User:Alliemarietta/sandbox

= Charles W. Cushman = Charles Weever Cushman (July 30, 1896 - June 8, 1972) was an American businessman from Poseyville, Indiana who became known as an amateur photographer, particularly for his color photography and travels from 1938-1969. He frequently used Kodak's first color film introduced to the public market, Kodachrome. Cushman's work is widely seen as an iconic representation of the changing times of the 20th century.

Early life
Cushman was born in Poseyville, Indiana to mother Mabel Thomas Cushman and father Wilbur Davis Cushman. He had one older sister, Ethel, who passed away before she was ten. Cushman graduated from Poseyville High School in 1913 and then attended Indiana University, from which he graduated in 1917. Here, Cushman took law classes which prepared him for a longtime career in business. He worked in various cities across the Uniter States, including New York, Chicago, and San Francisco

As A Photographer
On his road trips across the country, he found the development and simultaneous destruction of the American landscape fascinating and decided to document it with his camera in color photography. However, the incredibly striking component of Cushman’s portfolio is the vibrant colors presented in the photographs. Although most of Cushman’s body of work was created in the 1930’s to 1960’s, the images are so crisp that they are able to convey a kind of presence when the viewer looks at it. Cushman used Kodak Kodachrome film in his Contax IIA 35 mm camera. This type of color film had been introduced in 1935 but was not widely used in the public market, especially with amateurs, because of its price.

Cushman drove all across the country as a traveling salesman and experimented with this new, revolutionary process of photography. His collection has come to be referred to affectionately as “living color.” The collection that Cushman acquired over his nearly thirty-year journey with his camera is groundbreaking because he was able to capture moments in color that most had only seen in black and white. The innovation that was color photography was alien to most people in this time period. It was an entirely new experience looking at Kodachrome photographs—it looked like an actual reality instead of just a representation without the lifelike attribution of color. As he documented America post-depression, he was able to capture dying landscapes after the economic plunder affected the aesthetic condition of the country. Most of his photographs depict industrialized communities and the average American milling about their lives in urban cities documented in 47 states and the District of Columbia.

Cushman created nearly 15,000 photographs in his three-decade-long experimentation with color film. These photos, although the artist never was deemed a professional, are held in a collection that was donated by his family to his alma mater, Indiana University, following his death in 1972. In 2011, a book called “Day in its Color: Charles Cushman’s Photographic Journey Through a Vanishing America” was published by author Eric Sandweiss. This photobook and biography examines Cushman’s exploration across the nation as a photographer. On his travels, he frequented streets that he knew would soon be demolished by the city due to their decrepit state. When he took the photograph entitled, “Still Tenanted,” Cushman wrote in his notebook: “All its neighbors gone, this old 2-story brick still harbors tenants at 3117 South Wabash.” He kept a journal to document the subjects and locations of many of his photographs. He traveled with it, alongside his wife, Jean, and his trusty camera and tripod until 1969 when Jean died. His second wife, Elizabeth, married him in November of 1970 and Cushman passed away two years later.