Re:Sovetskoe Foto (Soviet Photography)
by morsch on Wednesday March 29, 2017 @07:06PM
(#13991445)
I've heard many times that the difference in public advertising between East and West Germany (or East Germany before and after '89) is striking.
But you are right, there may be more to it. I couldn't find a period American photo magazine on archive.org. There are old issues of a magazine called "Art Photography"[1], which sounds right, but turns out to be more pornography than photography, so I'm not sure it counts (there are only a few ads, for what it's worth).
On the other hand, popular mechanics is on archive.org ([2], featured previously on HN), and it's chock full of ads; the ads vastly outweigh the editorial content. I guess that's a feature, not a bug: in the 80s and 90s my dad bought computer magazines as much for the ads (ie. as a monthly product catalogue) as for the actual content. Like popular mechanics, they were pretty cheap (PM was 35 cents in 1965, around $2.50 in 2017).
The Soviet Photography magazine could serve as a case study. It wouldn't take forever to tally up the amount of ads in each issue, or even a sample of them. The 89/7 issue had zero ads. One of the last available issues is from around '94[3]. There is a bit of advertising, but not a lot.
The final (outer) page is a full page ad for a Canon EOS 1.
Edit/PS: I expanded my sample size to 3. The second to last page of a 1975 edition[4] has a full page ad for a Practica LTL[5]. No ads, apart from that.
[5] http://camerapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Praktica_LTL I'm sure the advertised 1.8/50 lens made for fun shooting. Better image quality than an iPhone! Both camera and lens fetch ~50 bucks on ebay, today.
But you are right, there may be more to it. I couldn't find a period American photo magazine on archive.org. There are old issues of a magazine called "Art Photography"[1], which sounds right, but turns out to be more pornography than photography, so I'm not sure it counts (there are only a few ads, for what it's worth).
On the other hand, popular mechanics is on archive.org ([2], featured previously on HN), and it's chock full of ads; the ads vastly outweigh the editorial content. I guess that's a feature, not a bug: in the 80s and 90s my dad bought computer magazines as much for the ads (ie. as a monthly product catalogue) as for the actual content. Like popular mechanics, they were pretty cheap (PM was 35 cents in 1965, around $2.50 in 2017).
The Soviet Photography magazine could serve as a case study. It wouldn't take forever to tally up the amount of ads in each issue, or even a sample of them. The 89/7 issue had zero ads. One of the last available issues is from around '94[3]. There is a bit of advertising, but not a lot.
The final (outer) page is a full page ad for a Canon EOS 1.
[1] https://archive.org/details/ArtPhotography1952Vol03No08 NSFW, obviously
[2] https://archive.org/details/PopularMechanics1960
[3] https://archive.org/details/sovphoto_v1_1994_02
Edit/PS: I expanded my sample size to 3. The second to last page of a 1975 edition[4] has a full page ad for a Practica LTL[5]. No ads, apart from that.
[4] https://ia801505.us.archive.org/10/items/sovphoto_v1_1975_12...
[5] http://camerapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Praktica_LTL I'm sure the advertised 1.8/50 lens made for fun shooting. Better image quality than an iPhone! Both camera and lens fetch ~50 bucks on ebay, today.