Two greats.
The WSJ reports that one of Alberto Giacometti’s great sculptures sold for a record price:
I can never look at this fabulous work without being reminded of the even greater photograph Cartier-Bresson took of Giacometti in Paris in pelting rain, picking up skillfully on the sculptor’s thinness theme.
They simply do not make them like that any more. Let’s hope the sculpture went to a good home.
P.S. You do not have to be poor to have good taste ….
Oh! dear.
Robert Capa famously remarked that if your pictures are not good enough, you are not close enough.
Maybe this lady photographer needs to get in a bit closer. Certainly, her man must have heard my thoughts – just mouse over the image for a bit of fun (requires Safari or Chrome browser to render).
Snapped opposite the old Transamerica Building on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco.
The real thing.
Unless something goes awfully wrong with the universe, Jeff Bridges will win the Best Actor Oscar this coming March 7 for Crazy Heart, the story of a washed-up Country and Western musician.
Now while I would generally pay serious money to avoid having to hear C&W music ever again, I make an exception here for one who is as good an actor as there is.
What I did not know is that Bridges is an accomplished doumentary photographer and you can see his images from both Crazy Heart and Ironman at JeffBridges.com. Like the man the site is funny, unpredictable, interesting and completely without pretense. Go to the Photography section and it’s clear just how hard making a movie really is and how many people work behind the scenes. His wonderfully quirky web site is just lots of fun and well worth a visit. Click the picture below to go to a video of him singing country music – he also did his own singing in the movie. One talented man.
A fine English photographer.
Roy Hammans wrote an interesting piece for this blog some thirty months ago on his experiences with Lightroom. Shortly after that I made the move from Aperture to Lightroom, a decision I have never had cause to regret.
What I have learned in the intervening period is that Roy is a fine photographer whose Ash Clippings site regularly showcases his work. It’s unfair to typecast any photographer by saying he or she is a ‘street shooter’ or a ‘landscape expert’ or so on, but I doubt Roy would mind if I pigeonholed him as a fine English photographer because so much of his work features the subtle beauty of England’s countryside, lovingly rendered, whether it be as close as his garden or a Hardy landscape on a grand scale.
What’s most striking about his work is not just the fine eye and technical perfection, it’s also his grasp of a large range of techniques from plate cameras and litho prints to the latest in digital and fish eye gear. If you were to ask me what of Roy’s work speaks to me most it would have to be his Hull Series, as I think of it. Here, he has photographed the hulls of old boats in dry dock, on Mersey Island in Essex, in various stages of discoloration and disrepair and the results are simply an abstract dream. Here’s one of many examples – click the picture for more:
They beauty of abstract work is that the viewer can see whatever his imagination is equal to and this one is so clearly a map of the eastern United States it might as well be the real thing. Suffice it to say that if you like Mark Rothko you will love these.
Roy’s fine eye proves what I have always said – you don’t have to travel to find great subjects. Case in point, look at this lovely, gentle image of a pair of courgettes …. picked from his garden. That guy who did all those peppers would be proud.
Roy’s love of the sculpture of Henry Moore is clear in this beautiful photograph, perfectly lit, composed and rendered.
Again, click the picture for more.
But I started this piece by saying that Roy is a fine English photographer and few pictures could better explain what I mean than this charming, seemingly simple, composition taken in an English garden.
For me there are allusions to that great park scene in ‘Blow Up’, the scent of the English countryside and the sound and feel of a light breeze before the rain.
Be sure to stop by either Roy’s Ash Clippings photo site or his Weeping Ash site where he writes with the benefit of great experience and knowledge about photography and photographers. And if you want to die of envy, check out Roy’s purpose built darkroom/lightroom.
A woman conquers a man’s world.
It’s hard to imagine being successful at any one of Lee Miller’s callings, let alone all three.
I don’t mean dilettante dabbling. I mean as good as it gets.
Famous model, surrealist artist, war photographer. Miller (1907-77) did all of these with aplomb and was at all times in the center of the action. Whether posing for Genthe and Stieglitz in her modeling days, making a career as a surrealist artist when married to Roland Penrose and living with Man Ray, or being the only woman war correspondent to set foot at the scene of the crime waged on mankind in Dachau, whence she reported and photographed for Vogue magazine, Miller was as good as they get.
This is a splendid book and highly recommended. When you read that Sir Roland’s son, Anthony, did not learn of his mother’s many accomplishments until shortly before she passed away – she didn’t care to speak of any of them – your sense of wonder and admiration for this very special woman only increases.
Her beauty needs no words. Her originality is there for all to see in her art works. And her heartbreaking reportage from the death camps is the sign of a supreme professional. After witnessing the SS torching Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s retreat in the mountains, she was among the very first to enter his Munich rooms and proceeded, in true surrealist fashion, to take a bath in his tub. As she explained – and there’s a picture of her in the act – she was washing away the evil which she had witnessed and photographed just hours earlier. Just ask, which of us would have had the courage to do that, given the chance?
All of this is expertly set forth by experienced art curator Mark Haworth-Booth in this simply splendid book. The extracts of her searing prose for Vogue are almost as powerful as her pictures, many of the latter so horrific that they never saw publication. Seldom have I read such a clear eyed exposition of the German people’s utter complicity in the crimes of their leaders.
A woman for the ages. Any photographer or historian with an interest in Miller’s era should read this.