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Photographers, current

Wednesday, 16 February 2011

'Double Exposure'

[UPDATE #2, 3/10/11: LINK REMOVED after I received the following email from CBS:

Mr. Johnston,

CBS News does not post it's [sic] material on YouTube.com, if it is there it
is unauthorized, therefore, we cannot give you permission to link to it.

Sincerely,

Ann M. Fotiades
Unit Manager
CBS News Information Resources
524 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019

You'll have to search "Double Exposure" on YouTube yourself.]

It's great to see this appear on YouTube—when I first introduced Peter to you, I don't think it was available. "Double Exposure," The 60 Minutes piece on the Turnley twins, David and Peter.

(I spoke to Peter, and the nearest we can pinpoint the date of broadcast is to late 1996.)

Mike
(Thanks to Howard Linton)

P.S. If you want more of the lore of the photojournalistic life, Get the Picture, the fine memoir by John Morris, who appears here in the middle of the segment, is a lively, informative read. (Peter says he thinks John knows more about photojournalism than any other living person.)

UPDATE #1: I have to assume that whoever posted this to YouTube had permission to do so, but there's no way to confirm that, so I decided to alert CBS that I had linked to this in case they have any objections.

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Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Posted on Wednesday, 16 February 2011 at 06:30 PM in Peter Turnley, Photographers, current, Photojournalism | Permalink | Comments (23)

Tuesday, 08 February 2011

Lost Portfolio Update

I heard from Christopher Bailey following my post about him the other day. He's living in the barn pictured above. It's in the northeast quadrant of the U.S. I won't say exactly where because his residency therein is not exactly...not entirely...well, you know. The local authorities might not entirely approve.

And here is one of the pictures from the Lost Portfolio:

I hope to do what's called a "studio visit" (a.k.a. go see the guy where he keeps all his art) sometime this year. Maybe between the two of us we can recontruct the Lost Portfolio.

The good news is that Chris is painting again. I really feel Chris would have been a world-class painter if he were able to concentrate on just one thing. It's not too late for that.

Mike

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Featured [partial] Comment by David Dyer-Bennet: "That's a fascinating picture. It's definitely got me playing 'Okay, now where was the camera mounted?' "

Mike replies: That's one of the interesting things about Chris—the camera wasn't mounted. He was holding it.

He used to go to amazing places to take pictures. One story he told was of walking out on a naked railroad trestle in the middle of the night. And a train came along. Chris wedged himself down through the ties and hung on to a railroad tie—hanging in free space—while the train passed above him. His only comment was, "The train took a really long time to go past, and my hands got pretty tired."

And he has lots of stories like that. I remember walking around downtown D.C. with him once and he saw a building and he said, "Hmm, you know, I could climb that." Before we knew it he was scaling the outside of the building. He got up four stories before we convinced him to come down, and when he got back to the ground he said, "I could have kept going. But I guess we don't have time right now." We were on our way to lunch or something.

There is another picture in the Lost Portfolio, if memory serves, that was taken from a flagpole sticking out from a building. Chris shimmied out on it to take the picture. The catch? The flag pole was something like twenty stories above the streets of Manhattan.

And the thing is, Chris himself never used to think any of this was the least bit unusual or remarkable.

Posted on Tuesday, 08 February 2011 at 10:23 PM in Photographers, current | Permalink | Comments (34)

From Film Holder to Memory Card

By Charles Cramer

In 1973, I visited Yosemite for the first time and was smitten. I was in college studying classical piano (I was in it for the big bucks), and soon realized I wanted out of those tiny practice rooms. I read about Ansel Adams, and was inspired, since he started out as a pianist. So, on my next visit to Yosemite, I brought along my new (used) 4x5 camera, the nifty Super Speed Graphic press camera, and began making some remarkably bad negatives and prints. But, after 31 years of practice, I got better! I did eventually upgrade to a Linhof Master V field camera (similar to this one —Ed.), and was perfectly and utterly content with that beautiful camera.

That is, until some of my friends starting using digital DSLRs....

For the past 10–15 years I have been very intrigued with moving water, especially with longish shutter speeds. But this subject matter requires a huge amount of luck, since you don’t really know what the water will look like at different shutter speeds—unless you use a digital camera. On a trip to the Yosemite backcountry in 2002, several of us were photographing the same patch of moving water, and my friend with the digital camera yelled out "fifteenth of a second" as the most effective shutter speed. Seeing my transparencies ten days later—he was right. And he could make tens or hundreds of exposures, without worrying about film and processing costs.

On the next year's trip, I encountered an incredible water display. The base of Yosemite's Waterwheel fall was in shade, with the sun slowly rising behind it. And intermittent jets of water would shoot out far enough to be backlit by the sun. I pulled out my 220 roll film adapter for the 4x5 and started exposing. But this was really tricky, for three reasons.

The backlit jets were impossible to accurately meter.
I didn’t know what shutter speed would best show this effect.
It was hard to time the shutter release with the jets. As the sun rose, the backlighting became even more amazing.

With all those variables, I ended up exposing ten rolls of 220 film—that's 200 exposures (did I mention this was on film?) The exposure you see here was around 1/4th of a second, allowing the backlit water to create streaks, like exploding fireworks. I quickly realized how much easier (and cheaper) this would have been using a digital camera.

But it wasn't until 2006 that a digital camera had enough resolution to compete with 4x5—the Phase One P45 39-megapixel back. My friend Bill Atkinson had earlier switched from using film with his Hasselblad to an earlier Phase One back, and he was interested in this new back, too. At the dealer we staged a shoot-out: the P45 on a Hasselblad, against me with my Linhof armed only with Fuji Velvia. When the smoke cleared, it was all over—except I still had to get my film processed and scanned.

The comparison can be found at the Luminous Landscape website, with a follow-up post five months later at Outbackphoto.com. The P45 was so impressive that I wanted one—but the price ($30K) was outrageous. Since the back came with a three-year guarantee, I computed what I spent the previous year on 4x5 film, processing, and scanning, and multiplied by three—and I was at 80% of the cost of the back. Thus, sheer logic compelled me to buy it! Five years later, I am still very happy to have switched to the dark side, er, the digital realm for capture. (Note to my large format friends: O.K., I sold out—but I get to use zoom lenses!!!)

On the first photo trip I did with this new back, I experienced an almost supernatural event that proved to me that my switch to digital was the right choice! Bill Atkinson and I were photographing the Northern California Redwoods late one drizzly day, and were confronted with this scene:

The overcast provided a beautifully soft, glowing backlight. After doing many digital exposures, I told Bill that I just had to capture this gorgeous light with my 4x5—to make sure I got it. As I walked the few feet to the car—it started to hail! Hail to the extent that the road was now covered with white. My beautiful scene and light was suddenly gone! I took this as a divine intervention—assuring me I didn’t need to use my 4x5 anymore. Bill will testify that I am not making this up (although he thinks it was just a little hailstorm...). I haven't used my 4x5 since.

Here is an image that would not have happened with my film camera. It was getting very late in the day in Acadia, Maine, and I saw this little pool with leaves.

What I didn’t realize was that the pollen foam was slowly rotating. When I saw this slight blur in the LCD screen from a one second exposure, I stopped down to get much more blur. The image here was a four second exposure. Being able to see what is actually happening with differing exposure times, and even changing the composition based on what you then see is a huge advantage.

Two years ago I went to Hawaii, and started playing with slight time-exposures of receding waves. I found about a half-second gave the best combination of smoothness and detail. Even when I did not move the camera, each exposure of the waves created an entirely different composition. It was like the waves were auditioning for me ("How's this one...or this one?") I kept this up at dawn and dusk for the next three or four days, and ended up with around 1800 exposures! Great fun—until you have to edit these down. With that many exposures to work with, I have no excuse if I don’t find at least one good one!

My large format friends always ask me if I miss swings and tilts. To get the same angle of view as my favorite 4x5 lens of 200mm, I now use an 80mm. This decrease in focal length provides about 2 1/2 times more depth-of-field. Also, in a really challenging situation, I can always "focus bracket"—changing the focus point. Since changing the focus even slightly alters the effective focal length of the lens, the two exposures don't register. But, starting with Photoshop CS3, you can now "Auto align" the two exposures and then just paint in the sharpest parts of each exposure.

There is one situation, though, where I want to be able to tilt for focus. In the canyons of southern Utah, colored reflections in the water can be incredible. The water (in shade) reflects colorful things in sun, like red rocks, green or yellow trees (depending on the season), and of course, the brilliant blue sky. With these little creeks, you need a fairly fast shutter speed to capture the color from each respective little ripple. But you also need to get both close and far parts in sharp focus—so the solution is to use tilts so that the plane of focus is parallel with the water. One of my friends wasn't using his Mamiya RZ67—and he had the tilt adaptor and lenses to go with it. So I bought it, along with a Phase One adaptor plate to use my digital back with this camera. If I think I'll be encountering this type of water reflections, I'll take this camera along. Here is an exposure from Harris Wash, near the Escalante that uses this technique. The exposure here was 1/50th of a second.

One of the reasons for my switching to digital capture was the thought that being able to make many more exposures would lead to more "keepers." I'm certainly getting better water images, my camera backpack now weighs about 10 lbs less, and I'm having lots of fun. But, it still seems just as hard to get a really good image. This quote from painter/photographer Charles Sheeler comes to mind: "Isn't it amazing how photography has advanced without improving?" I’m waiting for the camera manufacturers to add a little red light in the viewfinder that comes on when I'm making "ART"!

Charlie

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Editor's note: As always, you can click on each of the images to see somewhat larger versions. With Charlie's pictures even more than most, you should also be aware that a little online JPEG is but a faint echo of the vibrant and rich real prints. It's difficult to bear in mind when you're "seeing the image" as published here that you're not really seeing the image, but that's the case.

Posted on Tuesday, 08 February 2011 at 06:57 AM in Digital Techniques, Photographers, current | Permalink | Comments (39)

Saturday, 05 February 2011

The Lost Portfolio of Christopher Bailey

Continuing our conversation about portfolio feedback, I wanted to tell again the story of my art-school friend Christopher Bailey. (Note that if you Google the name, you'll get the wrong guy. Several of them.) Chris is a painter, a free spirit who for several years was a "squatter" (it's a long story, but that's more or less what it amounted to) on the top floor of a Brooklyn warehouse, and who, when last heard from, was living in the Carolinas in a barn with one wall missing.

Chris is an all-around multitalented guy who probably has too many abilities for his own good—he tended to be mercurial, skipping from one activity to the next (furniture building, organic gardening). And he definitely "thinks different"—it took me a long time, for instance, to realize that he sometimes associated the sounds of words rather than their meaning, which could make conversations veer wildly from their conventional tracks! For a time, at least, he turned his attention to photography.

To deal with editing and review he'd make tiny proof prints, about 2x3" or even smaller, on fiber paper, usually with torn rather than cut edges—and he'd make them by the hundreds, if not the thousands. So then he got the idea of making little matchbox mini portfolio boxes for the tiny proof prints. Each box was custom-made, and many were little works of art in themselves, covered with exotic or found materials. Some if not most of them were open on two sides so the stack of little prints could be removed just by pushing them in on one side and grabbing them from the other side, like a matchbox.

Attuned
So here's the point of this story: because the portfolios were so tiny, Chris could carry them with him all the time. So he would show them to people constantly—other artists, people in the industry, movers and shakers of various kinds at parties, bars, openings, wherever. I remember one time he met a female art director in a bar and after talking for a while, she said, "Bring your portfolio around some time—I'd love to see it." Chris reached into his coat and five seconds later she was looking through his portfolio, right there at the bar.

And he was keenly attuned to peoples' reactions as they looked at the work. He'd remove the pictures people tended to not like, and keep the ones they responded positively to. Sometimes the consensus choices were real surprises to him. So, over time, he gradually built up a portfolio that was based on real-world feedback from real people, one that was reality-tested again and again.

It's been long enough now so that I no longer remember all the pictures in his "best loved" portfolio, or the exact sequence of the pictures, but I do remember that it was an absolutely stunning set of pictures. The pictures were unconventional, subversive, elliptical. It has nagged at my memory all these years, as a set of work that really should be documented, commemorated, honored, and put into final form as a book. It's probably too late now—Chris might still have some of those negatives, but somehow I doubt it. He's an artist; no doubt he's moved on.

Christopher Bailey had many of those little mini-portfolios, but the one that contained all the "most popular" pictures—based on all that feedback—I remember as one of the best bodies of photographic work I've seen in my life, published or unpublished, known or unknown.

Mike

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Featured Comment by SHJ: "Hi Mike, I still remember the time in my apartment in Manhattan when Chris pulled out his miniature portfolio. The pictures were amazing and his technique for maximizing appeal was something I recounted to photographers for years. Of course the other thing that stuck in my mind was the reaction the guy got from women on the street. He could charm anybody. A quirky and compelling character! Glad you are feeling better...."

Featured [partial] Comment by robert e: "I remember you mentioning your friend's mini-portfolio a long time ago, almost in passing, in a thread about editing. At around the same time, I noticed that one or two days a week, the local Ritz Camera offered 3x5 prints from files for seven cents apiece.

"Getting those prints to come out right turned out to be kind of a pain, but that's another story. I eventually ended up with a 'deck' of 52 that I packed in an index card case, and my friends and I had a lot of fun spreading them out on a table top at a local bar and shuffling through them to find the 20 or so that were good enough for a 'real' portfolio.

"The benefit, of course, was instant, intimate and interactive feedback; but I found another important benefit, too—editing is quite enjoyable as a social activity. And seeing as how the goal was to make and show prints, it made a lot of sense to be looking at prints, however small, rather than projected or backlit images.

"So it is now a tradition, and almost part of the process: when I need some feedback in a hurry, I'll have some small prints made, and I and one or more trusted pairs of eyes will spread out the prints and shuffle them around and discuss them over a round of drinks or a meal. More often than not, we'll attract some welcome attention and the feedback pool will grow.

"Thank you again, Mike, for the great advice. It's nice to know the name of the artist who came up with this, too. I'm going to try even smaller prints next time."

Posted on Saturday, 05 February 2011 at 02:57 PM in Editing and Portfolios, Photographers, current | Permalink | Comments (15)

Monday, 24 January 2011

Random Excellence: Joseph O. Holmes

Joseph O. Holmes, Genevieve

Disambiguation: There are two Joseph Holmeses (at least) who are accomplished photographers, and you might have heard of the other one. This is by Joseph O. Holmes of Park Slope, Brooklyn, who has a number of pictures on 20x200.

I found Joe's site through a comment of his I "featured" last week. A visit might make a nice way to start off the new week. He's got some nice views of the city (like this one) and he must be a dog lover. The picture above is from a series he did called "NYC Xmas Tree Vendors," from 2010. Here's the link to his site.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Joe Holmes: "Why, thank you, Mike. That Xmas Tree Vendor project was really gratifying because it was so social—I got to know some of the vendors (I returned with a print for those who wanted one) and heard some great stories. Some of those people have been coming into NYC every December for years and years. I'm sure I'll go back and visit many of them next December...."

Posted on Monday, 24 January 2011 at 10:27 AM in Photographers, current, Random Excellence | Permalink | Comments (7)

Tuesday, 18 January 2011

Happy Birthday to Jay!

Jay Maisel, the man with the cigar and the Nikon. Photo by Seth Resnick.

Jay Maisel turns 80 today. For those of you who might not know, for years Jay was regarded as perhaps the top assignment pro in the world. I only met him once, many years ago, in the company of Arthur Kramer, but I'd recognize his silhouette any day. Happy Birthday Jay!

The photo is by Jay's friend Seth Resnick, who wrote a nice post about Jay for his birthday.

Mike
(Thanks to Rob Atkins)

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Featured Comment by Rob Atkins: "jaymaisel.com is full of appreciations for Jay. And of course you can view a selection of Jay's outstanding work."

Featured Comment by Mark Hobson: "Back in the mid-'70s, I was asked by Corning to be their backup choice to do the photography for their annual report. Their first choice was Jay Maisel, but they had yet to contact him, and were worried that their budget for the work—picturing some of their products in use in ten different countries around the world—was not in Maisel's league.

"I was asked to submit a budget for the assignment and I agonized for days over the numbers. Eventually, I just doubled my estimate to $40k, based on the fact that Maisel's number would be very high, probably even higher than I could imagine. A month or so later I was delivering some work to Corning and stopped in to see the client. I was informed that there was good news and bad news. The good news was that their budget was so low—$60k (in 1970 dollars, remember)—that Maisel wouldn't even send his portfolio because Corning's number wasn't enough to even be a starting point for negotiations. I was in.

"The bad news...Corning's new CEO, in a budget-cutting move, declared that his portrait would be the only picture in that year's annual report. And, he already had a portrait of himself he was happy with."

Featured Comment by Hugh Crawford: "He also lives in one of the most awesome houses in New York City now that the Frick and the Morgan are no longer private homes."

Mike adds:

Jay Maisel's house in lower Manhattan, the former Germania bank building. Photo by Jim Henderson.

Another picture of Jay's front door by MGChan. (For more, do a Google image search for "190 Bowery.")

Jay relaxing at home by Leigh Davis.

Featured Comment by Adam Lanigan: "I'm late to the party as always, but I just realised that I've got a photo of Jay's front door with his name right on it and had never made the association."

Posted on Tuesday, 18 January 2011 at 02:01 PM in Photographers, current | Permalink | Comments (7)

Monday, 10 January 2011

It Won't Be Long

Olivia Price by Lee Morris...shot with an iPhone.

And speaking of the possible disappearance of the camera as a single-use still-picturetaking device, check out "The iPhone Fashion Shoot" at FStoppers. Photographer Lee Morris shot model Olivia Price in the studio with the whole fashion protocol, from hair stylists to retouchers—but using an iPhone and a pair of $50 floods from Lowe's.

Of course he was interrupted by a call from a telemarketer mid-shoot, but there's a price for everything.

Mike
(Thanks to Richard Skoonberg)

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Edward Taylor: "This may not spell the end for better cameras just yet. And these portraits from an iPhone do not surprise me at all. When I first started reviewing cameras, I used to test them out in the studio. That was a mistake. It turns out that the results of those tests were not reflective of the relative strength of the test camera. In the studio, with controlled lighting, and particularly when photographing a human, almost all cameras look pretty good. (Believe it or not, portraits have far less detail than most things). Take the same camera out into the real world, and the picture is much different. I love my iPhone, but in most circumstances it cannot compete even marginally with better cameras."

Posted on Monday, 10 January 2011 at 05:37 PM in Photo equipment, Photographers, current, Visual Culture | Permalink | Comments (36)

'The Variegated Town of Montreal'

Speaking of "then and now" views, check out the nice (if somewhat slow-loading—you have been warned) William Notman / Andrzej Maciejewski pairings at the McCord Museum of Canadian History website. Andrzej Maciejewski did a really nice job of matching the historical Notman photographs. Includes interiors as well as exteriors, and check under the "Photographer" tab for Andrzej's comments (there's even audio, if you mouse over the pictures). Ed Hawco told me about this.

It struck me as I looked that it's not an entirely fair way to appraise the progress of the city, for the simple reason that the early photographer—Notman, in this case—has a free hand to present the most comely views, whereas the modern photographer is constrained in what he can present by what the historical photograph shows. As is clear from one view (#3) that is now almost completely blocked by buildings, this in some cases leads to modern photographs that one wouldn't necessarily take or frame the same way if one had a free hand.

As I've no doubt said before (TOP will probably end when I've told all my stories at least twice), I've always wondered why cities don't have official photographers—just someone to wander around on a permanent basis capturing records of the way the city looked as it evolved. I suppose the politicians would find it an easy expense to cut, but if it were permitted it would be valuable for the historical record and for civic pride, identity, and interest.

Mike
(Thanks to Ed and several other readers)

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Featured Comment by John McMillin: "Years ago, I was briefly an 'official' photographer in Golden, Colorado. The local historical society hired and (barely) paid me to photograph each facade in a historical district. There's probably a little of this documentation going on at any moment, but not enough. When I came to Denver in the late '70s, it had a wealth of dilapidated post-industrial buildings downtown, and a busy railyard, that were far more colorful than today's designer-styled instant urbanist paradise. I documented those old relics a bit, but not enough. When they're gone, the photography stops but my memories remain, fading.

"Gotta put in a good word for Montreal here. I visited for the first time in October, and it was a visual delight. I was especially drawn to scenes of rooftops. There must be a law, or at least a custom, against leaving any roof flat or unadorned. Instead, they're steepled, ornamented, castellated in a most elevating style. Montrealers like to view their city from commanding locations, like the Olympic Tower, or the old church belfry by the Old Port. When an historic government building was being renovated, the whole structure and scaffolding was wrapped in plastic sheeting neatly printed with the building's windows and details. That's pride showing!"

Featured Comment by Jeff: "My favorite is the audio from #8, Notre Dame Church. Very 'TOPical.'"

Mike replies: I hadn't heard that yet when I read your comment. Made me laugh. Good catch.

Featured Comment by Andrzej Maciejewski: "Thanks for posting this. I agree that each city large or small should have a photographer who would document streets, buildings, parks, etc. It would not be such a huge expense to the city, but there would be something left in the archives. I was looking through the archives of a few cities in Canada and the state of them is rather less than poor (except for the Notman archives in Montreal but this is only because he was a successful commercial photographer who sold these city views at the time)."

Posted on Monday, 10 January 2011 at 04:43 PM in Photographers, current, Photographers, historical | Permalink | Comments (12)

Friday, 07 January 2011

How the Sartorialist does his Work

Some people care about how other people dress, a fact which mostly leaves me bemused and, I confess, a bit puzzled. But I understand that others care about it—even though I went through most of the past decade owning just four pairs of pants, all of them identical black jeans.

The field is called "fashion." I know nothing of it, and could not attract the Sartorialist on the streets myself with a sign, flashing lights, and dancing mimes.

Nevertheless, I like photography, and how Scott Schuman works is fascinating. (Those of you who found Bruce Gilden's street-shooting style offensive will find Scott's low-key, deferential way of asking permission a good antidote.) Tyler Manson and Intel Visual Life have produced a short documentary film that follows the Sartorialist on his daily peregrinations. To me, he seems a little too distracted by clothes, but that's just me being a picture geek. The photographic aspects of the short film are worth watching it for. If you like fashion too, presumably that will be a bonus. Running time is 7 minues and 11 seconds.

As you'll see, he gets recognized. The Sartorialist—admired, copied and satirized—is one of the most popular blogs on the planet, drawing ten times as many viewers as TOP.

Now that impresses me.

Mike
(Thanks to Oren-san)

P.S. Garry Winogrand was ahead of his time.

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Featured Comment by Christopher Grant: "I must admit, I was very surprised to see this video here. I am very much a lover of fashion, and have been a steady viewer of Scott's website for quite some time now. I even own his book. If you find his take on fashion photography rather refreshing, another website worth looking at is Jak and Jil, which tends to showcase the lifestyle side of the fashion world, while the Sartorialist is more based on the everyday."

Featured Comment by Roger Bradbury: "In Japan, Shoichi Aoki took photos of fashion on the streets and has put them into two books: Fruits and Fresh Fruits. It's very, very, different from The Sartorialist. You can get the books from Amazon, but to get an idea, just go to Google Images and type in as search terms: Shoichi Aoki fruits."

Featured Comment by Hugh Crawford:

"The Sartorialist is a style blog, not a fashion blog. Bill Cunningham does street fashion, which is about things like '20 women wearing green plaid coats with orange trim and gladiator sandals, it must be a trend.' Often to be stylish is to be deliberately un-fashionable. For instance if you are a guy wearing a cape, you are stylish, not fashionable, especially in Wisconsin. Pole climbers and a Mackinaw Cap might be fashionable in Wisconsin, but in Manhattan they would be stylish."

Mike replies: This distinction is right at the outer boundaries of comprehendability for me. But I'll continue pondering on it and see if I can wrap my brain around it.

Comment #2 by Hugh Crawford: "Oh and there is a very nice Sartorialist book out. Someone gave me a copy and it's on the shelf right next to the big box of Sanders' 20th Century. According to the quotes he can get a Vogue editor to cross the street!"

Mike replies: You mean he tries to scat the silly critters away? Which direction across the street, relative to him?

Posted on Friday, 07 January 2011 at 09:07 AM in Photographers, current | Permalink | Comments (45)

Monday, 03 January 2011

Jack Foley's 2010 Tenset

"This photo was shot in anticipation of the Rhode Island National Guard's annual air show. I had fun shooting it, but I'm sure Herald News reporter Kevin O'Connor had even more fun riding in the front seat of of that acrobatic plane."

One from the trenches: TOP reader Jack Foley works for the Herald-News in Fall River, Massachusetts (a state in New England, in the Northeast, for those of you who aren't from this country), serving Fall River, Somerset, Swansea, Westport, and Dartmouth in Massachusetts, and Tiverton and Little Compton across the state line in Rhode Island. He started in daily newspapers 32 years ago so he could shoot pictures every day, with lots of variety. "I'm not disappointed," he says.

He's posted ten of his better shots from 2010, in case you might "care to look at a few pix from guys like me that grind 'em out five shifts a week, and get a good one occasionally."

Mike

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Posted on Monday, 03 January 2011 at 07:46 AM in Photographers, current | Permalink | Comments (12)

Saturday, 01 January 2011

Portraits of the Photographer

Bruce Davidson by Hugh Crawford.

(Thanks to Hugh)

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Posted on Saturday, 01 January 2011 at 03:22 PM in Photographers, current | Permalink | Comments (4)

The Last Roll and Ara Güler Too

Steve McCurry has posted nine frames from the ceremonial last-ever roll of Kodachrome on his blog. Steve took the assignment very seriously, traveling around the world and including portraits of stars like Robert De Niro and Amitabh Bachchan (the second name won't mean much to readers in the U.S., but it will to readers in India) as well as some of the colorful native portraits for which is he is best known.

Ara Güler by Steve McCurry, from the last roll of Kodachrome

Much bigger stars to me are Elliot Erwitt and Ara Güler, no less! Ara, éminence grise of Turkish photography, is the auteur of Ara Güler's Istanbul: 40 Years of Photographs, a splendid volume I added to my library only last year.

Always nice to see celebrity portraits. (Ebru Ceylan—yes, of those famous Ceylans; Ebru is Nuri's wife—has a nice recent portrait of the Armenian-Turkish maestro at her website, too—third one down at the link.)

The glittering locales, characteristic Asians, and famous faces notwithstanding, the best shot on Steve's roll might be the very last, taken at a Parsons cemetery when he went there to turn the roll in to Dwayne's. A fitting ending for God and Man's old warhorse, and a picture that, I predict, will remain known in photography's history, down through the years to come.

Mike
(Thanks to Luc Novovitch)

ADDENDUM: Oops! Speaking of expiration dates, I think the expiration date on this auction might have just gone past. :-) (Thanks to Oren Grad for this.)

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Posted on Saturday, 01 January 2011 at 02:49 PM in Film and Darkroom, Photographers, current | Permalink | Comments (10)

Wednesday, 22 December 2010

Nature Slide Lecture

At Canon Europe there's a forthright and plain-spoken slide lecture by Tim Harris of Nature Picture Library/Bluegreen Pictures, who has selected his favorite nature and wildlife images from the photographs submitted to "Editor's Choice 2" in November by Canon Professional Network (CPN) readers from around the world. The slideshow with voiceover lecture presents forty winners, and Tim talks about his ten top choices in depth.

Commercial nature photography isn't my bag, so I apologize in advance if this isn't as interesting to initiates as it was to me—it could be old hat, I don't know. The genre as a whole tends to see nature and wildlife as static and unchanging, pristine, essentially romantic whether red in tooth and claw or anthropomorphized, the stance of the pictures that of the observing naturalist, whereas I see it as hugely dynamic and changing all too rapidly, often for the worse, all around the world; I can't quite make the conventions of the genre jibe with my conceptions of what's really going on with wildlife and in nature. But many people are interested both in this sort of nature photography and in the notion of earning a living from it, and Tim Harris's comments during the slideshow make this presentation rise above the ordinary. He's very forthright about the commercial aspects of such work, and talks plainly about what aspiring nature and wildlife shooters must do to break in to the field.

The show is not brief, and it starts off a bit wobbly, but later on he gives straight reasons why he prefers the shots he's chosen and straight advice about what's needed to make a living doing work like this. The hearer gets a sense of the clients he deals with and what they need, what the preferences of this market are. If you're interested in these nuts and bolts you might find it valuable in proportion to the time you'll invest in watching it. A good job—by judge Harris, the presenters, and the photographers.

Mike
(Thanks to G. S. Gass)

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Posted on Wednesday, 22 December 2010 at 12:52 AM in Photographers, current | Permalink | Comments (12)

Tuesday, 07 December 2010

Alec Soth Does the Hardest Thing

...The hardest thing being to make it in your home town. A short video about Alec's new show at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, from PBS Newshour.

(This is a screen shot; you have to click on the link to see the video. I hope it's available outside the U.S., but I don't know.)

Note a few things: his workspaces; the amount of work he has; and the form it's in (prints, some big).

He also gets the gestalt of the view camera..."My favorite thing about it is actually looking through it." There are a lot of great things about photography c. 2010, but one of the sad things is that so few photographers today have ever seen a lens image on the ground glass of a view camera.

Mike
(Thanks to John S. Krill)

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Featured Comment by Josh Hawkins: "I think my iPhone has an app that reproduces the look of 8x10 ground glass."

Featured Comment by HT: "I've seen the show at the Walker and I'm a sad to report that the physical conditions of the exhibit itself are somewhat maddening. As you can see from the video, the Walker's walls are white and the lighting is quite bright which results in a heavy reflection when you're looking at the photographs behind glass. This is very apparent at 4:16 in the video when Soth's reflection is clearly visible. I'm not exactly a museum connoisseur but I don't recall ever seeing this issue (or at least to this extent) at other photography exhibits at different museums."

Featured Comment by John Krill: "Speaking of the first time viewing through a ground glass, there is an article at The Digital Journalist in which David Burnett tells of his experience using a Speed Graphic on the bus with John Kerry in 2003. It makes for interesting reading. It's not mentioned there but David did say that he had never used a Speed Graphic before. That got a good laugh from me. For David and I are almost the same age and I've used a Speed Graphic since high school."

Featured Comment by Ken Tanaka: "Whether or not you enjoy Alec's work you should know that he loves photography. All of his recent promotion and becoming 'Gagosian-ed' are secondary distractions to the real pleasure he gets from making photos. I've met few people as engaged with the camera as he seems to be."

Featured Comment by Richard de Lhorbe: "That's why I still use a wooden 4x5 field camera...I just really enjoy the whole completely manual process of using it, and I like 'sensing' the composition while it is upside down and reversed on the ground glass."

Posted on Tuesday, 07 December 2010 at 03:27 PM in Exhibits, Photographers, current | Permalink | Comments (42)

Friday, 03 December 2010

Dagors Away

In keeping with our old-timey and big-camera theme of recent days I can't resist pointing out that this must be causing heart attacks amongst large-format aficionados all over—a pristine Gold-Dot Goerz Dagor in a modern Copal #3, offered by Lens & Repro of NYC for $2,350. ("Best one we have ever had. Best one we have ever seen.")

Another one for the "good thing I'm not rich or I'd lose a lot more money" category.

And lest you think this is just knee-jerk nostalgia, this is allegedly the lens that Paolo Roversi uses. (Or maybe his is a 14-inch. Does anyone have the March 2005 Photo District News?)

Paolo Roversi, Natalia Vodianova, Paris, 2003

I'm just sayin'.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Mike Plews: "A few years back I saw an Art Sinsebaugh show in KC. They had his Deardorff Banquet camera on display complete with a ton of electrical tape on the bellows and a Dagor out front."

Ken Tanaka replies to Mike: I remember that show here in Chicago very well. Here's that camera:

Featured Comment by Matt Miller: "The 12" Dagor was my first and most loved 8x10 lens. It had bubbles in the glass and was mounted in an old, slow Ilex shutter. Boy could that sucker draw a pretty picture though. I sure miss those days."

Featured Comment by Tobias Key: "In Paolo Roversi's Book Studio there is a close up of the lens he uses. It's a 12" Golden (rather than Gold Dot) Dagor in an Ilex No. 4 shutter. I presume it's considerably older than this example. The camera is a Deardorff 8x10 if anyone is interested."

Mike replies: Thanks Tobias. I hope someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think all the "Golden" Dagors are equivalent, whether it's a gold ring or the word "Golden" or a gold dot—as far as I know it's just the designation for the top selects from the manufacturing process for that particular lens of that particular vintage.

In the old days, when lenses were entirely handmade, there was a range of acceptable tolerances for any lens, which could only be determined by testing after the lens was completed. Arthur Kramer used to say that the measure of how good a lensmaker was was how many lenses it was willing to throw out—in the case of an early high-quality zoom I once read about, four out of five finished lenses had to be discarded because when they were assembled and tested they didn't perform up to spec. That naturally made the one remaining lens a lot more expensive. Goerz was one manufacturer that indicated which lenses turned out to be at the very top of the acceptable performance range: the "Golden" lenses.

And by the way, this is now more or less a solved problem: these days, sample variation has been minimized where high-quality lenses are concerned to the point that all the samples released for sale will be bunched quite tightly near the very top of the spec. Tom Kwas in the comments to the "Making Sharp Images" post mentioned that pros used to buy three new lenses, test them, and keep only the best one. Well, there's not much need to do that any more (although that's how I bought my last enlarging lens). At least, not if you buy a good-quality model from a reputable manufacturer to start with.

Question from Paul: "For those of us who have only ever shot 8x10 with 'cheap' Schnieder, Fuji or Rodenstock lenses, may I ask someone to elaborate and probably ruin my Saturday afternoon with the differences between modern day lenses and the Dagors? Are there any current lenses which can be considered in the same league?"

Mike replies: Paul, according to Kingslake, the classic Dagor (or Double Anastigmat Goerz) consists of two triplets arranged symmetrically around the stop. It derives from an 1882 design by Emil van Hoegh and was extremely successful and widespread in the era before cameras by and large came off tripods. Its chief advantage now, apart from a subtly old-fashioned look to the way it renders the image, is that it offers good coverage (i.e., a large image circle) for its physical size. (Long plasmats can be very large indeed, as you might know.) There must be modern large-format lens types that mimic the Dagor design, but I'm not up on my large-format lens lore.

There are several modern lenses which are better in every way. I don't have as much experience (or as much knowledge) as some, but my preference is for the Rodenstock Apo-Sironar-S line, which are superlative lenses. The 150mm Apo-S for 4x5 (Translation into English: 5x4) is about as good as a camera lens gets, the closest thing to practical optical perfection mere money can buy. If you are looking to save a buck, the Apo-Sironar-N line or the Sironar-N line (the latter two are the same, just labeled differently) are also excellent. The only advantage of the Apo-S over the Apo-N/N is that the former will maintain sharpness a little further out on the image circle and reach the same performance level roughly a stop (or a little less than a stop) wider open. If you're looking for an excellent, all-purpose, affordable first view camera lens, you really can't do much better than a used Sironar-N. As a bonus, they're not expensive.

Featured Comment by Rod S: "Mike, you wrote, '...in that case I don't remember where I heard that he uses a Dagor.' Does the photo below help? It's a reflection of the model while she is triggering the shutter of Roversi's camera."

Posted on Friday, 03 December 2010 at 05:29 PM in Lenses, Photographers, current | Permalink | Comments (22)

Wednesday, 01 December 2010

Ansel Adams App for iPad Just Released

By John Sexton

For those of you who own an Apple iPad, I have some exciting news...a brand new Ansel Adams app has just been released at the Apple iTunes app store.

I don't have an iPad myself (perhaps I should add one to my Christmas list!), but I was able to gift this app to a close friend and spend a little bit of time enjoying it on his iPad.

The app was published by Little, Brown and Company in collaboration with The Ansel Adams Trust. Andrea Stillman, whom I worked with at Ansel's in the late '70s and early '80s, selected the photographs, and contributed a lot of the information included in the app. Andrea has edited many books of Ansel's work and, in my opinion, is the leading expert on his work.

Ansel's images look great on the iPad display. There is a forty image slide show that includes well-known along with some lesser-known images. Each image has a brief essay by Andrea that is available by clicking on the image, or you can listen to Andrea read the text. I didn't have time to listen to all of the commentaries, but my wife Anne and I are looking forward to doing so in the near future. Naturally, you can view the images in silence, or listen to them with synchronized music...or anything you have in your iTunes library.

There is another section called "Letters and Images" that has letters between Ansel and Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Edward Weston, Garry Trudeau, President Carter, his wife Virginia, and others.

There are some really fun postcards that Ansel sent to his close friends Nancy and Beaumont Newhall while on the road photographing. You can even send a vintage looking e-postcard with an AA image, along with your own note, from within the app...very cool!

There is a chronology of Ansel's life and career, a complete bibliography, and even web links that Ansel fans will find of interest.

The app runs only on the Apple iPad. It will not run on the iPhone. If it did, the images would be too small to be fully appreciated.

You can find the Ansel Adams app at Apple's iTunes store. The price is $13.99. It will make a great holiday gift for anyone you know who is fan of Ansel's work and owns an iPad, and of course would make an excellent gift for yourself!

Anne and I had a great time exploring this new app. It was enjoyable, and we learned a few things we didn't know about Ansel. Now I have to figure out some other reasons to justify why I need an iPad!

John

Republished from John's new December newsletter, with his permission of course. Funny how things sometimes seem to synchronize—yesterday I bought a print of Ansel Adams by Ted Orland, who started his career as an assistant for Ansel, and this morning I heard from John—who started his career as an assistant for Ansel.

That's been a long time ago now, of course, and John has enjoyed a distinguished career of his own. Although I would venture to say that no one has exemplified more than John the best of the Ansel Adams tradition both as an artist and a teacher.

Note also that John is having his own print offer right now—four fine prints, including the one below, available for an advantageous price (30% off) and, just as importantly, for immediate delivery: John is promising that every order placed by this Saturday, the 4th, will be mailed by December 10th so it will get to you before the holidays.

Oh, and I would be remiss if I failed to point out that his most recent book, Recollections: Three Decades of Photographs, is still available. —Mike

John Sexton, Interior, the Grotto, near Aspen, Colorado

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Featured Comment by Jim in Denver: "I wish there was a John Sexton app...I have always enjoyed his work more than Ansel's."

Featured Comment by Moose: "I have several books of Adams's black and white images and have seen quite a few original prints in various venues, from very large prints of the famous ones to a series of commercial shots of a college and its students quite early in his career.

"The most interesting Adams work I’ve run across in years is Ansel Adams in Color, edited by Andrea Stillman and John P. Schaefer.

"If you've ever wondered what St. Ansel would have done in color, here's the answer. I don't know what the earlier book looked like. Reviewers say this one is better printed. Nor do I know what photographic prints might look like.

"There are 62 color reproductions, covering a fairly wide range of subjects, light and mood. I really love many of them. There's also a small selection of letters at the end that show Adams's changing views of color photography.

"Reading some of his letters, I imagine looking at 8x10 Kodachromes on a light table, then at the prints possible at the time—and being incredibly frustrated. He was a master at creating his vision of the subject on paper from a negative. But he had no control over the color printing process, and the results had none of the magic qualities of the transparencies.

"The reproductions in the book are quite another thing. Created with some sort of laser scanning process from the original transparencies, they strike me as beautiful.

"I wonder what he would have thought of these reproductions. I like to imagine he would have approved.

"According to the book, Adams took over 3,500 color images, starting when Kodachrome was invented in the '30s. Kodak contracted with him to use their films as they developed them. He did other commercial work in color, as well as some photography for himself.

"At $23 from Amazon, I think this book is a steal."

Posted on Wednesday, 01 December 2010 at 12:40 PM in Photographers, current, Photographers, historical, Print Offers | Permalink | Comments (11)

Monday, 15 November 2010

Calcutta

Text and Photographs by Peter Turnley

The first foreign trip I ever made as a traveling photojournalist was to India to cover the funeral of Indira Gandhi and the sectarian violence that followed her assassination by two of her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984. I had moved to Paris in 1978 and this first assignment in India would mark the beginning of a new way of life for me, one of almost constant travel to more than 90 countries these past 26 years. I will never forget the powerful and confusing culture shock of arriving at the old airport in New Delhi at a time when India was in a state of wrenching national upheaval. During the four days following Mrs. Gandhi’s death, more than a thousand Sikhs were killed in retaliatory violence. It is hard to find the words to describe all that this first visit to India represented for me. This was my first exposure to violence of such magnitude; to scenes of humanity so vast; to a sense of witnessing history and an opportunity to communicate something so important to others. It was one of my first exposures to the power and beauty of discovering a human connection to a people in a foreign land with great ostensible differences in culture and history to my own—but whose humanity my heart could identify with easily.

It was again death that brought me back to discover the amazing life of Calcutta many years later. On the evening of August 31st, 1997, I was lying in a hotel bed in Glasgow, Scotland, there on assignment for Newsweek, half awake and half asleep, when I heard a BBC television announcer report that Lady Diana, the Princess of Wales, had been involved in a serious car crash in Paris. Within an hour, her death was announced. During the next two weeks, I was exposed to two of the most highly charged international outpouring of human emotion one could imagine in such a short period of time. The morning after Lady Diana’s death, I returned home to Paris. That day, again on assignment for Newsweek, I photographed Prince Charles leaving a Paris hospital with her body to return for her funeral in London. I left immediately for London as well. On September 6th, 1997, more than three million onlookers and mourners in London, as well as a huge international public, observed her funeral. That day, while standing on a press stand in front of Westminster Abby, I made a photograph of Prince Charles, Princes William and Harry, and Lady Diana’s brother Earl Spencer observing her casket as it was prepared to be taken for burial. This photograph ran on the cover of Newsweek magazine the next week.

That evening, as I lay again in bed in a hotel room in London a bit dazed by all that I had experienced that day and the previous week, the phone rang. It was the foreign photo editor of Newsweek, who informed me that the previous day, Mother Theresa had passed away in Calcutta. I was asked if I could go to Calcutta to cover her funeral. Within a few days I left for the many hour flight to India, hours and distance, while great, that could not represent the magnitude of contrast of scenes of death and grieving of these two important international figures.

In many ways, the funeral of Mother Theresa was so representative of the profound nature of what I have felt when in Calcutta. The best way I can find to describe it would touch on the power of circumstance that involves a sense of humility, humbleness, faith, and an overwhelming celebration of the beauty of life. I have always loved the combination of organized chaos, sensuality, and childlike playfulness of Fellini films. I recall strongly, as I walked around the streets of Calcutta in the days after Mother Theresa’s funeral, having a sense that street life in Calcutta had much in common with an Indian version of a Fellini film—as in the works of the Italian filmmaker, at the heart of the matter is a vibrant celebration of living. I had always wanted to return to Calcutta to discover this reality further.

A few weeks ago I returned to Calcutta for the first time in more than 13 years, during the time of the annual Hindu religious festival, the Durja Pooja. I walked the streets of this amazing city for most of two weeks. While it was death that had brought me to India in the past, I had always wanted to come back, because what had stayed with me most on my previous visits was an ongoing, complex, and evolving celebration of life.

Calcutta

56 Photographs by Peter Turnley

(Click the link below to see the rest of the portfolio images)

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Posted on Monday, 15 November 2010 at 10:18 AM in Peter Turnley, Photographers, current | Permalink | Comments (59)

Tuesday, 02 November 2010

C.S. Fly

C. S. Fly, Geronimo, Son, and Two Braves. This cabinet card recently sold for $10,157.50. Photo courtesy Heritage Auction Galleries, Dallas, Texas.

Kind of a long story. I've been trying to watch more movies lately (I'm sort of videophobic), and I have not been having good luck where westerns are concerned—first I watched "Once Upon a Time in the West," which seems to me a clear artistic failure unless you like symbolism, and then I found something called "Geronimo: An American Legend." Made in 1993, it seemed like a sure thing. Name writer (John Milius, who wrote "Dirty Harry" and co-wrote "Apocalypse Now"), name director (Walter Hill, who directed "The Long Riders"), and a cast that included Robert Duvall and Gene Hackman...how could it miss?

Well, it missed, all right. It's wretched. A politically correct movie about Apaches? I always find a disturbing dissonance in films that try for "historical accuracy" where things like props, costumes, and details are concerned but that impose a thoroughly contemporary interpretation on historical reality. The film is a conceptual mess, and slow-paced and even badly acted to boot, with lots of labored, sanctimonious speeches and an actor who actually does a bad Clint Eastwood impression throughout. Save me.

C. S. Fly as depicted in "Geronimo, An American Legend."

However, it had a kernel of redemption. At one point as the film wends its slow way towards its unsatisfactory (and historically inaccurate) conclusion, it depicts a photographer called C. S. Fly solemnly documenting a negotiation session between Geronimo and General Crook. "They remain the only known photographs ever taken of the American Indian as an enemy in the field," intones the narrator (Matt Damon).

I don't know about that claim—I wouldn't take the movie's word for it—but it turns out there was indeed a photographer named Camillus Sydney Fly. He ran a photography studio in Tombstone, Arizona, beginning in 1879 or '80 with his wife Mary, who was also a photographer, and he really did photograph Geronimo and a small band of Chiricahua Apache with General Crook's party before Geronimo's surrender.

Movie depiction

The real photograph

The Fly studio in Tombstone happened to be adjacent to the O.K. Corral, where the famous gunfight between the Earp brothers and the Clanton gang took place and in which Fly himself played a bit part (he disarmed the dying Billy Clanton after the battle). Although he took no pictures immediately after the gunfight, he later made the famous shot of Tom McLaury, Frank McLaury, and Billy Clanton in their caskets in Tombstone that is reproduced in so many books about the Old West.

Undated photo of the original Fly's Photography Gallery (and boardinghouse) in Tombstone

As has happened to so many photographers, much of his and Mary's archive was destroyed by catastrophe—in their case, when the studio burned to the ground in 1912, eleven years after the death of Camillus. Mary, who on the evidence must have been a true pro ("first, get the shot"), took a picture.

Today, a modern replica of the studio is a tourist attraction in downtown Tombstone.

Photo by Kathy Weiser, 2007

I wouldn't recommend that movie, but I am glad to have learned about C. S. and Mary Fly.

Mike

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Mike Plews:

Mike replies: I presume these H.S. agents are leftists?

Posted on Tuesday, 02 November 2010 at 11:31 AM in Photographers, current | Permalink | Comments (57)

Thursday, 21 October 2010

Recent Books of Interest: 1

Introduction: In the next few days I'm going to be covering a motley of recently encountered or recently released books, some of which I've seen, some of which I haven't. This post began as a simple listing of a few titles, and since then has been growing like the Blob that ate Brooklyn. Every day it's gotten a little bit larger, a little bit longer. So, rather than delay and delay until it's "finished" and publish it as one great big huge endless sprawling post, I thought I'd break it into pieces. That way, you actually get to see it.

And away we go. —Mike

William Albert Allard: Five Decades (Focal Point, an imprint of the National Geographic Society). (Here's the U.K. link.) Just published last week.

The work of the great Bill Allard stands in a complex relationship to National Geographic magazine, which since 1962 has published much of that work. He is at once the quintessential NG photographer, and also a standout NG photographer, and also, it must be admitted, something of an anomaly as an NG photographer, in that he is really a reportorial photojournalist and a complex formalist photographer with a distinctive, influential style. And there's a further tension: many of his essentially investigative stories have been done of notoriously picturesque subjects, a few of which (cowboys, the Amish/Hutterites etc., bullfighting) can almost be seen as fish-in-a-barrel in this era in which all subjects get covered unto saturation.

I suppose you might have noticed that many retrospectives can be the best books by the artists so treated, because they gather together far-flung work, fill in missing ligatures, reveal rarities, and make a comprehensive, unified case for that person's vision and concerns. Others are more like samplers, bringing to mind the larger, more complete, more nuanced bodies of work from which the selections are drawn. Five Decades, oddly, is both: it conjures wholer sets of pictures and presents new material in about equal measure. I had never seen the Polaroids, for instance, or the intimate pictures of women. (And I'd never seen the picture from Junior Wells' funeral.)

William Albert Allard, Minor League Spring Training, Phoenix, Arizona, 1990

Allard, son of a Swedish immigrant, Minnesota-raised, will go down as a major figure in the history of color photography, transitional to whatever period of the history of photography we're in now. He's one of the few photographers of his generation (born 1937) whose entire body of work is in color. And you just keep coming back to the one overriding salient characteristic of this retrospective: there's a photographic masterpiece on just about every single page.

I'll have more to say about this one in a bit, as the physical book is being sent to me as we speak.

Bill Allard

But it seems clear that for most of us followers of the art, this 'un will be a must-have this Christmas season.

[To be continued....]

Mike

Featured Comment by Bill Mitchell: "Mine came yesterday. Definitely one of the Great Books of photography."

Featured Comment by JK: "Yes, a must-have, even for some of us who have had to cut way back on buying photo books due to lack of space and itinerant lifestyles. (This might be a good time to also mention William Albert Allard: The Photographic Essay [OoP but available used. —Ed.]. It’s a small book that gives a real insight into his way of working.)"

Featured Comment by Stuart Hamilton: "There are others I admire of course but Bill Allard is pretty much everything I'd like to be as a photographer. Vanishing Breed changed my life. Thank you Bill."

Posted on Thursday, 21 October 2010 at 07:58 AM in Books, Photographers, current | Permalink | Comments (13)

Saturday, 11 September 2010

Meeting Shimon & Lindemann

J. Shimon and J. Lindemann. Photo by Art Elkon.

Last night there was an Open House for all the galleries in the Marshall building in downtown Milwaukee (on the corner of Water and Buffalo Streets, which has got to count for something), and I got to meet Shimon & Lindemann at the Portrait Society Gallery. On view was their Real Photo Postcard Survey, a generous subset of several hundred postcard-sized platinum/palladium portraits they've made over the past three years or so that actually get mailed out as postcards (although I'm not entirely clear to whom they're sent).

Julie and John charge to make the portraits—most of them, anyway—although it's not a straight fee but rather more in the nature of a request for help in subsidizing the art project. They also make an effort to neutralize the troublesome subject/photographer relationship by making the portraits collaborative—the subjects come the way they wish to be seen and stand the way they want, but then they cede the final picture selection to the artists. Each "side" relinquishes a little power and control. It was interesting seeing many of the subjects of the portraits there at the Open House. I had an interesting talk with Drew V.

I also got to see Vanessa Winship's first American show—she's one of my favorite contemporary photographers, on the basis of her Black Sea work—in a small room at the Portrait Society. Most rewarding was hearing gallery owner Debra Brehmer talk about how her relationship with Vanessa's pictures grew over the month they've been on her walls. She has a large and humane take on them, and hearing her insights distilled into a few sentences opened my eyes to things I hadn't seen myself.

I was most charmed by a wall of modern Shimon & Lindemann portraits juxaposed with actual antique full-body portrait postcards (on the left wall, above). Julie and John—who, between them, share a single teaching position at Lawrence University in Appleton—have a highly developed curatorial sense in their art, and I loved the side-by-side old and new portraits—the echoes, resemblances, variations and differences the artists discovered between two photographs taken many decades apart. The idea didn't grab some people I talked to, but fascinated me.

Two of the lifesize portraits.
(Both installation photos courtesy Shimon & Lindemann.)

In another room were a series of large color portraits from the same portrait sessions. On their blog they write that "A series of lifesize portraits from 8x10 transparencies made with an 11x14 Deardorff studio view camera came out of the project. The scale (72x28") emphasized the physicality of the body and the presentation of self. Scanned at high resolution and output on an Epson 9800 wide format inkjet printer on canvas, the portraits reference Rembrandt and Van Dyke paintings whose subjects were royals and the petite bourgeoisie."

I've written about it before, but another plug here for a recent favorite—Unmasked & Anonymous: Shimon & Lindemann Consider Portraiture, the only one of Shimon & Lindemann's five books I've seen. A description of the exhibition on which the book was based: it "juxtaposes 43 of their original photographs...with 54 portraits from the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Collection, including daguerreotypes, as well as photographs by Alfred Stieglitz, Diane Arbus, Sally Mann, and Larry Clark, among others, to present new perspectives on one of the oldest artistic genres—portraiture."

It's a modest book but it encapsulates an enormous amount of work. It took them two years to go through all of the portraits in the Milwaukee Art Museum's holdings to make their selections for the show and book—they believe they saw virtually every photographic portrait the museum has. I have friends who are disc jockeys and film directors who make expert mixes to share music, and my take is that Unmasked & Anonymous is like a well-made mixed tape or CD—a tasty program. Lots of enjoyment here, in this small book.

Home is where the pictures are
Photographers have to go where their pictures are. John Shimon and Julie Lindemann met in college, moved to New York City to be artists, and promptly moved back when they realized they had to photograph what they knew best. One way or another they've been photographing Midwesterners ever since.

Mike
(Thanks to Art, Kate, and Deb)

Featured Comment by Chris Norris: "I had my portrait taken by Julie and Jonnie. I woke up god-awfully early on a Saturday morning, kissed my girlfriend (now-fiancee) goodbye and drove from Madison to Manitowoc. I got there early and walked around for a while, making the occasional picture. When my time rolled around, I made my way to their studio. They are two incredibly nice and engaging people and I really enjoyed my time there. For me, it was a big transitional period in my life and I'm glad to have a portrait that represents that time. The money spent was well worth it, as I now have a bunch of postcards and two platinum/palladium prints. I had never seen a Pt/Pd print before this.

"So to answer an earlier question, the postcards go out to whomever the sitter wants to send them to. I sent one to J&J at their request and have been musing about what to do with the rest. While I was at their studio Julie showed me a number of old postcards they had collected, with writing on the back. People marking important times in their lives, letting their families know how they were doing, etc. It's interesting to see how people will use their postcards in this digital age."

Posted on Saturday, 11 September 2010 at 11:42 AM in Exhibits, Photographers, current | Permalink | Comments (8)

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