Hole punched photos

gr82bart · Nov 18, 2017

Apparently these photos weren't good enough for the US Farm Administration.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/in...rica-hole-punched-photos-171114083121547.html

Regards Art

AgX · Nov 18, 2017

Whether to cross mark an unwanted negative or to punch them to me makes no differrence: spoiled is spoiled.
Though this kind of punching likely left more visible than cross marking.

Intersting to me is that the majority of samples have BH perforations and that quite some camera windows are not located symmetrical to the perforations/film center line.

removed account4 · Nov 18, 2017

i can see why they were rejected, terrible small 35mm negative ..

AgX · Nov 18, 2017

But Art, what are you after? To hint at hole punching, or that there still are many FSA photographs likely never to have come to public?

pentaxuser · Nov 18, 2017

It beggars belief that such negatives were disfigured deliberately. They are still part of a major project and in future years may well have been considered worthy of inclusion in "other works" for want of a better word. What was wrong with simply filing them as "reject for publication"

Essentially and unfortunately we seem to be a destructive species. The key to our future is to avoid giving positions of power to those in our species who are more prone to suffer from these tendencies

pentaxuser

Gerald C Koch · Nov 18, 2017

You're interpreting the marks the wrong way. A hole punch which does not intrude into the image area or an X means to the printer PRINT THIS ONE(S). This was common practice among photo journalists.

pentaxuser · Nov 18, 2017

Gerald C Koch said:
You're interpreting the marks the wrong way. A hole punch which does not intrude into the image area or an X means to the printer PRINT THIS ONE(S). This was common practice among photo journalists.

Not sure to which post you are replying, Gerald but certainly all the holes that I could see in gr82bart's link are in the image area and have disfigured the negatives

pentaxuser

Sirius Glass · Nov 18, 2017

Punching holes in negative was a dimwitted idea from a dimwitted bureaucrat. A simple "no" would have been enough. What a waste.

gr82bart · Nov 18, 2017

jnanian said:
i can see why they were rejected, terrible small 35mm negative ..

rrusso · Nov 18, 2017

Damn, that's a shame. Most of those were good shots...

Bill Burk · Nov 18, 2017

Would be good to see the entire roll... I can't count how many times I've taken two shots and know one's the better while editing but not when positioning the negative in the enlarger.

AgX · Nov 18, 2017

rrusso said:
Damn, that's a shame. Most of those were good shots...

To be fair, we have to know about the chosen ones too. If the chosen one was better for composition or information, and if the rejected one does not even deliver additional information for historic use, why then keep it?

I admit that is hard to decide now what information would be of interest for future generations.

Julie McLeod · Nov 18, 2017

Bill Burk said:
Would be good to see the entire roll... I can't count how many times I've taken two shots and know one's the better while editing but not when positioning the negative in the enlarger.

These FSA images (selects and rejects) are digitized by the Library of Congress and available for viewing. I've browsed them before and a lot of the rejected ones are near duplicates or it's clear why the chosen negative was preferred. Here's an example of the "contact sheet" you can look at which includes one of the Russell Lee photos in the article linked here - you can see the selected "Frenchy" photo and compare to the rejected one. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/related/?&co=fsa&pk=2017735864&st=gallery&sb=call_number#focus

sepiareverb · Nov 19, 2017

A wonderful edit of these negs is recently out in book form.

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Hole punched photos

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