The Wonderful World of Color

While there's something to be said for accurate rendition of color, I'm not here to say it. Nope, today I come to sing the praises of extravagant, preposterous color, especially that seen in hand-colored and tinted photographs. Sometimes the artist/photographer seems to have intended to achieve something realistic; other times they're just making an image that pops.

Did you notice that both these images have the same background?

Nightwatchmen

Pylon

Noting with sadness the death yesterday of Randy Bewley, guitarist for the band Pylon. Pylon was formed by art students as an art project, more or less, using music, and was a very exciting part of the fertile music scene in Athens, GA in the late 70s and early 1980s. Members of both the B52s and REM have asserted that the best band to ever come out of Athens was Pylon. They were clever, innovative, never cynical and they would make you DANCE. Michael Lachowski, the bass player, is one of the more remarkable and versatile artists I've known. I borrowed his photos for the illustrations here.

Condolences to Randy's family and bandmates Michael, Vanessa Brisco, and Curtis Crowe. He will be remembered with admiration and appreciation.

What Can You Say?

I took this one myself. I wish I had taken the sign.

Black and White Photography

A photograph that is evidence of more than it pictures. This proof photo of a young black girl is stamped "Hollywood Studio, Exclusively for Colored." The owner of the studio, who also was black, worked in Jacksonville, Florida and Atlanta, Georgia. Presumably, the marketing strategy was meant to appeal to pride rather than to discriminate. No date is given, but I think it's likely from before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Double Take

Wherein the photographer by means of magic captures the doppelgangers for two sitters.

Busted Banks, Bad Checks

In a box of personal papers found at an estate sale, a bounced check and an explanatory note from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, which reported that "we are advised that that bank is closed." The check is dated December 1931, and the US economy was well into the hard times that followed the crash of the stock market in 1929. The young man who wrote the check was in college in Alabama at the time. He saved similar notices and returned checks from other failed banks where he had accounts, including checks to the barber shop, the college bookstore, and his boarding house. The Federal Reserve Bank considerately attached this boilerplate note to each check with a straight pin before returning them to him. The postcard below, from the University of North Carolina collections, shows the failed bank in better days.

The happy ending is that the economy eventually recovered and he went on to a successful career in business. But I think it's telling that he never discarded these reminders of an unnerving time in his life and that of America.