photo: Sloane Crosley, NYC, 2010. ©Graeme Mitchell.

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photo: Channing Frye, Portland OR, 2007. ©Graeme Mitchell

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photo: Tim Hamilton, NYC, 2010. ©Graeme Mitchell.

photo: Tim Hamilton, NYC, 2010. ©Graeme Mitchell.

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photo: Derek Cianfrance, Brooklyn NY, 2010. ©Graeme Mitchell.

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photo: Heather Huey wearing one of her cages, NYC, 2010. ©Graeme Mitchell.

photo: Heather Huey wearing one of her hats, NYC, 2010. ©Graeme Mitchell.

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photo: Chris Maher, NYC, 2010. ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: Chris Maher, NYC, 2010. ©Graeme Mitchell

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We also had the chance to take her portrait:

photo: Lisa Solberg, LA, 2010. ©Graeme Mitchell.

photo: Lisa Solberg, LA, 2010. ©Graeme Mitchell.

And a gawldamn-good painting by Lisa:

painting: Land Red Down, 101×80,” by Lisa Solberg

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The actor, Alex Kaluzhsky, shot for Interview.

Alex Kaluzhsky, NYC, 2009, ©Graeme Mitchell.

Alex Kaluzhsky, NYC, 2009, ©Graeme Mitchell.

Stylist: Miguel Enamorado
Groomer: Laura de Leon (w/ Joe Management)
Photo Assistant: Nyra Lang
Location: Fast Ashley’s Studios

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photo: Alex Steckly in his studio, Portland OR, 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell

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photo: Julian in my basement, NYC, 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell

He is a friend, a musician, and a wonderful mind.

Here is a song:

song: Dolls Aren’t Supposed to Bite by Julian Tulip’s Licorice

And – peelug -  he also did the music for the Unreal City Slideshow.

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photo: Ian Mitchell, Portland OR., 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.

photo: Scott Mitchell, Portland OR., 2009.  ©Graeme Mitchell.

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photo: ©Graeme Mitchell.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell.

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photo: Cary Joji Fukunaga, Brooklyn, ‘09. ©Graeme Mitchell.

photo: Cary Joji Fukunaga, Brooklyn, ‘09. ©Graeme Mitchell.

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photo: Tara St. James, NYC, 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.

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photo: Kevin Baker, NYC, 2009.  ©Graeme Mitchell.

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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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photo: Cary Joji Fukunaga, Brooklyn, ’09. ©Graeme Mitchell.

Oh, and I just caught Cary’s new film, Sin Nombre (here).  I was speechless, really incredible work for a debut at the ripe age of 30.

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photo: Wavves, NYC ’09. ©Graeme Mitchell.

Hear some of his tunes, here.

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I’m admiring it.  Thank you for it, Mark.

photo: from South (1994-2005), ©Mark Steinmetz.

photo: from South Central (1991-1993), ©Mark Steinmetz.

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Ahhh, well, since you asked.

It’s funny you ask, b/c the author Haven Kimmel and I recently had a e-mail conversation that touched on, amongst many things, Avedon, specifically his portrait of Ezra Pound.

Avedon was a great photographer who “got it,” who worked day in and out, and who was able to doing something authentic.  I suppose one could offer that any sort of originality is genius in a way, which I wouldn’t necessarily debate, but I see that great thing in a body of work as more as a confluence of part man and part fate/histories momentum part…you get the idea; I see it was something much more complex than one’s inspirations and capabilities.  Regardless, I’ll leave that up to you, not the point anyway, but the key is Avedon did something original in his career, singular and completely authentic.  Yes, he was inspired by Sander and others, and some argue by his own history as a military photographer, but still he came to his own conclusion.  In the spirit of Ginsberg speaking to Whitman beyond the grave, you could say Sander fell the tree and Avedon carved it. At his apogee, and I believe Avedon’s crowning moment ,his pique his quintessence, was the American West series, he made one of the great photographic moves, and it stands as such still.  Something people will mimic and mimic but something that there will only ever be one of.  He did it first and did it best.

Foremost, and he said it more eloquently if you dig in his essays and quotes, Avedon’s pictures are certainly about himself, or about his idea.  Idea, I think, is the key term here, since it’s what Avedon reduced things too: a philosophy.  He along with the rest of his generation was influenced a great deal by Beckett and the sensibilities and ideas of Existentialism from that generation, that white void that Molloy limps through became Avedon’s white seamless.  Yet, don’t let the starkness of this mislead you; I do believe Avedon was an optimistic, a humanist, b/c when I look at the American West series, I see royalty.  Just like Arbus made the freaks into kings and queens, Avedon made the common people something that transcended.  Avedon would have had Louis Vuitton luggage and been wearing loafers suited for the UWS while shooting that work, and his time with the subject was, I’d gather, fleeting – it was not his world at all and he didn’t pretend it to be -  but all the same he was human and they were human and I see in his work a general love for that ubiquitous suffering and struggle that affronts us all despite our best efforts, that “nakedness of man faced with the absurd” to go to Camus.

On top of this, more generally to discuss his commercial and editorial (non-fine-art) work, he was technically outstanding, not tricky or fancy or conceptual, but more like the Rolls Royce of technique, beautiful and classic and smart.  Using things as simple as notan, to reference Mr. Cardwell, to draw you in and control composition and rythm.  And in the portraits he did editorially he knew the balance between that aesthetic in technique and balancing that with a ruthless display and adjustmentoft the sitters persona (in the Jungian sense).  I imagine Avedon was kind, liked and very smart, but I also suspect that when he photographed his great portraits he was at war with his sitters, b/c the moments seem both terrifying and sublime…which is, as Haven had pointed out to me, the same thing according to Kant.

Finally, it’d be a mistake to underestimate the commerce involved with the photography, and Avedon knew it.  Luckily for Avedon, the look he explored personally also turned out to be very very effective and easy to translate to the commercial realm.  Or maybe it was the other way around.  Either way, it’s a rarity as far as I’ve seen.

Anyway…I’m rambling.  I admire his work obviously.  I don’t deify him or think he didn’t take mediocre photos too.  And there’s a lot he didn’t do.  But what he did do right, he did tremendously.

Hope that helps.

xo

photo: from Avedon at Work in the American West. ©Laura Wilson.

And I wasn’t joking about the loafers, probably ferragamos, and the vintage Louis Vuitton Luggage (↓) either.

photo: from Avedon at Work in the American West. ©Laura Wilson.

Damn fancy, Dick!

Vuitton could inspire a campaign around that photo.

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photo: “Canal Street – New Orleans, 1955″ from The Americans, ©Robert Frank.

photo: “Robert Frank, photographer, Mabou Mines, Nova Scotiam July 17, 1975″ ©Richard Avedon.

(Of course another artist initialed R.F. who defined a sort of America

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

“The Road Not Taken”
-Robert Frost

.)

And as much as I try to avoid regurgitation by linking to blog posts elsewhere, this interview with Chris Buck is enough for an exception, part 1 and part 2.

photo: Philip-Lorca diCorcia for PDN magazine, ©Chris Buck.

That portrait by Chris is of, as you probably know, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, who’s work isn’t trivial.  I thought he’d be a good end note to kick the week off with.

photo: “Gianni,” ©Philip-lorca diCorcia.

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Here’s the MP3:

audio: NPR’s On The Media, “Snap Judgments”, Noverber 28, 2008.

They summed it up right off the bat when they said it’s about money – I’d specify for the magazines and the photographers.  After all, I’ll hullabaloo with the best of them on art and integrity and.  But editorial remains a business (even if it’s the biz of getting tearsheets).  And the end of the day ethics of business is profit.

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photo: Edith Mitchell in her room, Calgary, 2008. ©Graeme Mitchell.

photo: Edith Mitchell in her room, Calgary, 2008. ©Graeme Mitchell.

photo: My Grandma’s Chair, 2008. ©Graeme Mitchell.

photo: Alberta, 2008. ©Graeme Mitchell.

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photo: Katie Van Camp, NYC, 2008.  ©Graeme Mitchell.

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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.’”

photo: Albert Schweitzer, 1954. © The Estate of Yousuf Karsh.

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.

photo: Ian Mckellen I. © Nadav Kander.

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.

photo: Robert DeNiro, for New York Magazine. © Dan Winters.

vs.

photo: Ernest Hemingway, 1957. © The Estate of Yousuf Karsh.

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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photo: Garett Stenson, Sept 2008. © Graeme Mitchell.

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