Dull Tool Dim Bulb: Photographs

Showing posts with label Photographs. Show all posts

Annual Daytime Visit to the Carnival photographs by Jim Linderman

Annual Daytime Visit to the Carnival photographs by Jim Linderman

Blues in Brooklyn African-American Mug Shots from the Collection of Jim Linderman

Real Black gangsters, I guess. Criminals from the 1950s, but presumed, I am afraid, guilty until proven otherwise. Given attitudes, practices and institutional racism when taken, these sharp-dressers might have been just walking to work.

Striking Photographs, each near 8" x 10" and each handed back and forth from lawyers, prosecutors, file clerks and now collectors. Another reminder that the photograph was a tool and a physical object which developed surface, wear and form as it aged.

Jim Linderman's newest book of photographs is THE BIRTH OF ROCK AND ROLL and is available from the publisher DUST TO DIGITAL, AMAZON, BARNES AND NOBLE AND OTHER FINE RETAIL OUTLETS.

The Birth of Rock and Roll Number 4 from Dull Tool Dim Bulb

The Birth of Rock and Roll number four is an original slide circa 1950 from the Jim Linderman Collection, and we like it so much we gave it a watermark! The Birth of Rock and Roll series of original photographs appears on Dull Tool Dim Bulb periodically.

Untitled Original Color Slide circa 1950 collection Jim Linderman

Waterfalls of Tin Tintype Backdrops of Drops of Water

Tintype studio backdrops try to overpower the sitters in this little photo essay of staying dry while visiting the falls. These all appear in my book The Painted Backdrop but it is too expensive now. So if you are interested, buy the ebook instead.

The Painted Backdrop (EBOOK version) is HERE

Group of Tintype Photographs, circa 1870 - 1890 Collection Jim Linderman

World's Largest Mosquito Attacks, Kills Man Snapshots collection Jim Linderman

Early snapshots, and I think while one would expect these to be "trick" photographs of some type, I think they actually built a giant bug! Enlarge and see. Comments?

Group of Three original snapshots, circa 1930? Collection Jim Linderman

BOOKS AND EBOOKS BY JIM LINDERMAN AVAILABLE HERE

Women with Dummies Female Ventriloquist with Vent Figures Vintage Photographs

Women with Dummies

Are ventriloquist dummies any less creepy when being manipulated by women? Well, I don't see them as creepy at all, I see them as complicated, handmade and hand carved folk art objects with long and noble careers. The dummies, that is. The women with their hands up Woody's crotch might be a little strange, but the dolls (or using the proper term "vents" ) are fine with me.

Striving to be gender friendly in all endeavors, the author spent a decade collecting antique vintage photographs of ventriloquists with their tool, and while I cannot say total equality was achieved, I dare say you have never seen so many pictures of the "fairer" sex with blockheads before. Dummy dames?

I'M WITH DUMMY Vent Figures and Blockheads by JIM LINDERMAN | Make Your Own Book

BROWSE BOOKS AND AFFORDABLE Ebooks FOR iPad by Jim Linderman HERE

Ladies and Gentlemen The New Book I'm With Dummy Vent Figures and Blockheads

I'm With Dummy Vent Figures and Blockheads Vintage Photographs from the Jim Linderman Collection is the newest book from Dull Tool Dim Bulb.

Real Photo Postcards, Snapshots, Polaroids and more! Amateurs and professionals, anonymous and not, the story here is the figure. Vents!

78 pages and available as a paperback ($21.95) or Ebook for ipad ($5.99) only from Blurb.com.

FREE PREVIEW and ORDERING IS HERE!

The Extraordinary Wood Carvings of Anonymous 1921 Snapshot Collection Jim Linderman

Some serious folk art wood carving by Anonymous, who was so good he even had his own special "wood carving coveralls" for when the chips began to fly! Too bad there is no identification on the photo reverse, but at least we know the work depicted was finished around 1921. Close-ups here show not only the remarkable carving, but his weapon of choice.

Anonymous snapshot of a folk art furniture maker and carver, 1921 Collection Jim Linderman

Tip of the Hat to Joey Lin of Anonymous Works

Sumo and Samurai versus the Sultan of Swat Vintage Sumo Postcards

These 100 year-old postcards depict Sumo when it was a bit more muscle and a bit less mass, but in a sport where the goal is not to be moved, either certainly works.

In Japan, the skill is still admired with reverence and tradition we can not even imagine. We love our sports players too, but certainly none of ours go back to 1684, the year Samurai seem to have completed their many centuries long metamorphosis to Sumo. Our biggest and earliest sports heroes only go back to the similarly built (but hardly fit) Babe Ruth, and there are still some of us alive to have actually SEEN the Bambino. (Not to disparage the Swat Sultan...at least he only cheated on his diet and his wife, and his only performance enhancing drug was hot dogs and beer.)

One other big difference between ancient tradition in the East and the mere 100 year old sports in the West? While winning a tournament certainly has financial reward, just look up the average salary of a Sumo wrestler.

Collection of Sumo Wrestler Postcards, circa 1910 Collection Jim Linderman

Order Dull Tool Dim Bulb / Jim Linderman Books and Ebooks HERE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jim Linderman

"...Linderman is widely regarded as one of the foremost figures in a field of vernacular art collectors working beyond the margins of most institutional axioms and impulses, in what is essentially it's own self-taught art form."
Ursula Magazine Hauser & Wirth 2019

"Linderman produces the most sublime books on dreamy, arcane subjects, sexy stuff, too, all with rare one-of-a-kind images." Craig Yoe 2017

"...disclosing an underground history of American popular culture one oddball tale at a time"
John Strausbaugh in The New York Times

"...one of the blog writers to watch for"
ARTSlant

"...wonderful, extraordinary, fascinating, remarkable and profound" Fans in a Flashbulb International Center of Photography Museum 2016

"Brilliantly Astute, Acerbic and Aesthetic Jim Linderman"
The Museum of Everything 2014

"Dull Tool Dim Bulb is always worth a visit" THINGS Magazine 2016

"...grumpy..." The Austin Chronicle 2014

"Perpetually ahead of the collecting curve...a one man Taschen. An authentically curious individual...diligently archiving the forgotten curiosities of American History"

Emma Higgins in Art Hack May 2012

"Jim Linderman likes Art, Antiques and Photography and his collection of Vernacular Photography, Folk Art, Ephemera and Curiosities is a wonderful place..."
LifeElsewhere with Norman B. 2014

"...collected over the years by Jim Linderman, a character who seems the perfect subject for a Harvey Pekar comic. Linderman treats collecting like a calling, and his finds have a resulting air of authority, stunning in their capture of bygone picturesque moments."
Derek Taylor Dusted

"The pictures, discarded artifacts of ecstatic Americana, come from the stash of Jim Linderman, who in his introduction recalls advice he’s plainly taken to heart: “Collect the heck” out of whatever you find interesting."
Drew Jubera Paste Magazine

"His interest in art is rivaled only by his interest in music, and one expression informs the other. He pursues objects with thoroughness and an innate sense of curiosity..."
Tanya Heinrich Folk Art Magazine

"Linderman acknowledges the obscure at the same time that he elevates it.... His collections tell vast stories in sotto voce, allowing curios and objects shadowed by mainstream culture and ideology to converse and be heard. What we hear is an enormous American sub-culture speaking in forbidden, marginalized languages: stuff discovered boxed in the attic out of embarrassment or zealotry, smutty ash trays crowing next to religious pamphlets, each claiming a part of the complex, sometimes contradictory, always conflicted American imagination, a chaos of memories that will one day vanish."
Joe Bonomo Author of Conversations With Greil Marcus, Jerry Lewis Lost and Found and No Such Thing As Was

"...he's one of the world's greatest pickers."
Brian Wallis in The New York Times

"Documenting--one clipping at a time--the scrapbook of a leg and garter aficionado that was dumpster-dived in Virginia in the 60s" "...an outstanding image-archaeologist who has compiled a shelf-ful of worthy and unique photographic histories."
William Smith Hang Fire Books

"Linderman has a knack for discovering untold stories and introducing them to a wider audience"
Joey Lin Anonymous Works

"Jim Linderman...makes us all look a little puny"
Could it be Madness-this?

"...insatiable collector of ephemera and ringleader behind an incredible circus of blogs — including the treasure trove dull tool dim bulb"
The Cynephile

"Yo no sé ustedes pero creo que es uno de los mejores sitios que he visitado en mucho tiemp"
Color Me in Blog

"...there's something beyond the endless photos and postcards and weird propaganda from another time that he lovingly documents - I think it's the collection as a whole, the portrait of a person fascinated with culture and communication. I have met people like this before, and in reading Dull Tool Dim Bulb I feel I have been lucky enough to meet one more. This site is a goldmine in terms of links..."
The Hyggelic Life October 2009

"Linderman is always on the lookout for the new and exciting"
Chuck and Jan Rosenak Contemporary American Folk Art

"...an amazing collection..."
Revel in New York October 2009

"Jim Linderman has a nice little colllection of interesting books and blogs...But every so often he just loses it."
American Digest March 2010

"FOR MOST OF HIS LIFE, COLLECTOR JIM LINDERMAN has searched high and low for authentic things--unique and special objects that define the artistic culture of the American experience. From folk art to popular culture, from pulp fiction to Delta Blues-- Jim is a walking authority on so many things American they are too numerous to mention. One thing is certain-- his collecting interests are for things that have fallen through the cracks, those things lost and forgotten--the box of material under the table at the flea market booth. If it wasn't for dedicated collectors like Jim Linderman-- so many important objects about our culture would have surely been lost to time and indifference."

"Jim Linderman maintains a most interesting blog about the most amazing things from his collection—a site he calls “Dull Tool Dim Bulb,” the only curse words his father ever uttered. I love it, and read it everyday."
"...an excellent writer and I devour your blog daily. I am impressed at your deep knowledge of things within your niche..."
John Foster Accidental Mysteries

"I am grateful to Jim Linderman for first alerting me to the existence of the 1930s Spiritualist hymn "Jesus is My Air-o-plane."
William Fagaly New Orleans Museum of Art, Author Tools of her Ministry: The art of Sister Gertrude Morgan

"Linderman describes a long gone world...(he) claims not to be a writer but he is most certainly an excellent researcher..."
BOOKSTEVE

"Jim Linderman, King of the Internet Ephemeral Arts"
Spaniel Rage

"Jim is a fantastic historian...show him some love"
Astrid Daley Fringe Pop / Sin-A-Rama

"Almost an experimental narrative"
Idiopath

"He came to us with hundreds of jaw-dropping baptism photos that he'd been collecting for 25 years," Ledbetter explains. "By the time he found us, he'd already done half a lifetime's works, and he trusted us to handle it properly." Lance Ledbetter in Creative Loafing 10/13/11

Fair Use

Though the images, which I have myself largely scanned from my personal collection of photographs and ephemera, some are subject to © by the artist, syndicate that distributed them or otherwise the individual artists. The use here is regardless covered by the U.S. fair use laws because:
1. The image illustrates an educational article; its inclusion in the article adds significantly to understanding the text because it is a historical sample of the art covered in the critical commentary, and shows use of an innovative style. Therefore the image substantially improves the educational value of the article.
2. The image is used as the primary means of visual identification of the article topic, which directly concerns a visual artist, and is indicative of the style for which hethe artists are renowned.
3. Images are of lower resolution than the original. The image is not used here for profit.

4. It is not in any way replaceable with an uncopyrighted or freely copyrighted image pertinent to the work referenced in the article

The copyright for some images are most likely owned by either the publisher, the writer(s) and/or artist(s) which produced them originally.

Any other uses of this image may be copyright infringement.

Although most of the images here are original photography and objects owned by the author and in the author's personal collection, we cannot absolutely guarantee the exact copyright status of the items or offer written assurance that every or any aspect of this work is completely cleared for all usages. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.

Any Trademarks used in this item listing are used for strictly descriptive purposes only. No association or endorsement is implied or inferred. No character or trademark ownership is given or implied.

If you are the owner of any aspect of an item which you believe to be copyrighted, please contact us immediately at j.winkel4@gmail.com

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