"Precious Metal: A History of Silver Gel Photography" by Prof. James LaMalfa was on display at the UW-Marinette art gallery during the month of March, 2013. LaMalfa teaches photography, traditional and digital, at UW-Marinette every fall. The display consisted of six mini-exhibits, including the glass case. "Beginning at gallery left, viewers saw 12 silver gel photos from the 1940s. They were donated to UW-Marinette several years ago by Al Williams. Called, "Steichen at War," the photos were taken by Navy photographers working in Hawaii and the Pacific theater during WWII. Al was in charge of the photo lab at the US Navy's SINC-PAK headquarters in Hawaii. One of the photos of a Curtiss "Helldiver" dive bomber is actually in the book Steichen at War, displayed in the case. Edward Steichen, a fashion photographer before the war, enlisted with the rank of Captain and oversaw all film and still photographers for the US Navy in the Pacific. The photos show the home front in Hawaii and action over the Pacific Ocean and carriers," said LaMalfa. The second mini-exhibit was a retrospective of LaMalfa's photos from 1970 to the present and included photos of WWII aircraft belonging to the "Warbirds of America" pilots, a division of the Experimental Aircraft Association. Also on display in this section were portraits and scenes of ships, buildings and locomotives from the twin cities and Green Bay area. The gallery center was displaying one print from the 8 negatives that UW-Marinette owns by Ansel Adams, also given to UW-Marinette by Al Williams, whose mother was a student of Adams. To the right, were 6 photos by Doug Merriman, who owned and operated the Artrage gallery in Menominee in the 1980s. Merriman worked primarily with large format view cameras. When the gallery, called Deco Art after Merriman sold it, donated the dark room equipment to UW-Marinette, LaMalfa found a box of 200 or so negatives made by Merriman. With his permission, LaMalfa printed some for the exhibit. The next mini-exhibit, "Trades Welcome," consisted of photos of a used car lot on M35 north of Menominee. They were taken by LaMalfa last summer. The final display consisted of 13 photos from an album loaned to UW-Marinette in the early 1970s found in the basement of the Menominee Wisconsin Public Service building. They are photos of the twin Cities circa 1900. The case display also contained tintype photos loaned by Marinette artist Ernie Pleger, including Civil War vintage photos and an original glass plate negative of a Mexican church. Also in the case were books about Ansel Adams. "Although silver gel photography is no longer cutting edge," LaMalfa said, "we still offer it here during the first half of the ART 161 photography class. It requires the photographer/printer to learn the craft of dark-room procedure without a computer to solve photographic problems. We then move students to the Mac computer lab for digital photo classes, but hopefully with an appreciation of making images without a computer making decisions for them. There is a lot of US history that was captured on silver gel film. Prints of the Civil War done by Union combat photographers and other historic events such as the Wright brothers' first flights are available from the Library of Congress," said LaMalfa. Also on display in the gallery case was an Army Air Corps C3 military Speed Graphic camera which belonged to the Blazers of Marinette. Mary Blazer was a former Continuing Education director at UW-Marinette. "Her husband Don was in the 8th Air Force stationed in England during WW II and probably bought the 4x5 view camera as government surplus," said LaMalfa.

Comments

1. a pleasure to hear you again Mr. Lamalfa, nice work... remember me?, white horse 1999, /northern-lights
2. A very good first video post. And it was properly exposed & focused, too! :-)