Category Archives: Photographers

Kubrick at the CJM

Movies

A master’s work explained.

Stanley Kubrick made but twelve commercial movies and each is rated at the top of its genre.

The Contemporary Jewish Museum has a splendid show documenting the background to each, showing the man’s working method, deep research and painstaking attention to detail.


Winston at the entrance.


I touch the fabulous Zeiss f/0.7 lens used in ‘Barry Lyndon’ for the candlelight scenes.


Rescued from thrift shops, Kubrick used two of these Mitchell ciné cameras in ‘Lyndon’. The camera is beautifully engineered.


The wide lens mount throat of the Mitchell allowed adaptation of the Zeiss lens for full aperture use.


The exhibition is beautifully staged, with just enough detail to maintain curiosity.


Jack Nicholson’s Adler typewriter from ‘The Shining’


The chilling text.


Winston with the HAL9000 from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’


A selection of Kubrick’s lenses, mostly Zeiss.

You can read more about the ‘Barry Lyndon’ Zeiss lens here.

A highly recommended review of the master’s working methods. My son Winston, at the tender age of 14, knows all twelve of Kubrick’s masterpieces well, with the lush ‘Barry Lyndon’ his favorite, along with ‘Dr. Strangelove’. Indeed, his prep school application essay, which he wrote a year ago, addressed ‘Kubrick as a rôle model’, focusing on the master’s perseverance and what it teaches us about success in life.

All snaps using an iPhone 6.

Esther Henderson

Photographers

America past.

Americans had just been jolted out of their isolationism courtesy of Pearl Harbor when Esther Henderson took this magnificent image in Prescott, Arizona.


Prescott, Arizona. 1943.

Amazingly, some 40% of the nation, seemingly determined to vote for a candidate who is clearly missing several screws, still believes in the quixotic idea of economic and military isolationism. Mercifully, that candidate’s chances of soiling the Oval Office are even more remote than those of my Border Terrier coming back from the ashes.

But just look at that image of Henderson’s. Autumn leaves are burning – you can almost smell them – and the locals are chatting with the postman on the first of his two daily runs. The air is crisp and somewhere far away the greatest nation there has ever been is fighting mightily on two continents to provide peace and freedom for you and for me.

Prescott today? Forget it. Discovered long ago it is now so zooed as to be uninhabitable, like most places.

Stone Canyons of the Colorado Plateau

Book reviews

By a master of the landscape.

Jack Dykinga has been featured here a decade ago and his work in the American west continues to define the standard for landscape photography.


Click the image for Amazon.

Dykinga works with film in 4″ x 5″ field cameras using the finest Schneider lenses, and it shows. While film in small sizes is largely the province of cranks and those who place little value on their time – not to mention the quality of the results – the use of large format sheet film is thoroughly justified in this case. High pixel count digital sensors may be the thing for landscape snappers today, but it’s hard to beat the sheer plasticity of Dykinga’s results. Add an expert’s eye and you have a book to wonder at. There is absolutely nothing dated about the images on display here.

Long discontinued, it’s abundantly available from Amazon and resellers like Abe Books.

Traveling in style

Book reviews, Photographs

On the great liners.

In an age where (mostly white) trash pervades the news cycle, and one in which such human detritus is headed for the Oval Office regardless of one’s vote, it’s a pleasure to contemplate an earlier age of paparazzi which saw the rich and famous photographed crossing the Atlantic in the luxury liners of the inter-war years.


Fred and Adele Astaire on the S.S. Majestic, 1927.

The New York Times reminds us of that age in a splendid piece with many period images, which you can see by clicking the picture above.

For those interested in the great liners I recommend ‘The Only Way to Cross’ by John Maxtone-Graham, available used through Abe Books. The book looks exhaustively at these floating palaces, from the Mauretania and Titanic through the QE2, in both aesthetic and technical detail and is highly recommended. It includes many period photographs.

If you are seeking to get a sense of just how special these great ships were, you can stay on the Queen Mary in Long Beach which is now a floating hotel.