Prisoners dig a trench in a field. 3 ¼ x 4 – inch glass slide by McIntosh Battery & Optic’l Co, Chicago.
$75 — postage paid within US, $10 to Canada
film
FILM STILL BY WILLIAM MORTENSEN
10 x 8- inch toned gelatin silver print. This is a film still by William Mortensen from Cecil B. DeMille’s “massive biblical production.” The scene shows Victor Varconi and Majal Coleman as Pilate and his wife. Has Mortensen’s stamp on the verso. It is interesting as an example of his studio work before the wild pictorialist photographs he is known for. The melodramatic faces of the scene anticipate some aspects of his later work.
$100 – postage paid within US, $10 to Canada
Whitcombe’s Bermuda Greenhouse Autochromes
Two beautiful 5×7-inch Autochromes by B.J. Whitcomb
There is no identification but these came with a group of Whitcomb autochromes.
“There is no one in photography whose work is exactly comparable to Whitcomb’s. One must look to Frank Benson, Edmund Tarbell, William Paxton, those painters of the Boston School, and their ethereal women caught up in soft color and elegant interiors, in a ‘landscape of pleasure’, to find anything comparable. Whitcombe was a master of the autochrome, but his work was forgotten. […] Whitcomb operated a studio and giftshop in Kennebunkport, Maine.” In 1985, a box of 50 of his autochromes were found in an antique shop Amarillo, Texas which included images from a trip to Bermuda with his family. “There is a beautiful, unidentified green and summery house […]” most likely the one pictured here.
The green-blue discoloration seen at the edges of these images “is due to moisture entering the broken binding tape. The autochrome’s green dye is water soluble and is the first to break down.”
(Excerpts from “The Art of the Autochrome: The Birth of Color Photography” by John Wood)
$650