“Center Stage” and Graphic Overload
North side of downtown square in Walworth, Wisconsin
February 16, 2024
This photograph is a classic example of oftentimes equipment being one of the lesser important parts of photography. I made this image sometime in the early or mid-1980s at an event at Big Foot Airfield along Beloit Road in the countryside a few miles west of Walworth, Wisconsin.
People familiar with downtown Walworth, Wisconsin, will find this photograph interesting. That, I guarantee.
Before I explain the photo, I will be quick to note I did not make it. If I had, you would not be reading these words because I would have gone to the great darkroom in the sky probably 50-75 years ago.
Unfortunately, I do not know the photographer’s name. I also do not know the date (not even the year) the photo was made, but a good guess would put the time in the early 1900s.
Those who know Walworth will recognize the photograph as showing the north side of the downtown square. The large building on the right was constructed as a hotel, and thus it remains to this day and is known as the Wayside Hotel.
The building behind the hotel no longer is standing. Though the Facebook photo is too small to see, a sign on the building states Walworth Livery, and two buggies are in front of it.
The other buildings remain, too. I do not know what the smaller building was back then, and I am not sure what it is currently without going to the village and taking a look. Maybe readers of the post can supply that information.
The businesses in the large building on the left can be identified by the names on the awnings. The business on the right is a jewelry store, and the one on the left is Myer Cohn General Merchandise. Cohn eventually opened Waals Department Store on the diagonally opposite southeast corner of the square.
You will notice the train tracks (on the dirt road!) on the east side of the square. They were for the trolley that ran from the lakefront in Fontana to Harvard, Illinois. One of the first buildings for Gordy’s Lakefront Marine along Lake Street in Fontana was the former trolley station.
The park on the square remains as well. At one time it had a bandstand.
This photograph is a digitally scanned image of a plate-glass negative approximately 5x7 inches. Therefore, the detail with such a large negative (compared to the standard 35 millimeters) is outstanding. The digital file could be enlarged to probably 4x6 feet with still reasonable quality. That would be striking!
Viewers of this photo have the Rasmussen brothers, Richard and David, to thank. I have known them since the late 1950s, and they are known for their decades of practicing law from an office in downtown Walworth, following in the footsteps of their father Warren.
Twenty years ago, Richard and David remodeled their office and wanted to buy some of my photos to decorate their lobby and individual rooms. I showed the guys samples of my portfolio, and a few were purchased.
During our conversations about the photography to be considered I recalled a cigar box of old negatives I kept when I sold The Times weekly newspaper in October 1986. The negative of “Center Stage” was one of several Richard and David had made into prints and framed to display.
Coincidentally, the paper used to be published in the same building that served as the Rasmussens’ office. The structure was on the south side of Kenosha Street just a half block east of the square. My parents bought the paper in 1957, so I have memories of spending many hours in the building before the paper was moved in the early 1960s to a new red-brick building across from Walworth Cemetery on the east side of the village.
In 2016, the Rasmussens sold the building to the Seymour Kremer Koch law firm in Elkhorn when the two law offices were merged. Richard retired, and David continued to work in the building. However, he is going to be displaced because the Seymour firm is selling the building. He will work from his home.
“Center Stage” is from the Historic Walworth portfolio on my website www.frednoer.com. The portfolio contains other photos of old Walworth.
Also, if you would like to see the photos as nicely framed pieces, stop by Golden Years Retirement Village on the east side of Walworth, and ask to visit the lower-level Community Room. It contains many other old photos. Particularly impressive are large panoramas of the village from Ridge Road southeast of Walworth and a baseball game at the former Walworth Athletic Field along South 5th Avenue.
Graphic Overload
How much is too much?
That is the question I often ask myself about almost any aspect of (my) life as it has unfolded the last several years – and most certainly since so many people have fallen under the spell of a screen of whatever size. I hate to include myself among them, but it was inevitable, given my profession of journalism and its reliance – perhaps overreliance? – on computers and digital cameras.
But, has too much just become, well, too much? Could the question be applied to most aspects of life? And, if the answer is yes, then to what extent should they be throttled back? Where is the sweet spot for each facet of life, whether it applies to an individual, a family, a group of friends, an organization, a community, a state, or a nation?
Of course, I ask the question about photography (and its cousin videography). When do I and all of us stop pressing the button? Similarly, when does the point arrive at which we stop hitting the share button?
More questions: What is our collective appetite for looking at photos and videos? Are most of us suffering from graphic exhaustion due to media mania and the tsunami of images that can present themselves to us on a daily basis? How has the quality of those images been affected by the sheer quantity of them?
Have we lost the ability to choose just a few photos and videos we can deem exceptional and satisfy our media diets so we can say to ourselves we have had enough and stop producing them? Can consumers of the media hit the off button and pursue other interests or develop new ones?
I wonder about the answers to these questions when I look at photos on websites and social media. (Since I am a still photographer, I do not watch many videos or movies, but the same questions apply – maybe even more so because moving pictures can be immensely intoxicating.) Why are people posting 5, 10, or 20 times the number of photos at one time about one event, experience, or topic when fewer would suffice? The worst is when, for example, the same scene with the same people is repeated 3-5 times or more? Enough already, pick just one!
One of the worst examples of this happened to me in 2020 when I was writing, editing, and publishing an online publication called Dragscope about drag racing in the Midwest. I was writing an article about a racer who happened to travel one weekend to compete at a three-day event at a Colorado track.
I needed a photo of the racer to illustrate the article, so I looked on the website of the photographer who was covering the event. I was shocked to see he had posted 4,706 photos – incredibly, just for one day of the event. I wonder if he had another person or persons contributing to that total.
I was annoyed (putting it mildly) to have to wade through so many photos. Contributing to my annoyance was how repetitious the photos were. Drag racing occurs in a straight line, and camera technology enables photos to be taken every few feet when a vehicle leaves the starting line.
And that is what the photographer did. A vehicle did not look much different in any of the 3-5 frames of a sequence, so did he not have an obligation to his viewers to choose just one and post it? Sadly, a vehicle can make several runs a day, so of course the photographer followed his same routine when the vehicle made successive passes down the track.
My point is that people posting photos online need to be responsible so the person’s audience is not overwhelmed with images to the point of saturation and exhaustion and frustration. Learning how to edit is vital. If a someone does not feel comfortable making such choices, he or she should find someone who can, and then everyone will benefit.
In most instances, less is more!
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If you wish to comment or ask a question about this post, contact me at frednoer@att.net.