Forgotten but great
Take the style of Hoyningen-Huene and the class of Horst, add a dollop of good old American humor and what do you get?
Why, John Rawlings, of course.
If you like your fashion with a touch of spice and irreverence, you need go no further.
The book is out of print, but the photography remains splendid. It’s called “John Rawlings: 30 Years in Vogue” and you can find it on the web. Depending on your point of view, it’s either dead cheap or you just don’t get it.
Quite a contrast
I took our boy to a show of Russian and Chinese 1950-era aircraft the past weekend and, because detail was the order of the day, took along the 5D and a couple of lenses.
Quite a change from the G1 when it comes to bulk and weight!
The 5D has marginally better shutter and focus response, though unless sports action is your thing, it’s not a significant difference. On the other hand, the 5D is much noisier (the camera, not the images!) and of course weighs several times as much. The 5D’s viewfinder seems positively dim after the G1’s EVF, although it renders colors and dynamic range more realistically outdoors. Indoors, while the G1 may show some noise, it is in a different league. I simply fail to understand why so many commentators have criticized the G1’s EVF for noise in poor light. Which would you prefer? A dim image in a 5D or like camera, or a really bright and easily discerned one in the G1 with a touch of noise? No contest. Maybe these critics should try to take pictures with their charges?
It was an interesting exercise. Simply stated, comparing digital and film eras, the 5D is to medium format what the G1 is to the Leica M. With the 5D grain is not an issue and just about anything you snap will enlarge to a print size of choice. The G1, like 35mm film equipment, needs greater care. If you are going to push the size of your prints and the ISO setting, be prepared for compromises. The difference is likely to be less as time passes and technology marches on. While film peaked in quality years ago, digital is just getting started.
Nothing changes
When I was a kid growing up in London, I always used to wonder at public works employees. You would invariably see one man digging a hole while four or five others watched.
Much the same philosophy applies in the US, though as a nominally capitalist economy, we have reduced the worker:watcher ratio to 1:1 which, I suppose, is a bargain for the taxpayer.
I watched these chaps for a couple of minutes and can attest that the fat one did absolutely nothing during that time. Spotted in The Tenderloin the other day.
Now that’s loyalty
You have to admire a man who matches his car to his favorite watering hole.
A Depression era icon
I have finally set to right the inexcusable omission of a monograph on Dorothea Lange from my library.
Where Walker Evans mostly photographed things, Lange photographed people. And her pictures always seem to get to the emotional heart of her subjects and the horrors of the Great Depression.
The monograph, titled ‘Dorothea Lange: Photographs of a Lifetime’, is a splendid review of her work, covering the period 1932-59 and, as with all monographs published by Aperture, is of the highest quality.
It’s overpriced new, but my used copy came from Strand Books for under $40. That’s another bookseller which should be in every photographer’s address book.
In the photographer’s words:
“You force yourself to watch and wait. You accept all the discomfort and the disharmony. Being out of your depth is a very uncomfortable thing …. You force yourself onto strange streets, among strangers. It may be very hot. It may be painfully cold. It may be sandy and windy and you say “What am I doing here? What drives me to do this hard thing?”
The book relates the story of how she came to take her most famous picture, that of the migrant mother in Nipomo, CA. The story is so incredible that I will not retell it here and suggest, instead, that you buy this book to read all about it.
If you want to see the depredations visited upon this great nation by stunningly incompetent administrations of both parties, aided and abetted by a seemingly uncaring and callous Federal Reserve, you need go no further than Lange’s great humanism, as displayed in her pictures.