The Photographic Spirit Inspiring Photo Lives and Images by David Joseph Marcou
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The Photographic Spirit Inspiring Photo Lives and Images By David Joseph Marcou Photo by MAM David Joseph Marcou is a playwright, poet, journalist, documentary photographer, author, editor, and father/father-in-law. He’s published more than 50 of his own books, including his online version of the complete history of Picture Post Magazine, ‘All the Best’ (La Crosse History Unbound), and his 11-volume photobook series, ‘Human Character’. His works have twice been nominated for Pulitzer Prizes, and have been included in archives, museums, libraries, and galleries, around the world. In 2011-2012, two of his Presidential Campaign 2008 photos were included in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History’s group-exhibition, ‘Gift of the Artist’. In November 1981, he met and interviewed Bert Hardy and Mr. Hardy’s Korean War journalist-partner James Cameron in their respective homes in Brit- ain, and photographed Mr. Hardy and his dogs for the British National Portrait Gallery Photographs Collection then. The Centennial of Bert Hardy’s birth is May 19, 2013. From 1984-87, David worked and lived as a journalist in Seoul, Korea. He was a college writing and photography instructor from 1991-2002 in Wisconsin, and has held Migrant Mother Photo-Portrait, many journalism and related jobs during the last 35 years, having lived Nipomo, California, ca. 1935, by Dorothea Lange, in Missouri, Iowa, Britain, and South Korea, in addition to Wisconsin. Courtesy of US Library of Congress. David Joseph Marcou currently lives in western Wisconsin. The Photographic Spirit: Inspiring Photo Lives and Images – Researched, Written, and Revised by David Joseph Marcou – Copyright©2011-2013+, David Joseph Marcou. First Paperback Edition Published by DigiCopy of La Crosse in February 2013; First Online Publication by the La Crosse Public Library Archives in Early 2013. Dedicated to the Memory of Margaret Donndelinger, Bert Hardy, James Cameron, and DJM-Ancestor/17th- Century Explorer Louis Joliet, With Thanks to All Photographers, Archivists, Curators, Technicians, Subjects, Caregivers, Publishers and Readers Who Inspire Us, And to Our Extended Family and Friends, Especially My Parents, and MAM and His Wife, for Sharing Good Photos and Many Stories About Good Photos and Their Photographers. “If we would only remember the needs of our past, perhaps we could anticipate those of our future.” – Gordon Parks. “That is why I believe that art is so much more significant than either economics or philosophy. It is the direct measure of man's spiritual vision.” – Herbert Read. Preface by David J. Marcou*: “What Matters Most in Good Photography Is the Human Spirit” -- Carson, the butler in Masterpiece Theater's “Downton Abbey,” tells Lady Mary -- after Matthew, whom she most wants to marry, walks away from her, and she needs a boost – “At least, you have spirit. In the end, it's the only thing that matters.” Something similar can be said about light-writing, or photography, for light-writing depends on the human spirit – via inspirations, among a few key ingredients. And since I was asked in 2010 by the Wisconsin Historical Society, to name my photo-inspirations, and only mentioned a few then, I've expanded the list here, for good reasons. One of my former teachers (see “Charmed Light”) believes in the Quality of Light. She assigned that topic regularly to her photojournalism students. If a photographer doesn't have light to work with, he or she can't readily show the integral spirit of his or her subject. And to be able to see well with light, and be inspired by another person's seeing via a camera, depends on photo inspirations – or shared vision. Light (and light-writing) loves to travel – hence, its great speed. Most humans love travel, too. To be influenced by human lives and “travels” is, here, to be influenced by photography, at key times. After I deal here, with the specific lives of selected photographers who have influenced my photography (and writing) and others', too, my concluding essay is dedicated to the spirit of light-writers generally, and their overall influences on many people. Some of my essays deal with photographers I have never known personally, but whose works have influenced me strongly; other essays deal with photographers I've personally known, and, perhaps, have written about in the past. Now, these two types of essays are not written methodically, but depend more for their meanings on how I personally intuit each photographer's work needs to be described, so their influences on us can be inferred and/or read more fully. I hope this book shows how light-writing inspires all peoples, even beyond the more-or-less decisive life-moment it first records, via a positive, traveling, somehow fathomable spirit, as we remember our past, know our present, and imagine/intuit our future, and, thus, via light transfixed in visual patterns, and transmitted to us, via: The Photographic Spirit. – David J. Marcou, February 2011-February 2013. *All essays in this book have been researched and written by David Joseph Marcou. MAM and his wife have the main claim to creational-inspiration for this book. “Photography's Founding Fathers: Niepce, Daguerre, and Fox-Talbot” -- Niepce – The chemical and aesthetic approaches to the invention of photography evolved during many centuries, including near the end of the 18th century, when the English proto-photographers Elizabeth Fulhame and Thomas Wedgwood 1 experimented with chemicals, and in Wedgwood's case especially, attempted (unsuccessfully) to fix camera obscura images. before photography's invention. Then, in the 1790s, Joseph Nicephore Niepce began the experiments leading to what he would call “heliographie”. It was his goal then, not to investigate nature scientifically or to create multiple designs, but rather to do multiple reproductions of landscape views via the camera obscura, the device to copy nature used by painters previously, for many years. Although Francois Arago claimed in 1839 that JAC Charles had demonstrated imaging with silver salts to the Parisian scientific public, ca. 1800, Niepce's work proceeded independently of Parisian scientific circles. After year of trials and experiments, Niepce managed to copy an engraving in 1822 and made, in 1824, a point de vue – a positive (but difficult to view) image made in the camera obscura. (He had abandoned attempts to reproduce images with silver salts on paper, because he believed more solid and reflective surfaces and chemicals needed to be used.) Although accounts of his earliest experiments have not survived, Niepce's letters indicate the images he created were formed by the unique use of a thin varnish of the resinous asphalt bitumen of Judea, dissolved in oil of lavender, on bases of stone and glass. He later applied the same process to pewter. In a letter of September 1824, he declared to his brother that this stage signaled his success. Niepce and Daguerre – Also in 1824, Louis Jacque Mande Daguerre borrowed a laboratory to investigate the possibility of fixing images by sunlight. It's believed his earliest experiments involved phosphorous and silver compounds. Not having progressed very far, he learned of the experiments of Niepce. Daguerre initiated first contact, and the two men met in Paris in 1827, after which Niepce traveled to England to visit his brother Charles. When he arrived in England, Niepce found his brother in very bad health, so they abandoned some of their plans to work on joint projects. Joseph, though, decided to try his luck with the Royal Society, regarding his heliographie process. He was not well-received by the Society itself, due to its “disarray,” at the time. Joseph's work was well-received, though, by an individual member of the Royal Society, Francis Bauer, who made available to the British a photo-plate made by Niepce, the earliest surviving example of a photographic plate made in a camera obscura. “View from the Study Window” is a direct-positive, laterally-reversed image Niepce had made the previous summer, with an exposure of probably 2-3 days. It was in England, that Niepce was also forced to provide a name for his process, which he determined could be called “heliographie”. By 1829, Niepce had entered into a partnership with Daguerre that would lead directly to the invention and perfection of the daguerreotype in the 1830s. Niepce had made an important step forward, though, via his experiments with silver iodide as a light-sensitive compound, but he died suddenly in 1833 and was succeeded by his son Isidore in the partnership with Daguerre. The further positive steps needed to perfect the daguerreotype process remain generally unknown, but Daguerre's own crucial discovery of mercury vapor as a means of developing the latent images, and salt as a fixer, likely took place, ca. 1835. In any case, the Curator of Photographs for the American National Portrait Gallery, Ann Shumard, has said no photographic technique developed throughout history can rival the detail of a daguerreotype, which one 19th-century writer called “the mirror with a a memory.” In fact, when Daguerre first introduced the images to the public, critics were incredulous, believing instead that they had to be remarkably fine engravings. Daguerre responded by showing them the pictures with a magnifying glass, so the doubters could see details invisible to the naked eye. (p. 43, “The President's Photographer: Fifty Years inside the Oval Office,” by John Bredar with a Foreword by Pete Souza, Reagan and Obama Official White House Photographer.) Fox-Talbot – 2 At Lacock, England, Henry Fox-Talbot had been conducting his own imaging experiments, which would rival Daguerre's in 1839. Coming to his experiments relatively late, Talbot did achieve his desired results relatively quickly. He began his attempts at photography in 1834, and attained stabilized images fairly soon, but set aside his research for more pressing concerns in optics, biblical studies, and calculus.