Hacker Remix

Help Identify the Photographer Who Captured Many Images of 1960s San Francisco

114 points by gnabgib 3 months ago | 42 comments

TheDong 3 months ago

If they were taken in the 1960s by someone in their 30s who lived to 80, that means we probably have roughly another 60 years until these are free from copyright and you can actually publish them in a magazine.

I'm surprised the magazine let them publish as much as they did, given the lack of concrete copyright provenance.

Just think how many historical books and pieces of art and photos we could archive and sort and look at if copyright didn't last literally longer than a human's lifetime.

mapt 3 months ago

Of course it would.

Because copyright is a dystopian death-pact intended to serve as a deterrent, not a functional system of regulation. If copyright was strictly litigated by all aggrieved parties the damages would exceed the global annual GDP, every few minutes.

bsenftner 3 months ago

Seems like a fair strategy to locate the photographer: make money with their photos, and tada: they they are! Well, a few hundred claiming to be them.

echelon_musk 3 months ago

The YouTube video in TFA has the following at around the ~4:50 mark:

> Important questions about ownership fair use and copyright need to be addressed

Zealotux 3 months ago

Wouldn't that be fair use? In any cases, if someone do claim copyright on that article then the case will be closed.

madsbuch 3 months ago

Based on the image with the reflection, the photographer is probably closer to 12 - so there is indeed a chance they are still alive.

The meaning of copyright is changing as these images are being divorced from their physical medium.

It can be read that the film was found and sold - a practice that was probably fine when an image had a physical manifestation.

But yes, we are at juncture now with copyrights, as more and more things are virtual.

dietr1ch 3 months ago

I'm surprised you care that much about what the law says about Mickey Mouse. It's not for everyone.

EvanAnderson 3 months ago

I didn't take the OP's post as "caring about" the law so much as pointing out its absurdity.

ciabattabread 3 months ago

I thought we had already solved this mystery, but I was thinking of a different 1960's San Francisco photo archive discovery -- the Kodachrome slides in a cabinet left on a street.[0]

[0] https://sfmemory.org/TiffanyCabinet/

wincy 3 months ago

Hah yes I was also getting deja vu here. I spend too much time on HN I think.

unwind 3 months ago

Very cool, also amazing that someone did all the work of taking and collecting and storing the material and not accidentally, like, label a roll of film or a print or something.

I found it mildly amusing in a meta sort of way that the article about a collection of photos by an unknown photographer features a bunch of the photos, while crediting them to the current owner of the collection (Bill Delzell).

I understand that in a way he provided the image, so in that sense he is the source, but that's not being made clear in the captions.

madaxe_again 3 months ago

Sometimes, these questions are best left unanswered, and the objects, divorced from their creator…

I recall at one of my schools there was much fanfare about several boxes of slides found during renovations in the early 90s, of life in and around the school during the 50s and 60s. Fantastic photographs, from what I recall.

Anyway. They did an exhibition, creator unknown… and one of the teachers from the era came by. He immediately knew whose photos they were - a master from the time who had been rumoured to have been having an affair with a boy, and ensuingly shot his wife and himself. Back then, as when I was there, masters quite commonly lived in cottages, if married, or apartments at the school, some of which had become classrooms by my day.

The identity of the photographer immediately clouded the lens through which his work has been seen, as people suddenly thought to ask questions like “yes, why was there someone with a camera when the boys were dressing for school?”

ForTheKidz 3 months ago

Strikes me as quite a positive thing that the romance was removed from this situation.

WalterBright 3 months ago

It's interesting how we always take pictures of the wrong things. The treasure of this collection is he took pictures of things that other photographers thought were uninteresting.

Like everyone takes pictures of Disneyland. But who takes random street scene photos?

Once around 1988 or so my dad and I just drove around running his video camera. It's interesting now as the there's been enormous change. I wish I'd done this in downtown Seattle, as it has all been redeveloped. The old Seattle is gone.

baq 3 months ago

> But who takes random street scene photos?

May I introduce you to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_photography

williamdclt 3 months ago

> he took pictures of things that other photographers thought were uninteresting. […] who takes random street scene photos?

I could be wrong but I feel photographing the mundane is very common, something that’s discussed a whole lot in photography and probably one of the main things discussed and taught in photography courses.

Doesn’t mean it’s the majority of photos taken of course, and a lot of it probably stays uninteresting as art and as documentation, but it’s hardly a niche thing!

Even in painting, representing the mundane has been a big subject for hundreds of years (eg Lowry in modern times)

WalterBright 3 months ago

If it's very common, why are these mundane SF pictures so rare?

bbarnett 3 months ago

The missing piece, is that film was expensive, and few carried cameras around with them.

Unless you were on vacation, or going to a memorable event, it was rare for a person to have a camera on them in the 60s. They didn't easily fit in pocket. And rarer still for someone to spend a few bucks taking photos of unimportant things.

(Film and development costs both were not cheap in the 60s)

Most people only had 15 or 20 shots in their cheap camera, and wanted to save them for the party or event.

It's not like there were endless professional photographers wandering around.

spinningarrow 3 months ago

> But who takes random street scene photos?

What do you mean? This is exactly what street photographers do.

tetris11 3 months ago

> "But what significant portion of the public tend to take photos of everyday mundane things, barring those with artistic intrigue already in mind"

spinningarrow 3 months ago

Sorry, where are you quoting from? I can't find that in the comment I replied to or in the original article.

tetris11 3 months ago

An inability to extrapolate the general intent of someone's statement in good faith is often an omen for a needlessly entrenched discussion.

dredmorbius 3 months ago

If you're paraphrasing or reinterpreting, don't use quote marks.

inkcapmushroom 3 months ago

That's not how quotes work.

JKCalhoun 3 months ago

That "James at 13" photo shows just how fun it was to be a 70's kid. And those banana-seat (free style?) bikes were the pinnacle of kid's bike designs.

Am I showing my age much?

WalterBright 3 months ago

The banana seat bikes looked cool, but from a biomechanical perspective were inefficient to pedal. They were pretty tiring to pedal a significant distance.

noizejoy 3 months ago

> ... looked cool, but from a biomechanical perspective were inefficient to pedal. They were pretty tiring to pedal a significant distance.

You simply had to take a few longer breaks when going on longer distance trips to re-charge your muscles. ;-)

beautifulfreak 3 months ago

Reminds me of the photos of Vivian Maier, discovered in a storage locker after her death. The documentary "Finding Vivian Maier" tells the story. Amazing photos! https://www.vivianmaier.com

joeeverjk 3 months ago

Crazy how this feels like finding a dead man’s hard drive full of gold—thousands of shots while today’s “street photographers” beg for likes. Honestly, part of me hopes no one claims it. Feels cleaner that way—art for the sake of it, not some guy dropping a Netflix doc later.

larrywright 3 months ago

> The collection’s 75 undeveloped rolls of Kodachrome film likely amount to about 2,700 photos

I wonder how they’re planning on developing that film, since the chemicals to develop Kodachrome haven’t been available since 2010.

shagie 3 months ago

The chemicals aren't being made (sold) by Kodak anymore, but the chemicals are known and if you sat down with a chemical engineer you could brew up another batch. It certainly wouldn't be cheap, but it's not impossible.

There've even been some DIY projects to develop some of the film. https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorspider/48558429727/in/ph...

FirmwareBurner 3 months ago

>the chemicals are known and if you sat down with a chemical engineer you could brew up another batch

Jesse, let's cook.

ostacke 3 months ago

And even with the chemicals, it's a notoriously convoluted process.

But of course there's always someone who's done it in their garage[1].

[1]: https://emulsive.org/articles/darkroom/developing-film/they-...

limitedfrom 3 months ago

Back in 2020, VSCO and Kelly Shane Fuller (same one from [0]) seemed to have figured it out, at least to make a preset. Perhaps if they are willing to put in the effort, they should reach out to them (and not just fall back to developing in B&W).

https://eng.vsco.co/reviving-kodachrome/

[0] https://emulsive.org/articles/darkroom/developing-film/they-...

buildbot 3 months ago

There’s at least one company that does kodachrome, but not in color: https://processonephoto.com/mail-order-film-processing.htm

ForTheKidz 3 months ago

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iancmceachern 3 months ago

This is the Smithsonian Magazine, separate but affiliated.

Don't worry, DOGE will dismantle other parts of the Smithsonian you hold dear.

This is our problem. Complaining about ads on a website like it's the end of the world while the institutions behind these great things are being dismantled brick by brick.

ForTheKidz 3 months ago

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iancmceachern 3 months ago

Donate to it.

Subscribe to the magazine, go to the museum and buy something in the gift shop.

It's an amazing place, I cried when I walked in.

ForTheKidz 3 months ago

Hell no. That's what the state and taxes are for. I certainly don't need more crap from a gift shop in my life. The reason why I'm proud to be an american is because we fund stuff like this an national parks and libraries and the best postal service in the world. Without these things we're just sad, ignorant people obsessed with money and comfort

iancmceachern 3 months ago

I think you'll be surprised at how little of your taxes go to those things and how many of those things are actually supported by donations and proceeds from sales of things like memorabilia in gift shops.

I bought gifts for people. They liked them. I'm sure you can think of some children in your life who would appreciate a notion of caring from the Smithsonian.

saagarjha 3 months ago

I can definitely buy a gift for people. I also want to take them to taxpayer-funded institutions.

kelnos 3 months ago

Most of your taxes (assuming you live in the US) go to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the military.

> The reason why I'm proud to be an american is because we fund stuff like this an national parks and libraries and the best postal service in the world.

That's hilarious. All those things you mention have suffered budget shortfalls and funding cuts, continuously, over the past couple decades. There's a certain political party that would rather defund and privatize everything, funneling money to their cronies in corporate America. So we get ads and other garbage.

DoingIsLearning 3 months ago

From the HN guidelines:

- Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

- Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

- Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.

@dang the leaking of apoplectic American politics (on both ends of your polarized spectrum) is making HN a lot less interesting for the wider world audience.

ForTheKidz 3 months ago

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