Interesting photographic record of New York 100 years ago

Thanks for that. Documentary photography is by far my favorite type and the variety is endless. I've long since grown bored with landscapes and artsy photography by other people but documentation is history.
 
Thanks for link to interesting pictures. Many of them make me appreciate OSHA.
 
Sure is magic to see the world as it was many years ago.

Comment: Staged photos, in particular the first shot, the guy with the wrong spanner size is busy mangling that nut. Nit picking I know, or is that nut picking?

An enlarged clip to see it better.....

4e1dd737dfec42349157a54dbcd92379.jpg

Plus if he is trying to tighten it then that wrong sized spanner is about to foul the next bolt.

I'd pay $8 not $80,000 for that print, it's all wrong.

Am I being a too critical pain in the you-know-where?

Don't answer that.

Regards...... Guy
 
Sure is magic to see the world as it was many years ago.

Comment: Staged photos, in particular the first shot, the guy with the wrong spanner size is busy mangling that nut. Nit picking I know, or is that nut picking?

An enlarged clip to see it better.....

4e1dd737dfec42349157a54dbcd92379.jpg

Plus if he is trying to tighten it then that wrong sized spanner is about to foul the next bolt.

I'd pay $8 not $80,000 for that print, it's all wrong.

Am I being a too critical pain in the you-know-where?

Don't answer that.

Regards...... Guy
Times change things a lot of course.. and maybe in those days he just did not have the complete collection of tools that always seem readily to hand nowadays.. maybe it's the only spanner he had available to him then ???

It IS clearly stated of course that a lot (maybe all ?) of these pictures here were indeed 'set up' by the photographer so just maybe he wanted to simply convey the particular action and not perhaps had reality quite as much in mind ?



--
/eric
Staffordshire, UK
 
Yes you are being too critical. Remember that the cameras back then were very slow in operation and had to be on tripods so anything with movement had to be staged. It isn't like today where you can just move around taking candids. All the photos looked staged to me but it still conveyed a sense of life back then.
 
Sure is magic to see the world as it was many years ago.

Comment: Staged photos, in particular the first shot, the guy with the wrong spanner size is busy mangling that nut. Nit picking I know, or is that nut picking?

An enlarged clip to see it better.....

4e1dd737dfec42349157a54dbcd92379.jpg

Plus if he is trying to tighten it then that wrong sized spanner is about to foul the next bolt.

I'd pay $8 not $80,000 for that print, it's all wrong.

Am I being a too critical pain in the you-know-where?

Don't answer that.

Regards...... Guy
Times change things a lot of course.. and maybe in those days he just did not have the complete collection of tools that always seem readily to hand nowadays.. maybe it's the only spanner he had available to him then ???

It IS clearly stated of course that a lot (maybe all ?) of these pictures here were indeed 'set up' by the photographer so just maybe he wanted to simply convey the particular action and not perhaps had reality quite as much in mind ?
I think, when you're using a plate camera with no viewfinder except a ground glass in the focal plane, that most images were 'set up'. At the very least, your subject had to pose to avoid movement during the exposure.

I don't think the shots being posed is a big problem. They are still real people. Sure, twenty years later someone could have used their Leica or Contax to get a candid of them actually at work, but when these were taken, that wasn't an option.

--
Tinkety tonk old fruit, & down with the Nazis!
Bob
 
I found many photos of relatives who died in Eastern Europe long before I was born recently and its clear that having a photo taken was a huge deal, probably akin to posing for an artist a generation earlier and everyone dressed up in their finest for the occasion. The photos were sent on by post to relatives who had migrated to the New World and who would never be seen again in all likelihood. Once upon a time a photo was a thing of real value taken by someone who had access to scarce equipment and skills.

Nowadays we have phones, selfies and Facebook that basically perform the same psychological purpose. Instead of dressing up people pose in interesting locations or not wearing too much clothes, the old relatives probably would have loved Facebook.
 
Yes you are being too critical. Remember that the cameras back then were very slow in operation and had to be on tripods so anything with movement had to be staged. It isn't like today where you can just move around taking candids. All the photos looked staged to me but it still conveyed a sense of life back then.
 
Sure is magic to see the world as it was many years ago.

Comment: Staged photos, in particular the first shot, the guy with the wrong spanner size is busy mangling that nut. Nit picking I know, or is that nut picking?

An enlarged clip to see it better.....

4e1dd737dfec42349157a54dbcd92379.jpg

Plus if he is trying to tighten it then that wrong sized spanner is about to foul the next bolt.

I'd pay $8 not $80,000 for that print, it's all wrong.

Am I being a too critical pain in the you-know-where?

Don't answer that.

Regards...... Guy
The person is obviously posing; it's a portrait. A larger wrench looked better than a smaller wrench, and holding the wrench to a particular nut is merely an after-effect of the desired pose.

--
Personal non-commercial websites with no ads or tracking:
Local photography: http://ratonphotos.com/
Travel and photography: http://placesandpics.com/
Special-interest photos: http://ghosttowns.placesandpics.com/
 
But to use an actor when an authentic worker doing that pose would immediately reject the totally unsuitable tool and grab the real one for the job that fitted.
I don't believe it's an actor. I think that your conviction that an 'authentic worker' would do as you suggest is wide of the mark. I suspect that many authentic workers would humour the photographer.
 
But to use an actor when an authentic worker doing that pose would immediately reject the totally unsuitable tool and grab the real one for the job that fitted.
I don't believe it's an actor. I think that your conviction that an 'authentic worker' would do as you suggest is wide of the mark. I suspect that many authentic workers would humour the photographer.
I have no reason to think it's an actor either. It's likely an actual worker posing with an actual tool from his actual workplace.
 
The person is obviously posing; it's a portrait. A larger wrench looked better than a smaller wrench, and holding the wrench to a particular nut is merely an after-effect of the desired pose.
Yep, art, not documentary.

Regards.... Guy
 
But to use an actor when an authentic worker doing that pose would immediately reject the totally unsuitable tool and grab the real one for the job that fitted.
I don't believe it's an actor. I think that your conviction that an 'authentic worker' would do as you suggest is wide of the mark. I suspect that many authentic workers would humour the photographer.
Yes, looking again, the man is real, but told to pose like that is a bit absurd in my eye, why not something realistic?

Regards..... Guy
 
But to use an actor when an authentic worker doing that pose would immediately reject the totally unsuitable tool and grab the real one for the job that fitted.
I don't believe it's an actor. I think that your conviction that an 'authentic worker' would do as you suggest is wide of the mark. I suspect that many authentic workers would humour the photographer.
Yes, looking again, the man is real, but told to pose like that is a bit absurd in my eye, why not something realistic?
The photographer was a gentleman. He probably had no idea how working people went about their jobs.

Actually, this kind of thing is extremely common. There are plenty of posed shots around which are clearly absurd with respect to the job supposedly being done.
 
And in the US(these days), that's an open end wrench. A spanner is something entirely difference.
 
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But to use an actor when an authentic worker doing that pose would immediately reject the totally unsuitable tool and grab the real one for the job that fitted.
I don't believe it's an actor. I think that your conviction that an 'authentic worker' would do as you suggest is wide of the mark. I suspect that many authentic workers would humour the photographer.
Yes, looking again, the man is real, but told to pose like that is a bit absurd in my eye, why not something realistic?

Regards..... Guy
I suspect there was no such thing as a candid back then, not when setting up each shot was a bit like setting up a studio because of the nature of the camera. Also people would not have been accustomed to being photographed so it would have been a big deal.
 
And in the US(these days), that's an open end wrench. A spanner is something entirely difference.
Actually Spanner is just an alternate name for a wrench, not a specific type of wrench.

 
And in the US(these days), that's an open end wrench. A spanner is something entirely difference.
Aussie here, so it's a spanner for us.

Ah, I know the real problem, the equipment was metric and the guy was using an imperial spanner (wrench to some). Humour folks, humour.

Regards..... Guy
 
And in the US(these days), that's an open end wrench. A spanner is something entirely difference.
Actually Spanner is just an alternate name for a wrench, not a specific type of wrench.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrench
In The States I've never heard anyone refer to an ordinary open-end wrench as a "spanner." Perhaps they did in 1900?

But there are specific tools called spanners that are not anything like an ordinary wrenches:

 

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