Image

Vol. 17, No. 4

December,

1974

Journal of Photography and Motion Pictures of the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House
TABLE OF CONTENTS An Art Historical View of Paul Strand "The Thing Itself is Such a Secret and So Unapproachable" "Anything Can Happenand Generally Did" Symposium Synoptic Catalog 1 12 19 30 30 BOARD OF TRUSTEES Chairman, Vincent S. Jones First Vice Chairman, Alexander D. Hargrave Second Vice Chairman, Robert Sherman Treasurer, William E. Lee Louis K. Eilers Walter A. Fallon Sherman Farnham Wesley T. Hanson Frank M. Hutchins Mrs. Daniel G. Kennedy David L. Strout W. Allen Wallis Frederic S. Welsh Andrew D. Wolfe Secretary to the Board, Mrs. Arthur L. Stern III

IMAGE STAFF Robert J. Doherty, Director George C. Pratt, Director of Publications Contributing Editors: James Card, Director, Department of Film Andrew Eskind, Assistant to the Director of the Museum Robert A. Sobieszek, Associate Curator, Director Research Center Philip L. Condax, Assistant Curator, Equipment Archive William Jenkins, Assistant Curator, 20th Century Photography Marshall Deutelbaum, Assistant to Director, Department of Film Ann McCabe, Registrar Jose Orraca, Conservator Walter Clark, Consultant on Conservation Rudolf Kingslake, Consultant on Lenses and Shutters Eaton S. Lothrop, Jr., Consultant on Cameras Martin L. Scott, Consultant on Technology

About the

Contributors

Ulrich Keller is an art historian currently in Munich, on leave from the University of Louisville. He is doing major research on Rembrandt. Walker Evans and Buster Keaton scarcely need identification.

Image is published four times a year for the International Museum of Photography Associate Members and libraries by International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House Inc., 900 East Avenue, Rochester, New York 14607. Single copies are available at $2.25 each. Subscriptions are available to libraries at $10.00 per year (4 issues). For overseas libraries add $1.00.
Copyright 1974 by International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A.

Front Cover: PAUL STRAND, The Nets, Janitzio, Mexico, 1933. Back Cover: PAUL STRAND [Boat Canals, B r i d g e ] , n.d. Unless otherwise attributed, photographs are from the I M P / GEH Collection, Negative numbers refer to the IMP/GEH Print Service files.

An Art Historical

View of Paul

Strand

The Early PeriodCity Themes Paul Strand was born in New York. In New York he became a photographer. The modern metropolis was the first object of his camera. From this early period, only a few pictures have been brought to public attention through exhibitions and reproductions, but these few are among the most impressive pictures in Strand's oeuvre. A photograph of 1916 shows a woman with one dead and one aimlessly squinting eye. A white plate on her chest spells in large letters "BLIND." An additional metal plaque reads: "Licensed peddler 2622 New York City." The rough granite wall of a monumental building rises behind the woman. Strand confronts us with the portrait of a victim, crippled, reduced to a labeled object and exposed to a harsh environment. Around the same time he took a photograph of Wall Street. Most of the picture is filled by the huge towering stone mass of a bank building, the windows of which give the appearance of black, deep holes. No doors can be seen. Decorative features are completely missing. It is the typical example of New York's countless, anonymous street facades. The walkway in front of it is dotted with 2

pedestrians who look very small compared to the architecture. All of them wear black coats and move hastily in the same direction. The identity of their movement is emphasized by long parallel shadows. Similar to the architecture, the people appear to be anonymous, exchangeable. However, the architecture symbolizes power and duration, while the people play insignificant and transitory roles. The two pictures show that Strand is far from glorifying his native city. New York revealed to him the negative aspects of modern industrial civilization. His photographic description of New York includes documents of human misery and alienation. Strand expressed his critical views not only through pictures, but also in philosophical writings. At the beginning of his essay "Photography and the New God" (1922) modern man is credited with great technological achievements and with the creation of a "new Trinity: God the Machine, Materialistic Empiricism the Son, and Science the Holy Ghost." The essay proceeds, however, to warn of the excessive worship of this trinity: "Having created the new God, (the scientist) has permitted himself to be used at every step and for every purpose by its interested

devotees. Printing presses or poison gas, he has been equally blind or indifferent to the implications in the use or misuse of either, with the result that the social structure which he has so irresponsibly helped to rear, is today fast being destroyed by the perversion of the very knowledge contributed by him . . . he has made possible the present critical condition of Western Civilization, faced as it is with the alternatives of being quickly ground to pieces under the heel of the new God or with the tremendous task of controlling the heel." 1 Strand's call for human control over modern technology is followed by the demonstration that the photographer's creative use of the camera can be understood as a model of this Utopian goal. In the same year in which Strand published his essay he also took photographs of machines. Obviously, he gives major emphasis to the rational, functional organization of these metal structures. Clearly recognizable as creations of human reason they seem to suggest the possibility of reasonable, controlled utilization. Strand's interest in machines was short-lived and only the prelude to more important developments.

New Orientation

in the

Twenties

In the early twenties city topics gradually disappear from Strand's w o r k s . His first pictures of Nova Scotia date from 1919. By 1926 Strand is wealthy enough to take regular summer trips to distant parts of the American continent. This is the major turning point in his career as a photographer. The land, the vegetation, the architecture and the people of Colorado, New Mexico, Maine, the Gaspe, etc., become the new and soon exclusive themes of his camera work. In spite of the great Retrospective Exhibition of 1971/2 in Philadelphia it remains difficult to obtain an adequate idea of Strand's various picture series of this time. A p parently it was a period of experiments and explorations that never resulted in anything complete or definitive. Even the small Mexican Portfolio is no more than a preface to the comprehensive publications of the fifties. The main goal that Strand pursued and never realized in these years has been identified as "photographing a small locality, ideally an isolated village and its people. He had hoped to do this in New Mexico, but in his singular commitment to the landscape he never allowed himself enough time to pursue another project." 2

the N e w England coast as it must have appeared to the first colonists: the gray, desolate sea; gloomy, low clouds; rocks w o r n by the surf; endless, w i l d forests. These are the natural factors, the primitive state before civilization. The picture of a wall of unhewn boulders erected in the snow marks man's first, laborious attempt to claim a place in nature. Pictures of gravestones call to mind the hardships of this fight. An orchard with blooming fruit trees exhibits first signs of fertility. A church and a meeting house represent basic social institutions. Photographs of populated, cultivated land become increasingly frequent. Fields and pastures replace the original forests. Everywhere, friendly white farm houses spread out. Pictures of sailing boats bear witness to the domination of the sea. However, the progress of civilization is not completely smooth. Strand places great emphasis on the moments of crisis, for example the revolution of 1776 or the beginning of the women's rights movement around 1850. Of course photography cannot directly recreate t h e . actual events of the past. However, through accompanying texts Strand's pictures are charged with symbolical connotations that allude to these historical events. For example, trees struck by lightning and a house fallen in disrepair stand for the disastrous consequences of the Salem witch trials; the struggle and the victory of the Abolitionists are compared to a fissured rock next to a blooming tree. The more artificial such analogies become, the less they are of benefit to the photographs. Moral concepts seem basically alien to natural objects like trees or rocks. Strand's images of nature are stronger when they are allowed to stand for themselves. Strand leaves no doubt that the emergence of industrial technology and the subsequent formation of big urban centers represent the most decisive crisis or rather the turning point in the civilizing process of New England. As shown previously, the misery of urban life was the main subject of Strand's early w o r k s . In Time in New England any direct depiction of this misery is excluded. Only indirectly, through pictures of deserted, decaying houses in the country the beginning of the modern time is signalized to the viewer: the people lose their relation to nature, retreat from the soil, leave ruins behind. Two symbolic photographs accentuate this principal change. The first one shows the entrance hall of

a country house. Invitingly, the door towards the interior stands open; one understands that people come and go, that a sociable and friendly atmosphere awaits the visitor. The accompanying text (ca. 1800) includes reminiscences of a winter journey in a sled, of a public dance in a small t o w n , of hospitality and companionshipforms of a simple, rural society still far from alienation. In the second photograph the same atrium recurs, but the door is closed and due to a change of the viewpoint an urn appears in the foreground. The corresponding text is a diary report of Emily Dickinson's funeral (1886). That her house and garden, her hospitality, her natural, modest w a y of life are lost forever is the message conveyed by the picture of the closed door and the urn. However, Strand's last w o r d is positive. At the end of the book he directs attention to areas where industrialization has not yet been v i c t o r i ous, where the relation between man and nature remains undisturbed. There still are fishermen on the coast of Maine, there still are farms all over New England. Through the juxtaposition of a farm girl and a blooming fruit tree Strand finally expresses his confidence in the future of the land and its people. Once more, though, the philosophical concept is so obtrusive that it takes away from the beauty of the pictures. Looking at Strand's book as a whole one can distinguish three main phases in the man-nature relationship it sets out to investigate. At first, man is inferior to nature; he hardly can prevail against its hostile power. Later, a state of balance is reached: people still depend on the land, they still invest all their energy in it, but already the harvests are rich, already security and cultural achievements emerge. Finally man wins a dangerous victory; he renounces nature, retreats into the artificial w o r l d of the big cities, while the country continues to hold a promise for those who are willing to adjust to it. France Strand's second b o o k L a France de Profil (1952)also emphasizes the historical aspect of the relation between land and people. A sequence of four pictures symbolically reveals the full range of changes due to occur: a fissured, snow-covered mountain peak symbolizes the primitive state of earth before the beginning of civilization. Two pictures of farmers gathering hay and of sailing

New

England

From 1935 to 1943 Strand devoted all his efforts to film production. In 1944 he resumed still photography. His renewed photo-campaigns in Maine and Vermont provided the material for Time in New England published in 1950. This book is Strand's first attempt to render a comprehensive portrayal of a certain locality and its people. Strand did not simply record what he found in present day New England. Apparently he was too much aware of historical factors that took part in the formation of the land and its people. The difficult task of opening up historical perspectives is facilitated by the introduction of literary sources, selected and chronologically arranged by Nancy Newhall, concerning rural life in New England since the first settlement. Carefully combined with these texts, Strand's photographs surprisingly turn into documents of the different historical phases that the relationship of man and nature undergoes in the course of civilization. At the beginning of the book w e find pictures of 4

boats in a harbor show land and sea reconciled to man. Deserted, ruined houses alongside a river finally document the disregard for nature. In La France de Profil Strand dwells neither on the beginning nor on the end of this historical cycle. Mainly he tries to describe the state of balance between man and nature characteristic of provincial France. Photographs of growing fields, copious barns and contented farmers are predominant. A special chapter is dedicated to the peaceful cafes and the universal, unrestrained sociability in the French rural towns. However, Strand is aware of negative aspects as well. A series of pictures demonstrates that the w o r l d wars and the trend toward the urban centers have depopulated the land. Sleepiness, even desolation, threatens to overcome the rural communities. But again, Strand expresses hope at the end of the book. The portrait of a (much too) determined looking boy and a view of graceful, airy sailing boats are introduced to convey a spirit of enterprise and action. One of the last photographs deserves special attention. It represents a cluster of grapes covered by a film of poison that protects them against insects. Strand implies: agriculture in provincial France will survive with the help of modern metho d s ; rational use of technological achievements is in accordance with nature. As far as the basic philosophy is concerned, La France de Profil has much in common w i t h Time in New England, yet it is much less impressive than its model. Strand's reliance on supplementary texts produced by a mediocre author was bound to have bad consequences. Historical documentswell selected and chronologically arranged by Nancy Newhallhad provided a clear structure for Strand's first book. In contrast Claude Roy's poems, essays, marginal comments and quotations split the second book up into fragments that appear to be interrelated only vaguely and loosely. The light, superficial tone of these literary insertions defies the seriousness of Strand's photographs. Roy's inconsiderate, however charming, chauvinism is particularly incompatible w i t h Strand's broadly humanitarian orientation. In the preoccupation with symbols both the writer and the photographer coincide, but this too is detrimental to the book. Too many open or closed doors and open or closed w i n d o w s are presented in pictures and explained by lyrics to the increasingly indifferent reader.

Italy Presumably, Strand himself was not completely satisfied with La France de Profil. In his next book (Un Paese, 1955), he does away with historical perspectives and symbolism. Instead of a whole country his subject is now a small town. The text records what the townspeople themselves have to say about their w o r k and their living habits. (Interviews and editing: Cesare Zavattini, a native of the town) Luzzara is situated in the Po valley. In the first pictures Strand shows the river and the plain, not the town. The natural setting appears as the principal, conditioning factor to which the human settlement is only secondary. A railway bridge and a line of boats suggest, however, that the river has long since been made serviceable to men. The fields and woods, too, show signs of manifold cultivation and utilization. Strand seems to emphasize that a special type of agriculture is prevalent in the Po valley. W e are not presented with the rolling woodland, rich grain fields and ample cattle herds so common to New England and France. Instead the land is flat, only modestly fertile and so thoroughly domesticated that no sense of greatness and spaciousness remains. M o s t obviously, it is split up into countless small pieces. Everybody seems to possess some share of the land. A n d with infinite diligence every square foot of the soil is taken care of. Not even minimal crops such as berries and willow switches are neglected. The very fact that the land is hardly large or fertile enough to provide a living for everybody forces the people to acquire an intimate knowledge of it, to live in close contact with it. This symbiosis is Strand's subject and in it he seems to find the delicate state of balance for which he continuously searches: on the one hand nature is not any more a hostile, indomitable power opposed to man, it rather renders him services. O n the other hand, man has not y e t alienated himself from nature; instead he devotes his strength and intelligence to it. The closer Strand leads us t o w a r d s the t o w n the more numerous the signs of cultivation become. With a picture of the town entrance he finally begins to describe Luzzara itself. However, one never forgets that the town has its roots in the country. Again and again, views of fields and farms point back to the rural environment. Of the inhabitants only those are honored by portrait

photographs who are committed to some kind of agricultural w o r k and whose physical appearance reflects this occupation. In addition, there are pictures of craftsmen: a blacksmith, a saddler, a shoe maker, two women weaving hats. A hardware store and a dairy complete the description of a principally self-sufficient town community. Processing the basic raw materials of nature (milk, leather, straw, metal) these people meet the daily needs of their lives through their own manual labor. It is unlikely that in 1955 there was no industry yet in Luzzara. Certainly, many industrial products w e r e commonly in use. However, in Strand's Luzzara there are no factories, no cars, nor any other creations of the machine ageexcept bicycles, which appear to be counted among the small number of basic, legitimate human instruments. The town and its people are interesting to Strand only insofar as they stand in direct relation to nature. How these people relate to each other is explored in photographs of market streets, cafes and private houses. In the public sphere, various forms of activity and sociability predominate. In the private sphere, family ties are most apparent. Social barriers hardly seem to exist. The viewer is invited to assume that the direct relation of man to nature also causes a direct, unalienated intercourse between men. Un Paese seems to reflect a change in Strand's use of photography. In his first two books, the pictures serve to represent historical developments and philosophical ideas, a procedure which, to a degree, conflicts with the nature of a medium most appropriate to record visible, present things. This abstract purpose could be achieved only through the introduction of a verbal framework that charges the images with a symbolism basically alien to them. How many great photographs must Strand have sacrificed because they did not " f i t " ! How many pictures lose their beauty because some intellectual " m e s s a g e " interferes. Instead of offering a summary of the whole process of civilization, Un Paese depicts just one moment in this process, the state of balance between man and nature. This restriction allows Strand to do without an ideological framework. The pictures become independent, stand for themselves, speak their own language. In an unpretentious, direct and precise way they explore only the present. The result of this modest approach is visually more diversified and more impressive 5

than everything Strand previously achieved with a rather ambitious use of extraneous material. Outer Hebrides

Strand's fourth book, Tir a'Mhurain (1955), is based on a quite simple concept too. The pictures document the character of the land and its people, while Basil Davidson's text adds some useful topographic and ethnographic information. In Tir a'Mhurain, nature appears in a harsh, untamed, rather than a domesticated state. The islands of the Outer Hebrides are corroded by inlets, dotted with sand troughs and boulders, overcast by heavy clouds. Everywhere the threatening power of the elements is felt. Arable land is missing; the scarce pastures are barely sufficient for a few cattle and sheep. The farm houses, stables, and barns have thick walls, tiny w i n d o w s and over-dimensional thatch roofs. Yet, without the protection of trees and hills, solitarily placed on the naked ground, these buildings seem to be left to the inclemency of sea and sky. The clothing and bodily appearance of the people, too, are dictated by the hard climate. In contrast to his earlier books, Strand does not compose portrait photographs in groups. Instead, he now confronts pictures of single persons with pictures of vast, unfriendly landscapes. It becomes evident that the people of the Outer Hebrides are involved in a continuous struggle against the threatening environment. In Tir a'Mhurain Strand does not deal with a state of balance between human and natural forces, but rather with the preceding phase of the difficult foundation of human civilization. However, he leaves no doubt that even this primitive state is more satisfactory and dignified than existence in modern urban centers. Again, the temperate, direct application of the camera gives the book a strong impact. Occasionally, however, Strand's overemphasis of the health and earthbound strength of men and animals must be met with reservation. Egypt Strand's most recent book (Living Egypt, 1969, text by James Aldridge) also deals mainly with a relatively early state of civilization. A s usual, Strand starts out with the natural situation. The first photograph shows the wide, majestic River Nile nourishing a narrow strip of fertile land below the desert's imminent rock and sand formations.

In the following pictures one finds a water wheel propelled by an ox and a boy carrying a water jug on his head. Later, canals, irrigation ditches and oases are depicted. Several more views of the River Nile occur, and the last chapter focuses on the great dam at Aswan. It becomes clear that Egypt's crucial problem is the preservation, distribution, and utilization of water. Secondary to the river, the sun and the sand, in Strand's view, are the primary natural factors conditioning life in Egypt. Bright light and deep shadows make the presence of the burning sun felt in every picture. O n e is always aware of the desert somewhere in the background extending its dry, soft sand well into the center of the towns. Again and again Strand tries to capture the closed, almost hostile character of the tall, white brick houses in these towns. Only a few w i n d o w s and doors can be seen, but they are small and unobtrusive. To provide a refuge from sun and sand appears to be the main purpose of this architecture. Wherever Strand shows people in the streets, in the fields, or at the river, he makes the viewer conscious that they, too, are shaped by the given natural conditions. Rarely any faces or hands can be seen except in explicit portrait photographs. The sun forces the people to seek protection underneath ample clothing. Repeatedly there are pictures of peasants without any apparent occupation squatting humbly and patiently in the sand of a village street. In most of these pictures Strand makes a point of showing a donkey or a goat lying next to the peasant. Evidently this is meant to convey the idea that both the " f e l l a h s " and the domestic animals share the same, primitive form of existence. Reduced to passive, undemanding creatures they manage to live in the sun and the sand. It is impossible to be closer to nature than the Egyptian peasants in Strand's photographs. But this relation is not equal. It keeps man in complete submission and obedience to nature. Most achievements of human civilization remain to be established against the resistance of a hostile environment within which man is little more than an animal. However, through a dramatic picture sequence at the end of the book Strand documents that the struggle for these achievements has begun, that a " r e v o l u t i o n " takes place, that " m o d e r n Egypt is emerging from her past and her p o v e r t y . " 3 The first picture of this sequence shows a harbor

crowded with tankers and merchant ships. It is Port Said, Egypt's link to the world, especially to the industrially advanced nations. The second picture is the portrait of a steel worker. Later the powerful structure of the steel mill itself is shown. Further photographs represent mechanics and engineers operating machines. Apparently, Strand tries to describe both the emergence of modern technology and the birth of a new class of people. Finally, through the intelligent juxtaposition of two photographs of the Aswan Dam under construction Strand gives the viewer visual proof of the enormous technological accomplishment embodied in this project. The picture on the left is taken from above and represents a gravel desert interspersed with dirty puddles. The picture on the right is shot from below and shows the soaring buttresses of the dam. The flat, fragmented rubble is in contrast to the upright concrete structure o r d e r supplants chaos. At this point it should be remembered that Strand strictly ignored modern technology in his earlier works. Its thorough and apparently positive evaluation in his most recent book is surprising. Upon closer examination it seems that this change in Strand's attitude is motivated, and at the same time limited, by his old philosophy of the machine. Automobiles, or other consumer and luxury products of Western industry, are still excluded from his vision. Only useful machines that serve the progress and welfare of a whole nation have become acceptable and interesting to him. Characteristically, it is the structural beauty and rational organization that he emphasizes most in his pictures of Egyptian industrial plants. A n d whenever he represents men working at machines he suggests that this w o r k is of a careful and intelligent nature. In socialist Egypt, especially in the Soviet-made steel mill at Helwan and High Dam at Aswan, Strand seems to have found the incarnation of his old dream: human control over technology. Once more Strand has introduced a historical perspective. The first part of the book deals with primitive agricultural Egypt as it existed for many thousand years. In the second part w e are confronted with modern Egypt as it rapidly develops its industrial power. Since these two extreme states of civilization are simultaneously present in the Nile Valley Strand was not forced to resort to a symbolic use of images. Unlike Time in New

England or La France de Profil, Living Egypt records historical progress directly and realistically, much to the benefit of the book. However, the contrast between old and new Egypt is so great that Strand must have felt the need to tie it all together in some special way. Here, his inclination towards symbolism triumphs again. The very last picture in the book represents the fertile plain of the Nile Delta: water, grain fields and fruit trees promise an abundant harvest. This last view is paired with an exposure of an ancient tomb relief of a cow being milked and her calf. It is a well-calculated juxtaposition which points back to the beginning of the book. There the River Nile and the relief of a bull function as counterparts. The symbolism is obvious: the river embodies the male principle, while the valley represents the female principle. 4 This biological symbolism at the same time carries historical connotations. The photograph of the river which stands at the beginning implies that the fertilizing potential has always been present. Now, however, with technological progress the inhabitants of the Nile Valley, like the man who milks the cow in the relief, have the power to reap the benefits of their environment. They are no longer subordinated to an uncontrolled natural setting. It is this prospect of prosperity which seems to be represented by the final picture of the fertile plain.

ticularly uniform; the same principles are observed over and over again: each person is shown frontally, motionless, and fully aware of the camera; and each portrait is set in a narrow frame, so that not much of the environment can be seen. Through the elimination of transitory activities and surrounding objects Strand succeeds in directing our attention to the individual person, to what he believes to be the strength, health and beauty of people living in harmony with nature. He makes the viewer aware of an incredibly broad variety of facial features and physical appearances. Also, he apparently preferred to portray people whose hairstyles, hats, clothes and personal utensils display a great wealth of vernacular characteristics. In each of these practical, but at the same time modestly decorated, garments there is something individual and unique. Strand seems to celebrate this diversity as a contradiction to the mass-produced clothing of the industrial society. In spite of the strict concentration on the individual and the narrowly chosen frame, his portraits usually include some smaller or larger part of a home. Strand demonstrates that these people are connected to a certain place, that the need of a shelter is a basic condition of human life. Quite frequently, Strand shows a face in such close vicinity to a door post, a w i n d o w frame or a tree trunk that the viewer is compelled to compare and to discover similar textures in skin and w o o d . Both seem w o r n by weather, both exhibit the familiar traces of aging, both are subject to natural forces. Thus, Strand emphasizes the coherence of man and nature in agricultural societies as opposed to their alienation in the industrial cultures. Occasionally Strand portrays groups of people: man and wife, mother or father and child, brothers and sisters or a whole family. Consistently some form of blood relation is expressed. The accent is on the primary, natural ties between people. A few times one finds representations of larger numbers of people, that is, of rodeos, bazaars, markets or religious ceremonies. Only these primitive, traditional forms of communal life were accepted by Strand as legitimate subjects. There are no photographs of large, merely accidental meetings, or of modern mass rallies. Strand's photographs of man-made things are as exclusive in character as the portraits. The individual object absorbs full attention, everything else, even people, is marginal or completely left out. Strand loves to represent houses and barns,

especially, as independent, isolated units. Mostly their closed exterior is shown, while pictures of inviting, comfortable interiors are very rare. Strand mainly investigates how these buildings face their often hostile environment, how they stand out and " s u r v i v e " in nature. He neglects to analyze how they accommodate inhabitants. Strand's churches and gravestones tend to assume a sense of nearly absolute independence. Their color is pure white; often their bases are not shown, so that their connection to earth remains unclear; and repeatedly the shot is taken from an angle which gives these monuments a d i agonal upward movement. Apparently Strand interprets them as reflections of man's spiritual endeavor to escape or transcend nature. Art w o r k s are regularly included in Strand's books. Without exception these are non-sophisticated, vernacular productions, rarely going beyond the simple imitation of native plants and animals. Religious art appealed to him only if it still contained primitive superstitious elements. Apart from man and man-made objects, nature is Strand's major, consistently recurring theme. Here, too, he searches for individual forms. Closeups of boulders, driftwood, of moss, herbs and flowers reveal the inexhaustible variety of even the smallest natural objects. Strand makes no distinction between stone and plant; in both he discovers traces of the same formative forces. Especially he tries to explore contrasting configurations through his close-ups. A rough, splintered branch stands against a soft, velvety leaf; crisp grass blades cut into the sleek flesh of a mushroom; bright blossoms of a garden flower are surrounded by dark, austere forest vegetation. Occasionally, a male-female symbolism seems to be intended. Whole landscapes are not very numerous in Strand's books, but they clearly form a special category; in a way they represent the essence of his w o r k s . It has been noted before that Strand represents all other subjects with a sense of exclusiveness. His portrayals of people, buildings, plants strictly focus on the individual while secondary things are eliminated. Only in his landscape photographs these various independent subjects appear reconciled to each other and integrated into a larger context. They are no more then partsthe land is the whole. However, the integration is rarely perfect. Strikingly often Strand uses special filters in order to

Constant

motifs

In the first part of this article the main emphasis was placed on the great variety of national and geographic characteristics recorded in Strand's books. It should not be overlooked, however, that Strand's steady pursuit of one principal questionthe relationship of man and naturegives considerable conformity to these books. First of all, there is negative evidence of this conformity. Countless things that have become part of human life all over the w o r l d simply do not appear in any of Strand's w o r k s . Strand refuses to represent cities, he ignores the existence of the automobile and most other consumer products of the industrial society. With great strictness his camera focuses instead on surprisingly few, but recurring, constant motifs. These constant elements will be discussed in the following paragraphs. Strand's 10 portraits of native people are par-

give a pure, white appearance to birds, horses, boats, houses, garments or gravestones. Thus, these individual objects are set apart from the surrounding land and do not seem to share fully the coherence and duration of nature. Notes on Strand's ideological concepts Strand's photographic activity since 1926 can be described as a ceaseless exploration of isolated geographical and social situations which exhibit examples of pre-industrial, nature-connected f o r m s of civilization. In order to render a c o m pletely " p u r e " picture of these model situations, Strand rigorously excludes the signs of the capitalistic W e s t e r n society. Even in Mexico or the Outer Hebrides he must have found cities and factories, cars and bill-boards, fashions and affluence, but his photographs do not bear witness of these. (Several recent series indicate, however, that at least his attitude towards useful machines becomes more positive.) In addition, there is another, equally significant, omission: Strand does not represent misery. In Living Egypt, Aldridge reports that the Egyptian peasant " d i e s young and while he lives he is sick and in pain most of the time. Until the revolution of 1952, eighty-seven per cent of the population suffered from the eye disease trachoma, and ninety per cent suffered from endemic water borne diseases." Of Strand's numerous portrait photographs in Living Egypt and other books not one represents a sick person. A n d although Strand usually documents the living conditions of poor people, he never allows any hunger, despair, servitude, ugliness, dirt or disorder to show. The image he creates of the native populations of the Egyptian, Mexican or Scottish rural regions is the image of free, strong, healthy, beautiful men and women in a simple but dignified and well-functioning environment. A t the same time he wants the viewer to understand that it is the manual labor and the reliance on nature which accounts for the absence of all shortcomings in these rural communities. Purged of sophisticated Western trappings as well as of common misery and servitude, Strand's picture cycles become Utopian projections of a free human existence in harmony with nature. That such an ideal f o r m of life was ever achieved in pre-industrial societies, as Strand apparently tries to demonstrate, and that it ever could be realized again in a post-industrial civilization, as he seems to hope, is extremely doubtful.

Certainly Strand was not the first to express this hope. He seems to rely on familiar ideological precedents. The myth that only life in nature makes a good, healthy man is a common A m e r i can myth. Already in 1841 Ralph W a l d o Emerson deplored the departure of the young generation f r o m nature: " W h a t a change! Instead of the masterly good humor and sense of power and fertility of resource in himself; instead of those strong and learned hands, those piercing and learned eyes, that supple body, and that mighty and prevailing heart which the father had, whom nature loved and feared, whom snow and rain, water and land, beast and fish seemed all to know and to serve, w e have now a puny, protected person guarded by walls and curtains . . . " Consequently Emerson asks: " . . . if it were not the nobler part . . . to put ourselves into primary relation with the soil and nature, and abstaining from whatever is dishonest and unclean, to take each of us bravely his part, with his own hands, in the manual labor of the w o r l d . " 5 Similar ideas, interwoven with strong political and patriotic sentiments are pronounced by W a l t Whitman: " D e m o c r a c y most of all affiliates with the open air, is sunny and hardy and sane only with nature . . . American Democracy, in its myriad personalities, in factories, w o r k s h o p s , stores, officesthrough the dense streets and houses of cities, and all their manifold sophisticated lifemust either be fibred, vitalized, by regular contact with out-door light and air and growths, farm scenes, animals, fields, trees, birds, sun-warmth and free skies, or it will certainly dwindle and pale. W e cannot have grand races of mechanics, w o r k people, and commonalty (the only specific purpose of America), on any less terms. I conceive of no flourishing and heroic elements of Democracy in the United States, or of Democracy maintaining itself at all, w i t h out the Nature element forming a main p a r t to be its health-element and beauty-element t o really underlie the whole politics, sanity, religion and art of the New W o r l d . " 6

These quotations leave little doubt that Strand's concept of a free, healthy life in accordance with nature derives from an American tradition. It is ironic that the search for a reality corresponding to this concept has led him far away from contemporary America. Socialist and communist countries, Romania, Nasser's Egypt, Nkrumah's Ghana, have been the favored subject of his most recent camera work. The role of the machine, especially, seems to fascinate him in these countries. There f o r the first time Strand takes pictures of construction w o r k e r s , mechanics, engineers, of power plants, steel mills, agricultural machinery, etc. Evidently, the purpose of these pictures is to underscore three things: that the machines are under intelligent, human control, that they are rationally organized and that they are integrated in the natural environment, rather than destroying it. In contrast to Strand's earlier picture series, a synthesis between past and present forms of civilization emerges. Modern technology appears included in the reconciliation of man and nature. It remains to be seen if there is justification for Strand's confidence that this reconciliation actually is being accomplished by certain socialist and c o m munist countries. Recent developments in Egypt and Ghana seem to indicate otherwise. Independent of this question, Strand's w o r k s will stand as postulations of a more human w o r l d . 7

1. Nathan Lyons, Photographers on Photography, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, Inc., and Rochester, N.Y., The George Eastman House, Inc., 1966, p. 139. 2. Harold Henry Jones I I I , "The Work of Photographers Paul Strand and Edward Weston, with an Emphasis on their Work in New M e x i c o , " thesis manuscript in the Research Center of IMP/GEH. 3. Paul Strand and James Aldridge in the preface to Living Egypt, New York, An Aperture Book, Horizon Press, 1969, unpaged. 4. Besides these first and last pictures there seem to be three others with an obvious symbolic message: following the view of the crowded harbor of Port Said one finds a juxtaposition of the empty Suez Canal and a window with closed shuttersan allusion to the closing of the canal in the war of 1967. 5. R. W. Emerson, " M a n the Reformer," in The Complete Works, v o l . 3, Boston, The Riverside Press, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1929, pp. 239, 235. 6. Walt Whitman, Specimen Days, Boston, David R. Godine, 1971, pp. 120-1. 7. Thanks are extended to the University of Louisville for a research grant and to Robert J. Doherty for generous advice.

11

"The Thing Itself is Such a Secret and so Unapproachable"*

The four photographs which appear here are from Evans' FSA period.

Walker Evans, the eminent American photographer, who taught photography at Yale until his retirement several years ago, talks informally with today's students about his life, his art and the mysteries of the creative process.

I guess I'm the only survivor of my age of the school of non-commercial and extremely selfvirtuous young artists that I was when I was your age. We wouldn't do anything we were asked to do, and we fought around it. Of course that kills most people. For some reason or other it didn't kill me. And I feel that since I've progressed rather slowly, I still have a long career ahead of me. Could you tell us something about the experience of working with James Agee on the book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men? Oh yes. That of course is the most conspicuous thing I've done, entirely due to Agee. I have a lot of false renown because I was working with a tremendous man, and I'm embarrassed just talking about it because Agee's character doesn't fit

*Reprinted with permission from the February, 1974, issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine; copyright by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc. 12

the apotheosis he's gone through. He was a very humble man and also very opposed to all kinds of establishments, particularly including the academic, and to put his name in a circle like this well, he didn't like to be in that kind of an atmosphere. But I will say, he was a great friend of mine before we went off and worked in the South together, and he was distinctly the leader-instigator of that project and I don't think we could have succeeded without his talent with people. Incidentally, part of a photographer's gift should be with people. You can do some wonderful work if you know how to make people understand what you're doing and feel all right about it, and you can do terrible work if you put them on the defense, which they all are at the beginning. You've got to take them off their defensive attitude and make them participate. Agee was very good at that. He and I moved into some very remote but typical farming families in the Depression, at a time when everything just reeked of poverty. There wasn't a cent of money around. And these people were in terrible shape, but typically, because everybody else was. And I suppose, without meaning to, that what I was doing was photographing human poverty. I just couldn't help it. We were all in it. Everybody was desperate. I find that it's very hard to describe what that was like. Did it take long to overcome their nervousness? Not really, because Agee was very gifted in the field that I was just talking aboutmaking people

feel all right. In fact, they began to love Agee and to be awfully interested. He also took great care to let them know that this was not an invasion or a burden that would set them back in any way. At that time we didn't know it was going to be a book this was just for a magazine articleand he told them all about it and made them feel that they were participating. We made ourselves into paying guests, with their understanding, and they hadn't seen any money for the longest time, and although that wasn't a corrupt gesture it did make them feel a little bit ahead of the game. Since the game was zero right then. How long was it before any of the work was actually published? It was quite some time, as a matter of fact. What was first done was a two-part article that was rejected by the magazine that had commissioned it, and Agee asked for a release of rights. He then got a small advance from a publisher and wrote the book, but it took three or four years. I believe we were there in 1936 and the book was published in '41, so there was a long period and a whole lot of sub-adventuresthe book was rejected by the first publisher and taken to a second. It's a complicated and not very interesting story. But it's typical of the history of any venture. If you're going to start to do something you're going to have setbacks bringing it to fruition. Any venture is a rocky road. Your education is, too. You talk about yourself rebelling against the

13

Establishment and about the misfortunes of Depression times, but your photographs are not critical. I find them more of a glorificationglorification of the plain and simple reality. I'm pleased to hear you say that, because I didn't like the label that I unconsciously earned of being a social protest artist. I never took it upon myself to change the world. And those contemporaries of mine who were going around falling for the idea that they were going to bring down the United States government and make a new world were just asses to me. I knew by then that nobody was going to do that. And that kind of history has repeated itself. People in the late '60s, not long ago, had those same ideas, and there hasn't been a single dent in the forces that they were going to bring down. But certain photographs really do have political content, starting with, for example, Hine's photographs of children working in the mills at the turn of the century. Well, Hine can be used more than I can for that purposeand there's a good reason. Hine did intend to arouse political action, or at least arouse an interest in child labor. I cared to have certain things read into my work, but I really don't intend to have my ideas and my work and my vision used as political action. Since you raised the question of whether I'm a politically-minded artist or not, the answer is no, I'm not. I never undertake direct political action. Every time I've had a political idea it has proved perfectly wrong. For example, when I heard Mr. Nixon's speechyou remember the famous one that he made with his little dogI was just convinced, "Well, that's the end of Richard Nixon." The next morning the country hailed him as a white knight. In your picture of the dock workers in Cuba, it was obviously a very hard existence. The faces are as black as coal dust, or whatever it is they were working with, and yet your pictures seem to show them almost as cheerful. Well, you must remember, I didn't attempt to put that in. I want to record what's there, and you're rightthose people have no self-pity and no sense of very much of anything. They were just as happy as you are, really. Are you happy? Maybe you're having a worse time than they were. Do you think in photographing, say, suburban Americawhich is a very wide part of American life todayyou could use the same approach, of 14

just looking at the very surface to portray it? It doesn't work. I've tried. I thought, "Here's a great, significant sector of America," but I've been bored looking at the work of those who have done it and I've been bored with my own work. But have you seen any good ideas in photographing suburban America? The movie called THE GRADUATE was satirical and quite true, quite penetrating, but that's not still photography. And there's a long tradition of it in writing, identified by Sinclair Lewis. His characters like Babbitt are relentless pictures of middle-class American life. But I can't imagine myself photographing a group of people sitting around a country club, or whatever they call it. I've never found them satirical enough material. Some people have said that you knew more about America in the '30s than anybody else. How did you learn? You understood America. Well, yes, but only instinctively. That and many other questions come to me now as unanswerable and inexplicable. I knew a whole lot of things I can see now in retrospectinstinctively and unconsciously, and that goes along with a theory of mine: that almost all good artists are being worked through with forces that they're not quite aware of. They are transmitters of sensitivities that they're not aware of having, of forces that are in the air at the time. I've done a lot of things that I'm surprised at now which show a lot of knowledge that I didn't have or knew I had. I can now learn something from my own pictures. Was it hard to find America at that time after going to Andover? Well, that's a large and subtle question, and that's also something I don't know much about, but I've thought about it. Yes, I'm a product of a very Establishment place like Andover, for example, but I was always rather against it, even at the time. I didn't want to admit that I was in such a classical establishment, and I used to go around pretending that I wasn't, or that I was uneducated, and that was a youthful force. It was false thinking, but I've got my balance about that now. Privilege, if you're very strict, is an immoral and unjust thing to have, but if you've got it you didn't choose to get it and you might as well use it. You're privileged to be at Yale, but you know you're under an obligation to repay what's been put into you. Actually, in my generation only a very few peo-

ple were anti-establishment or were revolutionary or were artists. But now there's a great change, one of the most remarkable revolutions in thought and style that we have ever seen. For one thing, young people today have a place to go if they want to run away. We didn't have any place to go. The Communist Party let us down by the Stalin Pact and by the Moscow trials. The whole world offered us no escape from our condition and our past and authority. We couldn't get out of it. But if you look at a phenomenon like Woodstock you realize that there's a mass of people all in the same boat, who take care of each other. We had no strength in union. There wasn't any union. Do you think that this change in consciousness has resulted in an increase in good photography? That's a complicated question. I have a theory that the extensive interest in non-commercial photography that can be taken seriously now is due to the association between your minds and your idealistic yearning for honesty. And you have assumed that photography is an artistic medium and that it is more adaptable to honest work than words and drawings and paintings. I believe that's responsible for the enormous interest in noncommercial photography, though I'm not sure you're right about thinking that this is an honest medium or one that opens up possibilities of honest expression. It seems to me that you are an early pioneer of this very movement you've been describing. One reason for your appeal is that you have always been a photographer of extraordinary honesty and simplicitythat what you've been looking for in America is something unadorned and plain and true. You must remember that this is an unconscious phenomenon, and it is to me an amazing accident of art history and psychological history and American history that I was unconsciously working in terms that surfaced, so to speak, in your generation. You talk about simplicity. When I first made photographs, they were too plain to be considered art and I wasn't considered an artist. I didn't get any attention at all. The people who looked at my work thought, well, that's just a snapshot of the backyard. Privately I knew otherwise and through stubbornness stayed with it. I think I knew what I was doing but I didn't know that I was bringing into play these characteristics you're talking about. You talk about honesty. I didn't know I was honestI was just doing that in-

15

16

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stinctively. It just so happens that in a university the habit of mind is reflective and analytical, but that's exceptional. The so-called man in the street, if he exists, is neither reflective nor analytical. When you take pictures some kind of change occurs. There's something different between your photographs and if you went to that place and looked at it with the naked eye, and I was wonderingyou must have reflected on this, just having taken all those photographswhat effect your mind has when you make the conscious decision to push the button. Indeed I have. I think it's fascinating, but it's insoluble also. But I'd venture, if I could do it in a humble way, to claim to be an artist, and the motivation of artists is a great mystery. Who knows why a paragraph by Tolstoy is an inspired and often an almost deathless thing. It's a piece of literature and high art, and a New York Times editorial never is. It couldn't be. Yet they're both uses of language. Do you think it's possible for the camera to lie? It certainly is. It almost always does. Is it all right for the camera to lie? No, I don't think it's all right for any thing or any body to lie. But it's beyond control. I just feel that honesty exists relatively in people here and there. I guess what I'm trying to ask is, if you take a beautiful photograph of a garbage can, is it lying? Well, somebody wrote a whole essay called "There's No Such Thing as Beauty." And that's worth thinking about. A garbage can, occasionally, to me at least, can be beautiful. That's because you're seeing. Some people are able to see thatsee it and feel it. I lean toward the enchantment, the visual power, of the esthetically rejected subject. Is that simply because they present a challenge to you? No, I'm just made that way. It's partly rather perverse. I got a lot of my early momentum from disdain of accepted ideas of beauty, and that's partly good, it's partly original. It's also partly destructive. I wasn't a very nice young man. I was tearing down everything if possible. I only see that in retrospect. It was just in me, as there are certain curious things in you that you'll wonder at, later on when you're my age, but you won't ever get to the bottom of. To get back to the difference between noncommercial photography and journalism, if a pic18

ture is honest I don't see what difference it makes if it's hung in a gallery or printed on a page. I don't either. In fact, I'm rather suspicious of hanging a picture in a gallery. I cut out remarkable pictures from the daily press all the time. Have you ever tried color film and do you think it renders a less honest image than black and white? No, I've tried it. I'm in a stage right now that has to do with color and I'm interested in it. But I don't think that the doors open to falsehood through color are any greater than they are through the manipulation of prints in black and white. You can distort that, too. I happen to be a gray man; I'm not a black-and-white man. I think gray is truer. You find that in other fields. E. M. Forster's prose is gray and it's marvelous. Most of the people who have been doing color seem to be drawn to the dramatic, like Ernst Haas. I understand all that, but I've now taken up that little SX-70 camera for fun and become very interested in it. I'm feeling wildly with it. But a year ago I would have said that color is vulgar and should never be tried under any circumstances. It's a paradox that I'm now associated with it and in fact I intend to come out with it seriously. At the beginning you said that you were a late starter and you felt that your career still had a long way to go. What are you doing now? Well, I just told you one thing. I'm very excited about that little gadget which I thought was just a toy at first. What are you trying to do with it? Oh, extend my vision and let that open up new stylistic paths that I haven't been down yet. That's one of the peculiar things about it that I unexpectedly discovered. A practiced photographer has an entirely new extension in that camera. You photograph things that you wouldn't think of photographing before. I don't even yet know why, but I find that I'm quite rejuvenated by it. What do you think of the modern emphasis on technology? Well, I don't think much of it and so I'm very confused about that new camera. I took it to England last summer and a friend of mine who is an art critic said, "But it's a precept that hard work and mastering a difficult technique is a necessary part of artistic achievement, and therefore this thing is immoral." True, with that little camera your work is done the instant you push that button.

But you must think what goes into that. You have to have a lot of experience and training and discipline behind you, although I now want to put one of those things in the hands of a chimpanzee and a child and see what happens. Well, not the chimpanzeethat's been done before. But I want to try that camera with children and see what they do with it. It's the first time, I think, that you can put a machine in an artist's hands and have him then rely entirely on his vision and his taste and his mind. Maybe that's one of the worst things about the SX-70that there is no technical hurdle. Just anyone can take shots. Well, that isn't the worst thing. That's always been true with anything, whether there's any technical need or not. For example, we're all taught to write, and anybody can sit down and write something. Not everybody can sit down and write something that's worth writing. It seems that a lot of new pictures are just interested in displaying what's in the picture without much emotional feeling about it. Alfred Stieglitz said what he was most interested in was an intensity of feeling that he got from the object itself. I think in his case he was led into too much introspection about artistic matters. The more he thought about that, the less of an artist he became. When he began to think that he was photographing God, he was photographing nothing. But he did some wonderful work, say, around 1906 in the Paris streets. The reality of those streetshe caught it. He was a master technician, and those are very endearing works. But those pictures of clouds are nothing to me, absolutely nothing. And he thought they were the greatest things he ever did. What do you tell your students? First of all, I tell them that art can't be taught, but that it can be stimulated and a few barriers can be kicked down by a talented teacher, and an atmosphere can be created which is an opening into artistic action. But the thing itself is such a secret and so unapproachable. And you can't put talent into anybody. I think you ought to say so right away and then try to do something else. And that's what a university is for, what it should be a place for stimulation and an exchange of ideas and a chance to give people the privilege of beginning to take some of the richness of general life that's in everybody and has to be unlocked.

Anything

Can Happenand

Generally

Did"

GO WEST (1925): Brown Eyes and Buster Keaton.

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The name of Buster Keaton (1895-1966) appears as co-director or director on almost every film he made from 1920 through 1929 when his final silent, SPITE MARRIAGE, was released. In spite of his activity in the sound period and stints on TV, Keaton's reputation as a great figure in the world of film is based on his earlier work. The following interview was conducted in Los Angeles in 1958.

on down and play a scene with me and see how you like it. I'm startin' tomorrow morning." . . . I went down and did a scene in the picture [THE BUTCHER B O Y (1917)] and as long as I had a few days to spare, he carried me all the way through the picture. Then he talked to me like a Dutch uncle. He says, " S e e if you can get out of the Winter Garden. Stick with me." . . . So that was it. . . . . . . [There w a s ] no script. W e simply talked over what we were goin' to do and we got our ideas, and went to work. Arbuckle was his own director and I'd only been with him probably about three pictures when I was his assistant director. In other words, I was sittin' alongside the camera when he was doin' the scene. A n d he taught me the cutting room also because he was his own cutter. . . . W e made about six pictures in New York and then moved . . . to the [ W e s t ] Coast because we were too crippled and too handicapped in the East trying to do exteriors. [In] those type of pictures, at least 75 percent of all our pictures w o u l d be exteriors. Did you learn much about timing from Arbuckle? No, I had that long before I came into pictures. Because I did the same type of w o r k on the s t a g e "The Three Keatons" was a rough knockabout act. . . . [ A r b u c k l e ] would turn you loose. Because he didn't care who got the laughs in his pictures. He wanted 'em in there. . . . The Arbuckle pictures were Paramount release [1917-1919], and as soon as Joe Schenck sold Arbuckle to ParamountI mean his cont r a c t s . . . [ S c h e n c k ] turned the troupe over to me and set me out makin' pictures of my own. He got me the old Chaplin studio so it became the Keaton Studio. A n d I was right next to the old Metro. Well Marcus Loew wanted our pictures immediately, so before I made one he signed us. A n d even before I made one of my two-reelers he put me in a big featured picture that was [based on] a famous show in New Y o r k called The New Henrietta . . . [where] it starred William H. Crane and Douglas Fairbanksthis was before Fairbanks went into pictures. [ S c h e n c k ] even sent out the New York stage director, Winchell Smith [to supervise the f i l m ] . (John Golden was the owner of the show.) So they put me in the Fairbanks part for this big feature. This was before I ever put on misfit clothes and started makin' my own. The character was called "Bertie the Lamb,"

Well, I was born with a s h o w w i t h a tent show, in fact. It was a one-night stand in Kansas, a little town called Piqua. A n d the show left my mother and me there for two weeks and then she rejoined the show. So I was born really with the show. . . . M y father and mother with their act got into vaudeville and got to New York, and of course they had a make-up on me as soon as I could walk. My father had slap shoes on me, misfit clothes, even a bald-headed Irish w i g on me. But by the time I was four years old, I was a regular member of the act, getting a salary. . . . [ W e were billed as] "The Three Keatons." . . . The " B u s t e r " ? I got that [name] for falling down a flight of stairs when I was six months old, and I lit at the bottom of my father's partner in the show. And he says, "That's a buster!" A n d the old man says, "That's a good name for ' i m . " So that's the name I got. M y father's partner was Harry Houdini . . . the Handcuff King. . . . [The dead pan] was a natural. A s I grew up on the stage, the experience taught me that I was the type of comedian that if I laughed at what I did, the audience didn't. W e l l , by the time I went into pictures when I was 2 1 , working with a straight face, a sober face, was mechanical with me. . . . In the spring of 1917 vaudeville wasn't quite as good as it used to be, and I went to our agent and told him I wanted to get out and [he] said, " A l l right. Send your folks to your summer home in Muskegon, Michigan, and I'll put you at the Shuberts." So they signed me at the Winter Garden for The Passing Show of 1917. I had about ten days to wait for rehearsal to start when I met Roscoe [ " F a t t y " ] Arbuckle on the street on Broadway and he says, "Have you ever been in a motion picture?" And I said, " I ' v e never even been in a studio." He says, " W e l l , I'm just startin' here for Joe Schenck. I've left [ M a c k ] Sennett . . . and . . . [Schenck's] puttin' me up here to make pictures in the Norma Talmadge studio." He says, " C o m e 20

and his father is a Wall Street multi-millionaire. So I had to dress with the best clothes that the tailors could fit me to for the makin' of that picturea little bit unusual for me. THE S A P H E A D [1920] was the name of it. Then, following that, I made my first series of [my o w n ] two-reelers and I made eight for 'em. On the ninth picture I broke a leg on a studiobuilt escalator and that laid me up for six months. . . . It was called THE ELECTRIC HOUSE [19221923] and we shelved everything I had shot on it and then later on . . . I re-made the picture. . . . W e always had a scenario department and I found that the ideal size was three men to w o r k with you. They were Jean Havez, Clyde Bruckman and a Joe Mitchell. . . . I had off and on Bob [Robert E.] Sherwood (he w r o t e a story for me and I didn't do i t w e couldn't get a finish to it). . . . . . . I started makin' features in '22 and I didn't leave my studio until '28 to go to M G M , but I did my regular two pictures a yearthere was a spring and a fall release. None of those p i c t u r e s that's OUR HOSPITALITY, THE NAVIGATOR, THE GENERALall of 'emthere was never a script on any one of those pictures. . . . A n d our detail w o r k in things like HOSPITALITY and THE GENERAL, period pictures, had to be correct. W e did our own research right up there in the scenario room. W e were very particular about details, costumes and backgrounds, props and things like that. A n d never a script. Because when we had what we knew was a story, and had the materia! and the opportunities to get our high spots, w e ' d bring in our cameraman, our technical man w h o builds our sets, the head electrician and the prop manthose boys are on weekly salary with u s we didn't just hire 'em by the picture, they w e r e right there. A n d we go through what we had in mind on things. They make notes. They know what's going to be built. The prop man knows the props he's got to have and the stuff to be built. The electrician knows what he needs in the way of lights and stuff like that. By the time that we're ready to shoot, there's no use havin' it on paper because they all know it anyhow. And with us, we may lay out a routine in a nice set that we've built for this and we start out in this thing and we find out w e ' r e not gettin' any place. The material is not w o r k i n g out the way we thought it w o u l d . . . . [ W e knew that because] we could feel it. Not only looking at our own rushes, we could feel

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it also. Now, in a broom closet or somethin' like that, we're liable to find a very good routine. So we shift right then and there. W e just devote our time on that and the thunder with that big set. W e didn't care about [ b i g ] production. W e didn't give a darn about that. Soif we were w o r k i n ' by the script, you see, that w o u l d throw the whole thing right out the window. Well that w o u l d happen to us with the first and second day of shootin'. . . . W e didn't shoot by no schedule at all. W e didn't know when we started whether w e was goin' to have the camera up five weeks or ten weeks. A n d it didn't make any difference. W e owned our own camera. W e ' r e not paying rent on anything. All our people are on weekly salary anyhow . . . W e ' v e just got two pictures a year to make and that's all there is to it. I'll show you what happens to you. Up until I'll say 20 years ago, if I phoned out to the Production Department at M G M and says, " I want an insert of a man's hand coming in and picking up a book off of a desk." N o w that's not a big lighting job. That's not a big set job. It's nothing. That cost me 20 years ago exactly $8,000. So today, 20 years later, that same scene would cost almost $12,000. Where it didn't cost us [in the early 1920s] only the price of the film w e bought, which is $2.68 centssomethin' like that. That was the difference. So if I don't w o r k to schedule at M G M , I wreck that studio, according to their system. Which of course is t h e Another thing that hurt is that w e lose all chance of spontaneityad libbing, in other words. Because half of our scenes, for God's sakes, w e only just talked over. W e didn't actually get out there and rehearse 'em. W e just walk through it and talk about it. W e crank that first rehearsal. Because anything can happenand generally did. And w e got our best sequences that way. . . . We used the rehearsal scenes instead of the second take. Today, and especially since sound came in (they were pretty strict before on rehearsing scenes until the director thought they were perfect before he'd crank). With us, we used to say one of the hardest things in the w o r l d to do in pictures is to unrehearse a scene. In other words, you get so mechanical that nothing seems to flow in a natural way. Cues are picked up too sharp and people's actions are just mechanical. Well now to get that feeling out of it is unrehearse the scene, and we generally did that by going out and playing a coupla innings of baseball or somethin'.

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Come back in and someone'd say, " N o w what did I do then?" I'd say, " I don't know. Do what you think best and then go ahead and shoot." That's unrehearsing a scene. Coffee break or somethin'. . . . ONE WEEK [1920], my first two-reeler was a very big laughing picture, and the biggest one I ever made was called H A R D L U C K * [1921]. . . . Eddie Cline co-directed most of the two-reelers with me . . . [and Elgin Lessley was the cameraman.] In fact everybody in our staffthat went for the assistant prop man, the assistant director, the cameraman, they were all gag menyou couldn't stop t h a t . . . . Well [in making THE P L A Y H O U S E (1921)], we just set out to kid Thomas H. Ince. Ince started takin' himself very seriously and his pictures come out saying, "Thomas H. Ince presents Dorothy Dalton in FUR TRAPPING O N THE C A N A D I A N BORDER. Written by Thomas H. Ince. Directed by Thomas H. Ince. Supervised by Thomas H. Ince, and this is a Thomas H. Ince Production." W e l l , w e started the picture with that, saying "This is a Keaton Picture. Keaton Presents Keaton. Supervised by Keaton." (Laughs). . . . I was the cameraman. I was the e l e c t r i c i a n everything that there was to be, and then I set out to be the only one in the picture. A n d I did a minstrel first part. I was nine times on the screen. I was the whole orchestra. Nine exposures. Then I put different makeups on and I was four different sets of characters in the boxes. A n d for a finish, I was the w h o l e audience. . . . W e set an all-time record with the nine exposures. . . . This exposure thing is very tedious [to do, h o w e v e r ] . But the mechanical things of a picture like THE B O A T [1921] w o u l d hold you up longer. W e l l , for instance [in t h a t ] , I built a family cruiser in the basement of my house and had to knock out the end of the house to get the boat out of it. Then when I got it on the landing cradle and launched it, she went straight to the bottom. W e l l , it t o o k us three days to get that launching because we kept running into bugs. She simply w o u l d not go straight down to the bottom. . . . But this past year when they did THE BUSTER KEATON STORY at Paramount [1957], and they wanted that scene with Donald O'Connor playin' me, I could get all the bugs out of it for 'em before they built it. So they got the scene in one morningthe first take.
*HARD LUCK appears to have been lost completely.

. . . [In ONE W E E K ] my uncle give me the portable house and my aunt gave me the lot to build it on, as a wedding present. Only my former rival for the girl's hand changed the numbers on the crates so when I put the house up it was the darndest looking thing you ever saw. A n d then for a finish, I found out I'd built it on the w r o n g lot. . . . I remember w e had trouble one summer. Standard Lab had all our negatives and handled all our film w o r k from the studio. A n d durin' the heat of one of our severest summers, the cooling system went out and all of those negatives just fell apart. The emulsion ran right off of 'em with that heat, see. So we lost pretty near all our negatives. So the only thing that w o u l d be in existence [ n o w ] w o u l d be what prints were out and hadn't been run to death and all chewed up. . . . . . . After eight pictures with Metro, I released 11 First Nationals [ t w o - r e e l e r s ] . Then I came back to Metro to do features. . . . W e l l , that's what put us into feature-length pictures because an exhibitor, if he got one of a [short] Chaplin, a Lloyd or one of mine, he w o u l d bill it above the feature picture he had. And of course w e never got any big stars on the bill with us. W e never got any Bill Harts, Mary Pickfords, Gloria Swansons or Fairbanks or anybody. W e got the darndest stars y o u ever heard of. W e l l , your natural rentals in those d a y s f o r instance if he paid $300 rent for a two-reeler for the week, he w o u l d be paying $900 for the feature. W e l l , long as the exhibitor was featuring us anyway, w e weren't gettin' the best of the program by doin' it. W e stopped makin' two-reelersand went into features. . . . I wasn't impressed with motion pictures until Sennett hit his stride with the Keystone Cops and then I saw THE BIRTH OF A N A T I O N [1915]. From then on I was sold. I was sold from then on. I was a picture fan. Then of course the next picture that caught my eye was Sennett's [feature-length c o m e d y ] TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROM A N C E [1914]. . . . [Griffith's INTOLERANCE (1916) w a s ] terrific. . . . It's a beautiful production. That was somethin' to watch then. Y o u weren't used to seein' big spectaculars like that. . . . [In THREE AGES (1923)] w e used Wallace Beery as a villain. A n d what I did was just tell a single story of two fellows calling on a girl, and the mother likes one suitor and the father likes

the other one. A n d in fighting over the girl and different situations we could get into, and finally winning her. But I told the same story in three ages. I told it in the Stone Age, Roman A g e and Modern. In other words, I just show us calling on the girl, the two of us, gettin' sore at each other because w e w e r e in each other's way. Then I w e n t from the Stone Age to the Roman Age, did the same exact scene with the same people, only the setting was different and the costumes. A n d the same thing in the Modern Age. So every situation w e just repeated in the three different ages. That was the picture. . . . It was all right because as far as story construction goes it didn't mean much to the audience, but there was enough laughs to hold up. . . . The second picture was really a big seller, called OUR HOSPITALITY [1923] and there I used a story of a feud in the South, and placed the period in . . . [1831] to take advantage of the first railroad train that had been built. That's when they just t o o k the stagecoaches and put flanged wheels on 'em. A n d they had those silly lookin' enginesone called the Stephenson " R o c k e t " and [one called] the " D e W i t t C l i n t o n . " A n d they're naturally narrow-gauge, and they weren't so fussy about layin' railroad track [then] i f it was a little unlevel, they just ignored it. They laid it over fallen trees, over rocks (laughs). So I got quite a few laughs ridin' that railroad. But when [in the picture] I got down South to claim my father's estate, I ran into the family who had run us out of the state in the first place. A n d the old man of the outfit wouldn't let his sons or anybody shoot me while I was a guest in the house 'cause the girl had invited me for dinner. W e l l , I'd overheard it and found out. As long as I stayed in the house I was safe. But I had a good story to tell and it rounded out swell and it was a big seller for me. . . . The next picture was SHERLOCK, JR. [1924] . . . I did a lot of trick photography w o r k in that thing. . . . [ A b o u t that gag where I dive right through the middle of a person.] No, I just did this recently on Ed Sullivan's "Toast of the T o w n . " I put it in the Donald O ' C o n n o r film, see. A n d they sent me East to plug the picture, so naturally Sullivan had me there. A n d w e had this set built, and he says, " I t ' s marvelous what the trick department with the cameras can d o . " A n d I said, " I want to show y o u how to do this camera t r i c k . " So I did it in front of his [TV] audience.

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Of course, it is no camera trick. You do it in full view of the audience and on a full-lit stage. There's no lighting effects, no mirrors or anything. And it's really a great trick and it shocks an audience. And after the show was over, Sullivan sent for me. And I went up to his dressin'-room and he says, " S o I can sleep t o n i g h t h o w ' d you do it?" I wouldn't tell 'im. Now, tell me about THE NAVIGATOR [1924]. That's your favorite film? Yeah. W e were w o r k i n ' on a story, the scenario department, and w e didn't have a good idea y e t all fishin' around for somethin'. And I had just lent my technical man to Metro, to Frank Lloyd. He wanted to do THE SEA H A W K and that called for about five fourteenth century sailing vessels. So he was up and down the Pacific Coast lookin' for those hulls that they could build up into those pirate ships. . . . But he had just gotten back in town, and he says, " W h i l e I was in 'Frisco, I ran into an ocean liner500 foot longa passenger ship. And they're just about to sell it for junk." Says, " Y o u can have it for $25,000 and do anything you want with it." Says, " H e r name's the Beaufort. She was very much in the press at one time because I believe she brought the D u c h e s s or somethin'of Russia out the night before that slaughter took place over there, with the Czar of Russia and his family. So they sneaked her out of Russia over to the United States." Well, w e went to w o r k right then and there and says, " N o w , what could w e do with an ocean liner?" Says, " W e l l , we can make a dead ship out of it. No lights aboard. No water running. Just afloat." How could we get it afloat? W e l l , we set out to figure out how to do that and to write a story around it. Only to get a boy and a girl alone, and adrift in the Pacific Ocean. And w e plant the characters so that the audience knows that she never saw a kitchen in her life, doesn't know how to boil a cup of tea. I am the son of a very wealthy man in San Francisco, so I've been waited on all my life with valets, chauffeurs, and private tutors and everything else. So I don't know what I'm doin'. A n d set those two characters adrift in the Pacific Ocean on a dead ship. W e l l , that's THE NAVIGATOR. And it w o r k e d out beautifully. . . . The opening gag in that picture with me is one of the most stolen gags that was ever done on the screen. I think I knew at one time of 27 times it had been done by other companies. W i t h us, the gag was more to establish the fact that I was so 26

helpless, that I went to call on the girl, and I came down and got in my car with a chauffeur and a footman. The footman wrapped a blanket around my kneesa big open Pierce-Arrow Phaeton and drove across the street. That's all. I got out to call on the girl. I asked the girl if she'd marry me and she said, " N o , " and I come back down [to the c a r ] . The guy opened the door in the car for me, and I said, " N o , I think the walk will do me g o o d . " So I walked across the street with the car f o l lowin' me, makin' a U-turn. How about the underwater sequence? Did you have any trouble with that? Terrible problems with that. W e l l , w e says, we'll try and build a camera box and shoot some place off the shores of Catalina. That's good clear water. But when w e got over there we found out that time of year there was a milky substance in the water that you couldn't see very good in. Says, " W e l l , the next thing is we rent the tank down at Riverside." And of course the tank isn't deep enough for us. So we'll build it up another ten feet. Because I've got to have the rear end of an ocean liner in itthe propeller and rudder. Because in the picture w e drift ashore on a cannibal island in the Pacific and spring a leak in the stuffing box. W e l l , it can only be fixed from the outside. A n d . . . [she sends] me down in a deepsea diving outfit . . . [while she pumps air to m e ] . W e l l , w e thought that would w o r k out fine because w e know the clear water we're goin' to get down there. But the base of the swimming pool is built to only hold seven or eight feet of water. W o u l d n ' t take 18. The bottom just went out from under it. The weight of the water pushed the bottom out. So we wrecked that pool. Had to build them a new swimmin' pool. It's the Municipal Pool down there, for God's sakes. So then we moved to Lake Tahoe. So I was one month up there shooting that sequence. One of the worst problems in Tahoe was the water so clear you could really see, but so cold that I could only stay down about 30 minutes at a time. [That w a s ] as long as I could stay down. It'd go right through y a . . . . Did you ever use the preview system much in your own films, Buster? Always. . . . W e l l , w e used to sneak a picture out of town. One of our main reasons for takin' it out of town was that so none of the carpenters or extra people or anybody connected with studios w o u l d be in that audience. Because if w e had an

outstanding sequence or cute gags or good gags or anything like that, these people w o u l d sell it to other studios. Sometimes they'd sell it and sometimes just to get in good with somebody, says, " H e r e ' d be a good gag for y o u . " . . . And we had that happen to us a few times. So our p r e v i e w s w e ' d take 'em out to Los Angeles, Long Beach, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara, Riverside, Santa Anaplaces like that. A n d w e don't tell the audience they're lookin' at a preview. See, we want a cold reaction. W e ' d send the print down there to the exhibitor, and he's goin' to have two shows that night, he runs the picture twice. And he advertisesa Keaton picture, that's all. So we're in there to get . . . a normal reaction. W e l l , w e have never made a pictureI know I never did, and I know [Harold] Lloyd never did, and I'm sure Chaplin never didthat w e didn't go back and set the camera up again. Because w e helped the high spots, and re-did the bad ones, and cut footage out, and get scenes that would' connect things up for us. W e always put a make-up on and set the camera back up after that first preview. And generally after the second one, also. . . . . . . [ W e used the preview system from my] first picture. Arbuckle, in those days, it didn't make much difference to him. They says, "This is it," and that was it. But when it started gettin' a little more s e r i o u s w e took advantage of the preview. But our system was not lettin' the audience know so that the audience wouldn't yes us. The minute you got in one of the major s t u d i o s o h , I fought my head off at M G M when I went t h e r e and find out that they ballyhoo it. So that you got the audience in there, the minute it says, " M G M Presents," the audience applauds. A n d different characters come on the screen, they applauded 'em. They applauded the director's name, they went out of their way to laugh at things that the normal audience didn't laugh at. They yessed the b'jthe liferight out of ya. (Laughs.) W e l l , that hurt me. I didn't want that at all. I couldn't stop 'em. W e l l , that's because, w o r k i n ' at a major studio, all companies are assigned to a producer. W e l l , the producer wants to make sure that the high brass of the studio sees a good picture even at the first preview. Did you ever cut a major gag clear out of a picture? O h yes. Because it didn't fit. Do you remember, did that happen in the case of THE NAVIGATOR?

It did. I had a beautiful gag in THE N A V I G A T O R . I'm down tryin' to fix the stuffin' box of that ocean liner, and here's a school of fish goin' past and there was a big jewfish tryin' to get through the school of fish, and he couldn't make it. So I reached down there and pulled a starfish off of a rock, and let it grab my breastplate and I stepped in the middle of the school of fish and brought 'em to a stop and then turned like a traffic cop and brought the big fish through. A n d when he went through, then I turned and brought the traffic on its way again. A n d the gag folded right up [went smoothly] like a million bucks. It was perfect. A n d it was a son-of-a-gun to do. It took us three days to get the gag. W e had somethin' like 1200 rubber fish, all around 10 inches long, and they had t o be solid rubber so they wouldn't float and hang 'em all with violin string, catgut. A n d a piece of apparatus built by the Lewellyn Iron Company, and sink four telegraph poles under water up there to operate this apparatus overhead, to control the school of fish. But the gag photographed perfect. A n d we previewed this picture, and not one giggle did it get. W e didn't trust that preview. Says, " W e ' l l keep it in for a second [ p r e v i e w ] . Somethin's w r o n g . " W e kept it in for a second. A n d the same thing. It finally dawned on usI had gone down there to fix that stuffing box. The girl and I both are at the mercy of cannibals off of a cannibal island. I had no license in the w o r l d to go help a fish go through a school of fish. I quit what I went down to do. . . . [People were w o r r i e d about the situation.] And also get mad at me for doin' it. Anything else could happen to me. That was all right. Like a lobster gettin' on my pants. A n d I used his claws for a clipper, for a pair of pliers. A swordfish tryin' to interfere with me. That was all right. Now, to prove the gag, I put the gag in our " C o m i n g Att r a c t i o n " runner. W e used to call 'em runners. The theater w o u l d say: " C o m i n g Next W e e k . " A n d they'd just show you flashes of a picture that was goin' to come. I put that gag in it, and it was an out-and-out belly laugh. [That's because it was out of context.] No story. . . . . . . [SEVEN C H A N C E S (1925)] was not a good story for me. That was bought by someone and sold to Joe Schenck without us knowin' it. A s a rule Schenck never knew when I was shootin' or what I was shootin'. He just went to the preview. But somebody sold him this show that w a s done by Belasco a few years before. . . . A n d he buys this

thing for me and it's no good for me at all. . . . A n d the only thing that saved me was that I accidentally dislodged a coupla rocks in the chase scene and they chased me down the side of a hill. Well, when we saw that at the preview, and the audience sat up in their seatsthey expected somethin'for the first time in the picturewe built 1500 different shape size rocks and took 'em out on the ridge route and completed a sequence. It's the only thing that saved the picture. . . . [ W e shot G O WEST (1926)] about 60 miles out of Kingman, Arizona. W e were really out in open country . . . four cameramen (that's [ i n c l u d ing] the assistants), electriciangenerally takes about three men with him (because w e took a generator, which takes a couple of men), technical mantakes a couple of dozen carpenters, a prop man must take about four extra helpers with him. . . . Then w e house 'em up there, s e e w e take tents and everything else and a portable kitchen. . . . Well, I had one bad disappointment in that thing. I thought I had a funny sequence when I had my cattleI turned 'em looseand I actually turned 'em loose here in Los Angeles in the Santa Fe depot in the freight yards, and brought 'em up Seventh Street to Broadway ( n o u p to Spring Street). And we put cowboys off on every side street to stop people in automobiles from comin' into it. A n d then put our own cars with people in there. A n d I brought 300 head of steers up that street. I'd hate to ask permission to do that today. But then I thought that by goin' in a store, and I saw a costume place, and I saw a devil's suit (this was r e d ) w e l l , bulls and steers don't like red, they'll chase it. 'Course I w a s tryin' to lead 'em towards the slaughter house. I put that suit on and I thought I'd get a funny chase sequence, and have the cows get a little too close to me, and get scared. Then really put on speed tryin' to get away from 'em. But I couldn't do it with steerssteers wouldn't chase me. I actually ran and had cowboys pushin' em' as fast as they could go, and I fell down in front of 'em and let 'em get within about ten feet of me before I got to my feet. But as I moved, they stopped, too. They piled up on each other. They didn't mind a stampede at all. But they wouldn't come near me. W e l l , that kind of hurt when y o u think that's going to be y o u r big finish chase sequence. W e had to trick it from all angles. . . . Some parts I liked, but as a picture, in general, I didn't care for it. . . . BATTLING BUTLER [1926] I liked. It was a

good picture. I told the original story that was taken from the stage show except that I had to add my own finish. I couldn't have done the finish that was in the show . . . [where] he just finds out in the dressing room up at the Madison Square Garden that he don't have to fight the champion and he promises the girl he'll never fight again. And of course the girl don't know but what he did fight. But we knew better than to do that to a motion picture audience. W e couldn't promise 'em for seven reels that I was goin' to fight in the ring and then not fight. W e knew that w e had to fight. So we staged a fight in the dressing room with the guy who just won the title in the r i n g b y having bad blood between the fighter and myself. A n d it w o r k e d out swell. [Then THE GENERAL (1926-1927)]Clyde Bruckman [the co-director] run into this b o o k called "The Great Locomotive Chase," a situation that happened in the Civil War, and it was a pip. Says, " W e l l , it's awful heavy for us to attempt, because when we got that much plot and story to tell, it means we're goin' to have a lot of film with no laughs in it. But w e won't w o r r y too much about it if we can get the plot all told [laid out] in that first reel, and our charactersbelievable charactersall planted, and then go ahead and let it roll. A n d every other situation is more dramatic than it is funny." Well, that was the finished picture, andit held an audience. They were interested in i t f r o m start to finishand there was enough laughter to satisfy. I tell you one thing I was kind of proud of myself for. I made that picture in '26. Thirty years later, W a l t Disney did it [as THE GREAT L O C O MOTIVE CHASE (1956)], and I guarantee you we had a better picture. . . . It was shot up around Cottage Grove, Oregon. Because not only the scenery was perfect for it, but all the narrow-gauge railroads from those lumber camps [ w e r e t h e r e ] . A n d so much of the equipment. Because w e bought engines up there and with very little w o r k remodelled 'em into Civil W a r engines. Then w e built a passenger train and a freight train on their flat cars. They had the rolling stock for us. So w e just built box cars and passenger coaches and all the track in the w o r l d w e wanted to use was already laid for us. A n d it looked aged, which w e wanted, and b a d l y y o u k n o w t h e y don't bother keepin' it looking good, they don't care what 27

grows around it. . . . I wanted it that way. Did the actual locomotive "The General" appear in that? O h no, no. W e reproduced that. Because that original locomotive they'd have never let that one out of the depot in Chattanooga. . . . I believe they moved it to Atlanta, Georgia. Because the run of "The G e n e r a l " was from Atlanta to Chattanoogathat's where this chase t o o k place. How did the [mounted] cannon sequence develop? W e found that. It's an actual gun of the Civil War. The first railroad gun. A n d we duplicated that cannon. It almost looks like a prop we invented. That's the only thing that kind of scared us. When it come to using it. They said, " E v e r y b o d y ' s going to say, 'Oh, they invented the prop just to get the gag.' But it's an actual reproduction of a railroad gun built in the Civil War. . . . W e found it in more than one book. Were there more people involved in the making of that film than in any of your others? Well, when it come to do the battle scenes, I hired the National Guard of Oregon. Got 500 men there. And we managed to locate about 125 horses. Then in getting the equipment up from Los A n geles, we had to have a lot of it made. W e had to have artillery pieces and army saddles and stuff like that and uniforms for both gray and blue. . . . [I housed the men] for a week in tourist cars given to us by the Union Pacific on a siding. W e put up a big tent for a mess hall. A n d put 'em in blue uniforms and bring 'em goin' from right to left, and take 'em out, put 'em in gray uniforms, bring 'em goin' from left to right (laughs). A n d fought the war. There was some criticism at the time, and I'll tell you who was the man who mentioned itand that was your friend Robert E. Sherwood*who was a little upset by the fact that you showed men being killed in a comedy. Well, he was a little sensitive about that. Because you've had to kill people in comedies. You've done that for years. But as a rule, if we could help it, we didn't. I liked COLLEGE [1927]. . . . [In that] I tried to be an athlete when I was an honor student in high school and of course I flunked everything then. Until I got into a jam. They made me cox*Then editor of the old humor magazine, Life, tion picture critic. and its mo-

swain of the boat in order to make an athlete out of me. O h o n e of my best gags in it was I was at the Coliseum doing a warm-up with all the other athletes, see. No people in the grandstand. . . . [This was followed by S T E A M B O A T BILL, JR. (1928) which Keaton liked " v e r y much," and for which the climax was altered to accommodate a cyclone instead of a flood.] [Then:] THE C A M E R A M A N [1928] is one of my pet pictures. It's the simplest story that you can find, which was always a great thing for us if we could find it. I was a tintype cameraman down at Battery Park, New York. Ten cents a picture. . . . I saw the Hearst W e e k l y [newsreel] man and a script girl with him [at a parade] that I got one look at and fell hook, line and sinker. W e l l , immediately, I went down and sold my tintype thing to a second-hand dealer and bought a second-hand motion picture camera. A n d of course I got one of the oldest models there w a s a Pathe. A n d I went to the Hearst offices . . . and they got one look at me and my equipment and says, " n o . " (Laughs intermittently here.) The girl saw me make the attempt and she says, "There's only one way you can do anything. You gotta go out and photograph somethin' of interest. A n d if they see it and they can use the film you shoot, they'll buy it from you. A n d if you can do that more than once then they'll put you on as a member of t h e " W e l l , I set out to be a newsreel cameraman. A n d of course I had my problems. . . . There's one unfortunate gap in our print. Apparently the negative had deteriorated. It's the part where you go out for the first day and everything goes wrong. There's just a little bit of that left That's a shame because some of the biggest gags are there. Tell me about what was in there. W e l l , the No. 1 was I think I saw a lot of people around a Park Avenue hotel and I got there and they says, " I t ' s the admiral that's coming o u t ! " So I busted through the c r o w d and I photographed the admiral going right from the main door into his limousine. Only the mistake I made was, I photographed the doorman. That was my first error. Then I got over to the Hudson River and got a shot of the battleship, and then a parade on Fifth Avenue, and I double-exposed it by accident. So I had the battleship comin' down Fifth Avenue and the parade comin' down the Hudson

River. I went to a launching of some millionaire's new yacht, one of the Vanderbilts, and I made a mistake and set my camera up on part of the cradle that launched the boat. So I was launched with the boat. In a finish I photographed a disappearing gunone of those great big things that they had come up and shoot. W h i l e I'm photographing one, I didn't know it, but I was right up against another one that nearly t o o k the seat of my pants off (laughs). . . . [Later in the film] I got mixed up in that Tong W a r down there and because they saw me photographin' they came at me. I didn't seem to have any choice but to just leave my camera and dive out the w i n d o w into a fire escape and get away from 'em. And then go ahead and round out the story. W e previewed it and we thought the last reel was a good reel . . . and the last reel just died the death of a dog. It dawned on us what that was. I deserted that camera. So I had to go back and re-make thateven with the trouble of tryin' to get away from those wild Chinamen in the Tong War. I still kept my camera. Then it was all right (laughs). It was O.K.

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Symposium On February 20 and 21, 1975, the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House is sponsoring a symposium entitled "The Art History of Photography: Recent Investigations." In recent years an increasing number of university art historians have become involved with the study of the history of photography. These historians bring their specialized tools and methodologies for the study of art to the understanding of the history of the photographic image. Their concerns range from the historiographic and chronological to the history of ideas and aesthetics. The participants and their topics are: Peter C. Bunnell (Princeton University): "The Concept of the Equivalent: The Work of Alfred Stieglitz." William Innes Homer (University of Delaware): "Stieglitz' Credo of Modernism: Its Manifestation in Paul Strand's Early Photographs." Eugenia P. Janis (Wellesley College): "The Man on the Tower of Notre Dame: New Light on Henri Le Secq." Estelle Jussim (Simmons College): "The Syntax of Reality: Photography's Transformation of Nineteenth Century Wood-Engraving into an Art of lllusionism." Ulrich Keller (University of Louisville): "Photographs in Context." Ira Licht (University of Rochester/Museum of Contemporary Art): "USSR in Construction: Lissitzky and Rodchenko." Elizabeth Lindquist-Cock (University of Rhode Island): "Photography for Artists: William Bradford's Arctic Folio." Anita Ventura Mozley (Stanford University): "Thomas Annan of Glasgow: A Conservative Photographer." The symposium will take place in the Dryden Theater at the museum, Thursday, February 20, 2:00-6:00 p.m.; and Friday, February 21, 10:00 a.m.-12:00 noon, and 2:00-6:00 p.m. Abstracts of the papers read will be available during the symposium. A registration fee of $15.00 (regular) or $7.50 (student) will be required. For information contact (716) 271-3361, extension 24. 30

Synoptic Catalog of the International Museum of Photography Collections (continued) The synoptic catalog is a selective survey of the photographic and allied resources of the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House. Negative numbers refer to our Print Service files.

H. H. HILL [active Hamilton, N.Y., 1880s]. 4 albumen cabinet portraits. John K. HILLERS [b. 1843-d. 1925]. 30 albumen prints; 1 albumen print from the Geological & Geographical Survey of the Territories, Second Division; 127 stereographs. L. HILLMAN [active Watkins, N.Y., 1870s]. 10 stereographs of Watkins Glen. E. R. HILLS [active Brookline, Mass., ca. 18681878]. 4 stereographs. Harvey HIMELFARB [b. New York City, 1941- ]. 5 prints. A. L. HINDS [active Benton, Maine, ca. 18681878]. 3 stereographs. [Illustration: "Maine," n.d. (ca. 1870). (7.7 x 14.9 cm.) Neg. 19687].

David Octavius HILL [b. Perth, Scotland, 1802-d. Edinburgh, Scotland, 1870] and Robert ADAMSON [b. Burnside, Scotland, 1821-d. St. Andrews, Scotland, 1848]. 1 landscape watercolor, signed "St. Andrews, D. O. Hill;" 5 original calotype negatives; 133 original calotype positives; 20 original calotype positives in The T. B. Johnston Album; 56 original calotype positives in the album Photographic Portraits; 47 carbon prints by Jesse Bertram in Calotypes by D. O. Hill and R. Adamson, selected from his collection by Andrew Elliot, Edinburgh, 1928; plus 2 additional carbon prints by Jesse Bertram for the Elliot book and 12 further carbon prints, possibly by J. Craig Annan. Also: 71 modern prints in various processes by A. L. Coburn from original negatives; 42 modern prints by the Glasgow University Library from the original negatives; 8 modern prints from the original negatives; 10 photogravures from Camera Work; 2 photogravures, source unknown. In addition: 15 lithographs and title page (lithograph) in Sketches of Scenery in Perthshire drawn from nature and on stone by D. O. Hill, Perth, ca. 1821; various engravings in The Land of Burns, A Series of Landscapes and Portraits Illustrative of the Life and Writings of the Scottish Poet, Glasgow, 1840. [Illustration: "Naroji," plate 29 from Photographic Portraits, n.d. (ca. 1843). (20.2 x 15.0 cm.) Neg. 19688].

Lewis W i c k e s HINE [b. Oshkosh, Wisc., 1874-d. 1940]. Over 6,500 prints, including prints by both Hine and the Photo League; appoximately 900 glass negatives, 1075 nitrate negatives and 1950 safety film negatives. Number of distinct images according to Hine's original categories: 24 aircraft w o r k e r s ; 234 army camps; 22 automotive w o r k e r s ; 27 barge canal series; 6 Boy Scouts; 8 candy w o r k e r s ; 184 child labor; 92 children; 154 Children's A i d Society; 5 cigar w o r k e r s ; 46 craftsmen; 10 "dissecting a photograph, photo s t u d y ; " 428 educational services; 73 Ellis Island; 408 Empire State Building; 20 fishermen; 12 firemen; 149 France; 129 garment w o r k e r s ; 9 Geetlings, C. H. [portraits o f ] ; 158 Girl Scouts; 4 glass w o r k e r s ; 23 grocery w o r k e r s ; 161 Health Services; 20 Hine, Lewis W.; 10 Hull House; 3 industrial safety; 12 industrial scenes; 7 laboratory w o r k e r s ; 74 maritime w o r k e r s ; 49 mechanics; 252 men at w o r k ; 61 miners; 188 miscellaneous; 18 mother and child; 145 negro life; 7 paper w o r k e r s ; 62 personal; 53 Pittsburgh series; 22 playgrounds; 209 studio and commercial; 2 sweatshops; 3 telegraph w o r k e r s ; 21 telephone w o r k e r s ; 7 tenements; 28 textile w o r k e r s ; 27 T.V.A.; 20 unemployment; 1 unidentified; 302 welfare; 73 women at w o r k ; 161 W.P.A.; and 147 w o r k relief. A l s o : research collection of uncollated newspaper clippings, correspondence, pamphlets and other Hine related ephemera. [Illustration: Railroadworker from " M e n at W o r k " series, n.d. (ca. 1920). (17.6 x 12.5 cm.) Neg. 19680].

D. H. HINKLE [active Germantown, Pa., late 1860searly 1890s]. 3 carte-de-visite portraits, one dated Dec. 31, 1869, and another Feb. 1891. George W. HISSONG [active La Grange, Indiana, 1880s], 4 stereographs, all landscapes. E. Walter HISTED [American, b. Britain; active ca. 1900-1910]. 4 platinum prints, all portraits. James M. HOAG [d. Adrian, Mich., 1879; active 1860s-1870s]. 3 carte-de-visite portraits. (D. R.) HOAG (d. 1864) & QUICKS [active Cincinnati, Ohio, 1860s]. 2 carte-de-visite portraits of military wedding signed Hoag & Quicks; 1 carte-de-visite portrait signed Hoag Quick & Co.; 1 ninth plate ambrotype signed Hoag. HOARD & TENNEY [active Winona, Minn., 1870s]. 4 stereographs of landscapes. W. HOFFERT [active Berlin, 1890s]. 10 albumen cabinet portraits of theatrical personalities. [Illustration: "KuhnErika," n.d. (1890s). 14.7 x 10.5 cm.) Neg. 19686].

W. HOFFMAN [active Dresden, Germany, 18651875]. 3 cartes-de-visite, all landscapes.

J. HOGARTH [British, active 1850s]. 15 albumen prints reproducing drawings, two of which are hand colored, in Views in Lucknow, London, 1858.

A. HOGSTRATEN [active The Hague, Holland, 1890s]. 5 albumen prints on linen of the Hague, Holland.

Rev. J. HOLDEN [active Britain, 1850s]. 2 albumen prints; 1 albumen print in The Sunbeam, London, 1859; 1 salt paper print in The Photographic Album for the Year 1857, London, 1857.

Silas A. HOLMES [d. New York City, 1886]. 2 sixth plate ambrotypes in double case; 1 cartede-visite portrait; 2 ninth plate daguerreotype portraits in double case; 3 stereographs.

HOLT & GRAY [active New York City, ca. 18611868]. 8 stereographs, scenes of St. Croix.

W. E. HOOK [active Manitou Springs, Colorado, 1880s]. 2 albumen boudoir prints and 1 stereograph.

J .D. HOPE [active Watkins, N.Y., ca. 1868-1878]. 24 stereographs of Watkins Glen.

HOPE [active New York City and Goshen, N.Y., 1860s]. 9 carte-de-visite portraits labelled "Photographed by Hope, 233 Broadway, N.Y.;" 2 carte-de-visite portraits labelled "Hope, late of 233 Broadway, Succ'r to Frank Edsall, Goshen, N.Y."

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A. C. HOPKINS [active Palmyra, N.Y., 1880s1890s]. 12 albumen cabinet portraits and 3 carte-de-visite portraits. Emil Otto HOPPE [b. Munich, Germany, 1878-d. 1967]. 1 gelatin silver print; 2 platinum prints; 12 photogravures from Studies from The Russian Ballet, 1911. [Illustration: untitled, 1909. (20.1 x 14.9 cm.) Neg. 19721].

HOUGH BROS, [active Rochester, N.Y. 1890s]. 3 albumen cabinet portraits. Possibly related to a carte-de-visite portrait labelled "E. K. Hough, Artist; S. E. Hough, Manager, New York City". Thomas HOUSEWORTH [b. New York City, 1829-d. San Francisco, 1915]. 1 albumen print from the series "Houseworth's Celebrities;" 3 albumen prints of Yosemite Valley; 67 cartes-de-visite and 163 stereographs including views of San Francisco, Sacramento City, Calaveras County, Yosemite Valley, and the Central Pacific Railroad, all labelled Thomas Houseworth & Co. Also: 2 albumen prints; 1 cabinet; 7 stereographs; and 3 hand-colored stereographs labelled Lawrence and Houseworth. [Illustration: "Occidental Hotel, Montgomery Street, from the Russ House, San Francisco," 1865. (7.8 x 15.5 cm.) Neg. 19684].

W. H. HOWARD [British, active 1860s]. 4 albumen prints. William R. HOWELL [active New York City, 1870s]. 10 carte-de-visite portraits, several of celebrities and one dated January 16, 1872; 3 cabinet portraits; 1 stereograph. [Illustration: "Pauline Markham," n.d. (ca. 1870). (9.5 x 5.8 cm.) Neg. 19683].

J. HORSBURGH [active Edinburgh, 1860s]. 3 carte-de-visite portraits. Eikoh HOSOE [b. Yamagata, Japan, 1933- ] . 9 prints, 4 of which are reproduced in the book Killed by Roses, 1963; 2 in Ordeal by Roses, 1971; 2 in Embrace, 1971; and 1 in Kamaitachi, 1969. [Illustration: Untitled print of Yukio Mishima, 1963. (37.2 x 55.3 cm.) Neg. 19685].

E. P. and J. S. HOVEY [active Rome and Rochester, N.Y., 1880s-1890s]. 1 cabinet portrait and 1 carte-de-visite portrait labelled E. P. Hovey, Rome; 2 carte-de-visite portraits labelled J. S. Hovey, Rome; 4 cabinet portraits labelled Hovey & Brainerd; and 5 carte-devisite portraits labelled Hovey and Hartman, Rochester. HOWARD & CO. [active Plattsburg, N.Y., 1870s]. 5 carte-de-visite portraits. W. D. HOWARD [British, active 1860s]. 6 albumen prints in book Six Photographs of Ackworth, 1864; W/F. H. Lloyd album: Photographs Among the Dolomite Mountains, containing 23 albumen prints; 4 stereographs, all dated 1864.

S. S. HOWLAND [probably British, active 1870s]. 24 albumen prints in hand-written manuscript JourRobert HOWLETT [d. 1858]. 85 albumen prints, 77 of which are loose folios from the album The Leviathan, London, n.d. (ca. 1857-1858); 2 salt paper prints in the album Photographs, Exchange Club, n.d.; 1 salt paper print in album Pictures of the Photographic Exchange Club, 1855. [Illustration: untitled, from The Leviathan, n.d. (ca. 1857-1858). (28.6 x 35.7 cm.) Neg. 19682].

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International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House Office of Extension Activities 900 East Ave., Rochester, N.Y. 14607

Schedule of Bookings: December 1 9 7 4 - M a y 1 9 7 5

CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY SINCE 1950 50 prints$200/month Ackland Art Center, Chapel Hill, N.C. Nov. 15-Jan. 15 University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario Feb. 1-Feb. 28 DAVIDSON, BRUCE 25 prints$100/month Millbrook School, Millbrook, N.Y. Nov. 15-Dec. 15 DEJA-VU/RALPH GIBSON 45 prints$200/month DOISNEAU, ROBERT 25 prints$100/month Photographers Gallery, Seattle, Wa. Jan. 1-Jan. 31 FRANK, ROBERT 25 prints$100/month Slater Memorial Museum, Norwich, Ct. Jan. 12-Feb. 9 The Lindenwood College, St. Charles, Mo. April 1-April 30 Kansas State University, Manhattan, Ks. May 15-June 15 FROM THE GEH COLLECTION 100 prints$400/month Georgia Southern College, Statesboro, Ga. Dec. 30-Jan. 22 LEWIS HINE II 50 prints$200/month International Center of Photography, New York, N.Y. Nov. 15-Feb. 15 KRIMS, LESLIE 25 prints$100/month MUYBRIDGE, EADWEARD 35 prints$140/month Photographers Gallery, Seattle, Wa. Feb. 1-Feb. 28 Zoller Gallery, University Park, Pa. March 15-April 15

NEWMAN, ARNOLD 50 prints$200/month PHOTO/GRAPHICS 25 prints$150/month Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Ky. Dec. 1-Dec. 19 Eastern Washington State College, Cheney, Wa. Jan. 27-Feb. 14 Culver-Stockton College, Canton, Mo. March 1-March 31 SISKIND, AARON On extended tour by United States Information Agency SMITH, W.EUGENE 25 prints$100/month General Motors Corporation, Warren, Mi. Dec. 9-Jan. 9 Mulvane Art Center, Topeka, Ks. Feb. 2-Feb. 26 Photographer's Gallery, Seattle, Wa. March 15-June 15 TERMINAL LANDSCAPE 40 prints$160/month University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Ne. Jan. 13-Feb. 5 Orange Coast College, Costa Mesa, Ca. Feb. 15-March 15 TULSA/LARRY CLARK 49 prints$200/month University of Delaware, Newark, De. May 1-May 31 UELSMANN, JERRY 30 prints$125/month Mulvane Art Center, Topeka, Ks. Feb. 2-Feb. 26 The Lindenwood Colleges, St. Charles, Mo. April 1-April 30 WEST OF THE ROCKIES Slater Memorial Museum, Norwich, Ct. Jan. 12-Feb. 9 WESTON, EDWARD On extended tour by United States Information Agency

ATGET, EUGENE 41 prints$160/month Juniata College, Huntington, Pa. Dec. 1-Dec. 31 Oakton Community College, Morton Grove, II. Feb. 1-Feb. 28 Wheaton College, Wheaton, II. March 15-April 15 Orange Coast College, Costa Mesa, Ca. May 10-June 10 BULLOCK. WYNN On extended tour by United States Information Agency HARRY CALLAHAN/CITY 75 prints$300/month 140 prints$550/month CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHERS IV On extended tour by United States Information Agency CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHERS V On extended tour by United States Information Agency CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHERS VI 50 prints$200/month Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, In. Feb. 1-Feb. 28 CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHERS VII 25 prints$100/month Northern Michigan University, Marquette, Mi. Dec. 1-Dec. 31