How a Galway Pub Led to a Skyscraper
A friend just sent me this article about another classic image many thought, for good reasons, was made by Hine. A great story. He found it in The New York Times.
šĀ Pelle
Tag Archives: Media
I admit
That I donĀ“t often get too impressed by photography that I see. But this is just wonderful. I think! šĀ Pelle
Ā From Washington Post
Timeless tintypes of the worldās most photographed subjects
At Sundance Film Festival, photographer Victoria Will had just minutes with some of Hollywoodās most famous actors and directors ā arguably, some of the most photographed people in the worldĀ ā but she chose a processĀ that at its core is imperfect:Ā tintype.
TheĀ 19th century wet-plate photography process predates film. There are no negatives, no large digital files or multiple frames, and no do-overs. Each image is one of a kind.
It starts in the darkroom, where each plate must be coated by hand with light sensitive emulsion. The exposure starts with a comically blinding amount of light, which is reflected off the subject into the camera lens and onto the aluminum plate still wet with emulsion. Any dry patches will remain undeveloped. It is an unforgiving medium. It also makes each image undeniably unique.
āI love thatĀ when you make a tintype you are making a thing, aĀ physical photographic objectĀ ā oneĀ that you can hold and experience in aĀ different way,āĀ Will told In Sight.Ā āBut I also love theĀ finicky natureĀ of theĀ chemistry.Ā Each plate is one of a kind. In the digital age these twoĀ aspects of the medium really inspire me.ā
On one of the last pages of the book is a quote from Walker Evans: āThe eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.ā When asked, Will said it sums up what she loves and why she is so drawn to photography. āA successful image for me is one that makes you feel. It needs to touch you in some way,ā she said. āI think unconsciously, and clearly articulated by Evans here, photographers are moved by emotion. Thatās what is actually pushing the shutter.ā
Now I wish I lived in London
The top 10 photography exhibitions of 2017.
I picked this up in The Guardian.Ā š Ā Pelle
About the top image:Ā A still from Incoming by Richard Mosse. Photograph: Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and carlier|gebauer, Berlin.
Perhaps the most widely discussed exhibition of the year, Mosseās vast three-screen video installation was not strictly photography, but addressed all the issues that the medium is freighted with as it negotiates the post-truth world. Shot on a hi-tech military surveillance camera that registers body heat from as far away as 30km, Incoming reimagined the contemporary refugee crisis as a Ballardian dystopian drama populated by spectral figures moving slowly through an alien landscape. Beautifully observed moments of heightened intimacy ā a lone figure praying to Mecca amid the tumult around him ā provide breathing space in an almost overwhelming audiovisual installation.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/dec/13/top-10-photography-exhibitions-of-2017
The Art of Building 2017
Some really amazing photos! Again, from BBC.
The Art of Building is run by the Chartered Institute of Building.
Twelve finalists have been chosen from this year’s Art of Building architectural photography competition. From abstract details to abandoned buildings, here are the chosen images.
The top image: Mehmet Yasa’s photograph is called “the eye of the tower” due to his ingenious positioning of the staircase and bell in this tower in Verona, Italy.
šĀ Pelle
Snow is coming down. Tiddelipom…
A few tips for your camera excursions as winter is coming and snow is painting the world in white. Or gray and brown as it is in some places… I found it in on BBC.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/42310311/how-to-take-the-perfect-snow-snap
Read this!!!
This is just a wonderful, moving story aboutĀ love of photography. Read the article and see amazing photos from great photographers. By Ceri Jackson, BBC.
šĀ Ā Pelle
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/david_hurn_photographer_swaps_magnum
Swaps – Photographs from the David Hurn collections runs from 30 September 2017 to 11 March 2018 at the National Museum Cardiff
All you’ve got is a box with a hole at the front. That’s what we’ve all got and that’s all we’ve ever had since photography was invented.
“All that happens is the image of life out there goes whizzing through that lens and goes bang onto some material or other and you get a trace of that life on the back of the box. And you’ve got once chance at it, unlike painting or writing you can’t go back and edit, in photography the moment’s gone and will never happen again.
“So, all we have is this box with a hole in the front. So how come if there was a sheep dog trial for instance and Cartier-Bresson, McCullin and Bruce Davidson were there, they are all photographing exactly the same thing but if you showed me 10 pictures from that event I would be able to tell you who had taken what picture?
“It’s the signature of someone which can’t be contrived; it’s the purest thing to their real personality, the world seen through their eyes. The pictures are stamped with the unique style of the individual who shot them.
“But what is necessary for the authorship to come through is an impeccable command of the technical side. The best photographers might say ‘Oh, the technical side is unimportant’. Well, the technical side is staggeringly important but it has got to the point with them that they don’t have to think about it. That only comes through hard work and incessant practice.
“I always stress this point… you’re not a photographer because you are interested in photography.
“The picture is out there, you don’t make the picture, you just have a good visual eye and press the button at the right time. For that you must have an intense curiosity and tenacity, not just a passing visual interest, in the theme of the pictures. This curiosity leads to intense examination, reading, talking, research and many, many failed attempts.
“The idea that there’s no future in taking pictures is nonsensical. If you go to Smiths in Paddington station there’s 3,000 magazines for sale and they’ve all got pictures in them, they’re on websites.
“Everybody’s floundering a little bit as to how to make any money from it but those sorts of problems will be solved, clever people will find ways. Pictures are going to be needed there and the skills are still going to be the same.”
It is a measure of the force of the medium of photography that a picture that probably took a 60th of a second to shoot continues to fuel the life of another man 62 years on.
Ā
Ā
The Observer W Eugene Smith, the photographer who wanted to record everything
Together with Avedon, Penn, Steichen, Strand, Arbus, Cartier-Bresson, Albert Watson and a few more, he is one of the truly great photographers. For me. They are all different and perhaps I should not compare them. So I donĀ“t. Read the article from The Guardian, by Sean O `Hagan.
See the images and imagine the sound that he recorded.Ā Ā Ā Ā šĀ Ā Pelle
Smith took many famous pictures, but also taped hours of audio of jazz greats, writers and artists of the day in his New York loft. A new book explores his strange world
Smith was perhaps the single most important American photographer in the development of the editorial photo essay. His visual narratives, usually published in Life magazine, were often brutally atmospheric. He evoked the horrors of the second world war in the Pacific, where he was injured by mortar fire, and chronicled the working life of Dr Ernest Ceriani in the small town of Kremmling, Colorado, in his 1948 series, Country Doctor, now recognised as the first extended editorial photo story.
In 1955, Smith became a member of the Magnum picture agency, travelling to Pittsburgh for his first assignment, which entailed producing 100 photographs in three weeks to mark the cityās first centenary. He worked on the project for three years, producing around 21,000 photographs. Today, his legacy is maintained by the W Eugene Smith Memorial Fund, which celebrates and encourages the kind of humanistic photography he pioneered, if not the impossible tasks he set himself and his beleaguered editors.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/aug/06/w-eugene-smith-photographer-record-everything
ā¢ Gene Smithās Sink by Sam Stephenson is published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on 22 August ($26)
Fake or not fake. Do you see the difference? Take the test!
These days fake is a common word. Many people present alternative facts and want us to beleive in their truth. This is a very interesting test I noticed in the Washington Post. Read the article and do the test. I have. The research was done in England.
So amid this fakery and our obsession these days with āfake news,ā just how good are we at separating fact from fiction when it comes to photos?
Not good at all, says Sophie J. Nightingale, who researches cognitive psychology at the University of Warwick in England.
However, a personal thought. If something is added on a picture, or removed, is very difficult to see and understand. The image of the person at the top of the article is easy. DonĀ“t you agree?
Anyway, we need to be aware and look out for this.Ā By the way, I had 4. But it could easily have been zero.
PelleĀ Ā š
On a photographers mind 