The Online Photographer

Waukesha South Photo Students

This morning I was invited to give a couple of talks to some of Mary Windler's advanced photo students at Waukesha South High School, where my son is a junior. South is known for being strong in the arts, and has an excellent photo program. The school offers three different levels of photography classes, from Photo 1 and 2 to Seminar level. There are more than 150 students in the program.

The talk I gave was called "Surviving as a Photographer." Here's a truncated version of the outline:

I. MAKING A LIVING IN PHOTOGRAPHY

A. Being a photographer

1. Working for professional buyers

a. Studio/Advertising/fashion photography

b. Photojournalism

2. Working for the public

a. Wedding photography

b. Portrait photography

c. Artist (adequately remunerated)

B. Not being a photographer

1. Teaching

2. Industry

3. Scholar, museum, gallery, critic, author, etc.

3. Staff, support, technical etc.

II. NOT MAKING A LIVING IN PHOTOGRAPHY

A. Transitional (aspiring to full-time)

1. Artist (inadequately remunerated)

2. Part-time or occasional work for pay

B. Hobbyist (happy where they are)

1. Amateur artist

2. Chronicler of friends and family

3. Other

...For many, many values of "other." (I admit, I changed this outline considerably in rewriting it here. I've never been good at outlines.)

It was fun. For me, anyway.

The kids at South are pretty accomplished—they had a strong showing in the The National Scholastic Art and Writing Awards Contest—nine Gold Key winners from 11 entries—and Ms. Windler showed me some work by a graduate, Libbie Allen, who is working as a waitress but had an excellent feature-length shoot in a recent magazine. Some of the work I saw was quite impressive. One student, Cara Erickson, who works at the Elmbrook Animal Shelter, shot a poster consisting of a series of dog noses that is so good it's gotten her hired to do more publicity photography for the shelter.

I'll see if maybe I can get some JPEGs of some of their pictures for a portfolio on TOP some day.

The reason some of these kids are facing the wrong way is that in Wisconsin you can't take photographs of public school kids without parental permission unless they're 18. In the top two pictures, I just asked the 17-year-olds to please absent themselves from the crowd. You can see a couple of empty chairs. In the second class there were more 17-year-olds, so someone suggested they all just turn their backs to the camera. (Aren't the kids in back doing a good job of pretending they're looking at something?)

(And, yes, a zoom with a wider setting would have been handy. You know what they say: Oh well.)

My thanks to Mary for the invitation to speak—and my apologies to those students who aren't included in any of these pictures.

Mike

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Around the Web This A.M.

You remember Michael Paul Smith, he of the nostalgic, small-scale Elgin Park? Usually we keep an eye on photographers' work, but in Michael's case what's fascinating is watching the meteoric rise of his renown. Now he's been featured on CBS News with Katie Couric. A nice piece, and you won't believe what camera he uses!

Also worth a read is an interesting article in this morning's edition of the World's Best Photography Magazine about the changing employment picture for photographers. Good news for some, not so good for others.

Mike
(Thanks to Randy Cole and many others)

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Memories of Marshall

Tom Zimberoff and Jim Marshall

By Tom Zimberoff

I had to buy onions today. I just couldn’t bring myself to write about Jim Marshall, I suppose, until something that ordinary and evocative opened a sluice of memories and tears. Some of you will understand why.

For another reason I waited to see what others had to say. I didn’t want to repeat the obvious encomiums and tropes describing Jim’s irreconcilable and invidious utterances. Nonetheless, in spite of himself, Marshall made very many friends, and every individual memory they share is priceless.

I heard about his somnolent passing—a blessing, but ironic—within hours. It hammered me unexpectedly hard. The news sent me wandering on foot through Golden Gate Park for a couple of hours to take the edge off. Walking home, still restless, I decided to do something cornball and sentimental. (Marshall could be that way himself sometimes.) I bought flowers and a candle—pumpkin-scented, not votive, was all I could find—to lay by the entrance to his home.

As I stooped down with my offerings I saw light under the door. Oh come on! Was it a hoax? Or was I having one of those flashbacks? I rang the bell. More footsteps. Sh*t! I should have gotten really hammered. The door opened and, kindly, Jim’s indefatigable, indispensable, and saintly sidekick, Amelia Davis, greeted me with a hug. She had just arrived herself from elsewhere in New York. She invited me in. Her companion Bonita was there to support her. More tears. I drank some of Jim’s whiskey. I left hoping that these digs, very familiar to me, could remain a shrine for other photographers to visit. Hell of a place.

It’s a so-called "railroad flat," a narrow passageway with rooms off to one side. On either wall throughout its length is a gallery of framed photographs; not Jim’s but those of his friends, including some historic icons (i.e, both the photographer and the subject), given to him and hung with curatorial pride. Jim’s office was in the back on a kitchen table cluttered with tchotchkes and memorabilia, as was the entire abode. An adjacent door led to his rumpled bedroom, where a television usually presented football games or old dramas with the volume turned up loud. His enduring archives are carefully stored in file cabinets in the center rooms; every negative numbered and immediately accessible by card catalog and, hitherto, in Jim’s remarkably acute memory. The front parlor contains stacks of Marshall’s matted and signed prints, lots of CDs and LP record albums and photo books. There, too, were his Recaro racing seat and the saddle from a long-gone Triumph. This room faced onto the street and the blinds were always drawn—in every room. God help anyone who parked without permission in the driveway directly below! A decorative fulmination of epithets applied with a rattle-can of spray paint would be visited upon your vehicle. And Marshall did love cars. I don’t know how many of his acquaintances know that he was also a prolific documentarian of goings on at the Bonneville Salt Flats speed trials back in the late '50s. In his garage was a beloved Mercedes-Benz. The Stealth Benz he called it. It had more side- and rear-facing radars plus other evasive electronic paraphernalia than avionics in an F-117. Speakers and flashing panel lights alerted Jim to perform evasive maneuvers.

I remember a non-stop drive riding shotgun with Marshall from San Fran to Ketchum, Idaho at 100+ mph much of the way. Jim wasn’t wearing a hearing aid yet, and every time we got an audible hit on the reconnaissance gear it nearly sent me through the sun roof. We could hear befuddled state police on the scanners catching sight of us going in the opposite direction, trying to make U-turns as we sped away. We didn’t get caught, continuing even faster and then ducking behind rest stops. Capture would have been costly, to say the least, armaments considered.

Years ago, I shared a hotel room with Marshall after a night of drinking in LA. An early-morning phone call didn’t put either of us in the best of spirits but the picture editor of Rolling Stone, Laurie Kratochvil, on the line from three thousand miles away, must have been sorrier to hear Jim’s curses; not for the wake-up call but for neglecting to offer him assignments in years gone by, and yet asking for stock photos to publish in a commemorative issue. That diatribe must still be ringing in her ears.

Of course, the Chronicle ran Marshall’s obit on the front page. If he could have pulled off a Tom Sawyer, he would have exclaimed, “They didn’t run it above the fold, motherf*ckers!”

One time in New York, when we had failed to hail a cab, Jim ran into the middle of 10th Avenue and body-blocked a limousine. We got in and offered the driver a hundred bucks to take us to a party. I think we were with Robert Farber. Jim offered the driver a non-pecuniary tip that was well received. Later that night in the Whiskey Bar, Jim passed out, asleep in a chair clutching his Leica (I loved to see him react when, during one distraction or another, I would hide it from him.) The apparent groom of a honeymooning couple made a snide remark to his young bride about the lowlife drunk slumped across the table. Oooh, it felt good to point out the pictures on the wall to this now contrite couple. They picked up his bar bill. (I told Jim I did. Oh well. Hey, it worked!)

Jim introduced me to two women, one of whom I married briefly. Much later, I fell in love with the other. But I digress. Jim shot my wedding. The father of the bride almost got shot too. Well, he wasn’t actually the father but my brother-in-law acting in that guise to give away the bride. My sister’s husband is a belligerent and short-fused fellow; but he couldn’t hold a candle to Jim. Thinking Marshall was merely a hired hand, and having no patience that familiar phrase "Just one more!", as my bride was about to descend a staircase in full regalia with string quartet accompaniment, Jim was shoved aside. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone else muster as much self-control as Marshall did that day. That’s really something for him.

When I stopped shooting years ago, I gave Marshall some bricks of film I had in my fridge. He loved Tri-X. But the last time I saw him, at my own recent exhibition opening, he proudly showed me the new digital Leica M9, engraved with the Jim Marshall moniker, bestowed on him by the German factory moguls. I would like to see the pics he made that night.

Last year I was asked by the Doobie Brothers’ manager to shoot a comeback album cover. I had already hung up my cameras. I knew that Jim shot the first Doobie Brothers cover decades earlier. I suggested he do their last. I think that may have been Jim’s swan song assignment. I’d like to think so.

The apotheosis of Jim Marshall begins.

Tom Zimberoff
San Francisco
March 28, 2010

[Asterisks added to profanities in the text to avoid triggering spam blockers and firewall protections. —Ed.]

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Tweaked by a Tweet

Lancashire (U.K.) wedding ace Jeff Ascough hasn't exactly let the cat out of the bag, but, with a mildly indiscreet tweet on Twitter, he's let some people see the bag—and there is what looks to be a very big cat indeed in there. Jeff's let it be known that he's using a new camera under NDA, and...it's a rangefinder. That's got the tubes of the interwebs a-flutter.

For what it's worth, Jeff's a Canon shooter. I wouldn't read too much into that. If Canon comes out with a digital rangefinder, I believe I'll manger my chapeau.

Mike
(Thanks to Charlie Didrickson)

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Featured Comment by Ken Tanaka: "Let me quickly say emphatically that I've purchased my last rangefinder camera, the M9. I need no others and am more than satisfied with the big investment I've made in Leica rangefinders.

"With that preamble aside, I'll also claim that I expected Canon and/or Nikon to take a swing at a digital rangefinder sooner or later. After all, they were both players in that game long ago. And where else is there to go in the DSLR design? A new lens line can mean big, new profits, too!

"But poor Leica. First Pentax kicks all the wind out of its 'groundbreaking' S2. (The beautifully designed but implausibly-priced S2 is due to break ground only by being buried.) Now Canon/Nikon seem to be getting ready to clip the M9's wings.

"Eager to see what, if anything, comes of this.

"But let me say this again: I will not buy another rangefinder, I will not buy another rangefinder, I will not buy another rangefinder...."

Featured Comment by Steve G, Mendocino: "Hmmm...Mike, some time ago you remarked in a review of a Zeiss Icon rangefinder film camera that—'Flaw #3 is that the camera takes film. Huh? This is an almost silly thing to say about a film camera, I know, like criticizing the proverbial orange for not being the proverbial apple.' Perhaps, a la the DMD, someone was listening, or more likely, thinking along the same lines. If Cosina/Voigtlander is about to come up with a digital 3a, I won't be eating my hat, but it'll be for sale to raise funds."

Featured Comment by Paul De Zan: "Canon? Canon? The builder of my exalted 1959 Model P? If I could get a digital camera that handled like...oh hell, I need rest."

Not Quite Silence

You might have thought TOP had gone quiet today, but if you listen very, very closely, you can just barely hear a series of high-pitched tones, at the very threshold of hearing, as if from the greatest distance, very far away.

That's me, from Wisconsin, shrieking.

Working on taxes all day. When I get back from H&R Block tonight I expect to be limping, from the wallet.

Reboot soon, unless this gives me fever.

Poor and content is rich, and rich enough.

—Shakespeare

Mike

Random Excellence: Midcoast Studio

I was at my favorite local restaurant the other night when the owner, Siam (Sam) Saeng, seated another patron next to me at the sushi bar. Sam is what Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point refers to as a "connector"—a guy who knows far more people than most people do, and is adept at making connections between them. He introduced me to Madison Ford because he know we're both into photography.

Turns out Madison runs a studio in Detroit called Midcoast Studio, shooting mostly, but not exclusively, cars and motorcycles. He's away from his family now, living in a hotel, while he and his crew are doing three months of intensive shooting for Harley-Davidson, which is based in Milwaukee.

It was fun to talk to a big-time advertising guy. He told me he runs all medium-format digital backs, but that he'd just bought his first DSLR, a Nikon D3x purchased a few weeks back. He said he was looking forward to trying it, but hadn't had time yet to take it out of the box.

Another story he talked about was about a client he'd heard of in L.A. who felt they needed to hire a photographer all the way from England for a relatively simple job. Like there are no competent photographers in L.A.—or the United States!

I know all about that kind of thing, having worked in Washington, D.C.—our studio, like virtually every other studio in D.C., regularly lost work to New York guys. In fact, I knew one photographer who had two studios, one in the Carolinas and one in Grand Rapids, Michigan—his bread and butter was furniture—who kept an office at a major office building complex in New York City. The office was an empty room with a phone and an answering machine in it. He kept it for the Manhattan address and the 212 area code.

There's more than one way to be a "New York guy."

And I'll bet there's a photographer in England right now sitting at a sushi bar shaking his head and telling an acquaintance about some barmy client who had to hire a shooter all the way from L.A. "Like nobody in London can take a decent photograph!" It's all the same the world around—the guy from "away" always has a bit of an edge on the locals.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Rick K.: "Way back in 1994 I was taking a photography class at the local community college in Royal Oak, Michigan (OCC). The highlight of the class, for me, was taking a tour of the Midcoast Studio. Seeing the lighting setups with the huge cycloramas, flying flats and the like, was awe-inspiring to me as a student. The friendliness of the photographers was greatly appreciated as they explained the ways and techniques of their craft and answered our sometimes unprofound questions. I hope they read this comment. Just my way of saying thank you to Midcoast Studio."

The Canon EOS Rebel T2i

On Friday morning, B&H Photo in New York received a shipment of 50 Canon EOS Rebel T2i bodies. I thought, okay, that's cool, I'll post a little item about it at 6:30 Saturday (Central Time) when B&H returns from its weekly Shabbat break.

Too late. All gone.

This camera is likely to be the hottest seller in all of cameradom for the foreseeable near future. If it isn't yet, it's a matter of supply. We can debate all we want to about the advisability and desirability of putting a mega-mega 7D sensor in a Rebel body, but the combination of Canon's best APS-sized sensor and the responsive, small, well-made and not-too-expensive entry-level body—from the still-leading camera maker—seems to be hitting camera buyers smack in the pleasure center of the brain.

I've never used a Canon Rebel. In fact I haven't used any Canon in recent years except for the 5D Mark II. I really should try a Canon some time. This is the one that tempts me the most. I regret that it doesn't have a way to stabilize the kind of lenses I use, but other than that, seems like catnip.

Maybe I'll try a Sony A500 with the new 30mm Macro instead. (The A500 has body-integral stabilization, and that lens seems like my kind of thing.)

One of the essayists I follow regularly, James Surowiecki, who writes the "Financial Page" in The New Yorker, wrote this week about how consumer goods are soft in the middle but strong on either end—that is, bargain goods and luxury goods are both doing well, but mid-market products aren't. He makes his case with the iPad and automobiles, but it made me wonder how that trend might be playing in the camera market. It would seem to predict strong sales for T2i's and 1D Mark IV's, and weakening sales for the 7D (which is, you'll notice, being offered with several rebates, so maybe he's right). The key is that I don't really know what "the lower end" of the camera market really is in the mind of the market itself—$800 for a Rebel body still seems kinda mid-market to me, with "the lower end" being point-and-shoots, up to tasty morsels like the S90. But who knows? Maybe that's just the view from here.

I'll try to give you a more timely heads-up when the next batch of T2i's hits New York. My bad.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Sandro Siragusa: "I wish the Rebel and Canon well, but the 2-year-old Nikon D90 sells for $25 less (Amazon prices) and bested the new Rebel in a recent head-to-head in focus acquisition speed, mirror black out time, shutter lag, kit lens quality, high ISO noise and resolution (impressive since it's 12MP and the Rebel is 18MP), ergonomics, pentaprism vs. darker pentamirror, metering, flash control, dynamic range optimization, and menu customization. So I think sales of the Canon, well-deserved as they may be, are going to those who equate newer with better and more megapixels with better, and are not looking at all the available choices."

Mike replies: ...And don't forget the DxOMark Sensor ratings, where the D90 is still the highest-rated APS-C camera. That camera really is a "hit."

Featured Comment by Zaan: "Comparing this to a two-year-old Nikon is all fine and well, until you mention that the Canon does full HD video. You can use all the nice glass that you already own or will one day and create short and long movies that a similarly priced camcorder couldn't even come close to. So whereas $25 more might cost you a (slight?) reduction in image quality, it will give your creativity an entirely new realm to explore."

Random Excellence: Carl Weese

Thinking about the New Topographics made me think of this picture by my friend (and TOP contributor) Carl Weese, which I very much like for some reason I can't quite put my finger on.

The original is an 8x10 platinum contact print. I've never seen it "in person," but I know from experience that of all the photographic techniques I'm aware of, the qualities of platinum prints survive reproduction in ink the least well—and definitely don't make it into pixels.

But I've seen so many real ones that I fancy I can "see" what the original of this must look like. Sort of. I'll bet it's delicate and ethereal and subtle.

It kinda reminds me of a Geoff Dyer quote..."Photographs sometimes work on you strangely and simply: at first glance you see things you subsequently discover are not there." 

Here it looks a bit...gray, but you have to remember, you're not looking at it. You're just looking at a representation of it. A picture of a picture. For instance, look at that near tonal merger along the left side of the second story of the building—I'll bet that edge is exquisite in platinum.

Mike 

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'People of the 20th Century'

The other day, writing about August Sander, I said, "I never did buy, and have not seen, the 7-volume set. I've heard a few things about it, both good and a little more reserved than that, but I'm too cheap to drop that much money just to find out for myself."

Very shortly thereafter, Yellowstone Traders came on board with an ad for their super-soft buffalo-hair (warmer than sheep's wool) photographer's gloves (you can get them full-finger, fingerless, or one of each—the fingerless one for your shooting hand).

And a little money came over the transom. I decided to interpret that as a sign from God.

So I bought the 7-volume set. For, naturally, the longtime price of $195.

Merely a matter of hours after that, we got a comment from a reader called dovydas that the 7-volume set only cost $122.85. What? I looked, and sure enough. This was...of interest. Since I had just paid $72.15 more than that...or 37% more, as Amazon helpfully calculates for me on the sales page.

So the next morning I called Amazon. After some discussion, the nice lady decided to make a "one-time exception" for me, and credit me back the $72.15.

Whew. (You go, God.)

The "7-volume set" is of course August Sander: People of the 20th Century by Susanne Lange, Director of the Photography Collection/SK Cultural Foundation, in Cologne, Germany, with essays by Gabriele Conrath-Scholl, a scholar on the staff of the Foundation, and made with the cooperation of Gerd Sander, the photographer's grandson and an expert on his grandfather's work. First published in Germany by Schirmer/Mosel, and in the U.S.A. by Abrams, to mark the 125th anniversary of Sander's birth. It's the most complete set of Sander's work extant, with 1400 pages overall and more than 150 never-before-published images.

It just arrived. 

(Once again with a camera included for scale.)

I am pleased to report that it is magnificent. If you think about it, Sander's great document of the Weimar years is for most of us a myth—that is, we see a few, or a few dozen, or (in the case of single-volume books) maybe a hundred examples, and we're told of the existence of the project as a whole, but we never really get to see more evidence of its existence. There are lots of things here I've never seen before. This is a feast.

The reproduction quality is very, very good—not exact duplicates of original prints by any means, but plenty good enough to allow you to concentrate on the pictures. The paper is of very high quality. The size of the pictures is perfect—just one photograph per spread, with the title on the facing page. Exceptionally clean. The text is in German, English, and French. The typography and design are elegant, refined and restrained.

Rather touchingly (because nobody's going to remove the dust covers), the sleek cloth bindings are all different colors.

(Okay, and you wonder where Moe's hair stylist got his inspiration.)

This is the sort of thing that warms the cockles of my heart, although I'm not sure that the medical establishment would agree that my heart has cockles. It is very important to the history of photography in the 20th century, very good as bookcraft, and very cheap: if I get my calculator out, the new price comes to $17.55 per volume. I've paid more than $122.85 for one book in the past. Just not often.

For the sake of balance, I'll mention that the slipcase box is not of very high quality. The sort of thing they probably intend for you to throw away, but of course you can't unless you want to cripple the set's resale value, since book collectors are such sticklers for original condition.

At any rate, a strong, nay urgent, buy recommendation, if you have any interest in this work, or think you might have in the future. I realize that for most people's libraries, a one-volume greatest hits will be more appropriate*. And I can see why such a set as this would sell slowly—'tis indeed a lot of Sander, and the cost establishes (or established) a highish bar, even for mavens such as myself. Yet this won't be around forever, and it's the sort of thing that will become unobtanium one day (like the two-volume hardcover set of Kinsey, Photographer that I didn't buy when I could and now will never get to own). It's worth having in any solid library of photography books, and it will always be worth having in any solid library of photography books. The as-of-Thursday price makes it a fire sale—if not a trample-the-security-guards-at-the-door kind of sale—for those interested. (The price is €152 at Amazon Germany and £101 in the U.K. )

Right away, takes its place at the very heart of my own little library. I'm sure I will spend many contented hours with it. Myth no more.

Mike

*If that's you, I recommend Schirmer/Mosel's August Sander: Face [of] Our Time (in Deutsch, Antlitz der Zeit) from Schirmer's Visual Library, a near pocket-sized recreation of the book with which Sander introduced his project to the world. Small, but it's only $9.95, and it's a nice little volume and a nice taste of the work.

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Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop CS5?

Adobe has provided a "sneak peek" of a future Photoshop feature called "content-aware fill," a nifty new feature that evolves the healing brush massively. Take a look:

-

(If you can't see a video window above, try going here.)

The launch of Adobe's Creative Suite 5 (including Photoshop) is slated to stream on Adobe TV at 11 a.m. Eastern Time, Monday, April 12th. If you'd like to see it, you can sign up with your Adobe ID at the CS5 launch site.

Michael R. Thompkins at Imaging-Resource cautions that Adobe hasn't explicitly promised that content-aware fill will be a feature of CS5, a warning I hereby pass along to you in a weak attempt to keep egg off my face. Will it? Won't it? I've always disliked trying to report news before it happens. Tune in on April 12th to find out.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Guy Batey: "Amazing, and slightly depressing at the same time."

Mike replies: My feelings exactly. At first I thought, doesn't this belong in Illustrator?

Featured Comment by skinnyvoice: "Wow, I find the relentless shifting of responsibility for content from composition to post-processing more than a little chilling. I'm okay with darkroom tweaking, dodging, burning, spot removal and their digital equivalents, but a 'content-aware fill' is a step too far from my concept of what looking through a viewfinder and photography is all about. But I'm probably not the target market anyway (photographically speaking—I use PS almost daily though)."

Featured Comment by expiring_frog: "For those interested, the details of the algorithm ("PatchMatch") are described in this research paper [link is a PDF download —Ed.] (To the best of my knowledge, this is what's being used.) The original PatchMatch video from last year's SIGGRAPH is perhaps even more impressive than the one in Mike's post.

"Adobe has been on a roll recently transferring state-of-the-art research projects to shipping software in very short times. Two notable examples that immediately come to mind are Agarwala et al.'s Photomontage work in CS3 (see the link—while you've probably used this function for making panoramas, it's really incredibly versatile) and Avidan and Shamir's content-aware scaling [another PDF —Ed.] in CS4."

Featured Comment by John Robison: "'We have removed the lens flare.' What I find amusing is that with some of these CGI movies they add lens flare and aperture shaped ghosts such as you would see with multi-element zoom lenses on movie cameras."

Featured Comment by Robert Howell: "Amazing technology. But perhaps it's time to ask that re-touched photos now be marked unalterably in the code."

Featured Comment by David Bostedo: "I think everyone who's upset by this needs to realize that a large portion of photography today involves changes and manipulations every bit as large as those in the video. It's just that it's all commercial work, or digital art work, and not meant to be 'straight' photography. From that standpoint, this tool doesn't change anything, except making it a little easier.

"The 'easier' part, though, will likely continue to evolve the general public's expectations of photography. It used to be that most (non-commercial) photos were assumed to be pretty much documentary. I think there's a lot of doubt out there now. And we're heading toward a time when all photos are assumed to be modified, and you'll have to tag them so that people know when they haven't been greatly modified. I don't know if that's good or bad."

Jim Marshall Books

Jim Marshall's photographs have appeared in literally hundreds of books and magazines, both on their own merit and as illustrations, and a comprehensive bibliography would be a formidable task—even for a bibliographer, which I' m not. Luckily, for those who don't have any Jim Marshall yet, there's a no-brainer current choice: Trust: Photographs of Jim Marshall, published just last fall. Here's the U.K. link (for links to Amazon Canada and Amazon Germany, go here).

The classic monograph is Not Fade Away from ten years ago, now out of print. It's a nomad at my house: it never found a comfortable home and keeps turning up in the oddest places. At the moment I, um, can't find it. If you want that one, it's going to be either hard to find or a little on the expensive side. When mine turns up again I'm going to lasso it and ensconce it in the new bookcase, alongside my other Marshall books. Maybe it'll settle down.

Another recent book, still in print and easily available, is Jim Marshall / Jazz (here's the U.K. link), which is my personal favorite of all his books because...well, because I like jazz. Although relatively new to the public I still think it ranks among the six or eight best books of jazz portraits. Like all books that "collect" famous people, it's somewhat uneven, with true masterpieces next to pictures that sorta had to be included because they were all he had of somebody he wanted to include, but overall it's a vibrant and lively collection. No color pictures in this one.

Not long ago, Geoff reviewed The Contact Sheet from AMMO books, a subgenre that's likely to die with film, and Jim Marshall has his own version, called Proof. I haven't seen it, but the concept is standard and straightforward: a contact sheet from a shoot shown opposite the final select. As with many such books, likely to be of considerable technical interest to photographers.

Jim Marshall's contact sheet and final image from his coverage of the Beatles' final public concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco in 1966, from the book Proof

His newest book, which he was reportedly promoting at the time of his death, is called Match Prints. I've never seen it and don't know much about it; apparently it's a series of compare-and-contrast pairs of pictures by Jim and his friend Timothy White.

Trust is not a substitute for Not Fade Away. More like a complement to it. Its main feature is that it includes a great deal of never-before-seen color work. For color photographers, this is the one. Not Fade Away is still the go-to volume for all the classic and better-known black-and-white work. But Trust is a fine, and fun, book, good to look through, with the added bonus of an occasional story thrown into the captions.

Anyone who wonders if Jim was a "good photographer" might be a bit put off by Not Fade Away—many of the pictures are offhand, documentary, off-hours, backstage shots with a very casual, grab-shot feel to them. They're mixed in with straight portraits and pictures that were obviously done at the time as promo shots. The overall feel is a bit piecemeal. JM says several times that his subjects "were just kids having fun," and in some case you get the feeling that he was, too.

Trust is better edited and feels richer, giving a portrait of a more assured photographer, and one with a broader range—and more consistent as well. By the way, the title comes from the one-word answer Marshall used to give when asked how he got such intimate access to so many big stars.

A spread from Trust. Carol King on the left. The shot of Mick Jagger was a LIFE magazine cover.

Even though it's missing some of the big hits, the black-and-white work in Trust is of very high quality, and there's quite a lot of it. But the color work is the big draw here. Especially since Not Fade Away is no longer in print, Trust is the easy first recommendation if you want to get more familiar with Jim Marshall's work.

Unless you like jazz, in which case you'll want the jazz book. Too.

By the way, Trust was published by Omnibus Press and Jazz by Chronicle Books, but the two volumes are almost exactly the same size, and make a nicely matched pair shelved side-by-side. Not important; I'm just sayin'.

Mike

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Featured Comment by L. Sullivan: "I bought a copy of Not Fade Away when it came out. I was happy to find a book of Jim's photography. I loved the candidness of the photos. Jim was always one of my favorite photographers. You could look at the credits on an album or magazine and confirm what you already recognized as his style. The artists seemed so relaxed and open around him I don't think that is possible today. I caught part of 'Woodstock' on TV the other day and as they were shooting backstage I noticed Jim and it brought a smile to my face. He was truly one of the best."

European Venues for the New Topographics Show

Robert Adams, Tract House, Westminster, Colorado, 1973

A number of European readers were curious as to where the "New Topographics" show would be traveling there. The official list so far (which Geoff already reported in the comments to the book review post, but which I'll repeat here) is:

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (July 17–October 3, 2010)
Landesgalerie, Linz, Austria (November 10, 2010–January 9 2011)
Die Photographische Sammlung Stiftung Kultur, Cologne, Germany (January 20–March 28, 2011)
The Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam, the Netherlands (June 25–September 11, 2011)
Museum of Fine Arts, Bilbao, Spain (October 17, 2011–January 8, 2012)

(I've included the S.F. date because it's still upcoming.) In addition, Trinity Parker at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) in Arizona, which organized the show with George Eastman House (GEH), tells me that they are working on adding the Preus Museum in Norway, but that it isn't official yet. Norwegian readers might want to keep an eye on that.

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Nicholas Nixon, View of Cambridge from Boston University, Boston, 1975

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Bernd and Hilla Becher, Pit Head, Bear Valley, Pennsylvania, 1974

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Henry Wessel, Buena Vista, Colorado, 1973

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Stephen Shore, 2nd Street and South Main Street, Kalispell, Montana, August 22, 1974

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Joe Deal, Untitled View (Albuquerque), 1974

The JPEGs are from the CCP website. Here again are the links for the catalog, which should be arriving Chez TOP today, the Amazon warehouse and the brown trucks willing:

New Topographics at Amazon U.S.

New Topographics at Amazon U.K.

Mike

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Artists Ain't Saints: Jim Marshall, 1936-2010

By Ctein

I'm feeling mildly discombobulated. I just found out an hour ago that Jim Marshall died in his sleep last night (Tuesday night) in his hotel room in New York City; he was there for another show opening and to give some lectures. There are no details at this time. I imagine his body simply...stopped. He was 74, and honestly it was amazing he made it this far.

There's a photo of Jim himself here.

Jim didn't treat that body well. Understand that I hate the term "substance abuse." Our strait-laced, puritanical society considers any use of mind altering substances outside of the legally-accepted norm to be "abuse." Sorry to burst that bubble...wait, no, I'm not sorry at all...but society is filled with highly productive people who spend substantial amounts of each day in, um, altered states. They use, they don't abuse.

Well, that wasn't Jim. Jim abused. He abused in spades. His clean and sober periods were short intermissions in a lifelong tightrope act. Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll epitomized most of Jim's adult life (okay, I'm guessing about the sex part, but, you know, given the temper and the times, it's kind of hard to imagine it any other way.)

Copyright by Jim Marshall, all rights reserved

I started printing for Jim in April of 2001. Six dye transfer prints of this photograph of Miles Davis. Up to that point I had run my business on a cash-up-front basis. Made billing and bookkeeping a hell of a lot simpler. I told Jim that's how I worked and he said, "Sure, no problem!" By the third invoice, he was having me run an account for him. It just kind of happened. Jim was one of those forces of nature; he liked to do things his way, and the whole world warped itself to make it possible.

Practically the first thing Jim told me was to make a print for myself of anything I printed for him and he'd sign it. For all I know, my collection of Jim Marshall prints is worth more than everything he paid me over the last decade. He could alternate between being ridiculously tightfisted and incredibly generous. Mess with his intellectual property rights and he would go for your throat, literally and legally. Lots of people tried to rip him off, sometimes people who should know better like major magazines and television networks, sometimes just people who thought they could get away with putting a photograph of his on a T-shirt. Jim made a lot of money off of the many people who tried to rip him off. But ask Jim for something, almost anything, and if he didn't think you were out to rip him off, he'd say yes.

Copyright by Jim Marshall, all rights reserved

I digitally printed this photograph for Jim late last year. I thought it was one of the best photos of his I'd ever printed; it was like rich velvety chocolate. When I brought my copy to him to be signed, I told him how good I thought that photo was and that I was going to give it to my best friend as a birthday gift, because she was a huge Miles fan. Jim said, "That's cool. Print up another one for yourself and I'll sign that too."

Unless you follow the music business or have been a fan of Jim's, you really have no idea how many famous photographs he made. Check out the collections on his website, and be sure to click through the little square thumbnails; they're crops for identification purposes, not the whole photograph. People going to that site to buy work know what they're looking for, and the thumbnails work as commerce, not as a good displays of art.

But there's a whole body of Jim's work that's hardly known, civil rights photography that he did in the South before he became famous for music photographs. It's serious, profound, fascinating work. He should be famous for it. Of course he won't be. He'll be remembered for his iconic music photographs, unless some curator "rediscovers" him 50 years from now.

Not endearing
Then there's the other Jim. It drove me crazy that he'd casually throw out epithets like "nigger," especially because I knew that if there were ever a white man who didn't have a racist bone in his body (and I'm not convinced there is) it was probably Jim. It's that Jim didn't care; when he felt like being offensive, he was oblivious to who he offended and how. He just vented. Some people would say he spoke his mind. Some, from a distance, might even think that was an endearing trait. I was there. It so very much wasn't.

And if he was on a tear, you didn't want to be in his way. There's a story that in his younger days he and Hunter Thompson got in a pissing match and Hunter Thompson backed down. I entirely believe. Nobody wanted to be on the wrong side of Jim, and we all did a lot of tiptoeing and a certain amount of fancy footwork to make sure we didn't get there.

It didn't always work. Two years after I started printing for Jim, he took great offense at something I did. I insisted upon giving him an estimate for a rather large job before I started on it. It set him off; he was hugely offended that I didn't trust him to pay me no matter what the job cost. Go figure. Have I mentioned that Jim was not entirely rational?

He was so upset he wouldn't even talk to me about it. Ever. I didn't hear from him again for four years.

I got off lucky. A colleague of mine who was doing custom film processing for Jim some years ago had a gun pulled on him! Kind of soured that relationship.

Finally, Amelia, his walks-on-water assistant, convinced him in 2007 that he really needed to be dealing with me if he wanted to get any more dye transfer prints made. But he still couldn't stand the idea of talking to me. Everything had to go through her as an intermediary. That nonsense went on for about eight months. I knew it was ridiculous; Amelia knew it was ridiculous. Jim was being...well...Jim. But by this point I'd figured out some of Jim's buttons. I made a nice digital print of one of my photographs he really liked (the Apollo 17 liftoff), signed it to him personally, giftwrapped it, and gave it to Amelia to give to him as a Christmas gift.

Mid-morning, December 26, the phone rings: "Hey, Ctein, buddy, it's Jim. I really love that photograph. Thanks so much, man! I need some stuff printed, when can you have them for me?"

And life was back to normal with Jim Marshall, if I am allowed to use the words "Jim Marshall" and "normal" in the same sentence. I managed to avoid ticking him off after that, although there were a few perilous missteps along the way. It worked out okay; if he pushed too hard, I pushed back...very, very carefully. And rarely without consulting with Amelia, in case I was about to misstep. Sometimes I felt like dealing with Jim was not like walking on eggs—it was like walking on hedgehogs. Barefoot. At least he never threatened my life.

The last time I printed for Jim, it was three dye transfers of Jimi Hendrix in his blue shirt and a digital print of Janis on her psychedelic Porsche, a previously unprinted and unpublished photograph. Not the same one that's in his books. This one has the trademark Janis grin. I like it better.

Copyright by Jim Marshall, all rights reserved

And that's all he wrote. Possibly the most generous and irritating man I've ever worked with. I'd be surprised if I ever meet anyone more generous. I sure as hell hope I never meet anyone more irritating. Alkie, druggie, abusive, and open-hearted. An exhausting combination.

F*ck that sh*t
Some of you reading this may be mildly offended by the tone of what I've written. Or even majorly offended. Too bad. This is the kind of attitude that Jim respected and liked. I'm really sorry he's gone, and he'd be happy to know that I'm really sorry he's gone. Jim always wanted badly to be liked. And I really did like that royal pain in the ass. But if I got all pious and holy and handwringing on him now, his ghost would rise up to haunt me, rattling chains and saying, as Jim frequently did, "F*ck that sh*t, man!"

I can't wait to see the photos the man is gonna send back from hell. They are going to be dynamite!

Jim Marshall, dead at 74. I could say R.I.P., but honestly I think that would be altogether last on his wish list.

Ctein

Ctein's regular weekly column on TOP appears every Thursday morning.

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Featured Comment by Paul: "Of course my favourite Jim Marshall images are those of Jimi Hendrix. I suppose there will be one big party this weekend up in the sky. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and loads more all posing for Jim Marshall. There will be one very lonely M4 missing his owner down here."

One of Jim Marshall's M4 Leicas

Featured Comment by David Seelig: "I knew Jim for 25 years or so nice obit Ctein and very accurate as to how Jim was, I will miss him."

Featured Comment by Nick Despotopoulos: "As the guy whose company built & ran Jim's website for the past year plus, a collector of his work and a close friend since 1988 I can say that Ctein has it the way it was man...no sh*t! Also let me say that working with Ctein on Jim's stuff for the past few years has been a pleasure—he's a true professional. Now where's that bottle of Wisers Whisky...Nick Despotopoulos, Groovy Collectibles LLC for groovycollectibles.com."

Featured Comment by Jeff Kausch: "Jim was an Advertising Photographers of America San Francisco Executive Board Member, a close friend of many APA members, and a central character in the Bay Area Photo Community for decades, so we have created a special section on the APA SF blog to help honor him. Photographer Jock McDonald and agent Norman Maslov are just two of Jim’s friends who have already contributed. If you have any stories or photos of Jim or relevant links to share, please email them to us. Thanks."

Featured Comment by Fern: "Thank You...you have so beautifully captured the essence of this man. Through the lovely Amelia I had the honor of meeting Jim. While perusing his photos one afternoon when he graciously offered to donate any photo I wanted for my special breast cancer fundraiser, and before I could even think about leaving after being mesmerized for hours by his incredible work, I had to celebrate some occasion with Jim, who would simply not allow me to decline several shots of fine whiskey. I also had to work really hard at graciously declining his requests to come away with him for the weekend! Rock on Jim!"

The Story of a Picture by Ian Jack

And speaking of photographing types, a splendid article by Ian Jack from the Spring 2010 issue of Intelligent Life magazine has found its way online. It starts out, "Almost since its invention, photography has had the habit of turning people into symbols by accident...."

The article, which tells in detail the story of one of those often-reproduced, widely known iconic images (although this one is mainly known in the U.K.—I'd never seen it before yesterday) is called "Five Boys: The Story of a Picture."

The longer original version (7,000 words), is at The Economist's moreintelligentlife.com. Lots of people are talking about a condensed version (2,900 words) which appeared in The Guardian yesterday. The condensed version might still be too long for you if you're that pressed for time; I recommend the longer version. Both are good reads.

The fates of the two "toff" boys on the left are particularly poignant. Stereotypes or not, there's no telling from the present what life has in store.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Peter: "That's a remarkable image, and the linked stories too are fascinating. I'm reminded of related photographs which I was fortunate to see more than thirty years ago, not long after Queen Elizabeth visited an Oxford college.

"I was a student at Oxford at the time, and I had been told that every monarch since Henry VIII had visited the college during their reign. On this occasion it was the turn of Elizabeth II, and of course the college hired professional photographers to record the occasion for posterity. They were briefed on the need to do their job particularly quickly and effectively; the royal party would be present for only a short time, and there would be no opportunities for retaking images.

"One of the photographers took special pains to plan for the occasion, and sought out members of the college staff who could stand in for the royal party in a trial image, so that lighting, exposure, and of course composition, could be determined in advance and refined. The college staff had to be of approximately the same height and build as the people whom they would represent.

"My memory of the trial image is not as clear as I would like it to be, but I recall that a charwoman, with her hair in a scarf and a mop in her hand, stood where the queen would be; a tall member of staff (perhaps a scout, one of the retired gentlemen who looked after undergraduates in the rooms that go off a staircase) represented the Duke of Edinburgh; and so on. The final photograph, taken a few days later, showed the royal retinue standing just where the staff had been.

"I was fortunate to be able to see both images side by side, shortly after the event. Their juxtaposition had a special story to relate, one that was significantly more moving, and more historically relevant, than the story told by the royal picture alone."

August Sander

I'm wondering if anybody has seen this book, and if so, what you can tell me about its quality, especially the quality of the reproductions...? Schirmer-Mosel is usually pretty reliable in that respect, but it's never wise to take too much on faith.

In a way, I'm haunted by Sander. At the end of 1982, beginning of 1983, I saw a show at the Corcoran in Washington called "August Sander: Photographs of an Epoch (1904–1959)." Geoff Wittig spoke the other day about going to see the New Topographics show "obsessively," and I certainly visited that Sander show "obsessively"—the school I attended was in the museum's basement, and there was even a back way up. I'd go meditate on Sander prints that winter the way some people go outside to take cigarette breaks.

I don't think I've ever seen a better illustration of the old dictum that you've got to see original prints—and that reproductions (and now, online JPEGs) are no substitute. Even the prints made from Sander's original negatives by his son Gunther (or were the modern prints made by his grandson, Gerd? I don't recall now) don't measure up. The original prints were so...soulful. I was deep into learning how to be a printmaker at the time—I later earned my living as a custom printer, and that expertise (largely anachronistic now) is what led me into writing for darkroom magazines—and Sander's charcoally blacks seemed fathomless somehow, more like darkness than like paper. I've never seen prints quite like his, before or since.

Sander was famously attempting to photograph "types." Of course his people are not types, they're individuals. But I think the key to his great project (one of the great beacons in photo history arguing the merits of pursuing a consistent, persistent long-term project) is that his sociological ambitions allowed him to cut through the usual petty tyrannies of portraiture. They allowed him a crucial documentary distance. Let's face it, most portraits have a purpose—they're either made for some client or they're made for some specific reason. Their purpose is almost never just to show what someone looked like on the particular occasion the picture was taken. Sander's portraits are connected, representative, and objective, in a way that modern ironic art photographers often reference but seldom equal.

Sander's "sociology" had a spiritual aspect too—after all, his lifelong muse and guide was Goethe.

In Sander's case I've actually preferred to own cheap books, where the reproductions forthrightly do not pretend to measure up to the originals. Books with higher aspirations seem less honest somehow—by implicitly purporting to represent the work faithfully, their lies go underground, become furtive. Poor reproduction flies its inadequacy like a flag, and doesn't put on airs.

I never did buy, and have not seen, the 7-volume set. I've heard a few things about it, both good and a little more reserved than that, but I'm too cheap to drop that much money just to find out for myself.

Still, every so often I get a hunger to revisit Sander, and I find myself, in my mind, heading up the back stairs at the Corcoran again, to go visit those rows of prints alone....

Mike

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Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8

The internet was abuzz last Friday about the short supply of the Canon EF 70–200mm ƒ/2.8L IS II USM, thanks to a news item on the high-profile review site dpreview.com. But my contact at B&H Photo tells me they have the lens in stock this morning.

Mike

ADDENDUM: One of our readers recommends this as a less costly, less weighty alternative. At $730 vs. $2,500 it's considerably less than a third the cost, and at 1150 vs. 1490 grams it's 340 grams (~12 oz.) lighter, too. But it doesn't have IS.

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Impossible = Possible

Amateur Photographer reported yesterday that The Impossible Project's new black-and-white films for use in traditional Polaroid cameras will go on sale this week.

Mike

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A Photographic Love Story

Margaret Hardman by Edward Chambré Hardman

She became his assistant at age 17; he was ten years older. When they parted, she tormented him with tales of other lovers. They exchanged increasingly warm letters, and ended up happily married for years. She ran the household and the business, not unlike thousands of other husband-and-wife photography businesses down to the present day. When she died, of cancer, he mourned, heartbroken, for the rest of his long life.

Their love story is preserved in their letters and papers.

The more forceful personality, she was a fine photographer in her own right, and recently curators have been trying to sort out his pictures from hers—giving her her first solo show more than 100 years after her birth (in Liverpool, England).

They were working photographers. A scrap of doggerel she wrote for him:

Happy days and health and fun
And easy smiling sitters
(Not the kind that growl and scowl
And give us all the jitters)

It's a nice photographic love story, from Britain's Guardian.

Mike
(Thanks to Gavin McLelland)

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Featured Comment by Sean: "I watched a great documentary on Edward Chambré Hardman on BBC Four a couple of years ago. Narrated by one of Liverpool's favourite sons, John Peel, it can be found on YouTube and should not be missed."

Mike replies: What a lovely show—I really enjoyed that. Thanks for the link, Sean.

Analytics

Of the last 200,000 visits to this site, 94,276 came from the United States; Canada was next with 19,479 visitors, closely followed by the U.K. with 18,471. Our friends in Australia round out the top four with 7,642.

What's the relative population of Canada vs. the U.S.? We might get more visits per capita from Canada.

We had zero visits from about a dozen countries in central Africa. The only countries outside of Africa from which no one visited us were Turkmenistan and Papua New Guinea. Those countries were blank on the map. (The Caspian Sea was blank too, and I clicked on it about ten times trying to see what country it was. D'oh! What can I say? I'm not from around there.)  We're not stunningly popular in Paraguay (2 visits), Greenland (1 visit), Angola (1), Myanmar (1), or Cuba (1). We're much better read in Costa Rica (100 visits) than in neighboring Nicaragua (2).

Places where we're surprisingly popular: Finland (2,395 visits), The Philippines (1,184), Romania (1,021), Brazil (1,014), and Thailand (531). And I'm going to count Mongolia on this list, with 8 visits, because I wouldn't have thought we'd have any readers from Mongolia. Whoever you are in Ulaanbaatar, greetings and good wishes! 

We're read all over Europe, but garnered only 94 visits from Ukraine. I think we need some talking up in Ukraine—my sister-in-law Tetiana is Ukrainian!

According to Google Analytics, from whence all this tasty information cometh, TOP is read in 170 different countries. Here's to you, wherever you are in this beautiful round world.

Mike

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'New Topographics' Book Review

New Topographics
By Britt Salvesen with Alison Nordstrom
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Steidl & Partners (February 1, 2010)

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TOP review by Geoff Wittig

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The 1975 New Topographics exhibition at George Eastman House is widely considered a watershed event, rivaled in influence only by Edward Steichen's Family of Man exhibition. At the time, photography-as-art still meant black and white photography almost exclusively. Landscape photography in the romantic/modernist idiom (i.e. Ansel Adams, Wynn Bullock, et al.) was increasingly regarded as an irrelevant throwback.

Curated by William Jenkins, the exhibition displayed the work of a group of young photographers marked by a detached, clinical, almost wry æsthetic. Rather than romantic grand landscapes, visitors were presented with unsentimental images of tract houses in Colorado, or downtown Boston, or tacky motels in New Mexico. Also included were some of Bernd and Hilla Becher's photographs of industrial relics. Despite the almost pedestrian subject matter, the quality of the modestly sized prints was exceptionally good. Most were shot on large format film, though Lewis Baltz used Kodak Tech Pan film in 35mm size with results that were surprisingly similar.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the subsequent influence of this exhibition. It characterized a seismic shift in landscape photography away from the romantic/heroic mode toward the ironic and documentary. Most of the photographers exhibited went on to acclaimed careers: Robert Adams, Nicholas Nixon, Stephen Shore, Frank Gohlke and of course the Bechers have all been extremely influential in fine art photography. Many of them cited Walker Evans as a seminal influence on their own work.

The Center for Creative Photography and George Eastman House have teamed up with art publisher Steidl to create a superb new book on this seminal exhibition. It is published in concert with an encore exhibition of the New Topographics, touring now.

The design and physical format of the book admirably suits its intent. It is covered in simple grey cloth, with the title and photographers' names deeply embossed in white ink. This lettering precisely reproduces that of the original 1975 exhibition catalogue. The utterly pedestrian Times Roman typeface and simple page design likewise fit the goal of straightforward, unsentimental documentary presentation.

The first section of the book is a long essay by Britt Salvesen which places the original exhibition in historical context, and includes interviews with some of the photographers. Next is an essay by Eastman House curator Alison Nordstrom discussing the subsequent influence of the original exhibition in academia and print, right down to today's New Topographics group on Flickr (no, really!).

Following the essays are beautifully reproduced images from each photographer, in alphabetical order. The photographic reproductions are ideally sized: large enough to study, but with enough margin to handle the book. The Bechers' images are reproduced as "grids" of individual photographs, as intended. Stephen Shore's images, the only ones in color, perfectly convey his customary subdued palette.

Next is a complete reduced-scale photoreproduction of the original exhibition catalogue (sample above). In the same spirit as the Errata Editions reproductions of classic photobooks, the page layout and design are demonstrated.

Following this facsimile section are thumbnails of every photograph in the exhibition, noting the image's size and directing you to the page where it is reproduced. Finally, the book concludes with a very thorough bibliography, which is itself a testament to the immense influence of the original exhibition. It's a great resource for those interested in exploring the subject further.

This beautiful book is the catalogue for the encore of the New Topographics exhibition, which opened at George Eastman House in June of 2009. Currently at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, the show will travel to San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art in July before heading to Europe in November. By all means, see the exhibition if you have the chance. Having repeatedly (obsessively!) visited the show in Rochester, I can honestly say it's well worth your while. Compared to today's gigantic print sizes, the modest but superbly printed images are striking in their own quiet way.

Geoff

New Topographics at Amazon U.S.

New Topographics at Amazon U.K.

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