MIA: History: USA: Publications: Introduction to the THREE collections of digital images of The Masses 1911 – 1917 found on this site.
Introduction to the THREE collections of digital images of
The Masses 1911 – 1917 found on this site.
In the presentation of the digital images of The Masses here, you will find that in some cases for each issue, two or three different scans of the same issue are available. This note explains why we are presenting (where possible) three different scans of the same issue, where they came from, and how they differ.
The Masses is one of the two or three most celebrated and famous magazines of the American radical left, along with its successors, The Liberator 1918-1924 and New Masses of 1926 and on into the 1930’s). See Tim Davenport’s excellent overview of it HERE.
A very limited run of archival paper reprints was made by Krause of The Masses, but these did not preserve the truly stunning color covers at all and did an execrable job of preserving the center two page wide political cartoons and art: the reprint cut out portions of the center of the image). The Krause reprints also had problems with rendition of half tone photos, and of some charcoal sketches.
No reprints were ever produced of the two successors to The Masses: The Liberator and New Masses. We have here a complete high-quality (art-preserving) digital archive of The Liberator all 78 issues, that I made for the Riazanov Library, and a similar digital archive I made of the first 8 years of New Masses (1926-1933), both archives scanned from original issues. [provide links to MIA pages]
History of Scanning Projects involving imaging The Masses presented here:
1. Tamiment Library full run all 79 issues
Tamiment Library spent some years on a project involving imaging their near complete collection of original issues of The Masses, using a high resolution digital camera and elaborate copy stand and lighting arrangement. They and Brown University’s Modernist Journals Project released 200 dpi versions of their digital images to the public some years ago. The Modernist Journals Project web page has an especially elegant user interface, and their easily-download-able (tho still only screen display resolution / 200 dpi) pdf files of The Masses have embedded in them excellent tables of contents, tho unfortunately those tables of contents are property of the Modernist Journals Project and, unless removed from the pdf files of The Masses, prevent legal re-distribution of The Masses scans they offer.
The Modernist Journals Project also spent considerable time and effort tracking down the small amount of material missing from Tamiment Library’s collection, and enhancing it with scans from originals held by a number of other universities and libraries. Even after a great deal of such work, a few of the pages in the Tamiment Library / Brown University Modernist Journals Project scans had to be taken from Krause reprints. Fortunately not all that many.
I had originally been promised by former director of Tamiment Library, Michael Nash, and by its former chief archivist, Peter Filardo copies of the original full resolution scans of The Masses, which both said they wished to be widely distributed and re-distributed. Unfortunately, when the project was completed, with Tamiment Library under new administration, repeated requests I made for this promise to be fulfilled were met with a cold silence.
Years later I was quietly given the original full resolution scans, and learned that scans of public domain journals are themselves in the public domain. I then notified the current director of Tamiment Library we’d be posting these scans here, and he voiced no objection to this.
So we can now present here to you the original full resolution (400 and 600 dpi) scans of The Masses created by Tamiment Library.
Given that Tamiment Library’s scans include all 79 issues, WHY are we presenting OTHER scans of these same issues?
While in many ways a very valuable project, Tamiment Library’s scans suffer from what I and others consider tobe a number of flaws resulting from the techniques used to make them.
For one thing, they scanned material that originally was printed using black ink on pure white paper using 24 bit color scans, wasting as much as 90% of the digital imaging data of each scan in recording the particular fashion that particular physical page and issue aged over the last century, not the content of the page.
Political or other art color scans made by Tamiment Library do not print out nicely at all on a black and white “laser” (xerographic) printer.
Perhaps the worst flaw in Tamiment Library’s scanning of The Masses relates to how they handed the signature and famous two page wide center political cartoon art. Tamiment library failed to make the pages flat, resulting in distortions of the image, and presented the images as two separate pages. I likened their approach to presenting the 2 page center art of The Masses to sawing the Mona Lisa in half, then hanging one half in one room of a museum, and the other half in another room.
For this reason, I wanted to provide as many as possible scans of The Masses made in other fashions, with attention to clean rendition of the art, and specifically so that it could be printed in high quality fashion on a black and white printer.
2. The Riazanov Library scans of The Masses (the Riazanov Library MASSES scans) 25 Issues
Between my own personal collection of original issues of The Masses, the collection held by Holt Labor Library, and the personal collection of Theodore Watts (author of the published definitive indexes to The Masses, The Liberator and New Masses) I was able to obtain “scanning access” to 25 issues of The Masses. Mostly ones after 1914. By “scanning access” I mean I was able to take these issues apart, and scan the pages individually on a high quality flat bed scanner. In cases of two page wide center art from the larger paper format issues, I employed a broadsheet size flat bed scanner (capable of handling paper up to 18 x 24 inches) to make scans of the entire center art image. The later smaller format center art images I could scan on a tabloid size flat bed scanner.
Apart from the color covers, scans of these issues were made largely using single bit Black and White scanning technique, to produce ultra high contrast images that print out beautifully on a black and white laser printer.
For half tone photos and some of the charcoal sketch and other art, I used 8 bit gray scale scanning, usually with contrast and brightness adjusted to get the best, most clear and contrasty (yet still preserving detail) image possible. Often I made both single bit black and white and contrast-boosted gray scale scans of art, to best capture as much as possible of the aspects of the original.
As with all other scans made by the Riazanov Library digital archive project, it is our DESIRE and INTENT this material be as freely and widely shared and re-distributed as is possible. We would, of course, prefer that if you do such, you note Marxists Internet Archive and The Riazanov digital archive project as the source. If you wish to add I (Marty Goodman) personally and lovingly scanned every one of these pages in this collection, that’s OK, tho less important.
3. Hatcher Labadi collection / University of Michigan / Hathi Trust scans
Toward the end of my work making my own scans of The Masses and acquiring and organizing the high resolution scans made by Tamiment Library, I discovered that Hathi Trust had scanned their (not complete, but rather extensive) collection of original issues of The Masses held by the Hatcher Labadi collection. The curator of that collection, Julie Herrada, gave me a link to these scans, permitting me to easily download them.
Hathi Trust-made scans mostly are locked away, available only for page at a time downloading and viewing by all but a favored few at a very few universities who are part of the Hathi Trust… but once one has obtained these scans one way or another they can be freely re-distributed, for (as with any scan of an original that is in the public domain, the scans themselves are in the public domain).
The scanning technique used by Hathi Trust differed both from what Tamiment Library employed, and from my own choice of scanning technique. Yet their general approach to scanning had, I believe, much in common with my own approach to scanning, as they used high contrast gray scale scanning for most of the black and white material in the magazine. I judged these to be excellent scans. Thus, I considered it important that this large collection of Masses scans also be available to scholars and researchers, as yet another view of the publication.
If you do choose to re-distribute these scans, I urge you to credit Hathi Trust and the Hatcher Labadi Library as their source.
Single file of all 2 page wide center art found in issues of The Masses:
Offered here is a single 200 megabyte .pdf file, the result of years of work, which represents all 50 instances of two page wide center (usually but not always political) art found in the 79 issues of The Masses. 21 are scans made by Marty Goodman of the Riazanov Library directly from original issues in his collection, in the collection of Holt Labor Library of San Francisco, and in the personal collection of Theodore Watts, author of the indexes to The Masses, The Liberator, and New Masses. The remaining 24 scans are meticulously restored high contrast black and white scans made from the 2 separated pages (for each scan) color scans created by Tamiment Library of NYU from hits collection. Included is text with comments regarding each scan.
At times 6 or more hours of work went into some of the restorations you see here. We employed image stitching, distortion removal, assorted automated repair techniques, and laborious pixel by pixel editing out of noise and damage. The first issue of The Masses to have a two page wide center cartoon was the December 1912 issue (containing a brilliant Art Young cartoon about the role of the “free” press under capitalism).
Color art from the front and back covers (and interior) of The Masses
As of June 2016 we've replaced the single pdf file of cover art from The Masses with two pdf files (for 1911-1914 an d1915-1917) that contain higher quality and in some cases different renditions of the color art of The Masses. Where the old file hat 200 dpi resolution images, the images in these files are 400 to 600 dpi. Where the old file was exclusively of scans made by Tamiment Library, in this file about 25% of the scans were made by me, personally, from original material, using a slightly different approach to archival scanning, which (for better or worse... one can argue the point) results in more vibrant colors.
The two pdf files include all 79 color art cover pages of The Masses, and also the associated 30 or so examples of color art printed on the back cover of some of the issues of The Masses (for only some of the issues had such color art on the back). Additionally there are two or three instances where I found color or colored images on pages other than the front and back cover, and these are provided, too. All other than cover art is positioned in these files right after the cover of the given issue in which it appeared.
I have found that manipulation of color parameters (using a photo-editor) in the scans made by Tamiment Library can result in what seems to me both more pleasing images and more accurate renditions of what the covers probably looked like when new, but I've elected not to do such restorations in this presentation. Partly because of the amount of work involved. The scans I personally made from original issues are mostly found in the 1915-1917 issues, where I contribute close to 20 issues' color scans in that period.
Martin H. Goodman MD
Director, Riazanov Library digital archive projects Board of Directors Holt Labor Library of San Francisco