An exceptional talent.
The Austrian photographer Inge Morath (1923-2002) was that rare beast, a woman photographer in a male dominated Magnum photo agency.
Read more about this talented photographer on Wikipedia.
You can see more of her work on the Magnum site where the cleanliness of her composition is abundantly in evidence.
Architecture.
William Stout books is located in the heart of San Francisco’s interior design area of Jackson Square and has been in its current location for 27 years. The focus here is on architecture, urbanism, landscape, design and art. There’s even a small pure photography section though obviously photography pervades much of their inventory.
Spread over two floors, this sort of place can do serious damage to the architecture aficionado’s wallet.
The upper level.
The lower level.
Curiously, signs on the lower level proclaim “Please do not Photograph Books” (eh?) but the atmosphere is friendly and browsers are encouraged to take a seat and enjoy what the store has to offer. There are so many books here that the best way to put the sheer range of choice in context is to point out that tomes on California garden design alone take up a large bookcase. You will not find Amazon style discounts, but then you will not find this sort of selection on Amazon either.
I snapped up a copy of History’s Anteroom which is a photo book showing the effects of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire as well as the heroic subsequent reconstruction of the city. You can get this through Amazon but not discounted – the book is actually published by William Stout themselves, and is highly recommended, if not cheap at $40 + tax.
Outstanding.
This brief documentary on Jay Maisel is a fine portrait of one of the hardest working and most successful photographers.
Click the picture for the video.
A self-confessed technophobe, Maisel took to digital when encouraged by a friend, realizing that he no longer had to “…. check 600 rolls of film….” at the airport.
I was especially taken by his statement that the greatest fear he has when snapping is that he will miss an image.
“Pain is not a conduit to art or joy.”
Hooray for that.
Gorgeous neo-Dutch work.
A reader put me onto the work of still life photographer Paulette Tavormina. Much of her best work is done in the style of the great Dutch painters of still lives who originated the movement in the late-16th Century.
Here’s a typical Dutch piece, oil on copper:
And here’s a photograph by Ms. Tavormina:
An avid collector of butterflies, shells and ephemera, Tavormina makes a living from her still lives and it’s easy to see why. Her work is quite exceptional and gorgeous to look at. Take some time to look around on her elegant blog. And thank you Peter S. for the lead.
A long time favorite.
The Turkish photographer Ara Guler is one I have followed for well over thrity years now, first encountering him in the pages of Leica Fotografie which featured him as a ‘Master of the Leica’. Regardless of the hardware, Güler is a master photographer.
His work is predominately photo-journalistic but there’s none of the bad taste or excess frequently seen in that genre. Rather, his images are invariably thought out, sensitive and always beautiful.
Just look at some of the giants he has photographed – Winston Churchill, Indira Gandhi, Maria Callas, John Berger, Bertrand Russell, Willy Brandt, Alfred Hitchcock, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalà and Pablo Picasso. Compare that lot to the dispticks running nations and the fakes passing themselves off as artists today.
You can see more of his work by clicking the image below:
The link there to his web site is broken, but you can see many of his images by clicking the one above.