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St-Mary’s School, Box 97, 1956
After our brief 1957 excursion in 4×5 negatives, we’re back in 1956, so we’ll be looking at press format sized negatives again. These images all relate to the ground breaking for the new St-Mary’s school in May (?) 1956. I believe Joel followed up with some construction-in-progress images also later that year. The school is…
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Carson Mansion, JFC, circa 1957
The second sleeve out of Jessica Fong’s Collection of Dardis photography contains 4×5 B&W negatives. Thats a major departure from Joel’s use of press sized negatives (4.25″ x 3.25″, or 3×4 in short) This implies that Joel bought himself a new camera to work with. Although upgrading from 3×4 to 4×5 doesn’t seem much, it’s…
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Clyde Beatty Clowns, JFC, May 1949
Jessica Fong gracefully lent me her collection of Joel Dardis negatives acquired at the estate sales for scanning and archiving. These all came in envelope sleeves, a storage method Joel switched to, sometime getting back to photography in the mid 50’s. He still used boxes, but both Jessica and I have multiple envelopes full of…
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Linden, Box 96, 1955
Box 96 has two more descriptions written on the side. “Linden Play, March 21, 1955” and “Linden Graduation, June 12, 1955”. Since there are three dates on the box, with only 22 negatives in total, it appears to me that Joel is only photographing sporadic events. That’s quite a few images for the play. For…
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The Clowns, SF Examiner, Jun 1954
Courtesy of Jessica Fong, Executive Director at Stockton Art League Goodwin Gallery, the attached San Francisco Examiner Photography Page pdf of Sunday, Jun 13, 1954. A page chock full of art and photography news. And in all of it, there’s an image of Joel Dardis, who won the $5 weekly photo contest with a fun…
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Christmas, Box 96, Dec 1954
This box is equally in the familiar Kodak yellow instead of the old brown cardboard boxes. Actually, the side reads ” Xmas 3 sons + Uncle Bud Dec 24 1954″. Quite frankly, the “uncle Bud” threw me for a loop for a few seconds, wondering which yet unknown family member would pop up. Luckily, I…
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Kodak Ektachrome, Box 95, 1957
This yellow Kodak Ektachrome box has an expiration date of January 1948. Joel had developed this color film stock as B&W to experiment with the rendering of the tones and contrast. Joel always liked to experiment. We’ve discussed these negatives quite a while ago. What’s in the box ? Three subjects and some. There’s a…
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Hiatus from 1950 to 1954 ???
Yes, there are no negatives to be found from 1950 till December 24, 1954. There are no Dardis style images in the College of Pacific yearbooks in 1950, 1951, 1952 and 1954. Although Joel graduated in 1948, it’s clear he was still perfecting his photography art and skills at COP in 1949. Later, after 1955,…
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Machine Shop, Box 94, May 1949
The rest of the negatives in box 94 are all of the Machine Shop of the Stockton College. Most likely this was a class assignment. Joel focussed on two pieces of equipment. In both cases, he made sure to include an operator at least in a few images. Gives perspective and intent. The first piece…
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Construction, Box 94, May 1949
This box has two subjects, and we’ll check out the mostly road construction images in this blogpost. The date is May 1949. Construction with plenty of heavy machinery. Unknown location at this time, but in the late 1940’s, housing development at one side, and College of Pacific expansion at the other side, were in full…
Finding Joel Pahl Dardis 