From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 10/08/03-10:02:14 PM Z
On Wed, 8 Oct 2003, Scott Wainer wrote:
> I just looked at the beginning of the chapter, something I should have done
> in the beginning, and it was written by Anderson. I had assumed, without
> checking, that since his article on Fresson was listed in the bibliography
> the author was someone else - I have never known anyone to cite thier own
> prior work.
As I may have suggested a time or two, this is not Anderson's worst sin.
But for the record, he seems to have already recycled those articles at
least twice... coming out with them first from about 1914 to 1917, when he
published the gum series in American Photography magazine, and also did
his book on "Pictorial" photography. He then reissued both in the
mid-30s... a series of similar articles in The Camera, and another book
which seems to be more or less same as the first...
Of course I can't say that about the book for absolute certain, not having
seen the earlier book, but the bio published by Center for Creative
Photography shows that by the mid to late 1930s Anderson wasn't doing much
of these processes any more at all. In fact he himself wrote in a
personal statement that once he discovered the "oil process" he adopted
that exclusively. That was some time in the teens, although the CCP
catalog raisonee shows other processes later... (meaning, I suppose, what,
if anything, do we believe?) Soon thereafter anyway he began to devote
himself to writing novels...
So how come he was still being reprinted on the processes in 1939 ?
Because (this is the short version) the processes were no longer in use by
anyone except a few fossils & by now were all voodoo to contemporary
experts --- plus Anderson promised a kind of "precision" with his great
GPR that spoke to the zeitgeist.
Tho I may have mentioned that...
J.
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