Urbex at its finest.

I suspect a key reason that urban exploration photography so appeals to me is that you see the recent past through the mantle of a veil of decay and decrepitude. What was once vibrant and magnificent is now sad and rotted. The decay somehow heightens the sense of a locations magnificent past. It’s also no surprise that probably the best urbex work is being done in America for no other nation places so little value on the appearance of its land. A car is old? Dump it in the field. A factory closed? Place barbed wire around it and let it rot. Cheaper than flattening it. Seldom, it seems, is any attempt made to raze and redevelop the land which created so much wealth back then.

Jonathan Haeber, that prince of urbex artists, took his team to McLouth Steel in crumbling Detroit. He relates that McLouth was once one of America’s largest steel producers. The photographs accompanying his article are outstanding and very worthy of your time. Click his magnificently lit picture below to see more.

Click the picture for Haeber’s documentation of McLouth Steel.

If you are interested in American industrial history, there’s no finer way of getting a snapshot than the chart put out by Financial Graph & Art of the changes in the Dow Jones Industrial Average of common stocks from its inception in 1896, when it numbered 20 stocks. Today it’s 30. You don’t have to be a money management maven to appreciate what this chart shows. For example, in 1896, fully 50% of the Dow was comprised of metal, mining and rail, with agriculture the runner up at 25%. America made things. Finance (which produces nothing) and retail (which has us spending what we do not have) were mere slivers. Today? Finance – one third. Retail – one third. Everything else – the remainder. America borrows to buy garbage. The chart also shows how very few businesses survive for long and just how wild some of the market’s swings have been through our never ending booms and busts. I gaze at this chart often and never fail to learn something new. Just like Haeber’s photographs.

A Swedish master.

Lennart Nilsson (b 1922) is best known for his endoscopic photographs of the early stages of development of a human fetus. They remain as startling today as when he took them for LIFE in 1965.

Click the picture for his web site. The pictures are pure magic.

Click the picture.

A pioneering woman photographer.

Along with Lee Miller, the patrician and equally beautiful Toni Frissell (1907-88) worked for Harper’s and Vogue before and during WW2, moving onto a then new Sports Illustrated in peacetime. Fearless, like Miller, she saw action at the front and made huge contributions to photography and to the cause of women photographers. Credited with moving models out of the studio to her beloved outdoors, Frissell was well connected, lovely to look at and was what we would today call a ‘jock’.

Frissell donated her collection of 300,000 pictures to the US Library of Congress where it remains, largely unknown. This fine book, available inexpensively used, displays a small fraction of her work:

During and after the war years she photographed Winston Churchill and his family often and one of the most striking portraits in the book is of Clementine Churchill, WSC’s wife. It shows her beauty, directness and warmth as no other picture of this exceptional woman does.

Her work – whether striking fashion work, portraits of the famous or sports photography is as good as it gets.

Forget new copies – they are way overpriced. I paid Alibris $25 for a mint, used copy. Abe Books also has it.

A concerned photographer.

National Geographic photographer Chris Rainier, a one time student of Ansel Adams, has a fine web site displaying his art.

He describes his life’s mission as “…. putting on film both the natural wilderness and indigenous cultures around the globe.”

You can go to his site by clicking the image below, which will take you to a video interview with the photographer.

Click the image.

An interesting narrative.

A friend sent this along. What makes it especially interesting is Cartier-Bresson’s narrative, in charmingly accented English, about his philosophy of street snapping. It doesn’t hurt that it opens with the two greatest street snaps of the last century – the man with the monocle in Valencia and the puddle jumper in Paris:

Some favorite quotes:

• “Life is once. Forever.”
• “Facts are not interesting. It’s the point of view.”
• “After a certain age you have the face you deserve, I think.” – On portraits.
• “You shouldn’t overshoot. It’s like overeating.”
• “You have to be quick, quick, quick.”
• “For me it’s a simple pleasure, photography. It doesn’t take any brains.”
• “I never think. I act quick.”
• “When you take a good picture it’s like milking a cow. You need a lot of milk to make a little cheese.”
• “I like English people very much. It’s the most exotic country for a Frenchman.”
• “Everybody has done ten good photographs in their life. What is important is to go on, on, on.”
• “I like life. I hate people also.”
• “Even if it’s ugly, it’s an affirmation”

The very best eighteen and a half minutes a street snapper can invest in.

Update June 15, 2011:

Bother, Vimeo has been forced to take the video down. If you can, try to see it elsewhere. It’s worth it.