Manet’s Bar

Paintings

Amongst the great benefits of a 1970s higher British education was the complete laxity shown at my school (University College, London) about attendance. Given that I was a mechanical engineering student and realized early on that there was not a living to be made in the subject, I naturally spent most of those three happy years (1973-76) in the art galleries and auction houses of London. As my net worth was my Leica M3 and one pair of jeans, I wasn’t exactly a bidder at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, but they let me in anyway and I managed to luxuriate in some of the greatest art works never to see the inside of a museum.

Of all these great works that became formative influences none surpasses Manet’s ‘A Bar at the Folies-Bergère’. It didn’t hurt that it was owned by the Courtauld Institute which just happened to be across the road from my college.


Manet. A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. 1882

This is the most intensely photographic of paintings. The use of reflections, the amputated Kermit-like legs of the trapeze artist at top left, the action in the mirror, the sad ‘decisive moment’ look on the barmaid’s face – it’s all there. Best of all, the Courtauld exhibited it under a skylight, meaning that you had a 33% chance of catching the picture at its best (it was raining the other two times) when a beam of sun would illuminate the canvas. The result was magic. You could hear the unruly crowds, smell the booze and sweat and generally revel in the sheer reality of it all.

The most photographic of paintings.

And British beer aficionados amongst you will recognize the red triangles on the bottles on the bar.


An established brand for a few hundred years now

As for my grades, magna cum laude was a perfect ROE (Return On Effort) – six months’ work beating the three years’ worth which a summa dictated. A gentleman’s degree!

The photo press

Photography

Where I get my news

Human nature and the realities of capital costs dictate that most fields of enterprise will have a handful of dominant competitors – be it arms makers, foodstuff manufacturers, clothiers or camera makers. Likewise, there is only one Wall Street Journal and only one Variety, the latter for the Hollywood set.

In photography, growing up in the UK, it was The Amateur Photographer. Sure there were others, but none was published weekly and none published as much of my work as AP did – so obviously I liked it! The closest the US ever got in print was Shutterbug, a magazine whose sycophantic ‘reviews’ of gear reflected nothing more than pandering to their advertisers. An abomination.

Given that print is dead – the next few years will see the New York Times, the WSJ and every major US and UK newspaper cease print publication – where does one go for photography news? For me it has long been DP review which brings with it British journalistic integrity (a concept foreign to US shores) and a no-punches-pulled style to its equipment reviews. Sure, the guys doing the reviews couldn’t take a picture if their lives depended on it, but we are talking test charts here, not the Vogue studios.

A perfect example of the quality of DPR’s work can be seen today in their interview with the big digital cheese at Panasonic. A couple of excerpts indicate just how insightful their work is:

Translation: Dummies. We downloaded what they knew about optics and now have left them behind owing to our vastly superior knowledge of digital processing. No need to pay these fellows royalties for their dated designs any more.

Translation: Yup, another thing we picked up from Leica. The M rangefinder was the most perfect body shape ever made for hand held use. We will make it better.

There are lots of other review sites out there but none compares to DPR for breadth and depth of objective reporting.

And when that M-Panny with a 35mm f/2 lens and a full frame sensor appears, you will have to get behind me in the line.

The new Bernie

Photographs

Hiding out

If you are going to hide, a big city is the best place, as this shot of a newly-escaped-on-bail-Bernie, snapped on Montgomery Street in San Francisco, testifies.


5D, 24-105mm at 98mm, 1/250, f/5.6, ISO 400

And he can positively guarantee you 1% a month in perpetuity.