Last box with negatives marked “ART SJC Jan-June 1942” in the press sheet film format.
I found 21 negatives crammed in a 12 negative box, but also a few new names and images shedding more light on past images.
We’ll start with the masks this time.
Joel did a good job exposing this image, this single source lighting from left gives us reasonable detail, and I didn’t have to edit the negative at all.
The negatives below show an artist/student holding the above mask and these negatives were simply over-exposed and it took me some work to dial these in.
Joel only had a rudimentary light meter at the time and photographing against a dark background would have been challenging.
Joel is using a single incandescent tungsten light (hot light) for a lot of the indoor photography we’ve seen so far.
Continuing with more 3D artwork.
The second image above is just a different view of the top image. I’m actually quite fond of this particular piece.
We do recognize one of the trays the young man at right is holding, Joel photographed this tray at some point, and the negative was already featured in a previous blog post.
Joel know the above sculpture was challenging to photograph, so he did a second shot with different camera settings. Only the best negative is displayed here.
There was also graphic artwork represented in this box and these lead to few new names.
This work from George Akimoto is dated March 5, 1941. We could easily spend a blog post on this lettering-layout exercise.
Bob Fleming is a new name to add to our list of student/artists in 1941-1942
Doris Johnson is equally a new name in the mix of student/artist attendees of SJC in 1941-1942.
So, Joel is photographing the work of his classmates and he was subject to similar assignments.
The remaining negative cover more graphic artwork like one would find in magazines or advertizing. Mere doodles but shows the breath of exposure these student artists would be exposed to.
This sums the “ART” marked negative boxes up. Over the last 8 blog posts, we’ve seen a lot of student artist work with a few standing out in terms of quality and impact.
We’ve also seen how Joel’s photography work is becoming more confident. All a matter of practice over time.
Next few blog posts will be dedicated checking out what’s in the other 4 negative boxes, still in press format, with expiration dates in the 1942 range.
One of these boxes is infrared film, and this is another indicator that Joel was not afraid to experiment.
Cheers !
Finding Joel Pahl Dardis 