Category Archives: Photographs

Robert Gambee – Downtown Manhattan

Architecture, Book reviews

A standout from the crowd of Manhattan picture books.

Wall Street Christmas by Robert Gambee was published in 1990, some three years after I had taken Horace Greeley’s advice and moved west to Los Angeles. It is a wonderful piece with superb photography and text by Gambee – a monumental task. The book has over 270 pages and probably as many pictures.

While no longer in print you can pick up a good used copy for a few dollars from Amazon or other booksellers, and I recommend it unreservedly is you like superb architecture and photography.

I was reminded of the book when cataloging some pictures the other day and coming across a batch from my Wall Street days. Gambee records not only the exteriors but also the plush executive suites where the rich were made to feel better about parting with their money, for they could see so much of it hanging on the walls. My favorite recollection of the time is attending meetings in the board room of J. P. Morgan at 23 Wall Street where, for some inexplicable reason, I was always seated directly opposite the huge oil of J. Pierpont Morgan himself, dark glowering gaze and all. I have absolutely no recollection of the content of the meetings but the portrait will go with me to my grave! I recall traipsing down the corridor of this fine space – the building deliberately built to just a handful of stories to emphasize the wealth of the institution – and suddenly the industrial carpet changed to plush pile as you approached the hallowed ‘executive’ area.

There are the obligatory pictures of the World Trade Centers, of course, as it was impossible not to notice them. They only looked good at night when all those office lights made the facades look like some digital modern art piece. I had a client in one on the 95th floor and you had to take two elevators to get there. Each building was so large it had its own zip code for mail. Having dined a few times in the surprisingly good Windows on the World restaurant at the very top on the 110th floor, I recall on one windy winter’s day when the short elevator trip to the top was interrupted by the failsafes which would refuse to allow the elevator to move if the building and its shaft were twisting too much …. these buildings were tall!

Gambee’s pictures are far superior to anything I ever did in New York, but just for fun, here are a couple of my images.

Old and new, downtown Manhattan. Pentax ME Super, 200mm Takumar. Kodachrome 64

World Trade Centers. Pentax ME Super, 40mm ‘pancake’ Takumar. Kodachrome 64

A fine book, whether your interest is in architecture or just a vouyeuristic one wishing to glimpse the corridors of American financial power.

Simple lines and colors

Panasonic, Photographs

Sometimes a simple abstraction strikes you, and you press the button.

Simple colors. Simple lines. An air of mystery. What is around that corner?

Lines and colors. Panasonic Lumic LX1, ISO100.

With the small Lumix LX1 and its superb Leica lens, there really is no excuse. Nowadays I always carry a camera, in contrast to those occasions where even the compact Leica M3 and its small 35mm lens were too much to lug around. The only thing to remember is a spare battery.

Twenty photographs

Photographs, Photography

Think of twenty.

I do this often, and it’s a great vision improving exercise.

It’s not just a party game like naming the states or their capital cities. The winners at that game, in my experience, are usually professional sportsmen as they have travelled to each. No, what’s at stake here is building a mental library of pictures that drive me to excel and set a standard to be beaten.

Not equaled. I think I can do better. But you need a target. And I like to set my sights high.

Want to know my current twenty in no particular order? Here goes:

The bowler hatted gent jumping the puddle – Henri Cartier-Bresson
The couple in the convertible watching the drive-in screen – O. Winston Link
The Spanish revolutionary soldier at the moment of death, faked or not – Robert Capa
Chez Mondrian – Andre Kertesz
Churchill – Yousuf Karsh
Margaret Thatcher – Anthony Armstrong-Jones
Glyndebourne with cows – Tony Ray Jones
Eleanor with her son – Harry Callahan
Damaged – Walker Evans
Lisa Fonssagrives with elephant – Richard Avedon
Pepper – Edward Weston
Hell’s Angels – Irving Penn
Distorted Nude on the Beach – Bill Brandt
Nudist camp – Elliot Erwitt
The Krays – David Bailey
Prostitutes at Night – Brassai
Racing Car – Jacques-Henri Lartigue
Building the Golden Gate – Peter Stackpole
A Face in the Car – Robert Frank
Dog with Tweeds – Thomas Pindelski

Here’s mine:

Dog with Tweeds. Leica M3, 90mm Elmar, Trix/D76 at 800 ASA.

The other aspect of this little test is to look at changes when I redo the list in a few months from now. It always shows me the direction in which my work and interests are going and point to useful avenues of study and discovery.

To make this a useful exercise, write down your five, ten, twenty or whatever, favorite photographs. Now look at the list produced the next time around. What changed? What is attracting your focus? What did each of your choices do for you and why did they drop off your list?

Can’t name five? Ten? Twenty? Hmmm….

In search of Edward Hopper

Architecture, Paintings

An American painter who has inspired generations of photographers.

I came to the works of Edward Hopper (1882-1967) late in life. I say ‘late’ as I was well familiar with the great European masters while still a teenager. No, it was not until the early 1980s, when I was in my thirties, that I became aware of this American master. England was not the best place to learn about Hopper. Becoming an American fixed that.

I was traipsing up Madison Avenue on a warm summer day, when I came across what has to be the ugliest building in New York City – the Whitney Museum of Art. Whereas the Guggenheim can be thought of as an interesting building in the wrong place, flanked by stately Fifth Avenue mansions, the Whitney is just plain bad. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim should probably be in the mid-West somewhere to liven things up (please, not in downtown Chicago which boasts America’s finest buildings) but Marcel Breuer’s Whitney is nothing so much as a wrecking ball special. Not even Iowa would improve were it to be magically moved there. In any case, the city fathers would probably reject the offer.

Enough about architecture. So I was about to shuffle past, Leica insouciantly slung over one shoulder, when the poster caught my eye. No, not the iconic ‘Nighthawks’ but rather ‘Early Sunday’ which could have been painted in any number of American cities over the past fifty years.

The lighting was just so, that languorous sun ready to turn another American downtown into a cauldron. No one in sight. It is early Sunday after all. I simply had to go inside. The art was a revelation. On the one hand it played to the manic depressive Eastern European gene in my blood. On the other it spoke to the eternal loneliness of the big city. Here was a man after my own heart. Introspection and solitude permeate his painting – emotions somewhat alien to the American soul.

Over the years since, I have gazed much at Hopper’s art and it has unconsciously become a part of me. Yet, when I press the button on those special occasions, it’s the American master dancing in my head.

San Francisco. Leica M3, 90mm Apo Summicron Asph, Kodak Gold 100

San Diego. Leica M6, 90mm Apo Summicron Asph, Kodak Gold 100

Into the sun

Photographs, Photography

That approach seems to account for a high percentage of my pictures.

It’s second nature, I suppose, but somewhere up to half of my outdoor pictures seem to be taken into the sun. I just love the effects that renders. Modern near flare free lenses make things much easier than in days past of course, and even that Canon fisheye, where it’s pretty easy to end up with the sun in the frame, produces but one small flare spot, easily removed in Photoshop. Overall image contrast seems unaffected. Lenses have never been better, and in the case of many of the Canon range, more affordable.

Case in point, I just sold my Leica 90mm Apo Summicron Asph lens for more than you would pay for any but the most exotic lens from Canon. Is the Leica lens that much better? Well, you cannot tell from prints…. Whatever that great Leica lens gains in optical quality is scarificed on the altar of dated technology known as film. The full frame sensor in the 5D just holds up much better once reproduced size gets seriously large as long as you err on the side of underexposure to avoid blowing out the highlights.

Father and Child. Canon EOS 5D, 24-105mm at 70mm, ISO 200, TLR monochrome action in PS.