Category Archives: Photographers

HC-B at SF MOMA

Photographers

Not great.

I finally made it to the Cartier-Bresson show at SF MOMA and have to say it was underwhelming.

There are four ‘periods’ in HC-B’s work:

  • The surrealist masterpieces 1931 -1951
  • The photojournalism – tourist snaps of China and Russia before they opened up
  • The portraits of famous people
  • America

The first is a beacon for modern photographers and was poorly shown, replete with low contrast small prints poorly lit, many yellowed. The curse of the ‘original print’ which I described here. Sure, his technique wasn’t the greatest, his exposure all over the place, but the work is definitive. It needs better display than MOMA managed. It’s this period that haunts, amazes and inspires.

The second is blah. Notable only for the fact that no Westerner had photographed these exotic places before.

The third has generally left me cold but I’m warming to it after this show. Too bad they didn’t include those two great shots of Giacometti crossing the street in the rain and moving one of his sculptures in the studio.

The fourth? Well, he sees only the crassness and vulgarity in America, something the show’s narrative repeats. He just does not ‘get’ America but, then again, he was French – an honorable excuse!

It’s on for another week, then moves to Atlanta. The MOMA show has too many mediocre works and displays over 200 pieces. 80 would have done it.

As you can see it was zooed, making the small prints even harder to enjoy.

Felipe Dana

Photographers

A Brazilian photojournalist

A friend of the blog sent me this link to the work of Brazilian photojournalist Felipe Dana, documenting last week’s landslides in Brazil. The work does what pictures do best – inform, question, shock – while simultaneously displaying great compassion. Click the picture for more.


Vivian Maier – Part II

Photographers

It just gets better.

I wrote of John Maloof’s serendipitous discovery of Vivian Maier’s wonderful mid-century Chicago street photography here and eagerly await the DVD of the documentary he is working on about this great photographer’s life and work.

Meanwhile, here’s a brief introduction to her work which, I think you will agree, is as fine as anything in the genre (Note: The code is buggy so refresh the page if it does not display the video. It’s a Flash video, so it will not play on an iPad).

Maier’s world reminds me of Angel Rizzuto’s – the unknown talent with a singular dedication to his or her photography, dying unknown only to be discovered posthumously, each leaving a vast treasure trove for later generations to explore.

Vivian Maier

Photographers

An unknown street photographer.

Kickstarter is a sort of poor man’s venture capital fund raising effort. I first came across it when an engineer designed an elegant watch band for the sixth generation iPod Nano, soliciting the required $15,000 in funds to get production off the ground using Kickstarter. I happened to have a Nano lying around so sent the young entrepreneur Scott Wilson $50 for his beautifully designed LunaTik watch band. Scott ended up raising an astonishing $941,718 with each investor getting one of his watch bands when they become available.

Now there’s another thrilling Kickstarter project devoted to showcasing the work of a 1960s Chicago street photographer named Vivian Maier. John Maloof came across some 100,000 (!) of her negatives at an auction and realized he had hit on a treasure trove of great work by this reclusive photographer.

Click the above and you will be taken to the Vivian Maier blog, where you too can subscribe. This is a great way of supporting little known photography which is desperately in need of exposure.

Here’s an example of her work:

Goodbye Kodachrome, hullo freedom.

Photographers, Photographs, Photography

Bitter sweet feelings.

Kodachrome was the first and last color slide film I used, before migrating to color negative when emulsions equalled and exceeded Kodachrome for quality and contrast range. Then along came digital and film was no more.

Kodak gave its last roll of Kodachrome to National Geographic snapper Steve McCurry and his last picture on the last roll was of the Parsons, Kansas cemetery, the town with the last Kodachrome processing lab. So even if you can find some Kodachrome, you can no longer get it processed.

The last snap on the last roll. Parsons, Kansas.

Click the picture for the NPR article.

It is not this journal’s goal to indulge in political discussion. However, when the hydra of politics begins to threaten our most basic freedoms, it is important to draw attention to the reality. In England, for example, a nation increasingly resembling a police state, just try pointing your camera at something when a cop is present. In France, woe betide you if you wear a rag on your head. As goes Europe, so goes America. How long before our first photographer is incarcerated as a ‘threat’ to national security?

But not all was bad with the year just ending. Most significantly, we have seen the stirrings of global free speech through the courageous acts of an Australian journalist whose WikiLeaks publication has started exposing all governments for the frauds and cheats they are. Those seeking proof need look no further than the outpourings of vituperation and threat from those very governments so clearly exposed. If you were an unelected apparatchik of a government which afforded you easy money for no work, you too would consider your job mightily threatened by this sort of thing and that is what we are seeing in the press today.

So for all of you believing that the First Amendment to the US Constitution is a Good Thing in need of daily defense and support, all of you tired of perpetual war, all of you disgusted with a world ruled by banksters and corrupt oil men and purchased politicians and morally bankrupt diplomats and warmongers and despots and torturers, wrapping themselves in the flag, caring nothing about the next generation, let me take a moment to remind you of the words of that great piece of US constitutional prose:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I fondly hope that all global hegemonies are mightily exposed by what is happening in the world of disclosure and look forward, perhaps naïvely, to a better future.

So Kodachrome, thanks for a great past and Mr. WikiLeaks, thank you for a promising future. We can but hope that US gaols remain free of photographers.

For an earlier version of this brave journalist, one who worked before the invention of cameras, click here.

And you can read all about Kodachrome here