A recent event jolted me into observing (rather than only seeing) that the great majority of Davis history photos in the four main public Davis history archives are black and white (grey scale) rather than color.
But this is only true if you think of archives as dealing with photos made before about the 1950s.
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Some people will of course immediately declare: “Of course, you twit, grey-scale was the technology of that time.”
But this is only true if you think of archives as dealing with photos made before about the 1950s.
If you extend your conception of what is archiviable closer
to the present, you realize that color photography was widespread by the 1960s
and color photos have been the dominant technology for more than half a century.
But virtually none of the photos in Davis-relevant or
other archives are in color!
When we start to think about this fact we realize that it is
in important part because archive organizations (and other collectors) have
been pretty much limited to a period ending with the 1950s or a little later.
Indeed, stepping back, we can see that there was a great flourishing
of history archiving regarding Davis (and elsewhere) in the two decades after
World War II.
The swell of it subsided by the 1980s and photographic and
other archiving has been more or less moribund since then.
In the Davis case at least, this flourishing was driven by
decendants of Davis pioneers who had inherited materials from their late 19th
century great grand parents, grand parents, or parents.
One major vehicle of this collecting activity was the Davis
Landmark Commission, which was very active in the late 1960s through the early
1970s. Overall, a very impressive body of photographic and other items was assembled
and those materials are the signal portion of the four major public Davis
history archives.
But time moved on and the same sense of a pioneer generation
whose story needed to be told did not pass to later Davisites.
There has not been a new wave of archiving activity even remotely
resembling the pervious one, which would have of course contained abundant
color photos.
So, we live with a moribund or perhaps stagnant Davis history
archive situation.
THE JOLT
In the opening sentence I refer to a jolting event that
caused me to observe and not merely to “see” what I describe above. Let me now
describe that jolt and some of its implications.
The jolt was an email from an acquisitions editor at
Arcadia Publications--Rebecca Coffey--scouting for a color photograph book
focused on Davis history from, in her words, “about the 1950s to the present
day.”
This request caused me to realize that assembling a color
photograph history for the recent period presents a task very different from
constructing the black and white picture books I published on Davis history
that were focused entirely or importantly before the 1950s. Those books were
easy in the sense that the four public black and white photo archives I
describe above existed.
Curious about how Arcadia could embark on what seems to me
such a precarious enterprise, I wrote Ms. Coffey my misgivings and asked her
how Arcadia thought authors could deal with this lack of archive color photography.
With her knowledge and permission, I reproduce, in graphic 2,
her response. I read her as agreeing with me and as telling authors they should
hustle color photos from “people in the community.”
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That is all well and good and I agree that a fair amount of
such hustle is required. But building an entire book on color pictures scouted
from individuals is a very steep mountain to climb.
In addition, I notice the new Arcadia color photograph book
series has 17 titles signed (list in graphic 3), but only one of them is on a
community and has been published.
I think it is noteworthy that most of the titles listed,
both published and signed, are on tourist attractions and leisure pursuits
rather than on communities. (Lots of color pictures taken at those locations!)
THE CHALLENGE
Beyond (1) offering a proposition about how “local history making
“ has changed and (2) observing how hard this change makes it to do books closer
to the present, I want, nonetheless, to encourage anyone who might be interested
to take up Rebecca Coffey’s expression of interest on a color photograph Davis
history book focusing on the period since the 1950s.
I reproduce her offer in graphic 4. Some specifies are given
in graphic 5. These specifics include that these color photograph books will be
quite considerably shorter than books in the black and white series. (At least
the mountain one would climb is not quite so high.)
I am not able to contemplate a project of this scale and
challenge, but I very much hope others might consider it. (Perhaps a team of
four or so could undertake it.)
STANDING WAY BACK
Standing way back from all this, we might also ask, however, such questions as these:
• Where are the literal, emotional, or intellectual descendants of, for example, the 1970s-80s progressive era of Davis history? Does the progressive era flame no longer burn in the hearts of history-minded Davisites?
• And for that matter, what about other enormous changes in post 1950s Davis--such as the vast and varied housing developments--on which there must surely be an enormous amount of color photography “out there?”
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