Newly Discovered Photographer's Work

[Gerald C Koch]

The following link is to a short film on the work of Richard Samuel Roberts who worked in South Carolina in the 1920's and 1930's. He was self taught and worked during the day at the post office and afterwards as a photographer. Roberts can be considered as an artist and also as a historian of American society of the period. His work survives because he preferred to use glass plates rather then the new nitrate film. Of the estimated 10,000 images he is believed to have taken some 4000 negatives have survived.

http://video.scetv.org/video/2285659557/

 

[gorbas]

Thank you Gerald for the link!

 

[whowantstoast]

That was excellent - thank you for sharing!

 

[pbromaghin]

Oh, that was great!

 

[Newt_on_Swings]

I had the opportunity to watch this last night and I liked it! it was an interesting slice of life from the 20s and of the black middle class. It was shocking to see all those plates in paper boxes that were rotting away under their house, which was a dirt floored crawl space. Amazing to see how well they lasted because they were glass. It was also very interesting to see their approach to getting the images with people in them identified by turning to the community with sets of 100 prints at a time on the kitchen table. Must have been very exciting when it all fell into place and linked up.

 

[Mike Crawford]

Excellent film. Thanks Gerald for bringing it to our attention.