The Online Photographer

COLOR RUSH

[Ed. Note: Ctein is off today, busy preparing for the last great dye transfer sale which starts one week from today.]

New Curator of Photography Lisa Sutcliffe of MAM

I had a very nice day yesterday—my friend (and friend o' TOP) Kenneth Tanaka and his wife Christine took the train up from Chicago to tour the splendid "Color Rush" show at the Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM) with me. Because Ken and Chris are among the backers of the show, they're acquainted with Lisa Sutcliffe, who just joined MAM as its new Curator of Photography, coming from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA). Lisa just started her tenure in January. So Lisa joined us for lunch and then treated us to a guided tour of the show—a distinct pleasure for me, for sure.

The show is subtitled—well, as you can see from the picture—"75 Years of Color Photography in America," and it's a honey. It uses as its starting point the advent of the Lumière brothers' Autochrome process, first marketed in 1907, and picks as its endpoint the publication of Sally Eauclaire's book The New Color in late 1981. I remember the latter as being considered a bit of a pretender when it came out—color photographers were still pretty uncommon then and there was lots of murmuring about that book, especially among those who were left out—but it's as good a marker as any of the "gathering steam years" of the now-nearly-complete color revolution.

The show itself is co-curated by Lisa Hostetler, formerly Curator of Photography at MAM and now McEvoy Family Curator of Photography at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (gone but not forgotten), and Katherine Bussard, who recently left her position as Associate Curator of Photography at the Art Institute of Chicago to become Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography at the Princeton University Art Museum. (Kate is a friend of Ken's, which I'm going to guess is how he got involved.)

The show's been very popular here. It's advertised continuously on local TV and the public has responded: attendance has been great, and people seem to really like it. (Midday, midweek, the older parts of the Museum were all but deserted but "Color Rush" had a decent number of visitors circulating about.) And no wonder. Kate and Lisa H.'s interests and tastes are apparently complementary, synergystic, and superadditive. There is lots of tasty stuff to look at from any of numerous angles—examples of color printing in magazines, books, and newspapers; commercial photography and efforts to market color to advertisers; fine art work and its evolution; and a stellar, astutely chosen, yet widely varied cast of photographers. The effect is of inclusivity and dynamic variety. It was wonderful, for instance, to see a red-on-red advertising photo by Victor Keppler, father of Burt Keppler, longtime Publishing Director of Popular Photography magazine, in the same show with Eggleston's red ceiling.

Chris and Ken Tanaka

One of my own criteria by which I judge exhibits is simply whether the pictures are good to look at. As we all know, this sometimes decidedly takes a back seat in the art world—I'm sure you've been to shows in which the work was properly girded with all the proper conceptual and scholarly or in-group bonafides but just doesn't entertain the eye worth a damn. In that context, "Color Rush" all but soars—curators Hostetler and Bussard's taste in pictures is exquisite and sure, and many of their selections are just gems...there were a number of pictures in the show I wouldn't mind communing with at length. A Louise Dahl-Wolfe fashion shot, an Ernst Haas or two, a lovely panel of dye-transfer experiments by Edward Steichen that almost qualify as a sort of ancient ur-Photoshoppery. I suppose it helps that there was a whole lot of stuff I'd never seen before, always a plus for me. Lisa S. pointed out as one of her favorites a modest display of 1930s color advertisements shown alongside the same pictures printed in vintage magazines; those are exquisite.

There are several slide shows (Saul Leiter, Helen Levitt, also Nan Goldin) that I thought were less successful. Too much ambient light; the pictures didn't pop. But then, I've never cared for slide shows much. (Lisa did mention that some younger visitors to the show had never seen a slide projector before.)

My biggest complaint about the show, though, was that it was over too quickly. My heart fell when I saw the exit door. I could have gone on half as long again and continued to be just as happy. Come to think of it, though, I skipped the Nan Goldin slide show at the end, which was curtained off because of risqué content. (I was the only one of the four of us who hadn't seen the show already, and I didn't want to make Chris, Lisa, and Ken wait for me. I'll go back.) So maybe that would beef up the ending of the show and serve to extend the experience a bit.

By the way, I really liked Lisa Sutcliffe. I thought even her off-the-cuff comments about the work were insightful and incisive, yet she has a relaxed, completely unpretentious manner that's like clear water. Lisa Hostetler, as I've mentioned before, is a tough act to follow. (Her "Street Scene" show was also wonderful.) But I'm really looking forward to seeing what Lisa Sutcliffe will do with her own shows at the Art Museum; can't wait, in fact.

Very unfortunately, "Color Rush" is not traveling. It'll open and close in Milwaukee, and then that's all she wrote. You have until May 19th if you want to see it. Very fortunately, though, there's a book. I didn't even flip through it (and I didn't buy it this visit because it was raining and I didn't want to carry it home in the rain), so I can't tell you much about it as a book, but the show itself is so good I feel pretty comfortable pointing people to the book as a record of it. The first printing is almost gone but a second printing is going to be available from Amazon starting later this month (and can be pre-ordered now).

A must-see show? If you're within easy shooting distance of Milwaukee, we're in no-brainer territory—make it a point. Worth a drive from as far away as Chicago? There aren't many things in Milwaukee you can say this about for Chicagoans, but I'd say yes on that score too. And I'll go out on a limb and say it's worth the drive even for people whose primary interest in art isn't necessarily photography. Highly recommended.

Mike
(Thanks to Ken Tanaka and Lisa Sutcliffe)

Ken Tanaka adds: Hey, I had a terrific day, too.

I am glad that Gary mentioned the 2010 show (and catalog) titled Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970-1980. Although I did not see the show I do have Kevin Moore's excellent book.

"Color Rush" is a broader and deeper view of color photography. The show, and book, are organized into four chronological sections beginning with the 1930s (Steiglitz, Steichen, National Geographic, etc.) and ending with "An Explosion of Color"—the 1980s. The book features two excellent overview essays by Hosteler and Bussard. But the majority of the 270+ pg. book is devoted to individual photographers, each with a short essay and plates of their work. Aperture did an outstanding job with this project. @ Rob Atkins: You've been misinformed. ;~) 

Pete Turner, as featured in "Color Rush"

It is a shame that relatively few folks will actually see the show. It was 5+ years in the making and a real product of scholarship and passion by many people. But thankfully the book will live on. It's a must-have for anyone with a serious interest in the history of color photography.

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP links

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

John Krumm (partial comment): "...I'm left wondering if museums are going to keep ending photography shows sometime before digital starts, kind of like that's when photography died. Do they even collect digital photography prints?"

Mike replies: Well, it ends c. 1981-2, when color had solidly entered the accepted mainstream of publishing and art. Digital didn't really get going until well after that, the mid-to-late '90s; the first show of "giclée prints," as they were called then, that I saw was in '98 or '99, and I sought it out on purpose. The digital transition is a bigger story than should be tacked on to the end of a coherent and cohesive overview exhibit like this one.

Rob Atkins: "All sounds great; I wish I could see the show. But no inclusion of Pete Turner, a true innovator of color? Pete was a great promoter as well, running a gallery, The Space, beside his Carnegie Hall studio. An overview of color photography is incomplete without including P.T."

Lisa Sutcliffe replies: Pete Turner is included in Color Rush.

Geoff Wittig: "I'm quite jealous. Living near George Eastman House, I'm used to being spoiled by fabulous photography exhibits in my own backyard. Unfortunately, despite being entirely separate from Eastman Kodak Co., Eastman House has suffered mightily from both the disappearance of corporate support and a serious hit to their endowment in the late economic unpleasantness of 2008. Hence their recent exhibition history has been less than stellar. Currently they're showing a very low-key bit on the camera obscura, an exhibition cadged from their camera warehouse that has been collecting dust in one of their three main galleries since 2005(?!?), and a set of huge but technically awful gelatin silver prints made by using a cargo container as a giant camera. Sigh. I miss the good ol' days."

Followup: Twofer! ...And We're Back On Topic

One thing I will say for BMW...it's a popular subject. Yesterday's post about BMW brought in far more traffic than normal for a Sunday.

I did go to the car show, and got a pleasant surprise. As I rounded the doorway into the Classic Two-Seater Sports Car room, this is what I saw:

Whoa, what?

A bonus for Mikey, that's what. Turns out an enterprising local photographer had piggybacked on the Auto Show to stage an exhibit of his work. He's a retired commercial professional from West Allis named Tom Ferderbar.

Photographer Tom Ferderbar

Here's Tom. We had a nice chat. He knew the late Arnie Gore, a local pro who was a good friend of my father's. He was showing two sets of work in the Two-Seater room: black and white from Yosemite National Park, and color from a project shot along the old Route 66. And he kinda liked the GX1, too.

One of Tom's Yosemite pictures next to a 1991 Lotus Elan.

The color work was done on 6x6 and with Canon DSLRs, and the black and white was all 8x10" Tri-X. The giant prints—I forgot to write down the size, although you can get an idea from the snapshot above—are digital prints made from scans. Tom told me that buyers sometimes ask for silver gelatin enlarger prints, but he can't make them this big, and he says he thinks the digital prints are better anyway. The main advantage, he said, being that he can burn and dodge much more precisely.

I was too polite to ask him if he'd sold any. His prices were right stiff, too.

As you might even have guessed, Tom studied with Ansel Adams—he took a workshop with Ansel in the 1960s (I think it was). The week-long workshop included a private dinner for two students at a time at the Adams home with Ansel and his wife Virginia. Cost for the week? $100.

•     •     •

The nice thing about going to the Auto Show on the weekend is that you get to meet some of the owners of the gorgeous old cars being displayed. In Tom's room I got to talk to the owner of a perfect 1959 Corvette, as well as a guy who had owned his restored 1957 Ford Thunderbird since new. That's pretty unusual. I also talked to the owner of a Bugatti Type 57 that must have been the rarest car on display at the whole show. He had just gotten it back after a five-year engine rebuild. I didn't even want to know what that cost. I must have been well into six figures.

Best of show: A used Fiberglas-bodied Superformance Cobra on display at Harry's Toys. Harry's is my favorite exhibit year after year, no question. Harry has been dealing in cool fun fine used cars since he was 16. In his day he's sold more Excaliburs than anyone alive. He sells mostly used cars skimmed from his sizeable wholesale business, but he also just took on a brand of Canadian three-wheeler that must have been the strangest vehicle at the whole show. He likes telling the story of one customer from Switzerland who has bought 35 cars from him! If I were a rich guy, I'd trade one used car for another every two years at Harry's for the rest of my life, like clockwork.

Oddities: #1: This might sound strange, but the muscle cars of today are Mercedes-Benzes. In some of their cars there are so many engine choices that they'll offer a 400+ HP bi-turbocharged V8 and then a more powerful option above that. They have a station wagon that will pin a Viper's ears back, and I'm not joking.

#2: I was looking forward to sitting in a Golf R, my current dream car, but, strangely, the VW display did not include a Golf R. Or a GTI. Or a Golf. That's right, no Golfs of any flavor in the VW area. That's just strange.

Hot tip: If you happen to be in the market for a mainstream sedan, make sure you see the new 2013 Mazda 6, a Camry/Accord competitor that's new this year (they've only been on sale for four weeks as I write this). The car looks good in pictures, but in person it's gorgeous. Especially in an as-yet-unidentified smokey blue color. Even the cockpit design is superb. Coming from a company that has been notably styling-challenged in the past few years (remember the cat-car?), that's like a mope who's batting .119 suddenly stroking a game-winning grand slam.

It's really an unusally pretty car for its segment. And it starts at $20k.

Fiat Abarths are nicer than I thought they'd be, too, but who are those cars for? I can't picture men buying them, and I can't picture women buying them. And I think those are the only choices.

It's my birthday today, so I'm going back to the Auto Show this afternoon. Playing hookey two days in a row...what a slug! But the nice thing about going to the Auto Show on a weekday is that there aren't nearly as many people, and you can get better pictures of the cars. Today I'm shouldering the Big Dragoon...gotta get some snaps of that Cobra. Who knows if I'll ever see one again.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Christian: "I am in love with that first B&W photo with the tree and the waterfall. I can't even see it that well in your picture, Mike, but I am quite smitten. When I grow up I would love to make pictures of that caliber."

Tom Kwas: "FYI, for the years I worked in Milwaukee, Tom had the premier advertising studio in town; and was a genuinely nice guy. Everyone wanted to work there, and they always had the best facilities and equipment. He was blessed, if I can use that term, with owning that studio during what would be the golden years of advertising photography in this market area. He was of the perfect age, such that when he decided to retire, the business market in general was already on the wane, and many of the local businesses that had national and international markets, had already sold themselves to larger concerns not located in this area, and moved their advertising and marketing departments out of this area to their home offices.

"He probably owned his studio when Milwaukee was still the 13th–15th largest metro area in the country, until by the early '90s, it had shrunk to the 38th largest market area. Perfect timing! No studio now exist in this market area that was like his. End of an era...."

Framing P.S.

I'm not even close to finished dealing with all the car comments, and I've gotten so many private emails that I won't be able to respond to them all individually...but thanks to everyone! That post really did cheer me up.  :-)

But here's a P.S. to the recent framing posts...remember how I said I never use anything but white mats? Well, look what Carl Blesch did...

Carl writes, "I have matted my TOP print purchases from Ctein and Charles Cramer with the 'conventional wisdom' white mats. But for my first TOP print purchase, your 'Wisconsin #7,' I tried something different. I love how the gray and deep red double mats work with your photo."

Looks pretty good, doesn't it? I feel complimented. (That same scene was lovely this morning at dawn, with fog and a blanket of new-fallen snow. I almost got the camera out.)

Goes to show: all advice is only a suggestion.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Bárbara: "Great shot and while I generally agree about the white matting this looks really great! Oh how the world is so filled with 'exceptions to every rule!' That's one of the things that I really love about your blog—you aren't shy to state your own views and are open enough to share other point of view as well. Very refreshing."

Mike replies: Thanks! I do try hard to do that.

How Should You Frame a Photograph? Part III

Great discussion following the framing posts. Thanks for that.

Various people have made a number of suggestions, quite naturally reporting on other options, reporting their own tastes or practices, and so forth.

I suppose I'd really like to encourage something a little different.

First, backing up a little bit: Photography is a big house. It has "many mansions," in the words of the KJV. Everybody has a slightly different "take" on what it is and how it's best practiced.

To me, printmaking is close to the core of the art. And if you're a printmaker, I'd really encourage you to work out framing for yourself. Learn about it; look at options; get ideas; decide what you like and don't like.

As with "what to take a photograph of," "what a photograph should look like," sensors and lenses, color or B&W, film or digital, on and on—all of it—there are a myriad choices when it comes to framing. What direction would you take it?

One thing I might suggest, as an exercise. Take one print you really, really like—your own or somebody else's—and frame it as well as you can. Whether you do it yourself or you hire out the work. Just...get it right. What does that mean for you? Whatever that means for you.

The occasional effort to do something really well is an exercise, or amounts to an exercise, that really helps clarify our values and tastes. That's my belief, anyway. Back when I was a printmaker, every so often I'd work really hard to get a print absolutely perfect. I wouldn't do this with every print I made, Lord knows. But the effort, undertaken only occasionally, made me a better printer all of the time. I did that throughout my life as a custom printer, from the start to the end.

How would you frame a print if you really did it up right? It's not an interesting question, but it'll be an interesting answer.

Framing can be an afterthought, or something you just never do, or something you take for granted...or it can be an integral part of your creative practice and an extension of printmaking. Up to you. But it's fun to look into, fun to experiment with, fun to make up your mind about. Give it a shot one day.

Mike

P.S. To our American Friends, enjoy the Super Bowl today. Since I have no dog in the fight, I'm hoping for good close game. Personally, I'm still a little amazed about Brett and Aaron sharing the mic last night. That's big news around here.

Cheesehead royalty. February 2nd, 2013.

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

Q&A: How Should You Frame a Photograph? Part II

[...Continued from the previous post]

Q: How do I choose the right colour of matting to complement the image and draw the viewer's eye into the image?

A: For traditional museum-style framing, colored mats of any sort just aren't used. They're considered decorative and distracting and distinctly downmarket, suited to that sort of rural Victorian demotic decor that you might see in Country Cutesy magazine or Tchochkes and Trinkets Quarterly. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it if you want to. But many "frames" are really confections for the wall in which the "art" in the middle is really just one more element, and sometimes not even the most important element*; the modernist idea of framing (and granted, 20th-century modernism as an aesthetic movement is getting long in the tooth these days) is to dress up the photograph but not compete with it...to let it have all the attention. I've never once matted a photograph in anything but a white mat.

Of course, there are many shades of "white," from harsh, brightened, almost bluish stark white to "cream" color on the frontier of tan. I used to be, um, a wee bit fanatical about matching the mat white to the paper white. At one point, with considerable effort, I found the absolute perfect match—and within six months both the mat board and the photo paper that matched each other so perfectly were discontinued! So don't obsess. Just try a few of the available colors and see what looks best.

One warning there: be careful about the light under which you evaluate the whiteness of various whites. Frame shops might have become enlightened about archival paractices, but they're still mired in the stone age of fluorescent tubes for illumination, as much a torture of modern life as leaf-blowers. Most homes feature a mix of winter daylight, summer daylight, and incandescent light, and even the compact fluorescents infiltrating living rooms lately are color-corrected to yellow the light. Even that's changing now: the last two light bulbs I bought were LEDs. In any event, just be aware that the mat needs to look good where it's going to be hung, not just under the sickly greenish Martian glow of an office-type fluorescent.

You might also consider that matting as a standard evolved simply because traditional silver-gelatin prints can't come into contact with glass—over time, they'll stick. The purpose of the overmat is to hold the print suface away from the glass and keep the two from touching. I have an ancient family picture, oval in shape, that is stuck fast to a piece of curved glass that is, in shape, a section of an ovoid sphere. Never knew what I was supposed to do with it; the frame this weird piece of glass originally fit is long gone. But the photo is stuck fast to the glass. All I can do is keep it in a box cushioned on cotton batting.

Modern prints can be all over the place in terms of their materials, surfaces, and physical properties. I have some pigment inkjet prints on Epson Archival Matte (I don't know what they call this paper now; Epson kept changing its name for a while there) that aren't even matted. The matte surface of the inkjet paper doesn't stick to glass, so I just figured I'll risk putting it in contact with the glass. It's been a few years and it seems fine so far.

Q: Custom framing can be very expensive—should I try to do this myself? Are there kits available? Or, is it worth it to have lots of colour/matting options available and let the pros do it?

A: Absolutely try it yourself if you want to. Many readers in the previous post gave sources for framing "kits." Metal frames are very easy to assemble yourself, requiring basically a screwdriver and little in the way of craft skills, and many suppliers offer framing sections cut to order. I'd say the last thing to do yourself is matting, because cutting mats requires skill and good cutters are expensive, but some people do this too and you shouldn't be averse to trying it if you want to. There are sources for good quality pre-cut mats, although I'm not going to put in the labor to do a survey.

Plain-jane, bog-standard 20th-century modernist museum-style framed photographs chez TOP. Left over from an exhibition. These prints are actually dry-mounted, leaving a very narrow border, to rag watercolor paper, then inserted into a hinged window-mat (also called a passe-partout). Although you can't see it easily, the top one is signed in the lower right in pencil. Also, this print is very slightly bottom-weighted to create the visual impression of a mat that is exactly equal on all four sides. I should really get this picture and mat put into a better frame with better glass.

I've known do-it-yourself framers across a very broad spectrum. Some do it to pinch pennies and/or to minimize inconvenience, but some go the other way entirely—they do it themselves because they're fanatical about quality. I've even known a photographer who milled his own moldings himself, from exotic and beautiful solid woods, and assembled his wood frames prior to staining and varnishing them. They were gorgeous. We even have a regular reader here, Bron Janulis, who is a professional framewright who makes hand-carved, hand-gilded frames for oil paintings and other fine art. As you might imagine, million-dollar oil paintings don't go into "custom frames" made from stock moldings from the local frame shop. There's custom, and then there's custom.

And didn't Thomas Eakins, the 19th-century American painter, make his own frames? (Eakins was a photographer, too.)

Portrait of Professor Henry A. Rowland by Thomas Eakins. In this case the frame (by the artist) is very much an integral part of the painting.

One of the biggest reasons for not doing your own framing is, simply, volume. Or the lack thereof. I have only a handful of pictures framed in a good year; if I got all set up to frame my own, after I made my five frames for this year, what then? All dressed up and nowhere to go. One guy I know of got set up to do his own framing, then had to justify the expense of the equipment and materials by taking in work from other people. Because he wasn't great at marketing, he ended up working for very cheap. So, more or less inadvertently, he went from being an artist who wanted to frame his own work to being a cut-rate framewright toiling for low margins. No thanks. I tried to make my own sushi, too, and it was a transformative experience: I completely stopped resenting the high price of sushi and started really appreciating the artistry, skill, and knowledge of trained sushi chefs. Same with framing, for me—I know enough about framing to know I don't want to do it myself, and to appreciate the people who do it professionally.

Q: What glass options work best? I went with an anti-reflection coating option so I could see the print better. Waste of money, or the norm for prints you're proud of?

A: There are a zillion options for glazing. For standard-rate framing, many shops still use window glass, which is relatively low quality and has a distinctly green cast. Many reputable shops will have several glazing options with examples on display at various price points. At the other end of the spectrum you can buy optical glass that's multicoated like a camera lens to reduce reflections—Google "museum glass" to explore.

Note that light transmission varies with glass type. Behind poor-quality window glass, a picture will actually look darker. That's because window glass transmits less than 100% of the light passing through it. I don't know the number—it probably varies widely—but it's well under 90%. Museum glass transmits about 91–93%.

Museum glass is also very expensive. The only examples I have in my home are Denglas, framing two postcards, one from Ansel Adams and one from Helen Levitt. The only reason the postcards are framed with museum glass is that, years ago, when I framed them, they were the only things I wanted to frame that were small enough that I could afford the pricey glass!

These days, I'm starting to get my head turned by acrylics. ("Plexiglas" is a trade name for a particular brand of polymethylmethacrylate resin sheeting, not a generic material type. There are actually many different types of Plexiglas, and many other makers and suppliers of acrylic glazing.) The reason is that my real interest is not framing—my real interest is in print preservation. I'm very interested in how photographs survive through time. And for most, display conditions and inherent archival stability, while important, take a back seat to physical protection: can the photograph get dirty? Crushed? Wet? Cut? Burned up? Most photographs don't decay or fade despite loving care—they get destroyed, either deliberately or accidentally.

It's this last—accident—where acrylic really has it all over glass. Framing is thought to be a way to lovingly preserve a photograph, but actually it puts a photograph in a fair amount of peril, because frames fall, glass breaks, and broken glass damages the art. Plexi used to be a poor option, because it scratched easily and clouded quickly. But it was light, and it didn't shatter. However, acrylic glazing seems to have improved in quality quite dramatically since I was an impoverished student working part-time at a framing shop. I looked at a product called Tru-Vue Optium Museum Acrylic, which claims 99% UV protection and 97% transmission. Both numbers exceed glass. It claims to be scratch-resistant, but that I can't evaluate.

Acrylic is also a lot lighter than glass, which is why it's long been preferred for very large pieces.

•     •     •

I know these answers probably raise a whole lot more questions, but I'll venture to hope you got something, at least, out of the discussion. The final thing to bear in mind is that they're only my answers. And when I say "my answers," I mean they're my answers—not necessarily the best answers, and certainly not the only answers. And possibly not even entirely true and accurate answers, although I hope they are that last. As with any element of photography, it's a complex subject, assuming you are willing to get into it in depth.

Mike

*During my brief career as a framer, c. 1981 or so, it used to bug me that people would routinely spend $100 to $200 to frame a $29 poster, but would balk strenuously at paying $100 to $200 for a fine original print of a photograph. I am older now, and more resigned to human nature.

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Arne Croell: "With respect to glazing, don't mix up the 'non-glare' glass with the true AR-coated glass Mike mentions. Non-glare glass has a lightly etched surface which will produce light scattering instead of a directional reflection. Non-glare glass is inert, but reduces the contrast and sharpness of the viewed print considerably, so it is not a good choice.

"In addition to 'Museum Glass' by Tru-Vue, there are similar products by Schott (Mirogard), Pilkington (Opti-View), and one or two other companies, e.g. Luxar by Hy-Tech-Glass in Switzerland or Artglass by GroGlass (I think Denglas disappeared from the market). Both Mirogard and Optiview also come in versions where two glass layers are laminated with a thin plastic layer like in a car windshield, taking care of the breakage problem. These are expensive, of course. Speaking of expensive—if you think Tru-Vue 'Museum' glass is expensive, price the 'Optium' acrylic version by the same manufacturer mentioned by Mike...."

Q&A: How Should You Frame a Photograph? Part I

My local framer, Gallery 1, is less than a mile from my house. (I would have taken the time to make a more artful shot of the exterior, but it's as cold as Wisconsin here today. Brrr.)

A while back, a reader named Scott Price asked if I would answer some specific questions about framing pictures.

"When I went to a custom framer to choose a frame to complement the photo," Scott wrote, "I discovered that I'm a complete spazz when it comes to making these decisions—so many framing options, matting colours, widths, etc. I got completely lost in the process. If it weren't for an exceptionally patient and knowledgeable framer, I might still be trying to make up my mind."

Before we get into Scott's questions, though, I'd like to highlight that line, "if it weren't for an exceptionally patient and knowledgeable framer." In the 1950s and '60s, give or take, standard methods of archival framing hadn't been entirely developed. With the "Photo Boom" of the 1970s, experts quickly developed a set of "best practices" for framing photographs—but many storefront frame shops hadn't gotten up to speed. Now, however, many framers do know all about archival framing for most common photographic media. So a good first step is to find a good local framer and patronize them.

That's what I do. Above is a snapshot I just took of my local frame shop, Gallery 1, which is located handily a mere seven-tenths of a mile from my house.

If money is a big issue, most decent-sized cities have specialty framers that cater to artists, galleries, and museums. They'll often sell framing at a fairly big discount, sometimes leaving some of the assembly work to you. They might have a minimum order size, though, and you're unlikely to get the same level of personal attention a full-service framer will give you. But the trade-off might be worth it. To find these places, ask around—ask photographers who exhibit, or at local art schools, or galleries or small museums (larger museums will have their own installation personnel and do all their framing in-house).

And if money is a huge issue, consider buying a readymade frame from a place like Target. The quality won't be as good, and of course it won't be customized to your artwork...but one way I get around this when the artwork or the occasion just doesn't demand a custom frame is to buy the readymade first and then print the picture to fit it! It's a good trick and something I've done many times.

But on to Scott's questions.

Q: How wide should the matting be, relative to the size of the image?

A: Depends. Standard, typical museum framing generally uses very wide matting. Partly this is to set off the image and avoid visual distraction; partly it's fashion, in that it looks luxurious and unstinting, and it makes small photographs look more imposing; and partly it's due to the fact that museums tend to have stocks of standard-sized frames that are often a good deal larger than the artwork they will temporarily contain, and floating a small photograph in a very large matt will tend to mask the fact that the frame isn't proportioned specifically for each picture.

There's a technical element to mat width, because the width of the mat separates the photograph from the frame. If the frame is not archivally inert—for instance, if it's wood—some physical separation is a good idea.

But there's also expense to consider: the broader the mat, the larger the frame has to be, and larger frames cost more. For home display, larger mats (and, hence, frames) "cost" you in terms of wall space, too. So you don't want to habitually make your mats extremely wide.

Michelle Ellis of Gallery 1 holding the last framed picture they made for me. You might recognize the picture—from the Print Offer previous to this one.

I personally tend to like proportion—I think space and shape relationships are almost an art form in themselves (ask any architect). My preference is for mats that aren't too big or too small, but "just right." In the Peter Turnley that Michelle is holding above, we settled on two inches all around. It's a bit scant, but I didn't want the frame to be too big, and I didn't want to take the dark brown-black wood frame visually too far away from the picture.

A further issue is "bottom weighting." A picture has visual weight—the eye/brain "expects" the rectangle of the picture to have some weight, so if you make the mat exactly equal on all four sides, it often looks like the bottom margin is slightly too thin or narrow—as if the picture were visually "pressing down" on it. For this reason, framers often "bottom weight" a mat, which simply means making the mat border slightly thicker or wider on the bottom. There are two ways you can bottom-weight a mat—you can do it just ever so slightly, so the mat looks equidistant from the picture all around, or you can exaggerate the bottom weighting, which some people like the look of. In the Turnley, we didn't bottom weight the mat, but we gave more of a float on the bottom margin in order to accommodate Peter's signature, so the effect was the same.

(A "float," by the way, is when there's some blank paper between the edge of the picture and the edge of the mat.)

Q: Where should I sign my print? Lower-right corner of the image? Just below the image on an expose white edge around the print? On the back of the photo?

A: With all of this stuff there are no rules, and many photographers do like to sign their prints on the back, which is usually done in pencil to avoid any possibility of bleed-through or show-through. An old-fashioned custom was for the photographer to put a printed label on the back of the print, too, and sign that, and some photographers carry that over to today. But be cautious about the archival properties of labels and the glue you use to affix them to the print, and make sure the label can't be seen through the paper to the front of the print! That doesn't happen often, but I have seen it.

That said, most signed prints are signed on the front, in ink, in the lower right-hand corner, usually but not always right next to the edge of the picture.

Note where Peter signed his print—the customary, accepted, and by far the most common location. This mat is floated, meaning there's a gap left between the edge of the picture and the edge of the mat.

Most photographers sign the actual photo, on the margin or border of the photo paper that was left when printing. An exception is when the photograph is dry-mounted to a piece of mount board that will form part of the mat assembly. In dry mounting, a sheet of dry, heat-activated adhesive is tacked to the back of the print, then both are trimmed together on a rotary trimmer, and finally the dry mount tissue is tacked to a piece of acid-free mat board and the sandwich is pressed in a drymount press, which applies both heat and pressure to adhere the print to the board. The bond is semi-permanent; it can (sometimes) be removed by a trained paper conservator, but, most likely, not by you. In the case of a dry mounted print, there's often no blank paper-white border, and in that the case the signature would go on the board. But the signature almost never goes on the overmat (the sheet with the window cut in it that is hinged to the backing). One obvious reason is that the overmat can be separated from the print, and you wouldn't want the signature to go with it.

Note that drymounting is not considered completely archival, even if the adhesive is acid-free; standard practice is to leave the print alone as much as possible, so that it can be completely removed from the framing assembly as easily as possible. However, dry-mounted prints look better, and many photographers still prefer to do it for that reason.

Q: How thick should the frame be, in relation to the matting and image sizes? Does a thin frame work with wide matting?

A: Entirely a value judgment. Not only does a thin frame with a wide mat work, but it's almost the default standard, since Nielsen metal frames are widely used to frame photographs.

At one point, the lowest-common-denominator "standard" framing for photographs was a silver Nielsen #11 metal molding, which is quite narrow. Metal frames are still often used for photographs because they look good and they're archivally inert.

The profile, with measurements, of Nielsen #11 metal molding from the Nielsen-Bainbridge website, showing the colors available. Silver used to be standard but now Nielsen metal frames are offered in many different profiles and many different colors. I'm partial to German Silver and Contrast Grey for black and white photographs.

I'd say, make the judgment purely visually. In the case of Peter's picture, I liked the somewhat heavy, very dark frame with that particular image, but any number of different treatments would have worked.

[To be continued...]

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
There was a book about framing and presenting photographs and other artwork that I liked, but I can't remember the name of it.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Stan B.: "If you're gonna float your picture the customary 1/4 inch, make sure you (or your printer) leave 1/2-inch white margins (minimum) on the print around your image so that the mat will have enough room to properly overlap. Otherwise, you'll curtail your options."

Vivian Maier at the Chicago History Museum

By Kenneth Tanaka

The legend of Vivian Maier lives and looms even larger this fall!

Earlier this month the Chicago History Museum opened an excellent new exhibition of the late, previously unknown Vivian Maier's work titled "Vivian Maier's Chicago." Unlike an earlier show at the Chicago Cultural Center this is a wonderfully simple yet sophisticated exhibit that manages to capture a previously unshown dimension to her work in a relatively small space.

This exhibition of previously unseen Maier work is very thoughtfully and cleverly presented. The center of the smallish gallery space is occupied by large board-mounted prints suspended by cables. These enormous prints, actually of top quality (although I would have preferred them untoned), form small spaces that visitors can explore freely.

The perimeter walls of the gallery are banded by a continuous strip of enlarged contact sheet-style prints of some of Maier's Rolleiflex 120-size film rolls. We see all 12 6x6 frames of each selected roll, the progressive sequence of how she worked a subject, the stinkers with the gems. This is perhaps the richest possible presentation of Maier’s work for others to study, especially other photographers. I think I could have spent hours in there!

For me, this presentation affirmed that Vivian Maier was every bit as talented, and then some, as the best of the more renowned street photographers of the last century. I don't care if she was an odd duck. (As if Winogrand and Frank weren't? Yah.) And I care much less that the art museum /art criticism world has its collective head so deeply up its collective arse as they so clearly do on Maier's work. She was a great unknown talent and deserves to be shown and shown as intelligently as the Chicago History Museum is now doing.

The exhibit will be up until "Summer 2013." If you have any interest in Vivian Maier’s work, or even in good street photography, find a way to go see this show. Really, just go.

Can't get to Chicago?
Also noteworthy is a new book of Maier's work scheduled to be published by CityFiles Press on October 16th of this year. I have not been able to browse the book yet but from its appearance (in a vitrine in the exhibition) it looks to be a much larger collection (288 pages) of her work than the earlier 136-page book. Hopefully of more mature and refined print quality, too.

It's called Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows. That link's to Amazon.com (USA); here's the U.K. pre-order link.

Ken

UPDATE from Richard Cahan and Michael Williams, authors of Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows and curators of "Vivian Maier's Chicago" at the Chicago History Museum: "Thank you all for your enthusiastic comments about the Chicago History Museum show and the book Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows. We can assure you that the scans supplied for the show were straight grayscale images without any toning. One image, added at the last moment, now appears to contain a slight pinkish tone. We hope to replace that soon. We do not consider Vivian Maier's work to be nostalgic or sentimental. We are glad that so many people are enjoying the show. No plans for a traveling exhibit right now—so come to Chicago in the next nine months or buy the book."

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Mike's Day Out

Taken with the Sony RX100.

I went down to Chicago yesterday to imbibe some art. Ctein was in town for a convention and tacked a few extra days on to the end of his trip, and Ken Tanaka gave Ctein and his friend Bayla Fine a tour of the Art Institute of Chicago. I tagged along.

First of all let me just say that every time Ken takes me around that Museum I see something new. This time it was the Japanese galleries, which are stunning.

At the start of the day Ken handed me his Sony RX100 and told me he'd give me the card at the end of the afternoon. So I have for you a definitive, one-word, three-letter verdict on this camera: F-U-N. On his, Ken had a wonderful little aftermarket grip made by Richard Franiec, which I must say is much more beautifully made than many aftermarket bits tend to be—hard to believe it wasn't engineered with the camera from the start. Makes the tiny camera very nice to hold.

I spent quite a bit of time staring at a lovely old 19th-century picture in the permanent galleries, only to learn later that it's one of the Photography Department's latest prized acquisitions, and that what they had to pay for it would buy you a very nice house in most parts of the country. Worth it, I say, as long as it's not my money. A bewitchingly beautiful print. (I didn't take a snap of it—sorry. Maybe Ken can provide a link*.)

This is something I don't think I've ever seen before. It's a paper negative, by one Gustave de Beaucorps, c. 1859—but the display is beautifully back-illuminated using cool, non-destructive LED light. Really lets you see the subtle quality of the negative. Ken told me the display was a huge headache for the conservators to create, which I can believe. But their efforts were certainly successful. (That's Ken in the reflection.)

Sensors are getting better all the time, I know, but from what little I can tell after a few hours of happy snapping with it, it seems like the sensor in the RX100 is a particularly talented one. The results (see top pic) are sort of lush, luscious, and rich. Digital is starting to look less digital, it seems, which is a good thing.

Mike

*Ken adds: Hey, I enjoyed the day too, Mike! How can we not enjoy a day at a place like the AIC?!

Re: the 19th century piece you enjoyed so much (and you're not alone!), it's an albumen titled "The Day's Orders" by Camille Léon Louis Silvy. Even though it's a very staged image it is considered the first true work of photojournalism. It's a richly storied image of a type and condition that almost never become available for purchase. Matthew Witkovsky, the photography department's curator and chair, managed to track this down and strike a good deal to get it accessioned in 2011.

The Gustave de Beaucorps image is also a real wonder and something you'll not see every day (or probably in a typical life). It's a wax paper negative. Unfortunately it's not yet viewable online but SFMoMA has one online of a very similar size to ours. You can also see (and buy) a print from one of de Beaucorps's wax paper negatives at iPhoto Central.

For those planning a visit to Art Institute of Chicago both of these gems from the permanent collection are currently on display in Gallery 10 just outside the main photography galleries.

A further addendum: Ctein, for his part, managed to put himself into one of the world-famous Thorne miniatures:

Did you spot the Lilliputian photographer?

Taken with an OM-D, 14–42mm, ISO 3200.

(For those who've never heard of the Thorne miniatures, they are a whole series of exquisitely rendered three-dimensional miniature "dollhouse" rooms behind glass, showing period-accurate interior spaces in 1/12 scale—mostly (but not entirely) European, mostly (but not entirely) upper-class. The room Ctein photographed is not more that a couple of feet wide, high, and deep.

Narcissa Niblack Thorne was a socialite who essentially ran her own atelier in the 1930s to create the 68 model rooms, employing workers ranging from a real architect to design the spaces to a specialist trained to needlepoint tiny rugs and fabrics. The level of detail—and of attention to detail, not quite the same thing—is astonishing, and has been delighting museumgoers in Chicago for decades.)

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Will: "I feel that this isn't the first time you've written of a trip to The Art Institute of Chicago, and every time you do mention going, I'm flooded with longing to return. As a former Chicagoan now living in New York, I should want for very little in the way of museums. Still, there's something magical about that place and its collections, and I'd trade it for any two NYC museums in a heartbeat."

Featured Comment by John King: "Wonderful to spend a day at such a fine museum and with a knowledgeable friend as guide. You probably know that DxOMark just published its Sony RX100 sensor test, giving it an overall rating of 66. This rating puts the little Sony sensor in the company of many DSLR scores. Of course there's more to a camera than a sensor rating but it's nice to finally have a second camera that can perform this well."

Best Case Fate for a Negative?

Eugène Atget, Marchand de panier de fil de fer [merchant of baskets and wire]*, 1899/1900. The picture is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art and appears in Vol. 4 of Szarkowski and Hambourg's
The Work of Atget, Modern Times.

Photo by Richard Alan Fox

Richard Alan Fox says, "I took this photo at the MoMA in NYC this past February, at a show of Atget prints that included one backlit negative. The bulb was not functioning and this gentleman was replacing the framed object after the electricians fixed the lamp."

He called it "the best any of us can possibly hope for our negatives or matrices."

Mike
(Thanks to Richard)

P.S. And just in case you're within shooting distance of New South Wales.... (Thanks to Keith Mallett for this.)

*In case you're wondering why you can't quite "read" his face, it's because it's obscured by a puff of smoke from his pipe.

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Ben: "I disagree that a lone representative negative on display is really the best one can hope for. The museum archive at which I volunteer prints from its large collection of negatives, the prints being available for sale to help support maintenance of the collection and future acquisitions. Remaining 'active,' so to speak, and useful strikes me as a much better outcome for a negative than static display—after all, negatives exist to be printed from, not just looked at."

Heinrich Kuehn at Neue Galerie

Manhattan's Neue Galerie

By John Camp

Monday was quite a nice day in Manhattan, so I sent off on a 44-block march north from my hotel to the Neue Galerie, a small museum at Fifth Avenue and 86th Street that specializes in German and Austrian art of the early 20th Century. The museum attracted much attention a few years ago when one of its founders paid a reported $135 million for Gustav Klimt's golden portrait "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" (1907). This painting is familiar to many Americans as a poster that seemingly every young intellectual woman of the late 20th Century had hanging in her college dorm room.

Gustav Klimt, Adele Bloch-Bauer I

I was going to the museum specifically to see the show "Gustav Klimt: 150th Anniversary Celebration." I don't particularly like Klimt, and I specifically don't like "Adele Bloch-Bauer I," but the collection is generally well worth viewing. When I arrived at the museum, I found that in addition to the Klimt installation, the Neue Galerie was also presenting a photographic show called "Heinrich Kuehn and His American Circle: Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen."

Kuehn is not a familiar figure in America (at least, not to me), so what I have to say about him here is taken from the exhibit information and the accompanying catalog, which is available from Amazon for $36.42. Those sources report that he was an influential figure in the Vienna Secession of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and was deeply influential in the Pictorialism movement, one of the first to try to establish photography as an independent art form with a status equal to painting. He was close friends with Alfred Stieglitz and much influenced by Stieglitz's ideas about modernism.

Kuehn was also an avid experimenter in photographic techniques, and was one of the first to try working in color.

Before this exhibit, I was mostly familiar with Pictorialism through books. The Pictorialist aesthetic fell into disrepute with the rise of Modernism, but there are some undeniably beautiful pictures in this exhibition. In modern and post-modern times, it often seems that beauty isn't enough, and is even the object of derision—as not being "serious"—but this show demonstrates (to me) that beauty can be enough. (Impressionism is sometimes considered a lightweight aesthetic because so many of its central works are simply beautiful, without any other obvious meaning or intent; it's notable that many of Kuehn's works are so close to Impressionism.)

Kuehn was not interested in photography as a way to catch fleeting images—he felt that doing so put the emphasis on the machine, rather than the aesthetic. He often worked out his own photographs by sketching the image he wished to make, using the camera only when he was satisfied with the composition.

Whatever you may think of Kuehn's aesthetics, his technical work is fascinating. He worked in an incredibly wide range of printing techniques, and some of his prints, particularly the gum bichromates, are quite large, commonly more than 20 inches in each dimension, and some as large as 30 inches.

He also did autochromes, silver and platinum prints, carbon prints, and bromoils, and worked with several other processes, including some combination processes such as pigments or watercolor over platinum. Seeing large prints of all these processes together on a few walls, with a variety of paper textures and coloring processes, and with an emphasis on the Pictorialist aesthetic, suggested to me that our current preoccupation with resolution and color accuracy is rather stifling.

This Neue Galerie exhibit is worth seeing simply for the variety of techniques on display.

For those of you affected by personal histories: Kuehn (1866–1944) was born into a wealthy bourgeois family that eventually lost its money in the European economic cataclysms of the early 20th century. A conservative man, he became more radically conservative as he aged, and late in life, joined the Nazi Party in Germany.

The show will be up until August 27. General admission is $20, Seniors and Students $10. Children under 12 are not admitted, and those under 16 must be accompanied by an adult.

John

Former Pulitzer-prizewinning journalist John Camp now writes bestselling novels under the nom de plume John Sandford.

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Jeff: "This video produced in conjunction with the exhibit provides interesting information regarding Kuehn's autochrome process. Kuehn's work appeared in Camera Work on at least two occasions (issue #13, with four works, and issue#33, with 15 works)."

Featured Comment by Eamon Hickey: "I can happily confirm Mr. Camp's reporting: Monday was an (alas, all too rare) exceptionally nice day in Manhattan.

"And your comments about the value of seeing actual prints, as opposed to book reproductions, makes me want to hop on the uptown 6-train and go see for myself, which brings me to an off-topic rant:

"The $20 admission is a real deterrent to me. It's enough money to make me stop and think, 'Is it really worth it?', whereas $10 or even $12 would not be. I felt the same way about the $20 admission to the Cindy Sherman exhibit at MoMA. I ended up going, but I hesitated, and when I paid, I frowned.

"I don't know when museum prices crossed over that magical, mystical line between 'not a factor in my decision' to 'do I really want to spend that?'—maybe it's not new at all? But I'm noticing it this summer, and it seems really lamentable to me.

"Before anyone says it, yes, I know that Manhattan is in a parallel pricing universe (evidently the universe where the Higgs Boson is plated in gold), and I know about Free Fridays, and if you go a lot to one particular museum, membership is a much better deal. I applaud all those efforts—and student discounts, too—to make art accessible. But, phew, $20 is a lot to drop in and look at some pictorialist prints. Not sure I need the experience that bad."

The Irving Penn Archives

By Ken Tanaka

One of the unfortunate consequences of today's noisy age of communication is the deflation of "great." It seems that to grab any attention in the daily cacophony anything passable, or even momentarily competent, must now be called not "fair" or "good" but immediately declaimed as "great."

But genuine greatness can neither be achieved nor assessed so casually. Within the worlds of art and photography, greatness lands slowly and is gradually acknowledged through the lens of time. Irving Penn was indisputably one of the greatest photographers and artists of the 20th century, with a career that spanned nearly seventy percent of that century and a body of work that's astonishing for its variety and quality. Although best known for his fashion and portrait photography, Penn's artistic interests and accomplishments meandered to other genres of photography and even occasionally into non-photographic art forms.

In 1995 Irving Penn donated his archives to the Art Institute of Chicago. His transparencies, contact sheets, prints, drawings, notes, correspondence, even some of his cameras are all housed at the Museum. It's an enormous body of material which, although well-organized upon intake, has occupied man-years of work by a devoted research team, with the support of the Irving Penn Foundation, to sculpt into the recently-opened Irving Penn Archives site.

I really think that most TOP readers will love this. A warning, though: don't expect to casually jump in if you only have a few minutes to spare. Grab a beverage, sit down at a cozy spot and just enjoy immersing yourself in all things Penn.

If you’re not very familiar with Irving Penn, I envy you: you’re in for quite a new treat. I also envy you if you are familiar with Penn: I can virtually guarantee that you'll delight in learning something new about him or his work.

Regardless of your Penn-savviness, spending study time in the Penn Archives may, at the very least, recalibrate your working concept of what qualifies as a "great photographer."

Ken
(Illustration: Irving Penn, Large Sleeve, 1951)

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Harold Feinstein Book Will Be a Reality

You might remember that back in October 2011 we called attention to a Kickstarter campaign to help Harold Feinstein publish his first monograph of his decades of work. Well, the Kickstarter campaign was a success, and Panopticon Gallery in Boston has announced that the project will come to fruition: Harold's A Retrospective will be published by Nazraeli Press in the fall. Thought you'd want to know. Panopticon will stage a concurrent exhibit beginning on September 14th.

And today is Harold's 81st birthday.

Also, if you haven't visited the page recently, you'll note that Carl's Kickstarter campaign has been a big success as well, with eight days to go.

Mike

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Focus on Imaging: Show Report

The crowds at the Canon booth are constant....

...And at the Nikon booth too.

By Robert D. Phillips

For any U.K. readers eager to get their hands on some of the new camera releases, Focus on Imaging at the NEC in Birmingham is running until 5 p.m. this Wednesday, March 7th.

Canon are* using the show to launch their brand shining new and eagerly awaited 5D Mark III, and the stand is crowded from the 10 a.m. opening till the end of each day with people playing with the five or so examples they have on show. People seem to like it. I overheard the fashion photographer Perou, who has some photographs on show at the Focus Gallery at the hub of the hall, tell the CPS** rep, "You don't need to sell it to me—I will definitely be getting one." Or at least it was something very similar to that....

Nikon are finding it hard to keep up with demand to play around with their D800 as they only have one example in the country. The queues to try it out are daunting, like being at a crowded bar trying to get the eye of the barman. They are making up for it by having what is apparently the largest LCD in Europe serving as their theatre screen.

The Olympus stand is a small catwalk which is OM-D branded, and has been showing an alternating schedule of dancers, models, and photographers talking about the new miracle camera. As was mentioned in TOP, the actual camera is a lot smaller than it appears in the product shots, but it feels good in the hand and makes a very satisfying old-school shutter noise/feel when used. There are only two OM-Ds here, but again, people seem to be liking the camera.

Similar story over on the Fuji stand, where there is only one version of the lovely new X-Pro1. This is a piece of retro art—it looks and feels in the hand like a "proper" camera of old, and Fuji seem very proud of it, rightly so in my opinion.

Sigma are being even more coy with their new 19mm and 30mm ƒ/2.8 4/3 lenses—the sole examples of each are pre-production mock ups which stay firmly in the cabinet. Certainly tempting the desire though.

It is nice to see a pretty strong presence from Ilford at the show. Pushing mainly the new InkJet papers, they also have a strong film presence which is nice to see. Any visitors to the show can have their photo taken with an 8x10 camera loaded with an Ilford paper negative, which is then contact printed into a positive and is yours to take away after 20 minutes.

The Nova Chrome stand even has an enlarger on show!

All I want for Christmas....

I would say that the show is a must for any serious gearheads finding themselves near Birmingham, England over the next few days. Everything you can imagine, from the awesome Phase One 80MP outfit, right down to the eyecups and LCD loupes being sold by brothers Lou and Bob over all the way from L.A. CA. "We all but sold out by the end of day one" said Lou, with a big California smile. "So now we are just taking orders."

All the way from L.A.: Lou and Bob from Hoodman

Focus On Imaging is in Halls 9 and 10 at the NEC Birmingham until 5 p.m. Wednesday, March 7th.

www.focus-on-imaging.co.uk
@FocusOnImaging

Robert

TOP reader Robert Phillips, who you've encountered before in these environs, is filling in at the Focus on Imaging press office this week.

[*Company names are treated as plural in British English. A U.S. writer would say "Canon is." I've left the author's native Britishisms in place because it seems appropriate—in the way that Ailsa McWhinnie used to leave my Americanisms alone in my U.K. Black & White Photography magazine column. —MJ]

**Canon Professional Services, Canon's limited-membership support organization for Canon-using professionals.

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Mark Cotter: "I was at Focus on Imaging on Sunday and managed to get my hands on all of the new cameras that interested me—Canon's 5D Mark III and the 1Dx, the Olympus OM-D, and the new Fuji X-Pro1. Being a Canon user, the new models are very nice but didn't wow me. The OM-D was a disappointment. Yes, it's a very nice camera but it's too small for my liking: it needs the two grips to make it useable. Perhaps, being an OM-1 user for my film work, I just prefer the size of the original. The Fuji line was outstanding. I'm in love with the new Fuji X-Pro1. Possibly, the nicest camera I have handled in quite some time."

PX PLZ*

Notice anything missing? Read on for the answer.

By Ctein

I'm of the persuasion that feels that most decent art is capable of speaking for itself. With occasional exceptions—and there are always exceptions—I think that work that cannot be understood in its own vernacular is not successful work.

Photographs are, for the most part, meant to be looked at. If I can't appreciate it without knowing journalism's "5 Ws"—who, what, where, when, why, and how—it's likely not a particularly good photograph (of course, tautologically, photojournalism and narratives cannot be held to such stricture). The most common sin I find photographers committing when they present their work is talking over it.

I belong to a small circle of photographers who, about once a quarter, have a "print potluck." Everybody brings a dinner dish and up to 10 prints. It's a great motivator to force us off our duffs and actually make new prints. The work varies from better-than-decent to breathtaking; the group's coordinator does work that is stunning (and I would introduce you folks to it if he would ever get a friggin' website up, and yes, I'm talking about you, R.A.).

Still, everyone talks over their work. It's not just that they don't have enough confidence in their work to let it stand on its own 3-legged easel. I find it genuinely distracting. I want to concentrate on the photograph, thank you.

Those of you who know me will be astonished to learn that I, by careful and conscious effort, am by far the most taciturn of the presenters. Saying close to nothing when showing my work gets people's attention directed at the work. I wish more photographers were like me.

Which brings me to Pier 24 in San Francisco. Like so many photography museums, this was created by one man, Andy Pilara, to house his collection. It hosts long-running shows (six months or more) featuring work from his collection and from other major collections. It springs from the typical collectors' problem: if you are serious about collecting art, you will quickly exceed the capacity of your house. And if you're a really rich collector, you typically solve this problem by endowing a museum to build a wing to house your collection, or you build your own museum.

In other respects, this is far from a typical photography museum. It is free to the public, an unfortunate rarity in the United States these days. All you need is an appointment. Its doors are never open to walk-ins. Entry is by reservation only, during the operating hours of the museum (roughly 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Thursday).

You make your reservation up to 30 days in advance, for a specific day and two-hour block of time. You will not be admitted early. You may not stay late. An attendant will come looking for you a few minutes before your allotted time has expired. They will find you, even though the museum has something like 27,000 ft. of exhibition space and two-dozen-odd galleries. That is because Pier 24 admits no more than 20 people at one time!

Most of the time you'll have an entire gallery to yourself, no distracting crowds, no concerns about getting in the way of other attendees or vice versa or distracting them with your heated artistic discussions with your visiting companion (assuming you have one...or are comfortable talking to yourself). It's your own personal humongous viewing room.

Is this what you're looking for?

The most unusual aspect of Pier 24 is that there is no textual information in any of the gallery spaces, not a single word. It is purely a photographic experience. The only identifying information is a number set into the floor in the middle of the gallery. You can pick up an exhibition book when you enter the museum. On the page devoted to that gallery, you will usually find the name of the photographer. Sometimes, not always, you will find titles for the works on the wall (the exhibition book has photographs of the walls with the hanging work for identification; the real hanging work doesn't even have identifying numbers). On very rare occasions you will find some sort of artist statement.

The experience is indescribable. Hence, I am not even going to try. I was amazed, amused, and slightly appalled at how disconcerted I was by being made to look at photographs with no external information. It was almost a compulsion to want to know something about the backstory, at least who made the photograph.

I resisted; I never looked in the exhibition book until I had thoroughly studied the work in a gallery. In most every room, that additional information didn't change my appreciation of the photograph one bit. Given how compelling the urge was to acquire that knowledge, I thought it would. The urge was real; the actual need, as it turned out, was not. In a few cases, the additional knowledge did alter my opinions and impressions but 90% of the time it turned out to be irrelevant.

A singularly peculiar and enjoyable experience. One I plan to repeat.

Check it out: http://www.pier24.org. Currently they're between exhibits; the best way to find out when the new one will be mounted (and thereby give you first chance to make a reservation to see it) is to sign up for their newsletter.

Ctein

*Yes, the XKCD cartoon is one of my favorites. (Don't forget to check the mouseover texts.)

Scheduled viewings of Ctein's verbal creations can usually be reserved for Wednesdays. It's just that the museum just happened to be closed yesterday.

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Ansel Adams at the LCDM

If you noticed things were a little quiet around here yesterday, it's because Michael McCaskey enticed me to unchain my ankle from the leg of the desk and venture out into the north prairie sunlight to the Ansel Adams exhibit at the Lake County Discovery Museum (a.k.a. LCDM) outside of Chicago. (The "Mystery Man" post yesterday, which got away from me somewhat and ended up taking up most of my morning, was intended just to be a lead-in for this.) Matt Witkovsky, Curator of Photography at the Art Institute of Chicago, was able to join us for an informative and engaging hour before his many duties took him away. Looking at photographs with Matt, as you might imagine, was a treat for Michael and me. The Museum was kind enough to open early for us, so we had the exhibit to ourselves for an hour before the crowds arrived. My thanks to Andrew and the staff for their hospitality.

And the crowds did arrive. Despite being located in Wauconda, on a 3,000-acre former "gentleman's farm" that's part of the Lake County Forest Preserves and quite a hike from downtown Chicago (Lake County is the northeasternmost county in Illinois and Wauconda is near the western edge of it), Katherine Hamilton-Smith, Director of Cultural Resources for the Preserves and the person responsible for the exhibition, told us that the show is drawing well over 500 visitors a day—which Matt mentioned is as good as the attendance at some AIC shows. That's the drawing power of Ansel, definitely the most popular American photographer of the 20th century. To call his appeal "robust" might be understating things; the public never tires of Ansel Adams. He's evergreen. (Inset: the picture from yesterday: Ansel, clowning, in 1930, by his wife Virginia, doubtless with a little help from him.)

For anyone interested in attending, the show closes at the Lake County location on Sunday, but travels next to the Cedarhurst Center for the Arts in Mt. Vernon, in southern Illinois, where it will be on view from February 25th to May 6th.

Unidentified museumgoer peering at Tenaya Lake and Mount Conness, Yosemite National Park. Ansel Adams has always been a
favorite with the public.

The show consists of 70 prints that Ansel made for his daughter Anne Adams Helms (the Helms family is the one with Illinois roots, hence the connection). I wasn't able to quite get the skinny from the various parties, but evidently the prints are largely the same ones that comprise "The Museum Set" that Maggi Weston proposed to Ansel in 1978 as an autumnal summarizing of the best pictures of his career. He completed a number of those sets, but his long-range plans were interrupted by his death in 1984. Matt says the scholarly accounting of the various sets and groupings that exist is all over the place. (Maybe John Sexton knows more about the subject. I'll ask.)

I first saw the Museum Set (whether it is the same group of pictures or not, I don't know) when it was brand new, at its first showing at the Washington, D.C. gallery of Harry Lunn, the legendary photography dealer who was responsible, among other things, for making Ansel wealthy. I think I've seen an appreciable number of Adams prints only once since then, at the National Gallery, and that wasn't recently. So getting to see so many original prints again was a treat. Like visiting with old friends.

Ansel Adams, Georgia O'Keeffe and Orville Cox, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, courtesy Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Although most of the "greatest hits" are present—many of which I, too, never tire of—both Michael McC. and I chose as our favorites pictures that are not very characteristic of Ansel. One of the ones Michael especially liked was the famous portrait of Orville Cox and Georgia O'Keefe, one of the few famous AA pictures taken with a 35mm camera (a Contax). "Best of Show" for me was also a portrait, a large-format portrait called "Mrs. Gunn on Porch."

Ansel Adams, Mrs. Gunn on Porch, courtesy
Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

You can't "see" it very well from this rather poor JPEG, but the print is lovely, the picture unaffected and direct.

I'm almost certain I've never seen an original print of Mrs. Gunn before, although I could be wrong. (I'm no longer convinced, as I was for most of my earlier life, than I can remember every single photograph I've ever seen, a conviction that began in early childhood but was probably never literally true). Anyway, it's of a genre I now think I like best in LF, and maybe in all of photography, that is if I could ever say such a thing: the environmental portrait. It's also tonally "quiet," especially for Ansel.

As an aside, speaking of that, one thing I think is interesting is that the tonal properties of Ansel's work have been "changed" by the passing of more time and history. When I was young he was quite extreme in printing style: he walked a technical razor's edge from deep shadows to brilliant highlights, accentuating the contrasted edges and layers of light and dark that he loved so much. He inspired a legion of imitators, of course, who collectively changed the way we expect black-and-white photographs to look. (One of my friends used to refer to "zippy-zappy Zoners" to describe both the look and those who indulged it most.)  Anyway, my point is that he looks gentler now than he used to...less zippy-zappy, you might say. The prints have not changed, but now that local contrast and unsharp masking are as easy as moving a virtual slider, visual convention has gone even more over the top and Ansel no longer looks so radical tonally.

Ansel Adams, Church and Road, Bodega, California, courtesy
Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Ansel's picture of Bodega Church in Sonoma (above)—also a star of Hitchcock's "The Birds"—shows his tonal style, which used to be extreme and now isn't, at least not quite so much. I've always thought this picture was influenced by Wright Morris, the starkness of whose pictures of prairie sunlight has never been surpassed. (By the way, this was taken in 1953, by coincidence the same year Penn Camera started out in business.)

Another interesting thing we learned yesterday was that the Lake County Discovery Museum has the largest public collection of postcards in the world. Learn something new every day, I always say.

The LCDM, which will be moving to new facilities soon, regularly holds shows of postcard-sized art inspired by its huge holding of postcards.

All in all a very pleasant show, and a fine way to spend a morning ignoring my bloggerly duties. Thanks to Michael for inspiring and organizing the trip.

Mike
(Thanks to Katherine Hamilton-Smith)

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Steve L.: "Looks like you and I were doing the same thing on the same day, but in different parts of the country. My sister and I were at the Ansel Adams exhibit at the Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute Museum in Utica, N.Y. It's also one of his "museum sets", prints made by the man himself in 1970 I believe. I've done quite a bit of B&W printing (silver based in the past, digital now), and I found the quality of his prints simply breathtaking. It's the first time I've seen any of his work in person and it was well worth the trip. The exhibit ends on Sunday. Anybody in the area should definitely have a look."

Featured Comment by Jim Ullrich: "At the Missoula (Montana)Art Museum is a display of 130 of Ansel Adams's prints until April 15, 2012. These are privately owned by a former Dell Computer CFO who wanted to get an anniversary gift of four prints for his wife. He could not get 4, but could get 138 from the collection of the Friends of Photography. More of this story can be found in an article by Joe Nickell at the Missoulian.

Featured Comment by Bruce: "This show was such a treat. I brought my copy of Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs and sat in awe as I compared the prints to what I saw in the book. One image from Hawaii that I thought was okay in the book was just jaw dropping in person. I sneaked a few shots with my Fuji X100 as souvenirs. I was lucky in that there was no one there that day and spent a couple of hours with these magnificent images."

Mike replies: That's a great thing to do. It really opens your eyes (mind?) to the difference between good reproductions and original prints. Online JPEGs are another tier below good book repro, too.

One thing I worry about is that not enough people are seeing enough good prints these days. Just yesterday I was surfing around flickr, and kept coming on comments like "Great B&W tones!" left under B&W pictures that I thought were just tonally atrocious. I mean really, remarkably, unredeemably bad, not just a difference between my taste and the photographer's. And there they were, drawing praise and positive reinforcement. That seems like a "blind leading the blind" kind of problem to me, and is perhaps the result of not enough people being familiar enough with good work firsthand.

Featured Comment by AlanRossPhoto: "I’m glad you all had a chance to see the show, and I am glad Anne is still making it available. In fact, that is exactly why Ansel created the Museum Sets—so the work could be acquired by institutions and public-minded individuals on a not-for-profit basis, and keep the sets available for continued public viewing."

Alan is former Assistant to Ansel Adams and a wonderful photographer in his own right. —Ed.

Travels in Chicago, Continued

Know what this is? (Main Hall, Modern Wing, Art Institute of Chicago)

To continue my account of my recent sortie to the City of Big Shoulders—

After the football game, I had dinner with my brother, sister-in-law, and niece at a fine little restaurant called either Duck Fat or Fat Duck—it apparently hasn't quite made up its mind on the name yet. (Which reminds me, I'll have something to say about my current portrait project in a day or two. Or three; you know me). Speaking of fat, later, Charlie and I chewed a lot of it (figuratively speaking) while exercising the cats with a laser pointer. They love that.

Michael, Ken, and Matt, by me

The next day, Monday, I met Michael McCaskey and our friend Ken Tanaka at Terzo Piano, the restaurant at the Art Institute, for lunch. Ken brought along his friend and colleague Matt Witkovsky, the bright and dynamic young Chairman of the Photography Department at the AIC. Matt came to the AIC from Washington D.C. (where I went to school), where he was an associate curator of photography at The National Gallery.

I've often said that if you get any two photo guys together they'll have no shortage of things to talk about. Well, this group was that multiplied by a factorial and on steroids—I was the least articulate and knowledgeable guy at the table. Michael, who is a charming, personable guy, strikes me as a sort of polymath, perfectly at home and at ease no matter the topic. He can talk about Ethiopian written languages, or a job photographing monks making caskets, or the history of Chicago architecture as easily as he can talk about football.

And see that camera on the table, in the picture? That's Michael's, and, believe it or not, it marked the first time I've laid my eyes on a real Fuji X100. At least five individuals and organizations have promised to send me one before now and none have come through. I was beginning to think I'd never see one. It's considerably more exquisite than it looks in pictures; I can see why people find it so beguiling.

Ken, Matt, and me, by Michael, taken with my camera.

The curators and installers are in the finishing stretch of an enormous job putting up an elaborate multimedia exhibit that was six years in the making, called "Light Years," so the whole staff is in full-on work mode. But Matt was able to give us a brief tour of one of his galleries before he was obliged to get back to work. Matt's enthusiasm is infectious, and it's clear he's got good ideas and big plans for photography at the AIC—as well as the energy to implement them. One can only hope he'll get some more space to work with someday, too, now that the new Modern Wing has taken some of the pressure off the older buildings. In any event, he's already managed to put his stamp on the Department despite having been the head of it only since 2009.

Ken took over as tourguide after that. "Only" a volunteer at the museum*, he's there several days a week, knows everyone, and is just fantastic company for a walking tour in virtually any room in any of the buildings.

Ken and friend in the African Art room

We finally reached the Timothy O'Sullivan exhibit three hours after lunch began, and I confess I wasn't in the mood for it. I loved Civil War photography as a kid, and went through an "O'Sullivan period." But that was then. By now, I've seen the western expedition work many times, I've read the best of the older books twice (American Frontiers by Joel Snyder, Aperture, 1981, which is excellent), and...well, it's just not where I find myself photographically right now. No harm, no foul. However, the little show right next door, called "The Three Graces," I thought was wonderful. It consists of hundreds of snapshots from the huge Peter J. Cohen collection, each one featuring three women, a curious but ultimately quite charming idea. There's a book.

What I liked best was everything else we saw, from the Bertrand Goldberg exhibit, to our casual stroll through the core of the Institute's collections, with all their Monets, to the African room.

(Oh, and as to what that is in the picture at the top of the post.... At the Corcoran, the photography department is (or was) at the end of a long corridor they use (or used) as an exhibit space for student art. Coming out of the darkroom at one or two in the morning with my friends, with no one else around, admittedly just a little punchy after fourteen hours at school, I'd exercise what I called my "Critical Principle" on the hapless artworks slumbering innocently in the hall. The Critical Principle was: if I can jump over it, it ain't art. I was as sproingy as Tigger in my increasingly distant youth, and I disqualified as art some surprisingly large sculpture-like pieces. Without ever destroying anything by accident, I might add, which I still count as an impressive achievement.

But the dude in the picture? That's art, man, that's what that is.**)

Despite not being in the mood for O'Sullivan, I might have to get the new book anyway. It's much more extensive in its selection than the ones I have, and it includes an essay by Mark Klett that I'm very interested in reading. Mark Klett, of course, is the guy who did the Rephotographic Survey Project and uncovered some really fascinating things—revelatory, even—about the way O'Sullivan worked.

All in all, then, a fun, rewarding, rejuvenating couple of days.

I really should get out more. Especially with the getting as good as that.

Mike

*He also serves on the Museum's Committee on Photography.

**Actually, I really do like that sculpture, once I manage to extract my tongue from its habitual place in my cheek.

ADDENDUM from Ken: The sculpture in Mike's first image is Vater Staat (Father State) by German artist Thomas Schuttë. Since its installation last May, this 12-foot giant has become an unofficial greeter in the Modern Wing's cavernous Griffin Court, and a big hit with schoolchildren. You can read a bit more about it on the Art Institute's Museum blog.

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Les Rencontres d’Arles Photographie 2011

Hundreds of photography books go on show at the Rencontres, at which the European Publishers Award for Photography is announced.

By Roger Overall

If someone told you they'd just been to the big international photography festival in Arles, southern France, you'd be well within your rights to ask: "Which one?" There are, as best I can tell, five festivals—all of which run concurrently, some of which appear in each other's promotional literature. As one French photographer put it while trying to explain the situation: "It's complicated."

The first is the official festival, the real Rencontres, which puts on the prestigious exhibitions, workshops, book signings, talks and portfolio reviews in the most high-profile venues (including the town's Roman ruins). It runs from early July to mid-September every year.

The second festival is the Voies Off, or the "Off" for short, best described as the official unofficial festival that runs during the opening week of its bigger sibling.

Arles 3 comprises the dozens of exhibitions put on in gallery spaces (or any space, for that matter, including cafes, courtyards and basements) organized by independent photographers. By the way, such is the demand for a space during opening week of the official festival that photographers are rumoured to offer as much as €2,000 to shoehorn themselves in somewhere. The calibre of picture buyers, agents and international gallery owners who visit the festival each year is such that a few grand to secure the right space is considered a good investment.

Arles 4 is a single-evening extravaganza, hosted in a bohemian part of Arles called la Roquette. It’s a night of projections on walls and temporary screens, along with some street theatre. One lady spent the evening orating from her living room window this year. My French is bad, so I don't know whether she was any good. She held the attention of a crowd, mind you.

Arles 5 consists of the guerrilla exhibitions that spring up on alleyway walls and in shop windows overnight. Some of these even have official openings with wine and nibbles. When a friend of mine asked a young photographer on the street when the opening of his exhibition was, he was told: "You’re standing in it."

A single-print exhibit, an unofficial one, on the streets of Arles itself.

Small wonder that at the end of opening week the biggest question on everyone's lips is: "What did I miss?"

Surely the highlight of this year's festival is the main exhibit by the New York Times Magazine. I say "main" exhibit because there is a second, inferior NYT Magazine show consisting of stenciled tear sheets. The latter has the feel of a filler event. Maybe it is, I don't know, but with around two-thirds of the funding for the main festival coming from the public purse and private donations there is a possibility that cheap padding was needed to give this year's festival some bulk in the face of reduced funding in harsh economic times.

Anyway, none of that should detract from the main NYT Magazine exhibit, which is both exciting and engaging in terms of the variety of work on display and the way in which it is presented. Hard-news reportage sits next to celebrity portraiture, in most cases with explanation and supporting documentation about how a shoot came to publication. The many telexes, faxes, emails, notepad pages and so on give a terrific insight into the photographic process at the magazine, allowing you a glimpse behind the veil.

You can't talk about the NYT Magazine show without mentioning what many on the cafe terraces around Place du Forum, Arles' main square and social focal point, said were the most incredible black-and-white prints they had ever seen: Sebastião Salgado’s photographs of Kuwaiti oil well fires being quelled after the first Gulf War. "Breathtaking" is an overused adjective. In this instance, it is deserved.

Which I suppose brings us neatly to the greatest disappointment of this year's Rencontres, in my opinion at least. Shunted out to the edge of town is what should be the event's star turn: The Mexican Suitcase—an exhibition of the presumed lost negatives belonging to Robert Capa, David (Chim) Seymour and Gerda Taro, produced predominantly during the Spanish Civil War. The miserable exhibit space was badly lit, making it hard to see the photographs on display in some instances. In that regard, they may as well have stayed hidden in a plastic bag at the bottom of a cupboard in Mexico (the "suitcase." if there ever was one, is more a marketing concept than reality).

Wang Qingsong's ambitious 42-metre long print titled "The History of Monuments," incorporating 200 models photographed over two weeks.

As a whole, though, the first week of the Rencontres cannot disappoint. Arles is beautiful; no photographer could resist its visual charms. Good food and wine surrounds you. And it is easy to strike up conversations and friendships with photographers from around the world, including those who actually have work on show. Unless, of course, you don't share a common language. Upon leaving Wang Qingsong's remarkable single-print exhibition, I more or less collided with the photographer himself. Presuming he had no English, and me with no Chinese, all I could think to do was smile and shake his hand vigorously, while saying "Fantastic!" over and over again. I think the poor man thought he was being mugged.

Roger

Roger Overall is a professional documentary photographer based in Cork, Ireland.

ADDENDUM by Roger: Regarding The Mexican Suitcase: two readers have commented on the existence of an actual suitcase, one stating that it was on display in New York.

The physical containers of the negatives consist of a green cardboard box, a red/brown cardboard box (both containing rolls of film), and a box that contained film in envelopes. The red/brown box and the green box look to have been handmade for their purpose and, like the Mona Lisa, are much smaller in person than you would imagine in your mind. Neither are an actual suitcase, or resemble one.

Nor was a single suitcase on show in Arles. In fact, that would be impossible. None was ever recovered with the negatives. In the documentary by Trisha Ziff about the negatives and their recovery and place in history that premiered at the festival, Mexican filmmaker Benjamin Tarver, who was instrumental in recovering the negatives, talks of the three boxes being handed to him by their unwitting custodian in a plastic bag.

According to the website of the International Center of Photography, established by Robert Capa’s brother Cornell and the current custodians of the negatives: "As far as we understand, Capa left all his negatives in his Paris studio at 37 rue Froidevaux, under the supervision of his darkroom manager and fellow photographer Imre 'Csiki' Weiss (1911–2006). In a letter dated July 5, 1975, Weiss recalled, 'In 1939, when the Germans approached Paris, I put all Bob's negatives in a rucksack [my italics, RO] and bicycled it to Bordeaux to try to get it on a ship to Mexico. I met a Chilean in the street and asked him to take my film packages to his consulate for safekeeping."

So, at the time they vanished, the boxes were in a rucksack, likely a French one at that.

Moreover, in a FAQ section of its Mexican Suitcase website, the ICP says: "The Mexican Suitcase is the name given to three boxes of negatives found in Mexico City containing negatives of the Spanish Civil War by Robert Capa, Chim (David Seymour), and Gerda Taro."

While the three boxes collectively are known as The Mexican Suitcase, there is no actual, physical, single suitcase. The phrase is a metaphor—if that’s the right word.

That said, as a marketing concept and collective noun, it is superb. It is evocative, exotic, mysterious, and is suggestive of the journey of the negatives.

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Video: Paul Trevor

Photo by Paul Trevor

Here's a nice video by the English photographer Paul Trevor about some old work of his that's just been coming into its own within the past couple of years.

It's also quite pertinent to the discussion(s) in these 'ere precincts recently. A short digression about something that made me chuckle the other day: half tongue-in-cheek, I had sung the praises of Tri-X 400 in a joking comment. I then got an email from a reader who rather anxiously wondered why I liked Tri-X 400 and whether HP5 Plus was as good—what were the properties of Tri-X 400, he asked, that made it special? I'm sure he was asking about aesthetic properties, but many of the reasons I liked Tri-X 400 were purely practical: it withstands long latency periods (the time between exposure and development) gracefully; it doesn't deteriorate easily when stored temporarily in high heat, for instance inside a car or a trunk in mid-summer; it's got good low contrast, and high "latitude" or forgivingness for sub-optimal exposures; it prints fine even with higher levels of fb+f; etc.

Similarly, people always talk about the old "film vs. digital" question like it's all about aesthetic properties and workflow (and now materials availability, as we were discussing yesterday). But I'm lazy, and somewhat disorganized. Re that, listen to what Paul Trevor says in the video starting about 30 seconds in.

Purely by coincidence, almost the same thing happened to me not four days ago. I happened to find an old binder on the floor. Covered with dust, tucked away and hidden by a couple of stack of old CDs, forgotten, it happened to have in it my very first self-developed photographic efforts—photographs I made as a teenager 40 years ago. I was delighted to discover it again—I couldn't have found it on purpose if my life depended on it (at least not quickly). I always have to shake my head when people claim our digital work is permanent. There isn't one in 100 of us whose digital files will be recoverable 40 years from now—and I'm not talking about theoretically, I'm talking about actually. As in, someone will be able to find them, open them, and share the pictures or make new prints. Especially if the archives were not "curated" along the way, or if the curation gets interrupted by the inconvenient intrusion of our own demise (I don't mean to be macabre or morose, but let's be honest, that trend does look robust). The "store once" property of B&W film negatives is one of film's greatest advantages, if you ask me (or, I'm sure, Paul). Forget them, and they wait for you. Come back to them, and it's like you've never been away.

I really like Paul Trevor's work, but then, it's the sort of thing I'm a sucker for, like some people just love Westerns, or pickup trucks, or German beer, or Herman Brood and his Wild Romance at high volumes, or whatever. I love naturalistic B&W 35mm slice-of-life pictures with that offhand compositional dynamism that Paul seemed to get so skillfully back in Liverpool in the '70s. Just a sucker for it. It's "home" for me photographically, so I assume I'm less than objective about it. You'll have to decide for yourself what you think about the work.

That'll be a lot easier if you're within traveling distance of the Walker Art Center in Liverpool. The show (it's called "Like You've Never Been Away") is up until September 25th. (The pictures are nominally "available" on flickr, but only as snapshots from the discolored contact sheets, a way of seeing them you might want to actively avoid.) I have to confess the idea of flying to England just to see the show flitted across my brain. Not normally the sort of thing I do, or can afford to do. Then again, one only lives once....

Mike
(Thanks to Stephen Rees)

ADDENDUM: So this doesn't seem one-sided (many readers have trouble accepting that I'm film/digital agnostic—or, perhaps, that anyone should be), I might add that many of the reasons I like digital are completely practical too—for instance, I don't have to stand at the kitchen sink for an hour every other night performing a tedious rote chore, and I can shoot at 3200 without the fatalistic conviction that I'm completely wasting my energy. Etc.)

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

The Elliott Erwitt ICP Show in New York

By Miserere

Last week my wife received a call from her cousin saying he'd be in New York City for the weekend and would we want to go down to meet up. We both said yes! My wife would get to see her cousin and I would go to Erwitt's exhibit, which I'd written about on my website just a few days earlier. Not only that, but we'd also be in NYC during the Rapture, which could only make it more fun. In the end my wife came with me to the ICP on Saturday morning, and we enjoyed it so much that the one hour we had planned for it stretched to three, including a nice lunch in the surprisingly affordable ICP cafeteria (I recommend both the salmon sandwich and the tandoori chicken with chick pea salad).

The exhibit is divided into two floors with over 100 of Erwitt's favourite photographs. Here is my first and only beef with Erwitt: An artist is not always the best judge of his/her own work. I felt some of his images didn't really belong in this exhibit when compared in quality with the majority of the rest; I'd be walking down the wall and all of a sudden I'd come upon a photo that made me think huh? how did this get in here? I'm sure those few photos are favourites for some reason or other, but I suspect it's emotional, not objective appreciation of these photos.

Having got that out of the way, everything else I have to say is positive. The prints were all very large; I estimate the majority were 12x18 inches with quite a few 18x27, and the printing was superb (though I warn you I am not a printer, just a lowly photographer). My wife remarked about the wooden frames being very nice, though I hardly noticed them; if I had to guess, I'd say they were cherry wood or walnut. The lighting was invisible, meaning I found the prints to be well illuminated and was never distracted by reflections off the cover glass (as I am in most other photography exhibits), so I never saw the light, only the photos. We were lucky the gallery was mostly empty so we had plenty of space and time to admire each photograph, and I confess to grain peeping a few times...don't tell anyone!

Photo from elliotterwitt.com

But what about the images, man? Tell us about the images! Yes, yes, I'm getting there. So the images.... Are you a Street Photography fan? A dog lover? Do you enjoy the nostalgia of post war Europe in the '50s and '60s? What about political imagery? All of these are represented to some degree in Erwitt's photography, and dare I say that he was a Jack of all trades, master of many. As a street shooter myself, I thoroughly enjoy his humour and timing. Unlike the godfather of street photography, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Erwitt's timing is less about the decisive moment, and more about the right moment in the right place. A crane (the bird) stands close to a pipe with tap on the end, both curving around sharing the same pose; a couple is reflected in the side mirror of the car where they are cuddling; another couple smile for the camera through the glass from the back of a tram, unaware that the true subject of the photo is the boy hitching a free ride below them. And the humour, oh, how good Erwitt is at making you laugh; my wife and I let out loud giggles at some of his best, elbowing each other in the ribs as we did so.

Going to the bottom floor we were met by a group of his political images (Che Guevara, Nixon burying his finger in Khrushchev's chest, Jaqueline Kennedy weeping at JFK's funeral, the white/black water fountain...) on three walls, most of which are printed in the larger size. Turning around to the fourth wall there are two photos with Marilyn Monroe, one with the cast of The Misfits and another a lovely portrait taken in a dark room. Of interest to us photographers here are a few sets of contact sheets showing the images from the Marilyn, Nixon vs. Khrushchev, and JFK funeral, all with annotations in red marker made, presumably, by Erwitt himself. It's fun to play the game "which ones would I have chosen"; while there's no denying he picked the best ones, it's reassuring to see that not all his shutter clicks produced masterpieces, and that he sometimes got the exposure wrong, too. Sorely missing was an old camera, which seems to be a staple of these kinds of exhibits.

To round off the exhibit there are a few of his large photo books on a table, with chairs so patrons can sit down and peruse them without hurry. We spent a good half hour leafing through Erwitt's Paris, Erwitt's Rome and Personal Best. All of them show high-quality reproductions on nice matte paper, but fall short by neglecting margins for most images and making many horizontal images double-truck, effectively cutting them in half with the spine. I don't understand how publishers are allowed to get away with this semi-criminal activity.

If you are in New York City between now and August 28, you owe it to yourself to see this exhibit. I had a smile on my face throughout the whole visit—that's just how fun Erwitt is.

Miserere

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Comment by Joe: "Totally agree, on all counts. I just now got home from the ICP and I'm still feeling the effect of that wonderful show. Is there a well-known photographer who's more delightfully whimsical? Well printed, well displayed, great mix of classic familiar pieces and surprises. I was glad to see they were printed large, too. I'm going back."

Random Excellence: Ainslie Ellis, 1970

Ainslie Ellis's contact sheet of portraits of the late Tony Ray-Jones was loaned to the National Media Museum, Bradford (U.K.), by Anna Ray-Jones, for the museum's show "The Lives of Great Photographers." According to the notice in The Independent, the exhibition pairs "portraits of the masters with some of their most famous works, alongside illuminating snippets from their notebooks."

Mike
(Thanks to readers numerous, perspicacious, and erudite)

UPDATE: Amplify that last! I logged into the comment moderation page to find more than eighty comments responding to my earlier request for help in locating the source of this. For the sake of not clogging up the comments to this post I've elected not to publish them all, but thanks to everyone.

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.