Year: 2019

Always on Film: An Interview with Lindsay Laven, film archivist and projectionist.

Claudia Pretelin

Lindsay Laven’s love for film started at home at an early age. As with many other American families, her travel and everyday life were documented with cameras. For Laven’s family, it was a Hi8 camcorder owned by her father and, before that, an 8mm film camera owned by her father’s father. Home movies were watched as a form of entertainment. Soon, being in front or behind the family camera became an obsession that shaped her personal and professional life. Laven, is a full-time archivist and projectionist at one of the…

Landing in Los Angeles: An interview with B. Neimeth

Claudia Pretelin

Originally from Abington, Pennsylvania, Brittany or B. Neimeth (as she prefers to be called) moved to Los Angeles in 2014 to pursue an MFA at CalArts. When I asked her about what brought her to this side of the country, she described herself as a “wandering spirit with a desire for the kind of freedom and newness that a life change can bring.” A spirit that only stopped once it hit the ocean, as her family jokes about her journey to the West Coast. In Neimeth’s recent work, Beverly Hills,…

This Month in the History of Photography

Claudia Pretelin

The following events happened this month in the history of photography: In May 1969, Meroë Marston Morse was honored as the first woman elected Fellow of the Society of Photographic Scientists and Engineers. After graduating from Smith College, Morse entered the Polaroid Corporation working as a lab assistant and later became the manager of the black-and-white research lab. Between her many accomplishments, Morse advocated for a favorable deal among artists using Polaroid and the Massachusetts’ company. In this deal, Polaroid would supply film to artists including Minor White, Ansel Adams,…