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7 St. Luke's Place
New York City
December 13, 1940

Mr. Robert Carlen
Carlen Galleries
323 S. 16th Street
Philadelphia, Pa.

Dear Mr. Carlen:

I suppose you have about given up hope on the Pippin story. It has required repeated calls and my stubborn insistence to get Friday's editors to find time to consider the story, but I finally collared them for five minutes this week, and they decided to use it.

Now the thing has to be built to their satisfaction from the ground up. I hope it will not be too great a disappointment to you that the shots taken by the Pennsylvania Museum of Photography have all been found unusable by them. They will give instructions to a photographer they now have working in Philadelphia (I believe it is Biagio Pinto) and you will not have to supervise his work. I shall only ask that when he contacts you that you arrange for a visit by him to Pippin's home so that he can take whatever shots he has on his list.

Just a word of expalnation on why these must be done over. The picture of Horace with a poker is unreal. He holds it over a finished canvas, which makes no sense. The photo must show him as he actually worked in that phase, with a hot poker burning into a panel, if possible with smoke rising from the panel. In order to put the story across, it must be enacted realistically.

At the time I came over to see you about this story, Friday had no correspondent photographer in Philadelphia. That is why I asked you to try to get a photographer on a speculative basis. Of course they bear all the expense for the work they will order done now. The other stuff, I am afraid, is just a loss. I don't know how long the story will be, nor just how much it will bring in, but if there is any appreciable amount above the minimum to cover my expenses and time put in, I shall be glad to share it with you to help make up for our unfortunate start.

The story cannot be written until the picture layout is made, so I shall hold all the material you have sent me until the actual writing job is done, and then return it to you. I trust there will be no more hitches, and that it will come off as they have promised me. At any rate, I want to assure you that I have made more than an ordinary effort to put this across, both because you have been so cooperative and because I thought it was a kind of recognition, in a popular medium, that could be coming to Horace.

With best regards,

Jerome Klein