Ball Handling Basketball Broadcasters Black and White and a Bleak, Stark Reality

Despite a million voiceovers and enough color commentary to delay the beginning of my favorite show the Simpsons, it always comes down to ball-handling. No more, no less...you can dribble down your chin for all I care, but you can't say anything else. Ball handling.


A local photographer, local from who knows when or where, couldn't bother to focus, but he recorded some beautiful kids doing their best to look pro. Stark black and white reminders of our shallow, brief lives and the time we have on earth? Or some pictures of ball handlers.



Group of anonymous "sports heros" photographs, circa 1950? Collection Jim Linderman


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Travels of the Arkansas Traveler Song

I guess when you are given lemonade, you make a state song. In 1930s through the 1950s popular media, anytime a goofy "Slackjaw" was depicted, the Arkansas Traveler would play in the background. It was the "go to" song for down home goobers. A real "sligh tapper" if you wish. The original song melody was written by one Colonel Sanford C. Faulkner of the Confederacy.

There are as many versions as there are Arkansanianers. It became a generic melody for all manner of rhymes and tales, most of them involving some flashy fiddle playing, drunk jokes and one tooth yokels. Aw, huck, gawrsh, that's a purty song, I feel like dancin, Ayup! The song even became the unofficial theme song of Foghorn Leghorn! "I'm telling you, that's a JOKE son! "

In vaudeville, it was an excuse for a country bumpkin' to poke sly fun at the city slicker. There is a well-known version in which a goofus named Bocephus grabs a bumblebee and puts it in his mouth. He hurls it back up after being stung, all accompanied with frantic arm pantomine!

School children used to sing the song before naptime...in their version, a red nosed hillbilly puts off fixing his roof because a sunny day will come soon, so why bother?

The versions I am most familiar with are by the Skillet Lickers and even earlier, the one by FIddlin' John Carson. In his version, a trippy drone overwhelms the entire melody, but if you lean in close, you can pick out the "turkey in the straw" like tune. Both are great, but Carson creates a real mood...It sounds almost psychedelic...maybe that is why Jerry Garcia later recorded it.

Check it out.


Far and far away down in Arkansas There lived a squatter with a stubborn jaw. His nose was ruby red and his whiskers gray And he would sit and fiddle all the night and all the day.

The Laurel and Hardy short The Music Box, also known as The Piano Movers uses the tune briefly. Now THAT is high honor. This may be one of the few songs with Arkansas in the title, but still, it seems an odd choice for official state song, but that is what it was for some 20 years...an expunged version was commissioned by the state...gone were most of the h'yuk h'yuk references, and we are left with golden grains waving in the wind. It lasted until being put out to pasture as the state "historical song" in 1987.

Now you state historians don't bother writing in...I just wanted to post the John Carson song here...so take no offense and don't bother to correct any mistakes.

You can not do any better than Bill Monroe (no matter what you are trying to do) so here is his version. You can yell yehaw after any solo.


Real Photo Postcard collection Jim Linderman circa 1910

Bernard Kobel Photograph Freak and Freak Photographer Tattoo Sideshow Abnormalities and More (Worse?)

I pride myself on collecting unusual photographs, but no one collected more and with more vigor than Bernard L. Kobel. It is a clear case of the freak collecting the freaks!

You see, Bernie didn't just take and COLLECT photographs of medical abnormalities, circus freaks, war atrocities, lurid and lewd crime scenes and such, he reprinted and SOLD them from the back of sleazy magazines! You have likely seen some if you are a bit adventurous...the woman with the world's largest whatevers, the guy with the giant stuff, the bizarre pair of thingamabobs...even I don't want to show them and I'm pretty much immune by now. I'm cheeky but Bernie crossed the line!

You have also seen reproductions of his collection without knowing it. The famous picture of armless and beautiful sideshow performer (and actress) Frances O'Connor who appears on the cover of the Re/search book Freaks (linked at right) is a Kobel photo, even if not taken by him, but he did take plenty himself. Some of the photographs shown on the billboard at Hubert's Museum in Times Square (and later, on the cover of the Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street album) were Kobel shots. His reprints sold fairy well, at least well enough to have entered the sleazy underground where gourmands of gore dwell. They continue to sell long after Bernie moved from Indiana to Florida and then Sideshow heaven, as bootleg reproductions and, I guess, authentic ones on auction websites.

Not all Kobel's photos were gruesome or gratuitous, but plenty were...As you can see here, he advertised kinky tattoo photos in girlie magazines, (often showing far more than the tattoo) freaks and contortionists in entertainment trade magazines, and I suppose he advertised his gruesome war photos in whatever war folks read. A pair of originals are shown HERE.

I do not know much about Bernie, but I know as much as I want. Interestingly, a later advertisement shows he was trying to leverage his collection into a new direction....stamp collecting! "Lists sent, natch...Will trade for U.S. stamp collections."

Natch indeed...one of his catalogs from the 1950s lists nearly 500 photos which I don't even want to print the descriptions of. On the other hand, one of his photographs for sale in a catalog is "The First Official Hair Pulling Contest...held at the Palisades Amusement Park with 24 girls from the Walter Thornton Modeling Agency as contestants."

I'd trade a few stamps to see THAT one.

(A post on Vintage Sleaze the Daily Blog as well)

Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books HERE

Cowboy Band

Anonymous snapshot, circa 1920? Collection Jim Linderman

Review Jim Linderman The Painted Backdrop: Behind the Sitter in American Tintype Photography 1860-1920 by Joey Lin

Review of Jim Linderman The Painted Backdrop by Joey Lin Anonymous Works




View Original Review with Additional photographs HERE


Slogging through the dross of daily online auctions, I'm used to being disappointed 99% of the time. Cyber-picking can be a sort of self-flagellation, but when you find a hidden jewel the payoff makes it all worth it. I sort of feel the same way with self-published books. The theory is good, with online sites like Lulu and Blurb giving us all the ability to become published authors. Unfortunately, as I've browsed through the majority of self-published titles available, most are of the "these are my best Aruba shots" photo books that, while sometimes beautiful, leave me a little unfulfilled.

Fortunately there are others, like Jim Linderman, who look at the technology as an opportunity to expose the hidden corners of old (sometimes weird) America. Like Jimmy Allen's seminal book on lynching in America, Linderman has a knack for discovering untold stories and introducing them to a wider audience. His latest book, The Painted Backdrop: Behind the Sitter in American Tintype Photography 1860-1920, tells the previously untold story of 19th century painters who painted the backdrops of the then ubiquitous tintype photos. It's an incredibly interesting history and you suddenly find yourself looking for the subject behind the subject.

The Painted Backdrop is one of two of Linderman's books currently in the running for a People's Choice Award in the Photography category of Blurb.com. What's great is that for a limited time you'll be able to preview and read the entire books.

The Painted Backdrop Behind the Sitter in American Tintype Photography 1860-1920
Click Here to preview the book and vote!

Camera Club Girls Bettie Page and her Friends: The Work of Rudolph Rossi
Click Here to preview the book and vote!

If you like them (which I'm sure you will), make sure to put a vote in before August 20th!

Dull Tool Dim Bulb Art Photography Blogs Reach ONE HALF MILLION Clicks

The group of blogs under the Dull Tool Dim Bulb umbrella will reach 500,000 hits this weekend. The counter was installed August 9, 2009.

Arthur S. Mole Living Pictures and CBS Sunday Morning

Last week CBS Sunday Morning ran a nice profile of Arthur S. Mole, the genius of "living" photography. As I watched, I hoped the profile would mention connections with contemporary artist Spencer Tunick (not only because I enjoy looking at squirming masses of nude flesh) but because I thought it a natural enough comparison to make way back last October, my original post follows. (I was also disappointed not to see my primitive version of the living flag, composed of an unruly group of schoolchildren displaying a considerable lack of discipline and attention) Frank Maresca was interviewed, the Ricco Marecsa gallery has started a very nice online magazine titled Fluence you should check out. My Mole Photo is the Living Flag above, and it is way too big to fit on the scanner, so the full scale might not be apparent, the CBS Sunday Morning slideshow has more. Mole's photographs were also made into Real Photo Postcards...there is one in a bin down the road from me. Many original photographs were used as fundraisers for the Navy Relief Society located in Great Lakes, Illinois.


Original Silver Gelatin Print by Arthur S. Mole "The Living Flag" 1917 Collection Jim Linderman


Following is my original post of October 2009

Spencer Tunick, Arthur Mole and the Living Flag

The earliest "living flag" reference I find is a group of Los Angeles schoolgirls in the 1890's. A considerable number of them are recorded in that decade so there must be earlier examples. This one is certainly from that period, it is a primitive and ragtag posing but quite charming nonetheless. I am sure the "conductor" had greater expectations when he told the children what to wear then next day. Perhaps the origin of the living flag photograph is to be found in parades after the Civil War?

Arthur Mole had it easier...his participants were used to not squirming like schoolchildren, they being all well-trained soldiers. Several of his staggering works are shown here, they are available at the Library of Congress website.

The funniest living flag is certainly the one in Lake Wobegon, which keeps breaking up as the participants with red, white and blue baseball caps leave to climb to the third story buildings on Main Street and look down. Garrison Keillor has said his living flag was based on a 1917 photograph of several thousand army trainees arranged on a football field to form the Liberty Bell, this was certainly the photo produced by Arthur Mole shown here.

Spencer Tunick, of course, does not ask his participants to wear baseball caps or anything else. To date, the largest Spencer Tunick piece has been 18,000 folks in Mexico City. He is no Arthur Mole, and the idea is getting a bit tired by now anyway.

There was a living flag made in Portugal to celebrate the country's soccer team making the finals in the World Cup, it was comprised of 18,788 women dressed in red, green and black. That one I'd like to have seen, but not as much as a Mole.

"Living Flag" photograph Anonymous c. 1880 Collection Jim Linderman

The Painted Backdrop Behind the Sitter in American Tintype Photography

Available NOW! The Painted Backdrop: Behind the Sitter in American Tintype Photography The previously untold story of 19th century painters and their influence on American photography during the tintype era. Never before examined in detail, the book contains over 75 rare, unpublished original tintype photographs from the Jim Linderman collection. A Grammy nominated writer and collector who has been called "the perfect subject for a Harvey Pekar comic" this book is informed with Linderman's wit and continues his examination of previously overlooked art and photography subjects. 80 Pages, 8' x 10" with essays by Jim Linderman and Kate Bloomquist. Linderman's most recent photography book was Camera Club Girls which tells the story of the amateur photographers who met to take nude photographs during the 1950s, discovered model Bettie Page, and started a revolution in erotic art...all through the work of one never before published artist.

The Painted Ba...

Behind the Sitter i...

By Jim Linderman DUL...

Book Preview

Literally a Dog and Pony Show (at the Circus in Black and White #19)

Today "Dog and Pony Show" is a phrase used when tricking prospective customers with bedazzling graphics and such. It used to mean what is shown above.

Number 19 in the "At the Circus in Black and White" series.

Untitled Anonymous Snapshot, circa 1920 Collection Jim Linderman

The Invention of the Dashboard Camera Art Crime and Photography

By Jim Linderman from Dull Tool Dim Bulb
The mounted dashboard camera, as we all know from “America’s most horrible ruckus” on the flat screen, is de rigueur today for every cop car. Sideswipes, weaving drunks, runaway crackheads…we see them all through the electronic eye of the police car windshield. But did you know the apparatus was invented by a Weegee like ambulance chaser named Mell Kilpatrick who took accident photos for Los Angeles Newspapers in the 1940s and 1950s?

Mell Kilpatrick was a self-taught master photographer with Weegee skill and fortitude. In fact, the precious few times his name is mentioned, Weegee’s often follows. 

Living in Orange County when it was literally a county of oranges, Mell was attracted to photography young and certainly had the right eye. In the only photo I’ve found of him, he is posing as if squinting into a lens finder. Like a Weegee in sunshine, he traveled light…camera, flash, tripod and a trench coat when the road was slick. But he also had a camera mounted on his dashboard pointing through the windshield These photos were shot with it. Like a hard-boiled P.O, whenever California blood was spilled, he was there. Crime, Crash, Insurance Fraud…he squinted through them all in black and white. A James Ellroy with a speed graphic camera and a police-band radio. 

Mell is probably best known for the iconic photo “It’s lucky when you live in America” which depicts a car overturned in a field after having crashed through a billboard advertising a mountain fresh brand of beer. These photos of Mell’s skid marks, so to speak, are mild compared to the gruesome carnage shown in his work (and which should be shown to every driver using their cellphone)

In an extraordinary article which draws comparisons with the car crash silkscreens of Andy Warhol and the car crash fetishists of J. G. Ballard, writer Nathan Callahan attributes Kilpatrick’s vision to those he saw while working as a projectionist at the Laguna and Balboa Theaters in the late 1940′s, where he watched film noir masterpieces while waiting to change the reels. He learned well and got used to the dark. All these photos have his identification stamp or notes, but only one provides the time: 5 am.

Kilpatrick’s negative collection, well organized and labeled, sat for 35 years until being turned up by photography collector and dealer Jennifer Dumas. She compiled them into a coffee table book “Car Crashes & Other Sad Stories” in 2000 published by Taschen, linked below.

Remarkably, there was another side to Mell. As Orange County turned into Disneyland (literally) Mell turned his camera to the construction. Soon he was loaning his darkroom to other Disney photographers, and Uncle Walt himself granted him full access to the construction site. Mell’s granddaughter has published no less than five books of his early Disneyland photographs. As Callahan reports, she “sold the most gruesome ones…they brought a bad vibe to the house.”

Forensic Photography would seem to be a growth industry, what with all the teenage texting going on at 75 MPH. It was probably a good gig for Mell…even if most of them seem to have been taken at 5:00 AM.

Original Accident Scene Photograph by Mell Kilpatrick circa 1952-1953 Collection Jim Linderman 

Photograph Manipulation When Pictures Lie (ALWAYS) The Art of Painting a Photograph

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It is a very short walk from enhancement to deception. I suppose manipulating photographs (and by extension, the masses) is an art as old as photography. We often forget what happens after the shutter is snapped is really what photography is about. Even a monkey can take a picture, there must be a photo of a monkey operating a camera release on the web. (Note to self...commission a monkey to take some photos)

However, it is a serious subject, and I don't just mean the obvious historical examples we are all familiar with. Trimming the fat of supermodels for supermarket checkout lanes, eliminating Stalin's rivals with the stroke of a brush, etc. It is a serious ethical problem which is increasingly ignored. In 1982 the National Geographic moved no less than the pyramids closer together to fit them on their cover. It is insidious and shameful...but it isn't new at all. We've been had for centuries. If it weren't so widely practiced and so commonly accepted, it would be collectively known as the greatest and most pervasive hoax in history.

Paint Shop and Photoshop certainly made it easier. The programs have been around a long time now, and in an increasingly visual world where text is shortened to less than a caption, that we can not rely on what the eye sees is unfortunate and it could someday have tragic consequences. I guess. I have collected examples of the art of photo manipulation for a while now. It was the practice of the press to "highlight" or embellish photographs for publication. I find these examples striking and beautiful, if fraudulent, because they were all done by hand with a paintbrush. All were treated prior to publication and reproduction in a newspaper, where inadequate newsprint printing process made the craft necessary. But they never told us.

One from my collection, the firing squad here from 1927, was recently used in a small spread in Foam Magazine. Had the photo been taken moments later, the paint artist would have certainly wiped up the blood (or highlighted it I suppose, depending on intent) I reprint it here as an extreme example since virtually no photo remains, it is as much painting as picture. The other examples, none too nefarious that I can tell, but deceptive still, are shown more to illustrate a lost art. By the way...I have cropped some, but not "treated" in anyway. Like the press, I wouldn't tell you if I did. Being a music fan, Chuck Berry in the Clouds is a particular favorite, but then you can hardly beat a pipe which smokes "HEALTH."

DULL TOOL DIM BULB BOOKS HERE

Group of Original painted, embellished and manipulated press photographs, 1920 - 1971 Collection Jim Linderman

Jim Linderman Foam International Photography Magazine

(Click to Enlarge)

I am pleased to have a brief article and profile in the Spring 2010 issue of Foam: International Photography Magazine. As Foam is likely the most beautiful (and interesting) photography magazine published, this is quite an honor. Please follow the links to Foam and consider ordering a subscription or purchasing some of the back issues. Advertisers? This is a splendid publication to reach the worldwide art market, photography or otherwise, as the coverage of the booming European creative fine art photography scene is exceptional. The Spring 2010 issue alone is over 200 outstanding large pages.

Soft Landing Vernacular Photograph Snapshot

Untitled Snapshot (Model Airplane on Bed) circa 1940 Collection Jim Linderman

In Situ: American Folk Art in Place by Jim Linderman coming 2016!

A Yard of Heaven! Panoramic Pair of Bible School Participants from Grand Rapids Michigan

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A yard of Heaven! "Yard Long" or panoramic photographs are frequently seen but seldom as crisp as this pair showing 1942 Bible School Students and their teachers from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Too big for my scanner, and a shame as they are splendid. There is a slight "row" in one row...(second row on the left, detail shown) but all in all, the little monkeys behaved and each holds their little Bibles with respect. Photographed at the height of World War Two, it is exceptional to realize virtually all these children had a father serving in the Armed Forces. We can also surmise most of the teachers had husbands or sons serving. A beautiful pair of integrated images at a time when segregation was still common, and together a splendid example of what panoramic photos are for. The special cameras used for these giant pictures were developed as early as the late 19th century and their high resolution is still a marvel.

Harshberger began commercial photography in Grand Rapids in 1921 and closed the shop in 1949.

Two Panoramic photographs, each 8" x 28" Charles I. Harshberger "Photos of Quality...Groups any time or place in Michigan" 1942 Collection Jim Linderman

Also posted on the old time religion blog