Library of Congress - Pershing Collection
The U.S. Army Signal Corps was the repository for testing and implementing many new technologies in the early 20th century in addition to improvements in communication, such as the aero plane (1907), and photography. This is a Signal Corps unit in the Philippines circa 1900-1910. A number of photographs in this gallery are from the very large body of documentation of the Philippines that can be found at the Library of Congress and in the National Archives. Trained and often talented Signal Corps cameramen, generally using glass plate negatives, captured nearly every facet of the early American experience in the Philippines. What is noticeable is that they may have been innovative in a more social context as well, in that this appears to be a racially-integrated unit--rare for this time period. If anyone has further knowledge of or insight into this implication, the author would be most appreciative to hear from you.
However in 1900, it was the introduction of the famed Kodak "Brownie" camera, with its chemically-treated, paper-based film that put photography in the hands of ordinary people and ended up producing perhaps a number of the photos you will see on the next several pages. The Brownie was an immediate sensation and perhaps one of the most successful consumer mass market products in recent history, revolutionizing photography in the same way the Ford Model T revolutionized transportation. American soldiers and civilians arriving in the Philippines brought them en masse, prompting an astute Eastman Company to establish a film development facility in Manila, where the most popular option was printing one's photos on penny postcards to send by ship back to the U.S. where it would be forwarded by the postal service to a soldier's family. Being there was no censorship of the mail by the Army, many graphic photos from the battlefield later proved of embarrassment to the administration, not unlike the recent incidents of digital photos taken at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The author was most impressed that, while conducting research for this project, impressive numbers of photo albums from nearly a century ago were found in numerous special collections, some black and white prints seemingly taken only days before, perfectly preserved by the album's treated black paper and often accompanied by the proud notation, "these were all taken by me personally with my trusty Brownie."
Photo Galleries
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2. Los Moros
5. The Man Who Would Be Sultan
6. The Engineer
9. Center Stage:
Booklet: Battle of Bacolod - St. Louis World's Fair 1904
GALLERIES BELOW ARE INCOMPLETE AS OF THIS DATE
10. “introducing new orders”
11. “One Clean-Cut Lesson”
12. “Like a Mad Tiger”
13. “the kindest thing to do”
14. On Datu Ali’s Trail
15. “They will probably have to be exterminated”
16. The Battle of the Clouds
17. “clean the place up”
18. Lessons Unexamined