JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2795

Sometimes “surprises” are quick to come to recognition, and sometimes they are slow, and sometimes they do a fast-creep into existence. The following surprise is a combination of the three—it may not have developed into the “something” I thought it nearly was, or is, but given the initial shock in seeing them, there probably is a “there”, there.

I’m speaking of the illustrations for what is mostly a benign work, Georgia, its Resources, Condition and Opportunities, Preliminary Pamphlet, which on the face of it has very high potential for boredom and nothingness. It was published though in Atlanta in 1898, which gives it some hope—it also had in a sub-sub-heading that it was sponsored by the “Georgia Immigration and Investment Bureau”, which breathes some life into the thing.

On opening the pamphlet immediately gave up its prize—photographs. And this was the first photo I saw:

Now I know this is supposed to be a propaganda piece for the state to attract money and people to come to Georgia, showing the abundances and state of agriculture as they were in 1898, which should have put a bright coat of shining sheen over whatever was to be pictured–but a photo like this had a very photo documentary effect, far more so than the photographer or editor ever intended it to be. It was a pride photo back in 1898, not an unblinking-photo-eye.

But the mystery is also the insight, something for us to consider 121 years into the future of these scenes which displayed what was supposed to be the Happy Normal. So the “Square Mile of Peaches” photo showing abundance seems to have the feel of an abundant silent crisis receding in its own mist, sinking into the short horizon.

And this:

What I wonder was the message in showing the formal but informal arrangement of the white and black people working together picking pears? “Integrated” is certainly not the word to use here—no doubt it was more like an agreement to perform some sort of work where the races were in close proximity with all race rules observed and maintained.

There were many photos lie this in the pamphlet—of the thirty or so in the pamphlet only these three emerge to tell a story differentiated from the work they illustrated.

They are Found-Semi-Social-Documentary images, sort of…I’m not sure, really what they are. They were certainly very different from what I expected, and in memory remind me a little of Annan, Mayhew, Hines, Riis, Parks, and Lange, but only by accident. They reveal something that is beyond the quickly posed environment.

They are a little mysterious in interpretation—and they were certainly a surprise.

 

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

This slightly altered detail is from the central perspective of a photo of workers completing the base for a 10 million cubic foot gas tank¹ in Chicago, and appeared in the Scientific American on 23 January 1920. It is a great photo of the beginnings of a considerable project, and the full image (below) stands on its own as a visual accommodation of a segmented space soon to be occupied by something enormous. That said, the guy in the middle of it all caught my attention in all of this. Was he a standard laborer out of position amidst the 200-odd other people there as the shot was being made, wondering where it was he was supposed to be? Or was that a foreman, or somebody else with the freedom to walk around as the great mass fell into position to take care of the job at hand? 

Notes

1. It was a big tank: 10,000,000 cu ft is about 75,000,000 gallons, weighing in at about half-a-billion pounds, which is a lot. By spacing out the guys on the perimeter of the base I make it that the circumference of the structure was about 400′.