U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Article Posted (RE: Sury & Misonne)

Article Posted (RE: Sury & Misonne)



I have received the copy of the article. Thanks, Judy.

In general the OCR software does a good job. It has some problems with
numbers, so I manually edited some of them. Other than that, I haven't done
much editing. Occassionally some character are mis-recognized but you can
probably guess what the originals are. I haven't read through the article
(the xerox or the converted file) myself. If you find some words that are
not clear, please let me know, and I will check the xerox copy for you.

I haven't done much formatting either. I am putting this up quickly so that
those who are interested can check quickly. Eventually I might go back and
do some formatting so that it would look nicer.

The link is
http://members.aol.com/fotodave/Articles/PhotographicReview.html


Dave  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Judy Seigel [mailto:jseigel@panix.com] 
> Sent: Tuesday, January 01, 2008 3:49 PM
> To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
> Subject: Re: Sury & Misonne
> 
> 
> On Tue, 1 Jan 2008, henk thijs wrote:
> 
> > It is written 'Leonard Misonne', born in Charleroi -  
> Belgien, and i 
> > saw an exhibition of his work some time ago in the photomuseum of 
> > Charleroi, and the pictures i saw were a.o. (brom)oil 
> prints and gum, 
> > very  pictorialistic and depressing images of daily life 
> and factories 
> > next to romantic landscapes with sheeps et al.
> >
> 
> I took a longer look at the American Photography Annual (No. 
> 18, 1924) which I'd previously riffed through, and note a 
> couple of points:
> 
> page 308,"THE PHOTOGRAPHIC REVIEW," by E. J. Wall, begins:
> 
> The "COLOR PROCESS":  E.Rombaut gives a brief description of 
> the working of this new Process, which has been introduced by 
> E. Sury, of Antwerp. It recalls the old powder process and it 
> is distinctly different. 
> The paper is sent out unsensitized, and it is advised to turn 
> up the edges of the sheet.... and pinch the corners so as to 
> form a temporary tray...."
> 
> There follow formulas (Am bi & methyl alcohol), & 
> instructions for coating, draining, drying & printing... 
> using a screen of black lines between negative & 
> (insolation?-- which is -- the coating?). Some 2 pages of 
> instructions in small print which follow are tempting to try 
> -- (tho not to copy out).
> 
> Is this the "patented" method do you suppose, or something 
> else? The powder brushed on adheres in the unhardened cracks 
> where the lines in the screen "or "reseau" lay, hence color 
> (or colors) may be added by brushing in.
> 
> After this topic a section on Resinopigmentype lays out the 
> Namias process, using a "powder" made by "fusing resin, a 
> fatty body and the desired pigment, then grinding when cold." 
> There are plenty of fatty bodies & grinding  around here, but 
> I'm still doubtful I could follow those instructions... What 
> for instance is the "resin"?
> 
> Then the name is in fact Leonard Misonne, thanks Henk, tho no 
> further word on his nationality.
> 
> Other info gleaned from turning all 770-odd pages is that 
> females of the day tended to get tangled up naked in window 
> drapes or table cloths that persisted in flying open when the 
> shutter snapped (an affliction to which men were apparently 
> immune) and that F. Drtikol showed a couple of comically arch 
> figure studies that look like I Love Lucy drunk as a skunk, 
> while the penchant for titling photographs of 
> African-Americans of any age and mien with irrelevant 
> expressions in crude dialect was in full fettle.
> 
> On page 493 we see a pleasant-looking middle aged man with 
> pipe, beard and hat, comfortably seated with hands crossed, 
> over the title: "Befo' De War."  (No better or worse than 
> dozens, perhaps hundreds of the genre... 
> There oughta be a book.  Proposed title:  "Praise de lawd" -- 
> after the photo titled thusly, also for no discernible reason.)
> 
> PS. If someone has a...  I forget what you call them, a 
> program that scans and converts to text-- and others are 
> interested I can copy these pages on printing the 
> above-mentioned Sury process & mail to him or her tp put on a 
> website....( unless that's already been done?)
> 
> Judy
> 
> > happy 2008 ,
> > Cheers,
> > Henk
> 
> likewise,
> 
> Judy
> 
>