Another Xmas

      Every year at the end of this month the Christian world celebrates the birth of Christ, a holy day which has become more of a commercial event than a religious one. I'm not going to jump in with my own two cents simply because there is enough being written to include everyone. But I will say that the commercialism of Xmas and other festivities really, really, disgusts me. Not that I go for the religious aspects of it (I am not religious) but at least there is real feeling there, feeling that I get quite easily.
      What I am going to do is show some photographs.

      Photo taken in December of 1961 in Santiago, Chile for the weekly La Voz in Kodak Tri-X Pan film. Santiago is in the Southern Hemisphere, which means that December is Summer, not winter like in the Northern Hemisphere, where Santa Claus originated. In Santiago Santa really does not need the heavy winter coat and hat he is wearing in that over 30°C (over 90°F) temperature. But stores put cotton snow to be more like Europe or the US!

      Here's another Xmas photograph, taken in December of 1960 in Ilford HPS film, in Santiago and again for La Voz.

      Both B&W photographs were taken with a Contax IIA with a Zeiss 50mm f2.0 lens. The films were developed in D-76 and both were overdeveloped due to the conditions I had to work in.
      It wasn't easy being a free-lance photographer in Chile. I learned my photography in American magazines like Popular Photography and Modern Photography. In them I learned to develop by inspection, which meant opening the developing tank before the prescribed time and, under an incredibly weak green light, trying to sort of guess if the film was sufficiently developed. Strange as it may seem, it actually worked. Not every time, but it worked. Unfortunately, this method, like most chemical photographic methods, depended on an exact formula for the different chemical formulations used in photography. And this wasn't the case due to the economics of the Third World then (and probably it still is a factor). The fact was that the chemical formulations put out by photographic houses like Kodak, Ilford, Agfa and others, all in beautiful containers with exact instructions beautifully printed, were completely out of reach for a struggling, self-employed, free-lance (without even an equivalent expression in Spanish) photojournalist (again, no equivalent.) But there must have been a few of us, as indicated by the not very good but sole solution available, which was to purchase the packaged chemical formulations put together by one of the two stores that serviced professional photographers in Santiago, the legendary Casa Loben. The problem with this solution was that the chemicals used were not very consistent in their quality and the measurements were not very exact, to say the least. The result was a different product every time you mixed a batch of chemicals. Due to the aforementioned economic reality, not much testing was practical. So, more than once I ended up with overdeveloped or underdeveloped negatives due to chemical imbalances in the formula.
      It wasn't until I came to New York that I experienced Xmas in winter. My first trip to New York was in May of 1967, invited by Life en Español and I stayed until September of that year. I went back to Chile knowing I'd be back in New York somehow. The city had captured me body and soul and it hasn't let go yet. I came back in October of 1968 to cover the US Presidential elections and, as it turned out, remained here for good. That year was my first New York winter and cold Xmas.

      That is Fifth Avenue, somewhere in the fifties and you can see the very winterly light. Being October, people can still manage with light coats or jackets. Since I'm looking South its in the afternoon and judging by the shadows, it still early. One of my favorite New York photographs.
      And here is another one, taken the same day. It's in Rockefeller Center looking towards Fifth Avenue.

      These two color photographs were taken with a Nikon F camera with a 50mm f2.0 lens on Kodak Ektachrome film. At that time, and for many years afterwards, I did not develop my own color film. It was and adventure in sophistication of the highest degree to send it to a Custom Lab in New York. Years later, when I became expert in developing color in my own lab, I discovered that a few Custom Labs were not as professional as I thought, or should have been. But that is another story.
      And this is it for now. More to come soon. Let me know what you think and if you have questions, please DO ask them. And a wonderful Xmas to everybody, believers and non-believers.