Very, very special.

Michael Reichmann runs one of the oldest (meaning 15 years old) photography sites on the web, named Luminous Landscape. His claim to one million monthly visits suggest few photographers have not visited there and while I am one who has, my visit frequency runs maybe quarterly, because landscape photography, that site’s core interest, mostly leaves me cold. Or catatonic, if you prefer. I blame that on being exposed to Ansel Adams’s work before puberty which I swore left me infertile until my son Winston was born when I had reached 52. I’m pretty sure I’m the father given the resemblance.

However, recent sneek peeks at LuLa, as most know it, piqued my interest, for some of the street snaps Reichmann was making in his summer home in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico – an understandable choice of venue if you otherwise call Canada home during the winter – were breathtakingly good. Life’s too short to be cold.

Thus when Reichmann announced the creation of his foundation, and a partnership with LensWork as the publisher of his images from Mexico, I was all ears …. errr, eyes, because what little I had seen of his street work was memorable indeed. The fact that proceeds of book sales go to funding photographic projects makes me feel good into the bargain.

I just received the book – some 63 images in paperback format – and the work is spectacularly good.

Click the image to order the book.

I’m not sure what my $59 got me – seems like I will receive three more LensWork monographs – but if this is all I get I have no complaints.

The images draw on Ernst Haas (blurred bullfights), lots of Saul Leiter, images worthy of the fabulous Donald Jean, hints of HC-B here and there (see below), but above all Reichmann’s individual signature is clear. Tight compositions, sparse use of color in the style of Pete Turner but in far better taste, a clear love of his subjects which evokes the warmth and generosity of spirit of Mexican people …. it’s all there.

Bullfight practice. Reichmann’s gorgeous composition on display.

Highly recommended, at any price. And, best of all, there are only five landscape snaps included, all confirming what I learned of the genre back when I was in short trousers.

Update May 19, 2016: Sadly, it was announced today that Michael Reichmann died of cancer.

The jumping man.

Oceans of ink have been spent by would be experts explaining how Henri Cartier-Bresson’s divine sense of timing allowed him to make that picture of the man jumping the puddle behind Gare St. Lazare in 1932.

Click the image for the video and jump to 16:23 where you will learn not only that there was no timing involved, HC-B couldn’t even see the subject when he pressed the button! As the great man goes on to say, “all photography is an accident” (especially that of Ansel Adams, come to think of it, though the world would have been better off had those accidents never happened).

HC-B – ‘J’ai rien vu’. Click the image for the video.

What is so especially charming about this disclosure that it is said without artifice or pretense. Decisive Moment, my hind quarters. But the image remains one of the greatest ever made.

Magnum photographer.

Burt Glinn died aged 82 in 2008. Few photographers share his ability to highlight a subject and compose the image just so.

Click the image for the New York Times article.