Yousuf Karsh just died. Maybe you read about it. He became famous with his Churchill portrait but I think his other works are much more interesting. His portraits are amazingly telling. You get the impression that Karsh was able to show everything you would want to know about a person. It's interesting to compare his style of photography with what people do today. Do today's portrait photographers achieve what Karsh did?
A few days ago, I posted an entry about Yousuf Karsh's death. I missed posting the obituary from The Economist which in itself is a very nice piece about photography.
The other day, I found an article in the New York Times about Alfred Stieglitz. Until then, I had never been too excited about him but the article featured one of his photos which got me pretty excited. I decided to look for his work online. The best site I could find is the George Eastman House Alfred Stieglitz series. The photo I had seen in the NY Times - an amazingly modern looking portrait of Rebecca Strand - unfortunately cannot be found here but there are tons of other treasures.
Leni Riefenstahl is probably one of the most controversial Germans alive. She is widely known for the propaganda movies she made for Hitler and for her photography, in particular for her photos of the African Nuba. Was she, is she a Nazi or not? Here is an interesting article about her by James Faris.
Ernst Haas was one of the most influential photographers of the 20th Century. Well-known for his colour photography, he also did a lot of b/w work. Make sure you spend some time on the website, it's a real feast for the eye.
A huge gallery of photos with plenty of rarely seen ones.
These days, August Sander is my favourite photographer. He's most well-known for his portraits which I find nothing but amazing. They're even more amazing when you consider that when he started doing them this particular style of portaiture - something we take for granted now - was pretty much despised. People didn't want to see their real faces, they wanted idealized portraits, and photographers spent a lot of time retouching their work. In the end, Sander ran into trouble when the Nazis came to power. His portraits simply didn't agree with what the Nazis thought of the Germans, and, of course, they didn't want to see gypsies or other "Untermenschen" portrayed.
Beautiful colour photography at the George Eastman House (thru consumptive.org)
"Crazy, artistic, stingy, obsessed with taxes. Sex maniac, master architect, drug addict, genius. Carlo Mollino (1905-1973) is one of the most colorful figures in the world of architecture and Italian design. " (bio) Carlo Mollino was also a designer and photographer who took tons of Polaroids: samples (1), samples (2).
(Shiseido exhibit link thru wood s lot)
The New Republic has a review of a new Robert Capa biography. Recommended! It's not just about Capa but also about how journalistic photos have lost some of their impact - this being the times of Photoshop and of staged rescue operations for supposed POW heroes - and about various other, related things.
Much can be said and was said about her and by her. Of her most infamous works she said "I was only interested in how I could make a film that was not stupid like a crude propagandist newsreel, but more interesting. It reflects the truth as it was then, in 1934. It is a documentary, not propaganda." The films certainly were more interesting but Frau Liefenstahl was either too naive or not willing to not miss the point, even though she explicitely expresses it: "the truth as it was then" - that, and nothing else, is the essence of what propaganda is about. Propaganda is not about the truth; it is about the truth as it is, and that means as it is intended to be.
Frau Riefenstahl was a Nazi propagandist, maybe not of the absolutely worst kind, but a very talented and remarkable one nevertheless. Her unwillingness to face that and post-war Germany's willingness to except that to a certain extent exposes maybe the only unsolved problems with Germany's past. Contrary to what the media want to make you believe there is nothing to be discovered any longer about the war and the genocide of Jews, Homosexuals, mentally handicapped persons, Socialists, and Communists.
But Germany has never dealt with those people who supported the Nazi regime in a different way, not by building bombs or by ordering genocide or by fighting wars. There still is a lot to be discovered about how you create a regime like that. The lessons that we could learn extend to our everyday lives - especially when countries go to war selling that very same war on the basis of what very obviously is the truth only insofar as it supports the war, a truth disconnected from facts, a truth that is connected to spinmeisters and liars who dress up as statesmen.
Germany has never really dealt with Nazi Germany's artists - the ones which were only too willing to put their artistry into the service of a regime that knew about the power of images and sounds even though then mass media were almost exclusively non-visual. Artists like Ernst Jünger, the writer, Arno Breker, the sculptor, Herbert von Karajan and Wilhelms Furtwängler, the conductors, and Leni Riefenstahl, the film maker and photographer, helped create Nazi Germany's face to an extent that never got acknowledged. They never paid a price for that - and how could they? As an artist, you can always claim you were only working on art and nothing else.
It's amazing how Frau Riefenstahl got away with it so easily. Granted, her career was more or less over after the war. But did she go to jail like people like Albert Speer? You could maybe (note the maybe here) how people like Karajan got away with it. Conducting Beethoven's Fifth in itself is not an act of Nazism - even though getting a thoroughly brown nose is. But making movies which are as explicit about Nazi ideals as any movie can be? It's like making explicit pornographic movies with the idea of making a movie about sex and then claiming you were never interested in arousing people. Like Ernst Jünger, another very talented proto-fascist, she was left off the hook, and like Herr Jünger she lived until she was 100 years old - reminding the second German democracy of the legacy it never wanted to deal with.
So Frau Riefenstahl finally is dead. She was a talented photographer and film maker. But she sold her sold to the devil. Maybe now she can have another toast with Hitler - the person she admired so much. May she rot in hell.
Today's edition of utterly fabulous wood s lot features lots of links to work on and by Minor White.
Li Zhensheng "delivered to the offices of Contact Press Images in New York starting in 1999 approximately thirty-thousand small brown paper envelopes bound together with rubber bands in groups according to chronology, location, type of film, or other criteria" - a visual history of China's so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Zonezero shows excerpts.
When I saw that photo for the first time I thought it was a collage. Actually, they really kept throwing that water and those cats until they got the shot: "He suspended an easel, two paintings by Dali (one of which was 'Leda Atomica'), and a stepping stool; had his wife, Yvonne, hold a chair in the air; on the count of three, his assistants threw three cats and a bucket of water into the air; and on the count of four, Dali jumped and Halsman snapped the picture. While his assistants mopped the floor and consoled the cats, Halsman went to the darkroom, developed the film, and reemerged to do it again. 'Six hours and twenty-eight throws later, the result satisfied my striving for perfection,' wrote Halsman in his book 'Halsman on the Creation of Photographic Ideas'. 'My assistants and I were wet, dirty, and near complete exhaustion?only the cats still looked like new.'" Brilliant! I don't think my cats would be as happy if I kept throwing them, though. Well, maybe they'd do it for Dali.
Modernism in US architecture wouldn't have been as successful and influential if Julius Shulman had not been around to do the showcasing (more samples here). Find an in-depth interview with Julius Shulman here.
The days are gone when mastering what we call today "alternative" photographic processes could land you an entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
The official Milton H Greene website features tons of photos - for all subjects I looked at you basically get a digital contact sheet of the photo session - incl. failed exposures. Even though the samples are all fairly small it's quite amazing to be able to see all that.
PS: I find the subtitle of the official site - "Photographer of the People" - quite odd. Sounds like late 19th century labour movement to me.
(all links from wood's lot)
It's hard to say something about HCB that hasn't been said already. Given he was a master photographer I think it is enough to let his photos speak: Selected Portraits, assembled for a show in the National Portrait Gallery. A small selection of his work at Peter Fetterman Gallery; another small selection.
Also see these selections on Magnum's website: photos of HCB, landscapes, and an amazing retrospective.
Most people will probably remember Andre de Dienes for his early photos of Marilyn Monroe even though he did lots of other subjects, including surrealist nudes.
"Taking pictures is, in many ways, a kind of performance, and a camera is more like a musical instrument than a paintbrush or a pen. So, looking at a Lartigue print is very much like beholding, say, one of those brilliant child soul singers who come along every so often. You know they can't possibly have the wisdom that their work suggests, but it doesn't seem to matter. The miracle of such artists isn't a question of intuitive technique, for as I say, that's a contradiction in terms. But neither is it simply an illusion. It's something altogether astonishing and inexplicable, an expertise beyond experience, and sometimes all you can do is stand back and admire it." - Jim Lewis in a review of a a book about Jacques Henri Lartigue
In an older edition of Digital Journalist, I discovered a special on Arnold Newman that is not to be missed. More samples: here and here; plus a nice article/interview here.
One of the very first photography shows I went to was the big Richard Avedon retrospective they had somewhere in Cologne. It must have been about ten years ago, I can't say for sure, and I knew nothing about photography and very little about art.
There was something about the photos that struck me. The portraits were very honest and very revealing - especially the ones that weren't too obviously staged. And they were big. You could see every pore, and it wasn't always flattering for the people whose photos Richard Avedon had taken.
There also was a certain timeless beauty about the photos. I don't think the photos will get this somehow dated look that we know from, say, Karsh's portraits; maybe Avedon's work is closer to Horst's. Horst's photos only look a little dated because people dressed differently.
Since I got the subscription of New Yorker magazine (read their obituary), I have seen many photos by Richard Avedon, maybe too many. I've always felt that despite his obvious genius as a photographer Avedon wasn't able to produce good work every week - the occasional masterpiece notwithstanding (such as the portraits of Michael Moore - shown on Avedon's website). But now that he is gone I will miss seeing the photos, I'm sure.
Through his work and through the people who copied his technique (and/or willingness to show people as they are) Richard Avedon will stay with us. Portrait photography is probably the most difficult thing you can do, and I think it will take a long time before somebody else will be able to fill those shoes again.
Richard Avedon is dead. The New York Times has an extensive obituary.
Update (5 Oct): Slate.com features a somewhat less hagiographic obituary, which might be the best I've read. There are some interesting and, for a(ny) photographer, somewhat disturbing observations in it, which it is tempting to dismiss - until you start to think about them.
Until today, I had never heard of Angelo (P疝 Funk) before. I bet you'll be as amazed as I was when looking at the photos. Some of the 1920s photos have the look that many toy camera enthusiasts are trying to re-create now.
József Pécsi is another classic Hungarian photographer. I think the Eastern European photography history and scene has so far been vastly underrepresented compared with the Western European one.
The other day, architectural photographer Ezra Stoller died. Find some of his work here and here.
(found at coincidences)
"Erwin Blumenfeld's popular reputation comes almost completely from his work as a fashion photographer in New York in the 40s, yet when he came to choose his 'Hundred Best Photos' in 1969 only four of them were fashion shots." Unfortunately, I didn't manage to find more samples of his work online. Given his contribution to fashion photography - when fashion photography did not mean to take photos of naked anorexic women - that's fairly sad.
I've long wanted to link to Irving Penn but whenever I was looking for links it turned out to be very slim pickings. In that sense, the internet can be quite deceiving: If you try to estimate popularity or importance by the number of links you can find you might be making quite a serious mistake. In any case, I fould a few more links with a small number of samples: Two brief bios/introductions, here and here; and three samples plus text for his "Nudes".
George Hurrell was one of the most important Hollywood photographers of all times. Don't miss this site which has tons of samples. Also slate.com just had a tiny feature (with a very very sad portrait of the dumbest Austrian export since 1945). You know, when I look at photos like this one or this one and compare it with what current Hollywood photographers produce... I am sure yesterday's celebrities were as shallow and vain as today's; but will we look at photos of today's celebrities in fifty years and be amazed about classic beauty? I doubt it.
(Thanks, Mark!)
"Lotte Jacobi spent portions of her life in Berlin (1925-1935), New York City (1935-1955), and New Hampshire (1955-1990). As a result, she is able to provide us with a wealth of information through her photographs about pre-World-War II Germany, the cultural life in New York City, and the regional artists in New England." Also see this page.
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy was a member of the Bauhaus school ("The Bauhaus School was Germany's most important and most avant-garde art and design school. In existence from 1919, many of its teachers found a new home in the USA when the Nazis forced the school to close in 1933."), and there is a huge collection of his photos at the George Eastman House
There is a website dedicated to the photography of Horst P Horst, one of my favourite classic photographers. As much as I hate to say this make sure you treat yourself to the Flash presentation - even though it forces you to read all kinds of statements (some of which would not have been a tremendeous loss) before you can see the next image, the selection of photos is well worth the time.
After his untimely death Werner Bischof did not become an icon like Robert Capa. I personally like Bischof's work much better. Bischof was always an involved observer and and an artist at the same time - something that, I think, distinuishes a master photojournalist from the rest of the crowd. See many of his photos over at Magnum. There is a retrospective at the Bruce Silverstein Gallery, and a new feature at ZoneZero.
(updated post)
"Frederick Sommer, most widely known as a photographer, also maintained lifelong interests in drawing, painting, collage, poetry and prose." His photography is currently on view at the Getty Museum (until 4 September).
(thanks, Mark!)
Trude Fleischmann (1895-1990) was an Austrian photographer (who in 1939 emigrated to the United States) who contributed greatly to portrait and nude photography. Unfortunately, it's hard to find samples online. There are a bunch of portraits on this site, also don't miss this portrait and this nude study.
Helmar Lerski (1871-1956) created studies of faces. There really is no other way to describe it. If you want to get an idea of what it means watch this film that shows some of the 140 photos done using a single person's face. Utterly incredible.
PS: If you can't understand a word the presenter is saying don't worry. It's Swiss German.
"On his 80th birthday, Brett Weston fed sixty years worth of his negatives into the large fireplace in his home on the Big Island of Hawai'i. Some of the negatives didn't burn immediately. So Weston doused them with kerosene. Yes, he was something of a pyro. Over the course of that evening in 1991, flames consumed the raw material of one of the greatest photographic legacies in the history of the medium."
Thus begins an interesting article about the life and work of Brett Weston. And there is quite an ironic ending to the story of the burning negatives. Find more photos here; if you want to see more use Google - it's an easy search for this classic photographer.
The Edward Weston website features lots of iconic American photos. And the aformentioned background article about Brett Weston gives a little background about what Edward Weston's son Brett thought about the new prints of the old negatives.
Jaroslav Rössler was a Czech master of abstract photography. Very impressive work!
(seen at gmtPlus9)
I have wanted to link to Walter Vogel's work for a while but, up until now, there was no website available. That has now changed; unfortunately, there only is a German version. Click on "Bilder" to see the photos, form there it's obvious what to do. My favourites are the photos from around Düsseldorf.
(thanks, Frank!)
Richard Avedon was such icon of portrait photography that he could get away with showing almost no photos on his website. You don't have to see the photos again because you already have. There are a variey of shows and exhibitions online of which I'm going to list only a few: The Metropolitan Museum's Special Exhibition, PBS' American Masters, PDN's Legends Online.
In the late 1970's, Richard Avedon decided to embark on a project quite different from his usual work and to travel out west to take photos of people there. The resulting work In The American West
If you don't want to just look at a book, you can also travel to Texas and see the show (open until 8 January 2006). make sure to also look at Avedon's Lone Stars - Then and Now.
There also is a review of the book, courtesy of Britain's The Guardian.
(updated post)
"Photographing the artistic life after World War II in a period full of promise, Karl Bissinger took unexpected portraits of the day's luminaries of high Bohemiawriters, dancers, musicians, painters, journalists, and celebrities for such magazines as Flair, Theatre Arts and Harper's Bazaar. These photographs capture those lost, illustrious years of artistic and literary life in the late 1940s and 1950s, particularly in New York, but also in London, Paris, Los Angeles, and elsewhere."
