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if funds were available for personnel, just as a little financial support would make it possible for records and di=ocuments of all kinds to be expanded and maintained at a higher level than at the present. The frustration of culture through inadequate support is no new phenomenon, however; and it is extremely gratifying to know that the Russell Sage Foundation has made a start toward preserving a photographic collection of value to America.


CAMERA HIGHLIGHTS:

Grade A report cards to.... Norris Engel whose swell series of photographs were recently published in PM's Weekly and whose photograph of the "Harlem Merchant" is being used by Ansel Adams for the catalog of the "Pageant of Photography" show at the San Francisco "World's Fair".... and to Albert Fenn, whose definition of Documentary Photography is being used as the theme statement of the same show... and to Eliot Elisofon who has recently completed a series of photographs for Lofe of a Kentucky Mining Town; it shows fair promise of being Eliot's best yet.... and to "Mike" Ehrenberg who is now publicity director of the new photo contest being sponsored by the American Youth Congress in conjunction with Friday Magazine.

Coming attractions by way of photographs: Sid Grossman, instructor of the Documentary Class and Executive Secretary of the League, took a two months vacation and went down to Arkansas to do a series of photographs on the sharecropper. From all indications he is doing a bang of job, and we can be sure of seeing some swell pictures when he returns. Another vacationist is Aaron Siskind, who is completing this year a series of photographs which he started awhile ago on the subject of "Martha's Vineyard," the Life of a Small Town".


(From John Adam Knight's Photography column in the New York "Post".

We are living in an age of terrific upheavals. What we believed to be true yesterday is demonstrably false and fatal today. Our whole mode of living and thinking has to be altered from day to day to fit the times and to meet the threats of the times. No one cand deny that much of the pickle we are in today grew out of the almost universal custom of evading realities; and there is no better example of escapism anywhere than in salon photography.

"But," says your pictorialist, "we don't photograph morning mists exclusively. Look at the solon pictures of the seamy side of life. Why, only this year one of the most popular prints at the leading New York salon was an angle shot of a bum asleep in a Bowery doorway.

True, my friend, very true; but to you, to the man who made it and to the judges who hung it, this print merely meant the skillful selection and use of photographic material. To you the sleeping bum was swell subject matter, nothing more. And that is exactly the point of view I am trying to steer young photographers away from.

Did it ever occur to you that eventually even a sleeping bum will wake up? And that, having awakened, he may ask for bread or for a job where he can earn his bread? Things like this never happen in salons, but out here in the world of realities they have been happening since the beginning of time. When a man asks for a job and there is no job for him, he becomes easy pray for glib demagogues who promise better things if he will renounce democracy. If enough of us continue to look upon sleeping bums as no more than picturesque subject matter for the camera, it won't be long before all our pictures will be made through the barbed wire fence of a concentration camp. This is what I am trying to impress upon the youngsters in photography. They must be kept alert and aware, so they can save you 10 1/2 ostriches when the time comes.