We’re getting ready to start our Photography Workshops. The first one, in June, is on the different techniques of drawing by using light as applied by artists before the invention of photography. I’ve given this particular workshop many times for the conservators but now we’re going to include this in a new series for the general public.

Last year my wife France and I got a feeling for the interest in these pre-photographic techniques by teaching shadow-traced silhouette making at the f295 conference in Pittsburgh. Nearly everyone who took the workshop was an artist/teacher, including Dan Estabrook, Martha Madigan and Jessica Ferguson. It was probably the most fun we’ve ever had teaching a process and the class really enjoyed themselves. I was so surprised that we could coax photographers into a drawing workshop.

We got the physionotrace out last night and made some profiles by candle light up in our studio. It’s really the best way to experience how it was used, but it’s really difficult to document with a camera.

A physionotrace is an apparatus invented in the 18^th century and used for “taking” profiles and silhouettes. It’s tied to a chair and the sitters shadow is cast onto an oiled paper screen by a single light. The operator traces the shadow with a stylus that’s connected to a pantograph. As the virtual shadow image is traced, the profile of the sitter is drawn in miniature simultaneously on a piece of paper. The entire sitting lasts about ten seconds.

People always ask how I came to make the one we use for workshops. I really wanted to use one and so I had asked around to see if anyone had ever seen a complete working example of a physionotrace, but found no leads. The only documentation I could find was the period drawing by Chretien and the engraving by Halloway. Finally I discovered a poor reproduction of an 1810 era physionotrace in a book on American Silhouettes published in the 1920s. The device was incomplete, didn’t have the pantograph, but the frame seemed like a good solid design. So, I built mine based on the frame in that book and made a pantograph in the same proportions. It worked the first time we used it, though I have to admit, mastering the technique is tricky. Since then, I’ve found two more designs that are completely different.  I’ll make working reproductions of them too in a few years.

For more on the Photo Workshops, Visit  photo-workshops

…through a look at vintage Kodak ads from the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s

Part One

Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is one of the most famous American novels of the 19^th century. First published in 1884, the book has never been out of print. The character of Huck Finn has appeared in over 40 films starting with the 1917 version of TOM SAWYER, and was most notably played by Mickey Rooney and Eddie Hodges in THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN (1939 and 1960 respectively). But the first film version of HUCKLEBERRY FINN (1920), after its initial released, passed into film history and with the advent of talking pictures in the late 1920’s would be forgotten and almost lost forever.

Lobby Card for HUCKLEBERRY FINN (1920)

William Desmond Taylor (1872 – 1922) who was under contract to Famous Players-Lasky (which would later take the name of its distribution company of Paramount Pictures) had directed TOM SAWYER (1917) starring Jack Pickford and THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (1918). So Taylor was the logical choice to direct HUCKLEBERRY FINN. Lewis Sargent as Huck started his film career only a few years before with Fox Films, in ALADIN AND HIS WONDERFUL LAMP. An actor with a lot of presence and charm, Sargent was a perfect Huck Finn. Wanting to be as faithful to the novel as possible, Taylor went on location to Mississippi to shoot the film. Upon its release in February of 1920, HUCKLEBERRY FINN was both a critical and commercial hit.

Less than two years after finishing HUCKLEBERRY FINN, William Desmond Taylor was dead. His body was discovered lying on the floor of his living room by his butler on the morning of February 2, 1922 with a bullet wound in the back. A major investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department followed, but to this day the murder remains unsolved. Like most people who worked in silent film his body of work is fragmentary at best. Taylor directed 64 films in the nine years he was working in Hollywood. As of this writing only 18 are known to exist. In Part Two of the blog on the 1920 HUCKLEBERRY FINN, I will talk about the current George Eastman House restoration of the film.

The restored HUCKLEBERRY FINN will have its premiere at The Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House on the evening of May 9^th as part of The 360/365 George Eastman House Film Festival.