The Online Photographer

I really screwed up yesterday. I posted an "obituary" blissfully unaware that the event was well out of date. Then I had to remove that very nice portrait of Louise Fletcher with her Oscar—I hope you saw it. The Fair Use provision of the Copyright Act allows for using pictures of people in obituaries without securing permission—but in timely obituaries, but not two and a half years later. Considering I also talked about a 50-year-old movie, it was really out-of-date news about out-of-date news. I know I'm not always (ahem) up to the minute, but that was ridiculous.

Never hurts to celebrate women, however.

It was my second major screw-up this month, too. I assure you, I'm not actually losing my marbles. That I know of.

A further confession: I actually thought it was a coincidence that Ms. Fletcher happened to pass away just after I rewatched One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest on YouTube. Other way around, Skeezix. I got fed the old videos about her passing because I had just watched the movie. The Algorithm Knows All.

Old / new: William Manchester / Brigitte Lardinois
So. Speaking of old news about old news, I wanted to put in another brief plug for a fun book I mentioned the other day. I happened to notice that it's possible to still buy William Manchester's In Our Time: The World As Seen by Magnum Photographers for a decent price. This is a big, fat book with hundreds (but it seems like thousands) of pictures from the first 40 years of the existence of Magnum Photos, the for-photographers, by-photographers photo agency founded by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David 'Chim' Seymour in 1947, and staffed over many years by a constellation of the stars of photojournalism. There are more copies on eBay and a few on Abebooks.

Now then, there's one big problem with this book. One I've mentioned before. It was pointed out to me years ago by my friend Nicholas Hartmann, whose late father Erich (a wonderful gentleman, and the acorn did not fall far from that tree) was one of the "second wave" of photographers recruited into Magnum. Erich served as the agency's President for a while. Nick pointed out that part of the purpose of Magnum was to allow photographers to have control of their own work, such that they could insure that all the photos in a photo-essay could be shown together and in a way that they approved of. So a treasury of individual photographs plucked out of context sort of goes against the whole raison d'être of the agency. Magnum itself does that a lot these days, trying to leverage its assets, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem.

Still and all, the old book is a big box of chocolates, a guilty pleasure, a treat. Lots of fun to look through and study, even to get ideas from, or from which to learn more about composing images. It's a must for Leica enthusiasts, since so many of the Magnum guys preferred Leicas.

Another problem, of course, was that it was published in 1989, when digital was just a glint of light before the dawn, so it has nothing current in it. Someone should do a book of Magnum photographs 1990–now; oh wait, they have. I haven't seen that one, but in its original incarnation it was a very significant bestseller in the photography space, and it's just been republished in a splendid new edition. (I've been trying to leave "verys" out of my writing for a while now, but it was needed in that previous sentence. Very significant bestseller.) The new one is perhaps a better choice because, you know, we're here in now. The new one is by Brigitte Lardinois, who has the wonderful job title of "Reader in the Understanding of Public Photography at the London College of Communication at the University of the Arts in London."

Anyway, just a tip. A WTTW (word to the wise).

The Manchester is a book I mention from time to time because I love it and it was formative for my taste, but mentioning it again of course it means I'm repeating myself, repeating myself, and is that even worse than old news about old news?!

Good thing you're patient with me! I'd fire the Editor but....

Mike

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Featured Comments from:

Allan Ostling: "I knew those guys in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Not the actors, but three of the actual inmates. It was 1970, and I had been working as a Palo Alto taxi driver for several months. I got a call to pick up some fares at a bar. When the three men got into my cab they directed me to the V.A. Hospital on Willow Road (Menlo Park). This was the facility where Ken Kesey had worked as an LSD test subject while he was getting his MFA at nearby Stanford University. (That, and the ensuing saga, is described in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.) It was a short drive to the hospital. As the guys got out I told them the fare. 'Oh,' one of them said, 'we don't have any money.' I followed them into the building and told the woman at the reception desk about the situation. She reached for a volume of pages, and looked up the names. 'That's correct,' she said. 'They don't have any money.' I drove off, smiling at the joke on me."

robert e: "For what it's worth, Louise Fletcher's death was news to me, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is still on my 'to watch someday' list, so I, for one, appreciated the old news and the watch reminder. Maybe I'm in the subset of your readers who may be losing their marbles at a compatible rate."

Mike replies: I can't make a list of "best" movies, because I don't watch enough movies. And for me, as for many people who are not diehard movie fans, most of my favorites are from my formative years, movies I saw when I was young and impressionable. I did watch a lot of movies then. (I could make an argument for the era, though, too—Altman, Milos Forman, Arthur Penn, Fellini, Woody Allen, Scorcese, Lucas, Kubrick, George Roy Hill, Peckinpah, Malick, Lumet, William Friedkin, Bob Fosse, Francis Ford Coppola, Ingmar Bergman—those were very good days for what I consider "real" movies, i.e., not primarily showcases for graphic violence or special effects and not sourced from comic books.) But for what it's worth, Cuckoo's Nest might be at the top of my best-I've-seen list. If I've encouraged you to see it for the first time, I'll consider this detour to have been a success.

Albert Smith: "Re '...It was my second major screw-up this month, too....' Well, the month's almost over and you can soon reset the screwed-up meter to zero. 0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ "