Strange Days, Dangerous Nights

Rating:
Summary: Nothing to do with the Speed Graphic camera
Review: I bought this book on prepurchase with the idea that it would largely concern itself with the Speed Graphic camera. I grew up in New York and met Weegee, and other famous users of the old Graphic (and a few of its subjects too: need I drop any names when two initials suffice: MM!) and always wanted to use one, but by the time i was old enough to buy a real camera the Nikon F had replaced the Graphics completely.

It's a book on fifties era Minneapolis, "as seen through" the Speed Graphic, not on the camera itself. I have no beef with Minneapolis, but unless you live there, who else would care?

I donated it to the library here in New Jersey. The photos are excellent, if you want to know what happened in Minneapolis. Maybe someone does.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting photos from non-media town , poor camera detail
Review: This is a collection of photos from a newspaper not in New York or Los Angeles, and so provide an interesting change of pace from books by Sante and Jack Huddleston which cover the sordid side of this era in those over-covered towns.

The title did, however, lead me to expect more on the cameras themselves. In this regard it's a disappointment. I had hoped for reasonable coverage of the cameras themselves and perhaps even a gentle nudge to the reader to go out, rustle up an old Anniversary or Pacemaker Graphic, and experience firsthand the Speed Graphic era-which is not exactly over, as thousands are still in use in portrait studios, photo schools, and hobby users' homes and on foot worldwide. Most are used as view cameras on a tripod, rather than press cameras with working rangefinders and flash (sadly, Star Wars idiots have destroyed most of the flashguns to make lightsabers,although the recent release of a commercial model with a very authentic flashgun handle offers hope that one might get the chrome parts and assemble an electronic flash with a working solenoid shutter release). Often the focal plane shutters of Speed Graphics (the Crown was shutterless)have been crudely ripped out.

Still they were made in such quantities that a working Graphic with Graflok back,especially in the smaller sizes, is not that hard to find, and most repairs can be done by hobbyists with the opriginal manuals reprinted by Ed Romley and others. Rollfilm backs can be had, as can Polaroid backs, if one does not want to use sheet film. Other alternatives for hobbyists include glass plates (commercial or homemade) or photo paper, which can be reversal processed to 10 to 25 ASA making handheld use in daylight feasible.



Rating:
Summary: GRIST FOR THE DAILY NEWSPAPER MILL
Review: This book takes a wonderful look at the reportage of daily life in a small market daily newspaper before the advent of television, 35mm cameras and yuppified editors with abyssmally sophisticated news judgements. It speaks to the days when a newspaper was the important disseminator of news to the folks of post WW II America, the interpreter of what we were. The everyday stuff, ingeniusly putting their personal stamps on mundane photo assignments, illustrating everyday life, blood and gore, bad guys and good guys--the stuff the everyday Jane and Joe wanted to look at. Probably still do.

This book takes a different view from those historical photographic compilations of the NY Times, or LA Times or the Chicago Tribune, even AP. The photogs at St Paul did not get a chance to shoot the Hindenburg; but they did have plenty of chances to shoot snow storms, floods, and local queens of every sort. They did it with aplomb, and Larry Millett does a wonderful job writing about it, and an even better job of photo editing.

As a current photographer at the St PaulPioneer Press; I am blown away by the work of these guys. Really. I just never knew what these guys did on a daily basis--now I do, and I respect my profession even more.


Rating:
Summary: Great photography
Review: This is an outstanding look at Photo journalism in the 40s, 50s and 60s.There is a story for each of the photos. The book is not so much about the Speed Graphic camera its self but about the era in which the Speed Graphic camera was used from the 1940's to the 1960's at a small town newspaper. The are some amazing crime scene photos that you just dont see in newspapers today.