Albert Renger-Patzsch, Winterlicher Wald, 1925 (SFMoMA)
I had trouble with my brackets for the big tournament this month. Some of them were easy, but a couple were really tough. I mean, how do you choose between Sudek and Renger-Patzsch? There were some very close matches in the First Round—Moriyama's Bye Bye Photography squeaked by Eugene Smith's Minamata in a thriller, 47-45, and Brodovitch's Ballet mounted a strong challenge to Meatyard's Lucybelle Crater, which I never felt was the optician's strongest work.
The Inhabitants, out early, routed by a strong seed. (The Clark Collection)
Walker Evans trounced Wright Morris, but that one was the hardest call for me. I actually enjoy Morris more than Evans, so I voted for him. Of course I would rather neither one of them had to knock out the other so early in the tournament.
The Second Round has begun. The toughest matchup this time is #10. I'm not sure I can take the excitement!
Mike
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Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Dork
;-)
Posted by: charlie | Thursday, 24 March 2011 at 11:28 AM
If The Americans doesn't win I'll stop buying photo books. At least for a few days.
Posted by: Rob Atkins | Thursday, 24 March 2011 at 01:21 PM
That was fun.
Thanks.
Posted by: John Krill | Thursday, 24 March 2011 at 01:41 PM
#10 was tough. #7 was tougher. #15 is the only one I don't have an opinion on. But #4 is the one I feel most strongly is tipping the wrong way. Weegee's character, chutzpah, and legend is weighing on people. Klein's "Life is Good & Good for You in New York" is the better book, no?
Posted by: Robin Harrison | Thursday, 24 March 2011 at 02:22 PM
If I had known about this tourney, I definitely would have stuffed the ballots on the Wright Morris / Walker Evans match–I'm with you there. I haven't seen you mention him much, but I thought about Morris a lot when the 'previsualize' debate was going on, thinking about photographers and writing, and how one (Morris) can be so good while another (White), well, not so much... Not a fair comparison, perhaps, but one I know.
I've been enjoying The Home Place again recently, even if the image quality is pretty terrible. Do the old editions of his books have better printed images in them? If not I'd love to see a deluxe version with great iq.
Posted by: ben | Thursday, 24 March 2011 at 02:27 PM
Love this; thanks for the link!
Think I own over half of these team first editions (including some earlier French team counterparts), and choosing among some would be like Sophie's Choice (ok, not that hard, but hard). However, since Strand is not in the tournament as a team owner this year, that eliminates some favorites.
Evans and Kertesz are among my favorite owners, but their tourney representatives here don't match up (print) quality wise to some of the opponents. (One of the best re-creations of Evans' players, (print) quality wise, that I've seen is Steidl's modern team compilation, 'Walker Evans: Lyric Documentary'.) Still, Evans over Morris.
Need more time to consider.
Posted by: Jeff | Thursday, 24 March 2011 at 02:30 PM
Brassai beats his night-time teacher? Cruel. But, I understand.
Posted by: Jeff | Thursday, 24 March 2011 at 02:53 PM
Tough tourney this year, but like Obama, I see the first seeds in every bracket as almost unassailable. But maybe not, I've already been surprised a couple of times.
Posted by: John Camp | Thursday, 24 March 2011 at 05:49 PM
Mike, maybe your opinion of Meatyard's Lucybelle would change if you read my book "Ralph Eugene Meatyard: The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater and Other Figurative Photographs" (D.A.P. 2001)
Posted by: James Rhe m | Thursday, 24 March 2011 at 08:04 PM
Not knowing a better place to put this, I'll drop it here. Might help you sell some things...
Amazon price tracker: CamelCamelCamel: http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/005189.php
CamelCamelCamel: http://camelcamelcamel.com/
Doug Wong: This site allows you to track price history and has price drop and price watch alerts. Ever since I discovered it a few weeks ago, I've looked at it before I bought anything on Amazon just to make sure I was at or near a historical low. The price charts are intuitive, and allow you to see highs and lows for the past year, 6 months, 3 months, 1 month. You can set your tracker to include just Amazon.com, 3rd party sellers, or Used. The best part? It's absolutely free. (more at the Cool Tools blog...)
Posted by: Not Doug Wong | Thursday, 24 March 2011 at 10:11 PM
Where's that darned "like" button?
Posted by: Bill Bresler | Thursday, 24 March 2011 at 10:51 PM
Walker Evans v. Wright Morris is a true conundrum for me at least. Evans as a pure photographer interests me more, but Morris's photo novels have been a true inspiration for me personally because I discovered his work soon after I started producing a kinda sorta similar thing for myself, which I call Photocomics.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I have now spent 5 times as much time on THIS spring tournament than the other bouncy bally one.
Posted by: Jeff Glass | Friday, 25 March 2011 at 10:17 AM
I went to Blake Andrews' site and joined in for those choices I knew and could vote for.
All the time I was thinking, what is there in my nature and human nature that feels compelled to rank people for how good they are at every endeavour?
If I were picking the fastest man to run a hundred yards, then it would make sense to know who that man was.
But artists? Photographers? Why?
I know this is against the grain of community fun, but it is a question and not just rhetorical.
Posted by: David Bennett | Friday, 25 March 2011 at 10:53 AM