A fitting tribute
While it’s the very last place to go for objective investment advice – unless you are a ‘pump and dump’ broker (aren’t they all?) – Fortune magazine has championed great photography over the years and has published a fitting tribute to Kodachrome on its web site.
This picture by Walker Evans, a rare color effort, says everything you need to know about capitalism. Heavy steel with a mendicant living under the bridge. Click the picture for more.
A photographer’s photographer
Sam Abell’s book, ‘Sam Abell: The Photographic Life‘, is out of print but after reading the copy in my local library I tracked it down and bought a used one. It is that special.
I mentioned his work earlier when I reviewed his book Seeing Gardens. The Photographic Life, by contrast, is just that. An autobiography by a man who seemingly has done nothing but try and satisfy his fascination with the medium throughout his life, starting at a very early age.
This book is special. He relates how his father educated him in photography and how he risked his life time and again for a picture, not because he wanted to but because the drug of photography had him in its thrall. Later, as his father developed Alzheimer’s and could no longer recognize his son – what a cruel affliction this is – he still photographed him. It’s at once shocking and deeply moving.
In 1971, aged 20 and poor as a church mouse, I was desperately saving every last penny for my first Leica – an M3 that was to be my constant companion for 35 years when I finally bought it in 1973. Yet, when I saw this issue of Camera at the newsstand, savings were forgotten and my pennies deposited on the counter at W. H. Smith in Kensington because I simply had to have the picture on the cover. Yes, that cover, which haunts me to this day, was by Sam Abell and remains in my library. It also appears in this wonderful book.
It’s one of his first color photographs and its appearance in this book brought back a flood of pleasant memories.
Did his work influence me?
A very personal book by a very special photographer.
My used copy, through Amazon, was $84. Not a lot when it’s so important.
Brought to you from bankrupt California, USA
A master of color
This picture by Ernst Haas (1921-1986) is the earliest ‘art’ photograph in color which I recall, having probably seen it in my early teens.
Talk of starting at the top!
While abstraction pervades his work, Haas never abstracts just for the sake of doing so; rather, the context is always clear, the vision insightful and the feel warm and sympathetic.
Check out more of his work in the book Ernst Haas – Color Photography – hard to get, expensive and worth it.
As good as they get
Edwin Smith (1912-71) was a photographer of the British heritage. That sounds pretty dry, but once you have seen the work of this architect-painter-photographer, you realize that he really is as good as they get.
His wonderful vision, perfect technique and aesthetic sensibilities are perfectly displayed in this book, published by Merrell and the Royal Institute of British Architects, with monochrome reproductions of the very highest quality.
If high aesthetic sense is your thing, executed at an incomparable level of excellence, this book is for you.