Large Format Photography

[buywisdom]

Someone a while back was telling me about a cross America trip between 50 and 150 years ago where large formate photos were taken to capture the West. I think the photos are in the Smithsonian or some other archive. My question is who were these people and where can I see these pictures.

Thanks

 

[Doylem]

Civil war? Mathew Brady??

 

[GoCubsGo]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/3A109a Safari/419.3)

I think I know who you're talking about but I'd have to look at my notes when I studied the history of photography. You could go to www.masters-of-photography.com and see if anything there jogs your memory.

 

[Macerture]

seems you may be speaking of Ansel Adams.. Certainly done with a view camera and definitely done for the US government US Parks Commission and it was almost all 'out west'.. not in the 150 year range though - more like 60 years.. Though, I don't really follow other's works much.

 

[art gardiner]

If you're talking about the FSA (Farmer Security Administration) of the 1930's it was part of the OWI - a movement started by the government to complement the "New Deal". Basically, they were trying to get people back to work, and producing crops to be able to feed America during, and after the depression. Roy Stryker was given the task of hiring photographers to help spin the effort by documenting the move west.

Some of the more notable photographers that came out of this time were:

Ben Shahn
Dorothea Lange
Paul Taylor
Walker Evans
Margaret Bourke-White

If you look into the Library of Congress' Web site, look under FSA/OWI, migrant workers, tenant farmers, and the dust bowl - you'll find much of what you're looking for.

HTH's

Art Gardiner

 

[Father Jack]

Alexander Gardiner .... after photographing aspects of the American civil war he took photos for American government surveys

 

[snberk103]

Could be almost anyone....

With that kind of time range, it could have been any number of people. Try going to the Smithsonian to see if anything there jogs a memory. I suspect there are dozens and dozens of projects that fit that description. Another name to add to the list might be Edward Curtis.

Good Luck

 

[fisher1]

Someone a while back was telling me about a cross America trip between 50 and 150 years ago where large formate photos were taken to capture the West. I think the photos are in the Smithsonian or some other archive. My question is who were these people and where can I see these pictures.

Thanks

Try wikipedia with 'large format photography'. There a number of photographers working for the national Geological Survey in the late 19th century, namely Timothy O'Sullivan and others who did what is called 'mammoth plate' photography, i.e. large contact prints made with cameras as big as 20x24 inches. This technology produced some of the finest prints ever seen in the history of photography and the originals can be seen in Washington at the NGS and Smithsonian. Other notable mammoth plate photographers are Carleton Watkins and W.H. Jackson. All this off the top of my head so there may be errors bit Wikipedia searches will put you in the picture so to speak...

 

[KidneyPi]

Someone a while back was telling me about a cross America trip between 50 and 150 years ago where large formate photos were taken to capture the West. I think the photos are in the Smithsonian or some other archive. My question is who were these people and where can I see these pictures.

Thanks

You're describing hundreds of photographers over a hundred year period. Most serious photography before the middle of the 20th century was large format.

Check out http://www.shorpy.com, the Hundred Year Old Photo Blog. Jack Delano, who worked largely in 4x5 Kodachrome might be interesting. He worked for the Farm Security Administration.

 

[yeroen]

You're describing hundreds of photographers over a hundred year period. Most serious photography before the middle of the 20th century was large format.

Check out http://www.shorpy.com, the Hundred Year Old Photo Blog. Jack Delano, who worked largely in 4x5 Kodachrome might be interesting. He worked for the Farm Security Administration.

That's a fantastic site.

It's sobering to see how large format can, in comparison, make the shots that come from your $5K digital SLR look like a pile of puke.