Book review

The old dictum has it that “If you having nothing good to say, say nothing”, so I will earnestly struggle to say something good about Garry Winogrand’s street photography. I purchased my copy of this book in June, 1992 and, amazingly it remains in print. I return to it earnestly every year or two trying to see what the famed critics who all gush over Winogrand’s work are going on about.

True, some of the early work here is not bad, capturing the feel of 1950s and ‘60s America. Where a set piece is involved, such as a night club or an event or a zoo, in other words somewhere where Winogrand could actually be bothered to make the slightest effort at framing the picture, then indeed there is some good photography. The many pictures from the night club El Morocco are exemplars of their kind and the zoo pictures are poignant and thoughtful.

But the overall feeling I always come away with from my repeated occasional marathons through this book, is that, well, the photographs are, for the most part, surpassingly ugly. In his gushing essay on the photographer’s work John Szarkowski nonetheless pulls no punches between the lines. Take a look at the contact sheet of Winogrand’s street shots in 1961 (vital, involved, he actually bothered to raise his camera to eye level in a few) with the one from 1982. Sorry, the latter is pure garbage. The other way in which Szarkowski takes a side swipe at Winogrand’s work is in reciting some mind numbing statistics about Winogrand’s prodigious use of film during his Los Angeles period, 1979-1981. In that time, Winogrand processed 8,522 rolls of 35mm film with another 5,000 or so rolls taken but not proofed. Half a million pictures in 2 years. That’s 20 rolls a day. Can you wonder his contact sheet from this period is rubbish? Judging from the 1982 contacts he just walked the streets frantically pressing the button all the time without looking for or at a subject. Well, I suppose Kodak loved him.

By all means get the book to see the work of an American icon. Just don’t expect too much.

Update May, 2019: Sad to report but Winogrand also wasted money on color film stock.

Blood and Champagne – book review

I recall approaching this book with the thought that Capa was not really a very good photographer. I came away thinking otherwise, realizing that what makes a war photograph ‘good’ is not beautiful composition or perfect lighting or wonderful technique. No, the act of being there and recording the moment is what makes a war photograph good and no one bested Capa at that.

This book does not include any of Capa’s pictures, being an unauthorized biography. No problem. Just go to the Magnum Photos web site to see hundreds of examples of his work. Alex Kershaw does a fine job of writing a gripping narrative which at the same time is well researched. While the book could do with fewer asterisked footnotes, the quality of research is never in doubt and the writing never dry or academic.

Capa, the man, clearly suffered from what we would now call an addictive personality. His determination to be at the latest war front speaks to his addiction to adrenaline. In between, there was the incessant gambling, the boozing and the women. The gambling nearly bankrupted the agency he founded with Cartier-Bresson, Chim Seymour and George Rodger, Magnum Photos. The boozing was tediously incessant. The women ranged from Ingrid Bergman to Parisian streetwalkers.

Yet what a life the man lead. From the Spanish revolution, where he was in the thick of the action on the Republican side, to the D-Day landings on murderous Omaha Beach, to Viet Nam which took his life, he swallowed his fear and waded into the front lines of action. Kershaw forthrightly addresses the question of whether the famous picture of the Spanish Republican soldier at the moment of death was faked, coming away uncertain. I think it was, having seen some purported contacts of the film roll years ago in a reputable British photography magazine which showed the soldier ‘dying’ half a dozen times in succession, but it’s hardly likely that Magnum, or whoever owns the negatives, is going to release them if that is the case. No matter. One or two fakes in a life as prolific as Capa’s can be forgiven.

He also recounts at considerable length the D-Day story, where Capa went in with the first wave on June 6, 1944, carrying two Contax cameras and a Rolleiflex, taking but 79 pictures. Not surprising he took so few. Capa was a studied photographer who knew not to waste film and knew even better that the goriest images would never pass muster with the censor at Life, whose audience was Middle Americans who wanted their war sanitized. Kershaw relates how a darkroom technician fried the films when drying them, leaving but 11 frames useable, 9 of which were published. To Life’s eternal discredit, the magazine blamed Capa in print, saying the majority of pictures were too blurred to reproduce.

Later, having taken the required five training jumps, Capa parachuted in, yes parachuted in, with the 17th Airborne over Wesel on the Dutch border, in March 1945. Stunning courage. He was armed with his cameras and a spare pair of underpants into which he admitted having to change upon landing!

That his life ended in 1954 at the age of 41 is hardly surprising. First, he was feeling pressure from up-and-comers David Douglas Duncan and Larry Burrows. That meant just one more war. Second, he was, as ever, broke and in need of money. Third, his unwavering dedication to being in the front lines meant that sooner or later the inevitable would happen. So Capa, his best work done, trod on that fatal land mine.

“It’s not enough to have talent”, Kershaw quotes Capa as saying, “You also have to be Hungarian”.

This is a gripping story. The book is available from Amazon.

A Day Off – book review

The charm of the pictures in this wonderful book, published in 1974, is in marked contrast to the sheer nastiness of much of Robert Frank’s work in ‘The Americans’.

Ray-Jones was an Englishman who studied in America and apprenticed with Avedon, amongst others, so he was culturally well balanced. This picture book is about the fabled British ‘Day Off,’ which as often as not saw the resolute vacationer at the seaside in a raincoat, earnestly hoping for that one ray of sun.

What so contrasts this book with ‘The Americans’ is that where Frank sees nastiness, greed and despair in Americans, Ray-Jones sees nothing but charm and a wonderful quirkiness in the British, all nicely garnished with a sprinkling of levity. A light touch. The view, if you like, of a fellow traveller rather than that of a xenophobic critic.

All social classes are pictured here, from the wonderfully aristocratic boys at Eton School, the couple on the cover relaxing between acts of a Mozart opera at Glyndebourne, cows and all, participants in innumerable summer carnivals with all their eccentricity on display or the seaside shots which absolutely make the book.

This volume of photographs seems to be out of print but most of the pictures here can be found in current offerings of Ray-Jones’s work. So sad that he died at the age of thirty, in 1972.

Highly recommended. While the printing in my paperback edition is muddy and too contrasty, none of that detracts from the wonderful pictures.

A man with an agenda – book review

When this book was originally published in France (shock news) in 1958 , it would more appropriately have been titled ‘The Ugly Americans’, for Frank never misses an opportunity to show the very worst of America, whether making statements about race (the white man having his shoes polished by the black in a men’s lavatory), toil (the workers slaving away in the mass production factory), crass commercialism (fully half of all the pictures here) or poverty (most of the rest). Nowehere is the nobility, generosity and selflessness of the great American spirit to be found.

So from that perspective, one might well regard The Americans as the ultimate hatchet job, where the victims praise the results which ridicule them.

Nonetheless, there is a lot to praise here. Yes, the photography is stark and the printing depressingly dark, at least in my paperback edition. However, Frank has an uncanny ability to spot the incongrous in daily life (who can forget his surreal picture of the boy with the Sousa horn?) and captures, again and again, that same Decisive Moment which so eluded Cartier-Bresson in his American pictures. And while it may be hard to set aside the prejudiced sociological criticism in this collection of pictures (the handful of images of affluent citizens clearly has an axe to grind), the result is a truly fine collection of what any picture book should be about. Great photographs.

Unsurprisingly, The Americans remains in print to this day. Every photographer’s library should have a copy. Just take the left wing focus with a pinch of salt.

A great photographer

If nothing else, the British Royal Family has been adept at two things – choosing its parents well and being fortunate in having a select group of society photographers over the years preserve their likenesses.

They include Cecil Beaton, Norman Parkinson, Patrick Lichfield and Tony Snowdon.

Whatever one might think of his choice in mates, Anthony Armstrong-Jones, who became Lord Snowdon upon his marriage to Princess Margaret, rates not just as a fine Royal Photographer but also as one of the great photographers of our time. This vastly talented individual skipped easily between the worlds of industrial design (his work changed the making of wheelchairs for the disabled), architecture (the aviary at London Zoo is his) and photography. While many credit him with the first use of coarse grain in fashion pictures, his real forte lies in gritty social documentary, such as the series on mental institutions, and in portraiture.

‘Sittings’ is a fine book, though long out of print. It is rare that the warmth and gentility of a photographer is so clearly reflected in his subjects’ faces, yet those attributes shine clearly here time and again. The portrait of Meryl Streep in the gnarled tree is a masterpiece, plain and simple. The darkness of Brideshead Revisited perfectly reflected in Jeremy Irons’s melancholic stare. And where many would have made cruel fun of him, Snowdon’s portrait of Prince Charles in his racing colors is a simple and subtle image of rank and privilege. Indeed, were it not for the trust that Snowdon clearly engenders in his subjects, pictures such as this would never have been taken. Just ask yourself if you were a member of that much maligned family, would you trust anyone to take your picture?

If there is one picture above all others that deserves singling out here it is the portrait of Lady Thatcher. As is common with most of the photographs in this slim book, the set is simple to the point of being barren, the better to emphasize that great leader’s resolve and determination. You don’t have to agree with her politics to admire Snowdon’s portrait which is apolitical in the best sense of the word.

Most of these images are to be found in a current book of Tony Snowdon’s work entitled ˜Photographs by Snowdon ‘A Retrospective’ “. Any photo portraitist seeking to learn from the very best should search out that volume.