Child Photography
By Carl Kuntze
26 March 2008
CHILD PHOTOGRAPHY
by
Carl Kuntze
I learned darkroom work, while employed by a portrait photographer specializing in children in San Francisco, in the mid50's . Assisting him in "child wrangling," a profession that didn't exist at the time (One developed by advertising agencies, struggling with layout requirementsl, and frustrated at little children's incalcitrance.), I remember his repeated warnings, "You don't want a kid to cry. When you get one kid bawling, you'll have a roomfull of kids bawling and believe me that's something you don"t want to experience." A look of panic intruded into his eyes. He gulped two aspirin tablets down without water.
He was a tall, slim, pale, nervous man with an elongated face with a nose that curled
up in the corners, described by an astute child as looking "as if he always smelled some-thing bad." His hair style, similar to Sam Jaffe in the television series "Drl Kildare," preceded "Seinfeld's Kramer."Although he seemed cranky, he had an inexhaustable patience. He used a standard set-up. Overhead main light, key light, and fill-in. They were flood lights, and they were hot. That alone was sufficient to provoke a child to tears. He had a 4 x 5 Crown Graphic which was mounted on a tripod, and viewed his subject through the ground glass in the rear rather than the rangefinder. While the lighting was constant, and didn't require adjustments, he made a show of changing the shutter speed and aperture settings, partly to distract the child. Since he used a large format, one of his biggest problems was keeping the child in a stationary position to remain in focus. Infants, particlarly, would crawl towards the camera while he had his head behind the instrument, under the dark cloth. With a weary sigh, he'd pick up the child, gently depositing him back in position. He didn't engage in baby talk, only grunting, encouragingly. He didn't permit me to touch babies, probablly, fearful that I would drop them, which would have been a ruinous legal liability. Parents were his princi-pal antagonists, not only because t hey always insisted in photographs of their children smiling directy at the camera, but because of the lengths they would go to accomplish this.
I once witnessed a young mother shaking and pinching her little girl. She was in a hurry to finish the sitting, and leave. The toddler clamped her lips tightly, in initial stages of rebel-
2
lion, and refused to smile.
Worried about the effect on it was having on the other waiting children, he blurted out, "Maybe, if you stop hitting her, she'd smile."
The young mother turned her wrath on him, "Are you telling me how to rear my kid.?"
He retreated, "Nooo! Here, be my guest," he said, handing her a cane.
"Be funny," she retorted, realizing how incongruous the situation was.
The child looked up, sensing an ally, and stopped crying. After drying her tears, we shot a pretty good picture of her, and even when her smile was faint, the young woman didn't object. Children liked him, and during his retirement, I'd see him at Presidio Park on a campchair reading a newspaper. He'd brought his grandchildren to the playground, but they insisted on being clustered around him. He'd snarl, "You wanted to come here and play. Play!" He'd watch them from the corners of his eyes. He must have taken thousands of photographs. It's a pity he did not keep them. He surrendered the negatives with each order. He took so many pictures, filing and collecting them might have been cumbersome. A competent craftsman, he didn't consider himself in the class of the photographers of LIFE And LOOK Magazines, periiodicals he devoured regularly, but I thought he was. He utilized a large format, used the fastest film of the time, Kodak Tri X, and developed them in D76, a high speed chemical, yet had negatives that yielded fine-grained negatives from which, giant enlargements could be blown up.
He taught me that there was nothing more beautiful than the trust and innocence of a child. While I never developed the patience to engage in child photography, there was a period when I photographed them at random, at times, using a relatively long telephoto lens, something I don't dare do today. An old man skulking around playgrounds is suspect. I
3
only use children of my friends as subjects, vicariosly pretending they were my own. For an unfathomable reason, children respond affirmatively to me. I capture that reaction. They re-late volumes of stories. Here are some of them.
CHILD PHOTOGRAPHY
by
Carl Kuntze
I learned darkroom work, while employed by a portrait photographer specializing in children in San Francisco, in the mid50's . Assisting him in "child wrangling," a profession that didn't exist at the time (One developed by advertising agencies, struggling with layout requirementsl, and frustrated at little children's incalcitrance.), I remember his repeated warnings, "You don't want a kid to cry. When you get one kid bawling, you'll have a roomfull of kids bawling and believe me that's something you don"t want to experience." A look of panic intruded into his eyes. He gulped two aspirin tablets down without water.
He was a tall, slim, pale, nervous man with an elongated face with a nose that curled
up in the corners, described by an astute child as looking "as if he always smelled some-thing bad." His hair style, similar to Sam Jaffe in the television series "Drl Kildare," preceded "Seinfeld's Kramer."Although he seemed cranky, he had an inexhaustable patience. He used a standard set-up. Overhead main light, key light, and fill-in. They were flood lights, and they were hot. That alone was sufficient to provoke a child to tears. He had a 4 x 5 Crown Graphic which was mounted on a tripod, and viewed his subject through the ground glass in the rear rather than the rangefinder. While the lighting was constant, and didn't require adjustments, he made a show of changing the shutter speed and aperture settings, partly to distract the child. Since he used a large format, one of his biggest problems was keeping the child in a stationary position to remain in focus. Infants, particlarly, would crawl towards the camera while he had his head behind the instrument, under the dark cloth. With a weary sigh, he'd pick up the child, gently depositing him back in position. He didn't engage in baby talk, only grunting, encouragingly. He didn't permit me to touch babies, probablly, fearful that I would drop them, which would have been a ruinous legal liability. Parents were his princi-pal antagonists, not only because t hey always insisted in photographs of their children smiling directy at the camera, but because of the lengths they would go to accomplish this.
I once witnessed a young mother shaking and pinching her little girl. She was in a hurry to finish the sitting, and leave. The toddler clamped her lips tightly, in initial stages of rebel-
2
lion, and refused to smile.
Worried about the effect on it was having on the other waiting children, he blurted out, "Maybe, if you stop hitting her, she'd smile."
The young mother turned her wrath on him, "Are you telling me how to rear my kid.?"
He retreated, "Nooo! Here, be my guest," he said, handing her a cane.
"Be funny," she retorted, realizing how incongruous the situation was.
The child looked up, sensing an ally, and stopped crying. After drying her tears, we shot a pretty good picture of her, and even when her smile was faint, the young woman didn't object. Children liked him, and during his retirement, I'd see him at Presidio Park on a campchair reading a newspaper. He'd brought his grandchildren to the playground, but they insisted on being clustered around him. He'd snarl, "You wanted to come here and play. Play!" He'd watch them from the corners of his eyes. He must have taken thousands of photographs. It's a pity he did not keep them. He surrendered the negatives with each order. He took so many pictures, filing and collecting them might have been cumbersome. A competent craftsman, he didn't consider himself in the class of the photographers of LIFE And LOOK Magazines, periiodicals he devoured regularly, but I thought he was. He utilized a large format, used the fastest film of the time, Kodak Tri X, and developed them in D76, a high speed chemical, yet had negatives that yielded fine-grained negatives from which, giant enlargements could be blown up.
He taught me that there was nothing more beautiful than the trust and innocence of a child. While I never developed the patience to engage in child photography, there was a period when I photographed them at random, at times, using a relatively long telephoto lens, something I don't dare do today. An old man skulking around playgrounds is suspect. I
3
only use children of my friends as subjects, vicariosly pretending they were my own. For an unfathomable reason, children respond affirmatively to me. I capture that reaction. They re-late volumes of stories. Here are some of them.
Carl Kuntze
P O Box 131
Mendon, UT 84325 CHILD PHOTOGRAPHY
by
Carl Kuntze
I learned darkroom work, while employed by a portrait photographer specializing in children in San Francisco, in the mid50's . Assisting him in "child wrangling," a profession that didn't exist at the time (One developed by advertising agencies, struggling with layout requirementsl, and frustrated at little children's incalcitrance.), I remember his repeated warnings, "You don't want a kid to cry. When you get one kid bawling, you'll have a roomfull of kids bawling and believe me that's something you don"t want to experience." A look of panic intruded into his eyes. He gulped two aspirin tablets down without water.
He was a tall, slim, pale, nervous man with an elongated face with a nose that curled
up in the corners, described by an astute child as looking "as if he always smelled some-thing bad." His hair style, similar to Sam Jaffe in the television series "Drl Kildare," preceded "Seinfeld's Kramer."Although he seemed cranky, he had an inexhaustable patience. He used a standard set-up. Overhead main light, key light, and fill-in. They were flood lights, and they were hot. That alone was sufficient to provoke a child to tears. He had a 4 x 5 Crown Graphic which was mounted on a tripod, and viewed his subject through the ground glass in the rear rather than the rangefinder. While the lighting was constant, and didn't require adjustments, he made a show of changing the shutter speed and aperture settings, partly to distract the child. Since he used a large format, one of his biggest problems was keeping the child in a stationary position to remain in focus. Infants, particlarly, would crawl towards the camera while he had his head behind the instrument, under the dark cloth. With a weary sigh, he'd pick up the child, gently depositing him back in position. He didn't engage in baby talk, only grunting, encouragingly. He didn't permit me to touch babies, probablly, fearful that I would drop them, which would have been a ruinous legal liability. Parents were his princi-pal antagonists, not only because t hey always insisted in photographs of their children smiling directy at the camera, but because of the lengths they would go to accomplish this.
I once witnessed a young mother shaking and pinching her little girl. She was in a hurry to finish the sitting, and leave. The toddler clamped her lips tightly, in initial stages of rebel-
2
lion, and refused to smile.
Worried about the effect on it was having on the other waiting children, he blurted out, "Maybe, if you stop hitting her, she'd smile."
The young mother turned her wrath on him, "Are you telling me how to rear my kid.?"
He retreated, "Nooo! Here, be my guest," he said, handing her a cane.
"Be funny," she retorted, realizing how incongruous the situation was.
The child looked up, sensing an ally, and stopped crying. After drying her tears, we shot a pretty good picture of her, and even when her smile was faint, the young woman didn't object. Children liked him, and during his retirement, I'd see him at Presidio Park on a campchair reading a newspaper. He'd brought his grandchildren to the playground, but they insisted on being clustered around him. He'd snarl, "You wanted to come here and play. Play!" He'd watch them from the corners of his eyes. He must have taken thousands of photographs. It's a pity he did not keep them. He surrendered the negatives with each order. He took so many pictures, filing and collecting them might have been cumbersome. A competent craftsman, he didn't consider himself in the class of the photographers of LIFE And LOOK Magazines, periiodicals he devoured regularly, but I thought he was. He utilized a large format, used the fastest film of the time, Kodak Tri X, and developed them in D76, a high speed chemical, yet had negatives that yielded fine-grained negatives from which, giant enlargements could be blown up.
He taught me that there was nothing more beautiful than the trust and innocence of a child. While I never developed the patience to engage in child photography, there was a period when I photographed them at random, at times, using a relatively long telephoto lens, something I don't dare do today. An old man skulking around playgrounds is suspect. I
3
only use children of my friends as subjects, vicariosly pretending they were my own. For an unfathomable reason, children respond affirmatively to me. I capture that reaction. They re-late volumes of stories. Here are some of them.
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