Irving Penn, New York, 1951. Photo by Horst
By Andy Grundberg, The New York Times
Irving Penn, one of the 20th century’s most prolific and influential photographers of fashion and the famous, whose signature blend of classical elegance and cool minimalism was recognizable to magazine readers and museumgoers worldwide, died Wednesday morning at his home in Manhattan. He was 92....
READ ON at nytimes.com
Mike
(Thanks to Feli)
The last of the great French mid-century photographers has died. Willy Ronis, who had been on dialysis and in a wheelchair for some time, entered a Paris hospital several days ago. Stephane Ledoux, head of Eyedea Presse, owner of Rapho agency, said he was "bright and spirited to the end." He was 99.
Ronis is best known for his pictures of everyday life in Provence and in Paris, in particular the working-class districts of Belleville and Montmartre. His most famous picture is "Le Nu Provencal," a nude of his wife, Marie-Anne Lansiaux, bending over a sink in a rustic bathroom.
His pictures are lyrical, humanistic, warm, respectful, the opposite of dry, often packed full of information and of the sense of life and the love of people, sometimes shading into the formally pictorialist or the sentimental. He was prolific. He published many books, had many exhibits, won many awards. He decided to become a photographer in 1937, and joined Rapho, the French photo agency founded by Charles Rado in 1933, when it was reopened in 1946 by Raymond Grosset. Other Rapho photographers central to postwar photography in Paris included Doisneau, Boubat, Brandt, Izis, Ylla, Sabine Weiss, Brassai, and Lartigue. Considered one of the greatest photographers during the postwar era, Ronis's influence waned somewhat during the photo boom as the prevailing style became more iconoclastic and distanced.
Obituary (in English)
Video interview (in French)
Purchase (U.S.): Kathleen Ewing Gallery, Washington, D.C. (Artist's page)
Books: The German edition (bilingual text) of Willy Ronis: La Vie En Passant (life in passing) is still in print and available in the U.S.
Quote: "I never, ever went out without my camera, even to buy bread."
Featured Comment by Robin P: "Sad news. Definitely my favourite of the great French photographers. His pictures have a way of renewing my love of the world and its inhabitants whenever I slip into despondant cynicism."
Marcey Jacobson, an expat New Yorker whose creative life was spent documenting the indiginous peoples of Mexico, has died of heart failure at the age of 97 in San Cristóbal de las Casas.
Mostly ignored, she left a major body of work created over many years, finally recognized in 2001 with the publication by Stanford University Press of a generous retrospective, The Burden of Time: Photographs from the Highlands of Chiapas
Also sad to report, two days ago the Brazilian photographer Mario Cravo Neto lost his life to skin cancer. Formerly a street photographer, Cravo Neto turned his attention to studio photography during an extended illness and thereby found his muse, which he never again abandoned. "Neto" means grandson; his father was Mario Cravo Junior, famous in Brazil as a sculptor. Peter Weiermair's book, Mario Cravo Neto: Photographs
Featured Comment by Jack Nelson: "The New York Times now has a selection of Marcey's photographs on its "Lens" blog.
For you jazz fans out there, be on the alert that True Blue Music is raising the price on its catalogue of Francis Wolff prints in the small size: "Due to rising costs in inks and paper, the price of the Museum-quality fine art Francis Wolff prints, made with archival pigment inks on 100% acid-free rag paper, will rise from $75 to $100 on September 1," they write. "The image is 7.5" square and is printed on 8 ½" X 11" paper. We will honor the current price through the end of August."
I indulged myself. Using a donation made yesterday from a British gentleman living in the Netherlands (Thanks again, Martin), I took the plunge and ordered a print I've wanted for a long time, of Sonny Clark during the rehearsal for "Cool Struttin'
And not a bad shot. (I used to have a bigger JPEG of it, but I've lost it...on my own computer. So it goes....)
After we were talking about Lillian Bassman the other day, our friend Marc Rochkind (see below for a link to his blog) found a nifty article about her in the April, 1951 issue of Popular Photography which he has now scanned and put online. The article, by Walter Ian Fishman, is called "A Woman's Camera in a Woman's World." There are a few dated touches, like the line about the "girl and man," which sounds odd and patronizing now, but overall it's a fascinating look at Lillian Bassman at work.
Julius Shulman, who died two days ago at an advanced age after a full life, is one of those photographers who are well known in their sub-speciality but not as well known among the general public—including, even, photography enthusiasts. Mr. Shulman is probably better known among architects than he is among photographers.
For a little more background: we were tipped off by reader Allan Connery to a video of Calgary architect John Brown giving a virtual tour of Pierre Koenig's Stahl House. The Stahl House was the subject of Julius Shulman's most famous photograph, a picture that came to define mid-century Los Angeles modernism. And here's a link to information about the award-winning film about Schulman, "Visual Acoustics," compliments of reader Rodney Dean.
Shulman published or was a party to dozens if not hundreds of books. A Constructed View: The Architectural Photography of Julius Shulman
A couple more accomplished but lesser-known photographers who've belatedly been getting a little attention recently:
Jimmy Forsyth , also recently deceased, was a methodical documentarian of the "Geordies" of Tyneside (in the Northeast of England). A lifelong Socialist, he was blind in one eye, described as "a single man who was often lonely," and he created his work mostly living on "the meager resources of the dole" (what Americans would call welfare). Ironically, his last book, the very inexpensive Jimmy Forsyth: Photographs from the 1950s and 1960s
Elderly but still thriving, the once and future fashion photographer and classically free-spirited bohemian Lillian Bassman was the subject of a delightful short profile in The New York Times yesterday, written by Ginia Bellafante. The story of her onetime repudiation of photography and her discovery of Photoshop in old age is fascinating, as are the details of her independent life (I was especially touched by the brief description of her lifelong romance, from age 6 till death did the two part).
Lillian Bassman, from the upcoming book Women
She's also the beneficiary of a new retrospective, upcoming from Abrams. Called simply Lillian Bassman: Women
Mike
(Thanks to those mentioned, Ade Rixon, Roger Suppona, and all those who sent the Bassman link)
Featured Comment by Carl Weese: "As mentioned in the Times article, Ms. Bassman has a show of her prints opening tomorrow afternoon (Saturday 7/18) at KMR Arts Gallery in Washington, Connecticut. I understand the artist is planning to attend."
This is pretty cool. Ted at Boogie Woogie Flu found this old record at an antiques store in Phoenicia, New York, and posted some of the cuts as MP3's.
I've never heard Weegee speak before. "...One of those accents you don't hear so much in New York anymore: part Austro-Hungarian immigrant by way of the Lower East Side," Ted writes, "and part Elmer Fudd. Peter Sellers based his accent in Dr. Strangelove on Weegee's voice after Weegee visited Kubrick's set one day."
Don't miss it.
And don't forget: "You can't be a Nice Nellie and do photography." —Weegee
UPDATE: Joe Riefer tells me that the Getty Museum had some
some audio clips of Weegee speaking in its 2006 exhibit. Unfortunately they're RealPlayer files, so I can't listen to them, but maybe you can.
Thanks to an exchange between Steve Gasbarre and Michael Gilday on
Photo.net, pointed out in the comments by yemado, I've learned that the
person behind this record was none other than Lou Stettner.
The record catalogue number is Candid CA1001, dated 1958, put out by
Candid Recordings, and there was a review of it in the June 22, 1958
issue of The New York Times.
Featured Comment by Rod Graham: "I guess like a lot of others, I've had a passing 'familiarity' with Weegee and his photojournalism. But this recording is beyond a famous photographer talking about photography: This is a man talking from his heart, plain and simple words, freely sharing his art and craft and views on a profession that obviously meant everything to him. You don't have to be interested in photography at all to be taken with this piece of oral history and the simple integrity of the telling."
Edward S. Curtis, Three Chiefs, Piegan, 1900
Popular with the public and beloved of knock-off coffee-table-book printers, the work of photographer Edward S. Curtis has for scholars long occupied an uneasy middle ground between priceless documentary record and romanticized, artistic pictorialism. However, there's no questioning the appeal or beauty—or desirability—of his epic masterwork, the twenty-volume series The North American Indian. It is to American photobook collectors approximately what Audubon's Birds of North America is for book collectors in general—oversized, unobtainable, monolithic. It rarely becomes available, most copies being locked up in museum collections.
The set that originally belonged to railroad magnate James J. Hill, number 130 from an edition of 272, goes up for sale at Swann Auction Galleries in New York City on May 14. It's estimated to sell for $250,000 to $350,000.
Documenting the vanishing tribal customs, dress, and ways of life of indigenous Native Americans, each volume contains 75 hand-pressed photogravures and 300 pages of text. The project took Curtis nearly 25 years (1907 to 1930) to complete, and might never have been finished were it not for a personal recommendation letter from Teddy Roosevelt
that helped garner the financial support of J.P. Morgan in 1906.
Also featured in the May 14 Swann sale are more than 20 individual photographs by Curtis, among them "Three Chiefs, Piegan," a unique, mural-size platinum print, the largest known print Curtis made, 1900 ($20,000 to $30,000); and "The Vanishing Race,"* an oversize platinum print, 1904 ($18,000 to $22,000).
The two-part sale will include both Photographic Literature and Fine Photographs. A number of other influential photographs will be available, such as Edward Steichen’s sunlit pictorialist view of "Mrs. Steichen and the Steichen Children, Voulangis, France," silver print, 1908 ($12,000 to $18,000) (above right), and a selection of works by Edward Weston, including "Dunes at Oceano," silver print, 1936 ($30,000 to $40,000).
Mike
*Note that "the race" has not "vanished"; the U.S. Census Bureau estimated there were 2,786,652 Native Americans in the U.S. in 2003. There are 11 Federally recognized tribes here in Wisconsin—unofficially, the number is more like 32.
Question from Reg Paley UK: "As a matter of interest what is a 'mural size' print? or an 'oversize print'?"
Mike replies: Sorry, I let that word carry over from the press release. Here's the catalog entry:
Sale 2180 Lot 165
CURTIS, EDWARD S. (1868-1952)
"Three Chiefs, Piegan." Platinum print, 16x20 inches (40.6x50.8 cm.),
with Curtis' signature, in ink, on recto and a numeric notation in the
negative; in an original Curtis black oak frame. 1900
Estimate $10,000-15,000
Bear in mind that what constitutes "mural"- or "over"-sized will depend on the date and the medium; Curtis would have made most of his prints by contact, meaning the print and the negative used for the print (although not always necessarily the original negative) would be the same size. So 16x20 inches would in this case be exceptionally large.
By contrast, I remember hearing the in '80s that Richard Misrach supplied his gallery with standard-sized 20x24's of some of his desert pictures, and the gallery requested that he provide 16x20's as well because some collectors preferred the smaller size. (They were masked Cibachromes, too, so it wasn't a trivial request.) So it's all relative.
Featured Comment by Ken Jarecke: "All the estimates seem pretty reasonable to me. You can get the whole collection for just a small fraction of what it would cost you to have Richard Prince make a single copy print of one of them."
With apologies to those hardy few who have bought my book The Empirical Photographer, I have just posted the last essay in the book, entitled "Helen Levitt," here on TOP. The article was originally published in Camera & Dark- room magazine (the American one, which went away in 1995). The occasion was merely a show review; the illustrations originally consisted of several of her color photographs, which were new or relatively new to the public at the time.
Subsequent to that, she mailed me a postcard, which I've quoted in full at the end of the article. I think it is the best professional compliment I've ever gotten. I have the original framed.
I corresponded with Miss Levitt a number of times after that, but she really was not much interested in self-promotion. She didn't want to have to do more work with her photography than she was already doing, and she even declined to sign one of her own books for me, pronouncing it "horrible." She said she would sign my copy of Crosstown, but I never got around to sending it to her. (I think I was more concerned with not losing it than having it signed.)
I can't remember the occasion, now, but I once asked her if she would mind if I printed, in one of the magazines I was associated with, the 1959 portrait of her that Lee Friedlander took. She was having none of that, either. She said the portrait, too, was "horrible," although she said many nice things about Lee. (The picture appears in Friedlander's 1985 NYGS book Lee Friedlander Portraits, and I have visited it since her death. It is no species of horrible, although the large overexposed area will not appeal to the literal and the fastidious.) I think Miss Levitt was more genuinely camera-averse than was Henri Cartier-Bresson, who was more famous for being so; I have seen a lot more pictures of him than I have of her over the years. The one above, taken in 1963, is from her obituary in the Times.
From her art and from herself, I always had the sense of a true lovely soul.
There's a good book of her work available now. Here's a link to our review, written by Geoff Wittig.
Mike
Featured Comment by Jeff Goggin: "Today's Wall Street Journal published a nice piece about Ms. Levitt." [By the always excellent Richard B. Woodward, whose writings on photography are not always easy to find but are always worth finding. —Ed.]
Today is the centennial of Henri Cartier-Bresson's birth. The great Frenchman. I think I'll celebrate by taking down my copy of Henri Cartier-Bresson Photographer
___________________
Mike
(P.S. Before I went to look for it just now I have to admit I had no idea that this book was still in print. Learn something new every day!)
