Smile for the Camera!

 It's a shape that was once instantly recognizable.

Everyone knew what a camera looked like, even in silhouette. 
It was a large box with lens and shutter bulb, tripod legs, 
and came with a fabric cape to drape over the photographer.

Okay, maybe some dogs were a little confused.
That's a retriever thing.

A photographer was often like a theater director
commanding actors on a stage as they
prepared both the camera and the subjects. 
Everything had to be ready for just the right moment
when faces gleamed with a winning smile.

There were costumes to freshen up
and makeup to arrange.
The choice of camera placement 
might record a full figure or move in for a closeup.
Adjusting its angle for shadows and light 
accentuated features or disguised blemishes.
A good photographer considered themselves
more than just a craftsperson
but an artist too. 

Today I present a new genre of postcards
that I have started to collect,
art depicting early cameras and photographers.

Chez le photographe

                                            La mise au point est parfaite,

                                            Mais baissez un peu la tétem

                                            Ramenez sur vos bras nus

                                            Ce trop large pli de la manche,

                                            Prenez votre air du dimanche,

                                            Et, morbleu ! ne bougeons plus. 

At the photographer's

                                            The focus is perfect,

                                            But lower your head a little

                                            Bring back over your bare arms

                                            That overly wide fold of your sleeve,

                                            Put on your Sunday air,

                                            And, gadzooks! Let's not move.

This postcard shows a flamboyant photographer catching the attention of a little girl who poses for his camera. It was produced as number 3 in a series of humorous postcards by publisher A.D. of Nantes, Frances. The photographer looks professional enough but it looks like his camera is not pointed correctly. Nantes is a port city situated on the Loire River in the Upper Brittany region of western France. The postmarks have a date of 2 January 1908 and the card was sent to a young lady in Belgium.

* * *

My first image of a hooded photographer and a dog was cropped from a picture postcard showing a larger family group posing for a camera. It is a silhouette, a paper art form that was once a very popular kind of portraiture back in the time before photography. A talented artist used scissors to carefully cut a recognizable outline of a person from black paper. This image was made by a German artist Anna Schirmer (1852–1922) who was born in Stuttgart. This card was part of a series published by A. Ackermann's Kunstverlag of  München. The postmark is also  from Stuttgart with a postmark of 7 June 1910.

* * *

The third postcard is a colorful picture of a photographer preparing to take a photo of a young child in a home surrounded by a large family all dressed in rustic folk costumes. The girl looks directly at us as her mother arranges her head scarf.  The back of the postcard gives the title: 

Vesnický Fotograf ~ Village Photographer
from a collection entitled
"Obrazy z Chodska" ~ Pictures from Chodska. 

The artist was Jaroslav Špillar (11 October 1869 – 20 November 1917) a Czech artist who specialized in painting the Chodové ("Rangers"). This is a region in what was once western Bohemia, and now in the Czech Republic, where the Chods, an Eastern European ethnic group live. They speak the Chod dialect, a variation of Czech, and still maintain a strong sense of identity connected to the Bohemian Forest and their traditional role as defenders of the western Bohemian borderland.

This card was sent sometime after World War I as it has a Czechoslovakian postage stamp. The postmark is from Přeštice, a town in the Plzeň Region of the Czech Republic near the Chod people's homeland. The date is unclear but the 1920s is a fair estimate of date. The sender's message is in Czech, I believe.

* * *

I'll finish this short medley of cameras and photographers
with a picture of the photographer
who asked me to smile
more than a few hundred times.
He is my dad, Russ Brubaker,
seen here with his eye behind
a single lens reflex camera.
 

My dad had a lifelong passion for photography and
collected hundreds of vintage cameras of all kinds
and in different film formats.
He also produced countless prints
which he developed himself
in various dark rooms set up in our many homes.

My mom likely took this photo of him
with a modern digital camera and it is originally a color print.
But after scanning it to include in my bog post this week
I decided to use a software feature that transforms
a modern image into a vintage sepia tone style, 
in this case a platinum print from the early 20th century.

My earliest memories of my dad
are of him pointing a camera at me asking me to smile.
And I still do whenever I see one of his photos.  
Next week would have been his 96th birthday.

For other pictures of Russ behind a camera
check out my previous stories:
The Eye Behind the Camera and Everything In Focus

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where you never know who might be behind the camera.

(Note: This woman is behind a windup cine camera
that makes a movie, not a still picture.)