graeme mitchell

As a follow up to the recent post on the inventors of fashion photography (here), I thought it would be best to give proper props to the two guys I view as the inventors of modern fashion photography as we know it, Guy Bourdin (pronounced Gee) and Helmut Newton.

(You may ask, but what about Avedon and Penn, especially given my proclivity of admiration for their works?  My response would be that I consider them more the fathers of modern portraiture, not fashion; Avedon is a portrait photographer first and foremost…certainly up for discussion though.)

If you know fashion, then I don’t need to belabor the influence these guys had and have on it.  I will say that I’ve always been a fan of Newton’s aesthetic.  His works from day one appealed to my personal taste and a interest in black and white; both things I think would be obvious if you looked at my portfolio.  He was a phenomenal photographer and opened up a lot of doors. But Bourdin, well, Bourdin is often referred to in casual conversation as a genius, and though I’m  hesitant to use that term lightly, I wouldn’t disagree in this case.  I prefer Newtons look, sure, but I think Bourdin did more as an artist.  His work is incredibly refined, has a rare dedication to a vision, and seems like something he HAD to do.  I’d sum it up like this, I imagine Newton probably had a blast on all levels with his work, and probably could have had fun doing a lot of other things in life.  While Bourdin, I imagine, on some levels, was very tortured by his work, but he was meant to do it: there was no other route.

But this is all speculation, imagined scenarios and personalities; really, I’ve no idea about either of them beyond what I gather from reviewing the photographs.

Guy Bourdin:

photo: © Guy Bourdin

photo: © Guy Bourdin

Helmut Newton:

photo: © Helmut Newton

photo: © Helmut Newton

These are the guys that invented fashion photography; pre-WWII consciously or not they created a whole new genre and became the shoulders Avedon and Penn and the rest would later stand on.  Absolutely remarkable.  If you don’t know them, study up, b/c they’ve a great deal to teach.

Horst P. Horst:

photo: Mainbocher Corset, Paris, 1939. ©Horst P. Horst.

Cecil Beaton:

photo: Baba Beaton: A Symphony in Silver, 1925. ©Cecil Beaton Archive.

George Hoyningen-Huene:

photo: Divers, 1930. © George Hoyningen-Huene.

Louise Dahl-Wolfe:

photo: Twins at Beach, 1955. © Louise Dahl-Wolfe.

Martin Munkacsi:

photo: Lovely autumn: the last rays of sunshine, ca. 1929. © Joan Munkacsi.

I’d previously mentioned Brandt’s portrait of Francis Bacon here. But I want revisit Brandt, b/c I think he was one of the most visually creative photographers of the 20th century, certainly one of the greats to come out of England. It’s almost impossible for me to fathom how he took the pictures he took and, for lack of better words, got them to work, at least without losing the idea’s effect within the idea’s requisites, and more specifically how he was able to transform the plurals of form and content into a singular. Although, he was Man Ray’s assistant so… As an example and as the picture-to-really-consider-of-the-day:

photo: Micheldever 1948 ©Bill Brandt

I’ve mentioned Eggleston before but have never done a post on him, b/c I wouldn’t know where to begin or stop…I mean, I have hordes of awe for his vision and his pursuit of it, b/c you see, in so many ways, he is the father of modern fine-art photography. He brought color to fine art photography, and banality, and irony, and the vernacular, and…and pretty much anything you see in color hanging in Chelsea today. Indeed, he’s one of the handful photographers I’d, without hesitation, call a genius of the medium…not ingenious, but truly genius.

I still don’t plan on saying much here b/c it’d become painfully long-winded, so I only wanted to share this picture from his book William Eggleston 5×7. It caught my eye as being so beautiful. It’s not even particularly Egglestonish; it’s softer and lacks his usual detachment; but it’s for this very reason I’m attracted to it.

photo: from William Eggleston 5×7, © William Eggleston.

For more on this picture and the taking of it read this Smithsonian article.

I’ve been looking for good fashion editorials like standing at the newsstands is my job, but there’s not much out right now, and indeed I can hardly complain since I haven’t shot any editorial since Dec either… So, instead, I want to send out an appreciatory note to the better than good photographer Bruce Davidson (w/ Magnum and w/ Art Dept), b/c work like his has a great effect on me, b/c work like his matters.

There’s something about Davidson’s work that is aesthetically understated, technically excellent no doubt, but even so it doesn’t have a signature look, a giveaway affect, not like say the harshness of Koudelka or the smoothness of Friedlander or the expose for the highlights school of a lot of the young guys (Majoli, Pellegrin). No, Davidson’s signature is content. Simple, and yet nearly impossible to do. His photographs are about what is taking place within the frame, and he doesn’t allow himself anything to distract from this. B/c he doesn’t need to.

photo: from Brooklyn Gang, ©Bruce Davidson.

photo: from East 100th St., ©Bruce Davidson.

photo: from Subway, ©Bruce Davidson.

For all the proliferation of the business of art these days it’s a relief and escape this morning to look back to one of the greats of portraiture, August Sander, who taking these portraits during the first half of the last century would have had little to no concern at all with art, but rather his concerns were of a documentation of a scientific sorts, a photographic record of the German people. When I look at these I wonder if he knew how good he was, how original…if he understood even partially the lasting influence he’d have on photographers of the genre to this day. As an aside, in the manners of refinement and dignity (not to mention tonality) they bring to mind Penn for me; a specificity and accuracy is apparent, an intentionality…it’s unlikely, I’d reckon, that there were many happy accident’s in Sander’s making these.

photo: from the series “Man of the Twentieth Century” by August Sander

photo: from the series “Man of the Twentieth Century” by August Sander

photo: from the series “Man of the Twentieth Century” by August Sander

W. Eugene Smith (w/ Magnum) is one of the outstanding old guards of photojournalism. Many know him for his seminal project on Pittsburgh - which I’ve heard incredible stories behind of endless work and obsession and amphetamines - but maybe they’re just that, stories - I don’t know. But mostly I go to Smith’s work to see his printing, b/c it’s expressive and dramatic and necessary for the total effect of the images. This is something common place today in photojournalism, but I don’t believe it was so when Smith was doing it. In the case of Smith’s work it is something that takes a good picture and turns it into a great picture…a narrative, an idea, a dream-scape.

photo: © W. Eugene Smith / Magnum Photos

photo: © W. Eugene Smith / Magnum Photos

photo: © W. Eugene Smith / Magnum Photos

I recalled reading a section in William T. Vollmann’s beautiful book Europe Central that focused on Käthe Kollwitz, a German artist that lived and created through both of the World Wars, but it wasn’t until last night that I came across a book on Kollwitz…and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t well up looking at the work of this artist who lost her son in WWI, her grandson in WWII, and who’s life was spent surrounded by war and death - I could feel the absolute necessity of her work, her tremendous empathy…and seeing what she felt, I counted my blessings.

Etching: “Woman with Dead Child” by Kathe Kollwitz.

Etching: “After the Battle” by Kathe Kollwitz.

I came by a hefty book of Lartigue’s work and walked away absolutely humbled. B/c, you see, he did something few people ever manage, that is, he did something truly authentic. And from what I can tell, he did it with neither chutzpah nor hubris…nope, he just did it.

I repeat: absolutely humbled.

I see all those shoots David Sims does of models jumping across the set, the same ones that Hiro did before him, and Avedon before he…see these and consider Lartigue inventing that sensibility as a 10 year old kid at the beginning of the 20th century, shooting his sister and cousins jumping through the air. It makes implicit the shoulders we stand upon and the rarity unique ideas are.

I want to quote from Avedon’s (an acquaintance of Lartigue’s) afterword to this book, since I wouldn’t pretend to be able to add anything more:

I think Jacques Henri Lartigue is the most deceptively simple and penetrating photographer in the short…embarrassing history of that so-called art. While his predecessors and contemporaries were creating and serving traditions he did what no photographer has done before or since. He photographed his own life. It was as if he knew instinctively and from the very beginning that the real secrets lay in the small things. And it was a kind of wisdom - so much deeper than training and often perverted by it - that he never lost. There is almost no one in this book who isn’t a friend…no moment that wasn’t a private one.

Lartigue never exhibited his pictures until 1962. He never thought of himself as a photographer. It was just something he did every day…ever day for seventy years. Out of love of it. And every day his eye refined and his skill with a camera grew. He was an amateur…never burdened by ambition or the need to be a serious person.

But it would be a great mistake to credit his artistry merely to the fact that he was not corrupted by professionalism. Or to say that his work was the product of accident..that his photographs are extraordinary because the people around him were. Or the time in which he lived. Hundreds of children with similar backgrounds were given cameras in those days - but they never became Lartigues. And accidents aren’t capricious. They just don’t happen that often. They can’t produce a single body of work so consistently brilliant. Lartigue is not a reporter and his best photographs are not those gained by chance.

From the earliest possible age Lartigue kept a little diary. At the top of each page there was always a little drawing of the sun or a cloud…and some initials: T.B., B., T.T.B. They stood for Trés beau. Beau. Trés trés beau… That was the weather. It was always a good day. It almost never rained. Ever… And then there would be a quick description of what he did that day. Who visited the house. Where they went… And half the page devoted to drawings of what he’d photographed, because developing was a very risky process and often the pictures didn’t come out. So, afraid that he might never see the pictures that he’d taken, he would draw from memory what he’d photographed. And in the diaries, which went on for many years, you can see the photographs that have since become masterpieces…drawn. And the miracle of these little drawings is that he had captured exactly the way a scarf had been caught by the wind the moment he clicked the shutter. And they’re accurate. Absolutely accurate. Which means a perfect memory…and a complete sense of what he wanted. And this obsessiveness went on every year of his life. The files. The scrapbooks. They’re all over the apartment. The perfection of those files. In a second, he can find any glass negative…1911- neatly kept in perfect condition.

-Richard Avedon. Paris. February 15, 1970. (From afterword to Diary of a Century: Jacques Henri Lartigue. New York: Viking Press, 1970.)

Avedon continues, but I don’t want to belabor it any more than I already have. The point is, I think that in Lartigue’s work and in what Avedon writes of Lartigue, there is a great deal for anyone to learn, and not so much about taking photographs but more simply (or maybe more complexly) about living life.

photo: Sala Au rocher de la vierge. Août 1927. Biarritz. ©Jacques Henri Lartigue.

photo: Zissou, Rouzat. 1911. ©Jacques Henri Lartigue.

photo: My cousin Simone. 1913. ©Jacques Henri Lartigue.

photo: Zissou’s bobsled with wheels, after the bend by the gate, Rouzat, August 1908. ©Jacques Henri Lartigue.

Then of course there is Lartigue’s most famous photo that I’ve posted before while discussing Irving Penn’s refined compositions, here.

And finally, fittingly, a picture of Lartigue and Avedon together. Such a lovely picture, you can see the pairs genuine kinship with one another, Lartigue’s hand on Avedon’s shoulder as the young Avedon goofs, possibly in a gesture expressing his opinion on the immensity of Lartigue’s mind and creativity.

photo: Richard Avedon and Jacques Henri Lartigue, New York, November 1966 (photograph taken by Florette, Lartigue’s wife).

I’ve long been a fan of Bruce Weber’s work. He seems to stand alone in his genre; actually, his work is near a genre in itself: both in subject and technique he sometimes appears to have created his own path. So it’s interesting to see work that came before and, I imagine, informed Bruce. Case in point Herbert List (w/ Magnum), who not only had a proclivity for the male form in a classical aesthetic and for a certain boys at play sensibility, if you will, but his work also has a similar feel technically to that Bruce is now doing. Frankly, if you’d shown me these top two pictures of List’s, I’d of assumed they were from a recent A&F catalog.

Needless to say, List’s photographs are beautiful. This first photo especially:

photo: Wrestling Boys, 1933. ©Herbert List/Magnum.

photo: Torso of Young Man, c. 1938. ©Herbert List/Magnum.

photo: Friends at Lake Starnberger, 1946. ©Herbert List/Magnum.

Late late last night I was looking through MOMA’s collection of photography. My initial interest was looking at work by unknown photographers, unattributed work, since through the day I’d had this line of thought in regards to identity, reflection of self, authorship, etc, that I was unable to order or find completion in, and viewing work w/o authors seemed like it may prompt uniformity in the line of thought, if you could call it a line. Though a reasonable hope, it ended up being false hope. But I kept clicking through the collection.

And as I ran later and later into the collection I noticed a photographer’s name over and over, Lee Friedlander. I know the name Friedlander, know he’s still alive, know he shoots documentry work of sorts, but even knowing these things I’d never actually looked at or thought about his work. So I did. And I came away thinking that he uses the camera in an entirely imaginative and creative manner that isn’t, how should I say, contrived, or maybe that there appears to be a lack of self-consciousness in his images is a more appropriate phrasing. Instead, his pictures, especially his later works, seem wholly visceral (and b/c of this somehow unmitigated, as you can understand). And to me work that is visceral is most often brave, and brave work is what any artist should strive for.

First, his series of TVs on in empty rooms. I love these. I wish I’d taken these. But I’m acutely aware that any picture of a TV in an empty room will always be in the footsteps of Friedlander.

photo: Galex, Virginia. 1962. © Lee Friedlander, 2007.

Then there are his pictures that his own shadow plays an integral part in. I love these. I wish I’d taken these. But I’m acutely aware that any picture that the photographer’s shadow plays an integral part in will always be in the footsteps of Friedlander.

photo: New York City. 1966. © Lee Friedlander, 2007.

Then, similarly, there are his images with his reflection. I love these. I wish I’d taken these. But I’m acutely aware that any picture with the photographer’s reflection in a window will always be in the footsteps of Friedlander.

photo: Denver, Colorado. 1998. © Lee Friedlander, 2007.

Then, finally, there are his self portraits. Often behind sparse foliage. Initially I did not love these and did not wish I’d done them. But after going through his body of work and seeing how he’d arrived here. I did love them and did wish I’d done them. But I’m acutely aware that any self portrait of photographer behind sparse foliage will always be in the footsteps of Friedlander.

photo: California. 1997. © Lee Friedlander, 2007.

Now I wish to return to the initial topic of this post, and that was my researching unattributed works to better understand and to explore ideas of identity, image, self awareness, reflection, etc. Initially, I asked, what are we but a series of ideas and events that we’ve compiled? Then I thought of self-projection, and thus authorship and began to ask if something in the specific realm of the artist could elucidate a more universal premise. You get the idea. I too quickly concluded the MOMA collection wasn’t going to be much inspiration.

Then Friedlander distracted me.

Then I went to bed.

Then at some point late last night staring at the too yellow street light out my window, I realized Friedlander’s work was what I’d been looking for the entire time. Once I got past wishing I’d taken his pictures, I saw the obvious: that identity, reflection, self-awarenesses, and so forth, are all central issues he’s confronting. What I’ve yet to get my head around is whether he is simplifying or complicating these issues. Is he projecting self, or raising questions around self? Is his work a testimony, a stamp, a marking, a graffiti on the wall exclaiming, Lee was here? Or is it an obscuring of self, a questioning of what makes self up, the photographer/author apparent in his work, meta, post-mod, self as a shadow on others, as a cracked reflection in a store window, as a grotesque figure within yet obviously different from nature?

I don’t know, but it seems like something worth thinking about.

It’s incredible for me to think of Nadar doing this kind of work, taking these kind of portraits, that in sensibility feel so modern, over 150 years ago. I try and imagine him in Paris during the peak of Romanticism, mixing with and photographing the likes of Baudelaire and Théophile Gautier, and living during this pique of beauty and aesthetic. Somehow this must come through in his portraits, yes? Maybe in the sense of the theatrical, b/c I’d guess, despite the admirable earnestness of their ideals, the Romantics might have been guilty of theatrics. Just as so many artists are. Regardless, there’s a sense that not only did Nadar know exactly what he was doing, but he also captured a certain spirit of a time and idea - which is something, considering he was working with photography in it’s infantile stages…though I guess the opposite line of thought could be true: that maybe such work is easier borne if uninhibited from the history of what’s come before… It doesn’t really matter. Just see that, as far as portraiture goes, there is a lot to learn from Nadar. (Mind you, I really know nothing about him historically, nor much about photographs history, so…)

photo: Eugene Pelletan, 1855-1859, by Nadar.

photo: Pierrot Laughing, 1855, by Nadar.

To close, the Baudelaire poem, Au Lecteur, or To the Reader:

Folly, error, sin, avarice
Occupy our minds and labor our bodies,
And we feed our pleasant remorse
As beggars nourish their vermin.

Our sins are obstinate, our repentance is faint;
We exact a high price for our confessions,
And we gaily return to the miry path,
Believing that base tears wash away all our stains.

On the pillow of evil Satan, Trismegist,
Incessantly lulls our enchanted minds,
And the noble metal of our will
Is wholly vaporized by this wise alchemist.

The Devil holds the strings which move us!
In repugnant things we discover charms;
Every day we descend a step further toward Hell,
Without horror, through gloom that stinks.

Like a penniless rake who with kisses and bites
Tortures the breast of an old prostitute,
We steal as we pass by a clandestine pleasure
That we squeeze very hard like a dried up orange.

Serried, swarming, like a million maggots,
A legion of Demons carouses in our brains,
And when we breathe, Death, that unseen river,
Descends into our lungs with muffled wails.

If rape, poison, daggers, arson
Have not yet embroidered with their pleasing designs
The banal canvas of our pitiable lives,
It is because our souls have not enough boldness.

But among the jackals, the panthers, the bitch hounds,
The apes, the scorpions, the vultures, the serpents,
The yelping, howling, growling, crawling monsters,
In the filthy menagerie of our vices,

There is one more ugly, more wicked, more filthy!
Although he makes neither great gestures nor great cries,
He would willingly make of the earth a shambles
And, in a yawn, swallow the world;

He is Ennui! — His eye watery as though with tears,
He dreams of scaffolds as he smokes his hookah pipe.
You know him reader, that refined monster,
— Hypocritish reader, — my fellow, — my brother!

-Charles Baudelaire
Translated by: William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

Portraits have been keeping me up at night. You could say I’m obsessed. The thing I want to say is that taking a portrait is easy, so easy, but to take a great portrait - and I mean great - may be one of the most challenging things to do in photography. What is a great portrait? I’ve no idea; there are no rules; I figure it just is. But I don’t want to belabor all of this. So for fun I thought I’d combine two of my favorite things, Literature, or writers rather, and portraits…

First, Joyce by Abbott. The other day I read (I forget where) the perfect description of Joyce, calling him, the Einstein of Literature. Perfect b/c Joyce, like Einstein was a genius: a brilliant, creative mind. When you read Ulysses, you are shared the thoughts of someone who’s ability to think and use language is well beyond normal. And then when you read Finnegan’s Wake, you experience that same thing but you watch it run away from you and normal comprehension. Then you see this portrait, and you see how fragile that genius must have been. Joyce looks like he knows something we all don’t, and that thing he knows is sad…maddening even.

photo: James Joyce by Bernice Abbott, 1926.

Then two from H.C. Bresson. These speak for themselves. The Matisse (not a writer, I know, still…) portrait I think is absolutely wonderful, but, overall what strikes me as interesting about these Bresson portraits is that he was working with a sensibility that is standard convention in todays celebrity portraiture. That is: the fostering of a concept of the person. Yes, the figures Bresson was working with were famous, but it seems to me that Bresson worked to further the ethos of this public persona through his images. The painter with his birds. Camus the, uh, renegade intellectual looking, well, renegadish. Maybe what I’m seeing is obvious, but it strikes me as something I wish to applaud Bresson for: he understood the power of simplification…stereotypes if you will.

photo: Henri Matisse, Vence, France, 1944 by H.C. Bresson.

photo: Albert Camus by H.C. Bresson, 1947.

And of course Avedon… Beckett I suspect was probably one of the hardest people ever to photograph. His hyper-awareness of the situation and all levels of what was happening would probably inhibit him from any sort of action, paralyze him even. You could imagine he was a calculating man, in a good way, in a smart as hell way. Where, on the other hand, you have Pound, who would probably be easier to photograph, to say to least. Though, the fragility of his state of being might break my heart, watching him out on the fringe, precarious.

photo: Samuel Beckett, writer, Paris, April 13, 1979. ©Richard Avedon.

photo: Ezra Pound, Poet, Rutherford, New Jersey, at the home of William Carlos Williams, June 30, 1958. ©Richard Avedon.

And finally, Pynchon. The recluse. This I assume is from a old high school yearbook…?

photo: Thomas Pynchon, source unknown.

This is way off the usual topic for me, but sometimes I see a designers season and get excited, not b/c I want to own or wear it, but b/c I know what a pleasure it would be to photograph. That’s how I felt when I saw the pictures of Jil Sander’s Spring ‘08 show. Certainly, I’m not a critic and only know what I respond to, but both Suzy Menkes and Cathy Horyn agreed that Raf Simons did something special here. Regardless, the top, uh, wrap piece in the pic below, is the sort of thing I’d hug a stylist for bringing to the set: it will literally be the photograph.

photo: ©Marcio Madeira, 2007. From www.style.com.

See more pics of the show here at style.com.

And assuming Willy Vanderperre (w/Management Artists) continues to photograph Jil Sander’s ads, I hope he enjoys it as much as I.

Brandt’s portrait of painter Francis Bacon has always left me speechless.

photo: Francis Bacon © Bill Brandt, 1963.