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This newsletter is a hub for all things film photography. Every week we’ll provide resources, stories, and reviews that educate and inspire film-loving individuals just like you!
The theme of this week’s newsletter is…
The Power of The Portrait
How does portraiture preserve culture?
Instead of focusing on modern-day analog photographers, in this week’s newsletter, we will be learning about photographers and archivists whose collections of film portraiture have preserved important moments from the past.
Diane Arbus is considered one of the best-known and most controversial street photographers of the 20th century, with a multitude of museum exhibitions featuring her work. She began her career in fashion and advertising photography during the mid-1940s alongside her husband Allen Arbus. As a team, they became contributors to commercial magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, but as the decade closed Diane decided to take her photography in a different, less commodified direction.
Focusing mainly on the “misfits” of society, Arbus’ portraits depicted the lives of those who, at the time, were deemed out of the ordinary. Arbus’ subjects range from circus performers to monozygotic children to drag queens, branding her career as an expansive documentation of the “alternative” livelihoods of the mid 20th century.
An archive of similar cultural importance has recently been uncovered in the home of Charles Daniels, a photographer and emcee who worked at The Boston Tea Party during the rise of some of the 70’s most influential rock bands. Nicknamed “Master Blaster,” Daniels was able to capture candid moments of iconic groups such as Led Zepplin, The Who, The Velvet Underground, and The Rolling Stones. However, a majority of his film from this era was never developed. Daniels said that this happened due to the fact that “I didn’t need to see the final result as much as I just thought I needed to pay attention.”
It’s been over 50 years since The Boston Tea Party closed in 1970, and just this year Daniels started a crowdsourcing fund with a team of people who want to help process and conserve over 3000 rolls of Daniels’ film.
The fundraiser has since surpassed its original goal of $30,000, accumulating about $42,500 in total. The entirety of the film is set to be developed, which will result in a massive archive that will offer a coveted never before seen perspective of the rock and roll scene of the 60s and 70s.
Much like Arbus and Daniels, artist and collector Guadalupe Rosales has amassed an archive of cultural significance. In order to remain close to the neighborhood she was raised in, Boyle Heights—a predominantly Mexican-American community in Los Angeles— Rosales started the Instagram account titled @veteranas_and_rucas in 2015. The page is an extensive catalog of Chicano culture spanning decades with a primary focus on women. A majority of the featured portraits come from the 80s and 90s, though there are often pictures from earlier eras.
The account is centered around the youth culture of the time, exhibiting photos of party crews, prom pictures, yearbooks, car shows, and concerts that capture the essence and beauty of late 20th century Chicano culture.
While Rosales does occasionally post photos from her personal archive, the page is mostly made up of crowdsourced images. Followers often send in photos of family or themselves from days past, resulting in a nostalgic communal gallery of overlapping personal histories. Each one opens a window into a fragment of the past, enabling those who grew up in these communities to reminisce and pay respects to their origins.
Rosales’ goal with starting the archive was to allow the community to celebrate their heritage and history with pride, to “start looking at their images and materials differently, to value their collections,” and to understand that “material tells a story.”
Photography has the ability to transcribe people and events of the past into the present. The invention of photography forever changed the way we look at history, evident in the extensive archives of these individual photographers, as well as museum and gallery collections that provide the public with an organized, intentional view of a period of time. Archives are incredibly important when it comes to honoring and learning about ones heritage, I encourage you to start your own personal archive and record the moments that mean the most to you!