COBBLER'S PAGE

A recent delve into an old 'Amateur Photographer' magazine, for March 1939, unearthed one of a series of articles entitled 'How I make my exhibition pictures'. This one was No.CDLXXIX which would make it what in real numbers?

It starts "Neither my Hungarian colleagues nor I make pictures specially for exhibitions. We photograph and always try to do it well. We work hard, and if a theme pleased us we take four or five exposures on the same subject. During the year I make about 2,000 photographs, a few hundred will be in colour only so it is possible for me to show in fifty or sixty international exhibitions without experience of a lack of material". He exhibited all over the world as you can imagine. His name, Tibor De Csoged. It does not say how long he had been doing photography but as a reasonable assumption say he worked for twenty years and kept up his 2,000 prints a year that would make it 40,000. That is a lot of material. Does anyone know of him? Seen anything by him? I cannot say I have but then I am not of his period!

This article and a conversation I had with a fellow photographer while viewing their Camera Club Exhibition set me off considering my end product and it's eventual 'worth,. He, my fellow photographer, has been given a huge collection of photos b&w prints and colour slides left on the death of one of the leading lights of the club. Not on the scale of Tibor De Csoged perhaps but he was a well known exhibitor at the Yorkshire Union level. His forte being Church interior and Architectural Record and he travelled all over the country to take them. So, here is a lot of excellent 20x16 black and white photographs and thousands of slides taken over a period of his life.

What use are they? Well the pictorial ones have been discarded as not up to a high enough standard to keep. Contact has been made with the various churches portrayed and they are very keen to have the b&w record prints but not the slides. He enjoyed his photography, was well known within Yorkshire for his record work and lectures on the club circuit although he did not exhibit internationally. This story could be told time and time again about so many of us. It would be nice to think that some use would be made of our pictures when they are left behind. Perhaps we should give thought to it and get some sort of idea to this end.

Huddersfield Photographic Society are offering a Lantern Slide Show to any Club, Society or Organisation in the Kirklees area. With the help of a cash grant they have been able to modify an old lantern slide projector to electricity and so can project old lantern plates. Some of the plates have also been renovated and are likely to be of great interest not only for the camera enthusiast but to the general public also as they have come from local sources.

Thursday sees the launch of the Batley Archive Group at the local library. This group has been working for some time now collecting and collating historical material on the town. Although mainly old photographs it does include printed matter like programmes from amateur productions in the area as well.

Photographs are scanned into the computer and any details that are known added, some in the form of a 'hot spot', eg identity of people, places or events. It was fascinating to recognise mein an old school photograph that someone had brought in. This stored information will be available to members of the public but is likely to be of most use to school children wanting to know what Batley was like 'in the old days'.

The software for this programme was pioneered by this group among a few and is now being sold all over the EU. So although you are up against computer/digital imaging but it could be your pictures that will finish up in there. Pictures are a form of communication. Your pictures probably, like mine mainly, communicate only within a small group of similar minded photographers who recognise the 'art'in photography. But among your 2,000 a year I would hope you have some that have a much wider appeal that someone out there would make use of.

THE LIBRARY. The CRC library is not being used. It has been suggested that I write something for the newsletter about specific books in the collection. We only have a few books and all are informative on specific subjects. But postage being expensive it can cost as much as £4.00 (£2 each way). I have sent out manuals which have failed to re-appear. The list of Darkroom Techniques has been printed several times in the newsletter, as The Darkroom User has. With darkroom activities in decline these are neglected. The rest of the library material consists of formula sheets for E6 (is anyone doing E6 from home brew these days?). The sheets on DIY are informative but the sources for material is out of date, ie. PH meters, electronic times
etc. How do we bring the library up to date?

If the darkroom is on it's way out, home processing with own formulae tried and tested by the few, no one doing DIY, do we need a library at all? To go digital, to provide books on the subject would be expensive initially and would members be prepared to pay high cost of postage on such books?

I am asking you - the members - if we need a library and if you think we do what form do you want it to take? Answers, as they say, on a postcard please.