How had I missed that one? I checked out his book; it was a later edition. But the auction-goer mentioned that he had seen another copy on the table. So I started searching and found it among a group of paperbacks – about six of  them bundled in a rubber band with an absentee bidder’s number – that included works by Don L. Lee, Nikki Giovanni and speeches by Malcolm X.

I instantly recognized the cover – a black and white picture by renowned photographer Roy DeCarava of the haunting eyes of a little black child. I’d seen the book on the web but had never come across it before. When I inspected it, I found that the first few pages were missing – the title page with the author’s name, publisher and date, along with the first page of the story itself.

Darn. It was a 1955 first edition of the book, but there were too many important pages missing.

The auction house was selling Sweet Flypaper as part of a large lot of books, albums and furniture from the estate of a Philadelphia artist named Earle A.T. Wilkie (I also found him listed as Earl). According to the auction house, Wilkie was a director at the Elwyn Institute, a local agency that serves people with disabilities.

I was unfamiliar with Wilkie but I learned via Google that he was a sculptor. He was associated with a much-better-known artist named Ellen Powell Tiberino, who died in 1992 of cancer. Back in 1991, Wilkie was a member of an artist collective called the Rambla Group that included Powell, her muralist husband Joe and four other artists. The group held some exhibitions.

Wilkie’s work “In search of a primeval past” was part of a juried exhibit by the Philadelphia School District and the Museum of the Philadelphia Civic Center in 1969. The 40-page catalog “Afro-American Artists 1800-1969″ included more than 100 artists. The judges were artists Alvin Hollingsworth, Reginald Gammon and Louis Sloan. Wilkie also exhibited in 1988 at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

One of the auctioneers said that they hoped to be able to get some of his pieces for auction.

Among Wilkie’s collection of books was a first-edition copy of Richard Wright’s “Native Son,” with the dust jacket (it had tears). I already have a copy. The albums were an eclectic mix (one long table had stacks and stacks of them) – from jazz to blues to classical to rock. So too was his collection of religious books (there were two tall carts of them).  

For me, a first-edition copy of Sweet Flypaper would’ve been the coup. Hughes wrote the book in collaboration with DeCarava (who died in October). In a 1985 interview, DeCarava told of photographing the people of Harlem as part of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1952. He later took the photographs to Hughes, who devised and wrote the story, and got the book published.

Sweet Flypaper tells the sweet side of living in Harlem through the eyes of a fictional grandmother named Sister Mary Bradley. She introduces us to the members of her family, including her troubled grandson Rodney. It was first published in 1955, went out of print in 1977, was reprinted in the 1980s and may now be out of print, according to one website.

“We’ve had so many books about how bad life is,” one site quoted Langston Hughes as saying. “Maybe it’s time to have one showing how good it is.”

I wanted to purchase the book for my own collection. That’s why I was so excited to see it, as was this blogger (Heading East) who came across one for $3 in a used bookstore back in 2006. This little book – a thin paperback with 98 pages – combined the excellence of two talented people, one a writer and the other a photographer. Its richness appealed to us.

Discovering a copy at auction, in a used bookstore or thrift store at an insanely cheap price would be a notable find. Used copies (first edition and reprints) on Amazon were selling for $147 to $600.  At the site Alibris, a New York bookstore was selling  a first-edition for $1,000.

The bundle of books at the auction house sold for $75, with three people bidding, including a man who got annoyed as the auctioneer kept asking him to bid. He was in it for the long haul. As for me, I’ll keep looking. I’m sure it’ll turn up again.

Related posts:

1. Langston Hughes’ ‘First Book of Negroes’
2. Cups that are too sweet for tea
3. Our love affair with hoarding books

The Graflex came to mind a few weeks ago when it was mentioned in a news obit about Philadelphia photographer Jack T. Franklin. For more than 60 years, Franklin had aimed his camera at local and national celebrities, sorority and fraternity events, black soldiers during World War II and most importantly, the civil rights movement in Philadelphia.

He died three weeks before the passing last week of photographer Roy DeCarava, who captured black life in Harlem during the same period. The two men were born three years apart during the early part of the 20^th century.

DeCarava was the most famous of the two, and was renowned for his black & white shadowy images. Most people outside Philadelphia may have never heard of Franklin, but he was a fixture at local events in his trademark black beret.

In Franklin’s obit, a woman remembered seeing him walking in their North Philadelphia neighborhood when she was a child (he rode the subway to assignments). “He used to walk through the streets with his Rolleiflex and Graflex cameras,” the woman told a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter.

That statement piqued my interest. I wanted to learn more about Franklin and the cameras he used to tell his stories. And when I heard that DeCarava had died, I wondered the same about him.

I’m familiar with both the Rolleiflex and Graflex cameras. Both are as beautiful as they come. While I never bought a Graflex, I did manage to out-bid someone on a Rolleicord, one of the least expensive in the Rolleiflex series. This one was a Rolleicord Ia, produced between 1937 and 1938.

The Rolleiflex is a German camera that was first produced in 1929 and the first to use roll film. It’s a Twin Lens Reflex Camera (TLR), meaning it has viewing and taking lens mounted on the front. The creators came up with the idea during World War I. They wanted a practical camera to use on the battlefield. Production didn’t come until years later.

Famed photographers Diane Arbus and Ernst Haas both used a Rolleiflex.  

The Graflex Speed Graphic was the camera of choice for early newspapermen. I’ve seen many an old movie with white male reporters, some half-sitting on desks, others in chairs, a Graflex plate camera in hand, waiting for a morsel from the local mayor or police chief. The most famous photograph taken by a Graflex was the World War II image of Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima in 1945, photographed by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal.

Franklin took more than 400,000 photos, which are now housed at the African American Museum in Philadelphia. His news shots of historical events may be the most significant. He covered the 1963 March on Washington, and he was there in 1965 for the Selma to Montgomery protest march, photographing Dr. King and his wife Coretta, along with others.

Franklin got his first camera at age 11 in 1933 when he was given a Brownie camera.  

“The way I treat photography is different from how other people treat it,” Franklin said in a 2006 interview with the Philadelphia Tribune. “…. The idea is to photograph what they’re doing. The atmosphere of the surroundings is very important because that’s telling you what year, so when you see a picture you can say, ‘Oh that was taken in the ’30s.’ That’s the purpose of photography: the main reason is to identify.”

All I could find out about DeCarava’s camera was that he used a 35mm camera. He purchased the first one in 1946 to photograph images he wanted to paint. He soon ditched the paint and kept the camera. One account of his life noted that his mother had used a Brownie Box camera to photograph friends and neighbors.

I can only speculate what type of 35mm camera he used, but here are some types that were available around that time. Most were rangefinder cameras (they focus with a mechanism that measures distances).

Maybe he used a Leica, which was very popular.  DeCarava’s style of black and white dimly lit photos have been likened to those of Henri Cartier Bresson, who used a Leica 35mm rangefinder camera with a 50mm lens. Bresson described the small hand-held camera as a “big passionate kiss, or then again like a shot from a gun or the couch of a psychoanalyst.”

Life magazine photographer Robert Capa used a Leica for his famous war photos. German filmmaker, photographer and Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl also used a Leica.

DeCarava’s other choices of rangefinders: Argus Model A that sold for under $10. Argus Model C3, affectionately (or unaffectionately), called the Brick because of its shape and size. I love the look of the C3; it’s a mighty camera. It’s not likely the camera he used. Too heavy.  DeCarava told a Washington Post reporter in 1986 why he chose photos over paintings:

“I didn’t know what I wanted to paint, but photography told me right away,” he said. “I was very shy, scared to death of people, and somehow the camera gave me a license, a way of relating to people.”

Related posts:

1. An extraordinary display of historical cameras
2. Black golfer, black relics & black ancestors
3. The life & art of Stuart M. Egnal