This Sunday you’ll get the picture. Capturing Life (1839-1869), the fascinating film documenting Cincinnati’s role in developing photography before the Civil War, will premiere 4:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 16, on public television stations WCET-TV and Dayton’s WPTD-TV.
The first part of a proposed three-hour series called, The Big Picture: A History of Photography in Greater Cincinnati, was screened three times around town last October as part of the biennial FotoFocus events celebrating photography.
Capturing Life (1839-1869) is “packed with fascinating facts, events and surprising connections,” as I wrote after previewing the one-hour film in October. “I anticipated seeing historic photos of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, the Suspension Bridge and Civil War. I didn’t expect to see telegraph inventor Samuel Morse, landscape painter Robert Duncanson or Mammoth Cave” in the film.
Here’s my article, "Capturing Life’ shows Cincinnati at fore of U.S. photography in 1840s."
Cincinnati’s Dr. John Locke began some of this country’s first photo experiments with paper photographic negatives in the spring of 1839, months after two vastly different photography processes were announced in France and England, according to local filmmaker Tom Law, who wrote and directed the documentary.
Capturing Life (1839-1869) includes historic photos of the Cincinnati riverfront (1848); Tyler Davidson & Company’s Downtown headquarters (1851); writer Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852); an enslaved woman (1853); Miami University (1858); and abolitionists Levi Coffin (1853) and Frederick Douglass (1867).
The Kentucky Educational Network (KET) plans to broadcast Capturing Life (1839-1869) later this year, Law says. It’s also been offered to WOSU-TV in Columbus.
The film will be posted on the Voyageur Vimeo Pro website for free viewing and download for research and educational purposes later this month, he says.
Voyageur Media Group Inc. — a 501 c3 nonprofit organization dedicated to the creation of public media about science, history and culture — will assess community interest in Capturing Life (1839-1869) to determine when/if "we produce the next two episodes planned for the series, The Big Picture: A History of Photography in Greater Cincinnati,” Law says.
“Our assessment covers all phases of the cycle of development from funding, through production costs, scholar participation and distribution via regional public television stations and eventually streaming video. This includes viewership, companion website hits/user sessions and the use of the documentary (and lesson plans) in classrooms and workshops. Voyageur’s board will be talking a look at preliminary data at our next board meeting in May,” he says.
