graeme mitchell » inspiration

Old Japanese photography and French New Wave ramble.

admin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:40:14 +0000

It’s not news that I like Japanese photography from the 60s and 70s (see posts, here, here, here, here). Why is for much the same reasons I return often to French New Wave cinema. Call that reason a stripped down aesthetic which verges on a sensual brutality. Nearly able to chew on it. But what saves it from being trite w/ brutality, is a delve headfirst into the subconscious – wait, no, subconscious might prompt something psychoanalytic. That’s too much for here. But by subconscious I mean the very deepest and most uncontrolled and most fundamental mechanisms taking place in our minds. I guess it’d be easiest to just call it, our dreams. (Makes me think of Joyce writing in Ulysses, “history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”) It’s a documentation of an entirely different sorts, and it makes the work not brutal, but rather almost unbearably human and gentle.

I’m not informed enough to make theories on the reasons, the whys of parallel creative evolutions, but just look at Shomei Tomatsu’s work and then go watch Chris Marker’s short film, La Jetee (here). Breathe deep.

photo: still from Chris Marker’s film La Jetee

Or, make a literal French to Japan connection w/ Hiroshima Mon Amour by, Alain Resnais (like Marker – and also Agnes Varda – one of the Left Bank New Wavers).

photo: still from Alain Resnais’ film Hiroshima Mon Amour

There isn’t going to be order here though. Ramblings. B/c what I really wanted to do was just list some old Japanese photography. The inspiration being a well done new book out by Aperture Foundation called Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s, which reminded me recently how important this work is.

Jun Morinaga, namely his book River: It’s Shadow of Shadow:

photo: from River by Jun Morinaga

(These tiny and poor jpegs are not doubt not representative of the quality of this work – this stuff is not easy to find on the internet…a fact that gives me a little hope this morning.)

Masahisa Fukase, and his series Solitude of the Ravens:

photo: from Solitude of the Ravens by Masahisa Fukase

Tetsuya Ichimura, who’s work is almost impossible to find online, but he’s done a number of books, all now very rare I think:

photo: from Salome by Tetsuya Ichimura

Nobuyoshi Araki, who we all know as a photographer of gorgeous flowers and gorgeous bound women, but his book Sentimental Journey reveals a side of him little known. This older work is, again, almost non-existent online.

photo: from Sentimental Journey by Nobuyoshi Araki

Eikoh Hosoe, who I’d not heard of until just recently:

photo: by Eikoh Hosoe

And a few more obvious ones I’ve touched on before on this site and who are very well known, Shōmei Tōmatsu,

photo: by Shōmei Tōmatsu

For God’s sake, now that (↑) is photography.

photo: by Shōmei Tōmatsu

and Daidō Moriyama:

photo: by Daidō Moriyama

A friend recently offered me a simple and apt definition of good art, saying it “is something people want to experience again…after seeing it they immediately want to relive it, and then again and again.” This work then, to me, is good art.

Yes Yes. Tremendous.

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Bresson and Weegee audio recordings

admin — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:42:01 +0000

A photographer (thanks, James!) sent me these great little finds that were originally posted on this photographer’s record collection blog.

I’ll start with Henri Cartier-Bresson.

audio: Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1958. From Famous Photographers Tell How

The Weegee one is almost comical…given his subject matter: “The easiest thing to photograph is a murder.”

audio: Weegee, 1958. From Famous Photographers Tell How

photo: originally from: http://boogiewoogieflu.blogspot.com/2009/06/weegee-speaks.html

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Things I liked this week…

admin — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:38:40 +0000

The portraits by Lucia Moholy were the one thing at the MOMA Bauhaus exhibit that stopped me dead in my tracks:

photo: Franz Roh, 1926, by Lucia Moholy

And then this is a portrait of Lucia by her husband and photographer, László Moholy-Nagy. Both of these pictures are really something else.

photo: portrait of Lucia Moholy by László Moholy-Nagy

At nearly the same time as the Moholys, the painter Balthus was in Paris reaching a stride that would define his work as controversial, erotic, and, I think, brilliant. It’s great to read his biography revolving around his early years in Paris and the circles he ran in, including, Giacometti, Many Ray, Camus, Miró, Picasso, Lacan. The heavy hitters of culture, those that shaped our modern and even our post-modern sensibilities. Which brings me to a discussion I was having last night w/ a friend in regards to movements in the arts and culture, those little sparks that ignite and burn and sometimes manage to change everything thereafter. Namely we talked about how they’ve always been geographically based and how the internet has changed that old need to actually be somewhere and in a physically community to participate (Post-war Paris, NYC in the 50s and 80s, as two modern Western examples). Does physical dissipation lead to cultural dissipation? I think so. Does that kind of ruin, or at least make much more difficult, the chances for those paradigm shifts of culture, the arts, and how people think? Maybe. Sure, it’s an over simplified view, b/c I really don’t know what I’m talking about, but I figure it’s something to roll around in your head while we have this discussion. (Over our computers…oh, the irony).

painting: by Balthus

Anyway, there’s an excellent portrait of Balthus by Irving Penn, w/ Balthus in a chair wearing a robe and a belt made of simple rope, with that infinite air of human-ess reaching into eternity that Penn instilled in so many of his sitters. I’d seen it in one of Penn’s books, and thought it’d go nicely here, but can’t find it online anywhere, so I guess for now the internet does have it’s limits.

Painter’s and photographer’s makes me think of George Bernard Shaw’s quote that if Velazquez was alive today he’d be a photographer. I mean, could you imagine! Conde Naste contract. B/c the guy sorta was doing what Leibovitz does, except he did it over 300 years ago w/ a paint brush

painting: Las Meninas, 1665, by Diego Velazquez

Shaw, now there is a mind! The guy must have been a photographers dream: self aware, smart, and, the icing, the cliche look of a wise man. I mean, he was someone who believed death was only real b/c it was an idea put in our head, an idea that one really didn’t have to abide by. Faaarrrrr out. I guess he took the Nietzschian ubermensch literally. If you want to get to know him, his plays Major Barbara and Man and Superman would be the two I’d suggest as seminal.

photo: George Bernard Shaw, ©The Estate of Yousuf Karsh

The threads holding this post together were thin to begin with, and they’ve completely disintegrated by this point. So I’ll spare you any more of what was on my mind and will instead bid you adieu.

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‘Unreal City’ multimedia presentation

admin — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:15:10 +0000

I’m currently assembling a very small edition bound portfolios of an edit of NYC street photography that will represent that body of work to date, 50 prints to be exact (more on these when a few are finished). The name of the edition will be, Unreal City. This is a slide-show presentation of those 50 pictures. So, please, take a minute, dim your lights, turn up the sound, and let it creep around you.

Thanks, and I hope you enjoy.

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On the personal project, an ode

admin — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 21:25:48 +0000

JeanLoup Sieff lamented the moniker of “personal” when used in regards to defining his work. Actually, lamented is probably a poor choice of words being an extrapolation on my part; rejected, is probably more precise, but regardless, he considered all of his work personal. That’s an attitude I, and I imagine most, agree with, and that Sieff was able in the end to live by it is something we can go as far to admire. For most though, and in these days, the practice of successfully defining yourself in a market of commerce is a bit more difficult and riddled, unless you’re a pure-bred fine art or pure-bred commercial photographer or one of the upper-tier photojournalists, or basically, either someone who does only one thing or someone who can have someone else (a rep) make your definitions for you. (On that note, I had a discussion along these lines the other day with another photographer who was cheering on the lifestyle of Koudelka (which has become nearly mythological; probably rightfully so) and also a recent interview of Solve Sundsbo with him commenting how he never googled himself. Both comments amounted to a celebration of being a photographer and doing it outside of the feebleness of dealing with marketing or money or the rest of that, well, shit. My response to these examples was, yep, but rest assured that they have someone doing the shit for them. Someone is making the money, doing the googling, etc.)

photo: ©Josef Koudelka/Magnum

Most photographers aren’t there though (and with a comparison to Koudelka’s life, many probably wouldn’t want to be there even if offered – a comment, which, Josef, you can consider my highest compliment), most shoot work for money that is a commercial service and in being so usually amounts to certain compromises, in which case, efforts are usually made to say, yeah, I do this to pay the bills, but this over here is my baby, what I don’t but someday hope to get paid for. Now, I call my work, work, but I still will usually delineate when I’m discussing something that is personal, otherwise people seem to get confused, as if doing something simply for the sake of doing it is not natural…and it also turns out most people are more interested in who you’re doing something for than what you’re actually doing (hype hunger). But for the sake of this conversation, let’s just assume personal work is something we do for ourselves, not to sell, not to use as promos, but pictures we take out of curiosity, tests, boredom, love…work that has no excuse for any compromise other than the limits of our own ingenuity and creativity, and the limits of our capabilities and capacities. (Story has it that, Edward Weston, in shooting his peppers couldn’t achieve the depth of field he wanted at the smallest f-stop (he’d of been using a very simple 8×10, natural light, and exposures in the hours and hours). He didn’t change the idea; he didn’t back the camera up; he didn’t decide maybe peppers weren’t a great idea; nope, instead he figured out how to cut an even smaller f-stop hole in a sheet of black tin and insert that into his shutter as an even smaller fstop (a waterhouse stop). A special lesson resides in this photograph then I think: that is the willingness to take an idea to that length, the ability to go that far with a pepper.)

photo: Pepper, 1930 by Edward Weston, ©edward-weston.com

You still make pictures with that kind of heart, right?

Well, the thesis of this post is that I think you should be, b/c this work to me is incredibly important. The most important. It is the work I want to hear you talk about. I want your voice to speed up and for you to forget to blink when you tell me what you’re working on for yourself. Emerson went to the lake and came back telling people to take everything they own and get rid of half of it; well, I’m gonna say, take the time you’re putting into those personal projects and double it.

The unfortunate part is most personal work isn’t good. The pictures might be good, sure, but they still may not amount to much in your work’s grand-scheme. You start the idea, get into it, it doesn’t work, or even if it does, just doesn’t fit, you stop, and then, as Faulkner would say, you kill off another darling. Rinse and repeat. It costs money and time, and morale, as the enthusiasm of the process fades when you’re interest is the final product…not operating a film scanner. The painter, Alex Steckly, who I mentioned in my last post, and I discussed this recently while I was shooting his portrait. How in both are areas of work, we begin ideas, put ourselves into them, but then how it ends up that you really won’t know if it will amount to anything until after a year or so of working on and digesting it, and then, if you’re lucky enough to be onto something, it’s probably at least another year or two exhausting it. One must be tireless in their belief that it has the possibility of mattering.

photo: desert landscape as example of a project I started and never got anywhere with, except to sad places, ©Graeme Mitchell.

But here’s the upside. When you do manage to find a project that works, and learn to let yourself freely explore photographs w/o the hinders of classifying it, say, on your website, it is this work that I believe will enable your survival no matter what. It becomes that thing that no one can touch. And I’ll bet it’ll probably end up being the best work you’ll ever do. There’s not much to this. It’s obvious, blatant, written and said before, most photographers who’ve made it more than a few years know it and do there best to live by it. Regardless, I wanted to bring it up b/c of a few recent discussions in regards to and changes I’ve made in how I approach photographs, most changes amounting to simplifying the noise to a succinct hum of trying to make photographs I believe to be valid. Everything else, swept to the side, as best as possible.

photo: from a personal still project I worked on that ended up as big prints on some walls, ©Graeme Mitchell.

For instance, I began taking pictures on the streets in NYC three years ago as personal work, as therapy, having NO clue what I was doing other than exploring what this city conjured. In the last year that work, which was shoebox work never intended to be cared about, has grown and come to play a completely unpredicted and large part in what I’m doing in other areas, ditto for a lot of my personal portrait work. Right now, usually late at night, I’m working on floral still lives like sad brethren of Mapplethorpe, and I’m as excited about this almost as much anything I’m currently working on. And I have absolutely no use for it…yet…but I believe there’s something there worth keeping at. This is all coming from someone who used to be worried of being confused with anything other than a fashion photographer.

photo: a portrait I shot of my best-friend Benjamin b/c we had a free afternoon, ©Graeme Mitchell.

One similarity of the careers of photographers is that there are no similarities between our careers. We’re all different in personalities and the way we build the pictures we take around ourselves. But just consider this post an ode to the personal project, to get out and breathe something worth living for into the world with no reason or expectation. That will be a beautiful act of freedom in itself.

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Agnes Martin and Cy Twombly and Alex Steckly

admin — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 04:29:21 +0000

The work of Agnes Martin and Cy Twombly had, or rather, more surprisingly, stole my full attention this evening. Both took my mind to another place. If you haven’t, I’d suggest looking for their work.

painting: Untitled by Agnes Martin

painting: Untitled (New York City) by Cy Twombly

It was the painter, Alex Steckly who I who had a nerd-out over art today, that brought them both to the conversation. He currently has a solo show up at Fourteen30 in Portland OR, showing some really impressive new sculptures.

painting: by Alex Steckly

On a side note, on a long weekend out of the city for the holiday, hiding out and working on some new web stuff with Benjamin Diggles that I’m really looking forward to sharing here. Hopefully soon.

And really exciting, reading Roberto Bolaño’s book 2666, which is really really worth picking up and going head first into. Goddamn good Lit.

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Minor White

admin — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:51:01 +0000

This picture of Minor White’s is the best argument towards the existence of G_d that I’ve ever come across:

photo: Windowsill Daydreaming, by Minor White.

It is a photograph that poses ineffable questions while at the same time offering inherent answers. One risks vanishing into it.

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Bertolucci’s “Il Conformista”

admin — Fri, 15 May 2009 02:34:17 +0000

Il Conformista, by Bernardo Bertolucci, is one of the most amazingly shot films I’ve ever seen.

Ever.

Period.

I see in it everything from Lynch’s central oeuvre to Missoni’s FW09 campaign.

photo: still from Il Conformista

and Lynch…

photo: still from David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.

photo: still from Il Conformista

Lynch again…

photo: still from David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.

photo: still from Il Conformista

Missoni…

photo: Missoni FW 09 campaign, ©Steven Meisel.

——

On a seperate note, get to ICP to see the Avedon show!…or if you can’t make it, at least you can see the NYTimes multimedia feature, here.

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MET, the model as muse

admin — Mon, 11 May 2009 14:13:15 +0000

I did a quick yet idea provoking walk through the MET’s exhibition “model as muse” yesterday. The exhibition’s been getting a lot of press, rightfully, as it’s both excellently curated and art directed. Two things struck me while walking through the show. First, how incredible Dior has been in the history of fashion (duh), and how it remains to be under Galliano. The recent Dior Couture they had on display was incredible. It’s the sort of stuff that makes me want to photograph clothing. Second, I was amazed at both how many people were at the exhibit and how interested they were in it. Which seems like a silly thing to say, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so many people so interested in any exhibit I’ve been to. It was a reminder of how fashion and this aspect of our culture really is mass, and while it feels like it can become isolated to the little bubbles of NYC, Paris, London, etc, it’s so much larger than that. Maybe Penn summed it best in stating, to paraphrase, I take photographs for the housewife in the mid-west.

The museum also posted it’s curator talks in 9 parts, which are a nice history of models and fashion’s social/cultural functions in general:

1 of 9:

2 0f 9:

3 of 9:

4 of 9:

5 of 9:

6 of 9:

7 of 9:

8 of 9:

9 of 9:

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Roger Ballen’s, “Boarding House”

admin — Sat, 09 May 2009 21:56:23 +0000

I think Roger Ballen’s new book, Boarding House, takes the previous themes he’s explored and winds them into the most coherent vision of his work yet. It’s dark stuff. It’s scary stuff. It digs deep, surfacing forgotten recesses of the psyche, troubled archetypes your mind does it’s best to loose in the furthest and deepest mine shafts of your soul. But it’s also brilliant stuff, some of the most real and touching work I’ve seen in a while, all at once sublimely terrifying and terrifyingly sublime.

photo: “Fragments, 2005″ ©Roger Ballen.

photo: “Cornered, 2004″ ©Roger Ballen.

photo: “Boarder, 2005″ ©Roger Ballen.

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Some movies and solar vision

admin — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 02:42:44 +0000

I was having a super late post-party supper with a group from Tank while in London and the fash ed started talking about this really far out stuff and, as you’d guess, my interest piqued. It was a film. I won’t belabor the specifics here, but will only repeat what she said, it is amaaaaazing, then said again after a dramatic pause to assure my full attention, amaaaaazing. So I watched it. It’s called The Holy Mountain, by Alejandro Jodorowsky, and, I agree, it is most certainly incredible, but…wow.

video: trailer to The Holy Mountain

Nearly makes Barney’s Creamaster Cycle seem par for, er, normal.

video: Trailer for Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle.

On a completely different note, standing applause for Visionaires #56 solar-powered book. Putting up a good fight for why the printed magazine/book will always have it’s place.

photo: from Visionaire 56, ©Richard Burbridge

photo: from Visionaire 56, ©David Sims

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A conversation: Friedlander on Avedon, then bicycles, then Bill Cunningham

admin — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:50:42 +0000

More a regurgitation of a conversation, but after all, it’s a blog: so: while having lunch in Tompkins Sq. yesterday with photo-friend, Aaron Binaco he gave me some, how should I put it, neat shit. My first sun-drunk-enthusiasm was for that by now well known moment when Avedon went to take Freidlander’s portrait at his home, and how Freidlander, being a really real photographer (see note), also took Avedon’s portrait. I said I could find the Avedon picture, but have yet to be able to find the Friedlander. Well, Aaron found it and sent it to me. I imagine a sort of stand-off of great personalities, great wills face to face, and even if they were cordial and kind on some level it must have been profound-intense. Either as a matter of attrition of neither ever giving in, or maybe rather of two old masters being able to wink and nod, knowingly.

photo: from Aperture #188, Lee Friedlander by Richard Avedon (left) and Richard Avedon by Lee Friedlander (right)

Both Aaron and I grew up racing bicycles, so then he started on about this Scottish trials rider, saying, “he’d ride up that tree over there and just chill out,” while pointing at this giant bloody elm that a cat could maybe climb. I called, hyperbole!, but then he emailed me this link and jesusmurphy…if you’ve ever ridden a bike you should be able to appreciate this video:

And, yes, I am in fact posting on extreme sports youtube video…sigh, probably a slippery slope, so I’ll post this to balance it out:

photo: Corvette I saw in soho which I voted best possible prop of the day and sent it to a fashion editor with a synopsis of a story involving Death Valley, Bottega heels, and a Camio by Dennis Hopper (as eminence grise, naturally). Fashion editor responded, I weep.

Note: “real photograher”: I was shooting on 5th ave by Tiffany’s on Saturday morning, and I saw this old timer shooting people fast with an old Nikon. I guessed maybe he was part of the old-Magnum-guard. I said, hello, asked his name, he said, Bill Cunningham, didn’t ring a bell. I asked him if shot there much, if he’d seen Bruce Gilden out, he’s always shooting on this corner. He said, I have seen him in the afternoon; how is Bruce? I said, I’ve no idea, I just see him, can’t catch him. He said, now that’s a real photographer. I liked that. Since there was truth in it. We chatted a bit more, then he took off after this super chic blonde to photograph. I thought, huh, mildly-licentious, but, yeah! It wasn’t until I mentioned it later in the day in passing that someone explained to me who Bill is. Love it. Before he ran of he waved and said, keep snapping kid. I offer the same good-bye, keep snapping, Bill!

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tv

admin — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 22:20:43 +0000

photo: (on tv, late night, Tropicana, Las Vegas, NV). ©Graeme Mitchell

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Andrei Tarkovsky, some beats, Lanvin…

admin — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 22:55:17 +0000

I know I’ve been mentioning films a lot here, but movies are very influential to my work, as I think they can be for many photographers. So bear with me…but, I watched Andrei Tarkovsky’s, Stalker last night and my jaw was like hanging to my lap for the entire 2hrs. Geeked! Remarkable…no, a brilliant film. I’d never seen any of Tarkovsky’s work and had no idea what to expect, so it totally side-swiped me. Yeah, it’s sorta an old-arty film, so it takes some gear shifting, but it’s not French New Wave, so don’t drug yourself just yet.

photo: still from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film, Stalker.

Now I need to see Tarkovsky’s, Mirror and Solyaris.

photo: still from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film, Mirror.

Still, I appreciate that it’s not for everyone. Talking movies while on set today I lit up and got really excited about having seen Stalker and I could tell pretty quickly nobody cared to hear me wax on about it, let alone log into netflix for it…

…so if it’s not your bag, here’s a link to some crackin-beats: Pete Tong Essential Mix. (FYI, download button is towards bottom of the song list.) Thanks Mr. Diggles for that link; he’s my defenitive line to all things techno and all things Hi-Tech.

Segue.

Saw this gorgeous Lanvin look in the windows of Bergdorf’s the other day and immediatly sent it to a stylist on messanger:

“Me: LOOOOVE this Lanvin look!
Her: Love it and love each and all things Lanvin.
Me: Sigh”

(BTW, feel like you’re a photographer that gets the photos but is dumb on the clothes, well the Bergdorf windows are about the best crash course in fashion you’re going to find.)

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Steven Klein

admin — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:45:45 +0000

It took me a a long long time to appreciate Steven Klein’s work. For that long time I didn’t get it. I didn’t think it looked good, and that requisite was what took me a long time to get over…or not get over, but rather it took me a long time to redefine and learn what “look good” means. Now I think Klein has one of the most compelling visions in the industry for the reason that from a practical standpoint what he manages aesthetically is incredible: he’s one of the few guys that can take, uh, not-pretty pictures that still manage to be completely effective as fashion work. I say not-pretty in the sense that it looks like a lot of his work is shot on an old digital camera at iso 400 under flouro lights and processed by a mini-lab…I’m oversimplifying it, but you get the idea. (One thing not simple in his work though is set/prop design, which is usually pretty bloody amazing.) I think his work, from a photographic standpoint, is of the sort that you have to be a fellow photographer (or creative) to understand how good it is, to understand how hard it is to come to something that definitive.

I’m bringing this up b/c I think Klein’s recent work has shown no sign of backing off:

photo: from “Lara Fiction Noire,” French Vogue, 2009. ©Steven Klein.

photo: from “Wild Couture,” Vogue Italia, 2009. ©Steven Klein.

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More Guy: videos

admin — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 19:52:10 +0000

I found these to be remarkable. Both in what they are standing alone in the Formalist sense, but also in how they function as a side of Bourdin’s work. I believe he would have shot these during his still shoots, which to me reveals a certain visual obsession, or at the very least a singular idea of great depth…

video: by Guy Bourdin

There are a number of more of them online if you look them up.

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Ralph Gibson

admin — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 15:00:14 +0000

I had not seen much of Ralph Gibson’s work, only some of his peripheral projects – I knew his name well as he’s revered in the church of Leica and cult of Rodinal – then this evening I came by a used copy of his book Deus Ex Machina, and after flipping through it I had much more respect for what he’s put together over the years. I was going to write some composition theory mumbo-jumbo that had crossed my mind, but then I saw this thorough interview with Gibson that covers all of that and more quite nicely.

photo: “Mary Ellen and Hand,” ©Ralph Gibson.

This image reminds me of that phenomenal French short La Jetée that I posted a little while back: here…in case you missed that one.

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Vik Muniz

admin — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:06:18 +0000

My friend, Kelly, sent me this video of Vik Muniz speaking for TED (which are often excellent talks if you’ve never seen them).

It’s welcome relief, and also I think rare, in the visual arts to see someone do work that is thoughtful and technically interesting but moreover that is inspired with humor.

Nice start to the day.

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Lunch, Miles Aldridge, Guy Bourdin, Rankin

admin — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 14:02:37 +0000

Met up with a stylist/fashion-ed yesterday for lunch and we were talking work; work work work: what’s new, what’s good, what’s fresh…you get the idea. She told me to look at Miles Aldridge’s work. Not exactly a new name, but I’m thinking, the guy who shoots shiny for NYTimes mag? She responds, yeah maybe, but look at his stuff, digital wah!, which I know you’re not into, but it’s fucked up, which I know you are into. True and true…for the most part.

Given the post, I obviously did check out his work and obviously liked it. I mean, how to make a watch sing:

photo: Minuit, Paradis, 2007. ©Miles Aldridge.

Now that’s not so much twisted as more digestably erotic, excellent nonetheless. If you shoot sexy in fashion you’re pretty much coming from one of two similar but also disparate schools. Newton, who made for a confluence of the erotic and style. Or Bourdin, who did the same with eroticism and discomfort. Aldridge’s lineage is more of the latter. The difference is that Bourdin’s work tunneled below the image to something more troubling. There was an honesty to what he did, and much of his work then manages to transcend a sexually disquieted idea to a palpably troubling psychological event, to something that approaches the sick, but subtly so. (Not to say Aldridge’s work is superficial or dishonest, not at all, rather maybe I’m just pointing out in a round about way it’s contemporary traits. Suggesting the possibility that our current culture may be more reserved and commercial than, say, the 1920s or 1960s in some manners. We often associate the past with simplicity and a pietist nature and the the present with the opposite…consider that possibly we like to give ourselves undue credit in these regards, while culture and history ebb and flow.) Old news though, as I’ve hashed Bourdin here before, as countless have elsewhere.

photo: for Vogue magazine, ©Guy Bourdin Foundation.

But, if you want to see some actual footage of him, which is as rare as anything, someone emailed me this show (in eight short parts) last week of Rankin recreating some classic work. My first thoughts on the shows was a not getting the, why, but then I guess it’s for TV so that makes overall futilities excusable. Never mind that though, b/c I think it’s worth a watch for the superb old footage alone…or for David Baily.

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Alexey Brodovitch, Avedon, Penn, Wolfe…

admin — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 16:31:31 +0000

Nearly as an aside, I was at a friend’s apartment last night and she’d just bought an issue of Harper’s Bazaar from 1946. While looking through it I just kept reiterating how little had changed, I mean, aside from improved films and printing technology, the content really remains the same. Actually the design, font, art direction of this Bazaar was more sophisticated and interesting and in a way more contemporary than much of what’s done today – the use of white space alone seemed far ahead of our time. It made me appreciate why Alexey Brodovitch was and remains so lauded.

photo: Brodovitch lay-out in 1945 Harper’s Bazaar.

Brodovitch, you could say, discovered or groomed Avedon, bringing him in to shoot for Harper’s when he was 22. Those two working together became such a seminal time for the magazine and for fashion that they’re now commonly referred to as, The Avedon Years:

photo: 1952 Harper’s Bazaar cover by Avedon.

Brodovitch incidentally was also Penn’s teacher while he was studying painting at the Philadelphia Museum School. Later Brodovitch hired Penn at Harper’s for design and layout. Penn later moved to Vogue, I believe again with the function as a designer/creative, but Vogue’s Alexander Liberman had him do a photograph for the magazine, and the rest, of course, is history.

(Huh, interesting, I just noticed both that Brodovitch and Liberman were originally Russian…)

In this particular copy of Harper’s my friend had the fashion story was by Louise Dahl-Wolfe, who’ve I’ve mentioned before (here) as a notable influence on the early years or editorial fashion photography.

photo: by Louise Dahl-Wolfe for Harper’s Bazaar, circa 1950s I think.

And that last image goes back to my original point of nothing being new under the sun. Reshoot it on Portra 160VC replace the warmth with a little cyan and it might as well have been Craig McDean that shot it. Okay, not exactly, but you get the idea.

“All intelligent thoughts have already been thought;
what is necessary is only to try to think them again.”
-from Goethe’s Faust

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Antoine D’Agata

admin — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:58:17 +0000

This photograph from Antoine D’Agata’s book Hometown…it, it, as an old timer might say, hits me where I live.

photo: “France-2002″ ©Antoine D’Agata/Magnum.

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Busy and a something swell

admin — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:56:13 +0000

Concentrating on a few shoots right now.

In the meantime, this is that something swell:

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Cummings, Prince, Munch

admin — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 01:19:31 +0000

poem: by E.E. Cummings

(

photo: E.E. Cummings, 1953, by Walter Albertin for New York World Telegram

)

Makes me think of smoking poets and then of Richard Prince’s Untitled (Cowboy):

And that’s plenty for now.

Tons. Masses.

Like when at the MOMA the other day and I saw for the first time Edvard Munch’s The Storm.

painting: The Storm (1893) by Edvard Munch.

I couldn’t possibly look at anything after that – it was entirely too much already.

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Wanna put my foot in the carburator

admin — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 14:54:45 +0000

photo: ‘68 Firebird??? You tell me.

Made me think of driving real fast, lit rubber, loud exhaust…or shooting like Steven Klein…

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Eggleston Retrospective

admin — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 04:19:56 +0000

Last week I’d been asked 4, 5 times, have you been to the Eggleston show at the Whitney? So I finally made it, and now I’m asking everyone, so have you been to the Eggleston…?

It’s a beautiful show, the first retrospective of one of the fathers of modern fine art photography; it’s the kind of show that reminds one why; why photography; why take pictures; why get out of bed in the morning.

There were two things that distinctly crossed my mind.

1) How remarkable Eggleston’s early prints are. There were lightjets, inkjets, C-prints, silver-gelatin, but his early dye transfer prints were in a different ball park. They were interpretive and captivating and technically remarkable.

2) There’s no way to speak what it is or why it is or how it is, the only thing that is certain is that work like Eggleston’s is something that can’t be faked. It’d be like faking being human or faking being in love.

photo: the Eggleston Retrospective at the Whitney.

“I’m at war with the obvious.” -William Eggleston

No related posts.

La Jetée, the film

admin — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 03:56:20 +0000

I came by this incredible apocalyptic (chic right now) sci-fi (ditto) film, La Jetée, over at Amy Stein’s blog.

To say this short film is visually remarkable is a remarkable understatement. And further, the minimal creativity of it will make you long for a time when work like this was conceived, let alone completed. It’s at once brilliant and beautiful, which are two things not easy to couple. Needless to say, it got into my head b/c I’ve never really seen anything like it.

But watch it for yourself, here in 3 parts. It might be one of the best half hours of your week.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

(Amy also mentioned on her blog that there is a book version of La Jetée’s images with the narrative as text by MIT press (here). My notion is that it’d be excellent.)

(Also, it occurred to me by the end that this short was the inspiration for 12 Monkeys.)

(And while we’re on the video blitz of gloom. T.S. Eliot’s great poem “The Hollow Men” as recited by Marlon Brando (playing Kurtz in Apocolypse Now (Redux version), which makes sense, b/c one of Eliot’s main inspirations for “Hollow Men” was Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, which as you know was the basis of Apocalypse Now. The film does leave out the opening line of Eliot’s poem, “Mistah Kurtz – he dead”):

“This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper”
-final stanza of “The Hollow Men”

…)

And it comes full circle, B/c the French film maker Chris Marker who did La Jetée also did a multimedia installation on Eliot’s “Hollow Men” titled OWLS AT NOON Prelude: The Hollow Men. I’ve not seen it nor can I find it.

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Yousuf Karsh, (and Nadav Kander and Dan Winters)

admin — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 00:28:59 +0000

Most likely you’re well aware of Yousuf Karsh and his work. It’s part of the canon no doubt, but still I’d never seen this portrait he did of Albert Schweitzer. It left me speechless. Speechless.

This is what Karsh said was the conversation he had during the taking of this potrait: “‘Which,’ I asked this humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize winner, ‘is the greatest of the Ten Commandments?’ ‘Christ gave only one commandment,’ replied Schweitzer, ‘and that was love.’”

Absolutely. Bloody. Remarkable.

The Schweitzer portrait is I think so fecund with poignancy for a number of reasons, one being that it’s so contemporary; if you showed it to me w/o any credits, I’d have guessed Nadav Kander shot it.

Further evidence of of how seminal Karsh’s oeuvre has been in the medium can be seen elsewhere. For instance, take a look at the light Dan Winters has been exploring recently, especially in the actor series for New York Mags 40th anniversary issue.

vs.

And I’ll also include what Karsh wrote on taking this portrait of Hemingway:

I expected to meet in the author a composite of the heroes of his novels. Instead, in 1957, at his home Finca Vigía, near Havana, I found a man of peculiar gentleness, the shyest man I ever photographed – a man cruelly battered by life, but seemingly invincible. He was still suffering from the effects of a plane accident that occurred during his fourth safari to Africa. I had gone the evening before to La Floridita, Hemingway’s favorite bar, to do my “homework” and sample his favorite concoction, the daiquiri. But one can be overprepared! When, at nine the next morning, Hemingway called from the kitchen, “What will you have to drink?” my reply was, I thought, letter-perfect: “Daiquiri, sir.” “Good God, Karsh,” Hemingway remonstrated, “at this hour of the day!”

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John Rosenthal, via Haven Kimmel

admin — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:25:57 +0000

I’ve been having a certainly wonderful and kind of ecstatic email conversation with the author Haven Kimmel. We started on the topic of Avedon and Ezra Pound, but quickly found ourselves immersed in topics as various a Faulkner and God, insomnia and work, Milanese art collectors and, then of course, wedding gowns, taxidermic lions in the rearing-ferociously position and inordinately sized dogs in the sleepy-supine position, and, so on and so forth. At some point in the conversation Haven pointed to the Southern photographer John Rosenthal. Excellent! Needless to say, knowing my proclivities, you’ll quickly understand why I think this is brilliant work, or to quote Haven, “ambrosia.”

And of this second picture I’ll quote Kimmel again who explained the print to me, “Rosenthal was walking through a cemetery in Wilmington, NC, and he came across this man digging a grave. It turns out it was the family’s cemetery for three generations, and they allowed no machinery over the graves, so everything was dug by hand. Bellamy [the gravedigger] was a man of intense pride and dignity. Rosenthal asked him if he could take a photograph of him, and Bellamy, ‘You may take one.’ And this is it:”

I feel like the universe just grew.

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Kertesz’s, Chez Mondrian

admin — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:57:15 +0000

The point of this nearly loses its poignancy when I fess to not remembering where it was (not even in what country) that I saw a print of Andre Kertesz’s Chez Mondrian, but the point still feels very valid that it was one of those transformative photographs for me when I saw it, not in content in so much as the quality of the print itself. A photographer can have epiphanies regarding the possibility of expression through technique when they see for the first time the completed print of a master. Quality becomes, after all, a relative thing. Needless to say, these are not ink jets.

This is not meant to overlook the content of this photograph though, as it might as well be a example in perfect composition, rhythm and balance. I dare anyone to start, “well, if I had of shot it I would have…”

photo: Ches Mondrian, 1926, by Andre Kertesz.

(I know for sure I had the same sort of, jesus that’s good moment while seeing Sander’s prints for the first time. I’d have to think for a bit to come up with others.)

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Style Rookie Blog

admin — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:28:32 +0000

My good friend and web addict, Mr. Diggles shot me a link to this girls fashion/style blog in an e-mail. He wrote, “check out this girls site – like dig through her archives and read her shit. It kept me up last night thinking about how wonderful it is. She is like 13 and represents a freedom that both you and I will never have again[...]Fantastic.” Well…I can’t agree more. And it’s bloody inspiring to see the new generations do effortlessly and perfectly with the medium of the internet what my generation and those before had to grit teeth and rewire already shot-to-shit neuron paths to do only half-assedly.

Check out her blog here.

photo: screenshot from the style rookie’s blog.

Keep it up kid-o. For the time being you’re my blog idol.

——–

(And as a pointless except-for-a-smile follow up, a correspondence thanking Diggles for the link.

Quote.

Unquote.)

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