Charles Debois Hodges
1909----1974 Professional Photographer
Below is the Library of Congress listing. Charles Hodges was a good friend on mine before he died at 65 in about 1975. He lived in Agawaum, MA and had several local displays of his work. He liked to get the entire family invloved in a photo, including many nude shots of children with parents present while filming. The book below has several topless young girls. It is NOT SMUT ! He told me he had entire family involved in any photographs.
I finaly got to see the book on my last trip to the LOC.
Charles had made stereo card photographs in 30s for Keystone. He did
child photography using one of the Biedler-Viking
5X7 twin cameras. It has one lens for focus & another
for taking. The two lenses were kept in linement even for closeups! They
were Ilex Photo Plastic lenses for portrait. The camera was designed as
a quick focusing platform for child photography. One of the 3 built
and patented is in the Smitheonian & I have another of the 3 cameras
mafde. I think the 3rd was disassembled in that period. There were
many copies of this type of design in photo magazines of the 60s as I remember.
He also used a Graphic stereo camera to make Polaroid 3D lintecular
prints called Vectoigraphs in the late 40s. He did the Grand Central huge
wall vectographs for " Life Savers" adds. I have
one of his 4X5 samples of this process. I wonder if Polaroid has one
of the full sized ones?
Charles was also the photographer of the first 100 members (Charter)
of PHSNE in Framingham,MA.
Dick
Charles told me that during WWII he worked on an assignment for the
Navy to photogaph in 3D the dissembly and repair & reassembly of very
large guns. I have been making small inroads into where these might lie
now. Possibly Dalgrun ( sp) near DC in VA where the big guns are still
tested or some Naval archives.