Early photographer of archaeology.
The NYT has a fine piece on this little known photographer whose output dates from the 1850sand who died at a very young age.
The author writes: “Today, Greene’s images evoke a time when travel was still an adventure, ancient civilizations were largely mysterious and the grammar of photography was just being invented.” And, I would add, before social media destroyed photography.
A fabulous birthday gift.
These biographical pieces generally run annually in time for Hanukkah and Christmas.
Words cannot express this father’s feelings when, last night, my son Winston received the below, just in time for my birthday. There could be no finer birthday gift:
Our many college visits over the past couple of years have focused on the northeast and on Ivy and Little Ivy schools, Union being one of the latter. You can read about those visits here; the index includes two visits to Union College. The little Ivies are typically one tenth of the size of the Big Ivies and focus more intensely on liberal arts studies.
To quote Winston’s illustrious namesake: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
Well done, Winnie!
A master.
One of the pleasant outcomes of the V&A’s Horst show was the scanning and printing of his colour transparencies.
Introduced in 1935, and much improved shortly thereafter, Kodak made Kodachrome slide film in sizes up to 11″ x 14″. Horst opted for 8″ x 10″ and the Vogue magazine archive of his slides holds many originals never before printed.
The video explains that high quality drum scans of these originals preserved all the detail and dynamic range, something only recently improved upon by large format digital imaging. However, the vaunted curators really need to go back to curator school. Early in the video you see old copies of the magazine handled with cotton gloves. All well and good. Now jump to 4:22. Yup. Those fish and chip greased up fingers are used to manhandle the priceless originals. Let’s hope those drum scans are well backed up because the originals are not going to make it at this rate.
One of the key points the video illustrates is that Horst, during his 60 year career at Vogue, made the transition from monochrome to colour seamlessly, unlike many others. (Ever seen an HC-B colour snap? Ugh!). Horst’s classical, static compositions, using simple sets, helped but this master excelled at everything photographic. The video is well worth watching, especially if this is your first introduction to Horst’s work.
There’s one born every minute.
For that sort of money, you would think they would
at least get the order of the names correct.
The press would have us believe that Martin Scorsese’s latest (let’s hope it’s his last) gangster flick cost $160mm to make.
Uh huh.
Let’s see now, $10mm apiece to the three stars and the director, $20mm for everyone else and there’s $100mm missing. Doubtless The Mob got it for providing all the ‘de-ageing’ technology the movie is being sold on.
I have no issue with long movies if the content and delivery are good. The Godfather series, anything by Sergio Leone, they are all long and very good indeed. But this car wreck of a self-indulgent three-and-one-half hour snoozefest is an abomination, pure and simple. Plotless and directionless, it does at least have one purpose – to serve as background noise when you make the Thanksgiving turkey feast.
Mercifully, mine was free on Netflix as part of a new subscription, now cancelled. You would do well to contemplate like action for a public company so naïve as to waste its shareholders’ money thus.
Parisian street snapper.
A contemporary of HC-B and Robert Doisneau, Willy Ronis (1910-2009) is best known for his Parisian street images.
There’s a quiet, self effacing charm to these pictures which are all about the most beautiful city on earth.
1947.
1967.
1954.
You can read more about Ronis here.