The Online Photographer

Saul Leiter 1923-2013

Saul Leiter

Saul Leiter, a color photographer's color photographer, died a week ago today.

I suspect he'll be one of those photographers we learn more about as time passes, rather than less; he strikes me as a figure who will be known a century from now, once all the claims and pretenses and strivings of more effortful reputations have had a chance to fall away.

He photographed like everyone imagines a painter would: with an intense focus not on what was in front of the camera but on what the camera made of it.

He wasn't particularly famous in the 1950s when he did his most innovative work—or rather he was, briefly, but the moment soon faded. He reportedly didn't particularly seek fame and was sanguine about its ups and downs. But he was very lucky to enjoy a golden sunset to his life, thanks to the protean German publisher Gerhard Steidl, who published Early Color in 2008, a book that was in intense demand at the time and that revitalized attention and regard for Leiter. (We played a small part in helping publicize the book: TOP readers bought many hundreds of copies.)

Saul Leiter's only magazine cover?

Our friend Jim Hughes, who writes occasionally for TOP now, thinks that maybe the November/December 1981 issue of his magazine Camera Arts might be Saul's only magazine cover—at least featuring his artistic work. Saul was one of Jim's sources for Shadow and Substance, his biography of W. Eugene Smith. And a little-known fact, in Jim's words: "Gene Smith set Saul on his quest for personally meaningful visual images by giving him his first real camera, a 35mm Contax, in the late 1940s." Of Saul himself, Jim says, "Saul was wise, amusing and self-deprecating, to say the least. His perspective on life seemed to me to be very interior, with everything seen at oblique angles."

There are many nice things on the Internet about him from this past week: primarily the New York Times obituary. There is a film about Saul Leiter out there, one of many that I evidently don't get to see*.

News of his death has sucked dry the available supply of the recent books, but stocks of Early Color and Kehrer Verlag's Saul Leiter will allegedly be replenished soon. (I have not seen the latter.)

The piece you really should not miss is Teju Cole's beautifully written little piece for the New Yorker's Page-Turner. Called "Postscript: Saul Leiter (1923-2013)," it is an epitaph for a fortunate artistic life.

Mike
(Thanks to Stephan Miller, John Bax, and Jim Hughes.
If anyone knows who took the photo of Leiter at the top, please let me know.)

*Being at the letter-to-the-editor-writing stage of my continuing emergence as a curmudgeon, I actually wrote an email to the manager of the local multiplex. With 16 screens and two three-story-high "UIltrascreens," I pleaded, couldn't at least one screen be devoted to small films for serious thinking adults? Much to my surprise, I received a long response. He said they were sympathic, and they were trying to do that, but the films for the local market are chosen by the "main office" or whatever he called it, and the faceless corporate managers there make all the decisions. Those entities do not appear to have a very high opinion of sophistication of the citizens of Waukesha, unfortunately.

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.

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Featured Comments from:

Larry Watson: "I had a nice email exchange with Tomas Leach, the film-maker of In No Great Hurry, the documentary on Saul Leiter. I, too, had not seen it and I am a big Saul Leiter fan. One can subscribe to their mailing list for updates about seeing the film. Mr. Leach said they are hoping for a week in NYC in January. He also said that hopefully, Netflix and iTunes may carry the film, but that 'for a small movie like this, they are very slow....' I was also able to watch an interview on YouTube with Saul conducted in Amsterdam, I believe it was in 2011.

"As far as magazine covers, I thought I saw covers he did for Bazaar and Vogue when he was doing fashion photography. I only have a little book by Thames & Hudson. Look forward to seeing Early Color when it is reprinted."

Ailsa: "Thank you for the New Yorker link—it's always good to read such a warm, appreciative piece of writing. As for the cinema issue, I am lucky enough to live just a five-minute walk from one of the south's best cinemas—the Duke of York's, in Brighton (famous for the pair of can-can legs on its roof). Every now and then, my husband and I discuss moving out of Brighton, but when I think of living more than a mile or so from some of the best films you could hope to see, I become slightly panic-stricken. And if anything demonstrates that the public has an appetite for 'arthouse' films, it's this: the Duke of York's recently opened its second cinema in Brighton—a city with a population of only 270,000."

Mike replies: Still, that's about four times the population of Waukesha. And, I really must visit Brighton some day!

Open Mike II: R.I.P. J.J. Cale

This picture (by Gijsbert Hanekroot) should go in the blank white space*

He was known to the public at large as the writer of Eric Clapton's hits "After Midnight" and "Cocaine." But then, he never wanted to be known to the public at large.

Oddly, people cover "Call Me the Breeze" on Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute albums...even though Lynyrd Skynyrd's version was a cover of J.J. Cale.

He was called J.J. rather than the name he used in the first half of his life, John, to avoid confusion with the Velvet Underground's John Cale.

Neil Young once said, "Of all the players I ever heard, it's gotta be Hendrix and J.J. Cale who are the best electric guitar players." Eric Clapton said simply that J.J. Cale was the person he most admired.

If you're unfamiliar with him, download "Naturally" from iTunes, his 1971 debut effort for Denny Cordell and Leon Russell's Shelter Records. You'll either be hooked or you won't be—Cale was laid-back to a fault, and sounded just like an old black man even when he was a young white man. The modality is country blues, the riff on it unique.

I adore the song "Magnolia." But "Clyde" no less, really.

My favorite of his albums is probably Shades, with its cover reminiscent of a pack of Gitanes. Most people have a favorite album, one or another, often the one they got to know first.

Late in life he said, "If it weren't for Eric Clapton, I'd be selling shoes now."

He died of a heart attack on Friday, age 74. On jjcale.com it says, "Donations are not needed but he was a great lover of animals so, if you like, you can remember him with a donation to your favorite local animal shelter."

You know what's playin' Chez TOP today on the downstairs system. J.J. Cale on scratchy old vinyl. Perfect art.

Mike
(Thanks to Steve Rosenblum)

"Open Mike" is a series of off-topic essays by Yr. Hmbl. Ed. that appear here on Sundays.

*But I don't want G*tty climbing up my a**.

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's links!

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Featured Comments from:

Andrew Molitor: "Cale's a perfect metaphor for a lot of what I think about photography. Some of his best recordings are just some session players he grabbed from someplace and a drum machine. You don't need a bunch of gear to make great music. You don't even need good gear. You didn't even need gear capable of making particularly high fidelity recordings. What you need, what you can't escape from, is some great music. Extending this to photography is left as an exercise for the student!"

Hans Muus: "Don't know where to begin—there are so many Cale songs that I love. 'Crazy mama,' on the first album (Naturally), will always be one of my favourites (note the beautiful, archetypical wah-wah slide guiter by Mac Hayden that fits in so well with the groove that J.J. Cale is laying down). And I was there  at the (single) concert Cale gave in 1974 in Amsterdam where the backstage picture by Gijsbert Hanekroot was taken that TOP is linking to! J.J. Cale, sitting on a chair, half of the time with his back to the auditorium, seemed a little shy. The show lasted exactly sixty minutes—we were actually surprised it was over so fast. To my (young) mind, there were quite a few old blokes in his band—but they all played marvelously, including the almost invisible master himself. (In the Europe of that time, rock music was pretty much a youth-only thing.)

"In later years, my musical friends and I have practiced hours and hours on end trying to emulate the typical Cale sound. It is all about laying down the right groove, in which each single instrument involved does very little individually, but what it does has to be just right. A true joy when it happens (not very often...) and a thing of beauty when you hear it practiced by J.J. Cale and his friends.

"I hope he has not suffered much and may rest in peace. Been listening to his music (LPs and CDs) for the past two days to no end."

Dave Brubeck 1920-2012

Dave Brubeck just died. I grew up on rock and came to jazz late, like a longtime Catholic converting to Buddhism, so Brubeck is still relatively new to me. If you don't know him, try this if you can get it in the next 37 nanoseconds before it sells out. CDs of five of his best records for what amounts to shipping cost. My favorite is Time Further Out, but all five are excellent.

Or if you'd rather not, try this—a quick taste, suggested by Steve Gilbert. The laugh at the end is the drummer, Joe Morello, reportedly relieved that he got through it.

Mike
(Thanks to Steve, Michel, and others)

Original contents copyright 2012 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.
A book of interest today:

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Featured Comments from:

Paul De Zan: "I have very little in common with my father, except for the LP collection he assembled in the '50s and early '60s, before he started to lose interest in absolutely everything around age 35; an unhappy marriage and innate overcautiousness will do that to you. When I was small, the music in our house came from tinny AM radio, which I ignored, and from dad's kit-assembled Harman-Kardon Citation V tube-fired amplifier. And the music was Dave Brubeck's music, a bit of Ellington, later Stan Getz, never Miles, but a lot of Dave Brubeck. Brubeck wasn't jazz to me, he was music to me for the first 10–12 years I was on this rock. Paul Desmond was the first musician whose death I grieved. Dave's is just the latest. Sic transit gloria mundi."

Sal Santamaura (partial comment): "To get a sense of the man's true greatness, watch this short video segment."

Steve Biro: "I am 55 years old now, which means I was about five when Time Out featuring 'Take Five' was issued by Columbia. Perhaps it was exposure since (and probably before) birth to my parents' swing records that prepared me (I really enjoyed Benny Goodman as a child). But even at that young age, I was hooked instantly. I honestly cannot remember a time when I did not love both the album and song. It kicked off a lifelong love affair with jazz and the broader world of music. Sure, like most people my age I loved the Beatles and all that came after them. But jazz was and remains my musical center. And I owe it to Dave Brubeck. We are all very fortunate to have had him with us for so long. God speed, Dave. And thank you."

Digital Photography Pioneer

R.I.P.

-

Mike

Original contents copyright 2012 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.

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Featured Comments from:

David Ralph: "A search of the Rochester newspaper, the Democrat and Chronicle, reveals that Bryce Bayer's passing eluded their attention. Not that much different than Kodak's own appreciation for the import of the invention."

Malcolm Browne and the Burning Monk

Photo by Malcolm Browne for the Associated Press, 1963

It's one of the very few photographs that anyone can visualize instantly from a verbal description. "The burning monk." You know the picture.

Malcolm Browne was the photographer; he died yesterday after a long and full life.

I knew little about the photo and nothing about him. I was fascinated to learn from the obituary that many foreign journalists and photographers were alerted a day in advance to show up for the event—but only Malcolm Browne did.

Good call.

I decided yesterday that I should mentally replace the word "iconic" whenever it appears with the word "famous," which is more often what people mean. But is this photograph ever...famous. An image check on the web reveals tattoos, T-shirts, macabre spoofs, a rendering in Lego, colorized versions, posters, art prints, on and on.

Malcolm Browne worked for the Associated Press when he took the picture, which was voted the World's Best News Picture of 1963 at the seventh World Press Photo contest in The Hague. He joined the New York Times in 1968.

As for Thich Quang Duc, who had acquired such mind control that he meditated peacefully as he perished, his death was not in vain. His protest actually did influence international policy.

...With a little help from the only foreign photographer who showed up to witness it.

Mike
(Thanks to Pierre Munson)

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Featured Comment by Photoelectric: "The Austin [the car —Ed.] in the photo, in which Thich Quang Duc arrived that day, is still parked in a garage at the Thien Mu temple in Hue. It's rusty and neglected and would be totally unmemorable except for that photo, which gives it a strange sort of power when you see it."

Featured Comment by Rob Atkins: "Unfortunately, self-immolation of Buddhist monks has been in the papers with disturbing frequency lately, as the Chinese government continues its repression of Tibet."

Featured Comment by PWL: "Remember seeing this photo as a kid, when it first came out. Shocking. It was photos like this, plus the stuff that photographers like Larry Burrows did (I particularly remember 'One Ride With Yankee Papa 13') which made me realize that war was very different—and a lot uglier—than what we were presented with in TV shows like 'Combat.'"

Featured Comment by peter: "Interesting Malcolm Browne's commentary on the event...."

'Most Generous Magnum Member Gone'

Martine Franck, Pauline Doohan's and Brian Gallagher's wedding,
Tory Island, County Donegal, Ireland, 1996.

R.I.P. Martine Franck, 1938–2012. She died yesterday, after a protracted illness. A "shy" but accomplished photographer, she joined the Vu Agency in the 1960s, and became a full member of Magnum Photos in 1983. She was Henri Cartier-Bresson's wife and President of the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation.

Martine Franck, U.S. photographer Paul Strand, Orgeval, France, 1972.

There's a thoughtful and informative obituary by Olivier Laurent at the British Journal of Photography website, and several portfolios available to look at at Magnum.

Martine Franck, Shechen Monastery, Bodnath, Nepal, 1996.
(Photos courtesy Magnum.)

The title of this post was a tweet by Magnum photographer John Vink.

Mike
(Thanks to Pete)

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Memories of Dick Zakia

By Barry Myers

I first met Dick when I was a student at RIT in 1970. I enrolled at RIT in 1969 but dropped out then weeks later. After two quarters of being a non-degree student, I decided that I wanted to get a degree, but on my own terms, designing my own program of studies, which drifted far from RIT's policies at the time. After several disheartening and heated meetings with the Photography School’s dean and other RIT administrators, I was pointed in the direction of the college's director of educational research, Dr. Richard Zakia.

My only experience with the name was through the Photographic Sensitometry I had taken the previous year, taught by Hollis Todd, using the text he co-authored with Dr. Zakia. I was apprehensive at best.

At our first meeting I was one angry, frustrated, anti-establishment young man, and I recall him as a sympathetic soul who made me feel at ease, who was also interested in furthering educational opportunities at RIT. After additional meetings where I showed Dick some of my work and put together a detailed proposal for a program of study, he scheduled a meeting with the administration. Recognizing that Dick was the diplomatic one, I let him present my case, and watched him convince a skeptical administration that a custom course of study could not only be done, but would benefit them as well.

The last picture of mine that Dick asked me to send him for his collection.
It shows a groom and his partner at the Del Mar Racetrack,
for a recent book project.

From that time onward, our relationship became one more of friends than that of research director and student. Dick had me out to his house several times where I met his family, and I also had him and his wife over for dinner as well. Every four or five weeks we would have lunch together in RIT's faculty dining room to talk about our work. By that time I was taking an independent study with him in Visual Perception—an area where he became a noted authority and which I think was his first love, especially as it related to photography.

Generous, facilitator, teacher, innovator, insightful and intuitive are words that I think of as I think of Dick. Many of my life experiences turned on these. While at RIT, he introduced me to Ralph Haber at the University of Rochester, then head of the Center for Visual Science there, and with whom I did two research projects. Dick had a way of visualizing how people with seemingly very different interests might benefit from working with each other.

On one occasion, he introduced me to Jim DeCaro, then a civil engineering teacher at the newly opened National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) who wanted to make instructional television programs for his students on surveying. As I was taking a television production course at the time, Dick suggested I direct a 10-minute production on surveying as my term project. Jim and I hit it off, and produced the program, and I then went on to write another 15 programs for him. Jim later became the Dean of NTID and is now the director of Pen International, an organization that trains faculty to apply innovative technologies to expand the career opportunities for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. After graduate school at the U of R, I wrote a series of television and audio programs for special needs children which were hosted by Fred Rogers.

After I left Rochester in 1974, Dick and I only saw each other a few more times. He'd call when he was in Washington, and going to the National Gallery with him was a very special treat. He loved to talk about the paintings, how they worked from his point of view, and how much in awe he was of the artist's intuitive vision.

We kept in touch, by letters, phone calls and of course, recently by email. He would tell me about his travels, what new book he was writing or revising, and about his family. I sent him photographs from projects I was working on and occasionally he'd see one he really liked and ask me to send him a print for his collection. He used several of my photographs in his books and I feel honored to have had them included.

My deepest condolences go out to Dick’s family and his many friends, colleagues, and students. We all have been influenced and changed.

Barry

Barry Myers has been a professional photographer since 1972, dividing his work between commercial and personal assignments that concentrate on people and their relationships to work, family, and community. His book Del Mar at 75: Where the Turf Meets the Surf comes out in June.

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Richard Zakia

Dick Zakia in the summer of 2011. Photo by Willie Osterman.

I was just reached with the news that Richard Zakia has died, last March 12th.

Richard (born Rashid Elisha) Zakia was one of the great photography teachers of his era in the United States. A member of the stellar 1956 graduating class at the Rochester Institute of Technology that included Carl Chiarenza, Peter Bunnell, Bruce Davidson, Ken Josephson, Pete Turner and Jerry Uelsmann—and that numbered Minor White and Beaumont Newhall among its teachers—he did a stint at Eastman Kodak as an engineer out of school, and then returned to RIT, where he taught for 34 years, eventually serving as the chair of the Fine Art Photography Department and Graduate Program in Imaging Arts.

He was the author or co-author of 13 books, and edited, with his colleague Leslie Stroebel, the mammoth third edition of The Focal Enclyclopedia of Photography. His most interesting book to me is Perception and Imaging, a fascinating and learned tome on how we see, how the camera sees, and where the twain meet. His most recent book, with co-author Glenn Rand, is Teaching Photography: Tools for the Imaging Educator, published in 2006.

Our condolences to Dick Zakia's family, his friends, and his many students.

Mike
(Thanks to Barry Myers)

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Featured Comment by Slobodan Blagojevich: "I second your choice of Perception and Imaging...it has been the most influential book in my photographic library. I used to study perception in business school (as in: in marketing, perception is reality), but in photography, Zakia's book was an eye-opener. I often use the concept of optical illusions (mentioned in the book) to introduce the concept of cognitive biases in decision making: we are by now, being familiar with certain well-known optical illusions, quite ready to accept that our brain can play tricks on us, but we are somehow still very reluctant to accept—or, even worse, to consider—that our brain can play tricks on us using cognitive biases."

The First To Go

I want to apologize for the lack of activity around here on Tuesday—I was reached by news of the sudden death of Marina Finch, an old college buddy from Dartmouth, and I was just plain feeling sad all day. Memories kept coming back to me all day long. And I was beset with regret—I always assumed I would see Marina again someday, and I just took that for granted for far too long.

Marina Finch scalloping out of her little Grady White boat, c. 2008.
Photo by Martie Mack.

Marina lived a very interesting life. She was an EMT and a scalloper out of Sconset, a village at the eastern end of Nantucket island. Out of college, she spent winters in Colorado, waiting tables at night and skiing in the daytime; summers, she'd do the same on Nantucket, spending the days at the beach. This went on for so long that her friends worried she'd never settle down. Finally, in an effort to get serious with her life, she joined the Peace Corps—which promptly dispatched her to an outrageously beautiful island in the South Pacific, where she was given the best apartment on the island in return for teaching English to bright-eyed island children. "I can't win," she wrote. Can't lose, was more like it.

She married a guy who was a pilot for an island-hopping airline, I heard, and that's when I lost touch with her. I didn't even know she was back on Nantucket, and obviously she'd been there for a long time.

Marina was one of those people who have such strong, outsized personalities that, once you know them, you can never forget them. She had great spirit, strong, almost volatile passions when I knew her, a keen intelligence, and always, always a deep and abiding sense of humor. She left friends literally all over the world—tributes poured in from Scotland, New Zealand, the mountains, the seashores, both coasts. I wouldn't have guessed I had ten memories of the times we spent together—I don't remember much from those days, an unfortunate side effect of pre-recovery addictions—but as the day wore on I rediscovered ten times that many, back in the recesses of my mind. Put the Grateful Dead on and raised a glass of club soda.

That's the bitch about middle age. Pretty much everybody makes it through their first fifty years; pretty much nobody makes it through the second fifty. It's only a question of when. The first to go are never easy for those who stay. My thoughts go out to her family.

Mike

The Real Photographer Has Now Died

You've probably heard me say before that all photojournalists work hard but the really lucky ones labor all their lives and also leave a legacy of one single shot that becomes iconic, world-famous, part of the Zeitgeist, the culture. For example, Sam Shere's picture of the crash of the Hindenburg, or Nick Ut's of the napalmed Vietnamese girl; Alberto Korda's endlessly reproduced "Guerrillero Heroico," or Joe Rosenthal's "Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima." The one picture becomes a career compacted, like carbon into diamond; the precious transcendent pinnacle, symbolic of a lifetime of work.

That makes it especially heinous when somebody steals that one picture from you. That almost happened to Stan Stearns, who died last Friday, March 2nd, at the age of 76.

Stan was the one photojournalist covering the JFK funeral who got the poignant shot of 3-year-old JFK Jr., then known as "John-John," saluting his father's caisson and casket as it passed by.

The Washington Post tells Stan's story from that day. First, he asked around to see if any of the other guys had gotten the shot. None had (although television captured it). So he decided to detach from the proceedings and rush the picture back to the UPI's Washington bureau.

"The bureau chief almost had a hemorrhage," Mr. Stearns told the Annapolis Capital in 2009. "I never saw a man turn as white as he did because I was not with the entourage going to Arlington. Then the big boss from New York overheard that and he said, 'You better have it or you’re fired on the spot.'"

He had it.

The picture made the front pages of newspapers worldwide....

The Baltimore Sun quotes David Anderson, a friend of Stan's and founder of the Professional Photographers Organization of Greater Annapolis, who said Stan "was very proud of that photo and talked about it a lot."

Lifted!
Little did Stan know, though, that for years, another photographer was busy taking credit for his most famous shot. That story itself has become part of photography's lore now. Our coverage started in this post and most importantly continued here (with a bit of rare-for-us original reporting), and a follow-up here.

Stan Stearns with his most famous picture. Photo by
Gene Sweeney Jr./Baltimore Sun

There's a good obituary of Stan at the Baltimore Sun, written by Mary Gail Hare. The picture above is by the Sun's Gene Sweeney Jr.

The New York Times published an obituary of Stan Stearns too. But, fittingly, it also published a discussion of the O'Donnell affair that stands as its obituary editor's "worst nightmare," in Clark Hoyt's Public Editor blog.

Let's have no more of that, at any rate. Let the credit for the John-John picture belong to the man who took it:

Stan Stearns, R.I.P.

Mike

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Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Eleanor Callahan Has Died

Lewis Kostiner, Harry and Eleanor Callahan, 1996

Many people familiar with the history of 20th-century American photography know Eleanor Callahan. If you don't yet, you have something to look forward to.

Wife, muse, and frequent photographic subject of Harry Callahan, one of the major American photographers, she has died, in Atlanta, at the age of 95.

In 63 years of marriage, often using his wife as a model, Harry Callahan slowly created a tender portrait of connubial life that, in his pictures, conveys an unparalelled sense of quiet intimacy and personal connection. (I've often said that Eleanor seems present even in some of his pictures in which she does not appear.) She deferred all credit to him, but of course she holds the status of collaborator in their work together.

One of Harry Callahan's many famous photographs of Eleanor

I was surprised to find that the elegant 2008 book Eleanor is still in print. There's also a DVD , which I haven't seen.

Here's the obituary from the WBPM, and an earlier 2007 article.

Harry died in 1999.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Rob Atkins: "I almost feel as though a somewhat distant relative has died. Studying Callahan's photographs of his wife and collaborator for so many years—decades, actually—Eleanor Callahan long been a part of my understanding and love of his work."

Featured Comment by Kenneth Tanaka: "She was here at the AIC in 2007 for a retrospective of Harry's work. I did not personally meet her but remember my astonishment when Liz Seigel introduced her in the audience during her lecture. May we all have such remarkable circumstances in long lives! Thank you for your patience and indulgence, Eleanor!"

Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik, R.I.P.

Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin.
Photo by Bryan Adams, 2008, from the
National Portrait Gallery (U.K.).

One wonders when the world will have had enough...

...Had enough of the depraved and despicable regime in Syria slaughtering its own helpless people.

The rest of the Arab world and the wider world at large seem just as helpless. The U.N. can't even pass a resolution condemning the mounting atrocities. And that's just words.

I wonder if you can imagine just for a moment that the U.S. Army had set up its field guns around Jacksonville, Florida or Columbus, Ohio, or El Paso, Texas (all about the size of Homs) and began shelling mercilessly. And every citizen who tried to flee was at the mercy of hundreds of snipers. Imagine if the British Army were to do the same to Liverpool or Nottingham or Leeds. Imagine, just for a moment, what it might be like if it were to happen to you, in your home town.

Unthinkable? Maybe. But it's happening to Syrians.

Why? Because a corrupt and immoral regime is frightened for itself. Frightened by what might happen if it loosens its grip on power.

That regime is ruthless. Everyone else is helpless.

Courageous Syrian dissidents who were doing all they could do—getting the word out, hoping the rest of the world will choose not to be helpless—are dying too. Citizen journalist Rami al-Sayed was killed on Tuesday. 

'She was wonderful'
Everyone says nice things about the dead once they're gone, and evidently that's a social convention you're supposed to observe at all costs. That must be for the feelings of the survivors, since the dead themselves are presumably past caring. However, by all accounts that I can find, correspondent Marie Colvin really was a remarkable person, loved by all who knew her and admired by those who didn't. Plenty of people described her when she was alive in the rosy terms people conventionally reserve for the deceased.

Reportedly, one of the last things she saw in the days before her death was a Syrian baby dying before her eyes.

Don't imagine that one happening to you. That's too much.

I hope they make a movie about her life. I can see Meryl Streep in the title roll, looking almost as good in an eyepatch.

She and French photographer Remi (or Rémi) Ochlik (pronounced osh-LEEK) were killed by the Syrian government when a shell slammed into the building they were in. Direct hit; instantaneous death. Remi Ochlik had won a World Press Award First Prize only weeks ago. Here are some of his pictures. Some people say pictures have to stand alone; but are pictures worthy of more attention when a life is risked to get them? When the risk sometimes ends up the wrong way? The pictures at that site came at a cost.

Remi Ochlik, described as quiet, soft-spoken,
reserved, brave, and ambitious

Neus Agency photojournalist Olivier Laban-Mattei told AP Television News that Ochlik was unlucky, not imprudent. "I am persuaded that he did not take unnecessary risks," said Olivier. "He was caught in between bad luck and ballistic reality." Just doing his job.

I'm always sorry to have to write about the deaths of yet more journalists. It happens all the time. All too frequently. Sanctimonious noises will be made about how nobody's death is more important than anybody else's. But still, the ones that touch us are specific deaths, usually people to whom we can feel a connection, who we can differentiate as individuals. That's just the way it is, just the way we humans are.

Through it all, one wonders when the world will have had enough.

Mike
(Thanks to Judith Wallerius)

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Featured Comment by Jim Hamstra: It is so sad to hear of the deaths of these brave journalists who by sneaking into the country are getting the truth out. Hopefully the tyrants who are killing their own people will someday be brought to justice but I'm afraid many more will die first.

"We spent last April touring Syria. It was my third photograph trip in Syria and I have always found the people to be very friendly and helpful. Things were really tense when we left as the killings had started. Twenty nine people were killed in Homs the day before we got there and we saw funeral processions at the mosque behind our hotel. When we got back to Damascus we were the last two people left in the hotel and the owner drove us to the airport saying he knew all the back roads and would get us there safely. The hotel was right off Martyrs Square which was then a staging area for thugs. I had hoped the trouble would be over soon and had a return trip planned but as I follow the news I don't see much hope. It seems so sad that there is no one that can help the people and no end to the violence. Thankfully there are people in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon that are helping those than can escape. Why is the U.N. so helpless?"

Michihiro Yamaki, 1933-2012

Michihiro Yamaki of Sigma being presented with the Golden Photokina pin by Oliver P. Kuhrt, Executive Vice President of Koelnmesse GmbH, on the opening day of the CP+ Camera and Photo Imaging Show in Yokohama, Japan, last February 9th (photo courtesy Sigma).

A pioneer of the photo industry has died. Mr. Michihiro Yamaki, founder of Sigma Corporation and its longtime Chairman and CEO, passed away on January 18th. Michihiro Yamaki began working in the optical industry while still a student, and started Sigma when he was just 28 years old.

The heart and soul of Sigma Corporation for many years, he was passionately interested in photography. In the last years of his life he was shown great appreciation throughout the industry, awarded Person of the Year from The PhotoImaging Manufacturers and Distributors Association, the Hall of Fame award from the United Nations, and, at the CP+ photographic show in Japan, the Golden Photokina Pin from Photokina—its highest honor.

Our respects and condolences to his family and all those who knew or worked with Mr. Yamaki.

Mike
(Thanks to Jim Kofron)

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Awwww...

Doppelgang, 2001–2012

There are few things in life better than a good dog. Years ago, my mother decided to try a small dog in her small Georgetown home, so she went to a breeder and got a miniature long-haired silver-dapple Dachshund with one blue eye she named Wolfgang. Maybe ten pounds soaking wet, Wolfgang was an outsized character, a little Napoleon, brash and full of himself, never afraid to challenge dogs four times, or even eight times, his size. By the time Wolfie got old—spirit undimmed—my mother had gotten remarried, and my stepfather also had grown very fond of Wolfie. So they went back to the same breeder and got a puppy who turned out to be Wolfie's great-great-great-great-great-grand-nephew—also a miniature long-haired silver-dapple Dachshund with, yep, one blue eye. Although his temperament was completely different, he looked just like Wolfgang. So of course they named him Doppelgang.

(The joke, if you're not familiar with the word, is that doppelgänger—which I think means "double walker" in German—means a double, lookalike, counterpart, or alter ego—in literature, sometimes of a ghostly nature and occasionally sinister, although that last doesn't pertain here.)

Alas, today will be Doppie's last day on Earth. Wolfgang died with his boots on, so to speak, in a spectacularly catastrophic car accident that miraculously spared his owners and the younger dog; Doppie, in keeping with his milder nature, will go to sleep for the last time today at the vet's. He has been ill for some time.

I once said the only thing wrong with dogs is that they don't live long enough; my mother's cousin Ham Schirmer answered, "That's just god's way of making sure you get to know more than one."

My sympathetic condolences to Jane and John, and everyone else who knew their dear little Dopp, who really was very sweet. He gets blessed on his journey with that highest of compliments: "good dog."

Mike

P.S. If you've never seen the Nova show "Dogs Decoded," I highly recommend it—I've seen it twice now and found it completely fascinating. It's available for streaming on Netflix and from iTunes as well. Plus, they rerun it on Public Television now and then, so you could just keep a lookout.

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Eve Arnold 1912–2012

Eve Arnold on the Set of Becket, 1963. Photo by Robert Penn/Magnum

Eve Arnold, the first woman to become a Magnum photojournalist, died last Wednesday at the age of 99. An American expatriate, she lived in Great Britain for many decades.

From The Telegraph, the story of her two most important early lessons:

Eve Arnold was self-taught, her only tuition being a brief course in 1948 with Alexey Brodovitch, the celebrated art director of Harper’s Bazaar, at the New School for Social Research in New York. The class, which included ambitious professionals such as Richard Avedon, mercilessly criticised Eve Arnold’s amateur efforts.

For the class assignment, however, Arnold ventured into Harlem to record the black fashion shows that took place daily in deconsecrated churches. On seeing her, the hitherto feline star model "Fabulous" Charlotte Stribling began to mince down the catwalk like a white model. "Lesson number one," recalled Arnold, "pay attention to the intrusion of the camera." In the next class, Brodovitch singled out her pictures for their freshness.

As no American magazine of the period would publish photographs of black people, Eve Arnold’s husband sent her pictures to Britain — to his friend Tom Hopkinson, the editor of Picture Post. The pictures were printed but the text changed, so that its tone was snide. Henceforth, vowed Arnold, everything she wanted to say would be in the photograph.

There are encomia all over the web, including:

The obituary from the World's Best Photography Magazine;

An audio segment on NPR;

An excellent video presentation of her and her work at Magnum;

Another article from her adopted country; and

Her most recent and most accessible book of the sixteen or so she published. A new book, All About Eve, will be published by teNeues next month, on February 15th, and can be pre-ordered now. I hope she got to see it.

Mike
(Thanks to Doug Howk)

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Willard S. Boyle, Digital Camera Inventor, Dies

A moment of appreciation for Willard S. Boyle, who passed away on May 7th. Dr. Boyle, a Canadian, with his co-laureate, American George E. Smith, won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physics for the invention, at Bell Labs, of the charge-coupled device (CCD), which made the digital camera possible.

There is a good obituary article at the Los Angeles Times. The writer notes that the CCD "allowed engineers for the first time to store a visual image in digital form, revolutionizing photography and a host of other fields. CCDs are at the heart of smartphones, camcorders, telescopes, supermarket bar-code scanners, fax machines and scanners."

Dr. Boyle was a resident of Wallace, Nova Scotia, where he died of kidney disease at the age of 86. He is survived by his wife, three children, and 11 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

A quote, from the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame: "Know how to judge when to persevere and when to quit."

Mike
(Thanks to K.T.)

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Featured Comment by Carl Blesch: "I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Boyle when he retired from Bell Labs as a research executive in 1979. I was new on the staff of our in-house company newspaper, the Bell Labs News, and an executive retirement profile was considered a reasonably meaty yet low-enough risk story to assign to an entry-level writer. A few months earlier, my wife and I had taken a vacation in Nova Scotia, indulging our hiking and my photography passions. So I had the perfect chit-chat to get my interview with this scientific leader and down-to-earth Canadian off to a good start."

Featured Comment by Lancelot Gobbo: "Bill let me take his photo (with a CCD-containing camera, of course) when he came to see me one day:

Brian Lanker 1947-2011

Brian Lanker, Katherine Dunham, from the book I Dream A World

The NPPA has let us all know that Brian Lanker, a quintessential newspaper photojournalist (I always liked this shot), died suddenly yesterday evening, after learning only a few days ago that he had a fatal cancer.

Lanker won the Pulitzer Prize in the same year that Nick Ut won for his world famous picture of the so-called "napalm girl"—Brian's set was a sort of bookend, in that it showed a woman giving birth by the then-new Lamaze method of childbirth.

Improbably—he hadn't known the couple before photographing them for the story—the woman later became his wife, and the baby whose delivery he photographed his stepdaughter.

He is perhaps best known for his book I Dream a World : Portraits of Black Women who Changed America. Just recently out of print, it is one of the very rare photography books that have been huge bestsellers, crossing over to find fans among many people throughout our culture.

Our thoughts and condolences to all his friends, and especially to the Lanker family.

Mike

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Frank W. Buckles, 1901-2011 (OT)

Frank Buckles as a 16-year-old recruit in 1917

Frank Buckles died yesterday. He was the very last survivor of the 4.7 million people who enlisted in the U.S. military in 1917–18 for the Great War, the "War to End All Wars," now known as WWI. At the time of his death he was the oldest verified WWI veteran in the world.

Buckles never saw combat in WWI, but as a civilian he was captured by the Japanese in the Philippines in 1941 and spent three years in prison camps.

The Oak Park River Forest War Memorial in Scoville Park, Oak Park, Illinois, restored in 2010. Photo by J. Geil / oakpark.com

He advocated for years for a WWI memorial on the Mall in Washington, but he never saw that, either. (WWI memorials are common in American towns, however. My son used to play on and around one in Oak Park's Scoville Park when he was little, a juxtaposition that was never lost on me.)

Mr. Buckles was an impressive 110 years old. That qualifies him as a "supercentenarian," defined as someone who reaches that age. According to Wikipedia, only about 1 in 1000 centenarians (people who reach the age of 100) will become supercentenarians. There are calculated to be about 350–400 supercentenarians in the world currently, about 90 of of whom are known and verified.

Mike
(Inset photo: American Peoples Project)

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Featured Comment by James: "R.I.P. Frank Buckles. Just a couple of years ago, there were three British veterans of World War I alive; Frank Buckles; and John Babcock from Canada. Now all are passed away. I don't know of any German or other nation's veterans still alive. There will still be French, Belgian, German and Polish citizens alive who were young children in the 1914–18 era, and who have personal memories of the fighting around their towns and villages, but this era is rapidly passing out of living memory.

"My daughter (aged 11) and her class are doing a history project on the Great War, which will culminate in a trip over the Channel to Ypres and the Tyne Cot Memorial in May. It's good to see that schools are still interested in imbuing our children with a sense of history, but the project is all about dates, geography, and technology. I'm a little nonplussed that nothing in the project really addresses the sheer tragic waste and pity of millions of lives lost, and the impact those losses had on societies across the world. Perhaps that's a little too much to expect from the curriculum for a class of 11 year olds, but it seems a wasted opportunity to me."

Mike responds: It was known as the "Lost Generation," wasn't it? So many of the men of that generation cut down. 9.7 military deaths. Who knows how they would have changed history?

"Living memory" is an interesting complex of concepts, too. How soon before the world loses the last person born in the 19th century? There are still a few left, but, demographics predicts, not for long.

Milton Rogovin 1909-2011

Anne and Milton Rogovin, 2001, by Harvey Wang

I've just been reached by the news that the great leftist photographer Milton Rogovin died today, just past his 101st birthday. He was a wonderful, kind, compassionate man who lived a life true to the cause of civic decency, equality, and social justice.

Originally an optometrist, Milton was persecuted during the un-American McCarthyite inquisitions of the 1950s. With his practice in rapid decline as a consequence, he turned to photography to express his values, and for fifty years photographed the poor and the working class with a clear eye—surely one of the few positive outcomes of the McCarthy witch hunts. The title of his most recent (2003) book perfectly expresses his photographic concerns—it's called The Forgotten Ones.

One of the best acquisitions I made this year for my fledgling photograph collection is a wonderful portrait of Milton in his darkroom, by Diane Bush, signed to Diane by Milton—a lovely picture and a lovely print, and one I'll treasure.

Milton Rogovin in his darkroom. Photo by Diane Bush.

It might be hard to shed a tear for a man lucky enough to end his days a centenarian, but it's certainly appropriate to reflect on an upright life well lived. He won't be forgotten.

Mike

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Featured Comment by Jeff: "A worthwhile video on 'The Forgotten Ones'..."

Mike adds: For those of you who might have gotten into this pursuit a little later in life, note what the video says...that Milton didn't become a photographer till he was 48! It's never too late.

Geoffrey Crawley, 1926-2010

Generations of British photographers have lost a friend, mentor, and fellow enthusiast. For decades the name of Geoffrey Crawley has been hard to miss in photographic circles. He was associated with The British Journal of Photography from the early 1960s until 2000, including a 21-year tenure as that publication's Editor-in-Chief. More recently he wrote as the photo-science consultant of Amateur Photographer magazine.

Like Ansel Adams, Paul Caponigro, and Charles Cramer, his first love was the piano.

An inveterate photo-chemist, Geoffrey Crawley formulated some of the Paterson line of chemicals, including Acutol, for years a well-known fine-grain developer. He devised many fine-grain, high-acutance, and high-sharpness formulas with the prefix "FX," most recently FX-55, an environmentally friendly "Vitamin C" developer based in part on the work of Patrick Gainer. He was also known as an enthusiastic and exhaustive lens tester.

The first of what later became known as the "Cottingley Faeries" photographs, taken of Frances Griffiths, 10, by her cousin Elsie Wright, 16, in 1917.

At the end of the 1970s Crawley became known to a broader public for definitively exposing the ruse behind the previously mysterious "Cottingley Fairies" pictures of 1917, known as the longest-running photographic hoax in history (the story is the basis of not one but two movies). The photographs were promoted by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of Sherlock Holmes fame, who was an enthusiastic spiritualist. They caused quite a sensation with a hopeful public reeling (as Conan Doyle was) from the shocks and losses of the Great War.

In the process of his investigations, Crawley became friends with Elsie Wright, one of the schoolgirl cousins who took the famous photographs. The BJP's obituary tells a more complete version of the story.

There is also an obituary at AP.

Mike

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