Cream Colored Cadillac, Petersen Automotive Museum

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35mm f1.2 Voigtlander Nokton ASPH: My Favorite 35

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I once owned the much anticipated and very expensive Leica Summilux 35mm f1.4 ASPH FLE. That lens drove me crazy. I can’t imagine the genius and time and planning and expense that goes into making such a complicated and high-end piece of kit as that, or any Leica lens, so I don’t really like to bash things simply because they just didn’t work for me. But that lens didn’t work for me and I’ll leave it at that. I loved the 35mm 2.5 Summarit. Nice lens that made really classic looking images. I loved the 35 ‘Cron. I don’t think that things can get much better than any Leica Summicron lens. Period.

But like so many others, I covet fast lenses. So back a few years ago when I had the money to experiment I bought a Voigtlander 35 1.2 ASPH Nokton. I have to say, if that lens had been dressed up in a Leica barrel and had a red dot on it and I’d paid what I paid for the 35 ‘Lux FLE… I would have been happy with that purchase. To me, this is the 35 ‘Lux style lens I was after from the start. But unlike the Leica, I can handle it. It never fails me. It has some distortion and I’m working with a profile in Lightroom now to try to address that issue but… it’s okay. I’m okay with this lens. I’m okay with the color, the contrast, the sharpness, the wonderful 50 ‘Lux-like bokeh. Everything.

Anyway. Here’s a quick shot I grabbed the other day and below please find a detail from it to show a little of why I like this lens so much.

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Through the Strikethrough

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Very interesting article on the current realities of racial segregation in housing choices in the New York Times. Don’t miss the 1000+ comments either.

Affluent and Black: And Still Trapped by Segregation

MILWAUKEE — Their daughter was sick and they needed family around to help care for her, so JoAnne and Maanaan Sabir took an unexpected detour.

They had spent years blowing past mileposts: earning advanced degrees and six-figure incomes, buying a 2,500-square-foot Victorian with hardwood floors. Yet here they were, both 37, moving to a corner of town pocked by empty lots, cramming into an apartment above Ms. Sabir’s mother, in the very duplex that Ms. Sabir’s grandparents had bought six decades earlier.

Their new dwelling was in a part of the Lindsay Heights neighborhood where more than one in three families lives in poverty; gunshots were too often a part of the nighttime soundtrack. They planned to leave once their daughter, Ameera, was healthy.

But then, reminding them of why they feel at home in communities like this one, their new neighbors started frequently checking on Ameera: Is she doing O.K.? And on their son, Taj: When’s his next basketball game? Mr. Sabir’s car stalled in the middle of the street one night, and it was the young men too often stereotyped as suspicious who helped him push it home. So many welcoming black faces like their own, they thought.

“It felt like that’s where we should be,” Ms. Sabir said.

Previously Unseen Arbus – The New York Times

“Diane Arbus: In the Beginning” shows, among other things, that Arbus settled early on many of her major themes.

“Street photography was the advanced mode of the day, and practitioners like Lee Friedlander, William Klein, Helen Levitt and Garry Winogrand all claimed New York City as their turf. So did Lisette Model, a Viennese émigré with whom Arbus studied briefly. Ms. Model didn’t give her student much formal advice. Instead, she urged her to ease away from the stance of objectivity then considered requisite for serious photography and instead establish emotional relationships with her subjects, and see where that would take her. For Arbus, the advice was heaven-sent. It gave her permission to be the artist she was ready to be.”

“Diane Arbus: In the Beginning” runs through Nov. 27 at the Met Breuer, 945 Madison Avenue, at 75th Street; 212-731-1675; metmuseum.org.

Source: Previously Unseen Arbus, Unearthed Years After Her Death – The New York Times

A Midlife Crisis Poem

My eternal dream
the taste of your tiger’s tongue
washing me in white fire
In the nape of your neck
my nuzzling face lost

Stabbing against
the give of your breasts
my tongue lives
But your nipples
aggressive daggers
Pierce my heart

I trace with my lips
the length of you
And in the most
tender of moments
slowly you open
yourself to me

My hands grip and paw
at your surrendering self
Your tiger thighs
your tiger’s heart

A diamond glistens
in the Chinese moonlight
Fearless your eyes flash and say
even the devourer falls prey

The seawall cannot hold
against the crashing thunder
The waves, a thousand
dying demons
sizzle in effervescent
liquid and mad, retreat

I bite one last time
at the high flesh there
Tasting blood, the moment
writes itself forever
on our souls

My eternal dream,
my eternal dream.

-1995

Rodeo Clown

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That’s Rodeo (ro-DAY-oh) as in Beverly Hills. 😉

Photograph

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Ev’ry time i see your face,
It reminds me of the places we used to go.
I want you here to have and hold,
As the years go by and we grow old