The following events occurred this month in the History of Photography:
On April, 1929 the magazine Kodak Salesman announced the release of the first Kodacolor ad to be published on the inside back cover of April’s Red Book. George Eastman and the Kodak Company introduced the 16mm color motion picture film in 1928 but ironically the color ad wasn’t published until seven months later after the announcement. The ad features images of a woman documenting everyday domestic life with her Cine- Kodak and sharing these moments with the family followed by the slogan “You see them as they really are. In Kodacolor! [Home Movies in Full Color]”
Born on April 3, 1958, Francesca Woodman began photographing at the early age of 13. Raised into a family of artists, she soon followed the path of her parents and enrolled in art school at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Woodman’s provocative work experimented with different mediums including photography and motion picture films. Her career ended at an early age, when she took her life in 1981.
On April 9, 1951, Life Magazine published “Spanish Village”, an illustrated essay by American photographer W. Eugene Smith. In this journey, Smith documents the life of a rural town, Deleitosa in Spain, during the rule of Francisco Franco and it contains some of the most memorable images ever captured by Smith.
On April 11, 2018 the auction house Christie’s announced the sale of a portfolio by Diane Arbus for $792,500. A Box of Ten Photographs, as the auction house called this portfolio, included ten gelatin silver prints printed in the 1970s by Neil Selkirk, the only person ever authorized to make posthumous prints of Arbus, including the prints he made for the retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
On April 23, 1935, the exhibition Documentary and Anti-Graphic: Photographs by Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Walker Evans opened at the New York gallery of art dealer and collector, Julian Levy. According to a recent publication by the publisher Steidel, “this was one the first exhibitions Henri Cartier-Bresson ever had”.
