Recent Henry Yee eBay auction questions

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by obcbeatle

Which leads me to a question ... does the Cycleback book(s) or Fogel/Yee book cover slides, negatives and transparencies?

The Fogel/Yee book has a brief section on the various photographic processes and mentions transparencies, slides (which are transparencies mounted in a cardboard frame), and negatives, though usually only circumstantially as it discusses the prints produced from them. If I remember correctly, some of David's writings go into a little more detail, as far as how they are produced, but I can't recall offhand if that material is online or in one of his books (or both).

If you're talking about identifying who/where/when an image came from by looking at the negative or transparency, I don't recall ever seeing much on that. Some photographers will make notations directly on the image, some along the edge of the negative, and some even stamp a logo onto the negative so that it shows on the printed image. In most cases that I've seen though, it's either blatantly obvious (as in a signature or stamped logo), or impossible (as in simple block lettering identifying the subject) to tell who the photographer was based only on markings on the negative.

The one exception that comes to mind is George Burke, who used a very specific file coding with his negatives that referred to a combination of league, team, and player codes to give some organization to his files. In that case, you can match up the coding to the catalog listings of his player photos to either determine who the player is (if you know it's a Burke photo) or if it is actually a Burke photo (if the player depicted matches the catalog coding for that player). Other photographers may have done something similar that I am not aware of, but their coding would have been a different "system," and I don't recall ever reading it being addressed anywhere.

I've read a few websites and blogs aimed more at photographers or people researching family histories that had a usable tip here and there, but nothing comprehensive dealing with dating or identifying negatives or transparencies that I can recall (though I would welcome such a resource if anyone else knows of one).