Category Archives: Photographers

The most famous photographer in the world

Photographers

No question about it.

The current issue of Vanity Fair has an extract from Annie Leibovitz’s book illustrated with three superb photographs – of Demi Moore, Arnold Schwarzenegger and HM Queen Elizabeth II, and a not so good one of Mick Jagger. Read it here.

I was very much taken with Ms.Leibovitz’s modesty and straight forwardness. I hope you will be too. Surely, there is no more famous photographer working today?

The current issue also has a fine survey of the great photographers who have been published in Vanity Fair over the past 95 years, by Christopher Hitchens. Is there a finer English writer today? Berenice Abbott, Helmut Newton, George Hoyningen-Huene, Harry Benson, Cecil Beaton, Bruce Weber, Edward Steichen – they are all there.

And finally a piece on Vladimir Putin with a penetrating portrait by photographer Stéphane Lavoué. I was about to write what I really think of this fellow but decided against it. I do not own a gun and feel, if I said anything bad, I would have to meet those burly guys with dark glasses and ill fitting suits suitably prepared. So, for once, discretion is the better part of valor.

Edward Hopper and photography

Book reviews, Paintings

Even if you don’t care for painting, check him out.

I have written before about the American painter Edward Hopper (1882-1967) and of both the love I have for his work and the strong influence he has exerted over my way of seeing as a photographer. For Hopper is that most photographic of painters. And I don’t mean photographic in the dry, sterile, rather sick sense of the photorealists (gee, if you are going to kill yourself making a painting look like a photograph, why not just photograph the bloody thing and save some time?). No, I mean it in the sense that with his people-in-the-city paintings there are all the elements of photographic composition with the painter’s singular advantage that distracting clutter can simply be blended out with some brushwork.

Case in point:

Edward Hopper, Two on the aisle, 1927

You get a touch of realism in the ‘decisive moment’ timing of the picture, a touch of surrealism in the detailing of the woman’s face and a touch of Degas (also a fine photographer) in the back of the woman in the box on the right. The perspective is gently skewed in the best Bonnard tradition.

Invariably, when it comes to people, Hopper trends to the lonely vision of the American Experience, as here:

Edward Hopper, New York Ofice, 1962

I know exactly how he felt.

Leica M3, 50mm Summicron, Kodachrome 64, Anchorage, 1978

Nor is that vision unique to American cities:

Leica M3, 35mm Summaron, Kodachrome 64, Paris, 1974

There are many fine books on Hopper. One I recommend is “Edward Hopper: Light and Dark” by Gerry Souter, Parkstone, 2007. Barely published and already remaindered, it’s replete with many illustrations (over 140) and Souter’s text makes for interesting reading, devoid of pomposity. Any photographer looking to sharpen and refine his vision could do worse than plonking down $25 for a remaindered copy.

Click the picture for Amazon.

Italy from Above

Book reviews

A superb book.

The most beautiful women.

The world’s greatest art.

The finest fashions.

The most beautiful cars.

The magic of opera.

The best wines.

The most sublime architecture.

The deepest possible contempt for government and taxes.

The realization that you work to live, not vice versa.

And if that wasn’t enough, why not throw in the most gorgeous landscapes?

That is Italy and to say that the photography in this large book is spectacular is to do the photographers – Antonio Attini and Marcello Bertinetti (names to conjur with!) – an injustice.

No fewer than 423 pages grace this book which comes with a DVD of the Alps. Aptly enough, the foreword is by Franco Zeffirelli, and if you haven’t seen a Zeffirelli staging of an Italian opera, well, you haven’t lived.

Mine came from Edward R Hamilton, a tad shopworn, for $19.95, DVD included. Sure, they don’t take web orders but at that price, what’s your hurry? Get an envelope and a stamp. And don’t ask. Just go out right now and get this fabulous book.

As an adjunct, if you want to learn how Brunelleschi worked his magic on the dome in Florence, add this while you are at it.

Real Chicago

Book reviews

Book review.

One of the reasons I so like Chicago is that I have never had to visit it in the winter. Add the fact that is is the quintessential American city, has mid-west standards and values, not to mention America’s finest architecture, and you have a place well worth visiting. No one who has lived there could remotely think of New York, by contrast, as anything but a European city.

The title of this book says it all. Divided into decade chapters from the forties to the nineties, it comes as no surprise that the best work here is in the first two chapters. When you realize that five frames per second is discounted as slow in the world of modern DSLRs, think about the working stiff with his Crown Graphic and a couple of film holders. He generally had but one chance to capture the decisive moment, and you see lots of that in this book. Something about these old pictures speaks differently, too. Maybe its their dignity, grace and composition. They move you in the way modern photojournalism seldom does.

My remaindered copy cost all of $15 and I recommend you add this book to your photo library.

And if you think I have glossed over the decades of machine politics and corruption in America’s second city well, I learned everything I ever needed about Chicago’s law enforcement from the succinct words of the humorist P. G. Wodehouse. “At least when you buy a Chicago cop, they stay bought”. Honor and integrity. Got to love that in your local police force.

You can see my library of photography books by clicking here.

For a fabulous evocation of what the city must have been like in the early post war years, click here.