Horst in colour

Photographers

A master.

One of the pleasant outcomes of the V&A’s Horst show was the scanning and printing of his colour transparencies.

Introduced in 1935, and much improved shortly thereafter, Kodak made Kodachrome slide film in sizes up to 11″ x 14″. Horst opted for 8″ x 10″ and the Vogue magazine archive of his slides holds many originals never before printed.


Click the image for the video.

The video explains that high quality drum scans of these originals preserved all the detail and dynamic range, something only recently improved upon by large format digital imaging. However, the vaunted curators really need to go back to curator school. Early in the video you see old copies of the magazine handled with cotton gloves. All well and good. Now jump to 4:22. Yup. Those fish and chip greased up fingers are used to manhandle the priceless originals. Let’s hope those drum scans are well backed up because the originals are not going to make it at this rate.

One of the key points the video illustrates is that Horst, during his 60 year career at Vogue, made the transition from monochrome to colour seamlessly, unlike many others. (Ever seen an HC-B colour snap? Ugh!). Horst’s classical, static compositions, using simple sets, helped but this master excelled at everything photographic. The video is well worth watching, especially if this is your first introduction to Horst’s work.

Lies for WASPs

Photographs

Fool me once….


The latest unstitched invitation.

There are no blacks, Hispanics or Chinese in LL Bean’s world. Or maybe they know I am none of those and choose the cover image to suit their algorithm. No, their cover models are always white, in their late twenties, suffer from inherited wealth and smart choice of parents and oh! so happy in their blissful unawareness of the working world.

And there’s always a dog. They must know I love dogs. Maybe they bought that ‘intelligence’ from the thieves at Google as I have been known to surf dog images. Especially those of Border Terriers.

And the teeth – the dog’s and the WASPs’ – are always perfect, as befits American marketing at its best.

I have put up with LL Bean’s pandering for years and even visited their mega-store in lovely Freeport, Maine when we were checking out the ‘BBC’ colleges (Bates, Bowdoin and Colby) in that remote state, coming away suitably impressed. With the store and the schools. Heck, I bought their clothing for years, both for myself and my son.

Now, no more. Every Item of clothing bought in the last year or two has failed prematurely. If it has buttons, they come off soon after purchase. And I am about as likely to sew on a button as I am to change a diaper, which is to say not at all. Seams split as soon as you look at them. Though sized correctly, the arm seam on LL Bean’s ubiquitous polo shirts splits after a few months wear, and that’s at $45 a pop. Amazon’s ‘Essentials’ line runs all of $15 each, the seams never split and they last forever. Which is a good deal longer than LLB’s. For all I know Amazon’s are made of the same Chinese cloth, if stitched elsewhere. What I do know is that I get three for the price of one. LLB’s slippers? Aptly named as the insoles in LLB’s slip out after mere weeks of wear. I did not know these were a DIY project when I shelled out for them. They could at least have included a tube of adhesive.

So keep sending those WASP catalogs, LLB, as I love the cover images, so expertly crafted and targeted, especially those of the dogs. But I will not be darkening your order desk again. You have fooled me too many times.

A peaceful lunch

Motorcycles

In the desert.


Before the rumble.

Not disclosed in this image is the violent aftermath, the result of my pointing out to the pig riding the Harley that his machine was 90% made of Chinese steel. The other 10% is the Japanese parts. He took umbrage and I had to lay out his 400lbs of blubber using nothing more than my bare fists. Real Men do not need tire irons.

iPhone 11 Pro snap.

Reginald Marsh

Paintings

A ‘slice of life’ street painter.

The American painter Reginald Marsh (1898-1954) was born in Paris but grew up in New Jersey. Back when Americans could still afford the best American education he graduated from Lawrenceville prep school, and went on to Yale where he drew cartoons for the school’s student paper.

His genre of choice was that of street scenes, more often than not portraying the lower classes in locations like Coney Island. New York was very much his canvas.


Battery Park, 1926.


H. Dummeyer Bar and Grill, probably 1940s.


Coney_Island, 1930


Pavonia, Jersey City, 1928.


Coney Island. Pursuit, 1936.


The Normandie, 1953.

The cartoon ethic is always there to be seen. It’s no surprise that Marsh was a major inspiration for the best gangster movie made, Sergio Leone’s ‘Once Upon a Time in America’ set, naturally, in New York City.

Here’s what I’m talking about:


An electric crowd scene in the Jewish quarter, Prohibition-era NYC, from Sergio Leone’s movie.

A dirt cheap eReader

Photography

Kindle Fire 7.


The magnetic charger adapter – circled – protrudes very little.

I had yet another Kindle reader fail the other day. The previous two (Paperwhites) were rendered useless by trashed MicroUSB sockets, the latest, a costly Voyage (still sporting that awful MicroUSB connector), decided to go nuts and the screen started delivering crazed images.

So I thought I might try an iPad Mini until, that is, I saw the price. $400. Are you crazy, Apple? Never discounted, it’s over $100 more than a base full size iPad. No thanks.

I was reluctant to go with another Paperwhite owing to the fragile USB socket when I chanced upon a clever solution in the guise of a magnetic MicroUSB adapter. Costing all of $7, the small, chrome end piece goes in the Kindle’s socket and thereafter the cable is attached magnetically for charging. Elegant and inexpensive, you will never need to trouble that fragile connector again.

Then, by chance, I spotted that the base LED Kindle, the Fire 7, was selling for $30. Thirty dollars! At that rate I can replace it annually for a decade and I’m still way ahead of the cost of an iPad. And as my sole use for the device is as an eReader, paying up for lots of added functionality is money wasted. Sure the Fire 7 is replete with Amazonia, ads for this and that, direct links to the shopping site, and on and on. But, hey, one swipe and you are in the Kindle reader app. I downloaded free Wikipedia and Dictionary apps and that’s it. You really do not want to trust your contacts, calendars and so on to a device which runs a (modified) version of the Android OS, a system designed with thieves and hackers in mind, and not in a good way.

The LCD screen, which is perfectly adequate for reading all day long, means that you cannot read in direct, bright sun, but I can confirm that with the brightness cranked up to 80% I get a solid 7 hours of reading time. That’s barely adequate for a cross country flight, but the iPhone can always fill in for the last hour while the bus driver at the controls tries to find the landing strip and the cabin waitresses regale you with offers of free miles. What sort of masochist would want more time on an American flying cattle car?

Weight? 10 ounces, same as the iPad Mini, compared with 7 ounces for the Kindle Paperwhite.

And yes, you can comfortably hold the Fire 7 in one hand above your head lying on the sofa, a key requirement for this reader.

The Fire 7 comes with modest storage, netting to 10GB once the OS and apps are installed. This is more than adequate for ereading with each loaded book consuming 1-3 MB. That’s thousands of books and there’s no need to have them all loaded at one time. If more storage is needed, simply install an inexpensive MicroSD card in the provided slot. Up to 512 GB can be installed, with a quality 32GB card running Under $10.