Looking at Photographs vs. Looking into Photographs

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Visual superpowers are attainable! With the help of old-fashioned photographic technology these powers significantly enrich the experience of seeing. Here we continue our excavations into a vintage image from the Philadelphia City Archives, the subject of our previous post.

But first, a little detour:

• City Hall Transit Concourse, Philadelphia. Vincent Feldman, Photographer, 1993.

Photographer Vince Feldman knows about visual superpowers. Feldman worked the streets of Philadelphia toting his tripod and 4x5-inch view camera, capturing images for his now (unfortunately) out-of-print book City Abandoned. Feldman’s subjects, civic buildings that had seen better days, came alive to him in broad daylight. And in the darkroom Feldman’s negatives revealed even more richness. He used Kodak Technical Pan Film, a product introduced in the 1970s for “astronomy, electron microscopy, and other technical applications." According to Feldman, "the film is considered by many to have the highest resolving power... it also has unique tonal characteristics that help reveal details, particularly in masonry.”

Old-fashioned (but high-tech) film helped Vince Feldman sharpen his visual superpowers.

Though not a photographer, I like to think I've been doing something similar for the past six years while culling and researching images from PhillyHistory.org and writing blog posts about them. I select images and work with data-rich TIF files to prepare for publication. There's always far more in the images than is first apparent. When a new file arrives, it's always an adventure in deep looking. I have to admit, it's my favorite part of the process.

What were people wearing? What expressions were on their faces? Were they conscious they were being captured for posterity? We can read the fine print on signs: the price of a lobster dinner in 1939 was 75 cents. We can peer into the very shadows of long, lost realities.

• Street Cleaning Machine – Elgin Motor Sweeper, October 31, 1917. Detail. (PhillyHistory.org)

In the case of the city's brand-new Elgin Motor Sweeper, we see the the bowler-hatted executive peering back at the camera from the driver's seat. He looks proud, if a bit weary, holding a cigar between the fingers of his right, leather-gloved hand on the steering wheel. We see the raised bronze letters of the plaque informing us that the sweeper patent had been issued only a month before. We can inspect the machine's Rube-Goldbergian mess of chains, gears, springs and wheels that would soon be put to work.

Zooming in closer still, we notice three gentlemen standing across the street, on the sidewalk in front of the Masonic Temple's iron fence.

• Street Cleaning Machine – Elgin Motor Sweeper, October 31, 1917. Detail. (PhillyHistory.org)

Are they pedestrians who've been captured accidentally? Not at all. These three men posed themselves as purposefully as the character in the newfangled machine's drivers seat. They stare into the camera's lens just as intently. They occupy only a tiny space in the image, but they are part of the story.

I'm guessing maybe they are the story.

Stay tuned for more vintage zooms.

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