M.1.1 Seeking Subterranean Sun: Magnesium Flash and the Underground in 19^th-Century Photography

• Brittany N. Ellis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

How does one photograph darkness? This was the technical and philosophical question facing 19th-century photographers interested in working in conditions where natural light was limited or absent. Photographers experimented with electricity, pyrotechnics, and even the bioluminescence of fireflies, but magnesium—a material only isolated at the beginning of the century—quickly became the preferred light source. Professional and amateur photographers took up the material with gusto, using it in studios as a substitute for natural light, but, more notably, employing it to make photographs in fundamentally sunless spaces, specifically caves, tombs, and mines. The ability to illuminate these spaces led to a proliferation of images of the underground, which circulated in exhibitions and lectures, advertisements, commercial sets and albums, and the photographic press.

This paper historicizes magnesium flash as an essential technology in the development of photography. The first section of the paper treats the development of magnesium as a light source, focusing on the material’s properties which made it popular but also on the unique role of photographic practitioners, societies, and publications in its refinement and eventual industrialized production. Excavating magnesium’s material history still deeper, the second section of the paper discusses its particular application to subterranean photography. Case studies show how the illumination of underground spaces for the sake of photography was inextricably connected to their intensified exploration and commercialization. Finally, the last section of the paper considers what visions of the underground these images produced and how they may relate to theories of the subterranean developing in the 19th century. Bringing into conversation Rosalind Williams’ Notes on the Underground and Rosalind Krauss’s theorization of light as a material and spiritual agent, I suggest magnesium’s illumination of these scenes was fundamental not only to the expansion of the photographic field but also to Euro-American reorientations to subterranean space.

keywords: photography, flash, magnesium, 19^th century, underground

M.1.2 Cameras and Criticism

• Josh Ellenbogen, University of Pittsburgh

The claim that the material components of photographic technology incorporate and mobilize regimes of aesthetics and conventions of representation has a recognized standing in scholarly discussion today. At the same time, the idea has also played a vital role historically, animating the thinking of prominent commentators on the medium in the twentieth century. In this talk, I propose to examine an especially crucial manifestation of the idea: the way it functioned in the emergence of photo-criticism as an established genre of writing, particularly in the vicinity of the journal Aperture. In the 1950s and 60s, Aperture represented the primary institutional venue for photo-criticism when this literary form underwent its efflorescence, playing host to foundational writers on photography from Minor White to Henry Holmes Smith. Among the various commitments that drove along Aperture’s critical agenda, one centered on the claim that the material parameters within which photography operated, everything from lens design to photographic emulsions, incorporated and derived from historically specific ideologies and visual standards, ones that ultimately emerged from a broader universe of practices moored in painting and drawing. By taking such a position, this body of writing sought to establish what emerged as one of its primary commitments: the necessity for contemporary practitioners to interrogate, scrutinize, and cultivate the connections of their medium with the traditions of painting, and thereby ensure that photography become what White and Smith dubbed “a fully articulate visual language.” Partly because of the connections between the media enshrined in photography’s material equipment, “any injunction not to be influenced by the arts of painting and drawing was likely to be a doctrine less of wisdom than of despair.” This position ultimately underwrote important features of Aperture’s approach to “visual language”—above all, the nature of photographic traditions, and the photographic practices in the contemporary world that could develop them.

M.1.3 Military Mobilization to Family Photography: The Beginnings of Soviet Domestic Cameras and Amateur Photography

• Jennifer Goetz, Columbia University

In the decade before World War II, the Soviet Union invested in a domestic camera industry, primarily through veteran optical factories in Leningrad and a newly organized labor commune in Kharkiv. The former, administered by the Ministry of Armaments, produced a wide array of models, while the latter, administered by the NKVD, produced only one, a copy of the German Leica II, named the “FED.” This essay foregrounds the history of these two production centers to argue that Stalinist military mobilization was a primary factor not only in the development of the Soviet domestic camera industry, but also in the evolution of family photography. Drawing on archival documents from both the Leningrad and Kharkiv factories, I trace the parallel development of each to demonstrate the entangled relationship between Stalinist military mobilization, camera production, and the emergence of mass amateur photography in the Soviet Union. Factory archives stress the orientation of the optical-mechanical industry towards the Soviet Union’s perceived defense needs, even as they continued to produce cameras used by the civilian, amateur population. In a state-administered, non-capitalist context, economic and ideological motivations existed at times in tension, particularly as the FED factory was tied to a juvenile labor commune.

This paper then briefly traces the cameras’ journey from development and production to the consumer, in particular noting the intensifying connections between new camera technology and amateur photography during World War II. Following the war, amateur cameras became widely accessible to the civilian population, thanks, in part, to the infrastructure and technology developed as part of the mobilization push.

keywords: Soviet, amateur, camera, photography, Stalinism

M.1.4 Picture Ahead and Camera Ready: Kodak Picture Spot Signs as Aesthetic, Corporate, and Technological Tools

• Leslie K. Brown, Independent

This presentation will explore technological issues related to Kodak Picture Spots—markers placed into the touristic landscape that show and tell us where and how to take photographs—and consider these signs as photographic tools. Picture Spots are locative, but also informative; moreover, they are designed to work with and support cameras and other equipment. Kodak first installed these signs into the American landscape as a part of a roadside advertising campaign in the 1920s, later expanding them into Disney Parks, World’s Fairs, and other built environments.

While the initial iterations of the Picture Spots included only words (“Picture Ahead: Kodak as you go”), later examples incorporated exposure settings and film information as well as sample photographs. Just like cameras and earlier viewing accoutrements, these material culture devices were also “seeing machines,” encouraging one to scout out, pre-visualize, and then capture the perfect vista. The signs became mediated means by which one acquired a commercially-approved picture and, by extension, a more satisfied customer.

When standing and shooting at these picture-taking signs, amateur practitioners displayed and promoted “conspicuous photography,” effectively becoming other image-gathering “devices.” Related to conspicuous consumption, and with a heritage going back to the Picturesque era, this is a set of photographic expectations, actions, and entities tied to corporate culture and technology, which are observed, enacted, and then reified in a vernacular setting. Indeed, early Disney signs boasted the silhouette of a photographer with a camera up to his face, along with Kodak’s trademarked colors and paper curl. Part and parcel of a larger photographic industry, these signs were written about and promoted in dealer-only publications. In the late 1960s, generic versions were offered for $5 each, whereby merchants were encouraged to create their own photographic trails. In effect, Kodak proposed that businesses, which already stocked and used their products, enter the “franchising of place,” with the goal to draw tourists from the road and ply them with pictures.

To conclude, this presentation will review how such “photo opps” have inspired creative, critical, and even institutional responses, suggesting just how ubiquitous this visual training and aesthetic imitation has become.

keywords: photography, visual culture, material culture, cameras, Kodak