Roger Deakins – Byways

Book reviews, Photographers

A fine street snapper.

In addition to being amongst the most renowned of cinematographers, Roger Deakins is also a fine street snapper, with a style dating back to the 1950s when the moment was everything and composition mattered. These two attributes of a good street snap no longer exist, destroyed since 2007 by the iPhone which means everyone has a camera and thinks he is a good photographer.

So it’s a special pleasure to look at Deakins’s photobook with many examples of his street snaps over the years. The gentle sense of humor, typical of his generation of Englishmen, pervades many of these images and the book is highly recommended. If I have a favorite it’s this one, a sobering reminder not to associate with people who do not imbibe:


Prohibition lives.

Home theater – final touches

Home theater

The Home Theater was pretty much complete 6 months ago but as I had a couple of old tripods sitting around largely unused it seemed appropriate to add a couple of cameras to go with them.

The 120” screen is flanked by a 1960s Nikon F on a period Linhof S168 tripod at left and a Calumet 4”x5” view camera with a Schneider Symmar lens, on a 1930s English Gandolfi wooden tripod at right. The Nikon F, which brought back so many horrific images of conflict and death from the front did more to end the Viet Nam war than any politician or soldier. This was before the Pentagon learned to keep photographers away from the front lines, so as to sanitize and extend our endless wars. The Calumet view camera was a staple of Hollywood’s glamor photographers, the large 4” x 5” negatives making the retouching of warts and achievement of glossy perfection relatively easy.

Here are snaps of those two cameras:


The Nikon F, with a 50mmf/1.4 Nikkor lens.


The Calumet monorail view camera with more twists and turns than a politician.

Further, on the sofaback, there is one of these:


The Zeiss Ikon Contax camera is similar to the one which photographer Robert Capa took with him when he parachuted in to Omaha Beach with the 82nd Airborne on D Day. The few surviving negatives (the lab ruined most of the film) are amongst the greatest war images made. He lost his life when stepping on a landmine in Indochina a few years later.

These additions, as well as some further light sealing for errant sun rays, largely see the Home Theater project completed.

Cole Phillips

Art Illustration

Fadeaway.

For an index of articles on art illustrators, click here.

One of the special artists of the golden age of American illustration was Coles Phillips (1880-1927), remembered for his ‘Fadeaway’ images where the model’s dress would be the same color as the background, hence ‘Fadeaway’. A contemporary of J C Leyendecker his illustrations are distinguished by the lovely young women used to sell dresses, cosmetics, kitchen hardware, you name it. And those images are exquisite:








Cast your net and marry well ….


My favorite. An absolute stunner.



An example of non-Fadeaway art, still striking.


I can find only one monograph of his work out there:


Click the image for Amazon.

Phillips’s work is obviously not aimed at the grubby masses, yearning to breathe free (or, at least, hoping for a cheap seat in the bleachers). These women have gone the way of true capitalists, and have married well.

While 250 would have been more like it, the slim book has 83 beautifully reproduced full page images of Phillips’s work and is highly recommended for all lovers of great illustration.

For an index of articles on art illustrators, click here.