Small Scale Fabricated Photography, Toy Photography History, Art Creation Musings
"We desire to bring together all the most interesting facets offered by Daguerre's invention under the four rubrics of curiosity, usefulness for the arts, quickness of understanding and usefullness for the sciences." -Francois Arago, report before the Academy of Sciences, Paris, 1839 Toy Photography and the photography of toys are two very different things. Toy... Continue Reading →
The term 'still life' was coined in the Netherlands in the 17th century, but the practice itself dates back to ancient times. As a basis, a still life is "a piece that features an arrangement of inanimate objects as its subject" (My Modern Met). Meaning, for you toy photographers reading this, toy photography is a... Continue Reading →
Photographers who at least dabbled in photographs of toys, miniatures, figurines and the like, a timeline. Click the names to learn more. Links and Photographer listing will be updated as I find more to add. [Last Updated December 27, 2020] 1898 Albert Smith & James Stuart Blackton 1898 Edward H. Amet 1912 Adolph de Meyer... Continue Reading →
Today, August 2nd, is Doll Day and in realizing this I knew I had an interesting opportunity to talk about Hans Bellmer, an artist I recently came across while researching another post to come. Bellmer was a surrealist photographer in the 1930s. In his work he almost only photographed life-sized dolls he built beginning in... Continue Reading →
"The lesson here, surely, is not that the camera can, and often does, lie, but that it has lied ever since it was invented." -Mike Dash, Smithsonian The Spanish-American war began in 1898. Publications wanted photographs, theaters wanted films. The problem was, not everyone could get to Cuba, and even if they could, cameras of... Continue Reading →
“Never have I found the limits of the photographic potential. Every horizon, upon being reached, reveals another beckoning in the distance. Always, I am on the threshold.” -W. Eugene Smith So I've been writing all these post about toy photos that fooled the world and I had a thought, what if I made some of... Continue Reading →
The Surgeon's Photograph “I realised, for the first time, with complete assurance, the picture was not a fake and that the Loch Ness Monster was real and tangible; a living animal -or one that had been real and alive when the picture was taken in 1934.” -Nicholas Witchell, The Loch Ness Story The year is... Continue Reading →
“The most extraordinary photographs ever taken of air flights in war.” -The Illustrated London News Wesley David Archer was an American Air Force Pilot in WWI. He enlisted in 1917, but his time in active duty ended when his plane was shot down in October of 1918. The photographs he took while flying are said... Continue Reading →