Design the Night

Thanks to all who came to our show on Thursday! Here’s some snapshots from a wonderful night.

The World in Color

This week, the world’s first known color films were discovered in the archive of the National Media Museum in Bradford, UK. In celebration of this discovery, we share with you another one of the color slides which will be projected at our upcoming show. We suspect that these slides might have been colored by Ashael Curtis’ sister Eva, who also worked in his studio along with other members. So far, we have not been able to find a robust literature on the craftsmanship of the colorist, and are looking to know more about what may have been generally considered women’s work.

We’ve also been experimenting with creating our own color slides using some ink and squares of cut glass. For guidance, we have the 1903 edition of The Photographic Colorist: A Manual for Amateurs by one Mr. J. W. Neville.

On Mount Rainier

Happy September! We are still in production mode for our show coming up later this month. We’ve been digging into histories of travel and exploration, the development of the Northwest, and the various meanings of the word “projection.” Below is a brief dispatch from the archival salt mines from Asahel Curtis’ lantern lecture on Mount Rainer. Curtis, who served on the park’s advisory board, wanted his love of the park to be shared with the larger population, advocating for the development of trails and automobile routes to promote tourism in the region. He rhapsodizes:

“One comes more intimately in touch with the mountains when he travels the trails. In the valleys the forests seem lower, the giant trees rise from one’s side to tremendous heights and the lower growth reaches out a friendly hand to bid you welcome ; but it is on the untrodden mountain heights that the traveler receives a true reward for his toil. Here where vegetation makes its last stand amid a world of ice and snow, with the lower world stretching away to the horizon, nature unfolds in all her beauty.”

And check out this 1930 silent film of Mountain Rainer from the Mountaineer’s archive.