It will get better, despite the government.

It seems more than appropriate to share a depression era photograph of Norma Shearer, by the great Cecil Beaton, at a time when America is leading the world into a massive depression, one likely to compete with the Big One for the worst ever.

The coming depression is a good thing, contrary to what our ‘business as usual’ leaders tell us. America is over-levered, over-retailed, over-car’d, over-banked, over-housed, over-medicated, over-lawyered and over-fed. We need a large percentage of the related businesses to fail, bringing down inflation and encouraging savings and capital formation. Because, sure as hell, if you don’t provide for yourself you know the government will not. And I can assure you that no conceivable form of government stimulus will fix what ails us until a broad swath of bankruptcies cleans the Augean stables known as American Retail and Residential Housing. Face it – most people are designed to rent, not own. And no one needs a new iPod.

So enjoy the picture, look forward to going to the movies for $1.50 (it’s called Netflix and you don’t have to drive your foul SUV to see one), forget the vacations (you have had too many as it is) and save your money. You are going to need it.

Greek classicism.

Vionnet dress with ruffle skirt, 1934

Take the Greek classicism of the great French dressmaker Madeleine Vionnet (1876-1975) and marry it to the no less classical photography of George Hoyningen-Huene and you have a timeless combination of life and art. So it hardly needs adding that the best gift this Christmas brought along was Betty Kirke’s definitive book Vionnet which my grandparent’s gave me this past December 25th.

Not only an orgy of photography by Hoyningen-Huene, Penn, Steichen, Beaton, Horst and other greats, this very large format book includes detailed patterns for many of the seemingly simple, yet highly skilled, creations of this greatest of clothes designers.

War photographer.

It is appropriate that this fine documentary is introduced by that other famous lover of danger, CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour. For decades now James Nachtwey has found it impossible to stay away from conflict. Where most of us are happy reading the Sunday cartoons, Nachtwey is risking his life at the frontlines of whatever conflict ails the world on any given day. As he sadly explains, he is not about to run out of photographic opportunities.

Nachtwey comes over as a compassionate, caring individual who manages to establish close rapport with his subjects, allowing him that special close-up perspective which distinguishes his pictures. Appropriately, the documentary starts with Robert Capa’s famous dictum “If your photos aren’t good enough, you are not close enough”. Nachtwey is always close to the action.

One remarkable aspect of this piece is that Nachtwey uses a video camera – perched on his shoulder, I would guess – while taking his stills, so that you get pretty much the photographer’s view of the action, right down to the LCD panel atop his camera. It’s a little disconcerting how intrusive that seems but once you hear Nachtwey explain how he works with his subjects – and why he seems invisible to them – you understand.

This is a fine documentary but be warned that many of the pictures are very, vary hard to stomach, so if you get queasy at the sight of war pictures you should really avoid this film.

Nachtwey is showing the world what it chooses not to see. Gripping viewing.

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Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe – mentor and parasite?

This documentary is really much more about the rich curator and collector Sam Wagstaff than about the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, whose tediously mediocre output is testimony to the power of marketing over quality. Repeat the lie often enough and people desperately searching for an opinion to fill the void of their own will beat a path to your door.

Mediocre and tedious as Mapplethorpe’s work may be, it does not detract from Wagstaff’s vision. The latter is best known for amassing a vast collection of vintage photographic images dating back to the very start of photography, a collection which he eventually sold to the Getty Museum, a great sponsor of photography. Not that he needed the money as the Wagstaffs were New York monied elite, but the Getty obviously agreed with his discriminating eye.

Quite why a man with film star looks surrounded by gorgeous fawning women would take the path he did I will leave you to figure out, for I will never understand it, but suffice it to say that his lifestyle choices resulted in a premature death at age 66, almost certainly the result of his protegé’s proclivities which saw them both dead within 2 years of one another.

No matter. Wagstaff made photography collectible and we should all be grateful for that. The documentary is fun to watch and heaps well deserved praise on a visionary photography collector and curator.