The Online Photographer

Corn (and Kyle Batson's Roof With a View)

A couple of days ago I mentioned that it's tougher to see horizons around here at the end of Summer, before the corn is harvested. This year it's been especially noticeable, because we had a longish dry spell and then a week of rain, so the corn seemed to spring out of the ground all at once; first it didn't seem to be there, and now a week or three later it seems to crowd the view from every angle.

In response, David Brown wrote, "Two possible solutions to your corn problem: 1.) A car-top platform with a ladder, like the one Ansel Adams used. 2.) A step-ladder on roof racks on your car. Take it off the racks and use it on the ground. I'm not suggesting you set it up on top of the car." Bill Mitchell added, "Ansel Adams's greatest contribution to photography may have been the car platform (not the Zone System)."

I knew there a great opportunity to mention Kyle Batson was going to come around sooner or later! I love it when this happens.

I will not make any puns on the word 'corny'
But back to corn. First of all, I had been drifting through life in a state of ignorance, imagining that corn was getting taller because of genetic engineering. That might be true, or it might not, but it turns out that the world record for a cornstalk is 30 feet. Some kinds of corn are taller than others. Anyway, it seems to me that "normal" corn when I was growing up in the Midwest was 6–8 feet tall, and that more lately, around here, I've been seeing corn that's 8–12 feet tall. I guess all I can say with certainty is that a wall of 12-foot-high corn at the edge of the roadway makes a pretty formidable "fence" blocking the view. Especially when, as often seems to be the case, the road has a ditch beside it and the field on the other side of the ditch is elevated a little bit above the level of the road to begin with...as usually happens on one side of the road or the other when the road runs across a gentle hillside.

David and Bill are perfectly correct that being able to get up on top of your vehicle is a big advantage in getting a better view. Not disputing that and not criticizing their solution. Actually, in '87 when I did my one and only view camera project, I would stand on the roof of my little Mazda 323 sedan, as the "bumples" on the roof when I sold the car gave witness.

But there's a little photo-existential problem here, one that "crops up" (er, sorry) from time to time: it's the tendency we all (I mean all us photo enthusiasts) have of assuming problems are technical when in fact they're visual. Because, yes, a telescoping monopod, a stepladder, and a roof platform are all valuable for seeing over the top of the corn: but how do you know when there's a view to be seen above the corn when you can't see the view because of the corn? That is, how do you know where to stop and get up on the roof, or deploy the stepladder? The point is that you can't see the horizon. So you don't know where a good view might be because you can't see it.

Of course a lot of times you can see a little bit of it, or you can see enough to make an educated guess. But I'd say that that's the greater part of the corn problem.

You only live once
But on to Kyle. I usually try to mention when I meet readers, and I neglected to do so when Kyle came by because he wanted to clean up his website before I linked to it, and the mention got put on the back burner, which is a perilous place for anything to be where Yr. Hmbl. Ed. is concerned. Kyle and I met in Corning for lunch one day. He had quit his job, sold his house, and customized a Sprinter van into a camper! It's now his domicile. When we met he had just embarked on a circuit of the country in the van. He told me he just wanted to make sure he had some adventures as his life passed by, or words to that effect.

Kyle Batson at home

And apropos of the current topic, check this out:

Now there's a roof with a view. That'll let you see beyond the corn.

If you'd like to follow Kyle or see more of his adventure, here are his links:

http://www.kylebatsonphoto.com

http://www.desirepath.life

http://www.instagram.com/kylebatsonphoto

http://www.instagram.com/desirepathlife

Mike
(Thanks to David, Bill, and Kyle)

UPDATE: Kyle Batson writes: Hey, Mike! It was so good to be able to meet someone whose writing I admire so much. I am currently in Montana just having passed through Yellowstone. My roof perch came in handy recently to photograph some elk by the edge of the road. It’s a nice place to be, especially to gaze up at the Milky Way in the middle of a forest. I hope to meet again, and if anyone sees me driving around their neck of the woods, be sure to say hello!

Original contents copyright 2018 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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Moose: "We too travel in a converted Sprinter van, but converted at much less effort on my part by the folks at Pleasure-Way in Saskatoon. "What I want to know is how he got up on the roof. There are ladders that attach to rear doors, and which I've considered, but I don't see one on his van."

Mike replies: Here's a viewpoint that shows the ladder. But Moose, do note John's comment below. Let's be careful up there!

John Camp: "As a Midwesterner inflicted with corn and low horizons, I once had a roof rack on an SUV paired with a very compact folding stepladder that I carried in the back, with pieces of plywood that I put in the roof rack to stand on. One thing bothered me, and makes me a little queasy when I see pictures like that of Kyle standing on his Sprinter—the possibility of becoming so involved with the photo-making that you fall off backwards. I had less room on my SUV rack than Kyle has, but the problem is more one of inattention to the danger than it is of room. And if you fall off backwards, you'll most likely land on your head or neck...I solved some of the problem by buying sailing safety cables that allowed me to snap into the roof rack. I couldn't fall off, but I couldn't move much, either. In any case, roof-top photo-making has to be done with some care."

Edward Taylor: "It would appear that Kyle is quite good as a photographer, judging from the links to his site that you provided. Thank you."

Stan B.: "That van is one sweet setup—perfect size!"

George Steinmetz

Must reading, I'm afraid:

"The world has warmed more than one degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution. The Paris climate agreement—the nonbinding, unenforceable and already unheeded treaty signed on Earth Day in 2016—hoped to restrict warming to two degrees. The odds of succeeding, according to a recent study based on current emissions trends, are one in 20. If by miracle we are able to limit warming to two degrees, we will only have to negotiate the extinction of the world’s tropical reefs, sea-level rise of several meters and the abandonment of the Persian Gulf. The climate scientist James Hansen has called two-degree warming 'a prescription for long-term disaster.' Long-term disaster is now the best-case scenario. Three-degree warming is a prescription for short-term disaster: forests in the Arctic and the loss of most coastal cities. Robert Watson, a former director of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has argued that three-degree warming is the realistic minimum. Four degrees: Europe in permanent drought; vast areas of China, India and Bangladesh claimed by desert; Polynesia swallowed by the sea; the Colorado River thinned to a trickle; the American Southwest largely uninhabitable. The prospect of a five-degree warming has prompted some of the world’s leading climate scientists to warn of the end of human civilization.

"Is it a comfort or a curse, the knowledge that we could have avoided all this?

"Because in the decade that ran from 1979 to 1989, we had an excellent opportunity to solve the climate crisis...."

Based on 18 months of reporting and hundreds of interviews. "Complementing the text is a series of aerial photographs and videos, all shot over the past year by George Steinmetz." And yet the article is so sobering that saying "congratulations" to George somehow seems like a misplaced sentiment....

He's a photographer to know, though. "Best known for his exploration and science photography, George Steinmetz sets out to reveal the few remaining secrets in our world today: remote deserts, obscure cultures, and new developments in science and technology. [...] "Since his first assignment for National Geographic in 1987, Steinmetz has completed more than 20 major essays for the magazine, including three covers." (From his bio page at National Geographic.)

There's a portrait of him (by Catherine Converse) here but I can't figure out how to get permission to post it.

It's also interesting that some of his "videos" are in essence "moving stills": a single viewpoint where either the camera moves slowly or the view pans or zooms slowly. (The one entitled "Greenland in July 2017 | The Ice Sheet Is Melting Fast" (of the red dye being released into the ice melt to show current flow) is more like a "real" video showing something specific happening.

Nauru and other tales of our species
The article's right in line with my memories. I heard all about climate change in the 1980s, just by reading Audubon and other nature magazines. It seemed like a "known known," to use the odd locution of Donald Rumsfeld. It's one of the enduring mysteries of my life that it had become a truism by the 1970s that the global ecology was "a delicate balance," and yet by almost every metric we humans have gone ahead and treated it brutally rather than delicately—virtually, it seems, as if it has been our singular mission to upset that balance. If we knew it was a delicate balance, why didn't we act accordingly and treat it as such?

Alas, human beings are extremely good at responding to crises, but not good at all at preventing them or preparing for them. We had a window, but it's closing: "More carbon has been released into the atmosphere since the final day of the Noordwijk conference, Nov. 7, 1989, than in the entire history of civilization preceding it," points out the article's Epilogue.

Two interesting if oblique commentaries that come to mind on the underlying problem in terms of human nature: the accounts of the ancient South-central Andean civilizations of the 6th through the 10th centuries B.C.E., and how they were affected by permanent climate change, recounted in the excellent book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann; and the sad cautionary tale of phosphate mining on the Pacific island nation of Nauru, which (like the proverbial canary in the coal mine) seems to be virtually the fate of the human world and its resources in microcosm and collapsed in time.

Hope?
We were speaking of hope the other day, and I have to believe that human beings will solve this problem eventually. Not by pretending it doesn't exist, which appears to be the official strategy now. But we are extremely resourceful, and our command of science is a formidable weapon when it is bolstered and backed by sufficient will and motivation—as it eventually will be.

It's also fair to mention that as we grow old (and, by definition, closer to inevitable individual death), some humans do tend to grow apocalyptic or pessimistic in their fears of the future. I seem to recall reading that even in the United States, where there was no serious political disruption, there was an upward spike in normal age-related deaths as well as suicides among older people at the end of the 1930s, which sociologists ascribed to fear and hopelessness over the alarming events in Germany and Europe. (The exiled writer Stefan Zweig was driven to suicide in Brazil in 1942 by despair over "the future of humanity"—robbing himself, of course, of the opportunity to witness civilization's eventual triumph over Nazism). And of course there was widespread fear and pessimism over the supposed inevitability of nuclear conflagration in the 1950s and '60s. Really, we have very little imagination about the unforeseen possibilities of the future—compare Dick Tracy's wrist-radio to the iPhone X, for example, and you see what I mean. So it's at least possible that climate change seems so dire to us because we cannot yet imagine what humanity's eventual concerted response will be.

Let us hope.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 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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Peter Wright: "In an interesting coincidence I had just finished reading the full article in the NYT magazine, and flipped over to TOP to see what was up, and lo and behold, today's topic was the article I had just read! I found the magazine article to be an interesting (and long) comment on human psychology more than climate change. There was no new information in there other than Washington's inability to actually do anything, and then to compound the problem with deliberate misinformation, as it does to this day. I would like to have seen more of the photography of Steinmetz. It's illogical, but photographs of isolated cases can actually change public perception, in ways logical arguments and scientific data cannot."

Tim Bradshaw: "(Disclaimer: I work in climate science.) I think that it's not true to say that the global ecology is a delicate balance. We kind of know it's not because the Earth has supported life for several billion years and life has survived events which are significantly worse than what we are now doing, such as the thing which killed the dinosaurs. Life on Earth is really pretty robust: we are not going to destroy it, even with a full-scale nuclear war.

"But don't take this to mean that it will all be OK, because the global ecology is not actually what matters to us. Rather, three things matter to us. Not in order of importance (because that order depends on who is ranking them) they are: will what we are doing cause an extinction event (a geologically-short interval when many species become extinct)? if so, will humans become extinct? finally, if they won't become extinct will a recognisably modern civilisation survive?

"If we keep going the way we are going the answers to these are: yes (this is already well in progress); probably no (humans will survive); almost certainly no (we will be living in a kind of crap version of what things were like in the middle ages).

"As to whether there is hope: there is some, but it is waning fast. There is no real chance of preventing significant extinctions: to give an example the northern sea ice is effectively lost and everything that depends on it will go in the next 30–50 years. But we can act to reduce the scale of the disaster, and in particular to prevent the loss of a recognisable modern civilisation. But to do that we must act: we can't just sit around and wait for someone to act for us. The first step is to stop denying there is a problem, which means at least electing governments which do not simply deny the truth. The second step is to get governments to actually do something rather than mouthing platitudes. Some of what needs to be done will be uncomfortable: fossil-fuel-based energy must almost completely go, nuclear power must get cheap (even if that means it is slightly less absurdly safe than it is now). And so on.

"Will any of this happen? Three years ago I would have, on my brighter days, have said it might; today I see little hope. I have no children, but if you do think of what you are condemning them, and their children, to."

Thom Hogan: "I was still doing work for Rodale when they signed to publish Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth book. Gore wrote that we had a decade to make the changes necessary to stave off dramatic change. One of the Rodale execs asked me about that statement, as I had been the environment/DC editorialist at Rodale. My response was that he was wrong—we didn't have that much time.

"I'd agree with Tim Bradshaw's comments here. We're not going to wipe out the human race. But we're going to have 1–2b (that's a b, as in billion) people with essentially forced migration to deal with at the extreme.

"The analogy I use is this: if you're driving down the highway and constantly making small course corrections, you make it around the next corner. If you were pointed the wrong direction and don't make course corrections, you wander first across lanes causing chaos around you, then off the road into whatever is alongside it. If at that point you wake up and yank the wheel to try to get back on the road—which is my prediction of the course we're on—you tend to wreck.

"As I get near the end of my life, this is the saddest aspect as I contemplate all that's happened. Sure, much is better now than ever before. But we're leaving a legacy that needs cleaning up, for sure."

'Finding a Visual Identity in the Digital Age'

I wrote the following yesterday: "Cameras have all gotten so 'good' that what's starting to emerge is a certain tyranny of sharp, clear, detailed, correct-color, adequate-DR digital images. It's not all the same equipment, but more and more it's the same, or a similar, aesthetic look."

Richard Palmer emailed this morning to point out that Ralph Gibson addressed that very subject in a TEDx talk called "Finding a Visual Identity in the Digital Age." Indeed, at 2:53, Ralph says more or less the same thing I did: "...software is a key word here because it enables us all to take pictures very easily, and at the same time it makes everybody's pictures look the same."

I'm not sure Ralph entirely answers the question about how to find your identity—not everyone's work is keyed to graphic issues such as shapes—but his talk is good to listen to all the same: it's certainly great to hear about his epiphany in the Navy, what he learned from (and about) Dorothea Lange, his catharsis about his mother in front of the New York City beauty parlor, and other big moments in his life.

I've met Ralph several times, and in his studio darkroom in Manhattan I got to see a curious photographic artifact: his old Leitz enlarger (the Leitz family began and owned Leica for many years). Not only was it the enlarger that printed all the pictures from Ralph's seminal 1970s books (Ralph said he liked negatives that "fought back"), but he got it from another photographer he assisted, Robert Frank, who used the same enlarger to print all the pictures in The Americans. I wrote to Ralph long ago suggesting that that enlarger belongs in the Smithsonian or the George Eastman Museum when he's done with it. Nobody values old darkroom equipment but that's one of the most significant darkroom artifacts in American photography if you ask me. Hope I planted that seed. (I've been aware of several cases where famous photographers sold off significant darkroom artifacts simply as used equipment, with no thought to its provenance.)

If you don't know Ralph Gibson, head to your local library and see if you can find copies of his Lustrum Press books The Somnambulist (1970), Déjà-vu (1973), and Days At Sea (1974) (you couldn't get away with that scandalous NSFW cover today!) to look through. Here's a short backgrounder on Lustrum Press, which he founded and ran. Many of his later books are just as good but weren't nearly so famous or influential. My own favorite book of his, for reasons I don't fully understand, was his first book in color, L'Histoire de France.

Mike
(Thanks to Rich Palmer)

Original contents copyright 2018 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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San Warzoné: "It was obvious early on that Ralph Gibson's images were different...nowhere near the 'same' and certainly not 'MCU back of head with outdoorsy hat.' It was his choice of subjects that made them look so unique and attention grabbing. Being poor and living out of a suitcase didn't stop me from buying his 'Trilogy' in the bookstores along Polk Street back in the '70s, while living in San Francisco. Looking through those books was like going to school...eye opening, provocative, stimulating and direction changing...eyes open and head up."

s.wolters: "There is a lot in here Mike. Here are some loose thoughts:

"Alec Soth is one of my favorites. In Ping Pong Conversations he comments on his postcard picture 'Falls 26' in his Niagara project:
‘Everybody shoots in the same direction as I did here. The cover of any touristic book is essentially this view. What I think is hysterical is that this was my best selling picture. I printed it large and people said “Wow, you just could fall in, it’s so beautiful…” but there are a hundred million people that have taken the same picture.’

Alec Soth, Falls 26

"Looking at many of his pictures you get the feeling that you could easily have made them yourselves. So what is so good about them? Soth is of course very much involved with his his subject. A more personal style (like Gibson or Adams) would have interfered with his story.

"Technically perfect images can be extremely boring and ineffective when it comes to visual communication. In my career as graphic designer I have dealt with these problems so many times. There is always a need to make a difference. You always need something special for grabbing the attention. So if everybody shoots full color with the latest high-end DSLR you might steal the show with let’s say a twenty-five-year-old compact camera and pushed Tri-X. Good illustrations of this can be found at fashion magazines. Real professionals don't always go for the latest high tech. (Graphic designers have of course many more and heavier weapons to pimp boring images, a universe that expands far beyond Lightroom and Photoshop).

"The most important rule in the world of imaging is that there are no rules. Except for: ‘Always be honest.’

Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek, Cappuccio Girls, Milano 2011,
from Exactitudes

"The 'MCU back of head with outdoorsy hat' series seems larger than the sum of parts. The cheerleader effect. Also reminded me of this great project [Exactitudes] of photographer Ari Versluis and profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek."

Mike replies: Thanks for that. I'd been thinking of that project but I couldn't remember any of the names. It's really not good for my work to have most of my books in boxes. I need my working library!

It's also fascinating to hear Alec Soth's thoughts about that picture, because it's what I always thought about it. It always seemed out of place to me in the book. Which I also have. Somewhere.

Elephant Tongue and Hypnotized Chickens

Mark Hobson

TOP reader Mark Hobson came by the other day for a visit. Mark was for many years one of the leading professionals in Rochester, New York, and now lives in his beloved Adirondacks, where he has worked as both a wilderness guide and co-producer of the PBS series "Adirondack Outdoors." "Lunch" turned into four hours without much effort at all.

Only one of his projects isn't naturalistic—it consists of grim Photoshopped confabulations showing what the Adirondacks might look like if they'd never been protected. To drive the point home, the same tombstone appears (in a half-hidden, "Where's Waldo?" way) in every shot. An innovative use of fakery for sure. The rest of his work is "as seen," and bears no trace of "the professional look"—he has a distinct artistic style. He works square, and all the work he showed me was in the form of printed books and cards.

Here's Mark's website, where you can see more of his work.

A spread from Mark's book Rain

One of the pleasures of getting together with professional photographers is hearing tales of the weird things they've encountered in their careers. Mark's best two: being encouraged to insert his arm into an Indian elephant's mouth to stroke its tongue (they like that), and learning how to hypnotize chickens for a shoot so they wouldn't run around like...run around like...well, like chickens.

We've already written briefly about Mark's son Aaron, in 2007.

Mike

P.S. For our non-U.S. readers, "the Adirondacks," as I've written before, is a lightly populated, mountainous region of New York State that corresponds closely to the boundaries of a huge park of the same name. The area covered by the Adirondacks Mountains is larger than the State of Massachusetts and larger than Switzerland. The park is about as big as Vermont.

The name also refers to a distinctive folk style of outdoor furniture, especially chairs:

Adirondack chair, showing the distinctive construction (picture courtesy Hayneedle). These are fairly easy to make yourself out of wood, and, as it's a folk form, individualized variations are expected. Many commercial ones these days are made of recycled plastic so they can stand up to the weather. Those are actually fairly pricey, but come in all sorts of colors. The "Red Chair" I've posted a number of pictures of is a cheap molded-plastic faux Adirondack chair. Ironically, and, I must confess, a bit distressingly, the cheap molded imitation is considerably more comfortable to sit in than the real thing.

The ex and I found an old "shabby-chic" Adirondack chair in the warehouse of an out-of-the-way country antiques store down near Elmira, still with its original, nicely worn dark green paint, and I was going to pick it up for my faintly steampunk family room. But it turned out it was 115 years old and they wanted $5,000 for it! Yikes.

Original contents copyright 2018 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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David Comdico: "I admit to being a bit prejudiced against the iPhone-as-camera but his square iPhone shots are really great. Bravo."

Michael Perini: "Mike, each time you highlight one of your readers—or even just reading the comments on daily basis—I am reminded that with hard work, over considerable time, you have created, whole cloth, a community of interesting and interested people. You have maintained a civil and collegial atmosphere for people who would not otherwise get to interact. I think it is a wonderful accomplishment, and one for which I am grateful. Thanks."

Mike replies: I'd say you're welcome, except I'm grateful too! The community self-selected, and you're right, it's pretty wonderful.

Peter Mountford: "In Ontario, Canada, where I live, we also have chairs like the Adirondack chair. We call them the Muskoka chair, named after a region about three hours north of Toronto. Muskoka is Toronto's cottage/camp country. Parts of it are outrageously expensive and posh.

"I have sat in many Muskoka chairs, even in Muskoka, and they are without a doubt the most uncomfortable chairs ever produced. I think the only purpose they serve is photographic. They have nice lines and angles, and if the sun is hitting them the right way they produce some nice shadows. But I would counsel you never to sit in them."

The Sad Fall from Grace of Nicholas Nixon

My friends and I have been following this story for several weeks. The news is that renowned American photographer Nicholas Nixon has been removed from his teaching position at MassArt for inappropriate and unacceptable conduct. All parties are tight-lipped as the lawyers presumably circle in the skies above.

Although not exactly the Terry Richardson of art photography, The Boston Globe reported yesterday that Nick Nixon had long been accustomed to "going too far" as the headline of yesterday's article suggests. "It felt like the conversation always led back to sex," one student said. After Nixon asked students to analyze pictures of his own penis, Robin Myers, a 2012 graduate of MassArt, told the Globe, "Artists are always pushing boundaries between provocative and inappropriate, and then that line gets crossed and it becomes very clear. The penis photo incident was where that line became very clear for me."

I met Nick Nixon only once, when I was a student and he was at the beginning of his fame; he's ten years or so older than I am. He came to the Corcoran to give a talk. I was impressed with the matchless virtuosity of his then-new style of close, candid photography using an 8x10 view camera and a wide-angle lens, and the idea that was impressed on me most strongly at the time was that he had initially determined to change his technical style every year...until, that is, he alighted on the right one, which he has stayed with ever since. I even owned a few of his prints for a while, thanks to cameramaker Keith Canham, although I was too poor to be able to keep them. (My Sally Mann prints I could keep, because she wrote letters on the back of them and folded them up to put them in the envelope!)

In fairness to Nick, no students brought complaints against him. The investigation was pursued by the newspaper. At the same time, it seems undeniable that his behavior was inexcusable. As the Globe article reports, "...some of Nixon’s alleged behavior astounded Lorie Novak, a professor of photography & imaging [sic] at New York University. 'To ask undergraduate students in your class to pose nude for you is unacceptable, and from my point of view one of the very definitions of sexual harassment,' Novak said. 'The student is powerless.'"

Agreed, full stop. Still, a sad story and a precipitous fall from grace for someone who had been one of the leading lights of American art photography over most of my adult lifetime.

The article is entitled "Sex, power, and photography. At MassArt, how far is too far?" and it was written by Kay Lazar and Malcolm Gay.

Mike
(Thanks to Oren Grad and others)

Original contents copyright 2018 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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Kenneth Tanaka: "Sad? Sure. I met Nixon briefly about ten years ago at a small talk/dinner. He seemed rather quiet, modest but secure. Seemed like a rather nerdy academic-type. I never connected well with much of his work with the exception of his Brown Sisters project (which I keep running into) and some of his Boston cityscapes. (His horror stories of making those from windy rooftops with a huge view camera were more memorable than the images.) Honestly, if the BG report is true, and it certainly seems to be well-checked, what the hell was Nixon thinking? I have never taught an academic class but his excuse about helping to get students out of their boundaries is just plain bull. I'm confident I could conjure at least a dozen better strategies for accomplishing that goal with students. I guess we just never really know what's in someone's mind or, worse, what some people will do when they have power over others.

"Just this morning I was reading the most recent recap of architect Richard Meier's antics which also went on for decades. A lifetime of some remarkable work largely becomes anonymous because this guy, like Nixon, couldn't control his urges. Frankly I have no sympathy for these men and their creepy peers; they can live in hell for the rest of their lives. I had to keep it in check when I was in control of many people in a bigger business. Hopefully we're turning a corner on people not tolerating various sexual and emotional abuses in their work places, although human nature never changes."

John Camp: "I have a hard time getting too upset about this level of 'transgression.' You gotta grow up sometime, might as well be in college. You don't like what the professor suggests, tell him to stick it. In the current climate, he'll get the idea, especially since tenure, or the prospect of tenure, is the Holy Grail in 21st Century academia.

"I'm not sure, exactly, why colleges hire serious artists to teach. There seems to be to be an essential conflict there—transgression has been a byword for artistic endeavor at least since the Renaissance, and sex was usually the major vehicle for that transgression. In a major reversal from the later 20th century, colleges now seem to be taking a much more protective attitude toward students and their delicate psyches. If you wish to protect them, why would you hire somebody whose stock-in-trade is transgression? I mean, Robert Mapplethorpe, Sally Mann, Jock Sturges, Helmut Newton, Jan Saudek, Ruth Bernhard, Man Ray, Edward Weston...you wouldn't want any of those perverts influencing your snowflake."

Richard Kelley: Francois Cevert on the Day of his Death

Richard Kelley, François Cevert, 1973

Introduction: The tragic death of of the talented French driver François Cevert at age 29 was one of the epochal events in Formula One history, documented in books and in films such as 1: Life on the Limit and The Quick and the Dead. It ended Cevert's meteoric rise, caused Jackie Stewart to miss his last race, and crippled the then-dominant Tyrrell team. Richard Kelley, at the beginning of his 45-year career in photojournalism, was there. 

Portrait and words by Richard Kelley

I was a 19-year old Indiana University photojournalism student who had been an AP stringer for Chuck Robinson at Indianapolis and begged for an AP pass to shoot the US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen. When the Glen AP editor asked if I was 21, I said, "of course." Luckily, since I had shot for Chuck, it was a wink, a nod, and good enough.

I saw a story in François Cevert that October weekend in 1973. He had patiently learned all of his mentor Jackie Stewart's tricks, and he was now about inherit Stewart's leadership position as well. He confidently told Ken Tyrrell he would put his 006 on the pole. I wanted to try a different approach to capture his character at the Glen. I knew the pictures would be a perfect introduction to his 1974 season. I vividly remember standing next to him that morning in the garages; he was on top of the world. He picked up Helen, Jackie's wife, and gave her a bear hug. François seemed larger than life.

At the beginning of practice, I was my usual "fly on the wall" around the Tyrrell pit, and I noticed François becoming more pensive by the minute. Something was weighing on his mind. I made a series of frames, each one with him alone and lost in his thoughts. I could tell he was replaying his "mind’s tape" of the lap, over and over, looking for a tenth here, another tenth there. I stood up and walked 90 degrees to the left, to stand in the rear of the Tyrrell pit stall, shooting him backlit with a longer lens with Helen Stewart to my left.

I concentrated on isolating the men, first Ken Tyrrell and later Jackie Stewart and designer Derek Gardner bent over François, all in deep conversation concerning his setup. They formed a circle, with François in the center. As the men whispered, I raised my camera and made a frame of François's strained face focused on Jackie as he went through his ideas. I made another frame just as François looked directly into my eyes for a long moment and then, I made a final frame as his eyes seemed to look through me into the distance. Three full-framed images in all, and then I lowered my Nikon FTN. I will never forget the chills that surged through me as I looked into his vacant face surrounded by the total silence of Jackie and Derek. I could not bring myself to make another frame.

A moment later, François buttoned up to leave the pits. He looked up and blew a kiss to Helen; then visor down as he slowly slipped out onto the track. I wanted to make images of him going through the Esses on the back of the circuit; something, anything to erase the memory of his thousand-mile stare. I started walking to the access point; halfway there I noticed that the engines had gone silent. It had only been two minutes. When I arrived at the Esses, I saw his car inverted atop the twisted armco; François was still in the car. Heinz Klutmeier from Sports illustrated ran up, blocking my path and whispering, "...don't go over. He's gone."

I stood there and cried uncontrollably. I can't remember how long. With unspeakable horror in front of me, I couldn’t stop thinking about François' turmoil those few moments before he left the pits and the real significance of what I had seen in his eyes. I had experienced it alone, not recognizing the clue of what was to happen moments later. I felt soul-shaking sadness.

This last frame has haunted me for 44 years. Had he survived, François would have just turned 73 years old. Many believe he would have won multiple F1 World Championships, and how many more Grands Prix races? Present-day Grand Prix history would be different, and François would be reflecting on his long career with his children and grandchildren. As a trained pianist, he would have been into his music, wine, and life.

Today, he would be one of the giants of French motorsport and would revel in the stories that could finally be told. I can accept that being a Grand Prix driver was his dream, and he left this world doing what he loved, then. It's his missing the rest of his life that's an absolute shame, now.

Richard

©2017 by Richard Kelley, all rights reserved

The photo was taken with a Nikon FTN and 200mm ƒ/4 lens at 1/500th sec. at ƒ/4, on Tri-X at ASA (as ISO was called then) 400. You can see more of Richard's excellent and dramatic motor racing work at his website. He originally submitted this picture for the "Baker's Dozen Black-and-White" feature, but I felt the story and photograph deserved its own post and Richard kindly consented. —Ed.

[UPDATE Thursday 2 p.m. from Richard Kelley: "Thanks to you all for your kind words and comments. The moment I walked onto the Formula One pit lane, I knew my life would never be the same. At 19 years old, I could have gone a number of ways, but the 'decisive moment' and 'full-frame' had been drummed into my mind by Dr. Will Counts at IU, and so that was all I was searching for...sometimes I went a half hour between images, other times, it was rapid fire (for a Nikon FTN in those days).

"I just felt as though I had been given the privilege of being with those gentlemen to tell their stories and having a style that was different than all the other shooters, I wanted to do it the right way through my eyes. These images have only been introduced to the public in the last four years. I've had overtures from less than sincere entrepreneurs who wanted to print a book, but wanted to return only pennies. Your words and impressions here give me the determination to carry on and someday make that presentation a reality.

"Thanks again to Michael for the chance to spread these images to quite a few more eyes, and thanks to you all again for seeing what I saw in those men and how I tried to capture those moments."]

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Manuel: "Here's a post on a subject close to my heart. Having a rather rational approach to most things in life, it's odd that I have a fervid passion for cars and motorsport, but I do.

"The blue Tyrrells of Jackie Stewart and François Cevert cast such a spell on me I used to drive my father insane by incessantly asking him to give me a diecast model replica. When I got—I was nine by then—I was the happiest kid in the world.

"Then the news came about the death of François Cevert. Strangely, my acquaintance with the French driver's career came through comics: Jean Graton was the author of the popular adventures of Michel Vaillant, which featured real Formula 1 drivers as well as fictional characters. That's how I got familiar with François Cevert, but also with Jean-Pierre Beltoise, Jacky Ickx, Clay Regazzoni, Jochen Mass, and some other drivers.

"One of the features Jean Graton reproduced admirably in his comics was François Cevert's eyes. They were bright, expressive and intense, just like in real life. (At least as much as pictures and TV coverage allowed me to perceive them.) The picture in this entry captures that intensity in an admirable way, and in hindsight it's a rather troubling look. A bit like the last TV images of Ayrton Senna before he died, which show his anxiety and strain. Both leave us to wonder—in a rather frightening way—whether that was some kind of premonition. That's what's so disturbing—but not in a morbid manner, mind you—about Mr. Kelley's photo.

"Brilliant text, brilliant photo. It's such a shame people in the US have so little contact with Formula One. It has such rich history. The only part of the entry I can't agree is when Richard states that Cevert would be one of the giants of French motorsport if he were alive. Actually, he is one of the giants of world motorsport—despite his single Grand Prix win. As with Gilles Villeneuve, Chris Amon and a few others, talent prevails over stats."

Lenya: "A very sad story, very gracefully told. But my comment is also a thank you to Mike for an introduction to other Richard Kelley photographs via this guest post. The Portraits and Duos on the website are quite extraordinary, even to someone who knows nothing of motor sports whatsoever. Makes one long for a book that does not seem to exist...or does it?"

Earl Dunbar: "I am not much of a car guy, and even less of a racing fan. I consider auto racing an environmental sin. But this is a great, wonderful post and an amazing story, one of the best on ever on TOP, with a most haunting image. Thanks."

James Weekes: "I was at that race. A friend and I went to Watkins Glen for seven straight years. This was the last. Jackie Stewart was our hero and Francois Cevert was poised to replace him in our regard. What a loss. He was an incredibly smooth yet aggressive driver. This is a wonderful picture.

"Richard's website is well worth the viewing, especially if you loved Formula 1, but if you love the look of 35mm Tri-X well interpreted, it will reward you as well."

Meet Your Photography Teacher

I don't know about you, but I find those "Master Class" advertisements pretty moving all on their own. People with real authority in their fields offering to let you in on their secrets and tell you what they know. I mean really, Herbie Hancock teaching jazz and Helen Mirren teaching acting? Kinda gets me verklempt. I enjoy the ads and always watch new ones to the end.

I'm not recommending this per se, because I don't know anything about the organization or the classes...haven't taken one, haven't looked into it. But none other than Annie Leibovitz is teaching an online class in portraiture, and, well, wow. I don't know, but I think I'd pay $90 for that. I did quite enjoy her book At Work (now out of print and getting expensive...I hope you bought it when I told you to.)

Gotta think about it. Maybe after Christmas.

Mike

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Marco Maroccolo: "These courses are very well done—I tried some. From a technical point of view, shooting, location, and lighting are exemplary. The importance of the teachers who teach speak for themselves; I would like to recommend one of the first courses that they did, the one taught by Werner Herzog; in all probability it is not for everyone, but considering the duration and the number of pearls of wisdom profused by the director there is absolutely no proportion to the cost of the course. I think it is also of great interest to photography enthusiasts because it mainly talks about how to tell a story through images."

Random Excellence: Olivia Locher

Photo by Olivia Locher

Photographer Olivia Locher, born 1990, is from Pennsylvania and now lives in Manhattan, in the Flatiron District. Her website says she is "known for her sarcastic approach to studio photography with a heavy focus on color and concept."

The photo above is from her new book I Fought the Law, illustrating the strangest laws in each of the 50 states. The picture is captioned "In Ohio it is illegal to disrobe in front of a portrait of a man." Made me laugh. From the look on Ike's face, maybe it should be illegal to "disrobe" in front of his portrait. It's a strangely appealing photograph even unexplained, too, somehow—I like it. I'm not sure whether I like it more with the caption, or how I first saw it, with the meaning left inscrutable.

She's represented by the Steven Kasher Gallery, which has links to recent interviews in Vogue and Dazed.

I bought the Kindle version of the book and looked at it on my iPad, which is a good way to see it. The picture above is captioned, "In Connecticut, pickles must bounce to officially be considered pickles."

I liked the written material of the book too. Olivia's concise statement is an excellent description of how to develop a concept for a photographic art project.

The only note that jarred for me is that I thought one or two of the "weird" laws weren't weird at all. For instance, "In New Mexico defacing rocks is a crime," sounds perfectly reasonable to me—it's meant to protect ancient Native American petroglyphs and petrographs out in the wild that aren't otherwise marked or protected.

Olivia Locher

But that's minor. Anyway, it's always nice to see an idea I've never seen before, and I'm getting to that age when that doesn't happen very often.

Mike

P.S. I should also mention from a NSFW viewpoint that a few of the pictures have some mildly objectionable content.

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Law unto itself
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Random Excellence: Judy Dater

Judy Dater, Graham Nash, 1978

Even if you don't know the name Judy Dater, you probably do know her most famous picture, "Imogen and Twinka at Yosemite" (there's an "art nude" at that link, just so you're warned), one of the most famous American photographs of the 1970s.

This picture of musician Graham Nash was in the section of Judy's website titled "Photo World." Aside from being one-third of the famous '70s folk-rock group Crosby, Stills & Nash (and one-fourth of CSN&Y), Graham Nash is a longtime photographer and photography enthusiast. He also has a firm place in the history of digital photography, in that his atelier, Nash Editions, was one of the pioneers of digital printmaking. You can read more about that in Richard Benson's The Printed Picture, or from the book Nash Editions: Photography and the Art of Digital Printing. Both were previously TOP recommendations.

Judy has a new book coming out soon which, understandably, is occupying her attentions right now. I'm looking forward to the book and I'll tell you about it when it gets here.

Mike
(Thanks to Judy)

Judy Dater comments: "The photo was taken at Graham's house which was just off of Haight Street and across the street from Buena Vista Park. I remember being excited when I discovered the skylight at his house and realized he could climb up on to it. I wanted to make it look as if he were floating.

"I rarely photograph famous people but I knew him slightly because he had some of my work in his private photography collection. That collection became an exhibition and catalogue titled 'The Graham Nash Collection' that premiered at the de Saisset Museum at the University of Santa Clara."

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Wayne Levin on Lenscratch

"When I descend into this wonderland I want to make images not to explain
or clarify that world, but to deepen the mystery" —Wayne Levin

There's a fine new interview by Tara Cronin with B&W underwater photographer Wayne Levin on Lenscratch today. A very well-done presentation throughout. Nice, and worth your while.

A brief sample, from Wayne, related to the quotation above: "I don’t feel that I am able to live my life in realization of the mystery. In my day to day life, I’m a bundle of uncertainties, hopes, anxieties, anger, joy, tension, and relaxation, just like most humans. I do however often have a strong philosophical bent, and a drive that borders on obsession with my photography. I do feel that often I learn and get new ideas or concepts from my photographs. They teach me and open up new possibilities."

At the very least, head on over and look at the photographs. Not like anyone else's.

Mike

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Jack: "Whoa, thanks, Mike, that was a treat. Sometimes I see photos and think, I can do that too. In this case I say I'm glad Wayne can do that, because I can't, but really like his work.

Random Excellence: Lori Swadley's '52 Addicts'

The June 5 & 12 issue of The New Yorker features a long "Reporter at Large" article by Margaret Talbot called "The Addicts Next Door: West Virginians fighting to save opioid abusers—and their town—from destruction." It's a long, engrossing article, if one that's difficult to read.

The article includes a series of mini-profiles of a number of people, and one of the first ones featured is Lori Swadley, a successful wedding, portrait and boudoir photographer from the Martinsburg, West Virginia area. Despite obviously having lots else to do, Lori started an Instagram series called "52 Addicts."

Courtesy Lori Swadley, used with permission

Lori says in The New Yorker story that she herself was inspired by a reporter named Jenni Vincent, whose byline was on many of the stories about overdose deaths in The Martinsburg Journal online. "You could tell she wanted the problem to be known," Lori told Margaret Talbot. "Because at that time it seemed like everybody else wanted to hide it. And, to me, that seemed like the worst thing you could do."

That took me back to my son's first girlfriend, a bright, personable 14-year-old named Katelyn who I know I'll never be able to forget. Despite a loving mother (we didn't know her dad), Katelyn died of an overdose at 20—and there was no mention anywhere of how she died.

I spoke to Lori on Saturday, and she said she wondered when she was talking to the reporter whether there would be any negative blowback for her business, but she's found that all the responses to the work and the publicity have been positive.

Great admiration to Lori for taking on her "sideline" project for the sake of transparency and honesty and to honor those among her neighbors and her community who are struggling against the epidemic.

Mike
(Thanks to Lori)

Random Excellence = excellence randomly encountered.

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Random Excellence: Cody Cobb

Paired photos by Cody Cobb from the series "Mojave"

If you're interested in landscape you'll want to pay a visit to the website of Cody Cobb, who is self-described only as "a photographer based in Seattle, Washington," born in 1984 in Shreveport, Louisiana.

I had never heard of him before yesterday, when a reader named Fernando mentioned him in a comment (thanks). But I enjoyed visiting his site and admired his work, which combines creativity and tastefulness. Fernando said, "how challenging [it] is to create landscape photos that at the same time are moving, feel real, subtle and not overly cooked."

I wasn't especially convinced by "South" (apart from the marvelous first photo, of the horse), but every other series offers pleasures. He has a real feel for bleak, open land, and especially for the play of tone (for example the geodesic dome over the hilltop), and light (you won't miss the ones I mean). Pay him a visit if you get a chance and see what you think.

Mike
(Thanks to Fernando)

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Playing with light
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Dennis: "Very nice. So much landscape photography is the same. This is clean (though bleak) and new. My favorite is 'Panamint Valley' which I did not see in any of the portfolios, but shows up under 'Prints.'"

Nikhil Ramkarran: "Some of Cobb's images make me shiver. Amazing. And I don't typically like landscapes."

Stephen Voss on Trump's First 100 Days

Photo by Stephen Voss

Longtime TOP reader Stephen Voss, a photographer who lives and works in Washington DC, has been "documenting the upheaval and psychological tumult of the Trump Administration here in DC on both a local and federal level," as he says, and now has a major portfolio published at Politico.

Politico's introduction: "For anyone who lives in Washington, it was clear Donald Trump campaigned against the city in two ways. He ran against 'Washington,' the metaphorical seat of unchecked government power, and also against the actual city of Washington, a multicultural, Democratic stronghold that embraces immigration, marijuana and seemingly every other progressive policy Trump voters rejected. Since the inauguration, photographer Stephen Voss has been documenting the city’s uneasy relationship with its highest-profile new resident."

Outstanding documentary photojournalism, well worth taking a look from a photographic perspective regardless of your politics. Big congratulations to Stephen.

Mike

P.S. Here's Stephen's website.

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No tumult
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Random Excellence: Takashi Kitajima

Takashi Kitajima, Entrance to the Exit, Ebisu, May 2015

Sometimes Random Excellence points to a particular single photograph, other times to an entire set, still other times to a photographer. Takashi Kitajima plays with effects like focus and bokeh and motion blur in his work, and everything at his website is of interest. It's creative and sensitive work, wide-ranging yet with a sense of individual viewpoint. "Crosswalk" is a very successful use of multiple exposure, for example.

"Entrance to the Exit" is from the series "Myopia Hyperopia."

Mike
(Thanks to Lubo)

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Elementary, my dear Watson
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Two More Wonderful Portfolios

What's called "Street" appears to be one of the main currents of photography among ambitious and skilled practitioners these days. It's a photography of found subjects that takes its style cues and approaches mostly from reportorial and documentary photography*, but without the focus on an event or a story, and with aims closer to pop art. Its closest analog might be populist art such as tattoos, customized hot rods (famously the subject of Tom Wolfe's The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby), or pop-songs-by-the-people before the music industry gets sinks its chompers into them.

...But I shouldn't get started on deconstructing Street as a genre. (There's a rabbit-hole.) Basically just wanted to pass on two more photographers in case you have a hankering to look at more:

Photo by TC Lin

"Street photographs" don't actually have to include the street...they can, though. This is by TC Lin, one of the photographers in the Burn My Eye collective, who comments here on TOP as "poagao" or "TC." You can see more of his work here. I particularly like Portfolio 2, and the one of the new-style photographers and the bored guard in the museum.

Photo by Alexander Petrosyan

Alexander Petrosyan is a staff photographer at коммерсант (kommersant, or "businessman"), a daily newpaper in Russia that covers business and politics. He also enjoys a growing reputation as a chronicler and poet-photographer of St. Petersburg. A good article published at Huck magazine this past week emphasizes the street-photographer aspect of his work. More of his St. Petersburg photographs and his photojournalism can be seen at his website.

Mike
(Thanks to several readers)

*...with a smaller dose, perhaps, of those "amazing happenstance" kinds of photos that crop up on certain populist clickbait-type websites, such as these for example...

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At street level
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Jeffrey MacMillan: "Am stunned by the photos of Alexander Petrosyan. As said in the Huck article, they are short stories, each of them. Poetic. Comedic. I made the mistake of going to his blog. My cameras may be going on Craigslist soon. He has such a ridiculous number of notable shots. It may help that Petrosyan is in such an insanely photogenic city."

TC: "Wow, thanks for the kind words, Mike. I always enjoy opening up the browser each morning to see what's new on TOP, but it was kind of a surprise to start reading the post, scroll down and think, 'Hey, that looks familiar...is that...oh!'"

Two Genius Street Photographers

Photo by Richard Sandler

I make plugs here about the wide-ranging and far-flung photographic content at The New York Times, but TIME Lightbox also does a nice job. I got in the habit of ignoring them because early on I couldn't access them: some glitch in the Tubes of the Interwebs somewhere made it so the front page would open and then get stuck. So if I saw a link to TIME Lightbox I would ignore it.

Photo by Harry Kydonakis

No need now. Whatever was broke is fixed. And it's a good source for excellent, thought-provoking, eye-gratifying, mojo-revivifying slideshows. Consider these two: Richard Sandler, written about by Alexandra Genova, and Charalampos "Harry" Kydonakis, written about by Gus Powell. Harry Kydonakis is from the Greek island of Crete (home of the Minotaur and birthplace of Zeus) at the southern edge of the Aegean Sea. He's known as "Dirty Harrry" [sic] online, and a search will yield many breadcrumb-trails to follow if you're so inclined. Richard Sandler, who is currently a videographer, has been getting increasing amounts of attention stemming from a book of his classic street photography done in the 1980s and early '90s, mostly in New York City. There is more of his work at his website.

Stout stuff, both. Drink it in.

Mike

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Kenneth Tanaka: "Very compelling work samples by both Kydonakis and Sandler. Most interesting to me is the contrast in their styles of choices and presentation. Sandler's work reminds me a bit of Bruce Davidson's style, perhaps because of those trashed subway scenes. Kydonakis's work is much looser, not as generally figuratively impactful as Sandler's but much more conceptual. At least that's my take. Thanks Mike."

Looks Like It's Great Britain's Turn...

1985 and now: a brother and sister, or a couple who are still
together? Don't know. Photo by Chris Porsz.

I love projects like this, and (the Design You Trust article's claim notwithstanding) there have been many of them over the years, from The Rephotographic Survey Project on down.

Rephotography is thought to consider only sites, but just as many have been done of people (for example, Young Me / Now Me). The new one from which the photos above were taken was done by a professional paramedic and amateur documentary photographer named Chris Porsz from Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. The project is called Reunions. (I don't think Chris has much of a gift for titles—his earlier book, New England, is not about New England, but about newer towns in England. You know what I always say, "editors needed everywhere." But I digress.) Over the course of a decade, Chris tracked down the same people in Peterborough who he originally photographed as much as 40 years ago, and recreated the poses, sometimes in the same places.

Some examples of such comparative rephotography inevitably work better than others, but it's always fascinating to me how photographs themselves change in time, as well as how photographs show change. There's a book of Chris's project, Reunions, that you can buy directly from him, or you can see various examples of his work in this article at Design You Trust or elsewhere.

Fascinating.

Britain's turn for the great GX8
Looks like it's Great Britain's turn for the excellent deal on the Panasonic GX8, the Micro 4/3 camera I liked so much and keep yammering on about.

My further rummaging in the wilds of the Internets has suggested that the "shutter shock" problem that the GX8 has been asked to shoulder alone is only relevant with certain lenses...a statement which of course I am in no position to guarantee, which is why I have to be careful when I talk about it. But although I have read many good things about this kit lens, the 12–60mm ƒ/3.5–5.6—lenses generally really are good these days, and this one seems to be a case in point—I haven't heard anything about people detecting any evidence of shutter shock with this camera/lens combination.

I can't guarantee that.

Anyway, you can pre-order the camera and lens in the UK for only £869. It's also available with the 14–42mm lens, with the excellent 12–35mm ƒ/2.8 (which also is allegedly immune to shutter shock), or with the 14–140mm. The body only is already out of stock.

Jane the incomparable
Finally in the UK category is a new book that came out a year ago of the work of Jane Bown. (No, not "Brown"—no "r." It's Bown. I believe it's pronounced not like "bone" but like the bow of a ship with an "n" added on—rhymes with crown.) A modest photojournalist who made unfussy pictures with minimalist equipment, Jane's spare yet eloquent style puts her into the very top rank as far as my opinion is concerned—she's among my own favorites, certainly. I admire her greatly and always find things to love in her work, as well as things to admire and emulate. She died around this season of the year two years ago, after a successful career that saw her receive appropriate appreciation and recognition as the years warped and woofed onward, and at the end. The trajectory of her career was something that went just about right for her, and stands as a model for what every photographer of her talents ought to get.

(A brief insight into her character, quoted from Wikipedia: "She described her childhood as happy, brought up in Dorset by women whom she believed to be her aunts. Bown said she was upset to realise, at the age of twelve, that one of them was her mother and her birth was illegitimate. This discovery precipitated her into delinquent behaviour in her adolescence, and acting coldly towards her mother.")

The book is A Lifetime of Looking. It's also available in the U.S., but barely (a handful of used and new copies from third-party sellers).

Like Harry Gruyaert's book was for color photographers—inspirational!

Mike
(Thanks to Marcin Wuu)

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Peter Wright (partial comment): "I have A Lifetime of Looking by Bown (and the Gruyaert). I agree, it's inspirational, and should be in your collection if you have any interest in street, portrait, or the UK in the second half of the 20th century. However I was astonished when I read that there is no 'r' in her name. I had to go and check the covers of my books by her—and right enough! All this time I was 'seeing' an 'r' where one didn't exist! (Especially ironic given the title of the book!) So that's my humbling experience for the day...."

Tom Burke: "I haven't seen that particular Brown book, but I have seen other collections of her work. She worked for The Observer, a U.K. Sunday newspaper, and her work didn't necessarily appear every week, so normally you just saw one portrait in isolation, once a week or less. In that context I think it works brilliantly. But I did wonder when I saw a number of her images all at once if perhaps there was some similarity, possibly even a certain sameness, to the collection. Of course, it could also be that portraits aren't my thing. Certainly her work is highly regarded here, and has been for a long time."

Tom Burke: "(D**n spelling auto-correction! I wrote her name correctly....)"

Visitors Log

TOP reader Adam Isler dropped by remote TOP Rural Headquarters last week with his family (they were on a college trip for his daughter, who is interested in Cornell in neighboring Ithaca). Note the Zipcar—Adam is a systems engineer in Manhattan, one of the few places in America where automobile ownership seems to be a liability. We had a nice lunch and a nicer conversation down in Hammondsport, at my favorite restaurant there, which is about to close down for the Winter.

The Future Arrives, the Past Recedes, a photo by Adam Isler, from his website

Nice to meet the Islers!

Mike

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Jon Peterson: "Thanks for posting these occasional visitor's logs. It's fun to get a pseudo-random sampling from your legions of fans. As a Cornellian, a systems engineer, and a non car driver, I think I would have enjoyed chatting with the Isler clan."

190 Bowery Update

You might remember the first time we talked about Jay Maisel's house, one of the more famous buildings in Manhattan.

First, Jay: he was one of the top advertising photographers in America in the '70s and '80s and into the '90s. Since then he's been revealed as an actual lover of photography as well, having continued to do personal work and teaching, and publishing books such as Light, Gesture, and Color and It's Not About the F-Stop (both of which are good and worth reading).

That first comment wasn't intended to be demeaning; it's just that lots of photographers who made as much money as Jay did are mainly interested in making money, not necessarily in photography. A normal person can only do so much. Jay had enough energy, not to mention the skill and talent, for both.

The Germania Bank building at the corner of Bowery and Spring, a cornerstone of Manhattan's former Kleindeutschland ("Little Germany"), in about 1975. Jay Maisel already owned it at that time. Photo by Edmund V. Gillon, courtesy Museum of the City of New York.

Jay's famous "house": he bought 190 Bowery, the former Germania Bank building, for $102,000 in 1966, when the area was a dreadful slum. He rented parts of it for a while but eventually just lived in it, filling it with interesting things and hanging out on the rooftop garden. Although definitely bohemian and not all fancy-rich, it was for a period the largest private residence in New York, with 72 rooms. The outside got covered with graffiti (including some by artist Keith Haring, late friend of our friend Hugh Crawford who comments here) and for years, New Yorkers assumed the building was abandoned.

Jay, meanwhile, had an indoor basketball court.

Jay is now 85, and although I once opined that he should be allowed to live forever, he apparently isn't planning for that to happen, because he recently sold 190 Bowery...to Manhattan "he's-everywhere" developer Aby Rosen. For 55 million dollars, which, you've got to admit, is a nice rate of real estate appreciation.

And he got to live there for 50 years, too.

I'm a little concerned about Jay now. He no longer has a place to live! We might have to pass the hat to help him get a place. Anyone have a 72-room bohemian hangout to rent? Maybe at his age he'd be satisfied with 40 or 50 rooms. You know, downsizing. But I digress.

[UPDATE: He's landed okay, and now has the nicest house in Brooklyn. Those photographers sure do well, don't they? Thanks to Techfan for this. —Ed.]

The News [buried lede dept.]: The point of this post is that Untapped Cities found its way inside 190 Bowery and has posted a series of picture-posts. Start here but if you're interested, be sure to follow the links for further dimensions of the story. A great story and great fun.

Finally: Here's Jay on "How to Be a Better Photographer." Note that although it's nothing pretentious at all, pretty much every word he says in this is profound. Listen to and consider every sentence and you'll take away something good.

Mike
(Thanks to Grant Williams)

Original contents copyright 2016 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.

Hmbl. Ed. just pines for a place to put his pool table.
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Mark Hobson: "I was able to visit the basketball court and, more impressively, view the large display of large dye transfer prints (30x40–40x60) of his work ringing the basketball court. I gained entrance simply by knocking on that corner door.

"My next encounter with Jay was in the early '80s when I was asked to be the backup choice for doing the Corning Annual Report (10 countries around the globe picturing Corning products in real world use). They wanted Jay but weren't sure they could afford his fee. When told of the project budget, Jay wouldn't even send his portfolio because the project budget number (US$60,000 in early '80s dollars!) was not even in the same neighborhood as his fee would be.

"Next month I have been invited to accompany a good friend and fellow photographer and close friend of Jay for a visit to his new digs. Looking forward to it."

Mike replies: I heard a story from a guy who lost a job to Jay. It was for a series of brochures for a cruise line. My friend was sure he would get the job because his fee, although high, was much lower than Jay's. But they hired Jay. When asked for an explanation, the agency person said, "I had to be able to tell the client that we hired the very best."

Tom Foster: "In 2007, Luminous-Landscape published a video in 'Luminous Landscape Video Journal—Issue 17' that contains a one-hour interview of Jay Maisel by Michael Reichmann. This includes a half-hour tour of his building at 190 Bowery. A fascinating interview and video tour."

Specialists

It's easy for humans to be dismissive. It's an integral feature of human nature.

I am not good with plants, so I've always been happily dismissive of flower pictures. But in buying a new house I have inherited the previous owner's garden, which I have to say has been an ongoing surprise and delight throughout the whole Spring. There is always something new coming along, sometimes where you least expect it.

So naturally I have been taking pictures of it. Not because I have any deathless need to commemorate flowers, but because I tend to take pictures of whatever interests me at any moment.

And I have to say, it's not actually that easy.

Who knew? I always assumed taking flower pictures was sort of drop-dead easy. Wrong-O, tulip-bulb-head. I've actually had kind of a hard time with it.

As with anything else it requires observation. Flowers come and go. You basically get to say, "Oh, that's nice," and then a few days goes by and you forget to look at them again and that's it, they're gone.

And everything's sort of chaotic, too. But if you stay sharp-eyed, you can kind of guess that something might be about to happen.

I'm no expert, but doesn't it look like something's about to happen here? I'm keeping my eyes on these bad boys, and will keep you posted.

Specialists
I had occasion to exchange words yesterday with a reader named Tony Roberts, who is a very accomplished golf photographer. (Check out his CV—if you follow golf, you've seen his work.)

Specializing has always struck me as a smart business strategy, and one that has the potential to make your life more fun, too, because you get to spend your life around what really interests you. I've known of people who specialized in thoroughbred racehorse portraits, motorcycle racing, cars (for advertising), cars (for editorial), sailboats, weddings of course, portraits of children, portraits of babies, architecture (interiors, exteriors), all sorts of things—the list is probably very long. I probably wouldn't have made a good specialist, because I'm distracted easily and have lots of interests. But the idea has always appealed to me.

Even art photographers specialize, in a way, some of them. Amateurs too—you might know people who are passionate about landscapes or trains or animals or something else.

I wouldn't want to specialize in flowers, myself. But I have more respect lately for those who do.

Mike
(Thanks to Tony)

Original contents copyright 2016 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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jeffdmontgomery: "I consider myself to be a generalist as a photographer because I am a university photographer. I shoot athletics, grip and grins, theater, campus life, portraits, summer camps, architecture, food, and the list goes on and on. However when I take photos for myself I tend to point my camera in the direction of flowers. I like all kinds of flowers from wild ones growing on the side of the road to those in gardens. I really believe that being a generalist at work helps me be a better flower photographer."

Rene: "Mike, Over the years of reading your blog, I must admit that I did notice your distain for flower photography which always rankled me as I spent a solid decade doing mostly just that. I'm glad you've finally seen the light, as it were.  :-)  Shooting flowers (especially macro shots), particularly in the wild, can be devilishly hard. I've frequently spent as much as an hour and a half or longer on one flower, just waiting for the wind to die down and the light to be just right same time. After obsessing on flowers for a decade, I finally did burn out on them and couldn't shoot another one no matter how nice."

Kenneth Tanaka: "Specialization is very much essential to achieving success in many (most?) fields, particularly photography. Within what most people would call "flower snapping", for example, there are folks who specialize in photographing gardens and those who are expert in botanical documentation. I've met one of each and can tell you they are just as manic as neurosurgical specialists, particularly the botanical shooters. Then, of course, there are art photographers who shoot flowers, usually dead ones. LFI has a very nice feature on the work of such a photographer named Mike Tinney."

Steve Jacob: "To be financially successful as a photographer it's almost compulsory to specialise in one area, understand the market thoroughly and make sure you know where the commercial meat is. Only then is it possible to define a strategy and build up the competence, contacts and client base necessary to make money.

"The problem is that it becomes very hard to do anything else. You become type-cast, you are constantly competing for work, and if the market turns down, you can't reinvent yourself easily.

"Moreover, constant repetition of the same routines can become boring, and it gets increasingly hard for some to maintain any enthusiasm. A well established market is generally conservative. Taking risks is, well, risky.

"If you are one of those at the top of your game, you have some scope for taking the odd risk, in which case everyone else will soon follow, but in the main your paycheck still depends on giving customers what they want. I think many well known photographers are in that very rut—Steve McCurry included.

"Being an artist by nature makes it even harder. The market for 'art photography' is predominantly one of well worn stereotypical clichés of the kind you see on the walls of coffee bars and new apartments. The main market is interior decorators.

"To be a successful artist on one's own terms requires an extraordinary level of integration with the art establishment itself, which creates a market for you through its contacts with wealthy patrons. It is very seldom something you do in isolation, and in its own way, it is just as prescriptive. 'Be different' is just as tedious as 'be the same.'

"Hobbyists have no such concerns. Much of the time, hobby photography is just an extension of another consuming interest (or set of interests) such as your kids, travel, ornithology, motor racing, trains, horticulture, etc. It's a way to be involved in an activity you love, as is blogging or writing books.

"It just so happens that some hobbyists are also exceptional artisans and artists, and having complete freedom to do whatever they want, they sometimes come up with ideas and styles that are truly interesting. Not often perhaps, a very small minority possibly, but it does happen all the same. You just have to do a lot of trawling to find them."

JOHN GILLOOLY (partial comment): "I believe in most cases the type of job you end up in is a direct reflection of your personality type. For me specializing would not work as I need to be doing something different all the time. I would assume I first chose photography as a profession because it satisfied many of my needs as a person. Then once a photographer, you gravitate to certain areas of the business based upon what is suitable for your personality."