faces out of time 006

From Library of Congress:

• Date Created/Published: [between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900]
• Medium: 1 photomechanical print : photochrom, color.
• Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
• Title from the Detroit Publishing Co., catalogue J foreign section. Detroit, Mich. : Detroit Photographic Company, 1905.

Wikipedia – Photochrom (also called the Aäc process) prints are colorized images produced from black-and-white photographic negatives via the direct photographic transfer of a negative onto lithographic printing plates. The process is properly considered a photographic variant of chromolithography, a broader term referring to color lithography in general.

Random travel images 001

Dead wood, probably Utah Juniper, Canyonlands National Park, 2007.

faces out of time 005

From Wikipedia:

In the summer of 1936, while still working for the FSA, Walker Evans and writer James Agee were sent by Fortune magazine on assignment to Hale County, Alabama, for a story the magazine subsequently opted not to run. In 1941, Evans’s photographs and Agee’s text detailing the duo’s stay with three white tenant families in southern Alabama during the Great Depression were published as the groundbreaking book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Its detailed account of three farming families paints a deeply moving portrait of rural poverty. Noting a similarity to the Beals’ book, the critic Janet Malcolm, in her 1980 book Diana & Nikon: Essays on the Aesthetic of Photography, has pointed out the contradiction between a kind of anguished dissonance in Agee’s prose and the quiet, magisterial beauty of Evans’s photographs of sharecroppers.

The three families headed by Bud Fields, Floyd Burroughs and Frank Tingle, lived in the Hale County town of Akron, Alabama, and the owners of the land on which the families worked told them that Evans and Agee were “Soviet agents,” although Allie Mae Burroughs, Floyd’s wife, recalled during later interviews her discounting that information. Evans’s photographs of the families made them icons of Depression-Era misery and poverty. In September 2005, Fortune revisited Hale County and the descendants of the three families for its 75th anniversary issue.  Charles Burroughs, who was four years old when Evans and Agee visited the family, was “still angry” at them for not even sending the family a copy of the book; the son of Floyd Burroughs was also reportedly angry because the family was “cast in a light that they couldn’t do any better, that they were doomed, ignorant”.

From Library of Congress:

• Creator(s): Evans, Walker, 1903-1975, photographer
• Date Created/Published: [1935 or 1936]
• Summary: Allie Mae Burroughs, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing front.
• U.S. Resettlement Administration photographs.

Commentary

I learned today that a mark that I’ve had since childhood is actually considered to be a traumatic or accidental tattoo.  It’s on my knee and is the result of getting stabbed with a sharp pencil, and that’s the only way I’d ever get a tattoo – accidentally.

Another example of such accidental tattoos is the result of a deliberate or accidental stabbing with a pencil or pen, leaving graphite or ink beneath the skin. (Wikipedia)

I think Karen and I notice people with tattoos more when we travel, probably simply because we are around more people then.

We see all kinds of tattoos, from very fancy, intricate ones to simple but pretty tats; from poorly done art to art that is downright crude — and, sometimes, rude; from beautiful art on beautiful bodies to art that’s not so beautiful on not so beautiful bods – a wide variety of tats on a wide variety of people.

The closest I ever came to getting a tattoo was when I was in boot camp.  We had a one day liberty in town and the bus from the base dropped us off in an area that had tattoo parlors.  I was tempted, but spent my limited money on going to the San Diego Zoo and Sea World, instead.  Very adventuresome young swabbie, wasn’t  I?

Looking back at it, though, among the sailors I knew, there were actually very few that got tattoos.  There were a few here and there, but very few among those of us that worked in nuclear power.

While I do find some of the art fascinating, I really am not a fan of tattoos.   I think it’s probably because I have a hard time understanding why one would want to permanently mark up their body, not matter how pretty the “art” is – and most of it doesn’t seem to age well from what I can tell.

For some over-the-top tattoos, we’ve wondered if the person wearing them considered the potential impact that their art will have on future job prospects.  We decided probably not, if I recall correctly.

Perception is not necessarily reality and tattoos are not necessarily the person wearing the tattoos.

However, do they affect the way that the person with tattoos is viewed?

Image is of Lucky Diamond Rich, the most tattooed man in the world.

faces out of time 004

New York City.

In album prepared by Detroit Photographic Co. to use as a catalog in its office.

Detroit Publishing Company Photograph Collection; Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Reference page for image is located here.

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Digitally enhanced 2012 for clarity and to correct fading, Mike Goad.

Tawaiho, the Maori king of New Zealand, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing slightly left.

From Wikipedia:

Tā moko is the permanent body and face marking by Māori,the indigenous people of New Zealand. Traditionally it is distinct from tattoo and tatau in that the skin was carved by uhi (chisels) rather than punctured. This left the skin with grooves, rather than a smooth surface.

Captain Cook wrote in 1769:

The marks in general are spirals drawn with great nicety and even elegance. One side corresponds with the other. The marks on the body resemble foliage in old chased ornaments, convolutions of filigree work, but in these they have such a luxury of forms that of a hundred which at first appeared exactly the same no two were formed alike on close examination.

The Tohunga tā moko (or tattooists) were considered tapu, or exceptionally inviolable and sacred.

Image information:

US Library of Congress dates the image between ca. 1900 and 1923.

National Library of Australia dates the image 1894; from Album of the Boileau family’s voyage from England to Australia in 1894-1895.

Image is from Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Record page for this image: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/94505029/

Print showing Russian soldiers on river-bank, preparing to cross river at Stalingrad during World War II.

Artist: Dmitrievskiĭ, V. K.

Created: abt. 1958

Library of Congress Collection: Miscellaneous Items in High Demand

This print and additional information may be found here at the Library of Congress.

Scenes in an auto trailer camp near Dania, Florida, where 200 cars are encamped. This is one of the better trailer camps in Florida. The rates are $5.00 a week, including electricity.

The photos were taken by Resettlement Administration staff photographer Arthur Rothstein in January 1937. They are in the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives collection at the Library of Congress.

This photo and additional information may be found here at the Library of Congress.