Soft Wet Sassee Charcoal

Commercial Art was a three year trade for me at Ahren’s Vocational Technical High School, Louisville, Kentucky. I enjoyed learning not only from my instructors, but also from the very best of young minds. Photography, silk screening, abstract, modern compositions and many other art forms were taught in the 70’s.  

Wow the 70’s; what wild times in history to learn commercial art while so many current and world events were happening. Era of the Baby Boomer, The Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon, Watergate, Price and wage freeze, Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant accident, a nation turned upside-down by Politics, fashion, music, media and film.

In my 12^th grade of schooling I learned my military draft lottery number was 247; not a bad number at all and yet I joined the US Army in 1972 and was assigned to the US Army’s 543^rd Military Police Company, where I would spend my next three years serving my country at a most unpopular time when America decided it had had enough of Vietnam in the 70s. Richard Nixon’s “Vietnamization” strategy was a military failure, but it did give him a diplomatic way to withdraw American troops from Southeast Asia. After the death of 50,000 Americans the war ended, the prisoners came home, and South Vietnam fell to the communists. But the wounds of that war have yet to heal, more than a quarter of a century later. There are 76 million boomers who will remember the Vietnam War disaster till the day they die and I am one of them.

I tell you all this to say, the photo above is one of Sassee and with some of today’s simple Photoshop type software, one can manipulate and photo as to look as if it were a charcoal drawing or pencil sketch. The question is, is this photo done by hand and charcoal or is it a Sassee photo malnipulated by software?One more thought I leave with you. In the 70’s, there were no multimedia PCs, No, No pagers, No cellular phones, No Ipods, No PC digital sound or animated movies, No MP3’s, DVD’s, Digital and yes not even a simple CD or PC software programs to alter photos.

Can you tell me who Walter Cronkite is?

Can you tell me what television program Goldie Hawn became very popular in by 1970?