Famous images taken with large-format

[Louie Powell]

Pictures please!

Is there a possible copyright issue here?

[Bob Salomon]

One of the academic researchers at the Imperial War Museum in London told me that photographic evaluation is easier for WWI than for WWII because "It was prior to the miniature camera and we can put the plates under the microscope to see individual faces". Apparently there was a government or army scheme to get amateur photographers to donate their cameras for war use and 1/4 plate was the required size, so much very historic material in the archive is on 1/4 plt glass slides and negs.

The pix of Princip, the assasin who shot Archduke Ferdinand and started WWI being arrested were in LF...The Hindenberg zeplin burning is in LF.......Queen Victoria is in LF...The Duke of Wellington's only photograph is in LF.......Building the houses of Parliament is in LF,.....the analytical movement photographs of Muyerbridge (?) were all made with long lines of LF cameras tripped by string.....The forensic portraits of Jack the Ripper's victims were in LF........the Titanic is in LF ....news shots of Dr Crippen are in LF.....Many of the famous aerial photos taken over WWII targets could be considered to be LF such as the effects of the Dambuster Raid, Dresden, and Berlin raids.

It doesn't have to be that old. We sold NASA 4x5 Linhof Aero Technika ELs which were used on the Space Shuttle along with the Nikons, Hasselblads and Rolleifexes that went on the Shuttle missions.

What NASA told us after the first mission with the Linhofs was that with the medium format cameras they could see something was there. With the Aero Technika they could tell what it was (space to ground pictures).

The Linhofs were shooting 5" roll film on a vacuum back on NATO modified spools using estar based 5" film (about 60' on a roll) with a modified Hasselblad data module installed on the Linhof Vacuum Back. You can see some of these images in the book on space photos that Hasselblad distributed to camera stores.

[Steven Barall]

My favorite large format journalistic photo is the Wright Brothers first flight at Kittyhawk. Also there are Jerry Spagnoli's Daguerreotypes of the World Trade Center on fire on the morning of 9-11. There photos are striking and I would argue among the most important photos ever made, but that's another story.

[ChrisN]

Here's one. "Boy & Cop in Chinatown", made by Bill Beall of the Washington Daily News in 1957. This photo won the Pullitzer in 1958.

I've snapped this from p47 of my copy of Moments - the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs edited by Hal Buell, Tess Press, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers Inc, New York, 2007. The first section of the book covers the large format era, up to 1961. I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but here in Australia we're allowed under the copyright laws to copy a page from a book for private study purposes, and I think this qualifies.

[William McEwen]

It doesn't have to be that old. We sold NASA 4x5 Linhof Aero Technika ELs which were used on the Space Shuttle along with the Nikons, Hasselblads and Rolleifexes that went on the Shuttle missions.

What NASA told us after the first mission with the Linhofs was that with the medium format cameras they could see something was there. With the Aero Technika they could tell what it was (space to ground pictures).

The Linhofs were shooting 5" roll film on a vacuum back on NATO modified spools using estar based 5" film (about 60' on a roll) with a modified Hasselblad data module installed on the Linhof Vacuum Back. You can see some of these images in the book on space photos that Hasselblad distributed to camera stores.

I wrote an article in View Camera magazine years ago about the 4x5 Linhof used aboard the space shuttle. It included some pictures, too.

[William McEwen]

Lots. Karsh's portrait of Winston Churchill. Official NASA astronaut portraits. Steichen's closeup photo of Garbo. Avedon's photo of Nastassja Kinski with the snake. Everything by Jock Sturges.

[rdenney]

I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but here in Australia we're allowed under the copyright laws to copy a page from a book for private study purposes, and I think this qualifies.

In the U.S., the Fair Use provision allows copying excerpts from a work for the purposes of critical review. I would think that posting a low-res reproduction for the purpose of reviewing a photographer's body of work to other photographers is a textbook example of that situation, particularly if credit is given to the source. I have posted links to images on the Ansel Adams Gallery web site a number of times.

Rick "noting representative photographs that are reproduced in magazine reviews" Denney

[Henry Carter]

"Migrant Mother" by Dorothea Lange.

[John Kasaian]

The last on board shots of the Titanic were I think either 35mm, 127 or 120, taken by then Jesuit seminarian Fr. Brown who was ordered off the Titanic by his Superior when the ship arrived in England from France. His fare and camera were a gift from his uncle. Apparently the seminary didn't know he was taking an extended holiday until the ship sailed!

Many of the passengers appearing in photographs would be dead within days.