photography

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.”

via Robert Frank, Telling It Like It Was – NYTimes.com.

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.”

via Finding Robert Frank, Online – NYTimes.com.

Street Shooting Exhibition 2015 Winners | Los Angeles Center of Photography

Donald_Barnat_02_Sunday-Was-Soft-And-WarmHere 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.

Happy New Year!

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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. 😉

Josef Koudelka at The Getty Museum

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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.

Los Angeles Center of Photography… again….

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I’m not usually speechless or at a loss at how to respond to something. But I am through the looking glass right now. I’ve known about this for three days but I haven’t even been able to post the news here on 50lux.com because I’m so blown away.

The LACP, which selected one of my images, Gestalt Moment, for their first member’s exhibition earlier this year, asked for submissions for an upcoming street shooting exhibition early in 2015 which will be both in their gallery and also online.

I submitted 10 images. The response from street shooters in the LA area was great. 129 photographers submitted almost 800 images. The judges were serious. National Geographic’s much esteemed Sam Abell. Stephen McLaren, whose book, Street Photography Now has been on my bookshelf for years.

As far as I can tell, I’m one of only three photographers to have four images selected!

I don’t know what else to say. I would have been GREATLY honored to have one image selected and featured either in the online gallery and over the moon to have one once again on the wall of the LACP exhibition. But I will have TWO on the wall and an additional two different images in LACP’s online gallery for a total of four online.

I just want to thank Julia Dean, and the judges, and EVERYONE associated with the LACP for being what they are and creating their presence in Los Angeles photography and giving photographers here the platform and recognition as they have so deftly and gracefully done. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Since these four images will be featured on LACP’s own online gallery, and they have bestowed upon me this great honor, I don’t want to steal their thunder or take away even one web click from them by posting the images here.

I also won’t even post any of the six shots that weren’t selected as that too seems a bit of a weird thing to do at this time. I will at some point but certainly not now.

The shots have all been featured here in the last year. Three of the images were taken with Nikon cameras and one with the Leica M. I think. Don’t hold me to that. I’m so blown away I barely know my own name right now.

Thank you also to everyone who visits this site and has encouraged me and my photography. You have bolstered the notion in my head that I have something to say photographically and that has kept me going these past years and I thank you all so much for that.

And I want to also thank Leica for the inspiration. Always. Even before I shot Leica. Switching to Leica gear was a complete rebirth for my photography. I could not have gone on another year shooting big autofocus DSLRs. I certainly wouldn’t have been inspired to start this blog without Leica and without this blog… anyway.

I’m thanking everyone today!

Donald Barnat

Cartier-Bresson’s “The Decisive Moment” to be republished this December

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From LightBox –

For new generations of photographers and artists who have missed out on experiencing many of the world’s important books first hand, it cannot be stressed enough how important this new edition of The Decisive Moment is for a contemporary audience.

“Robert Frank’s The Americans and Cartier-Bresson’s The Decisive Moment were published within a few years of each other in the 1950s and both books have since become the blueprint for the modern photography book,” Steidl says.

Its value as an out-of-print collectable has risen over the past few decades resulting in keeping this masterpiece out of the hands of many younger photographers. Finally, after 62 years, it is again seeing the light of day this December with a gorgeous facsimile from the German publishing house Steidl.

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via The Return of The Decisive Moment – LightBox.

Legendary Magnum, Leica Photographer René Burri Died Today

René Burri 1933 - 2014 | Design | Agenda | Phaidon

Via Phaidon:

As befits someone who’d photographed everyone from Churchill to Che Guevara, René Burri had a weapons grade arsenal pf wonderful stories and anecdotes, and he told them extremely well. One of our favourites was one he revealed in the garden of his Paris apartment a couple of years ago when we were interviewing him for his memories around the book Impossible Reminiscences. It concerned his mentor, Henri-Cartier Bresson and his habit of looking at negatives upside down. It infuriated all the Magnum photographers but particularly irked the Swiss-born Burri who revealed how, with one of his most famous photographs he managed pulled the wool over the Magnum founder’s expert eye and, as he put it that afternoon, “killed my mentor!”

René Burri 1933 – 2014 | Design | Agenda | Phaidon.

I’ll Leave You With These Four…

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Hello, everyone. I’ve been posting an image or more on my blog here almost every day for the last couple of years. I have to say… it may not have always looked like it but it really was a lot of effort. And it has now become very hard because while I’m still shooting street photography and uploading images I don’t feel about them the same way I felt about much of the stuff I’ve posted over the last two years.

Giving myself a little credit, maybe it’s not just about feelings but about the kinds of critical judgments that everyone who shoots and chooses their better shots makes every day. When I look back at much of the work I’ve posted in the last few years I feel it’s been pretty good. I’m proud of it even now. So I’m going to just trust myself and wake up to the reality that I’m not producing what I want to at this time and I’m not going to force the issue by posting images I’m not completely behind.

I also want to free my mind up to pursue some other things that photography has pushed to the back burner and I’m anxious and excited to get to work on these other projects. And there are photo projects as well. Anyway, I know I’ve bent ears here before declaring that I was going to do this or do that. But I really am going to take a break from 50lux.com for a good solid amount of time.

Of course, if I get anything really wonderful it will certainly find its way here. And I have it in mind to collect on a special page or even maybe the front page here my favorite shots of the last few years.

I again want to thank every one of you who follow this blog, artists all of you, no doubt, for welcoming my photography into the WordPress world. Hope to be back one of these days with new photography that represents a change in direction for me as an image maker.

Thank you again and I look forward to having more time to visit all of your blogs and take in all of your great works here on WordPress.

Best of luck,

Donald

P.S. About these four images…

I went to the Getty Center yesterday morning to see the Minor White exhibition. I’d only seen a small bit of his work prior to finding the article I posted a few days ago announcing the show at the Getty. I actually have a book about his establishing the photography department at Cal Arts. But when I saw that his work was being featured at the Getty I Googled him and took a good look at what came up. I was stunned. I felt a connection to what I was seeing that I can’t really describe.

So we jumped over to the Getty at the first opportunity. I had a feeling the images would effect me and they did. Very much so. The Sound of One Hand sequence made me feel just odd in my stomach it was so representative of some kind of a note or tone that I felt deep in my creative self. Almost jealousy. lol. So I kind of had my world rocked there for a minute.

Then we went upstairs. O mio Dio! Directly upstairs from Minor White was a room full of some of the greatest artistic treasures on the face of the Earth. Degas. Manet. Monet. Cezanne. The one time most expensive painting ever sold at $52M. Van Gogh’s “Irisis”. I can’t describe the effect this all had on me today.

So we went outside and started roaming the exterior areas of the Getty Center. There’s a small brook running through the place over rocks and small waterfalls. I had Minor White’s images in my head and just started shooting, thinking about how I would turn these images into black & whites, like his. But I couldn’t do that. I like them the way they are. I hope you all do, too.

I’ll see you all back here periodically with more photography.

Till then much love and best wishes to everyone…

db

 

Winogrand at the Met: The Genius of His Reviled Late Works

donald barnat / 50lux.com

There’s an anecdote buried deep inside the footnotes of the catalog for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Garry Winogrand survey that speaks volumes about the present exhibition. In it, his better known contemporary, Lee Friedlander, watches Winogrand release the shutter of his camera with nearly every passerby encountered on a New York street. Thirty years after Winogrand’s quick dispatch from cancer in 1984, Friedlander’s shocked response to his friend’s incontinence appears more informative than lapidary: “Garry, you’re not photographing, you’re taking the census.”

via Garry Winogrand at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Genius of His Reviled Late Works.

donald barnat / 50lux.com

Style Recollections

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Some women and their personal styles are timeless. Simple and sharp like the young lady above. Some are more complicated. 😉 These are all from the Nikon days.

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NY Times: No Longer an Invisible Photographer

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Vanessa Winship had gotten very good at getting the picture without getting noticed. But unlike street and documentary photographers who strive to be invisible, Ms. Winship was not happy.

“One of the problems with this is that it allows a certain kind of passivity from the position of the viewer, and of course the viewer includes me,” Ms. Winship said. “In this context it functions in a way that allows us not to take responsibility.”

So, during a project in Turkey, she gave up the easy invisibility granted by using a 35-millimeter camera to take up a view camera, slowing down her process as she engaged in a dialogue with her subjects.

No Longer an Invisible Photographer

New York Times: Photography as a Balm for Mental Illness
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donald barnat – 50lux.com

Seems that maybe there is, in this eye-opening piece on NYTimes.com, a blurring of the lines between what is thought of as mental illness and what might be considered emotional or other behavioral problems and issues. But nevertheless I’m glad they cast a wide enough net to include many of us and I’m thinking this might be a very interesting ongoing subject to discuss here or amongst any group of creative people.

(I didn’t feel comfortable using an image belonging to one of the photographers profiled in this article without permission so I used one of mine. It is in no way a commentary on nor are the subjects pictured in any way associated with this article.)

To the casual observer, Danielle Hark was living an enviable life, with a devoted husband, a new baby and work she enjoyed as a freelance photo editor. But she was so immobilized by depression that she could barely get out of bed. Her emotional state could not be explained in postpartum terms — she had suffered from debilitating depression for most of her life, and ultimately received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder when her daughter was a year old.

via Photography as a Balm for Mental Illness – NYTimes.com.

Inside My Mind Right Now

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Inside my mind right now it looks like this image. Except for National Geographic anything. They are not involved in any way. I have an incredible idea for a photographic project bordering on a life’s mission. It consumes every moment I’m online. I won’t talk about it publicly until I’m really well into actually shooting it but a huge part of it is research and planning.

As I’ve admitted in an earlier post, I have become ambivalent towards my LA street photography, a condition that comes at a very odd time considering one of my images will be featured in an exhibition at the Los Angeles Center of Photography. Printing, preparing, and presenting that image for exhibition was rewarding and a somewhat challenging experience that has led me to a different and much better place in terms of my own ability to get my images into a state where they can be viewed and sold.

I have now probably many dozens of images that I’ve been taking in the last month that I’m somehow unable to bring myself to share here. I don’t know why. The only thing I can offer is some vague feeling that they just aren’t good enough or don’t say any of the things I’ve typically wanted my images to say. I’ve had a feeling over the last year or so that I was in some kind of a sweet spot that might not last forever. I don’t know. Maybe I was right.

I really want to thank the many people, friends now, who have visiting and liked and commented on this blog over the last two years and ask for patience as I work through whatever it is I’m going through. You’re probably going to continue to see a lot of much older photography that I’ve done because while I’ve kind of grown kind of cold on the photography I’ve been doing lately, I’m simultaneously feeling a real appreciation and need to revisit and maybe even talk about all the stuff I used to do.

Anyway. The image above was taken yesterday, ironically and appropriately. Please know also that if you see current street photography here on this blog in the coming days and weeks, that I’m as dubious about its quality and worthiness as I possibly could be. To be perfectly honest.

Detroit Street Photographers at Marianne Boesky and Marlborough Chelsea Galleries

“Another Look at Detroit: Parts 1 and 2,” which opens Thursday and runs through Aug. 8 at the Marianne Boesky and Marlborough galleries, takes place at a crucial turning point for a city that has had so many illusory turning points over the years. The city’s federal bankruptcy case heads to trial in mid-August, a reckoning that will give Detroit a fresh start but will also determine the fate of the Detroit Institute of Arts, whose collection, under siege by the city’s creditors, has become the symbolic heart of the battle between Detroit’s financial future and its cultural past.

via Detroit Artists at Marianne Boesky and Marlborough Chelsea Galleries – NYTimes.com.

A New Leica M-E is Coming! Happy Dance (and a bit of a confession from me…)

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Some of the images in this post were made with a Leica M7 and Fujifilm 400 and some were made with a Leica M-E. This isn’t a test or a game. They’re just so wonderfully close and that result is so typical of the M-E that I thought I’d sweeten this news with a graphic demonstration of why I’m so happy with the Leica M-E and the news that follows.

Incredibly excited beyond any words today to hear this. Please click on the link at the bottom to the great Leica News & Rumors blog for more info.

But I have to say, one reason I’m so happy to hear this is that I can now really open up about how happy I am with the Leica M-E. And the selfish reason I didn’t do that to the extent that I wanted to is because my understanding is that Leica was discontinuing production of the M-E and that the CCD based Leica would be no more. Thus stock would dwindle and I might not ever get my hands on a new replacement let alone the half dozen I dream of having in rotation when I get back in the game of making money with a camera. I love this camera. I’m incredibly excited to hear that it will live on. As should be every single photographer on this planet.

Because this is a camera. Plain and simple. (Reminds me of the line from Julius Caesar spoken by Marc Antony over the slain leader’s dead body. Something like, “Here lies a Caesar. When comes such another?”) That’s how good of a picture taking image making machine is this Leica CCD camera and now we know when comes such another. Simple. Incredible. Film-like results. Film like ISO performance which, given the glass you can place on the thing, is and always has been plenty adequate. Anyway, as we used to say back in the 80s here in LA, I’m fucking stoked!

If this rumor is correct, this would be a clever move from Leica since many people prefer the specific look of the photos taken with the 18MP CCD sensor.

via Leica rumored to announce a M-E camera replacement | Leica News & Rumors.

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19 Pages of Famous Leica Photographers and their Cameras – NewOldTime

 

Leica tra realtà e finzione - Parliamo daltro - NewOldTime

Incredible! Mary Ellen Mark did not just show up at the Leica Gallery in LA lovely but apparently was a lovely person prior to last summer. Who knew? And she actually DID shoot Leica cameras. What a shocker that is. (kidding. well… )

Leica tra realtà e finzione – Parliamo daltro – NewOldTime.

HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON: “Arrogant Purpose” 1947 | AMERICAN SUBURB X

Absolutely one of my favorite places online, American Suburb X. Please click on the link to a great bit of writing from all the way back in 1947 that accompanied an exhibition of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s work at the Whitney.

Excerpt from Review of the Whitney Annual and Exhibitions of Picasso and Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Nation, 5 April 1947

The unusual photographs of the French artist, Henri Cartier-Bresson, also at the Museum of Modern Art, provide an object lesson too – in how photography can assimilate the discoveries of modern painting to itself without sacrificing its own essential virtures. One thing that painting since Manet has emphasized is that a picture has to have a “back”. It cannot simply fade off in depth into nothingness; every square millimeter of picture space, even empty sky, must play a positive role. This, Cartier-Bresson, like his fellow-photographer Walker Evans, has learned preeminently.

via HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON: “Arrogant Purpose” 1947 | AMERICAN SUBURB X.

Mary Ellen Mark at the Leica Gallery in Los Angeles

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Reposting this from last summer when Mary Ellen Mark, icon of 20th century documentary photography, presented and discussed images from her incredible career upstairs at the gallery atop the (then) new Leica store in Los Angeles.

The store was and is beautiful. The event was flawlessly executed. Mary Ellen Mark running a slide show (not really, it was a Mac-powered presentation) of her work and talking about it was a moving and humbling experience.

But nothing, of course, matched the thrill of photographing her. During her talk she mentioned that the biggest mistake photographers make is, after they’ve taken a few dozen shots of a subject or situation, thinking they have the shot. She said she works a photographic opportunity to death and that was probably the best advice she could give to photographers.

This is not advice I have ever needed to hear.

After the presentation the great Mary Ellen Mark hung around to meet and chat with members of the audience and sign a few of her books. There were, of course, a number of people snapping pictures of her. I know these kinds of events, the light, the many challenges, etc. It’s why I’ve chosen the Leica M gear that I use with incredibly capable and expensive lenses like the 50mm Summilux 1.4.

I was surprised to see that no other photographer at the Leica gallery was shooting an M – anything. Very surprised. There were X2 and X Varios but not an M that I could see. And consequently, no M glass. Well, at that point a light bulb went off in my head. A talking light bulb. It said, you’re the only photographer here with a camera and lens capable of pulling this off. It’s Mary Ellen Mark. Get to it!

So I started moving around the room, moving in close and low when I could, struggling to hold the camera still on my end and hoping Mary Ellen et. al. didn’t move too much themselves so that I could come away with some sharp images. At first, Mary Ellen paid me no mind. Most everyone there wanted to meet her and set about doing just that. She was very busy and very gracious.

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I didn’t really want to meet her in a situation such as this. I don’t really count that as actually meeting someone. What would I say beyond expressing my respect and admiration which does very little but force her, in this context, to respond for the fiftieth time in ten minutes. But as I continued to move around stalking my shots I couldn’t help but notice that, after more than one quick glance my way, she actually became a more animated subject.

You sometimes sense that people don’t want their picture taken. But Mary Ellen Mark, as a photographer who has inserted herself into so many desperate and even dangerous situations, shot so many difficult and dramatic human subjects, was familiar with and navigating that tension and resistance and the people projecting it to her long before I ever even picked up a camera with any serious intent.

Mary Ellen did not, thank you very much, project anything like that resistance or tension to me.

So I kept shooting. Adjusting my settings. Trying to think of everything. People were, of course, moving, jostling for position. It’s a crap shoot but you just keep going and going knowing that most of the shots you’re getting are throw aways. In retrospect, I wish I had done a lot of things different. I think I’d had too much caffeine.

This goes on, well, sort of off and on, for about 20 minutes. I’m really the only person there behaving like a photographer, diligently snapping away at this scene. I don’t know how or why that was the case, but it was. Lucky me.

At one point not long before I bailed, the fact that I wasn’t going to approach and meet her no doubt became apparent to her, as was it clearly mutually understood that I was photographing her and she was allowing me to photographer her. Either I had taken her advice to heart or came to the event already in possession of it. And it was at that point that Mary Ellen Mark gave me a look, a very sly smile, with squinted twinkling eyes.

I have that picture but it’s not the most flattering shot. So these will have to do.

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30 women photographers under 30

30 women photographers under 30 - Telegraph

”Look at any advertisement for a new camera, you will usually see the kit held by a male hand, with the image of a young woman visible through the lens…as though the camera were always meant to be a male eye, gazing out onto a world of female subjects. It may sound primitive to talk of the female photographer in such a way, but as the photographers of 30 UNDER 30 will undoubtedly profess, resistance – or discrimination, even subtle – can be common even today. We will each have our own stories of how being a woman has hindered, or even unfairly aided, our pursuit of this profession.”

Compiled by Chiara Palazzo

30 women photographers under 30 – Telegraph.

My Image Entitled “Gestalt Moment”…

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Very excited to learn that the above image, Gestalt Moment, won a spot in the Los Angeles Center for Photography’s first Juried Member’s Exhibition that will run from July 11 – August 12. Over 800 images were submitted and 50 were selected.

I set out to do a number of things in terms of street photography when I embark into the city to make my images. I don’t go out with a single project in mind but after so many years of shooting in Los Angeles I know there are a number of things on the spectrum of possibilities that I can hope to find and document.

This image actually represents a number of those things. First and foremost I think what my photography is about is that it’s psychological. That’s certainly a matter of perception and right or wrong, true or false, I attempt to make images of that which I perceive to be happening in the lives or minds of my subjects. There are certain psychological states which I look for that would be reflected in things like facial expressions or body language and gestures.

This is, of course, extremely subjective. Can I tell what people are thinking by the look on their face? No? Maybe? Sometimes? Does a photograph lie? Of course photographs can be misleading and can seem to show something entirely different from the reality of any situation.

Personally, I’ve never cared too much about the answers to those kinds of questions in relation to my street photography. It is not reportage or photojournalism. I think some of the images selected by Robert Frank for The Americans are possibly very misleading moments. But they advance his narrative and that’s what matters more than the notion that he took a specific image when the moment and time and place were all so oppressively pregnant with the exact point he was attempting to make with his book about America.

Detachment is a theme and a human condition I attempt to capture when I’m shooting street photography. Social detachment. Emotional detachment. Temporary detachment. Literal, metaphorical. I’m open to whatever I can find. Detachment was the unifying theme of the six images I sent in to be considered for the exhibition at the LACP.

Alone, elderly, downward aspect to her gaze, body language that’s slouching away from the world, literally disappearing into a darkened doorway, there’s enough evidence of social and emotional detachment here that I would hope I don’t have to discuss that element in this post or it would end up being 10k words.

Another thing I hope to do, and rarely accomplish, is to tell my little real or imagined social and psychological stories without actually showing someone’s face or revealing their identity. Two of the images I sent in accomplished that and this was one of those.

That’s for both artistic and just very practical reasons but to some extent there are ethical considerations as well. It’s not an easy thing to do by any means. But I can almost feel the exhibition juror looking over street photographs by me or any number of other photographers and (with a sigh of relief) being inclined to choose images that don’t reveal the identity of any human beings. It’s like an ‘ah’ moment. Yes! Thank you! These aren’t legal concerns, maybe, but any number of lesser worries are avoided. So there’s that.

Then there are, it is hoped, things that you cannot plan for or take any credit for whatsoever. The gestalt aspects of this photograph represent nothing less than a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.

To be the photographer who goes into the world seeking out something like this, spending his or her hours searching for opportunities that would, when photographed, represent examples of gestalt? God, I think I’d rather sell my cameras and start a disco band. That’s just not who I am as a photographer.

To those who might not know of gestalt theory or perception. As simply as I can state it, it is a combination of elements, dots, shadows, lines, that taken by the MIND in total, form or represent something other than those elements, dots, shadows, lines, etc.

In this image, you only see this woman’s hat and hair really. A purse strap. It is really the red, yellow, and blue polka-dots on her jacket, and the blocking of light by her legs which tells you her shape, her posture, etc. Those elements allow your mind to ‘see’ the human form of the woman.

That those elements, captured at this moment, reveal her body language, a gestalt perception that to me forms in the mind an expression of her detachment, one of the many things I seek to photograph with my cameras and lenses, is simply off the charts good fortune.

As part of the process of participating in this exhibition and having an image featured I’ve been asked to set a price for this photograph. I think it’s worth $1M. But I don’t want to sell myself short so I’m thinking of asking five. 😉

Thanks for looking!

db

 

Memorial Day

This is a repost of the very first real blog entry (after Hello World!) on this website back in 2012. I was in a very bad place at that time. My best friend was dying. I was not good with that. I was in one of those places where a person has no patience for the simpering superficial bullshit people tell each other mostly to make themselves feel better about themselves.

And although I feel strongly (always) about the message of this post, I didn’t repost it last Memorial Day. I was probably in a better mood. This year, with Memorial Day coming so closely on the heels of yet another gut wrenching domestic gun tragedy, happening this time here in my own back yard, and given everything else I see on the streets and read in the newspaper, I’m once again in a dark and unforgiving mood about my country. So fuck it.

Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’ exposed much of the truth about America. We might have looked at that work and been properly shamed and sought to make a course correction. But we didn’t do that. Anyway. Enjoy this holiday. Don’t thank our troops. Remember instead the dead ones, and their wives, and their children, and their mothers, and their fathers. And forgive me for encroaching into sanctimonious behavior with a self-righteous attitude. I have no room to talk. It’s taken me over half a century to finally wake up.

Memorial Day 2012

Cookouts! Barbecue. Hot dogs and hamburgers. Beer. Friends and family. Unofficial start of summer. Hell yeah! That’s what Memorial Day is all about. Oh and, of course, the Memorial Day sale at Macy’s. Right?

Then there’s those people who try to remind you of the more sober aspects of the holiday. Sanctimoniously thanking ‘our’ soldiers. Does that really stick with you or are they just as annoying as the people at Christmas telling us all to remember the spirit of Christmas and that Christ ‘our’ savior was born on Christmas Day?

So they had this event down at a new memorial in Irvine for service men and women who died in Iraq and Afghanistan. I saw it on the 11 o’clock news. The Northwood Gratitude and Honor Memorial looks really nice and is said to be the first of its kind in the country honoring those who have fallen in the wars on terrorism we’ve been fighting for the last eleven or so years.

But they’ve got this open mic thing going. And the wives and mothers of those who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan come up to the mic and, if you didn’t see it, I’m telling you these women are just fucking raw. All are emotional but more than a few can barely get their words out; they’re just dying up there.

Blubbering women. Most of them young enough to be my daughter, if I’d had one. Talking about what they feel on Memorial Day.

While these women are stepping up to the mic, one at a time, to tell you the names of their husbands and sons and what happened to them – as best as they can between the sniveling and gasping and choked-off words – all over this country, millions of Americans are getting drunk, washing down burgers with Bud Lite, laughing the day away talking easily about everything that careless partying Americans talk about on a summer holiday together. Most Americans are having a good time, a welcome day off from work, celebrating the start of summer and vacation time – which is and always has been the real point of Memorial Day in our culture.

A really young woman steps up to the mic in Irvine. Her two hands are in a wrestling match with each other as she speaks.

“My name is Brooke Singer and my husband was killed in January.”

Brooke looks to be about 22. She’s wearing a pretty black dress with nickle-sized white polka dots and spaghetti straps that cut into the soft skin of her shoulders. She seems to have more to say but after that one solitary sentence she puts the back of her right hand to her face and unsuccessfully tries to stifle a sob. That hand has a mind of its own and, almost to conceal the degree to which it is shaking, Brooke drops it momentarily but then quickly raises it back again to cover her mouth, which is contorted in a way she’d obviously rather the entire world doesn’t see.

A girl who looks like she could be Brooke’s younger sister stands helplessly to her left. A woman who must be her mother puts her arm on Brooke’s back and whispers something into her ear.

If you need to be told at this point that Memorial Day isn’t about cookouts and really good shopping then I don’t know what to say to you except that you’re not alone. Not in my America.

But if you still think it’s about thanking ‘our’ soldiers and telling them how much we love them and appreciate what they’re doing for us then you really need to either wake up or grow up or maybe just look up the word ‘memorial’ in a dictionary.

If this country can ever find its soul again it will be on some hopefully not-too-distant Memorial Day. One day when enough Americans are finally able to look squarely and, maybe more than anything else, responsibly, at young women who can barely breathe as they muster the courage to stand in front of a microphone in a public square and choke out the names of their dead husbands.

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Film images made with a Leica M7 and 50mm 2.0 Leica Summicron lens.

Bunny Yeager, photographer of Bettie Page pinups, dies at 85 – Los Angeles Times

Bunny Yeager, photographer of Bettie Page pinups, dies at 85 - Los Angeles Times

Yeager came to be admired for her use of natural light, sometimes enhanced by flash even in daylight, to make a model’s skin look luminous. But unlike nude photographers whose depictions of women were hyper-sexual and pumped up, Yeager found sensuality in a more natural look.

“Bunny has that good understanding of how to photograph the female body. At the same time, she knew how to captivate men’s sexual fantasies,” Miami gallery owner Harold Golen told the New York Times in 2011 when the gallery hosted an exhibition of Yeager’s work. “Her women are real. None of them are spray-tanned. Their breasts aren’t ballooned. They have curves and a bit of cellulite.”

via Bunny Yeager, photographer of Bettie Page pinups, dies at 85 – Los Angeles Times.