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Friday, September 14, 2012

Life / Visual Art My Goodness

Posted by Bethany Jean Clement on Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 4:45 PM

...these photos are beautiful, and this story is amazing.

THE YEAR IS 1938
…when an amateur photographer named Charles W. Cushman starts experimenting with a new technology: Color film. Few would follow suit in those early days. But for decades, Cushman remained obsessed.

Not long ago, photo researcher Rich Remsberg rescued a bunch of Cushman's photos that were headed for the trash. The rest had already been saved by Indiana University. Together, they amount to some 14,500 images.

Within that archive lies an incredible story of road trips, attempted murder and, above all, one man's lifelong search for depth of field.

NPR.ORG / Indiana University

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Comments (8) RSS

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The narrated slideshow was pretty cool. Thanks for tipping us off to it.

Posted by PCM on September 14, 2012 at 5:36 PM

thank you so much for the suggestion. what a fascinating story.

Posted by jayme on September 14, 2012 at 5:44 PM

Heard this on NPR this morning and thought it was a great story... Even better to put the images to the story! Thanks!

Posted by Queen of Sleaze on September 14, 2012 at 6:31 PM

I never heard this type of story. It is unbelievable and the pictures are very beautiful.

franchises

Posted by alanstone on September 14, 2012 at 11:27 PM

The slide show was alright and his pictures good for an amateur but my God, being shot twice by a wife who turned the gun on herself, only to both survive, and stay together? That is an amazing story.

Posted by Subdued Excitement on September 15, 2012 at 2:19 AM

Thanks for posting, this is beautifully done.

A great break from the anti-anti-anti-anti-Gay-Bashing blah.

Posted by Karlheinz Arschbomber

on September 15, 2012 at 2:28 AM

It's lovely that so many of these images were from 1938, they year of my father's birth, and from Indiana, the state where he and I grew up. And of course, that they are so beautiful. Thank you Bethany.

Posted by Jubilation T. Cornball on September 15, 2012 at 3:26 PM

Yarg, well I am always late to the party. I work in the Indiana University Libraries and my departmental peeps developed the digital project that published all of those Cushman photos online (in 2003, many years before I got here). Looks like Cushman never made it to Seattle, but there are 40 in the collection from Washington State: http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/cushman/….

Posted by Leoba on September 17, 2012 at 11:41 AM