Category Archives: Photographers

Provenance

Photographers

A mystifying economic phenomenon.

One of the stranger manifestations of our celebrity obsessed culture is the premium value accorded to personalty owned by famous people.

A recent example is the proposed auction (Bonhams, 11/30/2014) of Yevgeny Khaldei’s Leica III, which is expected to fetch $400,000 or more. The photographer and his camera are famous as the takers of the famous – if staged – image of Russian soldiers planting their foul flag on Berlin’s bombed out Reichstag parliamentary building. Not long after they were busy building the Berlin Wall.


Hey. mister! Can you spare $500,000 for this clunker?

I have no issue with Khaldei having staged this scene – the Recihstag had fallen to the Russkies a couple of days earlier. Many great images have been staged – the Marines on Okinawa, Capa’s dying Spanish Revolutionary soldier, etc. – but the images remain powerful and relevant to the history of the time. After all, all paintings and sculptures are posed and it’s not like we are about to trash Michelangelo’s Pieta just because the subjects were modeled by a street bum and a whore and the real things had been dead for nigh on 1500 years if, that is, they ever lived in the first place. All these pieces are outstanding examples of their respective genres and deserve the accolade of value which economics attributes to rarity and quality.

But why on earth would you pay $399,500 over the market price for Khaldei’s Leica III when good used ones remain abundantly available. I should add that the model III was not an especially good camera in the first place, given its pressed metal construction. (The later IIIC finally adopted die castings which made for a much more robust tool). Then again, people will pay up for one of Steve McQueen’s motorcycles or for gowns worn by Audrey Hepburn.

Mystifying.


Khaldei’s Recihstag image, complete with Ivans.

The ever arrogant Germans, oblivious as ever to outside sensibilities have, needless to add, recently renovated and reopened the structure.


The Reichstag today.

To see the Reichstag at its best, click here.

Horst at the V&A

Photographers

Coming in September.

That supreme master of style, Horst P. Horst, is being profiled in a Victoria & Albert Museum show in London this September.


Click the image for details.

Many of my teenage days were spent in this wonderful arts and crafts museum and it’s great to see the master thus honored.

More about Horst here.

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Photographers, Photographs, Photography

Enough already.

No more spammers, morons, idiots, bots, crawlers, losers, morons, cretins, grammarians, ill educated scum, you name it.

I’m happy with 5,000 daily readers. The noise is not needed.

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Cannnot begin to tell you how good that feels.

August Sander

Book reviews, Photographers

A master portraitist.

For an index of all my book reviews click here.

Click the image for Amazon – I get no payment if you do that.

August Sander’s ‘People of the Twentieth Century’ is the concise version of a like-titled seven volume set in which the photographer set out to document all the personality types of his native Germany. My copy dates from 1993 when I was living in La Jolla, near San Diego, a stone’s throw from the wonderful John Cole’s Bookshop, now long gone. The book remains in print at a startling $85 or so, but it’s worth it. Even back in 1993 it ran me $55 + tax. A lot and yes, Amazon was not yet in existence.

There’s a temptation to ‘recognize’ the clichéd Germanic personalities portrayed here – the arrogant aristocrats with their vast estates, the butchers with their no less vast waistlines and so on, but the reality is that these archetypes would not have been that much more different had the images been of Englishmen, the French, Italians or you name it. What is brought sharply into focus is that the ‘trades’ were a much more esteemed place to be back then, most requiring lengthy apprenticeships before the student could proclaim himself a master. Be it woodworker, plumber, cook, tailor or butler, all required long periods of training before expertise could be proclaimed.

That was in the between war years before mass production and standardization obsoleted hard-to-acquire skills, rendering creation and repair anachronistic concepts in a world where rapid obsolescence and high labor costs make it cheaper to recycle and replace than to repair and renovate. That was largely America’s doing – the production line and people replaced by machines. As the old saw (sorry) has it, if two carpenters turn up at your door, one with hand tools, the other with electrical machines, only a fool hires the former for the latter will do a far better job in less time and with greater precision than the once esteemed craftsman.

Sander’s book speaks to the latter and it is a fascinating thing to behold. Just don’t expect to find any humor here for in typical German fashion it’s totally absent, replaced by a ruthless efficiency, one devoid of emotion or caring.