Page 117 - Expanded Photography

Expanded Photography Bob Cotton 117/146
Ilsa Bing: Self Portrait 1931
An Art and Commercial photographer in tween-wars Paris, Bing was among the first to have a Leica 35mm camera - as prized then as now. She uses a cabinet-door mirror to make this self-por- trait - her and her Leica together..
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/44571
The use of Mirrors in studio photography was mainly to modulate and direct sunlight to create ideal lighting for portrait photography, and before the widespread introduction of electricity and electric light, (for example in Siegmund Lubin’s rooftop studio in 1899) they served the same pupose - to side-light or otherwise model the faces and figures of the cast. John Kobal, the col- lector of Movie Stills: “ In 1901 a photograph was taken of a film being shot in Edison’s little New York studio.It was for an article in a German newspaper about that new American invention (!) ‘the movies’, ans it was probably the first still.” (Kobal: Preface for Brownlow & Kobal: Hollywood: The Pioneers I979).