Stone (George E.) photographs of architecture, fine arts and decorative arts, 1916-1992

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Summary

Title:

George E. Stone photographs of architecture, fine arts and decorative arts

Dates:

1916-1992

Creators:

Stone, George Eathl

Abstract:

The George E. Stone photographs of architecture, fine arts and decorative arts comprises images of works of art and architecture in England and Italy made by this photographer and educator on a year-long trip to Europe in 1930 and 1931. The archive also includes a small number of photographs from other projects, as well as related documentation of Stone's career.

Extent:

17.9 Linear Feet (30 boxes)

Language:

Collection material is in English.

Preferred citation:

George E. Stone photographs of architecture, fine arts and decorative arts, 1916-1992, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 87.P.7

http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa87p7

Background

Scope and content:

The collection, as received by the Getty Research Institute, consisted of over 1300 nitrate negatives; ten enlarged and mounted, gelatin silver photographic prints; a set of file cards indexing Stone's photographs typologically; a set of photographic stocksheets; and a scrapbook. Subsequently, a set of copy negatives and a set of black-and-white contact prints were produced from the nitrate negatives, in order to preserve and facilitate access to Stone's images. These Getty-produced materials now form the bulk of the archive.

Overall, the photographs made by Stone on his European trip record a diverse array of artwork with a broad chronological range, reaching from the prehistoric period to the late nineteenth century. Within this span, there is a focus on certain periods and media: English architecture; Italian architecture; Classical antiquities; and Italian Renaissance sculpture and paintings, decorative and minor arts, with an emphasis on the work of Michelangelo. Because the purpose of Stone's trip was to obtain images for his photographic stockhouse, Visual Education Services, the photographs are for the most part standard art historical choices, supplemented with places and objects of historical or literary significance. In addition to the European photographs, the archive contains a small number of other photographs, including images Stone made at an exhibit of modern American sculpture held in San Francisco in 1929 and copies of Edizioni Brogi photographs. Perhaps because his background was scientific rather than art historical and his photography often displayed different conventions of framing and lighting, Stone's photographs reveal new aspects of familiar artworks.

The archive also preserves some of Stone's documentation of his photographic collection and his career. A card catalog records Stone's art photographs, including some not represented in this collection. Multiple versions of these index cards with identification of the object, the negative number and a brief description are sorted by chronological and cultural categories. A similar cultural/chronological categorization of Stone's images is found in the photographic stocksheets in the archive. The scrapbook records Stone's broader career through letters, clippings, photographs and ephemera, with a strong emphasis on his roles as a filmmaker and educator. Items preserved in the scrapbook relating to the photographs in this collection include museum permits, letters of introduction, and catalogs listing his available work.

Biographical / historical:

George Eathl Stone was a documentary filmmaker, photographer, zoologist and educator. Stone was born February 22, 1889 in Annandale, Minnesota, but by 1900 the family had moved to the Los Angeles area. Stone's interest in photography developed early and he purchased his first camera while still a teenager.

Stone enjoyed an extended undergraduate career at the University of California, Berkeley, completing his B.A. in the sciences in 1916. His studies at the university were marked by frequent breaks. He worked for the Zoology Department in various capacities; traveled in Central and South America; spent the 1913/1914 academic year in New York working as a microscope salesman for Leitz; worked at the Laboratory of Scientific Photography at Berkeley; and married May Gray, whose family resources allowed Stone to build his own studio/laboratory in Berkeley late in 1914. During these years, all of Stone's interests — natural science, photography, microscopy — came together, and by his graduation in 1916 he had completed a four-reel film, How Life Begins. One of the first educational science films made in this country, the documentary was noteworthy for being both scientifically accurate and aesthetically pleasing, as well as having been made primarily using a process and apparatus of Stone's invention.

The film brought Stone to the attention of Prizma, Inc., a pioneering company in the use of color in motion pictures. In 1916, Stone went to work for Prizma applying their color process to nature and scientific films. His work for Prizma was soon interrupted by his World War I military service as a photographer for the Army Signal Corps, first in France, and then in Germany after the armistice. Stone returned to work for Prizma late in 1919 and spent the following years creating color motion picture films and managing Prizma's laboratory in Hollywood. Stone created numerous documentaries for Prizma, including A Day with John Burroughs (1919), a look at the life of the noted naturalist; Hagopian the Rugmaker (1920), the story of an itinerant Armenian craftsman; The Living World (1920), the sequel to How Life Begins; and The Sunshine Gatherers (1921), essentially a Del Monte advertisement in the guise of tracing the history of California. The Prizma process proved too expensive to compete with other emerging color technologies, and in 1923 Stone was let go.

Stone promptly moved on to other photographic ventures, shifting his focus from motion pictures to still photography. Stone spent most of the 1920s as a commercial photographer, specializing in nature photography. In this period, the Stones moved to Carmel, where again Stone was able to build a private laboratory/studio. He pursued his scientific and zoological interests by serving from November 1923 to January 1924 as photographer on G. Allan Hancock's expedition to the Galapagos Islands. On a more mundane level, Stone was hired to supply photographs for commercial clients, including the images for a guide to Mount Whitney in 1925 and a Yosemite travel booklet for the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1926. Stone was also independently selling his work, especially as stereographs.

In 1927 Stone was one of the founders, and then served as director, of Visual Education Service, Inc., which promoted the use of visual materials in education and served as an image stockhouse. By 1929, however, Visual Education Service was experiencing financial difficulties. Stone's catalogs from this period offered lantern slides, stereographs, prints and films, with the bulk of listings drawn from the areas of science and nature. Stone and his wife departed for Europe in the spring of 1930, intending to spend a year photographing works of art. It was envisioned that these new images would expand the stockhouse's offerings into areas of the humanities and provide a boost to the business. However, the Stones came home to America in 1931 to a worsening economy and the hoped-for benefit never materialized. They soon sold the house in Carmel and moved back to Berkeley, where Stone returned to the university and received his M.A. in zoology in 1933. He also returned to another earlier activity, accompanying Hancock on another expedition to the Galapagos around this time.

In 1934, Stone's career again took a new direction. Soon after enrolling as a student at San Jose State University (then San Jose State College) Stone was asked to be an instructor. Stone had a long career as an educator, building the photography program at San Jose State from a very small venture into a thriving department, of which he served as the first chairman. During World War II, Stone took a leave of absence to serve as a photographic officer in the army. After the war, he returned to teaching and also wrote a book, Progressive Photography, a laboratory manual for college students, which went through three editions. Stone retired with the academic rank of an Associate Professor in 1956.

Acquisition information:

After his retirement in 1956, Stone presented his entire photographic collection to the Science Department at San Jose State University, which soon dispersed the material. The portion of the Stone's collection currently held by the Getty Research Institute was deaccessioned by San Jose State in the 1960s and given to Luraine Tansey, a former student of Stone's and at that time, the university's Art and Slide Librarian. In 1987, Tansey gave the collection to the Photo Archive at the Getty.

Processing information:

In 1991-1992, the Getty Research Institute created a set of copy negatives and a set of contact prints from Stone's original nitrate negatives. All notes from Stone's negative sleeves were transcribed into the Photo Archive database, ANTNEGS. In 2014, Cassandra D'Cruz, under the supervision of Ann Harrison, conducted research on the collection, collated the information in the ANTNEGS database with the contact prints and created the inventory.

Arrangement:

Arranged by type of material: photographic work, photograph documentation, and a scrapbook.

Physical location:

Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the catalog record for this collection. Click here for the access policy.

Rules or conventions:

Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Indexed terms

Subjects:: Sculpture, Renaissance -- Italy
Painting, Italian
Classical antiquities
Sculpture, Italian
Painting, Renaissance -- Italy
Decorative arts -- Italy
Architecture -- England
Architecture -- Italy
Cellulose nitrate film
Black-and-white prints (photographs)
Black-and-white negatives
Gelatin silver prints
Scrapbooks
Names:: Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1475-1564
Stone, George Eathl -- Photograph collections

About this collection guide

Date Encoded:: This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2024-05-14 13:46:38 -0700 .

Access and use

Restrictions:: Open for use by qualified researchers, with the exception of the negatives.
Terms of access:: Contact Library Reproductions and Permissions.