Category Archives: Photographers

The Jackling Mansion

Architecture, Photographers

Great pictures of this controversial building

Click here for a wonderful selection of pictures of the Jackling Mansion, Steve Jobs’s home that he very much wants to pull down to build something useable.

Can’t say I blame him looking at these. It’s what I think of as a Wrecking Ball Special. Jobs probably needs to step up the bribes, er …. computer donations, if he’s serious about tearing down this eyesore which looks more like the No Tell Motel than any mansion I have seen. Once, a long time ago in America, a man’s home was his castle to do with as he saw fit. No more, it seems.

You can see more of Haeber’s work here.

So waddya care if it’s posed?

Photographers, Photographs

It’s the result that matters, not the means

Apropos nothing, I was reminded of a comment a fellow photoblogger made, addressing one of my snaps. I was heavily into photoblogging three years ago but got tired of all the sycophancy and lightweight comments passing for constructive criticism. Hardly a conduit for learning and improving.

His words were to the effect of “I would rate it a 10 if it was not posed”. Charming and comical at the same time. Viewed logically, he was awarding points for a mixture of luck and skill in taking the picture clandestinely. I’m not sure I understand that. I’m all for rewarding spontaneity when it comes to the performing arts, say, or scientific research. That’s how breakthroughs happen. But for a medium whose sole appeal is to the sense of vision, what does it really matter whether the picture was spontaneous or not?

Allow me to illustrate with four examples – Posed, I’m Not Telling, Sacrilege …. and a Real Corker:

1 – Posed:

Surely on the short list of all times great ‘decisive moment’ snaps, is Robert Doisneau’s ‘Le Baiser’:

Doisneau, whose work I adore, was your typical French leftie-with-commie-sympathies but, God bless him, was happy to admit that his most famous picture was posed.

2 – I’m Not Telling

This is my picture which occasioned that funny remark at the introduction to this piece:

All I will say is that it’s always awful fun snapping pictures of my beautiful son.

3 – Sacrilege

The thought that the single greatest photograph of the Twentieth Century was posed is pure sacrilege.

Yet it is that very thought that gave life to this entry …. have you ever wondered that the balletic figure on the wall and the fatso about to splash are just too much of a coincidence?

4 – A Real Corker:

You think I was going to ask a guy who does not even speak English to pose for this? Get real:

Still, whether it’s posed or not is irrelevant. All that matters is the result.

Are art books dead?

Book reviews

Perish the thought

One of the simple, yet sublime, pleasures in life is to stroll past a bookcase and be rewarded with some gem long forgotten. A moment later and you are on a trip to a place unknown, basking in California’s late sun.

The thick art paper invariably used in photography books permits high quality reproduction and the tactile and olfactory pleasures, coupled with the user’s choice of sequential or random access …. well, there’s a lot to love about Gutenberg’s invention.

As machines go, the printing press has had a decently long life of 570 years and counting, though it’s a piker compared to, say, the catapult (an elegant, simple tool) or the wheel. Compare those to the lives of sound reproducing media – wax cylinders, shellac 78s, LPs, stereo LPs, Cassettes, 8 Track, CD, iPod – none has lived more than a couple of decades.

Yet while I am committed to getting clutter out of my life (my ideal being Woody Allen’s place in Sleeper), I still cannot get worked up about looking at photography books on a screen. I recognize that some media – black and white comes to mind – benefit greatly from transillumination – but the magic of a book compares favorably to the netbook warming my lap as I type this. I would have said ‘frying’ but I got rid of my MacBook in the interest of my testicles.

The transition to reading news, analysis and fiction from paper to screen is accelerating, so you can bet that we will have full color Kindles, or whatever, before long. Maybe the screen will become a flexible pellicle with pictures sent wirelessly for it to display; that might work, I suppose, but I think this is still a bit sci-fi.

Meanwhile, I am going to stroll past my bookcases.

Alec Soth

Photographers

An interesting artist

When you read that Alec Soth is represented by none other than ace salesman Larry Gagosian, alarm bells tend to go off. Isn’t this the same carpetbagger who persuaded the world that a $100mm diamond encrusted skull was something worth buying?

In Soth’s case the concerns are ill founded, for his work is insightful, sensitive, and original. I especially enjoyed the Fashion magazine section of his web site. It’s a quirky, somewhat sardonic, look at the loons and twits who make up the modern fashion world, a world where publicity and labeling are more important than quality and originality.

Well worth a look.


Two prize twits – Karl Lagerfeld and some other dude at Chanel

Soth’s site has several broken links – inexcusable – but you can also find his work at the Magnum site.

Barry Lyndon

Movies, Photographers

A must see

Like the great English film maker David Lean, the American Stanley Kubrick made but a handful of movies. As with Lean’s oeuvre, there’s not a dud to be found. Indeed, I recall many years ago buying my first DVD player and the first movie I bought to see on it was, of course, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But if it’s visual richness you crave, then the Kubrick movie you will like most is the little played Barry Lyndon. In addition to a superb performance by Ryan O’Neal (when did you last use those words about O’Neal?) there is the sublime beauty of Marisa Berenson. Kubrick was nothing if not technically competent, having started life as a stills journalist photographer, and I recall at the time of its release stories circulating of Kubrick’s use of special Zeiss still camera lenses on his Mitchell movie camera.

Well, here’s the scoop from Ed DiGiulio, the expert who adapted the Zeiss f/0.7 (f/0.7!) 50mm lens for Kubrick’s camera, which Kubrick proceeded to use for the candlelight scenes in the movie. The effect is magic. The lens – like the fabulous Leitz 180mm f/3.4 Apo-Telyt-R which I used for many years on my Leicaflex SL – was commissioned by NASA.

This is a very long, slow paced film and one which is essential viewing for those with non-American attention spans – meaning you can sit still without popcorn and colored, sugared water for 3 hours – and a love of visual beauty. It’s the sort of movie that makes you go out and buy a 100″ screen for your home theater. I did.

Here’s a schematic of the Zeiss Planar lens together with the enormous (over 5″ diameter) Kollmorgen wide angle adapter which DiGiulio refers to:

Marisa Berenson? None other than the great-grand-niece of that art plunderer and self-appointed Renaissance expert, Bernard Berenson, but a whole lot nicer to look at.


Marisa Berenson by candlelight in Barry Lyndon. Staney Kubrick, Zeiss Planar 50mm f/0.7 lens

Kubrick’s last movie was Eyes Wide Shut, released in 1999, the year he died. Another visual masterpiece, it is also distinguished by another actor who couldn’t act before he crossed Kubrick’s path, Tom Cruise. Watch it for a radiant Nicole Kidman.

Update June 2013:

Watching Barry Lyndon in the newly remastered Blu-Ray version is a revelation. Maybe the best art film ever, with luscious cinematography by Joe Alcott whose credits include three other Kubrick masterpieces – ‘A Clockwork Orange’, ‘The Shining’ and the unsurpassed ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’.

Update July 2015:

There’s a fine 6 minute documentary on the Mitchell cameras, the Zeiss f/0.7 lens and the costumes here.

The March 1976 issue of American Cinematographer with details about the cinematography can be downloaded here.