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,

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

The Gift: Photographs from the Federal Art Project     In 1943 the New York Public Library’s Picture Collection was the beneficiary of a gift by the U.S. government of over 42,000 photographic prints covering many of the  Federal Art Project  programs initiated by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930’s.  These included prints from Berenice Abbott’s  “Changing New York”  series (a Master set and many duplicates), the Federal Music Project, the Index of American Design and the Photographic Division which was assigned to document activities like classes at community art centers which were established across the country. Another set of photographs included were from t he  Farm Security Administration   series. Altogether an important and content-filled assortment of American history from the 1930's and early 1940's.  Harlem Community Art Center - Changing New York, a Federal Art Project     "One of the young artists who will be present at the Contempora