Have and Have Not
Wearing traditional Chinese garments, perhaps in celebration of the Chinese New Year, a child in San Francisco’s Chinatown pops a sweet into her mouth while another at right apparently goes without. Taken ca. 1901, this is a very early example of documentary street photography by Sigismund Blumann, who had only begun taking photographs seriously the year before while living in San Francisco. This display print is ca. 1932 or later because of the inclusion of his F.R.P.S (Fellow, Royal Photographic Society) honorarium on the mount. (not shown)
A fine example of the artist’s 1930s finished work after honing his skills for at least three decades, this is a bromoil or gelatin silver variant process print he called a Lithobrome, with this particular example done using a fine masking screen on the entire image and separate border mask in the darkroom to enhance the overall effect.
