Otis Dump Cars

This pamphlet for Otis dump cars provides an example of the promotional uses of photography in the early-twentieth century. It also calls to mind some of the more mundane uses of photography, which were taken up and parodied by conceptual artists in the later twentieth century. The NE Thing Company’s Portfolio of Piles, for example, builds on the function and aesthetic of corporate publications like this one.

Bruce Peel Special Collections houses both the published pamphlet and the original photographs on which the printed images were based. Considered on their own, the photographs resemble the Modernist aesthetic taken up by photographers in the early-twentieth century.