ID this pic: Parisian (?) kids ca. 1975-80 (?)

[le vrai rdu]

sh°t, i posted before i read all the thread :/

 

[dfoo]

This was a great thread, made all the more amazing by John TF solving the mystery!

 

[monkeypainter]

Lovely thread!!!

 

[pesphoto]

wow, amazing! So cool. Gotta check out his website.

 

[chut]

This is one of the best threads I've read in awhile. I loved all the photo forensics everyone was contributing. Would it be possible to do this every week? Mystery Monday perhaps? Forensic Friday?

 

[Daneinbalto]

I sent an email to the photographer, Herb Ascherman, who had the generosity to reply. While I cannot assume that his message to me was intended for widespread distribution, I believe I can share one detail: the photograph was taken in March 1986.

 

[furcafe]

Neat thread, indeed. The internet is good for something, after all. 😉

 

[Daneinbalto]

The photographer gave me permission to bring his email to me here. A clarification and tidbits from our further communication: it was taken in the older part of Issy (not Paris). Under her coat, the girl in the front is wearing a shift (part of her uniform).

Here is Herb's message:

The story is this: I arrived in Paris at 0600 on a March morning in 1986,was taken to my friend's house in Issy Les Moulineaux and after a brief nap, walked their daughter to her Catholic school located in the older part of the city. I had given her a toy dinosaur which she held, clutched tightly in her arms. The other children gathered around her as she wound it up and watched the toy walk away. Suddenly, she grabbed it, ran to the back of the courtyard with the kids in tow, and then ran back shrieking toward me. I hefted my Hasselblad, snapped one shot, and walked home with her mother.

Arriving back in Cleveland several weeks later I developed the film and saw this delightful image. Months later, when in need of a poster for an exhibition of my work, I pulled the print, entitled it 8 Children and sent it to the printer. The phone rang. Mr. Ascherman? Yes?. You're an idiot. There are 9 children. No there aren't yes there are. We counted. And changed the name
of the poster to 9 Children. We printed up couple hundred, mailed them around the world and the phone started to ring. Mr. Ascherman? Yes? You're an idiot. Now what? There are 10 children! No there aren't yes there are, we counted and sure enough, so there were.

I hung this print as a 40 inch square enlargement in a major exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art the following year. The print hung on a corner. I was able to stand behind the wall and listen to the comments, the most fascinating conversation of which was:

Where's the 10th child?
The photographer is the 10th Child.
No, the viewer is the 10th child.
No, intoned one particularly low and reverent voice, the 10th child is God.

This photo is the most widely published image I have ever produced in 34 years of professional photography.

Copies are available in silver, hand made platinum. and as a 20 x 30 inch poster. It is also featured VOYAGE, a book I published some years ago.

Hope that helps.

H

 

[Daneinbalto]

The picture below, taken from Herb's website, is in the original square format as it would have come out of his Hasselblad.

The picture at work, which I attached in my original post, is cropped to a format that are not too far from the proportions of a 35 mm negative.

Before the picture was identified, a previous poster wrote: "And it looks like an image made from on 4 x 5 , not 35mm."

Can anybody tell me what clues one would use to determine that a picture was made from a 4 x 5 rather than 35 mm when the proportions of the print match neither 4 x 5 nor 35 mm?

 

[furcafe]

I would say that less grain, more tonality, & shallower perceived depth of field @ given print/reproductions sizes, fields of view, & film ISOs are relatively easy-to-spot indicators of larger formats. You can ignore aspect ratios as too many photos are cropped. In other words, all other things being equal, bigger is better.

That said, I would not have been able to tell just from the JPG examples you posted.

Can anybody tell me what clues one would use to determine that a picture was made from a 4 x 5 rather than 35 mm when the proportions of the print match neither 4 x 5 nor 35 mm?

 

[Honus]

Wonderful thread. Thanks to the OP, John and all the participants. I saw the original post a week ago and spent a good hour at work frantically trying to solve the mystery. Although I obviously failed, it was a good hour spent (or wasted, as my colleagues would say).

I hope we can do this again sometime soon.

 

[pschauss]

The ten child is behind the girl in the middle of the group running toward the camera. If you look closely you can see the right side of her head and a part of her right foot.

From the left side of the picture we have 3, 2, 2, 2, and 1.

Great thread by the way!!

 

[MickH]

Nah, I think the tenth child is holding the toy dinosaur.

 

[yanidel]

at some point, I'll try to go to Issy and take a 2009 picture of that setting to see how it looks like now. Shouldn't be too different, especially the weather ...

 

[adonf]

Amazing thread !
The odds of finding the origins of the picture were really small !!
And yet it happened ....
As Yanidel said, if I have the opportunity (and I go to Issy each week), I'll find that place and shoot a 2009 picture too 😉

 

[samoksner]

Lets post one of these every week. Have a good image and have people try to figure out what it is, if someone knows the answer, they should wait a couple days to reveal the mystery! Forensics Fridays, as another poster said, sounds perfect!

 

[Jumpin Jack Flash]

Ladies and Gerntlemen, thanx for a fascinating thread. I am quite honored to have been compared to the Lions of French Street Photography, all of whom I admire greatly.

I can still remember taking this shot, which, I might add, looked entirely different through the prism viewfinder. I guess that's the beauty of the art: despite our best efforts to the contrary, you never really know what you've got until that beautiful print surfaces in the dakroom....and in this case until a couple dozen people look at it closer than you do.

Herb Ascherman
www.ascherman.com

 

[JohnTF]

Thanks, but I am getting entirely too much credit, as I look at a fine print of this every day as it hangs at the bottom of my stairs.

Herb's work has a wonderful tonality that cannot be shown in a casual scan, and I happened also to use Agfapan in Rodinal, which I always thought to be a terrific combination for tonality.

Wonderful execution and master printing, I recommend to all to see original prints of course, when you get the chance.

There are many images at RFF which I would like to see "in person".

When I saw this print at Herb's gallery, framed and sitting on the floor, I bought it.

I received several quick notes from Herb today, nice to reconnect.

There have been days when I would go out to shoot and just feel the photos as I was making them, I know quite well that Herb has more of those days than I. I am just happy to have one now and again.

I too enjoyed the "CSI Photography".

Now perhaps we can figure out how this copy got to its current location?

Regards, John

 

[yanidel]

I finally had the opportunity to discover Issy-Les-Moulineaux and guess what, I found the spot of the picture. By chance I must admit as I entered a court to take a picture of a church and suddenly I found myself on top of the stairs.
Unluckily I could not get to the exact spot as (this is the bad news), the school (St-Clothide) will soon be demolished and reconstructed. The whole area has been restricted to public and of course, no more children attend classroom there. I did take some picture though, so in order :

Picture 1 : The stairs (note that a basket has appeared as well as a frame of a football goal)
Picture 2 : the facade that was on the right of the shot
Picture 3 : Probably the spot from where Mr Herb took the picture at the time.
Picture 4 : The Church "Notre Dame Protecteur des Enfants" (Protector of the Children) whose basement was the right facade of the shot. The stairs are located on the left of the church.
Picture 5 : the building that was in the background on top of the hill. Surprisingly still there though many modern building took place around it.
Picture 6 : a little wink to history ... a sign on the entrance of the stairs saying that "Dogs are not permitted within the school"

I really got the impression to be in the 50's ... a little part of the old Paris that will soon disappear too.

 

[yanidel]

Here is the second string of pictures