W.M. Hunt

 #somereallygoodones, #pressprints, #acme, #worthypictures, #roundtheclock, #americanworker 

This photograph is astonishing to me.  

It seems like an out of focus abstraction for an instant then it comes into relief.  This is America at work. “’Round the Clock Aircraft Production” is a World War II image credited to ACME, the most prominent news agency of the first half of the twentieth century.  It is very much part of the legacy of Arthur S. Siegel’s “Right of Assembly” photographs made in Chicago in the late 1930s, and it anticipates Martin Handford’s “Where’s Wally/Where’s Waldo” illustrations, from the 1980s.  The moment in time, the focus, the point of view, and the composition are all brilliant. 

This is — for me — a worthy photograph 

Worthy means “having or showing the qualities or abilities that merit recognition in a specified way.” 

It comes as some surprise that someone is actually reported to be the source of the adage, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”  In 1921, one Frederick R. Barnard was talking about advertising and made the statement about how much “one look” was worth.*1  He seems also have indicated that a Japanese philosopher may have said as much many, many years before, but his phrase stuck, and he was talking about photographs. 

People in the western world have the experience of looking at tens of thousands of photographs because they have seen them in newspapers and magazines.  That’s where we start to learn to see.  We know a lot because we have seen a lot.  We can tell the good ones from the bad ones.  In the thousands of these so-called “press prints," every so often a great one surfaces.  What makes for a great photograph?  The powerful way in which an image resonates with the person looking.  That’s what makes it great.  It is entirely subjective.

Here is little history that I pulled together from a range of sources online.  I’m not a historian so if I have inadvertently plagiarized someone else’s hard work, I apologize

Mid-nineteenth-century newspapers used photographs as the basis for illustrations that were halftone gravures. The first photomechanical reproduction of a photograph published in an American newspaper appeared in The Daily Graphic (New York 1873–89) on March 4, 1880. Forty years later (!) New York's Illustrated Daily News began to feature photographs routinely.  Change came quickly with lighter cameras and faster lenses and the advent of photojournalism.

This expanded further when newspapers started publishing photographs that initially “came over the wires,” that were transmitted over telephone or telegraph wires, sent by a photographer in the field back to the newspaper.  The invention of wire service telecommunication was a technical miracle of the early twentieth century. Western Union transmitted its first halftone photograph in 1921. 

Eventually, a photographic print would be produced that would get marked up, cropped and highlighted — in black ink or with white for contrast — and a caption would be pasted on the back side usually with the who, what, where, when, and, most importantly, which wire service to credit: Acme Newspictures, Associated Press, etc.

Sometimes the actual photographer’s name included.

This anonymity makes these “press photographs” or “press prints” a candidate for inclusion in the field of “vernacular photography.” The word “vernacular” is used like “ordinary” or “everyday” and “found,” but not amateur, especially in the case of these press prints, which were usually made by skilled and experienced photographers.  Their authorship got lost along the way, and most often, too, their context or meaning. Most of these images were intended as documentation or illustration. 

That history does not interest me.  I am fascinated that the print has survived its own unique history of having been archived and overlooked or neglected, then surfacing more than a half century later on eBay or in a flea market.  The “whos” etc., are lost.  We get to consider the image for itself, not for any information such as identities of persons in the pictures or the names or significances of the events.

I like images like this. The more enigmatic they are, the better.  You don’t need the wall labels.  Try to see and to respond. 

It is all very basic and worthwhile, this seeing business. 

*1 Source?

*2 dictionary.com

Parts of this essay came from “Worthy Pictures - Selected Newspaper Press Photographs from the W.M. Hunt Collection”, a part of “The Past is Prologue: Vernacular Photography, Photographica and the Road to Selfie Culture, exhibited at The ArtYard, Frenchtown, NY.  ©2019 

©2021

eallygoodones, #theunseeneye, #wmhunt, #collectiondancingbear, #collectionblindpirate, #greatphotographs, #howilookatphotographs, #photographsfromtheunconsicous, #collectingislikerunningaroundinathunderstormhopingyoullbehitbylightning, #aphotographsogooditmakesyoufartlighting, #photographschangedmylifetheygavemeone, #pressprints, #acme, #worthypictures, #roundtheclock, #americanworker