture.

Of course, photography aficionados and creatives are aghast. Polaroid instant films have since skyrocketed in demand and are sold out at many traditional photography retailers - very ironic, considering that Polaroid was shutting down the factory because of poor market conditions. While Polaroid film was never cheap, averaging about $1 per shot, many retailers who still have the product in stock have doubled and tripled the usual prices, sensing an opportunity for profit. Photographers looking to stock up should note that the film has a relatively short expiration date as well.

Unless another company steps in with the magic formula to replace Polaroid’s Spectra film with a second party alternative, the future looks bleak. While Polaroid blames the ‘digital age’ for its misfortunes, as do many manufacturers, us romantics just aren’t enough to support the flagging corporation, even with online petitions. The digital age, in fact, brings us such observational gems as this, found over at a Switched.com article about the death of the Polaroid :

“Are all you people that far behind on photography. Come on now sence [sic] 1948 pictures have taken on a hole [sic] new meaning. “

… but it also brings us online petitions.

Sometime in the next year, I’ll ceremoniously shoot one final Polaroid of a broken ferris wheel, or a fortune telling machine with a peeling label, and I’ll sigh, lamenting the end of a beautiful collection.

As previously discussed, ‘TTV’ is a method of photography that produces interesting and organic in-camera aging effects without the hassle of Photoshop. I think that if something can be done organically, it’ll always take precedence over anything done digitally. Check out the previous post to get some more background on exactly what TTV is and what it might require.

So, you have a collection of working or semi-working Kodak Duaflex cameras, as well as your newfangled digital camera… how can you make neat things with them?

First of all, when you’re focusing your digital camera on the viewfinder of the analog camera, you’re going to want to eliminate all external light besides the light entering the analog camera’s lenses. Not only does this give you a clearer image, but it’ll prevent any glare on the viewfinder from obscuring your photograph. Because the distance between the two cameras is likely to be a foot or more, your setup is going to require some kind of lightproof conduit between the two cameras.

By way of example, I found an old, wooden card catalogue drawer that my local library was getting rid of. Through some fluke of fortune, my Kodak Duaflex fit perfectly into the drawer, and its lenses peeked right through the bottom slot, so this drawer served as the basis for my lightproof conduit between the Duaflex and the digital camera.

Next, I tested the automatic focusing range on my digital camera. This is the trickiest part - you want to allow your digital camera to be able to easily focus on the viewfinder of the second camera and be able to capture it cleanly. After a series of test photographs, I discovered that setting my Canon Powershot to macro mode and setting it back by about 14 inches would get me the clearest shot possible. Using that distance, I cut the drawer down to size, and wrapped any open parts (besides the very top and the small section with the lens) with black matboard and tape - all things that I had lying around the studio. At this point, the TTV device begins to take shape. The only thing left to do is seal the top!

When sealing the top, you want to leave a space just big enough to slip the camera’s optical zoom lens through. It’s pretty simple to trace around the lens and cut the resulting circle out of a piece of cardboard. Tape the top panel onto the TTV device and you’re ready to take some photos!

Of course, making this out of wood means that the device is very sturdy, but also pretty heavy. You can use any materials that you have around that can provide lightfastness when taped together - in fact, cereal boxes are favored for their neat designs, thickness, and ease of construction. Other devices use lengths of PVC pipe, and still others are made entirely our of fabric. As long as you have a clear shot between cameras with no intervening light, you’ve got yourself a TTV device. Of course, all of this was gibberish to me until I started looking at pictures, so hopefully the above images illustrate the process better than my clumsy words.

If nothing else, it’s a great use for some of the old cameras you’ve collected, especially when the cost of processing more obscure films is astronomical - if the cameras even function at all. Again, check out the small gallery here on CQ for some more images I took this week, and by all means, enjoy your cameras. They’re pretty, but they do stuff too.

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I’ve never been able to grasp photography as I have some of the other visual arts. Sure, I can paint and draw stuff, and I’ve even made a few short films, but capturing a perfect section of reality on a perfect section of film has always eluded me, even moreso when I had to start mixing chemicals to make it appear on a piece of paper. Over the course of my attendance at art school, I taught myself to approach these more difficult arts by embracing their imperfections and emphasizing them to a point of beauty. I spent an entire semester of metal shop by digging in the scrap bin and over-welding every joint I made, and by never polishing my printing plates properly, I managed to pull out some pretty intense textures. Well, I could call them ‘textures’ in critiques - in truth, they were simply the products of my greasy fingers.

So, I have a tendency to shy away from the pristine. I’d rather hear a scratchy LP that a sanitized, cleaned up copy of the same, and I’d rather see a photograph with muted colors and dust spots than a hi-resolution digital image. That’s just the way I roll - knee deep in anachronisms and before-my-timery. If I could hook up an old Corona typewriter up to my Mac Mini instead of this keyboard, I’d probably feel more at home. Also, if the Mac were made of bakelite and rusted metal cogs and I had to pedal or pump some kind of steampunk bellows to make it run. It’s this love of anachronism, paired with some interesting online art communities, that I fell in love with Through The Viewfinder, or TTV, photography.

Essentially, TTV is the art using a camera, which we shall call Camera One, to take a photograph of the viewfinder of Camera Two, while Camera Two is focused on the subject of your choice. Camera One, which takes the actual photograph, is usually a digital camera, whereas Camera Two is a regular ol’ analog camera. Camera Two does not take a photograph, but instead serves as a static conduit for the incoming image. This photograph that you end up taking is visually altered by the unusual systems of mirrors and lenses that the second camera uses. This usually results in various blurring, refracting and prism effects on the final image - and if you’re using an older camera, dusty specks. It’s automatic vintage, and you don’t even need to shove it up Photoshop’s nose.

Since you’re taking a photograph OF a viewfinder, it stands to reason that you’d want a large target to shoot at. We’re not talking about the LCD readout on the back of your digital - we’re looking for real glass-and-mirrors stuff. The most popular camera for this kind of photography is the Kodak Duaflex camera, a TLR (twin lens reflex) camera which features a large 2” x 2” viewfinder and an internal mirror. For anyone born after the last three decades, this is no palm-sized camera. It’s a big, chunky thing that you must hold below you and look down into in order to see what you’re taking a photo of. As a camera, it creates medium format negatives for the professional photographer. For TTV purposes, it has a relatively large viewfinder and captures a lot of detail. Also popular are the Starflex and Kinaflex cameras.

Kodak made four versions of their Duaflex, conveniently called ‘Duaflex’, ‘Duaflex II’, ‘Duaflex III’ and finally, 1957’s ‘Duaflex IV’. Please note that these cameras are neither called the ‘Dualflex’ nor the ‘Duraflex’, though using such terms on eBay will greatly increase your search results from sellers who do not bother to read the labeling on what they’re selling.

I started adding Duaflex cameras to my arsenal of visual devices, right next to the Polaroid Spectra. I’ve never been a camera collector before, mostly due to my uneasy relationship with the device and many unsatisfying photo courses, but my bandolier of cameras seems to be ever-growing. I always take pleasure in subverting devices and formulas to my own unexpected ends. For an investment of well under 20 bucks per camera, I’ve found myself with a full line of vintage Duaflex cameras, with more incoming and about to be subjected to various dissection experiments. Many eBay auctions seem to come with complete camera carrying cases and loads of flashbulbs, and even long-expired film to play with.

For a world going increasingly all-digital, it feels good to take another step backwards in the name of beauty. Check out the photos above, and in our Community Section, for examples of TTV photography, and stay tuned for Wednesday’s instructional about how to make your own TTV device.

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Photography buffs are most likely to have shelves of obscure and rare cameras, ones they used in their craft and ones they came by later. They probably have a number of flashes in their collection, and they could also have accumulated a bunch of film canisters, lenses, and filters — and then they begin to realize just how far a well-stocked photography collection can grow. Photography is one of the collectibles that benefits from having an enormous amount of accessorization. Looking back at the last 150 years of photography, cameras were quite complex compared to most household goods at the time, and before easy access to photolabs a photographer had to process her own film. The large amount of equipment a photographer needed to produce their work not only make them an effective photographer, but it also gives a photo buff more ways to round out a collection. Here’s some of the extras I’ve run across in my experience that can compliment a camera collection:

Manuals: These small booklets were often tucked in the camera case and dragged out into the wilderness, to children’s backyard birthday parties, and streetside for 4th of July parades, so only copies that were either well cared for or forgotten at home survived to today. Both the camera manufacturers and outside professionals published full-length books in addition to the camera manuals to help would-be photographic artists hone their craft on their particular model of camera.

Film Rolls: Disposeable antiques are rare antiques, because few people thought to save it. Film was often delivered in a light-tight, protective packaging that was disposed of either when loading the camera or when the film was developed. Thrifty photographers often saved the rolls and re-loaded the film themselves. Early cameras had a wider variety of film sizes than today, so it may be more difficult to augment a rare camera display with examples of its film.

Dealer Samples: film, photopaper, and developing chemicals were produced by numerous companies, each vying for the attention of photographers and photo labs. To promote their products, distributors offered samples of their wares, such as the photo paper sample booklet above. I also have a small sample of color-photo touch-up paints that consist of a thin layers of dry pigment on a small swatch of paper. These can be difficult to find, other than by accident, because they were far less useful than many of the other items I’m listing, so many ended up in the trash.

Packaging: Especially during the self-developing period, the various chemicals and paper products came in small, manageable batches. Of course, when the product was used up, the box was tossed away. These boxes, tubes, and canisters ended up at the dump, but a few managed to survive to today.

Additional tools: Light-meters, enlargers, loupes, darkroom lights, studio lamps, and anything else that helped a photographer in the darkroom or on a photoshoot can make a basic collection into a extrordinary one.

The image above is of a special kit designed for colorizing black-and-white photos in the early 20th century — I had no idea such a thing existed, until I saw it at an auction today. Photography became a medium of the masses a hundred years ago, so many of these types of items can show up at most any auction and garage sale. A sharp eye helps in grabbing up these small and rare parts of photographic history.