Cindy Sherman

Photographers

An outstanding show at MOMA SF.

In a sweeping Retrospective show of her work (can you have a Prospective show?) at SF MOMA through October 8, 2012, Cindy Sherman shows why she is one of the most interesting contemporary photographers.

For some forty years now Sherman has been working with just one subject. Herself.

Sherman as the Duchess of Windsor, the much divorced Wallis Simpson who never got to be Queen.

Expert in make-up and prosthetics, Sherman has portrayed herself in dozens of styles. Flapper, floosie, whore, matron, aristocrat, bag lady, newly moneyed, and so on. The show is too big to take in at one pop, but two of the rooms stand out. In one a handful of large format pictures, maybe 3′ x 5′, show her portrayed against insanely lush backdrops, varying from Dynasty kitsch to landed gentry. The scheming Duchess of Windsor above, perfectly understood, is but one such example, though the out-of-focus masking is beyond crude. (She needs to learn Photoshop’s Magic Lasso tool). The viewer is simultaneously awed by the detail and technique and repelled by the excess on show, as Sherman treads a fine line between purportedly respectful rendering of the subject and her surroundings and disgust at the vast wealth on display. Evil is the root of all money here.

In another room are painterly renditions of characters from the Dutch and Italian Renaissance schools, and they are simply breathtaking. When you see Sherman as Caravaggio’s ‘Sick Bacchus’ your jaw will drop in amazement and admiration.

Sherman as Caravaggio’s Sick Bacchus.

It’s hard not to be impressed, and puzzled. Here’s a woman making herself up in imitative styles and surroundings, making recreations of famous paintings. Is that bad taste or great art? Hard to call. But there’s no denying the woman’s work ethic and, well yes, her originality.

MOMA SF

Photographs

Sun hat.

iPhone 4S. Click the picture for the map.

I stopped by the MOMA Cindy Sherman show – of which more later – yesterday, in a seemingly deserted San Francisco, and found my eye diverted by the sun hat and red chevron.

Another reason why the point-and-shoot camera is dead. When you can’t be bothered to take gear with you, there’s always the phone. And GPS coordinates come with the territory. The iPhone’s camera is silent, so even at a range of two feet discretion is assured, and no excuses are needed for the quality of the results.

By the way, the above image printed splendidly at 13″ x 19″ on the HP DJ90 printer. While admittedly not a challenging picture to print, owing to the low contrast lighting and limited dynamic range, it does testify to the quality of the lens and sensor in the iPhone 4S.

iPhone5

iPhone

A disappointment which will sell well.

With discretion and confidentiality being concepts of the past, the forthcoming iPhone5, to be announced on September 12 and on sale September 21, has been the most leaked iPhone design ever, despite Tim Cook’s commitment to tighten up security. Here’s what we know:

  • Same width as the iPhone 4S.
  • Half an inch taller for 16:9 widescreen rather than 4:3. Largely useless.
  • LTE 4G cellular, meaning AT&T can cease lying about 4G (my AT&T 4S says ‘4G’ when it’s ‘3G’).
  • Thinner, owing to integration of touch sensors into the LCD panel.
  • Better battery life, maybe as good as the competition.
  • A smaller dock connector, just to make sure 50 million users of accessories get upset.
  • Maybe an even better camera sensor to update the already excellent 8mp one in the 4S, the biggest update from the previous model 4. OVTI’s pop in share price and revenue predictions suggest this may be so; they make the sensor.
  • The global Qualcomm comms chip to permit functioning on any cellular network, including China Mobile which has yet to sign with Apple. China Mobile accounts for 50% of Chinese cellphone users.
  • A faster A6X ARM CPU.

Here’s what we likely will not see:

  • Near Field Computing. NFC is the technology which will replace credit cards and drivers’ licenses, storing that data encrypted in the phone and transmitting it by a proximity wave to the reader in the retailer’s store. Or cop’s cruiser …. In an insightful piece, one of the best tech sites around, AnandTech, has concluded there is insufficient space inside for an NFC chip, further hampered by a reversion to a metal back, compared with the current glass one.
  • A proper sized screen. Having sued and prevailed over Samsung’s copycat efforts, and rightly so, Apple is likely finding it hard to argue for the right-sized screen in Samsung’s Galaxy III phone. As regards those who damn Apple’s intellectual property efforts, they forget two things. Apple has paid its share of penalties for IP infringement. And how would these critics feel were it their IP which was being stolen?
  • Biometric technology. Apple recently bought biometric security (fingerprint recognition, retina scans, etc.) AuthenTech for $356mm which brings with it the thrilling prospect that I will no longer have my credit card number stolen annually by Russian hackers. You will access your iPhone with your fingerprint, no more easily guessed passwords for thieves. The thieving sales clerk will no longer see your CC number. And, once licensed, customers of WalMart will be able to check out with a fingerprint which is an improvement over the ‘X’ they currently struggle to write on the credit card machine’s screen.

In a nutshell, if the above is right – and I pray it is not – the iPhone 5 is a useless 0.5″ longer than the iPhone 4S and represents little more than tinkering at the margin of the current design, while increasingly falling behind the best of the competition, stolen as many of their designs may be. 4G is nice for the 2% of the cellphone world which has access to it. Verizon 4G on my iPad3 is outstanding in the Bay Area, by the way. AT&T’s 3G on my iPhone 4S is anything but.

Yet despite that litany of disappointments, it will be a massive success, for several reasons:

  • The Apple ecosystem. You can argue, correctly, about the dated and confusing design of iTunes, but a relatively stable iCloud and high integrity email and related applications not only tie in existing users but also attract those brutalized by Android and Windows.
  • There is no earthly reason to think that Microsoft’s Windows 8, promising everything to everyone, will be any more successful than the disastrous Vista. iOS and the iPhone/iPad were in development 5 years (500 man years?). Why on earth would anyone think that Microsoft, famous for poor UIs and a cynical disregard for the user experience owing to long vested monopoly power, should succeed with an immature Windows 8 which tries to please both desktop and mobile users? Were I a gambling man I would bet that the Surface tablet will be the Sinker tablet before too long, having successfully upset all of MSFT’s traditional manufacturing partners (Acer, Asus, HP, Dell, etc.) who have had the carpet whipped out from under their feet by MSFT’s sudden decision to become a manufacturer. (Xbox was purchased and remains largely unchanged since, and making mice is not the same as making tablets).
  • China Mobile. Apple will soon sign this carrier in China, one who accounts for 50% of China’s cellphone users. The new Qualcomm comms chip in iPhone5 will, for the first time, accommodate CM’s cellular technology. Sure, that does not mean 500 million new sales, but Apple is about profits not market share. Another 10 million at 45% profit margin will do nicely. That figures to $30 or 5% on AAPL’s share price.
  • Pent up replacement/upgrade demand from iPhone4 owners who were disappointed by the marginal improvements – camera aside – in the iPhone4S.
  • Vanity sales from Apple’s growing share in laptops, where users are introduced to the elegance and quality of Apple’s design work. As one example, the 2012 MacBook Air is an outstanding, attractively priced machine and the Retina Display 15″ MacBook Pro has the best laptop display in the business and will soon be joined by a 13″ model which will further grow laptop share.
  • Continuing Apple supply chain dominance with long-term supply contracts signed up with key component makers, not least the three manufacturers of retina displays.

So while I expect the camera to be further improved in iPhone5, yet another nail in the point-and-shoot sector’s coffin, I will be waiting for iPhone6 unless I am significantly mistaken in what I wrote above.

As for Apple’s future, the company has lots of good things in the pipeline but the ones we know about are anything but innovative. The iPad Mini will clean up in the education market (OK, not in US public schools, which hardly qualify as education) at a $249 entry point, and will get no competition from the soon to be introduced Kindle Fire2, which will be heavily advertising supported to direct you to buy more stuff from Amazon.com. Teachers will likely not take kindly to their charges firing up their, err…. Fires only to be confronted with condom ads. Patent litigation will continue for the forseeable future and Apple will mostly prevail, setting back the thieves and forcing them to actually make something original. Everyone wins, but Apple wins first.

The Steve Jobs pipeline of innovative products is ending, so some really new things have to come along for Apple to maintain its torrid pace of growth. I expect that to continue for at least another year, but absent a fresh burst of innovation, the storm clouds will come closer. The replacement market is not a growth business, after all.

Disclosure: Long AAPL, QCOM, BRCM.

9-eyes

Photography

GBS lives.

George Bernard Shaw once accused the 35mm photographer, with his high capacity cassette of film, of being a salmon which lays thousands of eggs in the hope one will hatch.

The 9-eyes project is modern proof of the truth of that statement. The name refers to the nine lensed camera used by Google’s StreetView project to photograph everything on earth and slot the images into its mapping software. Regardless of what you may think of the invasiveness of this project – and I think it is both invasive and probably illegal – photographer Jon Rathman has taken it upon himself to curate the best images which accidentally result and you can see more on his blog by clicking the picture below. Many images are quite startling and true ‘accidental’ art. The multiplicity of one-fingered salutes and ‘moonings’ offered by subjects to Google’s prying camera suggests I am not alone in my view of the acceptability of what this thieving corporation is doing here.

Click the image for the 9-eyes site.

Many of the lansdcape images, some quite outstanding, confirm the futility of most landscape photography. All it takes is to be there and push the button. The photographer, as often as not, adds nothing. Stated differently, if I see another bloody picture of white birches I am going to scream. StreetView does it as well as Saint Ansel. And some of the surreal street candids are nothing short of superb suggesting candid street snaps are just as random and easy as those wretched landscapes.

Rathman’s site raises a lot of questions. Had one snapper caught as many great moments in his lifetime he would be regraded as the next HC-B.