PhotoEphemera

The Posograph vs. The Zone System

2012-01-08T13:23:00.001-05:00

I've heard tell how difficult Ansel Adams' Zone System can be to understand and absorb. Here's another method for determining the proper exposure of a particular scene: The Posograph. While as it is perfect for amateur and professional photographers alike, it is very clearly intended only for those with exceptional eyesight. Which makes it elitist and therefore, cool--just like the Zone System!, only for the young.

Curiously, it hasn't caught on. I reckon it most likely because it doesn't yet have a celebrity photographer touting it.

Now that we've absorbed that and we're all out making images: Who hasn't had the following problem? And all for the lack of the proper face cream...

A tip of the hat to David for these wonderful photographic artifacts.

Advertisements by Elliott Erwitt

2011-12-15T20:56:00.002-05:00

Elliot Erwitt has shot advertising images for many years. I believe too, that his work has also been licensed for use in advertising. At any rate, he has been asked in the past to recreate some of his famous images as advertising, say, the kid on the back of the bike with a computer instead of a baguette. What follows are some examples of his advertising work.

Vogue
September 2010

Vanity Fair
April 2010

Vanity Fair
February 2010

The New Yorker
December 15, 1997

M
April 1990

Cindy Sherman Goes Stepping Out

2011-10-21T12:33:00.008-04:00

I don't even know if the following sort of thing even qualifies as ephemera. It may be a sub-genre so low on the paper-waste scale of our society that it falls under the fish-wrap rubric. Still, I find it interesting and fun.

I'm not intimate with the details of the woman's life but I recall that in her early days, Cindy Sherman didn't like to be photographed, perhaps having to do with not wanting her image to distract from the imagery she created, which in the early days always included herself. Then there was a period when she was married during which she was somewhat reclusive. And finally, divorced in 1999, she began appearing in public.

Which is where this starts: in public, in 1999. What follows are appearances by Sherman in the society pages of New York City publications.

New York Magazine
August 30, 1999

New York Magazine
August 24-29, 2002

New York Times
October 23, 2004

New York Times
July 29, 2007

New York Magazine
November 5, 2007

David Alan Harvey Bravo Paper Campaign

2011-06-28T06:27:00.001-04:00

About fifteen years ago or so, there was an ad campaign for Bravo, "the number one paper from Domtar." The design studio hired to do the design work was Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios. It was an extensive campaign including full page ads in Print and other design publications, post card mailings and large brochures (10.5 x 14 inch, 16 pages plus die-cut cover.) To promote the printing capacity of the paper, the campaign used the work of Magnum photographers for reproductions. The brochures are particularly nice, being so large, and featuring the work of one photographer: Bruno Barbey, Antonin Kratochvil, Alex Webb, Larry Towell and Steve McCurry are five that I know of that were featured in these oversized brochures.

Here are four of the postcards from the campaign with photographs by David Alan Harvey. Each is 7 x 5.75 inches.

Photographers Have to Make a Living Too, Part 7

2011-05-27T14:16:00.008-04:00

Richard Avedon
For HP printers
The New Yorker, April 19-May 6, 2004

Platon
For Moschino
The New Yorker, April 4, 1996

Mike Yamashita
For Transitions
Newsweek, April 13, 2009

Tracy Emin
For Vivienne Westwood
Unknown

Duane Michals
For Estee Lauder
Vanity Fair, November, 1991

Ray K. Metzker at Laurence Miller Gallery, NYC

2011-03-06T12:13:00.005-05:00

What follows are announcements for eight of the twenty solo shows that the Laurence Miller Gallery in New York City, have hosted of Ray K. Metzker's work. There is also an announcement for the release of the book Light Lines in 2008.

All are 9 x 4 7/8 inches and printed on stiff card stock, one side only, except where noted. I don't know the date of the first one but it would be between 1998 and 2001.

With flap closed.

With flap open = 12.75 inches wide.

Front, 8.75 x 5.75 inches.

Back

2008

8.5 x 11 inches, glossy paper

Truely random bunch of stuff

2011-02-20T22:47:00.004-05:00

Yasuhiro Ishimoto and The Document of Human Revolution

2011-01-05T18:07:00.001-05:00

Here's a gorgeous bit of architectural photography.

In 1972, the Sho Hondo temple at Taiseki-ji, Japan, was completed. It was regarded as an important work of post-war Japanese architecture and was to be the main temple of Nichiren Shoshu, a branch of Japanese Buddhism. The temple was built by Nichiren's lay organization, Soka Gakkai but by 1991, Soka Gakkai had been deemed heretical and stripped of its affiliation and so, the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood had the Sho Hondo temple demolished in 1998.

The following pages are from a book called The Document of Human Revolution, published in 1973 to commemorate the completion of the temple. The first part of the book is a series of documentary photos of the then-president of Soka Gakkai and his family and followers. What follows from there is a large section of architectural photographs by Yasuhiro Ishimoto along with architectural drawings, floor plans and elevations. It's a beautiful production and is of course printed in gravure.

Daido Moriyama

2010-11-07T17:39:00.017-05:00

Daido Moriyama, Cologne, 2007, by Jo Schwartz

Some interesting ephemera from Daido Moriyama's history:

Postcard advertising Moriyama's first book of color photography, Color (Sôkyû-sha, 1993)
Stiff stock, 8.5 x 6 inches
Signed by Moriyama in English on the front

Postcard advertising books by Moriyama, found in a copy of Memories (Sôkyû-sha, 1999)
Stiff stock, 4 x 5.74 inches

Moriyama intruded on the popular American consciousness in 1999 when Stray Dog, the first retrospective exhibition of his photographs anywhere in the world, opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on May 14 of that year. From there it moved to the Japan Society in New York City, where it opened on September 23, 1999, concurrent with a show of all the images from his 1972 book, The Hunter, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC. Also in New York at the same time were exhibits at the Laurence Miller Gallery and a show of work and books from contributors to the magazine Provoke, which included Moriyama, at the Roth Horowitz Gallery.

This is the point at which he broke through in the U.S. with a hammer. He was everywhere at once. There was the book that accompanied the SFMoMA exhibit, Stray Dog, which is a nice overview of his work; he was the cover of Artforum, October, 1999, issue; the subject of innumerable articles. From that point on, I'd venture that he was a "known brand" here in the U.S.A., so much so that the magazine The Week, sort of a weekly USA Today, ran a review of one of his shows this past February.

To open the show at the Japan Society in 1999, a conversation was held between Moriyama and John Szarkowski. I don't recall it being too illuminating or, as Szarkowski later said, "That was a hard slog." What he meant I think is that, despite a translator, no one was quite understanding what the other was getting at so none of us came away any wiser. After the conversation was the opening for the show at which one might have seen Moriyama and Robert Frank huddled together at one point, presumably trying to understand what the other was getting at.

What follows are a number of items from the Stray Dog tour.

The ticket stub to the conversation between Szarkowski and Moriyama:

The press release:

The brochure for the show
5 x 10 inches, unfolding thrice to 20 x 10 inches

Opened once:

Both gatefolds open:

Back cover:

The September/October 1999 issue of the Japan Society Newsletter
12 pages; 8.5 x 11

After New York, the Stray Dog wandered off to Switzerland and then Essen before returning to the U.S. in August, 2000, and appearing at the Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA.

The brochure
9.75 x 6.25 inches, unfolding twice to 9,75 x 17 inches

Top flap lifted up:

Bottom flap folded down:

Back side, signed by Moriyama in English and Japanese

Gallery card announcing a booksigning in conjunction with the release of
'71-NY (PPP Editions, 2002) at the Roth Horowitz Gallery
Stiff, matte card stock
9 x 6 inches

Announcement for the show of work from the same book at the same gallery
12.5 x 9.25 inches, folded twice
Front:

Back:

Opened once:

Fully opened:

And finally, I don't where this is from though it might have published in 2002. It's 5 x 7 inches and unfolds three times to a 20 x 14 poster.

Folded, one side:

Folded, the other side:

Unfolded once:

Unfolded twice:

Unfolded all the way:

While poking around the net I found photos of a retrospective of Moriyama's work held in Cologne, Germany, in 2007. I hadn't noticed before but the image of the "stray dog" appears in various publications flopped one way or the other. The photo is included in The Hunter, 1972, in the orientation seen below but is flopped on both the cover of Stray Dog and when reproduced inside.

Photo by Jo Schwartz

There was a room in the Cologne show of just his pickled embryo shots. As the coda to Nippon Theater (Muromachi-shobo, 1968) I think the images are terrifying. After the chaotic careen through contemporary Japanese culture--from want to plenty, despair to ecstasy, art to commerce, tradition to change, from one maniacal grimace to deadpan stare and back to crazed laughter--you come full-stop against these calm, placid images of floating humans-never-to-be, framed in black--the first page of which is simply a light rectangular frame on a black page. The book feels like roaring full-speed through life itself, grabbing everything within reach. And then it just ends…at the void, the existential void that is so often, and in this case appropriately, applied to Moriyama's work. You end up staring into a dark space where life-never-started and yet is suspended forever, a grotesque reminder of the Eros/Thanatos cycle.

And I find this room with embryo wallpaper to be a grotesque reminder of design gone bad. Which I'll admit is unfair since I don't know what precedes this room or follows so I don't know what the "experience" of the exhibit is and how this fits in. But it just seems silly.

Photo by Jo Schwartz

Just so there is no misunderstanding here: Aside from Moriyama's work being some of my favorite to interact with, I think that Nippon Theater is one of the best photobooks ever produced. I think it's right up there with Klein's New York in terms of sequencing, editing and design.

If you're into Daido, you're well-aware that he's a marketing machine these days. While as he doesn't have nearly as many books published as Araki has (but maybe as many as Parr) he has more than enough to keep one searching for years to fill in the gaps on the bookshelf. These days, there is all sorts of other stuff. (I haven't found a bobble-head version of him yet, but there must be one somewhere.)

There is a documentary called Daido Moriyama: Stray Dog of Tokyo. It was directed by Kenjiro Fujii, made in 2001 and released at the beginning of this year on DVD, runs 84 minutes and can be found on Amazon as well as elsewhere.

There is a net-store, TokyoBaron.com that sells all things Japanese including Moriyama (and other Japanese photograhers) t-shirts (though they all seem to be sold out.) Go here to browse.

Azito, an online gallery, has just partnered with Daido to produce five limited edition prints from his 2009 book Northern. The book featured work shot in Hokkaido as a way of forcing himself back into photography but which he never printed. Info about the prints can be found here. The book is supposedly out-of-print but can still be purchased through Amazon Japan. (Azito also just published a book of work by Toshio Shibata with accompanying prints.)

Daido at his Hokkaido opening at Rathole, 2009, by Enya Nanako

Robert Frank Interview

2010-09-02T16:13:00.002-04:00

Found this Robert Frank interview recently on the web. It was recorded January 22, 2009, and of course the bulk of the conversation is about The Americans. But he also touches on Pull My Daisy, CS Blues and bits of this and that.

Now: can someone tell me what he's referring to when he says, "Which was a mistake, just a mistake."

Robert Frank : interview
Uploaded by JeudePaume. - Arts and animation videos.

Ferdinando Scianna

2010-08-21T16:11:00.001-04:00

One thing fun about doing this blog was researching various aspects of the items I was posting. I no longer have the time to do that. I do have quite a bit of ephemera scanned and ready to post though.

I'll continue posting but any background information that I include will have to be from memory.

Which means most of it will be wrong.

Ferdinando Scianna is a Magnum photographer.

Ad from The New Yorker, February 20 - 27, 1995, with an ad photographed by Scianna.

Ad from Vanity Fair, February, 2001, with a background photograph by Scianna.

About ten years ago or so, there was an ad campaign for Bravo, "the number one paper from Domtar." The design studio hired to do the campaign was Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios. It was pretty extensive including full page ads in Print and other design publications, post card mailings and large brochures (10.5 x 14 inch, 16 pages plus die-cut cover.) To promote the printing capacity of the paper, they used the work of Magnum photographers for reproductions. The brochures are particularly nice, being so large, and featuring the work of one photographer: Bruno Barbey, Antonin Kratochvil, Alex Webb, Larry Towell and Steve McCurry are five that I know of that were featured in these oversized brochures.

Here are four of the postcards from the campaign with photographs by Scianna. Each is 7 x 5.75 inches.

Landscapes: With and Without Figures

2010-07-22T10:33:00.012-04:00

PETER BRANDES
D.C.A. Gallery, NYC
2001

LARRY BURROWS
Laurence Miller Gallery, NYC
1998

Stiff card stock, 9 x 3.75 inches, blank back

LYNNE COHEN
P.P.O.W., NYC
2000

Stiff card stock, 6.25 x 5.25 inches

LUCIEN HERVÉ
Michael Hoppen Photography, UK
nd

Stiff card stock, 4 x 5.75 inches

TODD HIDO
Julie Saul Gallery, NYC
2000

Stiff card stock, 5 x 7 inches

PAUL HIMMEL
Keith de Lellis Gallery, NYC
2003

Stiff card stock, 10 x 7 inches, folded once vertically

JOHN HINDE
Wessel + O'Connor Fine Art, NYC
2005

Stiff card stock, 6 x 4.25 inches

RUTH THORNE-THOMSEN
Laurence Miller Gallery, NYC
2001

Stiff card stock, 9 x 3.75 inches, blank back

GEORGE TICE
Sandra Berler, Chevy Chase, MD
2000

Thin card stock, 6 x 4.25 inches

LARRY TOWELL
Leica Gallery, NYC
2001

Thin card stock, 16.5 x 5.5 inches, folded once vertically

WYNN BULLOCK
Laurence Miller Gallery, NYC
2002

Stiff card stock, 9 x 3.75 inches, blank back

Imogen Cunningham

2010-07-05T07:54:00.008-04:00

The Art Museum of Santa Cruz County
1984

Stiff, card stock; 8 x 8 inches

Back

Stiff, card stock; 16 inches wide by 8 inches folded once vertically
to produce an 8 x 8 inch exhibition checklist

Open

Back

The Halstad Gallery
Birmingham, MI
2002

Stiff card stock; 8 x 5 inches

Swann Galleries, NYC

Stiff card stock; 6 x 9 inches folded once horizontally to produce a 6 x 4.5 inch notecard
(The inside is blank)

Self-portraits

1910

1913

1932

1933

1958

1974

Henri Cartier-Bresson shoots color for Holiday Magazine

2010-06-18T17:50:00.000-04:00

These were shot in the early 1950s on assignment for Holiday Magazine but as with the Robert Capa post, I'm not sure the date of the issues. The first three images are from a chapter entitled "The Low Countries."

The rest of the images are from "The Iberian Peninsula."

The lower left image is by Cartier-Bresson. Top left and lower right: Duncan Edwards; Top center: Arnold Newman; Top right: Slim Aarons; Bottom center: Alexander Wainman.

Robert Capa shoots color for Holiday Magazine

2010-06-09T22:13:00.003-04:00

Early 1950s though I'm not sure of the exact issue. This is from a book that features reprints of articles. I'm almost convinced that the woman in the yellow raincoat is that same woman in the last shot.

R. G. Hoegler's Griechenland

2010-05-29T16:56:00.005-04:00

I was looking through a book of photographs recently called Griechenland by R. G. Hoegler. Except for the fact that his first name was/is Rudolf, I couldn't find out much about the him. He was a German painter who fell in love with rural Greece and spent many years there before the start of World War II. After the war had interrupted his idyll, he returned to Greece to find that painting no longer spoke "the language of his heart." He took up photography and produced more than one book about Greece.

The book itself is elegant. The copy I have is pretty beat up but it is large, bound in nice cloth with gilt embossed lettering, with all tipped-in images. Quite handsome.

The work is mostly images of the Greek landscape, archeological ruins, sculpture, artwork, towns. All professionally produced and beautiful examples of their genre but for the most part, the book reads like art history (visually reads; the text is all in German which I can't read.)

What sets this book off is that there are more than a handful of images which are unusual and striking. And a couple that are in fact puzzling in the context of the overall theme of the book. Here are some samples:

I really don't know what to make of this image, the last in the book. It's a very odd way of ending this sort of coffee table travel book.

Aaron Siskind

2010-05-19T21:03:00.015-04:00

Robert Mann Gallery, NYC
2003

Stiff, card stock, 10 x 6 7/8 inches, folded once to produce a 5 x 6 7/8 notecard

Robert Mann Gallery, NYC
2000

Stiff, card stock, 5 5/8 x 6 inches, printed one side only

The New Yorker
March 13, 2000

Glenn Horowitz Booksellers
East Hampton, NY
May 31 - June 24, 1997

Booklet: 6.25 x 8.75 inches, 24 pages, saddle-stitched with stiff blank wraps with dust jacket

This exhibition booklet features a twelve page essay by Peter Bunnell,
one reproduction (aside from the one on the title page)
and an exhibition checklist of 41 pieces.

Phoenix Gallery, San Francisco
1976

Stiff card stock, 5.5 x 8.5 inches

Toshio Shibata

2010-05-10T18:41:00.010-04:00

How about some ephemera from the career of Toshio Shibata? Unfortunately, nothing from Japan, but here are some items from around the U.S.

Laurence Miller Gallery, NYC
1996

Stiff card stock, 9 x 3.75 inches, printed one side only

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
1997

17 x 11 inches folded once to form a 8.5 x 11 inch brochure

Laurence Miller Gallery, NYC
1998

Stiff card stock, 9 x 3.75 inches, printed one side only

Laurence Miller Gallery, NYC
1999

Stiff card stock, 9 x 3.75 inches, printed one side only

Gallery Luisotti, Santa Monica, CA
2002

Stiff card stock, 8.5 x 5.75 inches

Laurence Miller Gallery, NYC
2003

Stiff card stock, 9 x 3.75 inches, printed one side only

Walker Evans in Provincetown; Gene Smith in NYC; Mary Oliver on Molly Malone Cook and the VII Photographers Gallery

2010-04-20T18:18:00.012-04:00

Recently, on Cape Cod, I picked up a book of photography in a used bookstore and after paging through it found a photograph of Walker Evans. I had decided that the work wasn't very interesting but then figured that "at that price" I could just cut out the page with Evans on it.

When I got the book home and had time to peruse it more carefully it offered up some surprises. Turned out to be not as uninteresting as it had appeared at first glance. (One of the surprises was that there were splotches of dried blood all over the back cover. But that's not part of this story.)

The book is called Our World. It was written by Mary Oliver and was published by Beacon Press, Boston, in 2007. The photographs in the book are by Molly Malone Cook, Oliver's partner of over 40 years. The photography doesn't actually get any better with a second, third or subsequent look-see. It's not that they're bad, it's just that each clearly shows the influence of a particular "other" photographer and as a group they never cohere into a "vision." They're nice snapshots. But then, Cook isn't responsible for the edit so she may have chosen a different group.

And, though the book is meant to showcase Cook's photos, the title really says what the book is about: an attempt by the writer to explain--and probably to herself--who it was that she had spent such a large part of her life with. The narrative is incomplete--in part to shield but also because there are things, even after 40 years, that the author doesn't know. The prose tends to be more allusive than descriptive (Oliver is a poet, after all, and a pulitzer prize-winning one, at that) and is very short but in the end you actually have a good sense of what kept these two people together for over 40 years--and happily so, it seems. It's a sweet, unsentimental bohemian love story.

Mary Oliver on the left and Molly Malone Cook, no date.

But that's not why I'm writing about the book. There are a couple of items of interest to the casual photo-historian. One is that Molly Malone Cook opened one of the first galleries on the East coast that showed only photography. Here is Oliver's text (Molly is referred to throughout the book as M.):

M. first visited Cape Cod, the towns of Truro and Provincetown especially, in the late fifties. Then, in 1960 she decided to come for the summer season and to open a photographers' gallery. Her ambition and her hope were great, as was her valor. At that time--almost fifty years ago now--photography was scarcely, or at best only by a few, regarded as an art. People bought paintings certainly but had not yet begun to purchase and cherish the photographs that now cost thousands of dollars, if one can find them.

She rallied her friends and made new friends among the photographers of those years. Edward Steichen said to her when she visited him to talk over her idea, "Are you crazy or rich?" to which she replied, "Well, I'm not rich." Nevertheless he joined her enterprise. Among the photographers whose work for the next few summers was shown at the VII Photographers Gallery (seven was the number of the original group, though it grew larger) were Berenice Abbott, W. Eugene Smith, Eugene Atget, Harry Callahan, Ken Heyman, Rollie McKenna, Barbara Morgan, Minor White, Lawrence Shustak, Aaron Siskind and Ansel Adams, as well as Steichen and, on occasion, M. herself. One day in the first summer a tall boy showed up when the gallery had just opened--dusty, with the proverbial sixties knapsack, and some photographs which she accepted; the dusty boy was a young William Clift.

Ansel Adams had a show in 1964. Could it be possible that the price he put on some of his prints was thirty-five dollars? Among the papers from the Gallery I have found such a price sheet.

The Gallery's final season was the summer of 1964. Many people had come to look and to admire, but not enough people bought photographs for the Gallery to be a viable way of life. To help the situation M. had added the sale of books, opening the East End Bookshop. Photographs were still there, on all available wall space, but the predominant business in that combination was literature. In the sixties whole families came to Provincetown, with their children and their children's summer reading lists, and M.'s selection provided their needs and, for us (we had begun to live together in the Gallery's final year), a more possible life. Previously M. had gone back to New York for the winter, but that long fall we kept lingering, feeling our roots settling into that magical and beautiful town, and so we stayed on.

The bookstore is where the photo of Evans was taken. Cook's account of the meeting is included in the book:

On a fall day in 1967, Walker Evans came into my East End Bookshop in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with the painter Fritz Bultman.

He was seriously surprised that I had both paperback and hardback copies of his book Message from the Interior for sale.

Evans appeared like a man who expected nothing, was slightly bewildered and found it hard to smile because he knew what was about to happen around the next corner, and it wasn't necessarily good.

He wrote in my hardback copy of Message from the Interior, "Molly Malone Cook with pleasure and gratitude. Walker Evans 9/12/67." I asked him if I could take his picture, he looked puzzled and asked me why. I just took the picture.

I had been interested and curious about Walker Evans since I'd first seen Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, the book he and Agee did in the 1930s. Somehow I could not see Walker Evans in the middle of Alabama feeling as comfortable as James Agee did and from what I have read he wasn't.

He seemed a very sad man, but oh what a fine eye he had.

Molly Malone Cook
Provincetown, Massachusetts
November 27, 1990

Another thing that I found of interest was Oliver's description of Cook making prints. First off, the passages speak to feelings I used to have making images in the darkroom and secondly, it's a great peek at how some photographers used to work, unaware of the damage accumulating in their bodies. (I knew photographers who would not use tongs, believing that they needed to be "in touch" with a print for it's proper development. And yet, one of them would say, "Every time I stick my hand in the fix, I can taste it in my mouth.")

Happily a friend in town gave M. the use of her darkroom. The process now has changed, but then it did indeed, except for the faintest red light bulb, take place in darkness. Sometimes I went with M. and watched as she developed or printed--a careful, timed business with vats and trays and potions. I watched not as one understanding the process--I never learned it--but as an observer seeing with excitement and delight how the long slips of film became a distant city, the desert, or a face revealing its personal story. A part of the pleasure no doubt was watching M.--her exactness, her patience, her certainty. Fortunate are all who have had such an experience, in whatever discipline--watching a painter paint, or hearing music as the notes lift and dip into something that will be everlasting--they are sacred moments. Especially if the person involved is someone you know intimately, but now all is cleared from the mind except the blessing, the heaven of work. I never tired of watching. First the great, cumbersome enlarger, then the vats, then the first impressions appearing on the blank paper in its bath, the blacks deepening to M.'s approval. Maybe a touch from the bottle of ferrocyanide, maker of brightness. Then the dryer, then the decision if and how to crop, until there it was: the photograph. From that fragile film. From the camera. From the eye looking, and finding.

But there is this, too. Under that faint red light, M. all the while smoking, and sometimes checking temperatures by dipping a finger and tasting. Yes, it was a magical process and a magical time. Also, of course, it was beginning to ravage her lungs, a process that was fairly slow but, also, not reversible. When, in the seventies, she could no longer do the darkroom work and her vitality was beginning to diminish, she took fewer and fewer pictures, at least in the old, driven way. Yes, there were pictures still, developed commercially with one of the new digital cameras. But the role of maker, the seeker of faces first in the world and then coaxed onto the heavy Verigam paper, the smell of the dryer, the cropping, that was over. She gave the enlarger to a young friend just beginning to print. The enamel trays were useful in the kitchen. The negatives sat in their plastic slips; the prints, hundreds of them, went into their boxes.

In 1969 M. suffered an illness, lung-related, significant enough for us to close the bookstore. And thus fairly finished was the forwarding of her own work in photography, as well as the forwarding of the work of other photographers...

Cook died in 2005 and I include the last paragraph of Oliver's writing here, which relates to Cook's last days, because the passage not only gives us a nice feel for each of these individuals but also speaks eloquently to the idea of "end of life."

The end of life has its own nature, also worth our attention. I don't say this without reckoning in the sorrow, the worry, the many diminishments. But surely it is then that a person's character shines or glooms. M.'s strength waned, over and over she met with some obstacle that might be called the-body-can't-do-it-anymore. She was cheerful during repetitive hospital stays; she was sometimes hilarious with visitors, wonderfully off-hand. "Oh," she would say, flipping her hand as if scooting a fly, "it's just a little tumor." Her boat was still in the harbor and once in a while she would struggle aboard and have a good time, though a brief good time. To get out of the boat she contrived the only manner possible, she flung herself overboard into the shallow water, laughing, until we all laughed with her. Finally, she gave the boat away. Good lungs we need, and hers were failing. That is the way it goes sometimes, slowly. The vitality goes somewhere else into this world. And then the life.

And finally, there are also a couple of shots of W. Eugene Smith in the book.

The first is labeled "The photographer W. Eugene Smith, New York City, 1962" and the second, "Smiling this time."

Odds and Ends, Part 5

2010-04-16T12:56:00.014-04:00

Here's an odd group of exhibit invitations.

Evelyn Hofer
Rose Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
2001

Stiff card stock, 15 x 9.25 inches, folded once to 7.5 x 9.25 inches

Barbara Nitke
Hellfire, NYC
1995

Stiff card stock, 4.25 x 6 inches

John Baldessari
Sonnabend Gallery, NYC
1981

Stiff card stock, 4.25 x 6 inches

Morton Bartlett
Julie Saul Gallery, NYC
2007

Stiff card stock, 10 x 7 inches, folded once to 5 x 7 inches

Larry Burrows
Laurence Miller Gallery, NYC
2005

Stiff card stock, 8.75 x 5.75 inches

Marvin E. Newman
Keith de Lellis Gallery, NYC
2002

Stiff card stock, 5 x 7 inches

American Photographers on Stamps, Part II

2010-03-30T13:42:00.001-04:00

Here are the rest of American photographers stamps. I didn't have much luck finding source photos.

W. Eugene Smith, Self-portrait, 1944

Albert Sands Southworth by Southworth & Hawes

Self-Portrait with studio camera, 1917

Stieglitz by Carl Van Vechten, 1935

Strand by Walter Rosenblum, 1973

Self-Portrait

White by Robert Haiko, 1973

Mary Ellen Mark in Avant Garde magazine

2010-03-09T20:12:00.004-05:00

Originally shot for Look magazine: "I suggested another story, on drug addicts and junkies in London. It's funny because I shot it predominantly in black and white, but on the last day I shot a couple of rolls of color, and they ended up using the color pictures. Anyway it was a very solid story--I still count some of my black-and-white pictures taken on this assignment as being strong statements about drug addiction."

Avant Garde 14, Summer 1971.

Also in the issue is a photo-essay by Leonard Freed about an artist's commune in Lower Manhattan and the "Belles Lettres" alphabet of naked women that Ed van der Elsken was involved in as story teller. And no, I don't know what that means.

American Photographers on Stamps

2010-02-28T17:00:00.001-05:00

With each new issue of a postage stamp in the United States there is a ritual of creating First Day Covers--envelopes with the new stamp, canceled on the day of issue. There are a number of commercial interests that sell these--including the Post Office itself--and each has a different envelope design. Some envelopes are cheesy and some are handsome but these days, they tend to be mostly cheesy. Here are some examples of the George Eastman issue of 1954.

In 2002, the United States Post Office issued a set of 20 stamps representing the American Masters of Photography. Needless to say, they all had to be dead since in the USofA we don't print official stamps with living people on them. (We suffer no royalty here, just celebrity.) And of course, there were First Day Covers created for the issue.

Here are examples of two of the more cheesy versions of this particular issue:

Timothy O'Sullivan

Dorothea Lange

Lewis Hine

Imogen Cunningham

One of the FDC sets had an illustrated portrait of the photographer on each of the envelopes. In some cases I was able to find the source photograph cause, well, the likeness in many cases, was, well...not spot-on. But then, I figured most people wouldn't recognize any of the artists anyway so it didn't really matter how good the likeness was. In alphabetical order:

Ansel Adams

And for no other reason than that I think Ansel has a great face to look at, here are some other portraits I found on the web while looking for the source-photo.

(L to R) Photobooth self-portrait, circa 1930; F. Malcolm Grany, circa 1947-1950; Edward Weston, 1946; Jim Alinder, 1984;
David Hume Kennerly, from the 1979 Time cover shoot (the only time a photographer has appeared on the cover of that magazine.)

Alvin Langdon Coburn

Not quite, but close.

Imogen Cunningham

Cunningham self-portrait, 1933

Walker Evans

I couldn't find the photo this caricature was drawn from. You may have noticed a pattern emerging: the illustration in many cases is flopped and the Evans image above is clearly flopped, as Evans parted his hair on the other side.

1937.

Gertrude Käsebier

André Kertész

Kertesz by James R. Holland

Dorothea Lange

1965.

Lewis Hine

1936.

Man Ray

Timothy O'Sullivan

I'll mount the rest another time.

Henri Cartier-Bresson in Foto Fanfare, December 1957

2010-02-23T22:00:00.002-05:00

Sorry, I meant Henry Cartier-Bresson...

Photo Notes, Fall 1948, Part 2

2010-02-15T14:40:00.001-05:00

Photo Notes, Fall 1948

2010-02-07T21:54:00.000-05:00

The issue is a total of 44 pages. The rest will follow at a later date.

Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

2010-01-21T19:33:00.014-05:00

Some of the nicest exhibition invites are produced by The Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco. They also represent an impressive roster of photographers so they have great images to work with. Beyond that, they seem to go one extra step in the design and production of their invitations such that they become little works of art in their own right.

The image above was taken by James Danzinger (and borrowed from his blog, "The Year in Pictures") while visiting the Fraenkel Gallery in 2009; it shows a wall in the office with framed (apparently never folded) copies of some of the invites. And what follows are more examples.

Diane Arbus, 2007
8 by 10 inches, unfolds twice to a 16 x 20 inch stiff sheet

Front

Back

Opened once

Fully open

Katy Grannan, 2006
8 by 10 inches, unfolds twice to a 16 x 20 inch stiff sheet

Front

Back

Opened once

Fully open

Group show, 2009
8 by 10 inches, opens to a 16 x 10 inch stiff sheet

Front

Back

Open

Bernd & Hilla Becher, 2009
8 by 10 inches, unfolds twice to a 16 x 20 inch stiff sheet

Front

Back

Open once

Fully open

I can not seem to get enough of the Bechers' work; I can look at it over and over and still enjoy it.

Ansel Adams, Journalist

2010-01-15T20:35:00.008-05:00

Ansel Cruises Los Angeles

By Ansel Adams, 1940, but reminds me of David Goldblatt

Poking through the online photo-archive of the Los Angeles Public Library, a fellow named Gerard Van der Leun found many un-Ansel like photos labeled Ansel Adams. After some deep research he figured out what they were. It's an interesting story and can be found here with some of the images. The complete set of images, with no explanation as to their origin, can be found here.

The man in the photo at the right is Cole Weston, Edward's son. By Ansel Adams, 1940.

Nicholas Nixon

2010-01-10T12:52:00.019-05:00

Nicholas and Bebe Nixon at the opening of an exhibit of his series "The Brown Sisters"
in Granada, Spain, May 6, 2009.

Nicholas Nixon, Self-Portrait, 1997

Of working photographers, there are very few producing images as good as those Nicholas Nixon makes. Here are a few gallery invites from the last ten years.

Zabriskie Gallery, New York City, 2001

Stiff card, 7.25 by 9 inches

Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, 2004

Front

Opened once

Opened to poster view

20 by 16.5 inches, folded twice

Yossi Milo Gallery, NYC, 2006

Front

Open

Back
8.75 by 11.5 inches, folded once

Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, 2009

Front

Back

Opened

With flap opened
17.5 by 10 inches, folded twice

Nicholas Nixon by Bill Jay, 1973

And speaking of the Brown Sisters (which I'll assume you know), the British artist Idris Khan, who makes layered composites of appropriated imagery, has aggregated every one of the Brown sister photos into a single, rather cool, image.

every...Nicholas Nixon's Brown Sisters, 2004

Bruce Weber in Vanity Fair

2010-01-03T20:47:00.004-05:00

Let's start the year with a particularly unusual fashion shoot by Bruce Weber for Vanity Fair's November 1984 issue.

W. Eugene Smith at war

2009-12-12T21:50:00.006-05:00

SALON SECTION 40-50
WAR PHOTOGRAPHER IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC
This month's Salon Section features outstanding photographs taken by Gene Smith, twenty-five-year-old war correspondent. They were selected from the seven hundred pictures which Smith made during a period of nearly eight months, much of which time was spent aboard a carrier. A feature article describing his experiences in the South Pacific appears in conjunction with this selection of dramatic pictures.

Camera on a Carrier
W. Eugene Smith, War Photographer in the South Pacific, flew 15 times against the Japs

By JOHN R. WHITING

THE radio compartment of an Avenger is not a very good place for a photographer. It's too narrow to move around in; there's no place to sit down; there's very little room for cameras. But if the Avenger is flying over a Japanese-held harbor and there are a few holes cut in the Plexiglass housing, and the pilot banks to a good camera angle over an exploding tanker--it'll do.

W. Eugene Smith, twenty-five-year-old war correspondent, found these things out about Navy planes in combat over Tarawa, Truk, Kwajalein, Eniwetok and Tinian islands. He found out about darkrooms aboard aircraft carriers, how close an aerial camera will focus, and how cameras stand up under combat conditions.

When he started from the Pacific Coast for Hawaii, Gene Smith had two Ikoflexes, a Rolleiflex, a 4 x 5 Graflex, a Speed Graphic for color and another fitted for aerial work, a Contax with five lenses, and a Kodak Medalist.

Eight months and 700 negatives later, Gene came back to the mainland for repairs. One camera had a jammed shutter, one was smashed internally, two wouldn't wind film, two had sprung boxes, several wouldn't focus properly, and one leaked light through a bent shutter leaf. The record of the experiences of those cameras--and of W. Eugene Smith--is a photographic story, an aviation story, a human story.

The record begins on the day when the Public Relations Officer of CINCPAC (Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet) at "Pearl," as they call it in the Navy, called Smith in to say: "Tomorrow you go to sea. Be here at two o'clock with a minimum of essential equipment." That night Gene checked his cameras over for the thousandth time, counted out his film and flashbulbs, and incidentally packed the extra khaki shirts of his war correspondent's uniform. He looked over his credentials as a photographer for Flying, Radio News and POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY, sister magazines of the Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, wrote last letters home to his mother and his wife, and finally decided he was ready.

It was only when the launch had taken him to the side of the slim gray ship that he knew he was assigned to a cruiser for his first trip. A routine patrol cruise: Smith photographed scout planes landing on the ocean, taxi-ing up to the ship, being hoisted aboard by a crane's steel fingers.

Far from the Japs, life seemed so boring that the crew seizcd upon the crossing of the equator for a high celebration. Gene photographed shaving of heads, mock trials, King Neptune in a paper crown, and all the other age-old high jinks of the sea. He tried to protect his camera from salt spray as the sailors crossing the line for the first time were initiated with a fire-hose shower. Just in time he handed his Ikofiex to an officer as a yelling mob of sailors decided to put Smith through the same ceremonius roughhouse he had just photographed!

That night, in his cabin, an unoccupied corner of the Admiral's suite, he cleaned his salt-sprayed camera inside and out with an oily rag, wondering if he ever was going to see a battle. If you had told him that in the next eight months he would cross the equator another forty times and usually be so busy looking for Jap planes that he wouldn't even think of the Shellback rigmarole, he wouldn't have believed you.

It was September 18 before Smith saw action, as his cruiser steamed along as protection for carriers attacking Tarawa Island, still Jap-held. His battle station was the searchlight platform, with hand-lines around it. Gene fell off, and his Speed Graphic and Graflex took a 15-foot drop to the deck. When the damage was checked over the Graphic was way out of line and the Graflex had lost ground-glass and mirror and its lens had rolled across the steel deck--but the lens was still intact.

"But I'm still not getting battle pictures," Smith was saying to himself.

For his next cruise he drew another ship, a small carrier in a task force. When he asked the captain of his carrier to let him fly in the first big-scale American attack on Wake Island, the answer was always, "I'm sorry. Not this time."

So Smith watched the planes lined up on the flight deck, stood in "air plot," the tactical headquarters for the planes, as they took off on the famous Wake raid of October 6. He was shooting Hellcat takeoffs with his Rolleiflex when the film-winding mechanism broke. Another camera down, but all he had to show for his work so far were pictures of planes with folded wings; of destroyers coming alongside with bags of mail, of bombers and fighter planes heading out into the sun, bound for strikes against the Japs that he couldn't watch. Once he flew a patrol flight.

This still wasn't battle action, and the first thing Smith knew, he was back at "Pearl," waiting again for his next ship. But plans were changed and it didn't come in. Instead, one Saturday night he got a call to repack his equipment, cutting out all surplus weight, and report to the offices of Naval Air Transport. Sgt. Johnny Bushemi, Yank cameraman, helped Smith pack his cameras, lenses, bulbs, and film.

A long overwater flight in a giant PBY, a short stay at a tiny port "somewhere in the South Pacific," and finally Gene saw his ship coming into the harbor--a trim new carrier of the Essex class, the most significant ship of the war. This was to be Smith's home for the next four months; aboard her he was to pick up some of the fine points of being a war photographer, such as stowing cameras in different parts of the ship in case a bomb hit knocked out one set of his equipment; in her darkroom he was to stay up many nights developing aerial photographs of some of the most violent American strikes against the Japanese islands.

The carrier moved out to sea, part of a task force with a still secret mission. One day the ship's loudspeakers carried these words: "This is your captain speaking. Within 48 hours we will be engaged with the enemy. There will be more details of our mission tomorrow."

Tense, carrying at least the Contax always around his neck, Smith kept constantly "topside" (above deck) in case of action. The next time the captain spoke to the crew it was to reveal that they were going in to raid Rabaul. Once again Smith wanted to fly with the attacking bombers, hut the word was still "No. Not this time." For a short moment he was almost assigned to Plane No. 26, but once again plans were changed.

So, in the hours before the strike against the Japs, Gene Smith talked with the fourteen Navy cameramen on the ship, figured which was the best place to be during the attack, and finally measured off the tiny space on the searchlight platform (again his battle station) so that he would be out of the way of the swinging barrel of a battery of 20 mm anti-aircraft guns.

The carrier neared Rabaul, a clanging bell sounded General Quarters, a bugle blew, and then a voice over the loudspeaker boomed: "General quarters. Man your battle stations!"

The planes took off for the Jap base and for tense hours the men on the carrier awaited their return. Once Smith climbed up into the "island" and listened in on the radio as the attacking pilots talked among themselves. Once he stood down close to thc flight deck and watched a TBF coming in for a landing--the torpedo planes had run into anti-aircraft and a flock of Zeros on their way back, but as the damaged Avenger came in one hand stuck out from the fuselage, with a gunner's thumb cheerfully pointing up.

Then it happened. Dive bombers and torpedo bombers, refueled, were line up on the deck. The last of a flight of Hellcat fighters was about to take off when the huge Executive Officer of the ship rushed past Smith, saying "Get your helmet, a Jap raid will be here any minute."

Smith ran for his battle station. The last Hellcat ran down the flight deck between the anti-aircraft fire of the carrier. Thirty-five Jap dive bombers headed for the ship, black puffs of smoke specking the sky about them, shells now and then winging one.

Diving from 9,000 feet the Vals (Navy slang for Jap dive bombers) came in. The Hellcat's flaps were still down, its landing gear still unretracted as a Jap plane flashed in front of the plane. The pilot pulled the trigger and flred a short burst of his six 50 calibre guns. The Val smoked, crashed into the sea.

Ensign Billy Watts, ten seconds after his first combat flight started, had brought down a Jap plane. From his searchlight platform Smith took a picture of the anti-aircraft guns firing at a diving Val, then, seconds later, whirling under one of those 20 mm guns, he followed a bomb with his camera and as the carrier swerved, clicked the shutter just as a near miss sent a geyser of water towering toward the sky.

The AA guns swung to starboard and he heard someone yell "Torpedo planes!" Smith decided to get to the other side of the stack. He jumped the four feet from his searchlight platform, and just as he landed on the deck he saw something bright falling--his Contax had broken loose from the neck strap. By the time he got around, the torpedo planes had been driven off for at least a moment. He got his helmet and inflatable life belt, then picked up the Contax. It looked fine on the outside, but the inside was a mess of broken gears.

The attack continued for an hour. Once there were burning Jap planes on the horizon every fifteen degrees around the ship. Officially, 86 out of 125 attacking Japs were listed as shot down by planes or AA fire in the attack. Four American planes fell to the Japs; others were hit. The most tense moment in Smith's life to that day came when plane No. 26, the one in which he had almost gone up, landed with the rear-gunner, in whose place Gene wouid have flown, badly, bloodily wounded. It was weeks before he was even out of the hospital. Later Smith was to feel the same way about another piane casualty. But on this day of the Rabaul raid, it was work, work, work.

That night Smith helped the photo crew of his carrier develop their pictures until nearly 1 a.m., when he finally got a chance to load his Nikor reels with two rolls from the Medalist and two from the Ikoflex. He put the reels into the big tanks of DK-20, waited, rinsed, then fixed the film, and finally turned on the lights to look at the negative of the near-miss of a 500 pound bomb (see photograph, page 45), one of the great pictures of the war. After he had looked at the four rolls of the Jap attack, he kept on developing until 5 in the morning, finishing up all the odd rolls of film on hand. Once, whlle film was in the developer, he took a look at the inside of his Contax and sadly added it to the casualty list.

What is the photolab of a new U. S. carrier like? Five rooms, several enlargers, big wooden tanks along the walls, all on the level of the hangar decks, amidships. It's pretty much like any other commercial photolab where thousands of negatives and prints may have to be processed in a few hours.

This particular lab, like the fourteen men in the photo crew, is under the direction of the photographic officer, Lt. C. K. Eaton of Los Angeles. Lieutenant Eaton's men turn out increasingly better work, but the quality still does not suit him. Many of the men are without previous experience with cameras and not even the Navy's flne Photo School at Pensacola can make up for that lack.

Smith, asked for a critical appraisal of Navy photography, was loth to speak harshly of men who risk their lives to get their negatives, but he did have some cool comments about teaching photographers to "do things by the book," without regard to changing conditions. "Inflexibility" would be his one word of criticism of Navy cameramen. If other words could be added, they might be "lack of training in coverage; lack of appreciation for quality developing and printing; ofttimes improperly chosen equipment (of a score of Medalists aboard the ship, not one was equipped with a lens shade)." The Navy, of course, would have its side of the story in reply: the speed with which the personnel have necessarily been trained, the basic routines which secure adequate pictures under almost all conditions, the differing requirements of Navy and press photography. The Navy's pictures are military reconnaissance photos, and composition, drama, or print quality don't count one tenth as much as getting the picture, getting sharp details, and getting prints out fast. Both Smith and the Navy would agree that intelligent criticism was one way to improve Navy photography and on the other hand, that "adequate" is not good enough for the U. S. Navy.

Even with half his cameras out of commission, Smith still had his Medalist, his aerial Graphic, and an Ikoflex in working order. The aerial Graphic had been made from a regular 4 x 5 Speed Graphic, with a metal hood substituted for the leather bellows, in order to stand wind pressure. He had had a bayonet mount installed for his filter and lens shade.

Only a few days after the Rabaul raid, the carrier, in a newly made up task force, again headed for Jap territory. This time it was the Gilbert Islands--and this time his long sought permission to fly came through. Once in a TBF (Avenger), once in an SB2C (Hel!diver), Smith flew over Japanese territory. On these flights he learned how to take a pair of pliers and knock out the plane's Plexiglass housing so his cameras would have a free swing. He aiso learned that none of his cameras was really adequate for action pictures from a low-flying, speeding plane. He began to scheme a way to get around this difficulty.

Then, November 18, the bombing attacks on Tarawa and Makin Islands came to a head as the great invasion fleet moved in. They called it "D-Day," that third day of the assault on Tarawa, when bombing and shelling were followed up by the fleets of invasion barges. The water bugs waited offshore from the isiand, circling constantly, then moved in at signals, advancing upon the beachhead in waves. From overhead Smith aimed his cameras at the pattern of whitccrested wakes, at the smoking island with its wrecked piers, at the U. S. Marines who were on their way in to write another page in history. For the next five days the carrier was under attack almost nightly. They ate fast, waiting for "Betty Time," when the bombers came.

He wanted to go ashore--but the carrier's job was air cover for the landing and there was no place for a plane to land on Tarawa until the fifth day. Finally he got an O.K. from the Admiral and Lieut. Comdr. Frank Whitaker took him along in a TBF, landing on the hastily rebuilt airstrip almost on the tail of the first U. S. planes to come in.

"We're taking off in one hour. Be back here!" Whitaker told Smith who was already running towards an unused jeep. By fast talking he got permission to use it (how would a Marine lieutenant be able to foretell that Smith would run it into a shell hole and knock out the brake system in five minutes?).

Smith's Tarawa shooting cannot go on the "famous" list, for the Marine photographers who had landed two days before--some even taking color movies, two giving their lives--made the immortal pictures of that action. But he did record the gutted frames of planes, the Marine burying parties tossing sand on dead Japs, and in one shot the gray, macabre horror of a ruined pillbox overlooking a twisted Jap rifleman's body. And he did get back to the airstrip after a mad, hectic hour of stopping his jeep to read signs that warned, "Danger - Mines," careening through the wasted tree stumps of a battered stronghold. With his friend, Whitaker, squadron leader of the torpedo planes, he once again landed on his carrier "home," his Ikoflex and Medalist around his neck, his aerial Graphic in his hand. Only casualty: lens shade and filter, despite bayonet mount, lost from the Graphic in a dive-bombing attack.

But his plan for more specialized equipment really got going. First he talked someone into cutting special camera hatches--two holes in each side of the transparent Plexiglass housing--into TBF No. 13. Then, because his picturts were already proving of value to the Navy, he discovered that it wasn't so hard, after all, to borrow a Fairchild K-20 aerial camera. Before long, in strikes against Naru and Kavieng, Smith was having camera-fun, aiming the 50 shot, rapid-fire K-20 at Jap harbors. He had to learn a new camera geography--how to stop down to f 11 and set his shutter speed to 1/500 second, how to put on the minus-blue filter, how to load the special rolls of Tri-X and Super-XX film. Pictures on these flights? "Nothing much," says Smith.

The exact times and sequences of the jobs of a carrier cannot be set down, but somewhere in this time Gene took time off from carrier cruising to fly in a B-24 (Liberator) from an island down to Guadalcanal, carrying his Ikoflex and an extra Contax he had purchased from an officer. He also took part in a mixed military venture: Marines, flying in Army C-47 cargo planes, dropping ten tons of supplies by parachute to U. S. forces near Bougainville.

And then towards the end of January, back on his carrier, he felt the tension in the air as the gigantic armada moved in for the Marshalls invasion. On January 29 he flew in No. 13, his plane with the camera hatches over Kwajelein Atoll, aiming his K-20 at Jap airfields pockmarked with U. S. bomb hits, at Jap planes burning from U. S. incendiary bullets, at sinking Jap ships. Two of the four planes in his flight were shot down by Jap AA.

Then came Eniwetok, the day after. The going in the air-fighting was easier...pilots were soon to complain that there were no more targets. Once, after strafing and bombing a Jap freighter, Smith's pilot held up the attack for a minute so they could swing closer for more pictures (see pages 48-49).

On the morning of February 2 the planes were due to make a strike against Engebi Island. An Avenger carrying the Navy cameraman who was to record the bomb damage had trouble, went into tbe water. Whitaker, the squadron leader, asked Smith by radio if he would make pictures for the Navy that day (he was assigned to Lt. Dickson's plane). Raymond Clapper, writer aboard the carrier, was assigned to Whitaker's plane.

They headed for the already plastered Jap atoll. The flight had just finished bombing Engebi, and Smith had just finished taking a record picture of a hit on the island, when over the interplane radio he heard Whitaker call for his flight to close in behind him. Smith wasn't watching in that direction, but one of the four planes was directly under Whitaker's, and Whit didn't see it. He started to peel off, his wing dipping low, his Avenger side-slipping toward the fourth plane.

In his earphones Smith heard an excited pilot's voice: "Mid-air collision. Mid-air collision!" His own plane banked and turned, and as Smith lifted bis camera to the hole in the Plexiglass, he saw two bursts of flame on the water: Whitaker's plane with Clapper aboard, and the one that had been underneath. Gene's photograph of the death of the two TBF crews, including a squadron leader, and one of America's great newspaper writers, was just two puffs of smoke against a vast expanse of waves, but it was put into the newspicture pool and appeared in countless newspapers and Life magazine.

That night there was a quietness in the pilots' rooms aboard the carrier, and Gene Smith, who had eaten with Clapper in the officers' wardroom, who had been flying with Frank Whitaker for many weeks of the kind that are like years back home, was quiet in the darkroom as he developed his films. There was not much celebrating of the Marshalls' succcssful invasion.

About this time a whisper began to he heard in the ready room, where the pilots gathered while waiting for operational orders. That whisper was "Truk!"

Truk, called the Japanese Pearl Harbor, had been the subject of jokes before. To say "I'm taking off for Truk" was the height of something funny; it just wasn't done. Gene Smith, when you press him for the truth, will tell you that he, like the pilots with whom he sat for hours playing phonograph records in their spare time, was a little fearful at these whispers of "Truk! Truk! Truk!" Not even the ease of knocking out the Jap airfields at Eniwetok and Kwajalein did much to lessen that feeling of awe. Truk was still a dread word. But, officially, the carrier was just cruising around.

Sometimes they would be under attack by Jap planes, but the fighters and anti-aircraft fire from other ships kept the enemy planes so far away that the only pictures Smith got showed miniature ships on the horizon, surrounded by tiny puffs of smoke. Once or twice destroyers reported submarine contacts, but nothing happened. Once, at night, Gene photographed a distant scene: a Jap plane hit and falling to the sea in flames. His caption on that shot, when it came into the POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY office, read: "I could have made a better picture at home in the bathtub, with a pen-light."

The whispers about Truk grew louder, until one day the loudspeakers revealed that they were really going in for a raid on the Japanese bastion. No, not a raid--an all-out pounding. As the carriers with their escorts sailed toward the coral ring of Truk, someone noticed Smith, walking across the flight deck with an assortment of cameras around his neck and in his hands. He heard the remark about his weighted-down appearance: "If the ship goes down, I know who'll hit the bottom first!"

Between attacks, moving in for a strike, is a tense time aboard a carrier. Pilots sit around, waiting. Some of them play phonograph records. Gene had nearly a hundred of his own records along, and with two pilots formed a classical three-some. When all their records were pooled they had 350--a goodly number for idle hours. One day Smith wrote home, "Speaking of music, I have found what I believe to be the most powerfully dramatic music in the world. It is absolutely electrifying: the shrill bugle call sounding Torpedo Defense."

One day he noticed that his remaining Ikoflex was developing an ailment: a sprung shutter blade. Indoors, for flash shots, it was all right. Outside, in the bright tropic sun, it leaked light, and some streaked negatives are th€ result. Earlier, a Fairchild Aerial Camera repair expert at an island base had helped him refocus the Ikoflex, but this latest bug made things serious.

He took to carrying his newly purchased Contax (whose shutter speeds were all off) always around his neck, loaded with Plus-X. The Medalist he kept up on the bridge, and the sick Ikoflex in the aerologist's office up forward. Th€ aerial Graphic was developing troubles by this time and then he noticed a new affliction on all his cameras: fungus growing on the lenses. It took lens tissue and rye whiskey to clean them off!

The Truk strike changed from the waiting period of the jockeying approach into the fateful pre-dawn hour before. The big worry was whether they'd be attacked by land-based planes from Truk, but everything was clicking perfectly (except Gene's cameras). While it was still dark the Hellcat fighters took off. A little later the first flight of dive bombers started warming up on the after part of the flight deck. Lieutenant Dickson, with whom Gene was now flying steadily, smashed the elevator of his plane, so Smith couldn't fly with the early TBF's. He was eating an apple in the ready room when Dickson stuck his head in the door and said, "Come along, we're going."

Truk! It was being said out loud now, almost gleefully. Most of the Jap fighters had already been shot down, and although the great base was well protected by ack-ack, the planes that were attacking were coming back for more bombs and gas. But it was still Truk.

They flew in formation to the outer ring of coral, then started heading down. They could see the smoke of strafed airfields and burning ships in the harbor as the flight of four Avengers glided down. Dickson checked his target (the whole job was done so methodically that each flight had a section of the harbor assigned) and then the planes headed for a tanker in a torpedo run under fire.

At a thousand yards the "tin fish" started dropping: two didn't make proper power runs (as you can see by the crooked wakes they left in the picture on page 47), one missed but went on half a mile to hit another freighter, and the torpedo dropped by Dickson went smack into the tanker. Dickson cut to the left in a steep bank, then turned again for a moment as Smith shot the picture of the target with four torpedoes heading for it, then dived on a gunboat that was almost directly under them. For seconds the tracers from the plane and the gunboat's anti-aircraft guns were crossing in midair.

If Gene had any ideas about holding up the attack so he could make better pictures, he didn't mention them as the flight of TBFs, relatively unscathed, streaked back towards the carrier. He did take a look at the smoke spirals in the harbor and noted that six or seven Jap ships were burning in one corner, and he did think to himself, "What a swell guy it was who designed this K-20 for highspeed work." Like the others, he also thought, "My God, I've flown over Truk!" And in admiration of his Lieutenant Dickson who had worked his way up in twelve years from plane-pusher on a carrier's deck to pilot, he had still more ideas--for Dickson flew them in, and out again.

After Truk came other actions: the Marianas, where the hard-hitting carriers were beginning to run out of bombs and "air plot" decided to drop depth charges instead. At Tinian Island Smith took a shot as carefully composed as any of his peacetime ones for Parade or Life. In the foreground was a TBF--in the background was the airfield with three pillars of smoke climbing toward the Pacific sky. He knew by now that his non-focusing aerial camera would be sharp on planes as close as 80 feet. Just before he made this particular shot he discovered his flight was under attack by Zeros, but the fight was soon broken off by the Sons of___Heaven.

It was during the Marianas attack that Smith listened in on the inter-plane radio and heard the slow, easy-going voice of one of the pilots with whom he had pooled records say, "I'm hit in the shoulder and I'm going down." Smith's plane was so badly shot up it nearly crashed in landing.

It was at this time that Gene Smith's last working camera went haywire. The next day he climbed to the bridge to get his Medalist and discovered that someone had fooled with the levers and got it out of whack.

One day he heard that in the Eniwetok landing Sergeant Bushemi, who had helped him pack and who had laughingly taken Smith's kidding about being a character in "See Here, Private Hargrove," had been killed.

Not very long after this Smith's carrier headed for port and he began to get ready for a trip to the mainland for camera repairs and refitting. He had had his share of troubles: Once there was no mail for two months. Another time he discovered his color film had all gone bad from improper storage. Once he landed on his carrier, checked upon the plane, and found machine guns had put bullet holes in a neat bracket all around the place he stood. Another time he had to have several teeth pulled.

At the other end of Gene Smith's big adventure--the office where his negatives arrived from the Navy censors, we were having a satisfaction that Smith seldom had from his work: seeing 11 x 14 prints. It kept us saying, "Here's a guy who's proving what a camera can do in a war."

Lee Friedlander in Vanity Fair

2009-12-09T22:35:00.004-05:00

Lee Friedlander shoots on assignment for Vanity Fair, April 1983.

Imogen Cunningham-The Cook

2009-12-05T21:53:00.005-05:00

Random Photographic Ephemera-Faces

2009-12-01T22:14:00.006-05:00

Roswell Angier
From "A Kind of Life"

David Hockney
Portrait of one of the best film directors...ever

Shomei Tomatsu Retrospective

Evelyn Hofer
I meant to make mention of her death
but one thing, then another got in the way

Ken Ohara
From "One"

W. Eugene Smith and The Jazz Loft Project

2009-11-22T08:13:00.018-05:00

W. Eugene Smith at 4th floor window of 821 Sixth Avenue (ca. 1957).
(W. Eugene Smith © The Heirs of W. Eugene Smith)

By far the most exciting bit of photographic detritus that has lately washed up on our cultural shores is the Jazz Loft Project:

"From 1957 to 1965 legendary photographer W. Eugene Smith made approximately 4,000 hours of recordings on 1,741 reel-to-reel tapes and nearly 40,000 photographs in a loft building in Manhattan's wholesale flower district where major jazz musicians of the day gathered and played their music. Smith's work has remained in archives until now. The Jazz Loft Project is dedicated to uncovering the stories behind this legendary moment in American cultural history."

From these archives, a ten-part radio show has been compiled by Sarah Fishko for NPR. The seventh episode played today on "Weekend Edition." Check your local listings for the last parts. The introduction and the first seven episodes can be found here. Needless to say, there are all sorts of extra visual and aural bits and pieces from the project that can be seen there on the website as well.

In addition, in conjunction with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, Knopf is releasing a book of photographs by Smith with snippets of transcribed audio. The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957-1965 by Sam Stephenson is just fantastic and a hell of a lot of fun. The book features Smith photos of the jam sessions that seemed to be going on virtually every night through morning (it was considered rude to show up before 11 pm.) It seems that just about anyone connected with the jazz world in the late '50s showed up and Smith incessantly photographed them all and the environment around them.

(Left) Thelonious Monk and his Town Hall band in rehearsal, February 1959.
(Right) Zoot Sims (ca. 1957-1964).
(W. Eugene Smith © The Heirs of W. Eugene Smith)

Further, Smith seemed to have photographed everything that passed by his window as well. Half the photos in the book are ones shot from his window on the fourth floor--life drifting by, caught and pinned to the tarmac backdrop by Smith's telephoto lens.

White Rose Bar sign from the 4th floor window of 821 Sixth Avenue (ca. 1957-1964).

Not his best work certainly, but add to the mix reproductions of the reel-to-reel boxes of every imaginable manufacture covered with Smith's notes and indexing (one reel labeled: Hard, Grim. A dope tape, stereo), pawn shop tickets, letters and album covers as well as reminiscences by people who passed through and you start to get a remarkably detailed document of a thin slice of American life and culture at a very specific time.

The tapes (The Center for Documentary Studies)

And then, there are the tapes. They include legendary musicians talking shop; Smith discussing photography; Smith and other residents arguing living conditions; contemporary radio shows and tv mulling the concerns of the day; music live and recorded music re-recorded; junkies, hop-heads, dealers, thieves, drunks or walk-ons from the street talking shit; and, apparently, hours of nothing but the building breathing. The transcribed conversations provide a microscopic view of a fascinating subcultural community during a period of creative upheaval.

"Christmas Eve, 1959
Zoot Sims [saxophone] , pianist Mose Allison, saxophonist Pepper Adams, bassist Bill Crow, and others in the loft:
'Come on, Mose, one more tune, just one more.'
'I have to make it home. It's Christmas Eve.'
'It's actually Christmas Day now.'
'We won't have a piano player if you leave.'
'One more, come on, just one more.'"

These are the tiny shards of life that usually end up in the trash bin of history--shards that when assembled can transport you into another time and place with such vivid resonance that you could fool yourself into thinking that all these are your own memories.

Cindy Sherman shoots Fashion for Harper's Bazaar

2009-11-16T21:43:00.004-05:00

For the May, 1993, issue of Harper's Bazaar, Cindy Sherman was given her choice of clothes from the year's spring collection and let loose.

The New Cindy Sherman Collection
The artist photographs herself in a selection of '93 Spring designs, once again creating a cast of unconventional characters. By Jim Lewis

For this month's Bazaar, Cindy Sherman was offered her choice of clothes from among the Spring collections and invited to photograph them in any manner she chose. The results, which appear on these pages, are not fashion photographs but artworks that treat fashion like a dream, with a dream's strange logic and air of allegory.

It's not the first lime fashion and art photography have confronted each other; they make a natural pair, with each seeing in the other a reminder of itself. Both, after all, are fictions that acquire power by disguising themselves as facts--about beauty, about truth, and, above all, about desirability. Each incites the other to tell ever more mannered stories, holding out its own power of illusion as a goad. On the whole, then, the less constrained and more daring the artist's imagination, the fitter the match; so Surrealism, in particular; found a likely subject in the world of high style. At its height, Man Ray and Lee Miller were shooting fashion layouts, and both Joseph Cornell and Jean Cocleau published illustrations in this magazine. From the other side, Elsa Schiaparelli was designing clothes that matched the efforls of her art-world counterparts for drama and sheer eccentricity.

Sherman has a somewhat different aesthetic, but no artist of our time is better equipped to face the designers. It is not, after all, the first time she's taken a common form of picture making and turned it into something unfamiliar, by bringing to the surface everything that the original slyle repressed.

In the beginning she produced whal she called Untitled Film Stills (1977-80), a series of black-and-white photographs that staged scenes of women in imaginary melodramas, with Sherman herself made up to fit the various roles. They were tense, charged images, wilh an uncanny capacity to invoke half-remembered late-night movies.

The Stills had a powerful charm, and they established the artist as one to be reckoned with. But their beauty was so enigmatic and ambivalent that it was hard to tell whether they were meant as comments on cliches of femininity or examples of them. Sherman herself now says that she's uncomfortable with them: "They came too close to the real thing," she allows, and she was after less-conventional forms of visual pleasure. In fact, she says, she was "much more interested in what isn't beautiful, and finding beauty in that." So Sherman began leading her views deeper into the profound and difficult psychology of sexuality, decay, and the grotesque

At first she simply photographed herself in various monstrous guises, wearing a pig's snout, say, or with a massive, ruby-red tongue hanging from her mouth. Then, in her History Portraits from the late '80s, she reimagined Renaissance portraiture in photography, emphasizing the ugliness that the original painters had excised from their canvases. The body of work that followed was at once less pointed and more visceral: She started rooting through medical-supply catalogs, sending away for the artificial body parts upon which doctors-in-training practice surgery, and using them to create unsettling scenarios of dissolution and dismemberment. It was as if she'd taken her studies of the way the body is used to stage a persona and had broken it down into its constitutive parts, an arm's gesture here, a dissociated facial expression there: They were anatomies of fear, desire, disgust, and ecstasy.

The project presented here seems to draw upon everything Sherman has learned to date. To bring out the beauty behind the beauty we see in magazines, she's returned to impersonation; the women on the following pages are all played by Sherman herself-padded, bewigged, made up, and posing before a mirror that she sets beside her camera. The result is a series of tableaux vivants drawn from subconscious memories of movie shots, fashion trends, elements from the history of painting--that mass, consensual hallucination of Western culture that we all carry around in our minds

Sherman's eye for archetype is so sharp that the pictures look right at first. Anyway, one can have a good deal of fun trying to sort out the influences (is that Susie Wong? a Kewpie doll? Medusa?). And then, of course, they look quite wrong: One spots the dirty feet and blackened teeth; the expressions and postures of exhaustion, satiety, or suspicion; the bruised legs and protruding bellies

"I wanted to twist people's minds and then make them question their reactions," Sherman says. So in a way they're fun-house mirrors: Every viewer will bring to them his or her own beliefs about femininity and see them reflected back distorted and transformed, to the point that any approach to beauty seems possible. If the artist is after something more specific, she isn't saying. "I'd rather risk misinterpretation than hit people over the head with a message." The purpose of the pictures, after all, is to allow people to think for themselves: The context is fashion, and the medium is photography, but the goal is a freedom more basic and real than either.

Henri Cartier-Bresson in American Photography, 1947

2009-11-09T21:46:00.001-05:00

Henri Cartier-Bresson Takes It On the Chin

Here is a review of Henri Cartier-Bresson's first book. The critique ran in the July, 1947, issue of American Photography magazine. For those of delicate sensibilities, it's not pretty so precede at your own risk.

But first, some little historical context.

HCB by Unknown; Self-Portrait; George Hoyningen-Huene

Quick recap of the first half of HCB's life:
Born outside of Paris in 1908 into a typically bourgeois French family; first became obsessed with painting; studied art; met the Surrealists; 1931, went to Africa for a year to make a living shooting animals and selling the meat to the locals; contracted blackwater fever (really bad move); recuperated; discovered Munkacsi's work and decided to give up painting and hit the streets with his camera; worked in film as an actor, cameraman, director alongside Jean Renoir; WW2 broke out, he joined the army, was captured when the Germans swept through France, his third attempt at escaping succeeded and he spent the rest of the war working with the French underground.

Slipped in here and there were exhibits of his work. His first exhibition in NYC was in 1933 at the Julien Levy Gallery. His second show was also at Levy's space only this time it was work of his, Walker Evans' and Manuel Alvarez Bravo sharing the wall space.

Invite for the Evans, Alvarez Bravo and Cartier-Bresson show
at the Julien Levy gallery, 1935.

Digression:
Julien Levy (1906-81) was an interesting figure, prominent in the modern art world, and a modernist in the sense that he found visual pleasure not only in the 'high' arts but also in fields as wide-ranging as fashion, film, the decorative arts, performance and cartoons. He was a big champion of the surrealists and is probably best remembered as the host of the first exhibit of surrealist art in NYC.

Julian Levy by Jay Leyda c. 1932

He also had an especially strong affection for photography. In fact, his inaugural show at his first gallery space in NYC in 1931 was an homage to Stieglitz that included work by Mathew Brady, Gertrude Kasebier, Charles Sheeler, Edward Steichen, Paul Strand, Clarence White and Stieglitz. Over the next year, he presented solo shows of work by Man Ray, Bernice Abbot, Lee Miller, George Platt Lynes as well as a dual show of work by Nadar and Atget. Despite being the preeminent dealer of modern art in New York throughout the 1940s, he found photography a hard sell and gradually lost his enthusiasm for the medium.

HCB by Arnold Newman, 1947; Ernst Haas; Lisl Steiner, 1961

Meanwhile:
Toward the end of the war Cartier-Bresson's death was reported in the U.S.A. The Museum of Modern Art, NYC, started to prepare a posthumous show of his photographs. When his death was found to have been greatly exaggerated, he was invited to New York to work with MoMA on what would be his third US show and his first museum exhibit. (February 4-April 6, 1947.)

This book was published in conjunction with the show. American Photography reviewed it in their July, 1947, issue. They didn't like it.

What follows is the text of the review and at the end of this post are the pages from the magazine themselves.

THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON, text by Lincoln Kirstein and Beaumont Newhall, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1947. 56 pages, 41 plates, stiff paper bound, $2.00.

Henri Cartier-Bresson is said to be the leading European exponent of a group of contemporary photographers who are united towards formulating a new approach to deliberate photography. The qualifications for membership in this super-artistic movement consist of a peculiar assortment of personality traits, a profound lack of knowledge of photographic techniques, a distaste for so-called "salon" photography and a naive, egoistic-motivated willingness to be a party to the obtuse rantings of associates of The Museum of Modern Art. The photographs of Cartier-Bresson include a number of emotionally appealing examples that speak well for his artistic insight. Sprinkled among these are many common-place, unimpressive pictures that only add confusion to any serious attempt to understand his style. But an approach to the understanding of his work is certain to be less confused if based on a study of his pictures, rather than on the explanatory texts written by Messrs. Kirstein and Newhall. It is a sad commentary on the development of modern photography when promising young amateurs are exposed to such superficial, arty statements like, "Because Cartier-Bresson has developed technique to the point of almost instinctive reaction, he cannot tell you the film, lens and shutter settings, and other technical minutiae of each photograph he has made. In judging the exposure which is to be given he uses the film speed recommended by the expert laboratory technicians who develop his film. In this way maximum quality of shadow detail, contrast, and fineness of grain is assured." This is so utterly ridiculous that there is no wonder that sensible photographers question the sincerity of the so-called modernists. Continuing, the text includes even more far-fetched statements. "When it comes to making the final print he works in the darkroom. He alone is able to recreate the tonal values which he visualized at the time of exposure." Such drivel shows a total lack of understanding of the photographic process. If the modern trend for straightforward photography is to survive it had better rid itself of the uninformed charlatans who attempt to make it something that it is not.

Now, for fun, contrast that with a review of a book they did like:

AMERICA'S WILLIAMSBURG, by Gerald Horton Bath, photographs by Wendell MacRae, published by Colonial Williamsburg, Inc., Williamsburg, Va., 1946. 48 pages 7 by 8½ inches, many illustrations printed by Photogravure and Color Company, price 65 cents, postage included.

This is a most attractive booklet which tells why and how the historic capital of Virginia has been restored to its eighteenth century appearance by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. There are photographs on every page, with explanatory captions, and there is the story of Williamsburg as it was when it was the capital of one of the most influential of all of England's thirteen American colonies--as it became later, during the Revolutionary War, when the capital was moved to Richmond - and as it is now, after its restoration. There is a lot of very interesting subject material for the enthusiastic amateur photographer to be found in and around Williamsburg, and anyone who has not yet visited this unique Southern city should by all means make an effort to do so as soon as possible. Its main street, Duke of Gloucester Street, was described by the late President Roosevelt as "the most historic avenue in all America." Those who are interested in architecture will find in restored Williamsburg a perfect exhibition of painstaking research and skillful technique. For garden lovers it is an unparalleled delight. Artists and photographers will see it as an opportunity that is often hoped for but seldom found, and for those who are interested in antiques it is an adventure of a lifetime.

Here are some pages from the Williamsburg book, as I just happen to have a copy.

The pages from the American Photography, July, 1947.

The page preceding the Cartier-Bresson review? A Leica ad of course.

Photographers Have to Make a Living Too, Part 6

2009-11-05T19:24:00.025-05:00

Evans, Weston, McGinley and Meyerowitz
In Advertisements for All Sorts of Stuff

Joel Meyerowitz for Epson printers

PDN, October, 2005
You can find more examples from this campaign here and here.

Ryan McGinley by Jurgen Teller for Marc Jacobs

Details, March, 2009

Details, January, 2009

Edward Weston for freezers?

PDN

Walker Evans images in an advertisement
For Checkered Past Records

Communication Arts, 1999 Advertising Annual

Roy DeCarava Passes Away

2009-11-01T08:54:00.021-05:00

Roy DeCarava, 1996 By Sherry Turner DeCarava

Roy DeCarava died last Tuesday. I was working on a post of ephemera from his career but had not written a bio for it. Now, I'll just refer you to the New York Times obituary and run the ephemera.

DeCarava's first major museum show was at the Studio Museum of Harlem, NYC. His first retrospective was at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, in 1975. What follows is the publication released in conjunction with that show. It's 76 pages so I haven't scanned the whole booklet.

Stiff wraps, 8.5 x 8.5 inches, saddle-stiched, 76 pages, 1976

The show that brought him the attention of the larger audience he deserved was the retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, in 1996. There was a nice catalog published to accompany the exhibit and this was the brochure handed out at the museum.

5.25 x 8.5 inches, accordion-style fold unfolds to 26.25 x 8.5 inches with 5 panels per side, 1996

You can see an interview by Charlie Rose here with DeCarava around the time of the MoMA retrospective.

And again, around the same time, he did an interview with NPR.

Postcard, 6 x 4.25 inches, 2004

Card stock, 5.75 x 8.5 inches, unfolds twice to produce a 17.25 x 8.5 invite, 2006

Glossy photo-printer paper, 4 x 6 inches, 2006

In 2006, Roy DeCarava was awarded a National Medal of Arts by then President George Bush.

Caption that accompanied the above photo: 2006 National Medal of Arts recipient and photographer Roy R. DeCarava accepts his award from President and Mrs. Laura Bush in an Oval Office ceremony on November 9, 2006. Mr. DeCarava's citation reads, "In the midst of the Civil Rights movement, his revealing work seized the attention of our Nation while displaying the dignity and determination of his subjects." White House photo by Paul Morse.

Robert Frank and Politics

2009-10-25T07:58:00.002-04:00

Robert Frank, 1994, by Barry Kornbluh/Kahmann Gallery, Amsterdam

Robert Frank photographed at the 1984 Democratic Convention, San Francisco, on assignment for California magazine. A selection appeared in the November, 1984, issue of American Photographer, which follows.

Captions: top, Evangelical group;
bottom, Photographer shoots a Japanese woman commemorating the Hiroshima bombing

Captions: top left, A young man on his way
to rock and roll concert by "The Dead Kennedys";
bottom left, One of many Democratic parties;
right, Jesse Jackson supporter

Captions: left, Street photographer;
top right, Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley;
bottom right, Parking lot outside Moscone Center

MoMA Bulletin, 1952

2009-10-18T20:06:00.009-04:00

Museum of Modern Art, NYC, Bulletin, Vol. xix, No. 4, 1952, devoted to photography.

W. Eugene Smith in Pop Photo

2009-10-14T19:38:00.007-04:00

Gene Smith shot this photograph that ran on the cover of the November, 1945, issue of Popular Photography. By November of '45, Smith was convalescing in the hospital, recovering from shrapnel wounds to his face. This photo was shot the year before; presumably while home from the Pacific. Pretty cool image for the time.

Here is the text from the above page:

THE NOVEMBER COVER
W. Eugene Smith entitles his picture of Miss Hazel Scott "The Hot Spark of the Blues." He made the picture at Cafe Society Uptown in New York, about a year ago, when Miss Scott was appearing there.
Smith writes that the picture "was shot from a tripod sitting on the edge of the top of the piano. The piano was reverberating with the pounding it was receiving most of the time I was setting up the camera." He was trying to show Miss Scott as a great artist of the piano, and in doing so, he thinks he had "to slaughter the looks of the young lady."
The camera he used was a 4x5 Speed Graphic with a 5-1/4 inch f 4.5 Zeiss Tessar lens. The exposure was made on Kodachrome film, Type B, with 6 flashbulbs. A 2A (yellow conversion) filter was used, and the picture was taken open flash with the lens stopped down to f 16.

Interestingly, this following item is on the next page. It's from a list of gossip items about photographers:

This is positively the last story (I promise) on W. EUGENE SMITH and his adventures in the hospital following his injury on Okinawa, but everyone who knows "Idea Man" FRED SPARKS will appreciate it. When Gene was in the hospital at Guam he had many visitors, but he was too weak to do much more than lift his hand slightly in recognition. When Sparks was sent as a Look correspondent to the Pacific theater, he stopped at Guam, poked his head in the door of Gene's room. Gene took one quick look and said painfully: "I want to go back to Okinawa."

Not only did Gene Smith not get back to Okinawa but he didn't even shoot for the two years it took him to recuperate from his wounds and the subsequent plastic surgery.

An Envelope

2009-10-11T22:30:00.002-04:00

Irving Penn Dies at 92

2009-10-07T21:40:00.007-04:00

Irving Penn died today at the age of 92. The obit in the New York Times is long and detailed. For years I've had a subscription to Vogue for one reason only and that was to see the intermittent Penn photos. (To their credit, the editors did seem to try to get him in as often as possible.)

The door to his studio on 5th Ave., Manhattan

(top, l to r)
Penn, 1944, in the American Field Service; self portrait, nd;
with Her Royal Highness Princess Désirée, 1985,
at the Hassalblad Awards ceremony honoring Penn

(bottom, l to r)
Self portraits: 1986, 1992, 1993, 1993

Elliott Erwitt Exhibition Cards

2009-10-06T21:31:00.014-04:00

Erwitt by D. Lykes Keenan

James Danziger Gallery, NYC
c. 1989 - 1993
11.75 x 8.5 inch stiff card
folded once to create a 5.75 x 8.25 card that opens horizontally

Edwynn Houk Gallery, NYC
2000
5 x 7 inch stiff card

Robert Koch Gallery, NYC
2001
5 x 7 inch stiff card

Book Signing at Eyestorm Gallery, NYC
2001
4.25 x 6 inch post card

HackelBury Fine Art, London
2001
11.75 x 8.25 inch stiff card
folded once to create a 5.75 x 8.25 card that opens horizontally

Leica Gallery, NYC
2004
16.5 x 5.5 inch stiff card
folded once to create a 8.25 x 5.5 inch card that opens horizontally
(I doubt that this is of any interest to anyone, but, there are two versions of this card,
where the front and back photos have been reversed.)

Edwynn Houk Gallery, NYC
2006
7 x 5 inch stiff card

Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR
2007
Poster

Erwitt can be a humorous guy. For years he has shot his own holiday card greeting cards. I've seen a couple and they're funny. If anyone has any of these, please scan them and send them to me. I'd like to gather the whole lot and display them here. And if anyone knows when the first one was made or anything else about them, do tell. Thanks.

Erwitt by Alec Soth

More Robert Frank

2009-10-01T18:28:00.018-04:00

Robert Frank By John Cohen/Deborah Bell Photographs

And yet more.

The new Robert Frank documentary;
an interview with the director of the documentary;
and Bob on the radio.
Though not necessarily in that order.

FOLLOWING BOB'S TIRE TRACKS In New York City last night, a documentary opened called "An American Journey: Revisiting Robert Frank's The Americans." In it, the filmmaker Philippe Seclier, retraces Frank's route, along which he made the 27,000 images that were eventually whittled down to the 83 we know from the book. The press release (edited) explains:

"An American Journey" explores both the origins and resonance of Robert Frank's seminal photography book, The Americans. More than 50 years ago, in 1958, The Americans was published to great acclaim--as well as to negative reviews that faulted the Swiss-born Frank's vision of a nation awash in poverty, racism and postwar jingoism. Today it is impossible to overstate the influence of this groundbreaking work. "An American Journey" travels back to the small towns and rural communities the photographer immortalized–exploring the world as Frank saw it and as it survives today.

There are many reviews of the film online but for the most part they agree that it will mostly appeal to Frankoholics or Photoephemeratics. This paragraph, from a review by Daniel Eagan of Reuters, sums up the prevailing wisdom:

In "An American Journey," French photographer and filmmaker Philippe Seclier sets out to document not the book itself, but the conditions and characters that led to its creation. Those already familiar with The Americans may gain some insights into Frank's creative process. Others will be faced with an oblique, often exasperating road trip that never seems to end. That weakness will limit the film's appeal beyond Frank aficionados.

The insights would be worth it. Regardless, it's only playing until Tuesday, October 6 at the Film Forum so get your tickets now. Also, and this may be more the treat, the documentary is being shown with Helen Levitt's "In the Street," shot in East Harlem in the late 1940s by Levitt, Janice Loeb and James Agee. It's only about 15 minutes but it's supposed to be quite wonderful.

You can find showtimes at the Film Forum's website and while you're there you can see a couple of clips to whet your appetite.

FRANK ON THE RADIO Robert Frank and Jeff Rosenheim, curator of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Department of Photographs, were interviewed by Leonard Lopate Tuesday, September 29, and it is surprisingly interesting. I only say "surprisingly" because the times I've seen Frank interviewed I walked away with the notion that he really didn't have much to say anymore. Instead, it may be that he wasn't asked the right questions. It's worth the half hour of your time.

Philippe Seclier

INTERVIEW WITH THE DIRECTOR The director of "An American Journey: Revisiting Robert Frank's The Americans" is a French journalist named Philippe Seclier. Beside this film, he has edited two photographic books. He has also made a documentary on the photographer Marc Riboud, collaborated with the Magnum Agency on a book celebrating their 60th anniversary, and, since 2007, has been working with French photographer/filmmaker Raymond Depardon on a variety of projects. He was interviewed by Sharon Abella from fest21.com, a film festival social networking site.

Sharon Abella: Robert Frank is thought of as one of the greatest living masters of photography. How did you decide to make a film about him?
Phillipe Seclier: It's a long story. I traveled to the USA in 1984, and learned a lot about American culture, theater, movies, paintings and American photography. In 2005, I was looking to publish a book of photographs, "La Longue Route de Sable", I made based on the story by Italian filmmaker, Pier Paolo Pasolini. The photos are from a trip I took throughout the Italian coast following in the footsteps of Pasolini. Pasolini made the film in 1959, and I made the same trip in 2001. After publishing the book in France and Italy, I decided to do another project, but I didn't want to do another book of photography, because it was so easy.

I had visited the "Storylines" exhibition at "The Tate Modern" in London by Robert Frank, and saw a special room called, "The Americans." Of course, I knew his work, and his book. Also the first time I went to the USA , I was very impressed with Ansel Adams, and Edward Weston. It was my second trip I took to the USA, when I discovered Robert Frank, and when I was in the special room, at "The Tate Modern" with "The Americans" exhibition by Robert Frank, it was the kick, and I decided to spend a lot of time in the USA to try to find the places where Robert Frank took his photographs. I tried to find everything in the book, to meet all the people who knew everything about the book, spoke to curators, photographers, and painters. I began this project in 2005 in Houston. I decided to take the road to make the same trip he made 50 years ago with a Guggenheim fellowship. I was alone at the beginning of this project. I had no grounds, no fellowship, no producer, at the beginning. It was very odd, but I decided to do it, because I thought it was a unique way to try to arrive at the finish. But after four years, there were a lot of ups and downs, like a mountain range, but I never stopped searching. I tried to find everything. It took four years, 15,000 miles, 70 hours of footage, and 30-40 interviews.

SA: What is your favorite Robert Frank story?
PS: The fact that he was very courageous to make this project. Because I think it was difficult taking photographs during the 1950's, when you are an outsider, a foreigner, not an American. He was arriving to America in 1947, going to South America for one year, then going to Europe, it was his first trip to America, and he was very courageous. Of course, He had a grant, but it's not enough just to have a grant, you need to have a good eye and to be very courageous.

SA: Do you have a favorite photograph?
PS: It's very hard, because in "The Americans" book there are 83 photographs, Robert Frank took approximately 20,000 photos, selected 1000 photos, then narrowed it down to 83. He printed them himself, and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit opening September 22nd, you can view a lot of his photos. It's difficult to pick just one, but I appreciate the cover. I went to New Orleans to try to find out more because this is an iconic photograph about segregation. When I decided to make this film, I knew it was necessary for me to go to Hoboken, NJ. I love the two women holding the flag. Another important photograph was from inside the hotel window in Butte, Montana. I went to try to find the flag, and met Miss Molboy, who is now 65, In Butte, it's the only image from a hotel view, and the hotel is the spirit of the trip. I was very lucky to meet the owner of the hotel who gave me the opportunity to enter inside the room, and another important photo, I heard about this black woman, on the motorcycle in Indianapolis, and I met her, her husband died 10 years ago. and it was very emotional to meet her, and the last one was in Detroit, a very iconic photograph with white and black people, because I think it's an image of segregation during the 50's. There are a lot of special images.

SA: Did anything out of the ordinary happen when you retraced his footsteps? Did you get pulled over, did you notice any racial problems in rural America? Robert had been arrested at one point in the film.
PS: No, no problems, traveling in the USA is very easy, and sometimes it is very hard when you are alone, but no, I had no problem with that. I was very lucky to meet people who helped me a lot. I met the policeman where he was arrested and he was very friendly, and spoke a lot a lot about the fact that it was horrific to be arrested 50 years ago, and to stay in jail maybe a few hours. It was horrific.

SA: Robert Frank was a European foreigner looking into America, and you are as well, how does that shape your point of view?
PS: I don't know if an American filmmaker can make this film. It is a good opportunity to have the distance when you are an outsider to focus on the subject, like this book and this country. Some curators explained that very well in the film, the fact that he was an outsider was very important. At the same time, it was very hard for him because critics were very upset when they discovered this book. That it was not about the American dream with beautiful landscape and the Statue of Liberty, it was about how difficult it is to live in this country for people and especially for poor people. This book talked about the rich/poor, black/white, racism/segregation, and religion. The country has changed, the time has changed, but sometimes we see history repeating itself, with times like Hurricane Katrina, we see the difficulty blacks face. That was the target of the film to make an observation between two periods and to make the link between those two periods.

SA: What are Robert Frank's feelings about the film? Does he know about it? Was there anything he didn't want to show or say?
PS: I met him for the first time 2 years ago in Germany with his publisher, Gerhard Steidl, who published The Americans. It was very funny because maybe he understood I had no support in making this film like he was 50 years ago, so after meeting him, he pushed me to finish the film. He was very appreciative that I found the black woman, because for him it was important to know she was still alive, and she talked about her husband. He was very friendly with me. He was in Washington, DC at The National Gallery of Art exhibition, about his book Robert Frank/The Americans which we will welcome at Metropolitan Museum of Art here. He saw the film in January, and I think he appreciates the film.

When you decide to make a documentary like this film, it's impossible to believe it's over and reading to be shown at The Film Forum. It's an experience , a large part of your life. Trying to go into the footsteps of a maestro of photography. Now the film is finished , I am very happy.

SA: What's next?
PS: It's difficult to imagine another film on photography after this one, because this book is very important. I try maybe to do something with abstract art, because I am very passionate about American Abstract art. It's too early to decide something. I need to wait to sort out the film to be sure it grows up and makes it's own life.

Enough Robert Frank

2009-09-27T20:13:00.000-04:00

Ed Ruscha and Jack Kerouac On the Road Together

Oh, enough Robert Frank...for the moment. (I've actually got lots more Frank-related stuff but let's take a break.)

For those unaffected by the economic downturn, here's a treat from Steidl:

Jack Kerouac On the Road
by Ed Ruscha

Ruscha's personal affinity with Kerouac's seminal novel On the Road has been wonderfully resolved in this limited edition book. Ruscha has designed the book, illustrating Kerouac's text with his own photographs. The text is printed in Letterpress on 220g Hahnemühle paper and every one of the 55 photo-plates is blind embossed and tipped in by hand to create an exquisite and original edition of On the Road.

Details
• Published by Steidl with Gagosian Gallery
• 55 Photos on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper tipped in by hand.
• 228 pages
• 44.5 cm x 32.5 cm
• Leather-bound hardcover delivered in a leather-covered slipcase
• Limited edition of 350 copies, 35 APs and 5 PPs, signed and numbered by Ed Ruscha
• ISBN: 978-3-86521-947-3
• Publication date: October 2009

Price
• UK £6,250.00
• US $10,000.00
• EC €7,200.00

You can order the book here. I'm thinking of getting three copies. I kinda think maybe it'll be a collector's item someday, maybe.

This sells for more than his most expensive self-published books.

I'm just saying...

All Bob, All the Time: More Frank

2009-09-26T09:22:00.000-04:00

Frankophelia

Frank by Allen Ginsberg, 1988

This is a fun little Frank-related item from NPR.

Robert Frank's Elevator Girl Sees Herself Years Later

August 30, 2009: One of photographer Robert Frank's most famous images aroused a particular interest from his friend, beat writer Jack Kerouac.

In his introduction to Frank's book of photos The Americans, Kerouac writes, "That little ole lonely elevator girl looking up sighing in an elevator full of blurred demons, what's her name & address?"

Now we know.

Today, Sharon Collins lives in San Francisco. About 10 years ago she visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and found herself drawn to a particular photo — the same photo Jack Kerouac wrote about.

"I stood in front of this particular photograph for probably a full five minutes, not knowing why I was staring at it," she says. "And then it really dawned on me that the girl in the picture was me."

The iconic shot shows a young girl, pressing an elevator button, looking up with an unreadable expression.

At the time, her name was Sharon Goldstein, growing up in Miami Beach. At fifteen, she got a summer job as an elevator girl at the Sherry Frontenac Hotel. She says the hotel was always full of tourists, and many of them had cameras. Although she wishes she remembers this particular tourist, she doesn't. But she pieced together what happened by looking at Frank's contact sheet.

"Robert Frank took about four photos of me without a flash in the elevator. I didn't know he was taking them. And then when the elevator emptied of its 'blurred demons,'" she says, "he asked me to turn around and smile at the camera. And I flashed a smile, put my hands on my hips. I hammed it up for about eight or ten frames."

But from the single image that was chosen for The Americans, Kerouac guessed she was lonely. Collins thinks he was pretty close.

"He saw in me something that most people didn't see. I have a big smile and a big laugh, and I'm usually pretty funny. So people see one thing in me. And I suspect Robert Frank and Jack Kerouac saw something that was deeper. That only people who were really close to me can see. It's not necessarily loneliness, it's ... dreaminess." ©NPR

Sharon Goldstein today, by Ian Padgham/SFMOMA

NPR has a couple more articles related to the Robert Frank exhibit "Looking In" that aired when it was at MOMA, SF.

'The Americans': The Book That Changed Photography

Frank's 'Americans,' Still Revelatory After 50 Years

Other recent meditations on Frank and the book:

America, Captured in a Flash by Holland Cotter, NY Times

Road Show by Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

Furthermore, Robert Frank will be at the MET, NYC, for "An Evening with Robert Frank" on Friday, October 9, 2009, at 6:00 PM. (Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, $23.00)

Now, this is not necessarily a good thing, given Frank's last two public appearances in New York City. Both were disappointments in one way or another. The advantage this particular evening has over the others is that academics will be moderating and asking the questions. Jeff L. Rosenheim, Curator, Department of Photographs, MET, and Sarah Greenough, Senior Curator of Photographs, National Gallery of Art, Washington, have the honor of presenting the performance and I think there should be a higher level of conversation. Also, the event is not being held at the main Public Library on Fifth Avenue; always a plus.

Now the bad news:

THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT. STANDING ROOM TICKETS WILL GO ON SALE AT THE BOX OFFICE BEGINNING ONE HOUR PRIOR TO THE EVENT.

Robert Frank in Fortune magazine

2009-09-24T19:13:00.003-04:00

Walker Evans was an associate editor at Fortune from 1945 to 1965. He commissioned Robert Frank to do this photo-essay for the magazine.

Robert Frank and The Americans

2009-09-23T21:02:00.002-04:00

In honor of the opening of the Robert Frank's "Looking In" exhibit, September 22, at the Met, NYC, here's a spread of "Never-Before-Seen" photos from The Americans.

(The text of the intro)

The Americans Revisited

In the post- "Family of Man" euphoria of the late 1950s, when the photographer was celebrated as the empathic bearer of brotherly love, the publication of Robert Frank's The Americans seemed an ungrateful gesture, at best. In the chronicle of his now legendary cross-country journey of 1955-56, the Swiss-born photographer brought back images of an automobile-obsessed populace, some bored by a surfeit of abundance, others disappointed by the unrelieved burden of poverty, and all uncomfortable in their social, economic and racial relationships.

Photographing in large cities and nondescript places in between, Frank shattered a precious, cosmetic fantasy of a post-war America years before her promising young novelists were sober enough to confront it. The American dream was not to be seen through Frank's viewfinder. In his intentional disregard for conventional pictorial composition, lighting, sharp focus and fine print quality, Frank's critics found little more than willful distortion by a talented photographer acting as if he did not know how to operate a camera.

But Frank withstood his critics and denied any a priori condemnation of his adopted country. "I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference," he wrote in 1958 just before the publication of Les Américains in Paris. "Opinion often consists of a kind of criticism. But criticism can come out of love. It is important to see what is invisible to others–perhaps the look of hope or the look of sadness." For his friend, Jack Kerouac, it was the sadness that made Frank's pictures the perfect embodiment of the "potry" of the Beat Generation. "With that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand," wrote Kerouac, "he sucked a sad poem right out of America."

Two decades, several wars and countless photographic images later, we have seen sadder pictures. The content of Frank's imagery now appears more expected than shocking. Today it is his technical indiscretions–unacceptable in the fifties–that endear him to an emerging generation of modernists continuously striving to define the expanding frontiers of the medium. The photographs seen here, accompanied by Jack Kerouac's ramblings from On The Road, are from that original odyssey but never have been published before. They will be exhibited at Venice this month. –Nancy Stevens