Ansel Adams Act proposed 1/2/15

H. R. 5893

To restore the First Amendment Rights of Photographers.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

January 2, 2015

Mr. Stockman introduced the following bill; which was referred to the
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and in addition to the
Committees on Natural Resources, Agriculture, and the Judiciary, for a
period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for
consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the
committee concerned

A BILL

To restore the First Amendment Rights of Photographers.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

Congress finds as follows:
(1) In recent years, the Federal Government has enacted
regulations to prohibit or restrict photography in National
Parks, public spaces, and of government buildings, law
enforcement officers, and other government personnel carrying
out their duties.
(2) In recent years, photographers on Federal lands and
spaces have been threatened with seizure and forfeiture of
photographic equipment and memory cards, and have been arrested
or threatened with arrest for merely recording what the eye can
see from public spaces.
(3) Even in the absence of laws or regulations, Federal law
enforcement officers, other government personnel, and private
contractors have been instructed to prohibit photography from
public spaces, and threatened photographers with arrest or
seizure of photographic equipment.
(4) Arresting photographers, seizing photographic
equipment, and requirements to obtain permits, pay fees, or buy
insurance policies are abridgments of freedom of speech and of
the press.
(5) The First Amendment of the United States Constitution
states, “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the
freedom of speech, or of the press.”.
(6) Still and motion photographs are speech.
(7) The photography by Ansel Adams and other famous
photographers helped bring home to Americans the beauty and
fragility of our natural resources.
(8) Ansel Adams’ photographs helped build public support to
make Yosemite into a National Park.
(9) Future “Ansel Adams” must not have their paths
blocked, regulated and made more expensive with fees and fines,
or be threatened with arrest and seizure of their equipment.

To continue reading, see: https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/5893/text

Je suis Charlie

Cartoon showing ISIS Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi giving a New Year’s message

Today, Wednesday, January 7, 2015, gunmen attached the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and 12 people have been killed. The magazine tweeted a political cartoon [above] this morning but they have been publishing satirical material for years.

The offices of the weekly magazine were fire-bombed in November 2011 after publishing a special edition with cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. Readers were threatened with ‘a hundred lashes if you don’t die laughing.’ Six days later, a front page depicted a Charlie Hebdo cartoonist kissing a bearded Muslim man in front of the charred aftermath of the bombing. The headline read: L’Amour plus fort que la haine (Love is stronger than hate).

Read more: Stéphane Mazurier, Bête, méchant et hebdomadaire : une histoire de Charlie Hebdo, 1969-1982 (Paris: Buchet-Chastel, 2009). Firestone Library (F) PN5190.C5 M397 2009

Sébastien Fontenelle, Même pas drôle : Philippe Val, de Charlie hebdo à Sarkozy (Paris : Libertalia, c2010). Firestone Library (F) PN5183.V28 F66 2010

Pacôme Thiellement, Tous les chevaliers sauvages : tombeau de l’humour et de la guerre (Paris : Rey, c2012). Firestone Library (F) PN5190.H37 T55 2012

Stella’s Pastorales

“In 1667 Claudine Bouzonet Stella published Les Pastorales, a set of sixteen prints of rural subject-matter which have been called the chefs d’oeuvre of the pastoral genre in seventeenth-century France. Besides the charm and attractiveness of the scenes and figures, the quality of the drawing and the excellence of the prints themselves, perhaps the key success of the Pastorales was their reworking of traditional bergerie subject- matter in a modern classical idiom. It was a formula that was to last, and without Claudine’s set of prints the profusion of pastoral imagery in the 18th-century would be almost unthinkable.” –Jamie Mulherron, “Claudine Bouzonnet, Jacques Stella and the Pastorales,” Print Quarterly 25 (2008), pp. 393-407.

It is thrilling to announce that the Graphic Arts Collection has acquired a complete set of Stella’s Pastorales, bound in contemporary vellum. We join Harvard University Library as the only collections recorded by OCLC to own this set in the United States.

The acquisition adds significantly to our holding of work by this important female printmaker (see https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2014/12/15/where-are-the-female-printmakers/). Here are a few of her beautiful prints.

Claudine Bouzonnet Stella (1636-1697) after Jacques Stella (1596-1657), Les pastorales (Paris: Par Claudine Stella, aux Galleries du Louvre, 1667). Complete suite of 16 engravings in contemporary vellum binding. “Extrait dv privilege” letterpress printed on verso of title page. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2015- in process

Kunstschaetze der Mittelalterlichen Sammlung zu Basel

Kunstschätze der Mittelalterlichen Sammlung zu Basel (Art Treasurers in the Medieval Collection in Basil). Text by Wilhelm Wackernagel, ‘head of the collection’ with photography by Jakob Höflinger (Basel: Georg, [1864]). Four portfolios with wrappers. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process

The graphic arts collection’s acquisition of this rare, complete set of Swiss photographs will make them, for the first time, available for research in an American collection. Its twenty-two albumen silver prints by the photographer Jakob Höflinger (1819-1898) are mounted on stiff boards and in good condition. The acquisition not only adds to our research holdings in early photography but also documents the medieval art in Basil during the nineteenth century.

Howard Trafton

Howard Allen Trafton (1897-1964), [12 almanac sheets] (New York: Printype, 1931). Graphic Arts, Ephemera Collection

The classes offered by commercial illustrator Howard Trafton at the Art Students League and Pratt Institute were regularly wait-listed. “I don’t try to teach my students to do finished work,” he commented. “I try to teach the fundamentals of art—color, composition, arrangement—and these are the same whether you’re going to make an easel painting or an advertisement.”

In 1933, his Trafton Script and other typefaces were cut and sold by the Bauer type foundry (Bauersche Giesserei), which had an American office with Elmer Adler in the New York Times Annex. For examples, see http://luc.devroye.org/fonts-24156.html.

Also in the 1930s, Trafton designed a series of advertising leaflets for the Printype Company. Each month they handed out a calendar with horoscope or appointment calendar with colorful screen prints on the cover. Here are a few brought to Princeton by Adler.

Silhouettes, pantographs, and physiognotraces

Silhouettes, pantographs, and physiognotraces are just a few of the pre-photographic topics covered by the George Eastman House in their new series of videos. This is the first of 12, each lasting about 6 minutes, beautifully illustrating the various photographic processes from the renaissance to the present. These videos make it much easier to understand and appreciate many objects in Princeton’s collection, such as:

Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin (1770-1852), Physiognotrace portrait of Thomas Jefferson, n.d. [1804]. Engraving and copperplate. 7.1 x 6.6 cm. Graphic Arts French prints. Gift of Charles Scribner Jr., Class of 1943.

Brass pantograph, in a tapered, hinged mahogany case, 27.5″ (long) x 4″ (high) x 5.75″ / 2.75″ (wide), signed “W & S Jones Holborn, London.”

Here is the link to the whole series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me5ke7agyOw&list=PL4F918844C147182A

Louis XIV is coming to Princeton

Hope to see you there!

Good-bye to Gretchen Oberfranc, editor of the Princeton University Library Chronicle

“I have worked with books most of my life,” wrote Gretchen Oberfranc, introducing herself in the Winter 2002 Friends of the Princeton University Library Newsletter. “My first job, at age 14, was as a shelver in the children’s book section of my hometown public library . . . . A job as editorial assistant to the Atlas of Early American History project at the Newberry Library eventually led to a copyediting position at Princeton University Press–where I stayed for twenty-four years.”

When Gretchen moved from the Press to Rare Books and Special Collections in Firestone Library, her first issue of the Princeton University Library Chronicle featured a cat, in connection with the commemorative edition of Adlai Stevenson’s veto message rejecting Senate Bill No. 93, entitled, “An Act to Provide Protection to Insectivorous Birds by Restraining Cats” or the so-called “Cat-Bill.” Thanks to Gretchen, this tiny book in Mudd Library became popular across the campus.
Over the years, Gretchen produced over 40 issues of the Princeton University Library Chronicle (with a few more almost ready for the mail), not to mention dozens of keepsakes, exhibition catalogues, newsletters, and other print material for the department. I would not want to count the tens of thousands of labels she patiently proofed and corrected for the curatorial staff.
When asked to mention some of her most memorable issues, Gretchen points out the first wrap-around cover design; the first issue offering original fiction (published in honor of the Leonard L. Milberg collection of Irish novelists); and an issue dedicated to film. The latter included an essay by Maria DiBattista entitled “The G-String Letters” featuring a photograph of Gypsy Rose Lee from the Theater Photographs Collection.

Gretchen also pointed to the issue featuring Johanna Fantova’s introduction to her “Conversations with Einstein,” along with Alice Calaprice’s “Einstein’s Last Musings.” This, paired with the diary and short story by Ginevra King, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first love, edited by James L.W. West III, made for an outstanding publication in the autumn of 2003.
Gretchen leaves the department of Rare Books and Special Collections this week. For the many of us who benefited from her scholarship, good taste, and clever turn-of-phrase, we wish to express our thanks and appreciation. She has been endlessly generous with her time and patience with our lack of timeliness. Gretchen was always willing to do whatever was necessary to ‘get it just right’ and we were always the better for it.

It is hard to imagine the department without her. Thank you Gretchen and best wishes in your many new endeavors.

A Lesson in Brushwork with Elizabeth Yeats

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired two copy books by Elizabeth Corbet Yeats (1868-1940), the sister of W.B. Yeats. In the 1890s, Elizabeth was living in London, teaching art to children and involved with the Royal Drawing Society of Great Britain and Ireland. The Society’s director, Thomas Robert Ablett, wrote the introduction to her 1896 edition:

Miss Yeats, who is the daughter of an artist and a skillful kindergarten mistress, has proved that she can make good use of the subject. For several years her pupils’ brush work has obtained high awards at the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Drawing Society of Great Britain and Ireland . . . In this volume, Miss Yeats gives her experience for the benefit of others, wisely choosing her subjects from the flowers of the field, so that any teacher may paint from the growing plants themselves, with the help of the advice freely given and the chance of comparing the results obtained by Miss Yeats.

In 1901, the Yeats family moves back to Ireland and Elizabeth learns printing. Her imprint, Dun Emer Press, begins in 1903 with the letterpress printing of her brother’s book In the Seven Woods.

Elizabeth Corbet Yeats (1868-1940), Brush Work (London: George Philip & Son, 1896). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process

Elizabeth Corbet Yeats (1868-1940), Brushwork studies of flowers, fruit, and animals for teachers and advanced students (London: George Philip & Son, 1898). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process

Winslow Homer at Petersburg?

Winslow Homer (1836-1910), Untitled [Sketch of Abraham Lincoln and his son Tad with Ulysses S. Grant], 1865. Pencil drawing. Graphic Arts, GC040 Winslow Homer Collection. Gift of Mrs. David A. Reed.

After several years of extensive travel capturing Civil War scenes for Harper’s Weekly, Winslow Homer (1836-1910) stopped feeding the magazine images almost entirely in 1864. Out of the 52 issues that year, the only Homer drawings published were Anything for Me, if You Please? (a Brooklyn post-office scene) and Thanksgiving Day in the Army. In 1865, with the dramatic end to the war and the death of Lincoln, Homer only sketches three events for Harper’s: Holiday in Camp, Soldiers Playing Football; and the pair: Our Watering-Places, Horse-Racing at Saratoga, and Our Watering-Places, The Empty Sleeve at Newport.

Nearly twenty years later, The Century Magazine published Admiral David Dixon Porter’s account of “Grant’s Last Campaign,” illustrated with a number of wood engravings, including several previously unpublished drawings by Homer. One is in the Graphic Arts Collection, seen above, clearly initialed by Homer and dated 1865. These drawings are specifically cited as drawn from life.

Was Homer invited along with Abraham Lincoln when the president visited general Grant after the battle of Petersburg in April 1865? And if so, why weren’t his drawings of this historic meeting either published or incorporated into oil paintings?

According to the National Park Service report on the Battle of Petersburg (http://www.nps.gov/pete/index.htm) “On the morning of April 3, Lincoln was informed that Petersburg had finally fallen to Federal troops. He decided to go into the city and was accompanied by Admiral David Porter, Captain John Barnes, William Crook, and Lincoln’s son, Tad on a special train. Upon arriving at the station along the U.S. Military Railroad, Lincoln took his seat on Grant’s horse, Cincinnati and with the others rode into the city over the Jerusalem Plank Road.”

“Lincoln and his entourage arrived at the Thomas Wallace house and, while Lincoln and Grant discussed that Grant should defeat Lee and allow Sherman to defeat Joseph Johnston’s army in North Carolina, Tad grew restless until Federal general George Sharpe produced sandwiches. Tad eagerly grabbed them as he exclaimed that being hungry was what had agitated him. Thomas Wallace invited the President and General Grant inside but they opted to remain on the porch. After an hour and a half in the city, Lincoln left to return to City Point.”

Porter’s account in Century Magazine notes, “Mr. Lincoln soon after arrived, accompanied by his little son “Tad,” dismounted in the street and came in through the front gate with long and rapid strides, his face beaming with delight. He seized General Grant’s hand as the general stepped forward to greet him, and stood shaking it for some time and pouring out his thanks and congratulations with all the fervor of a heart which seemed overflowing with its fullness of joy. I doubt whether Mr. Lincoln ever experienced a happier moment in his life. The scene was singularly affecting and one never to be forgotten.”

Winslow Homer (1836-1910), President Lincoln, General Grant and Tad Lincoln at a Railway Station. Reproduced in The Century Magazine (November 1877), p. 134.

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