Topic: The forgotten photographs of Werner Bischof

[AJShepherd]

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/mar/03/in-living-colour-forgotten-photographs-werner-bischof

A hidden treasure trove of previously unknown colour images by Werner Bischof, one of the towering figures of 20th-century photography and reportage, has been uncovered in Zurich bringing a new dimension to his work and introducing stunning depictions of Europe and beyond.
About 100 colour prints from original negatives, some rediscovered but most never seen before, taken by Bischof between 1939 and 1954, have been restored and feature in an exhibition exploring a little-known aspect of his creative output.
...
The images were discovered four years ago after his son Marco, who curates the Werner Bischof archives in Zurich, came across boxes containing hundreds of glass-plate negatives.
“It was strange at first because we appeared to have three black and white identical negatives of each image,” he told the Guardian. “Only on a closer look you see they are each a bit different. We consulted experts, and embarked on the very technical and sophisticated restoration process.” Using scanning equipment that allowed the plates to be seen as a single whole, the images came alive. “It was magic, like the effect you have when you make a black and white print by putting it into the developer. Except it was colour,” he says.


I'd never heard of the Devlin Tricolor camera before which shoots three plates at once, through red, green and blue filters, and which was used to make these pictures. The article says there are still thousands to go through, so what a find!


Do hope the exhibition will tour and come to London some time. Or there'll be a book.

[Francois]

Tricolor was really a magical process for the time.
Just imagine the thrill of seeing a color image for the first time when all you've ever known was black and white.

One of the things I enjoy the most about this process is the accuracy of the color.
Fantastic.

[Kai-san]

The Devlin Tricolor camera has an interesting layout.

[Francois]

I know that those, and similar ones, were used for a very long time to make magazine covers.
The big advantage they offered compared to other ones is that only one lens and one shutter is used, so you don't get artifacts like on other cameras with multiple lenses.

I've seen a portrait of film star Roy Rogers before and the results were pretty impressive.

[EarlJam]

My dad (born 1921) came of age in the Technicolor/tri-color era and had a lifelong obsession with the process. He experimented with two-color photography before WW2, such as this shot of his brother from 1938/39. Over the years, my dad built a collection/accumulation of tri-color cameras, from a 2-14 x 3-1/4 Curtis Scout to Devin 4x5 to National Colorgraph 5x7.  He had an affinity for the Curtis cameras, as he grew up near the Curtis factory and came to know Mr. Curtis. My dad tried but was never able to get a 3-strip Technicolor camera, but friends at the company helped him acquire a System II two-color camera when the Hollywood lab was shutting down.

For reference: in 1948, the Scout 2-1/4 x 3-1/4 with lens, VF, flash, and one set of film pack magazines was priced at $595, or $7,300 in current dollars. The 4x5 model, similarly configured, ran about $1750, or $22,000 today.

I made a copy of the data sheet that came with the Curtis cameras. There was a lot to consider when making images with these cameras, but until Kodachrome sheet film came along, there wasn't a better way to make color images, particularly for print and advertising.

A collector named Scott Bilotta has an extensive collection of these cameras and more info: http://www.vintagephoto.tv/color1.shtml

[Francois]

For reference: in 1948, the Scout 2-1/4 x 3-1/4 with lens, VF, flash, and one set of film pack magazines was priced at $595, or $7,300 in current dollars. The 4x5 model, similarly configured, ran about $1750, or $22,000 today.

Yikes! That was expensive!
When you consider that back in those days the daily wage was about 1$ per hour, that is definitely not cheap.

[EarlJam]

For reference: in 1948, the Scout 2-1/4 x 3-1/4 with lens, VF, flash, and one set of film pack magazines was priced at $595, or $7,300 in current dollars. The 4x5 model, similarly configured, ran about $1750, or $22,000 today.

Yikes! That was expensive!
When you consider that back in those days the daily wage was about 1$ per hour, that is definitely not cheap.

When I was going through old magazines, receipts, and processed photo envelopes that my dad had saved, I was struck by how expensive photo equipment and materials have pretty much always been. In the mid-1950s, a roll of Kodacolor 120/620 was $2.00 ($22 today). Add processing $0.75 ($7.50) and prints  $0.25 ea, so $3.00 ($30), and you're pushing $60 for a roll. Growing up, my film budget was one roll of 127 B+W per month, and maybe 3 reels of Double-8 Kodachrome a year. I didn't shoot color stills until I was in high school and paying my own way with summer job earnings.

I think the tri-color cameras line up like this, against today's equivalents:

> Curtis Scout 2-14 x 3-1/4 is in the same class as the Nikon Z9 or Canon R3 today
> The 4x5 cameras fall into the Leica S3 category
> The 5x7s are the Phase One cameras today

Add in the film budget, 3 sheets per exposure, and the time and cost involved to make a print, and probably 99% of these, particularly the large format cameras, were used for high-end advertising and publication images, the kind one would have hired a Richard Avedon or Cecil Beaton-level photographer to make.

[Francois]

Add in the film budget, 3 sheets per exposure, and the time and cost involved to make a print, and probably 99% of these, particularly the large format cameras, were used for high-end advertising and publication images, the kind one would have hired a Richard Avedon or Cecil Beaton-level photographer to make.

Lets not forget the whole staff that was present to make sure the shot was "in the box" by the end of the day.
And those prints were made by the carbon transfer process, which is really hard to master and pretty expensive.

They were far from the days when I could buy a roll of 35mm for about 6$ and get it processed for 4.50$ at the grocery store's minilab.

This reminds me of a book I have of photos taken by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. He was a chemist who got commissioned by Tzar Nicholas II to make a color photographic inventory of Russia and it's regions. He had a multi-lens camera, so there are artifacts in the pictures. But it's excellent none the less.
(https://www.lensculture.com/articles/sergei-mikhailovich-prokudin-gorskii-nostalgia-the-russian-empire-of-czar-nicholas-ii-captured-in-color-photographs)