Spent the weekend printing and framing a collection of black and white photos from the 1970s. Like most newspaper photograpbers of the era, I shot mostly in black and white, almost always with Kodak Tri-X Pan film (grainy as hell with an ASA rating of 400).
The grain didn’t matter, though, because reproduction in most papers was marginal at best and — in many cases — the grain added drama to the photos.
Among the photos was a shot of one young lady who — while attending the Mississippi River Festival in 1972 — decided clothes were a bother and stood up in the crowd wearing only a scarf and beads. The “family newspaper” I worked for at the time wouldn’t run the photo of course but an alternative weekly in St. Louis did and it later appeared in a couple of magazines.
That flower child from the 70s may be a grandmother now and that photo may one day fall into the hands of her children or grandchildren who may look at it and say: “Mother?”
Doug,
I am working on a book about the radio station KSHE and the music scene in the St. Louis area from the late 1960s-1980s. It will be a coffee table style book complete with photos of bands, crowds, ticket stubs, handbills, posters. I am interested in any photos you may have of MRF in the early 1970s. I have been at work at this for a year and have done several dozen interviews with former KSHE DJs and have collected many hours of airchecks (recorded broadcasts) of the station along with the aforementioned items, but still in search for more.
Thanks
John Neiman