Painted Over
An Embedded Photographer Empowers the Poor – NYTimes.com
Via NYTimes LENS –
Scenes of poverty are inescapable in a country like Bangladesh, where Western media and charities use them to generate outrage, sympathy and — sometimes — donations.
That bothered Shehab Uddin, a former newspaper photographer in Bangladesh who knew there was more to the story than downtrodden people victimized by poverty, not to mention photojournalists.
“When photographers visit a country like Bangladesh we don’t bother to ask permission from the people we want to photograph,” Mr. Uddin said. “We have the power, with thousands of dollars of gear, nice clothes and a good education, and we think we have every right to photograph.”
Mr. Uddin not only asked permission to photograph poor people. He also moved in with several families and later had them help select the images that he would exhibit in their neighborhoods.
All Wet in Hollywood
As Seen On Oscars Weekend
Reposting this from last year… will have this year’s shots up soon.
Feb Street Photography Mosaic
Spider Martin’s Photographs of Selma Get a Broader View – NYTimes.com
NYTimes:
When Spider Martin, a young photographer for The Birmingham News, stepped onto the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., on March 7, 1965, he knew exactly what to do.He ran to the top of the bridge “and got myself situated, like I’d done so many times, like shooting a football game, staying 10 or 20 yards ahead of the action, never knowing what the score was,” he later recalled.Today, everyone knows the score from that day in Selma, known as Bloody Sunday, thanks in part to Mr. Martin’s powerful images of the police beating back peaceful civil rights marchers, which were blasted around the world via The Associated Press.
via Spider Martin’s Photographs of the Selma March Get a Broader View – NYTimes.com.
Window on Wilshire Boulevard
Westwood, Warped
Sunday Will Never Be the Same
From Smartphones to Museum Walls – NYTimes.com
LENS AT NYTIMES: While some professional photographers might grow nervous at the idea of Instagram users taking over a museum, Mr. Kuster said people should embrace it. “There is an amazing movement that’s happening in photography,” he said. “There are so many great and talented people who are finding their voice.”
Skater Girl
Winter Like This
Brood
Sunset Boulevard Smiles
2.8.15
Wall Art
Designing a World of His Own – NYTimes.com
The quiet stillness of Eliot Elisofon’s pictures of New York can be deceiving. Mr. Elisofon, who died in 1973 at age 61, was neither quiet nor still. An early member of the Photo League and a staff photographer for Life magazine from 1940 to 1964, he called himself the “world’s greatest photographer” and hired a publicist to spread the word.
We Are Los Angeles
Maid Wanted
Reds
La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, 01/25/15
Untitled, West Hollywood, CA – 01/25/15
THE EVENT: LACP’S First Annual Street Shooting Exhibition
TONIGHT IS THE NIGHT!!! LACP’S First Annual Street Shooting Exhibition
As I write this the rain is falling on the roof of my building in cold jealous sheets. 😉 Damn you, rain! Be gone! We photographic artists must be allowed to co-mingle and congratulate ourselves over wine and cheese that we did not pay for!
Okay. (Let’s hope that works.) No rain can dampen the excitement and warm feelings today holds, not just for me, but for the 28 other street photographers who will be honored at the Los Angeles Center of Photography’s first Annual Street Shooting Exhibition in Hollywood.
I don’t really discuss street photography much here on 50lux.com. As I’ve said in an earlier post from last year, I prefer to let my images do the talking for me. It is a sentiment that has been shared by so many photographers throughout the history of the medium. Let the work speak for itself, the images for themselves.
Not always a workable position to take there, it is increasingly less so in the world of contemporary art photography and galleries and clients etc., which all demand that any visual artist know exactly what the purpose is in their work and that they possess and own the very reasons their art exists. It doesn’t seem like too much to ask.
In my case, I don’t even have the excuse that I’m not good (enough) with words or that I don’t have anything to say about what I’m doing. I’m good (enough) with words to say what I’m thinking and I have actual thoughts on photography and, maybe especially, the street photography that accounts for the majority of my own creative efforts over the last 15 years.
So I’m going to take this opportunity, on the occasion when what I’ve been doing for so long is being recognized, when the undertaking itself is being recognized, to say a few things about the work of street photography.
First I have to say that upon perusing the fine selections for the LACP showing online I’m reminded that, thankfully, whatever positions or thoughts I hold in regard to street photography aren’t instantly transferable to the work of others. Photography itself and street photography in particular means something different to everyone who picks up the camera.
I think when I started to make street photography a form of creative expression I did it because I wanted to capture and preserve and make permanent my own life in the form of what I was seeing in my world. I saw it my way. I don’t believe there is a higher power simultaneously seeing and recording and preserving my perspective… or any perspective at all.
Moments, like life itself, were fleeting, but even moreso. There is no guarantee of permanence of human life or even the planet we live on. I had a desperation to grab the ordinary because I saw it, and still do, as being so extraordinary. Everything I see and photograph is, to my mind, the most singularly pointed definition of unique.
Selecting scenes and frames from what I see happening in front of me is a far more subconscious process. I am looking for specific things and then something inside of me is also more instinctively looking as well. Sometimes the things that are most integral to my images are not physical image elements. At best, meaning when I think an image of mine is most successful, the things that I have photographed are not physically apparent.
More than anything, I’m trying to photograph humanity and the human interplay between the living beings and this imposing city. The grace, lack of grace, responses to life, its pressures and pleasures, the human reactions to the environment that we have created for ourselves.
In street-photographing Los Angeles, I am attempting to make subtle, psychological images of humanity as I find them and see them against the backdrop of one of the more chaotic and overdeveloped places on Earth.
I hope that touches on the more general aspects of my street photography in a way that people can relate to when looking at my images. I thank everyone who comes to 50lux.com and who has supported me and my photography over the years.
I want to once again thank Julia Dean and the Los Angeles Center of Photography. Thank you for everything that you do, LACP!
Donald Barnat
Los Angeles
The Los Angeles Center of Photography proudly presents our First Annual Street Shooting Exhibition that celebrates street photography in Los Angeles and around the world. The exhibition showcases 29 photographers and 39 photographs. The works were carefully selected among 120 photographers and 767 images. The selection process was juried by Sam Abell, Julia Dean and Stephen McLaren.
via First Annual Street Shooting Exhibition – Jan 30 | Los Angeles Center of Photography.
Prints for Sale Here!
This page is just a teaser! Please check back here in the very near future to go to the actual Purchase Prints page where images I have selected will be available to be purchased as prints. I will be adding many more images to these in time and if there are any that you have seen that you would like to purchase a print of please feel free to contact me regarding those.
Thank you so much for your interest and support if you have any questions at all contact me here.
Donald Barnat
Layers
New Construction
Behind the Green… Monsters
Red Dot Photography
Life
Girls on Film
Leica M7, Zeiss 50mm Sonnar f1.5, Kodak Ultra 800
Leica M7, Zeiss 50mm Sonnar f1.5
Leica M7, Zeiss 50mm Sonnar 1.5
Leica M7, Zeiss 50mm Sonnar 1.5
Leica M7, Zeiss 50mm Sonnar 1.5
Leica M7, Zeiss 50mm Sonnar f1.5
Leica M7, 35mm Summicron 2.0 ASPH
Leica M7, Zeiss 50mm Sonnar f1.5
“Street Shooter – An Interview with Mary Ellen Mark” (1987) | AMERICAN SUBURB X
donald barnat / 50lux.com all rights reserved
Via AMERICAN SUBURB X:
“Her most memorable work documents the lives of the dispossessed; those deprived by birth of the rights and amenities most of us take for granted, touch her. When that happens she virtually moves in with her subject. She spend 36 days in a maximum security section of the Oregon State Hospital, living with the mentally ill, for her 1979 book, Ward 81. And she spent three months with prostitutes in Bombay for her 1981 book, Falkland Road.”
via INTERVIEW: “Street Shooter – An Interview with Mary Ellen Mark” (1987) | AMERICAN SUBURB X.
405 Freeway and Santa Monica Boulevard, 12/13/14
Table With A View
Untitled, Santa Monica, December 2014
Untitled, West LA, 01-17-15
Robert Frank, Telling It Like It Was – NYTimes.com
From LENS at The New York Times:
“One of the most consequential images in Robert Frank’s “The Americans” is a raw, cinematic photograph of a black couple in San Francisco in 1956. Approaching them from behind as the pair relaxed on a grassy hill overlooking the city, Mr. Frank disrupted their solitude. Startled, they turned to acknowledge him. The woman was annoyed. The man crouched protectively. As his eyes locked on the photographer, his expression hardened into a scowl. The couple seemed determined to protect themselves and their dignity.
On one level, as Mr. Frank himself has said, the photo demonstrates the ease with which the camera can invade the privacy of others, portraying “how it feels to be a photographer and suddenly be confronted with that look of, ‘You bastard, what are you doing!’ ” But the photograph is also racially fraught. Rather than a neutral observer, Mr. Frank looms over them, an active, unseen participant — a surrogate for the intimidating whiteness that shadowed the lives of black Americans, no matter how liberal their environment.”
Finding Robert Frank, Online – NYTimes.com
From LENS on The New York Times:
“The cover image for the U.S. edition of “The Americans,” Robert Frank’s epochal book, spoke volumes about the state of the nation in the mid-1950s. The tightly-cropped photo shows passengers in the widows of a New Orleans trolley assuming their place in the social order of the Jim Crow South — progressing from a black woman in the rear to white children and adults up front.
The contact sheet that contained the image showed that Mr. Frank had photographed the city from multiple perspectives, but he ultimately selected the frame that most dramatically and symbolically captured New Orleans’ racial hierarchy. Learning this photo’s backstory would be impossible without the ability to view Mr. Frank’s contact sheet.
Now, such important archival material, typically reserved for scholars and curators, is just a click away. Launched by the National Gallery of Art in time for photographer’s 90th birthday in November, the Robert Frank Collection Guide is an extraordinary resource for the general public and researchers alike.”
Grabs of Life
Song of the Sea
Hey. You. Get Off of My Cloud.
The Sweetest Sound
Street Shooting Exhibition 2015 Winners | Los Angeles Center of Photography
Here are the winners (link below) of a spot in the LACP’s 2015 Street Shooting Exhibition. Please find among the work of all of these wonderful photographers my four images. I can’t thank enough the LACP, Julia Dean, and guest judges Sam Abell from National Geographic and Stephen McLaren, author of Street Photography Now. But thank you again to all of them. I will put one of my winning shots here, entitled Sunday Was Soft and Warm. And it really really was.
Street Shooting Exhibition 2015 Winners | Los Angeles Center of Photography.
The Leica Look
I’m linking today to what’s called a long read. But this one isn’t just for photographers. Everyone should read this. America should read this. American businesses should read this. This is the way it’s done. This is the way we are supposed to do things here in America.
Gibson. Fender. Cadillac. Are you listening? I think some of you may be starting to.
I just bought a guitar amplifier from a boutique maker named Michael Swart. It’s the Swart Space Tone Tremelo model. I’ve heard, but don’t hold my words to be legally binding, that Michael Swart will fix any of his amplifiers that come back to him, no matter if they’ve been resold. Is this perfectly true in all cases? I don’t know. But the story is out there because this is what people who have experience with him are saying. He doesn’t give a fuck who owns the amp now! It’s got his name on it, it’s broke, it’s in front of him, he’s fixing it.
Booyah! (R.I.P. Stuart Scott) That’s the way it’s supposed to be.
Leica. Leica is the mother of all boutique brands. That Leica would react to a situation like this — with the expense of the items involved — is breathtaking. Booyah on you, Leica! This is the kind of story that makes me proud to be a human being. Proud that we all evolved from the primordial soup together. It doesn’t happen all that often but here it is.
How I lost my Leica equipment and what happened next – Witold Riedel
The following story has some parts that might feel a bit strange to some, and yet will feel completely familiar to others. I guess that’s how stories go. When reading it, some will dislike me for some of the facts, while others will be able to relate and feel that what happened was not exactly easy. The story is true. And it has something to do with my cameras; with my M Leicas.
via Witold Riedel › Notes › How I lost my Leica equipment and what happened next..
Oh No! It’s the Streets of Beverly Hills… Again
Light Forms
Happy New Year!
2014 was a great year for me, finally, and I couldn’t hope for anything other than more of the same in 2015. So here’s a New Year’s toast (sparkling apple juice) to photographic and artistic success and fulfillment for all of us. 😉
Christmas Eve Mosaic Gallery
Obey Worldwide
Josef Koudelka at The Getty Museum
The picture above was not taken by Josef Koudelka, of course. It’s just one of mine. Sorry. But it reminds me of something like what I feel when I look at the amazing work of this possibly greatest living 20th century icon of photography. So I thought it appropriate to use it here to note the exhibition at the Getty in Los Angeles of Koudelka’s work that runs till mid-March of next year. I will be there staring with my mouth open I’m sure.
Josef Koudelka: Nationality Doubtful
November 11, 2014–March 22, 2015, GETTY CENTER — An aeronautical engineer by training, Josef Koudelka (Czech, naturalized French, born 1938) became intensely committed to photography by the mid-1960s and quickly emerged as one of the most influential, iconoclastic photographers of his generation. This exhibition—the first U.S. retrospective devoted to Koudelka since 1988—traces his legendary career with more than 140 works produced over five decades. It marks the first time that the work of one contemporary photographer will fill the Center for Photographs at the Getty.
via Josef Koudelka: Nationality Doubtful | The Getty Museum.
50'Lux 