. . . . .
And no, I’m not talking today’s economy…I’m talking Great Depression.

This is the work of a man who made it through the Great Depression with imagination, pen, paper, a fancy camera, and a whole lot of gumption.

I heard this story last week from Bob, who is working on his family history book with me.

Bob’s father’s garment business was liquidated during the Great Depression. He needed another way to make money, so he started to draw. And it turns out he was GOOD at it. He illustrated these children’s books and pitched them to publishers…and got some published!

And then he somehow acquired a camera with the fastest shutter speed at that time. He started taking "rapid sequence" images like these.

Then he used the camera to photograph some dogs and wrote a children's book to go with it. Since he wasn't known, publishers rejected his manuscript. But since he needed the money, he found a known author who agreed to put his name on the book for 50% of the proceeds, and lo and behold it got published!

And when all was said and done and the Depression was over? He donated the camera to the Smithsonian where you can see it today.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under inspiration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.