Words on Pictures

Cinema and the Document "The slow appreciation of the cinema as an art form may be laid at the oversight of dual but compatible functions of all art, of all pictorial productions. While the moving pictures document and record realistically that which we have seen, experienced and heard, nevertheless they are designed and produced under the same basic principles which condition all other types if pictorial composition. Consideration of any film discovers that the amount of story-telling elements and the subjective content is slight when compared to the amount of production craftmanship required to make the finished work. Photography in the moving film form has within its projected image every element of art, merged into a whole by editing, direction and conception of the relations of time sequences of events portrayed, of images moving and the balance of tone, light, sound and shape. And just as other art forms, moving pictures are good sources for facts... All films,

  Words on Pictures: Romana and the New York Public Library’s Picture Collection .  edited by Anthony T. Troncale. New York:  Photo | Verso Publications, LLC , 2020.    ISBN 978-1-7346409-0-8 (hardcover)   Identifiers ISBN    978-1-7346409-1-5 (ebook) An eye for history... [Vaudeville Theater advertising the silent movie Tigris next to the Brill Building at 46 Broadway, Times Square.] c.1913. Yampolsky Collection     Many illustrations found throughout the forthcoming book Words on Pictures are drawn from Romana Javitz's personal collection (cited as the Yampolsky Collection) of prints, photographs and ephemera. Here is an early view of Broadway in Times Square. ca. 1913. Note the Brill Building at right.   ~~~~~ One of the most critical quotes from the 1933 Annual Report to the Director sums up the contributions it provided going into the tumultuous Great Depression. It is only a harbinger to come for future decades of service to its consumers of visual documentati

New York Public Library's Picture Collection, 1940s. Photo by Wurts Bros. New York Public Library Archives ( Visual Materials, RG10 ).  Worth Beyond Words: Romana Javitz and NYPL Picture Collection.  The general public, especially outside the New York City area, is not familiar with the uniqueness of the New York Public Library's Picture Collection. It provides, much like books, the free circulation of prints, photographs, postcards and other clippings, all arranged using subject classification. And they have been doing it since 1914!  T he story of the origination of the Picture Collection and the career of Romana Javitz (1903-1980) can be found in an essay I wrote in 1995 for  the NYPL journal  Biblion: Worth Beyond Words: Romana Javitz and The New York Public Library's Picture Collection Here is an excerpt: " Within two years of the opening of The New York Public Library's Central Building in 1911, the Print Room found itself overwhelmed with requests for p