RARE! “Picture Play” Alexander Black Hand Signed 3X5 Card Dated 1920 COA

Description: Up for auction a RARE! “Picture Play” Alexander Black Hand Signed 3X5 Card Dated 1920. This item is certified authentic by Todd Mueller Auctions and comes with their Certificate of Authenticity.ES-3252D Alexander Black (1859–1940) was an American author, photographer, newspaper man, and the inventor of the pre-cinema “Picture Play” which debuted in 1894. Alexander Black was born in New York City in 1859, the eldest child of Peter Black and Sarah MacCrae, both born in Scotland. After a grammar school education and teaching himself printmaking, became a reporter at the Brooklyn Eagle. In 1878 at the age 19 he toured Europe for three months keeping a detailed sketchbook. Black's career began as a newspaper man in Brooklyn and stenographer for Brooklyn courts, working at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle starting in 1870, editor of the Brooklyn Times (1885–1905), New York World (1905–1910), Frank Seaman, Inc. (1910–1913), Newspaper Feature Service (1913–1926), and as art editor for King Features Syndicate (1926–1935), alongside freelance writing and photography. During this time he also became the first president of the department of photography at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences in 1886. His first book was published in 1886 titled Photography Indoors and Out, intended to be a manual for amateur photographers. On the lyceum circuit, Black presented a magic lantern show of candid photography called "Life through a Detective Camera" (alternately titled "Ourselves as Others See Us") in 1889. Inspired by audience responses to these lectures, as well as emerging work by Eadward Muybridge capturing the effect of motion in photography, Black began to develop a plan to bring fiction to life through dissolving slides. Over the summer of 1894, he wrote and photographed his first "Picture Play" titled Miss Jerry at Carbon Studio at 5 West 16th Street, New York. The finished work debuted before a live audience on October 9, 1894 at Carbon Studio, featuring a "slow movie" composed of over one hundred glass slide photographs of posed motion, accompanied by a feature-length script. In the years following the Picture Play, Black went on to become a popular novelist, publishing several books into the 1930s, including adaptations of his three Picture Plays. He also continued to experiment with photography and film, creating several home made 16mm films featuring special effects and titles. Beginning in 1910, early film historians began to credit Black with his role in the development of motion picture. The significance of his work was not in the technical effect of motion, but in the presentation of a full length narrative on the screen, rather than a peep show, and in the development of what would later be known as a screenplay.In 2009, film historian Kaveh Askari and the Black family collaborated with the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California to preserve and archive several of Black’s original 16mm films, and screened them in November 2009.

Price: 999.99 USD

Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida

End Time: 2024-12-11T12:14:17.000Z

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