Book review.

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This slim book of some ninety photographs presents a current documentary on the cruel, decaying prison on Alcatraz Island in the bay of San Francisco. Cruel in so many ways, from the views of both the Golden Gate and Oakland Bay bridges, from the sounds of freedom wafting from the mainland on the prevailing wind, for the views of America’s most beautiful city so close yet out of reach. It’s as if it was located to enhance the suffering of the inmates for some sadistic purpose, purportedly in the service of man. The Constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishment and while there’s no excusing the actions of those who ended up in Alcatraz, there’s even less excuse for the sheer brutality of the concept.

Clint Eastwood starred in a fine movie Escape from Alcatraz which speaks to the only successful escape, by three inmates, which shows well the inhumanity of the place. Short, sharp and well acted by all, it’s an excellent companion piece to this book, whose Foreword by Peter Coyote is startlingly well written. What sort of person has it in him to become a prison guard, let alone a governor of such an institution?

This book has current pictures, many of which show the merciful decay of this horror story, and contains many memorable images. Perhaps the most poignant is also the simplest. It’s by Peikwen Cheng, appropriately enough a resident of a prison to over one billion souls, and appears on page 40. Titled ‘Days Go By’ it shows the scratches made on a cell wall by an inmate, counting the days of his incarceration. Nothing could be simpler or more powerful.

A mix of well reproduced color and monochrome images, the book is recommended if you like atmospheric photography with a message.

Book review

This collection of photographs from 1939 -1944 London is simply riveting.

If you look at the severity of Germany’s unprovoked aerial bombardment of London in WWII, using deaths as a yardstick, then the worst year was 1940 when the might of the Luftwaffe poured death and destruction from the skies. The combined efforts of I G Farben (now Bayer, BASF and Hoechst) for chemicals, Daimler Benz, BMW, AEG and Siemens for hardware and Deutsche Bank and Commerz Bank for finance, aided in no small part by massive conscription of slave labor, made all that insanity possible. Needless to add, all those firms survive and prosper to this day, along with the vermin offspring of their parents.

So it is impossible to write objectively about what this book of war time photographs from the Daily Mirror’s reporter George Greenwell portrays, other than to wonder at the miracle which gave England the English Channel, the greatest of all defenses, and a half-American named Winston Churchill. Our son Winston – a simple act of gratitude – will never know how close he came to not seeing this world.

While some of the pictures here are undoubtedly propagandistic in nature, the reality is that people did get married in bombed out churches, kids did play in the ruins and life went on as best as it could. ‘Muddling through’ may be a trait ascribed to the English but realistically what else were they going to do? I bow in admiration to their wonderful grace and stoicism in these hardest of times.

What many forget, and this book makes clear, is that death from the skies was not confined to 1940. Almost as many died in London in 1944. This time, with the Luftwaffe finished, it took the form of the V1 pulse jet and V2 rocket flying bombs, the first effective guided, pilotless missiles. The V1 could be put out of action by the faster Spitfires who would daringly tip it over with a delicate nudge from a wing tip and a 100 mph speed advantage. The V2 was altogether a different proposition. At 1,800 mph it flew at more than twice the speed of sound and no 400 mph piston-engined, propeller aircraft was about to catch it. That little number was created by a brilliant rocketeer who became a more than willing member of the SS in 1937 and managed to look resolutely the other way while Jews and Poles died on his production lines creating his evil weapon.

What became of him?

A few short years later he was to be seen in one of the last ticker tape parades down Manhattan’s Broadway, proudly waving a Stars and Stripes, testimony to his new citizenship and to the fact that his Saturn V rocket had just made it possible for Neil Armstrong to make his ‘Giant Leap for Mankind’.

That rocketeer was named Wernher von Braun.

A photographer from New Jersey.

One of the more treasured books in my photography library is this small monograph on New Jersey photographer George Tice (b. 1938). Tice is perhaps best explained in his saying “If I were given the choice of traveling to China or Missouri, I’d probably pick Missouri. I want to be known as an American photographer.”

It shows in his work which is calm, restrained and clearly imbued with a love for his country. There is none of that denigration of the worst that can be America so often seen in Cartier-Bresson’s pictures taken on this side of the pond. Rather, there’s a gentle, insightful approach of one who clearly loves where he is.

One of my favorites is of the interior of a seemingly deserted barber’s shop in Paterson, New Jersey, whose window sign proudly proclaiming ‘Joe’s Barber Shop’ is missing several letters (p.53). There’s no need to replace them, you can hear the proprietor thinking. Every one knows where the local barber shop is. It’s been there for ever, after all. A lovely memory of the best that small towns bring.

The book remains available from Amazon and you can go there by clicking the picture above.

A woman conquers a man’s world.

It’s hard to imagine being successful at any one of Lee Miller’s callings, let alone all three.

I don’t mean dilettante dabbling. I mean as good as it gets.

Famous model, surrealist artist, war photographer. Miller (1907-77) did all of these with aplomb and was at all times in the center of the action. Whether posing for Genthe and Stieglitz in her modeling days, making a career as a surrealist artist when married to Roland Penrose and living with Man Ray, or being the only woman war correspondent to set foot at the scene of the crime waged on mankind in Dachau, whence she reported and photographed for Vogue magazine, Miller was as good as they get.

This is a splendid book and highly recommended. When you read that Sir Roland’s son, Anthony, did not learn of his mother’s many accomplishments until shortly before she passed away – she didn’t care to speak of any of them – your sense of wonder and admiration for this very special woman only increases.

Her beauty needs no words. Her originality is there for all to see in her art works. And her heartbreaking reportage from the death camps is the sign of a supreme professional. After witnessing the SS torching Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s retreat in the mountains, she was among the very first to enter his Munich rooms and proceeded, in true surrealist fashion, to take a bath in his tub. As she explained – and there’s a picture of her in the act – she was washing away the evil which she had witnessed and photographed just hours earlier. Just ask, which of us would have had the courage to do that, given the chance?

All of this is expertly set forth by experienced art curator Mark Haworth-Booth in this simply splendid book. The extracts of her searing prose for Vogue are almost as powerful as her pictures, many of the latter so horrific that they never saw publication. Seldom have I read such a clear eyed exposition of the German people’s utter complicity in the crimes of their leaders.

A woman for the ages. Any photographer or historian with an interest in Miller’s era should read this.