Monthly Archives: February 2011

To get ahead ….

February 19, 2011Paintings, PhotographsThomas Pindelski

…. get a hat.

“To get ahead, get a hat” was a famous slogan of men’s hat makers in the middle of the last century when every respectable man wore a hat. Come to think of it, a lot of not-very-respectable guys wore them, too.

Speaking for myself, I wear a hat, more correctly mostly a cap, 365 days in the average year, more in a leap year. My choice is one of many English Tweed (sorry, Scottish Tweed) caps in my collection, though now and then you might find me under a Trilby or, on particularly eccentric days, a Sherlock Holmes Deerstalker. This one is ideal for taking street snaps as everyone writes you off as a harmless nut which, of course, you are. Summer, as often as not, finds me sporting a Borsalino linen number and I confess to always having had a hankering for a straw boater but have yet to own one. For years you could have found a Greek fisherman’s number gracing the old noggin and if I ever owned a bowler I am most certainly not admitting that here.

The milliner is a special kind of hat maker, catering solely to the gentler sex. No finer expression of his work – or his clientele – exists outside Degas’s priceless renditions.

And it’s not like he did it once. There are many renditions.

So show me a hat shop and you can bet on one thing. I’m going inside.

Here’s one in San Francisco’s Little Italy and, yes, you know who I was thinking of:

In the hat shop. Panasonic G1, kit lens 1/3rd sec., f/6.3. ISO 320.

1/3rd second, hand held? Yup. Sometimes you get lucky, and no way I was letting this one get away. No time to mess with the wretched little buttons on the Panny to increase the ISO, so 1/3rd it was. Snapped at the Goorin Brothers Hat Shop on Washington Square in Little Italy, San Francisco, which has been selling hats since 1895, when Degas was still doing his thing.

Helen Levitt

February 18, 2011PhotographersThomas Pindelski

A New York street snapper.

A friend of the blog pointed me to a Helen Levitt show at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University in Palo Alto and I finally manage to toddle along. The show, named “In a New York Minute”, is worth attending if you can make it; unlike the overblown Cartier-Bresson one earlier this month at SF MOMA, this one has relatively few pictures on display and leaves you wanting more. That’s how it should be done. Plus you can see a great collection of Rodin sculptures and tour the Stanford campus while you are there.

The distinguishing feature of Levitt’s work is that it is never less than witty. Often it’s laugh-out-loud funny. You could never accuse HCB’s output of that.

You can read Levitt’s biography here. The theft of many of her color originals from her home only further emphasizes the need for every photographer to have multiple back-ups – there is no excuse in a digital age not to, using technology not available to Levitt.

Though there’s a paperback of Levitt’s work available for browsing in the gallery, their bookshop only has a very costly $60 hardback of her work. Duh! I asked the salesperson and she didn’t even know there was a paperback ….

No matter. Do the smart thing and order the same hardback from Amazon for much less. It’s beautifully printed and an essential addition to any street photography fan’s book library. I just ordered one of the last ones, so you may have to wait! But a search of remaindered booksellers will get you there for a like price.

Levitt’s work often features children and many of the images in the show are in color, which only adds to their impact. Color is another thing largely missing from HCB’s work which, if you have seen his color snaps, is just as well.

* * * * *

Here’s a typical Levitt photo, full of wit and whimsy:

The show is not lacking in humor either. There are but two props, visible in the following snaps, which I took once the ever watchful guard’s back was turned. (Excuse me, but why exactly are they ‘guarding’ machine made prints?) If you want to get a camera in there, don’t take a backpack as they make you check those. My shoulder bag, Panny G1 and all, survived the strip search ….

All snaps on the Panasonic G1 with the Olympus 9-18mm MFT superwide zoom at 9mm and at ISO 1600. In truth, that’s really pushing the poor little sensor in the G1 which starts emitting creaking sounds at anything much over ISO 400, but it works at a pinch when the light is really low. Levitt – and HCB – would have loved it!

Stanford

February 17, 2011ArchitectureThomas Pindelski

What a university should be.

It’s academic week here! After the sheer architectural awfulness of UCSF Mission Bay profiled earlier, take a look at Stanford in Palo Alto, CA.

The apocryphal story has it that Leland Stanford, his fortune in nineteenth century US rail secure, offered a large chunk of it to Harvard as an endowment. When this scruffy looking Californian was refused so much as an audience with the Dean he left in a huff and gave the dough to create Stanford in Palo Alto instead. His creation has become one of the very greatest schools in America, rivaling Harvard for academic excellence. (As an alumnus of the School of Engineering at University College, London, I have no axe to grind, and hereby proffer humble apologies to the many Harvard alumni reading this, just in case. I will be quite happy were our son to attend either of these great American schools – or both!) Today an engineering degree from Stanford is as certain a guarantee of fame and fortune in Silicon Valley as there is.

The architecture and environment could scarcely differ more from the horrors of UCSF. Just look:

Everyone at Stanford rides a bike.

George Segal’s sculptures off the main Quad.

The Hispanic Studies building.

A place to think.

Contemplation.

Cloisters off the Quad.

Proving modern architecture can be sublime.

The Belltower.

Now which would you or your child rather attend?

All snaps on an Olympus C5050 and a Panasonic G1 with the 9-18mm Olympus MFT lens.

The embrace

February 16, 2011About the Snap, PaintingsThomas Pindelski

Edvard Munch lives!

The embrace

Date: Feb 6, 2011
Place: The Embarcadero, San Francisco
Modus operandi: On the BikeCam.
Weather: Just perfect.
Time: 2:07pm.
Gear: Panasonic G1, kit lens at 28mm, f/5.6, 1/160th, ISO320
Medium: Digital
Me: Seeing Edvard Munch
My age: 59

While the gender rÃ´les may be reversed, Edvard Munch saw the same vampiric behavior in the enamored lover in his painting Vampire (1893) and I confess that was my sole thought when pressing the button:

Edvard Munch – Vampire – 1893.

UCSF Mission Bay

February 15, 2011ArchitectureThomas Pindelski

An architectural nightmare.

The architecture of a university campus seems to bear little relationship to its academic excellence. The raft of Nobel laureates in physiology and medicine at UCSF Mission Bay in south east San Francisco would appear to confirm that a welcoming environment and academic excellence are unrelated. Visit this soulless campus and you would swear that, even at lunch hour, the place has been hit by a neutron bomb. The public areas, such as they are, will be empty, the buildings remain standing. The ‘quad’, if you can call it that, is dominated by two fifty foot slabs of steel plate covered with graffiti and rust …. see the third snap below.

And it’s not as if the near constant construction at this huge campus is improving things. Whereas you can see some hint of originality in the brutality of London’s Barbican or the sheer silliness of Paris’s Pompideau Museum, their is neither wit, whimsy or originality in the structural steel passing for architecture at UCSF Mission Bay.

UCSF, Mission Bay.

Try as I may to inject some wit and interest into snaps of this architecturally arid desert, I fear I am doomed to fail. I don’t see myself revisiting this area any time soon unless, that is, I get a sudden hankering for a Nobel Prize in physiology, which is a long shot.