The Online Photographer

David Bailey Books

I saw a number of great books on my visit to MoMA, and curiously two of the best were by British photographer David Bailey, who is perhaps the éminence grise among the celebrated stars of the photographic firmament in Great Britain today. Bailey was a leading light of 1960s fashion and culture in Britain and has been an important photographer there ever since. A member (with Terence Donovan and the late Brian Duffy, whose last exhibit we highlighted here) of the famous "black trinity," he was the model for the photographer in the Michelangelo Antonioni movie Blow-Up.

Anyone interested in fashion photography or celebrity portraiture will want to own Bailey's Stardust. A big, bold, beautiful book with a premium feel, it's chock full of superb reproductions and is as good a summation as any of Bailey's major lifetime accomplishment in that genre. It was originally an exhibition catalogue from a traveling show that originated at the National Portrait Gallery of London in the Spring of last year. If that sort of thing is your sort of thing, I can almost guarantee you're going to love this one. It's a hit in every way.

More interesting to me personally, and an even better book if that's possible, is Steidl's Bailey's East End, which consists of three paperback volumes in a slipcase. Six hundred and twenty or so photographs drawn from three extended periods of shooting from the 1960s to 2000 fill a total of 464 pages. A rich and important documentary project and a really top-flight book that will bear repeated study and extended delectation. I'm short on bookshelf space now but this one's a must-have. If there is such a thing in these atomized times, this is a major landmark in photobook publishing.

Here's our link to Amazon U.K.

Mike

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Random Excellence: Damon Winter

Photo by Damon Winter

A superb double portrait of actresses Tonya Pinkins and Dianne Wiest by Damon Winter, surely one of the best editorial photographers working right now. Winter, like a pitcher with two great pitches among many good ones, has a strong graphic sense and an acute eye for the telling detail, gifts he can often be seen using to excellent effect in the same pictures. This shot illustrated a New York Times article about the play Rasheeda Speaking.

Damon Winter's website is here. See especially the sections entitled "Stories."

Mike

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'Sports Illustrated' Does Away With Staff Photographers

A great shot of Terrell Owens and Tony Romo by Al Tielemans, one of the last six remaining SI staff photographers who were all laid off last Thursday.

The venerated photography-centric Sports Illustrated magazine let go all six of its last remaining staff photographers last Thursday, amid sad noises about restructuring, smaller quarters, and new working arrangements.

However inevitable, it's another sad ladmark moment in the transition from old media to new.

With distinct irony, the NPPA notes that the layoffs occurred "less than 12 hours after many sports shooters were in Manhattan for the premier of the ESPN film Keepers Of The Streak, a new documentary about four photographers who have shot every Super Bowl since its beginning." Here's a clip from the film featuring sports greats Walter Iooss (pronounced "yoss") and Neil Leifer, along with Joe Namath, talking about Walter's poolside shot of Broadway Joe—a great period piece.

Sympathies and solidarity to (in alphabetical order) Robert Beck, Simon Bruty, Bill Frakes, David E. Klutho, John W. McDonough, and Al Tielemans.

Mike
(Thanks to concern from many readers)

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Michael Barker: "Next time I go to a game, I'm cheering for the photographers."

Benjamin Marks: "Wow. Just wow. Where is the 'Illustrated' going to come from? Fans with iPhones?"

Steve Biro: "I've said this time after time but I'll repeat it here: I'm fine with the transition to new media, even though I love books, magazines, traditional broadcasting and, yes, photographic prints. But I have a major problem when that transition is used as an excuse to gut an institution of what made it great in the first place. This latest move by Sports Illustrated is more evidence that most of the media brain trust has yet to figure out this new-fangled digital thing."

John Camp (partial comment): "I'd point out that the photographers weren't let go because they were unnecessary—they were let go because SI is failing. The company will struggle along for a while, but not too long.

"I once worked for one of the largest, most powerful news publishers in the nation. That entire corporation is now gone. When I was there, the place was rockin'—when they thought they needed more money, they'd just push the advertising rates. The couldn't even conceive of something like Craigslist.

"There was a group of us who really did see this coming, but we weren't the people who got promotions—those went to the socially ept, the guys (and I do mean guys) with shiny teeth and square chins who were good with the wives of the top managers. Most of the people who saw it coming eventually did okay: they got out and found something more economically relevant to do. The guys with square chins got early retirement, because the company fell apart beneath their feet. Many of the newspapers they ran no longer exist."

Retiring from Everything Except Work

Michael Wolf, Real Fake Art 25, from the series Real Fake Art. (The painting is a copy of Lee Friedlander's Memphis 2003.)

 

At sixty-five I retired from everything except work.

–Lee Friedlander

Lee Friedlander (b. 1934) is one of the few artists in any medium to sustain a consistent body of influential work over five decades. The result of singular talent coupled with dogged, indefatigable effort, Friedlander has photographed almost every day since the late 1950s. More than a few of his friends have observed that for Lee Friedlander, working is the equivalent of breathing. In the pre-dawn hours he can be found in his darkroom, developing negatives, studying contact sheets, and printing. He has never had an assistant. Every Friedlander photograph in existence was printed by the artist himself, a claim that can be made for very few photographers.

(From the writeup of a Friedlander show at the Fraenkel Gallery in late 2010.)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 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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Fred M: "How do I convey the deep respect I have for the work of Lee Friedlander? I have numerous Friedlander books, the count of which outnumbers, by far, the collected works of any other single photographer in my book collection. Musicians, street photographs, desert plants, monuments, nudes, self portraits, landscape...and the list goes on. A photographer supremely confident in his voice and vision. And what a vision at that!"

Michael M: "Sadly I don't have any Friedlander books. What books would you recommend as a starting point?"

Mike replies: This can be difficult because many of his books are so different in subject matter. There are at least two retrospectives I know of. On is the big Museum of Modern Art compendium by Peter Galassi—I didn't care for that and actually didn't keep it, although some people like it. For me, it's too jam-packed with too many pictures and the repro quality doesn't quite meet my minimum standards. The book I still like best is getting long in the tooth as a retrospective—Like a One-Eyed Cat from 1987. Of the two, a more enjoyable book and much more integrated and cohesive as a photobook. And, unlike many older photobooks, used copies are still affordable.

You might have to take this with a grain of salt because Like a One-Eyed Cat is one of my favorite photobooks, so I might not be very objective.

Klein and the Anti-Technicians

Written by John Kennerdell

From Life is Good & Good for You in New York by William Klein, 1955. Klein once described the book, one suspects not without pride, as "a crash course in what was not to be done in photography."

You might have seen him had you been walking the streets of New York City exactly 60 years ago this winter. Although trained as a painter, he was carrying a camera. And while he lived in Paris, he moved through the city of New York and photographed its people with the ease of a native son. His name was William Klein and he was 26 years old.

When Klein tried to find a publisher for his New York photos before returning to Europe the next year, 1955, the reaction could hardly have been less encouraging. He made the city look like a slum. His framing was random and incoherent. Technique? Fugeddaboutit. As Popular Photography described it on first sight of his work, "meaningless blur, grain, muddy exposures, drunken horizons and general sloppiness." Whatever his game might be, mid-century America clearly wasn’t ready.

Chet Baker, from Jazz by Ed van der Elsken. Dutchman van der Elsken's career ran in parallel to Klein's but increasingly fell under its influence, as seen in this superb 1959 photobook.

Back in France, Klein managed to put out a small volume of 120 of the photos, titled, with Beat irony, Life is Good & Good for You in New York. "I wanted to do [it] as a tabloid gone berserk," he later said, "gross, grainy, over-inked, with a brutal layout, bullhorn headlines." While the European establishment didn’t quite know what to make of it, young, avant-garde photographers loved its raw, anything-goes energy. It was largely through those young photographers, whose names included Ed van der Elsken and Mario Carrieri, that the style if not necessarily the substance of Klein's photography began to ripple out to the world at large.

Nowhere did this new sense of photographic freedom find richer ground than in Japan, a nation still grappling with the ravages of war and the search for a new identity. Restless young Japanese photographers immediately saw in Klein a visual language that they could apply to their own ends. Collectively, five of them became known as the Provoke group, after a short-lived magazine of the time, and described their aesthetic as "Are, bure, bokeh" ("Rough, blurred, and out of focus"). But individually they very much went their own ways. Shomei Tomatsu, the photojournalist of the group, took what he called a "subjective documentary" approach to social and cultural issues. By contrast, Takuma Nakahira's dark urban abstractions felt like equal parts sumi-e and radioactive nightmare. And then, somewhere between those two, Daido Moriyama, the most directly influenced by Klein and soon to become the best known of the group in the West. To this day he roams the back alleys of Shinjuku with a little digicam and wide-angle lens, a street photographer to the last.

From Chewing Gum and Chocolate by Shomei Tomatsu, 1959. The postwar Japan photographer par excellence, Tomatsu admitted to being "obsessed" with the U.S. Occupation and the cultural impact of the West on Japan.

And Klein? He still lives in Paris and seems to savor the role of eternal rebel. Fully 40 years passed before his Life is Good photos were put out in book form in the U.S. The expanded collection, titled William Klein, New York, 1954–1955, more powerfully than ever shows us a young man working at white-hot intensity, following his instincts as an artist rather than a trained photographer. Had his original book been published in the U.S. rather than Europe it's hard to imagine it would have had any less impact than Robert Frank's The Americans, which appeared two years later.

But in the end the point is moot, so ubiquitous has Klein's influence become. Whether in fashion, advertising, or documentary photography—never mind motion pictures—nothing has ever been quite the same since William Klein and that winter on the streets of New York six decades ago.

John

John Kennerdell writes two articles a year for TOP.

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Chris Y.: "John Kennerdell should write a lot more for TOP. This was gold as far as I'm concerned. Thank you."

Mike replies: Yeah, but I don't look a gift horse. If ya follow.

Julian Love: "Tate Modern held a large Klein/Moriyama retrospective a couple of years ago. While the photographs themselves were wonderful to look at, full of visual interest, it was the large collection of first edition books that really stood out (most of them loaned by Martin Parr, who seems to own several copies of each). The dramatic layouts combined grainy full-bleed images covered in bold text and graphic shapes. The results were both chaotic and mesmerising."

Last Hour! Last Chance

This is the last hour of our current Paul and John Paul Caponigro Print Sale.

The sale ends at 5 p.m. New York time—that's 10 p.m. in London, and 7 a.m. Tuesday morning in Tokyo. John Paul will extend it a little bit for West Coasters (and Aussies in Perth).

Otherwise this really is the last chance for this work, as the father/son print pair was created for this sale and will be retired permanently when the sale ends...it won't be offered again under any circumstances for any price. It's a great piece—you will love it when you see it.

The first six prints have already shipped. The rest will go out by mid-week. Most people will get theirs in plenty of time for Christmas.

A bit of news: this print, like the last father-son print pairing we featured, has been accepted for the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution.

Buyers of the print will receive a free copy of the e-book Two Generations, which is a nice sampling of the work of both of them.

Revivalist
Personally, I think it's high time for a Paul Caponigro revival. Paul is 82, and has been a major American landscape and still life photographer since the 1960s. He's never fallen into obscurity, never been ignored; he's still well known, and his work still sells well. At the same time, he's not as well known as some other photographers of his generation and level of accomplishment, and almost none of his many books are in print...which is a shame as his medium has been the book as much as the fine print. He really deserves an Indian Summer, a bloom of appreciation for his wonderful career and superlative work.

He's been one of the most important photographers for me for most of my life. Here are a few words I wrote about Paul many years ago:

It is easy enough to mistake Caponigro for a mere landscapist; but it would be about as accurate as categorizing Diane Arbus as a portraitist, or Emmet Gowin as a maker of family snapshots. Caponigro is a spiritualist, a seeker, a mystic.

In general, the old saw about photographers wanting to show the substance beneath their subject, the soul of the machine, is nothing but a conceit—photographs are concerned with surface, not with substance, and they are infinitely better at showing how things look as opposed to how they are. But every one of us has had the experience of being in a place and suddenly having the hackles on the back of the neck stand up, as if an extraordinary insight had angled in upon us, or a ghost had flitted past. Paul Caponigro has managed to make a career of showing us those moments in photographs—and not by relying on symbolic shorthand, tricks, or gimmicks, either, which makes his accomplishment all the more remarkable. Somehow, by picking his spots with extreme care and fanatically eking the greatest descriptiveness possible out of the medium’s materials, he manages to compress those moments, those insights, into a square of gray. Many nature photographers please us by showing us nature as we might relate to her; Caponigro elicits awe by suggesting a nature entirely independent of us. [His work is] not about the world of appearances, but of the Spiritus Mundi that exists outside of time.

Here's a link to a great conversation between Paul and John Paul—there are lots of insights in it, both about them, and for you and your own work.

If you purchased one of these prints, thank you. Remember to give it time; Caponigro photographs never grab you by the shirtfront, but reveal themselves slowly across time and through repeated, renewed contemplation.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 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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Fer: "That conversation you linked to made my day. Thanks."

Falling Off a Horse: Tomás Munita

Tomás Munita, Jorge Vidal ties up a cow the bagualeros caught a couple of days earlier on Antonio Varas Peninsula in Chilean Patagonia.

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"It’s always fun to work with photographers on their first story for National Geographic because they’re usually surprised by the resources and support we can provide and by how much of a voice we give them in contributing to their story."

—Elizabeth Krist
Senior Photo Editor
National Geographic

Here's Elizabeth's article at Proof. If you watch the video, try to imagine working in those conditions. I was glad I don't have to!

Here are the Patagonia bagualeros pictures at Tomás's website (the pictures unfortunately are way oversharpened for web resolution, but try to look past that...).

Chilean Tomás Munita, born in 1975, is an independent documentary photographer interested in social and environmental issues. He's based in Santiago.

Mike

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James Sinks: "The post-processing looks like the clarity is pushed and then a large radius high pass filter is applied. Nice colors (a bit pumped...but still nice), nice compositions, and interesting subjects, but that processing really grates."

The Most Excellent Aaron C. Greenman

As I've mentioned many times, I like a wide range of photography, and like to flatter myself that I can be "convinced" (in the sense of persuaded or won over) by outstanding accomplishments even in genres I don't usually find immediately rewarding. However, I can't deny that there are some kinds of photography that are central to why I like the medium in the first place. Probably the core of my "likes" in this respect might be street photography in the classic Leica M tradition, favoring prime lenses, black-and-white images, and an approach to the world that is without preconceptions.

Those words are appropriated from Aaron C. Greenman's description of himself.

Here's the trailer to a film called AcuityColorGrain currently in production for 2015 release, about Aaron's work.

He's also an interesting combination of traditional methods and contemporary marketing—his books, for instance, are available for the iPad and Mac. Here's his website. He's perhaps a bit too closely identified with the Leica fan community, but hey, whatever works; people need support, moral support too.

Aaron

Mike

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Dennis: "Hmm...maybe I'm cynical after reading that Ursula Le Guin quote, but he strikes me as a photographer trying to turn himself into a brand; trying to create an image of himself. The photos seem calculated—not like a Stephen Shore composition, but with an audience in mind. He breaks his photos up into three 'themes' that share his initials (ACG). It also bugs me when a photographer shares the same photograph in monochrome and in color. There's no denying he's talented and he has some excellent photos taken in places and of people that many of us would be too shy to shoot. But the whole thing seems a little bit fabricated to me."

Kenneth Tanaka replies to Dennis: "Dennis, Absolutely. But is that really bad or wrong? The type of work this fellow shows is fine but it's been almost entirely the domain of the amateur/hobbyist world for 30 years. And while ACG's work is in the upper quartile of skill, that's still an awfully large field of competition, and growing daily. Building one's 'brand' is a perfectly legitimate—actually an essential—strategy for distinguishing oneself in an extremely noisy marketplace of snappers. Waiting for spontaneous internet worship of this type of work would be delusional. Peter Turnley has certainly built his 'brand' on excellent sentimental and romantic B&W street photography, no? Nothing wrong with that, wouldn't you say? Yes, his background in photojournalism certainly served as his leverage but it wouldn't be keeping the wind in his sails without constant bellows work (workshops, books, print sales, personal appearances at Leica stores). High Energy + Good Products = Success. So I wish 'ACG' well. My only advice to him: Lose the smirky portrait."

Mike adds: I tend to agree with Ken. I've worked with photographers who are very talented but who refuse to promote themselves on principle, for whatever reason (it would be wrong of me to speculate). What happens? They end up working in obscurity or going off to do something else for a living. Color view camera film photography is well established by many practitioners right now, heavily supported by galleries; I'd like it if we had more people, not fewer, working to promote a high profile for their "classic 35mm" -style photography. It deserves a place at the table too.

John Sarsgard: "There are many reasons it is more and more difficult to make a living as a photographer. I applaud ACG's marketing efforts as taking responsibility for making a living at what he obviously loves. I don't mind a person trying to sell me something. I can pay attention or not; I can buy or not. And I like his work very much. Trying to imitate HC-B with fresh new work is just fine with me. Many young photographers today seem to think must be different from the masters to the point of being contrived. I remind them that after abstract art has been accepted for many years there are still respected representational painters."

Random Excellence: James Morgan's Bajau Laut

Whilst few young Bajau are now born on boats, the ocean is still very much their playground. And whilst they are getting conflicted messages from their communities, who simultaneously refrain from spitting in the ocean and continue to dynamite its reefs, I still believe they could play a crucial role in the development of western marine conservation practices. Here Enal plays with his pet shark. Wangi Wangi, Indonesia.
(© 2014 James Morgan; photographer's caption)

There are large numbers of working photographers around the world whose names sometimes are not well recognized, even though they are very accomplished and in many cases are doing truly outstanding work. It's encouraging when projects like James Morgan's "Bajau Laut: Last of the Sea Nomads" gets widespread attention, even in this age of fractured media and shortened attention spans.

I find "Tragedy of the Commons" features dispiriting and tough to read about or look at generally, but this is a superb one, for the probity of its inquiry as well as for the beauty and eloquence of the pictures. To sustain themselves, the natives use fertilizer bombs and cyanide as fishing methods, thus destroying the reefs that shelter the fish they catch, all but ensuring that the future of their way of life will be untenable and bleak. Such cautionary tales are probably fated to be the #1 concern of global humanity in the 21st century after Christ, and we all should learn what the specific examples look like. Eaten grouper in a restaurant lately?

James Morgan both captures the beauty of what will be lost and describes the dilemma of the people.

Mike
(Thanks to Christian Kurmann)

Original contents copyright 2014 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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Sarge: "It's OK to order or cook grouper it if it's freshly caught locally or frozen. If you pick one live in an aquarium, it was probably caught with cyanide. Municipal fisheries in littoral South East Asia have been blighted by damaged coral reefs caused by blast fishing or cyanide used by sustenance fishermen (of whom the Badjao's are a tiny minority). But this pales in comparison to wholesale coral bleaching caused by climate change. You don't have to eat fish or have them as pets to contribute to the latter."

Darlene: "Another reason to be a vegetarian."

Open Mike: We Hear from Judy Dater (NSFW)

...No less. Judy was one of the photographers I admired and wanted to emulate when I was in art school, because of my interest in (sorry about the pretentious-sounding term, but it's descriptive) art-photography portraiture.

There are nudes past the break, so fair warning. Our site is used in schools, where viewing nudes might not be appropriate, and please bear in mind that in many workplaces and offices, having nudes "overseen" on your computer can violate rules against sexual harrassment. But this was the first "full frontal" nude published in the old LIFE magazine, so you know it's pretty benign. And you might well already know it.

What 100 Looks Like

Maud Ford: ‘The secret to a long life is taking things lightly, not worrying
too much.’ Photograph: David Bailey/Guardian

If she says so.

Those of you who are readers will especially appreciate this nice little feature from The Guardian, which matches interviews with centenarians by Sally Williams and portraits by David Bailey. Despite being the model for the photographer in Antonioni's Blowup, David Bailey has never been as famous here as he deserves to be. Here, the portraits and interviews, both nice enough alone, amplify each other. Bailey himself is still 24 years short of 100.

They've also go a feature of his "best" portraits, too. (We don't do enough on portraits around here.)

Mike
(Thanks to JK)

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Roy: "In the early '80s (maybe '82) I was working for some friends running a professional video sales and hire business in central London. We had a demonstration studio and edit suite attached to a domestic TV/video sales centre so we got quite a bit of walk-in business as well as spinoff from the numerous broadcast and industrial video operations in the area. One day a scruffy guy in a leather jacket walked in and started asking me about video production. He showed no sign of either having any previous experience—or any money for that matter. We spent a couple of hours playing around with equipment. About a week later he came in again and we resumed the 'lesson.'

"At one point I showed him a comparison between the various domestic cameras where some were shoulder-mounted and others pistol-gripped (a distinction that remains to this day, incredibly). I pointed out that the latter format was inherently unstable but could be stabilised to some degree by dropping a chain from the tripod socket and placing a foot on it, bracing the camera with tension. I mentioned that this was an 'old press photographers' trick,' to which he replied 'yes, I know that one.' My response, inevitably, was 'are you an old press photographer?' To which he responded, 'sort of....' I continued showing him the principles of editing systems which, in the analogue days, were a complex jungle of VTRs, TBCs, waveform monitors and wiring looms. Although I could tell that this guy was not wasting my time, I couldn't really figure out what his intentions were; he hadn't mentioned what sort of stuff he was interested in shooting—which was a first. I figured that it might well be porn.

"A week passed and he appeared for a third time, but on this occasion he wasn't alone. I recognised his beautiful girlfriend imediately: Marie Helvin. At which point of course the penny dropped. David Bailey. I managed to conceal my recognition (or I think I did) and continued with the lesson, distracted somewhat by the new student. Finally we were reaching the point where I figured I had a big sale to close so I said, 'well, sir, you've kicked all the tyres, do you intend to buy the car?' To which he replied something along the lines of 'I appreciate your help, but I can probably get all the equipment free from Sony....' Ah...I seemed to recall that at that time Bailey was involved in a Sony advertising campaign. End of sales pitch, shake hands, 'nice to meet you,' and pitch over. Exit.

"Jump forward to 2013. I'm sitting outside The Camera Cafe near the British Museum, having coffee with a friend when I see three people coming toward me, one of whom I immediately recognise as an older, still equally scruffy Bailey. Round his neck he has a Panasonic Micro 4/3 camera with the Panny 20mm lens mounted. I have the same lens on the Olympus E-M5 I'm carrying. I couldn't resist hailing him and pointing out that whilst it was inevitable that I recognised him, it was less likely that he would have recognised me, not least because it was about 30 years since we last met. He joined us for coffee with the two young guys who I took to be his assistants and I recounted the story above to him, which everyone present found very amusing.

"He's an engaging guy with absolutely no bullshit about him. Indeed at some point I got the distinct impression that he was concerned to let me know that he was still working hard (he mentioned a trip to Afghanistan to shoot stuff for a disabled servicemen's charity). We compared cameras and I was astonished how enthusiastic he was about the little Panasonic which he was using to grab rapid street shots. I told him that this lens didn't focus as fast on my camera so he tried it and snapped a shot of me with it. I also got one of his companions to take a shot of the two of us. We continued talking for half an hour or so until I decided that I wouldn't protract the conversation to the point where he wearied of it—although he showed no sign of doing so despite a couple of my impertinent observations about his marital history.

"We shook hands and promised to meet again in about 30 years. Within about ten minutes of leaving I was struck by what the French refer to as 'l'esprit d'escalier.'* I should have asked him to return the favour I'd done him decades ago by asking for either a portrait lesson, or else, even better, a formal portrait of myself by his hand (I'm not that interested in doing portrait photography.) But at least I had a snap of myself by Bailey in my own camera. Of course when I examined it it wasn't even roughly framed correctly—and it was grossly out of focus.

"If you read this, Bailey, how about it?"

[*"Staircase wit," a French term used in English for the predicament of thinking of the perfect retort too late. (Wikipedia) —Ed.]

Mike replies: Lovely comment. Made my day, and my day needs making.

Electric Pumpkin

I don't post on Saturdays, but just this one little thing.

Duane Michals, Magritte with Hat, 1965

The Lens Blog had a great little article the other day to catch us up with the prolific Duane Michals, a playful and inventive photographer whom time has turned into a somewhat incongruous photographic elder. If anyone should be forever young in our small-u universe it's probably Michals. And Erwitt too, I guess, but I digress.

Anyway the article is worth reading—it's short and sweet and has some great slideshows, although I never took to Michals' pet "Sidney Sherman" joke very well. It always seemed a touch gay-misogynist to me.

René Magritte, Le fils de l'homme [the Son of Man], lithograph, 1967

Best things in the Lens Blog's presentation: "Magritte with Hat," a portrait of the Belgian painter René Magritte, a quintessential surrealist and an early enthusiasm of my youthful art-room-denizen self; I'd never seen it before. (Or, if I've seen it, I never "saw" it.) And this quote:

Along comes this guy and he’s saying he needs the moment before and the moment after.  "That decisive moment is fine, but it doesn’t work for me." He needed to create a sequence.

That's Linda Benedict-Jones speaking, the curator of the Duane Michals show that opens today at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittburgh, Pennsylvania. I like her idea of contrasting sequences (some of Michals' sequences seem like little movies) with H. C.-B.'s iconic (and inevitably overused) idea.

•     •     •

So Halloween yesterday was a bust at my new house, and which was kind of a bummer. For one thing, Xander wasn't home to minister to the decor—our old house somehow got very spooky in Halloween garb, such that little kids were sometimes afraid to approach it. At the new house I just plunked an electric pumpkin out front to signify that we were open for business. Last year, at the old house, I gave away more than 200 full-sized candy bars; this year, at the new house, fewer than 15. (Good thing I saved the receipt and can return the rest.)

However, the holiday was somewhat redeemed when reader John MacKechnie sent me this picture of this great Halloween costume:

But back to Duane Michals...he's one of those photographers who are represented in my library by one carefully-chosen volume. I have The Essential Duane Michals from 1997, which is not a valuable book—it's still available cheaply. The new book—Linda Benedict-Jones's catalogue from the exhibition at the Carnegie Museum—might be a good one to have instead, but I don't know yet as I haven't seen it.

Michals' work, however, is essential to get to know, if you don't already know it. He's one of those later-20th-century photographers who are unique unto themselves, like Jerry Uelsmann or Sheila Metzner. And a nice thing about him is there's always more you haven't seen.

Mike

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Stan B.: "'Never trust any photograph so large it can only fit inside a museum.' —Duane Michals."

Must Reading

...On Ars Technica. "Bugging out: How rampant online piracy squashed one insect photographer." By Alex Wild.

Insect photographer Alex Wild explains why he is giving up the business. "Copyright met the Internet, and the Internet won."

 

Mike
(Thanks to John Camp and several other tipsters)

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Jay Dickman's Olympus 12-40mm Samples

Roving the webby Intertubes for bits related to the Olympus 12–40mm lens led me to National Geographic photographer Jay Dickman's Firstlight Workshops website, which I'd never seen before. He uses the OM-D E-M1, even underwater (in a housing). At the link, I particularly liked the polar bear with his front feet in the water and the last one of the wave and the iceberg. There are a lot of E-M1 shots on the site, but you kind of have to wander around looking for pictures (it actually took me a surprisingly long time to figure out what Jay's last name is—it's barely mentioned on the entire site).

Worth a visit, especially if (but not exclusively if) your taste runs to...well, Nat Geo type nature/travel photography.

(I have a tough time researching cameras and lenses because I always get sidetracked by photographers and their photographs.)

Mike

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9/15/14 The Morning Coffee: Resonance

A Good Morning to you—

Recently a reader named Chris Hunt offered a nice contribution to the library at TOP Underground HQ—a copy of Charles Harbutt: Departures and Arrivals, a retrospective book that came out two years ago. I only have one book of Charles Harbutt's—a signed copy of Travelog from way back—but his work is right down my alley.

Chris was trying to find a good home for the book because, as he explained, "sometimes a given photographer's work just doesn't resonate."

So true. I've always likened it to taste in music, or physical attraction between people, or the "voice" of a favorite poet—there's sort of a rough consensus as to what's good, but it's perfectly normal for individual people not to agree with it, and there's a sort of magic, a mystery, to what really clicks with each of us. So it is with photographers.

Charles Harbutt, Le Mistral, en route Arles–Paris, 1975

It's often actually difficult to isolate exactly what it is about a photographer's work we're responding to. It might be personal associations, interest in some aspect of the subject matter, a technique we love the look of, similarity (or dissimilarity) to our own work, any of a hundred things. 

My friend Geoff Wittig has a great passion for pure landscape. It always helps me to meet people who have passions for various kinds of photography different than what I like—it reminds me that there are many rooms in the mansion.

I'm sure I'm going to enjoy Departures and Arrivals—but I can completely understand why it might not resonate for Chris. I get rid of a lot of books too, ones I know I'm not going to get much nourishment from. It's not that there's anything wrong with the work, necessarily. It's just that it doesn't resonate.

Hope you discover something that resonates for you, in your Monday.

Mike

"Morning Coffee" is auto-published weekdays at 3:30 a.m. Central Time to be in time for morning coffee breaks in the UK and Europe. It'll also be there for Americans who might get up very early in the morning, say at 4:50 Eastern Time.

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John: "I bought Ray Metzker's Landscapes through TOP almost two years ago after reading about him here. I looked at the photos and skimmed the information, and I decided his style was not for me.

"Recently I came back to the book, looking and reading more deliberately. I now enjoy the photos, the way he approaches tone, composition, and subject matter.

"I also find interesting Metzker's remarks about tone in an exhibition of Sebastiao Salgado's, comparing this printing to how he (Metzker) printed tones for one of his exhibitions. I know some TOP readers were recently asking about books for learning black and white photography. The photos and comments on tone in Metzker's Landscapes are a great B&W education. So, Mike, this is a photo book that now resonates with me."

[A different] John: "Few photographers' work resonates with me like Harbutt's. I attended his show in Tucson, was deeply moved, and have since bought two of his books. Like you say, it's hard to explain what draws one to certain work. But one thing I like about Harbutt is his pictures are those anyone could make. No exotic locations or events required. Mostly just ordinary life, but very well seen and rendered. Plus, he usually includes some insightful writing. I find both inspiring and motivating."

8/30/14 The Morning Coffee: The Rembrandt of Chicken Photographers

I have many favorite photographers whose work I try to keep up with. One from Britain, Kate Kirkwood, is, in my soberest judgment, the greatest photographer of chickens ever to have lived. Number 33 from her series “Light, Landscape, Lives” is the “Night Watch” of chicken pictures:

Kirkwood

Rembrandt

When I first said this to her I thought she might take it the wrong way—it's a bit flip, as I am wont to be, and I was not trying to belittle* her work—but she took it in the right spirit. She wrote, "I was immediately flattered and delighted by the Rembrandt comparison because I look for and strive for that sumptuous dark light, the dense colours, those possibilities."

I think she finds them, but see what you think. I love this body of work, from Britain's famous Lake District.

She's not bad at street photography, either, as you'll see if you delve further into her website. But of course there's probably more money in chickens. (Again with the flip....)

•     •     •

I had to spend eight hours in the (still empty) new house today as, tick-tock, I inexorably lost my last working weekday till Tuesday. Ya hate that. The first half waiting for the AT&T UVerse guy (Internet hookup), who was supposed to show up in the 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. window and showed up at 2:30 instead; the second half waiting interminably for him to get his work done. I was required to be present, in case any decisions had to be made. He was a nice guy, don't get me wrong—Ricky, from the city, with daughters nine, eleven, and thirteen. And he was working away at it right along. It just took forever.

A few decisions did have to be made, but they did nothing to fill up all the time. I was bored out of my s k u l l.

On the good side, the painter is all finished (thanks Karl), and the colors I chose for the walls work wonderfully. As the day progresses the subtlety of the colors and the way the shifting light is reinforced by the colors is marvelous, much better than I expected. The house is more beautiful than I thought. The light is wonderful. Based on a big eight hours of observation.

Also we discovered that our bathtub is a whirlpool bath! You know, with massaging jets. Another experience that is still in my future in this life. Kind of a bonus, because that's the kind of thing I would never specifically spend my own money on, not in a million years.

I should have brought a towel and taken a long bath, come to think. I had nothing else to do. Except sit around watch the light change. And think of all the other things I should have been doing.

Mike

*Did you know that Thomas Jefferson coined the word "belittle," and made himself a figure of fun among English pedants at the time because of it? That's according to Mencken.

"Morning Coffee" is auto-published weekdays at 3:30 a.m. Central Time today to be in time for morning coffee breaks in the UK and Europe. For those who rise later, it will be there. The feature is a month-long experiment to give people something to check in with while I'm busy moving. If I can get the rhythm down, I'll try to continue the tradition when TOP gets revved up again in mid-September.

I'll write about anything. Want to suggest a topic or ask a question? Leave it as a comment.

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JacobT: "For me that set of photographs captures the lake district far better than any of the grand vistas for which it's most famous. Those little vignettes cast me straight back to my childhood there, encountering various creatures on late night drives and misty atmospheric walks. Thanks so much for bringing her work to my attention! Thanks again for the wonderful site, from a homesick Cumbrian residing in London."

Dave Stewart: "Thank you for the link to Kate Kirkwood's site. I really enjoyed looking through her work. Also most heartening to see that she has built up a fine body of work with a humble Nikon D60 and kit lens. That's something to bear in mind as Photokina approaches, and many of us find ourselves tempted by all the new and (allegedly) so much better baubles!"

Mike replies: Right, but I somehow keep feeling that her "sumptuous dark light and dense colours" would be better served by a full-frame Canon with an L lens.

Svein-Frode: "What a great photographer. Talk about turning a weakness (digital camera noise) into an advantage! Thanks for sharing, and Kate if you're reading this, keep up the excellent work. I can imagine that your prints must be even more beautiful!"

Steve Pritchard: "The photographs in Kate Kirkwood's 'Light, Landscapes, Lives' section of the linked site are just sumptuous. I've only looked at the first twenty but had to leave so as to save them until I can clear the decks of distractions and give them my undivided attention. I can't think of a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Thanks for the link.

"By the way, did there really used to be such a thing as English pedants? Before my time!"

Bob Smith: "Ok, I looked. Here is what I think: WOW. It's wonderful coming across or being pointed to a photographer with a definite look and feel to their work. I have bookmarked Kate's site and will be spending a pleasant afternoon taking it in."

Photography Has a Bad Name...

...And it's "Terry Richardson." I would never be allowed on the jury if justice ever catches up to that guy, because I've long ago made up my mind. Counsel for the defense would dismiss me right away. But if you'd like to read Benjamin Wallace's controversial New York magazine cover article (which in my view is overly Richardson-friendly), here it is. (Reading the comments is actually fairly rewarding, too. I don't know why I'm so surprised by that.)

But to answer the article's title question:

Literal question: Predator; Implied question: Wrong framing. It doesn't have to be "either-or"; subtextual question: That it might be art rather than pornography as well as over-the-top workplace sexual harassment—or worse (much worse)—does not in any way, shape, or form excuse it.

I'm appalled I have to share a label with certain individuals.

Mike
(Thanks to Bruce Appelbaum)

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John Boeckeler: "The big guns in the fashion world aren't surprised by this, and we shouldn't be either. All you have to do is Google 'Terry Richardson photographer' images to find out what he's like. In fact, I'd say his conduct is not inconsistent with contemporary standards in popular entertainment, fashion, politics, and our culture's declining norms. That magazine piece will probably end up helping his business."

Gordon Lewis: "I wouldn't say that Terry Richardson gives photography in general a bad name so much as his conduct reflects very poorly on himself and the fashion industry—not that I hold either one in high regard. They are clearly co-conspirators in this tawdry mess. What hits even closer to home was when Bob Shell, the former editor of Shutterbug magazine, was convicted in 2007 of involuntary manslaughter for the death of one his models. I personally found his prior photos of young women to be slightly pervy, so I was surprised but not shocked to hear of his arrest. Men and women alike have to be very careful before putting themselves into situations where vulnerability can lead to exploitation or worse."

Bahi: "Not long after the New York magazine article, there was a very good and widely tweeted follow-up written by Alex Abad-Santos for Vox. It offers a better balance; the New York piece was a little infuriating."

Al Satterwhite and Ali

Muhammed Ali by Al Satterwhite

David Vestal liked to be called simply "photographer." Perhaps the best descriptor for Al Satterwhite is also just "photographer." He's one of those guys who have somehow managed to balance many different kinds of work and do it all well; a photographer.

Now he's crowd-funding a book about Muhammed Ali, drawn from 50 rolls of Tri-X he shot in 1970–71. Al hung out with Ali as Ali trained for his comeback after his suspension. "I include my recollections of being with 'The Champ,' who to me was a big pussycat, as friendly and fun as you can imagine."

Al Satterwhite

Even if you're not interested in helping with the book, the Kickstarter page is like a nice blog post, with lots of good pictures. Worth checking out on its own merits IMHO.

Thought you might enjoy. The book will be called "The Secret of Muhammed Ali."

Mike
(Thanks to Joseph E. Reid)

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So, How You Doin'?

Apropos our discussions last week, a quick pulse-check. This doesn't even rise to the level of a survey, and that's okay. I'm just interested in hearing from some actual people.

If you work in photography, how's it going?

How are things for you? How's the market, how's work, how's income, how's the job, how's job satisfaction? No need to be literal, just peg it to how you feel overall. Don't speak for others or analyze the Universe, just speak for yourself.

Let's define "work as a photographer" as 1. Employed full-time in any photo-related field or earn your entire living in any photo-related field, or 2. Make at least 2/3rds of your present income taking pictures and selling them (in whatever way).

Let's rate on a 10 scale from –5 to +5, where 0 (zero) is "same as it ever was," "just cruising along," "same old same old"; the positive numbers are various shades of "things are good and/or getting better," and negative numbers are degrees of "things are bad and/or getting worse."

You can just give a number if you want. Adding how you work in photography might be helpful. You don't need to comment further unless you want to. (If you want to, be aware than the longer the comment, the less likely it is to be read.)

I'll start. I'm +3 or +4.

So how you doin'?

Mike

P.S. And just this time, no meta-comments or non-responsive comments, please. I might hold those back until later. Although I'll post them eventually.

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Bahi: "I'm a 0 financially but at least a +3 for job satisfaction. I work with some very interesting photographers on workflow, post-processing, print-making, colour management and other technical things. Some people say that teaching is a good way of learning your subject and that's true but looking constantly at other people's work has meant learning about photography in general and not just about the technical stuff. In particular, I get to see what distinguishes one photographer's outlook from another's and how true it is that belief in yourself and your work is everything. Teaching people the tools to quickly organise and edit their work means you get to see what photographers consider to be their hits and misses—definitely one of the highlights of the job and still, after a good few years at this, a great way to learn.

"I also get to meet some lovely people. Most photographers I work with see the world as their raw material and are interesting and insightful—they tend to be optimistic and successful (I guess they'd have to be otherwise they wouldn't be paying someone to help with this stuff).

"Plus, I get to file all the time I spend here at TOP under 'Professional Development'!"

Mike replies: Splendid.

Jim Hughes: "Sam Kirkland, a former employee of the Chicago Sun-Times, has done an interesting story for the Poynter Institute on what's become of the photojournalists the newspaper fired en masse last year.

"'One year ago today,' he writes, 'the Chicago Sun-Times eliminated its photo staff, laying off 28 full-time employees. Most of them have landed on their feet, according to email and phone interviews with many of the photographers. While they were sometimes hesitant to dwell on the layoffs, the former Sun-Times staffers filled me in on how their lives—and those of the photographers I couldn't reach—have changed since May 30, 2013....'

"Here's the full story. And be sure to read the comments that follow the article itself."

aaronL: "–2. Twenty years running a once busy portrait studio. Hanging on by a thread...."

Fiddlergene: "+5."

Tim: "–4. Left the industry almost completely after five years being fully self employed. Still shoot the occasional job for old clients but now mostly just shoot my kids and cats."

Bryan Geyer: "I'm retired (since 2002) from the photography trade now, and I can't speak specifically about 'work as a photographer,' but I can tell you this: The photography equipment business is in a tailspin. This past year has been a major disappointment for virtually every equipment manufacturer, large and small, with progressively shrinking sales and scant evidence of improvement. I can't recall any period of such severe and widespread recession since the very early 1970s. The entire trade is in a funk."

[Bryan is the retired founder of Really Right Stuff, the tripod accessories company. —Ed.]

Mike Plews: "In September I'll hit 40 years in the TV news business as a photographer. For me at least things feel like either a +1 or a +2. My business has seen a lot of change in the last five years. I see that as an opportunity to recharge my creative batteries. The changes in technology have occasionally left me breathless, and I mean that in a good way.

"Photography in all its forms has always been a tough racket. You have to be agile to make a living. I do notice that in the last few years personal work, which is all still photography, has been occupying a larger part of my 'thinking for pleasure' time."

Rob: "I think I'm at +4. I'm early in my career, and about to (hopefully) expand my business with the addition of a full-time studio space, dedicated to shooting and editing, in Lebanon, New Hampshire. I can see why newspaper and magazine journalists are worried, and to the extent that I aspire to editorial portraiture, I know I probably should be worried as well, but my tiny business is growing, and I'm excited. Hopefully I can continue the expansion without dominating the twittersphere or embracing crossover video mumbo jumbo."

Jay Pastelak: "In my personal work, probably 0 to +1. In my professional life as a professor in a private for-profit school that once had a vibrant photo program but is now struggling to attract students, it's a –4. Summer schedules came out last Friday afternoon. I'm OK but some of my full-time colleagues have found themselves reduced to one class (five is normal). Adjuncts are non-existent. Things were exceptionally grim in faculty offices yesterday."

Steve Wilkie: "I work in the film industry in Toronto as a set/gallery photographer. I'd give it a +1 currently."

Robert Harshman: "Last year and this year, on your scale, I'm at a +10 off the chart. Commercial work. In the last six weeks I've made what would have been a very good two years' income five years ago. Keeping my fingers crossed it will last 2–3 more."

Pete: "I shot stock for a big agency for 15 years, originally sailing around the Pacific on a yacht, then living in Australia. Income peaked 10 years ago and has declined ever since.

"I married a Thai photographer and moved to Thailand to reduce costs. So I'm about –3. My wife's wedding photography has taken off here and she is about +4. But she's a good photographer!"

pierre: "Full-time freelance since 1981. Income exclusively from shooting. Constant decrease in business since 2004, but 2012 has been excellent while 2013 has been the worst in twenty years. So far 2014 is even slower.

"I like to believe I have never been a better photographer as of now. The clients comment positively on my current assignments with more enthusiasm. And yet, they buy my services less and less. Go figure.

"Note: –3. Of course, I am worried."

Jack Foley: "I've been a staff photographer on daily newspapers for 35 years, and in my current job for the last 28 of them. I am a general assignment photographer, so my subjects are quite varied day to day. The way I approach the job of telling stories with a camera has not really changed that much. But, the tools and the business have changed greatly. For me, working in color came in the early '90s and digital took over in the early 2000s. Both were welcome improvements. The newspaper business, with print circulations in decline, has become as much a web presence as it is a print presence.

"For me, in its current state, more of my pictures are published, but I fear fewer people see them. Embarrassing as it is to reveal it, I haven't had a noticeable raise in pay in more than two decades. I still love the work though, and hope to last long enough to retire five to ten years from now. So, on the business end, the number would be –3, and the personal satisfaction number would be around 4. Short answer: Guess I'm doin' okay, Mike. Thanks for asking."

Ken Bennett: "+4. I'm the sole staff photographer at a University, where I've been working for 17+ years, after ten years as a freelance news photographer in another state. [Readers might remember that we published Ken's portrait of Maya Angelou a few days ago. —Ed.] I work with a terrific team of writers and designers who love my work, and I get great assignments.

"I had a major promotion last year, I'm doing the best work of my career, and my position provides excellent benefits and most of my gear. Although many people in higher education are facing cutbacks and layoffs, our office has been expanding over the last few years (because we really needed it.) Of course it's not all unicorns and rainbows, and there's a fair amount of the 'headshots and banquets' common to any staffer, but overall my personal situation is great. I feel for Kirk (in the Comments Section)—'To sum up: Sucky time to be an aging photographer with the inertia of old school practices sitting heavily on one's shoulders like a dead albatross'—and I see that among my freelance colleagues in this area. But you asked about our personal situations, so I thought you might want a positive outlook to provide some balance. :-) "

Agdemesaphoto: "I'm a 26 year old currently working as a fashion photographer's assistant here in the Philippines. It's creatively a +3 since I used to shoot documentary, journalism, and street for my own projects. It is a –4 financially. I worry about my day to day. I only get an allowance and food. I rarely have time to do my own shoots or find other sources of income. My equipment is not as fancy and my computer is an ailing five-year-old machine that is having a hard time editing files. I frankly don't know where I could get the capital to get better equipment. I may get connections and networks with my work but it's nothing if I don't have money for food. It's never about the money for me but I sure wish I don't need to worry about it."

kirk: "Mike, one more point. I think there is some aspect of context and relativity to peoples' perception of the market. If you ran a great business in the 1990s it was entirely possible to pull out $150,000 to $200,000 of profit in a good years. That's what many in the business saw as their target or benchmark. People who have entered the business after the 'digital revolution' may look at $60K to $80K in profit and think they are doing a dynamite business. I think a lot depends on when and how you entered the business. The understanding of success in the biz seems to be, to a big extent, relative to expectations."

Tom Hassler: "Financially, –2. Everything else, +5. I made a very nice living doing advertising and corporate photography from the late '70s until about 2008. As the economy tanked (and the photo biz turned into a low-paying, high-stress crap shoot) I re-focused my career entirely. It was a scrape for a while, but in hindsight, it was the best possible time for a major change. Now I teach and run workshops, and more importantly, I love my life in photography again."

Jore Puusa: "I'm a 62-year-old photojournalist from Finland. I've been in the industry from 1977. First 15 years I covered war and crisis for AP, UPI, DPA and AFP etc. Those years were good and photography was the very main point of my living. Good pictures paid good money and I felt I was a part of making the world better.

"Then at about 1985 things started to go worse. Several publishers gave small compact cameras to editors and the deadly trend has continued. Editors take now most of the pictures or amateurs deliver pics for free. We pros are set aside, I have been unemployed for three years now. I taught photojournalism three years—from 2008 till 2011—and during that time all my earlier clients chose an inexpensive young wannabe photog or free amateurs and now I'm finished and waiting for pension. The substance or visual quality means nothing and print looks terrible. Nobody cares because those who have a degree in economy are in charge in papers—not journalists any more. Circulations go down about 10% per year. The final death shakes are here and all will be finished maybe in 10 years from now. This is so sad and when print dies, fascism starts to raise its ugly head. Jore Puusa, teacher of photojournalism, Helsinki, Finland."

Kenneth Wajda: "+1. I'm a former staff photojournalist for a daily newspaper and now work as a freelance commercial photographer. I say +1, but I balance my shooting stills work with video production and editing. So, it's doing okay, but it's never easy. And there are still many people looking to get work for little or no pay. They'll say, 'unfortunately, we don't have a budget'—I just got that from a major Boulder magazine group. I said it's not like not having a budget is something that happened to you, that you're the victim of. You're the one who decided you could run a magazine while not bothering to budget anything for photography, because you don't respect photographers or think they should be paid for their work. I worry the younger generation won't appreciate or even recognize what good photography is."

Almostinfamous: "Overall –1. I do commercial and wedding photos in Hyderabad, India, and have been since 2009. It's a small market with not many agencies, and budgets have grown tighter and tighter the past few years due to political uncertainties. our state has recently split into two due to longstanding issues so if not for the clarity that brought, I'd be at –2 and looking anxiously to move to a bigger city."

Gordon Cahill: "+4 for me. I like technology so was early to go digital and early to reduce my printing. After 20+ years I'm still having a ball and making a good income. I've tried to keep my eye on what's going to happen rather than cling onto what I would like to happen, which has, so far, kept me out of trouble.

"My first 10 years was weddings. Then a few in commercial work. Then a break to go travel. Then another 10 in weddings and now back shooting mostly commercial although I will shoot 15 weddings and 25 portrait shoots this year as well. I've just invested in new cameras and I'm now looking at adding a drone to my kit. That alone might add another 500 per week. And I don't shoot video, just stills. Picked up another regular client this week. If this keeps up I might need to close the books. I do think there's been a real shift in the industry and I'm real glad I'm not a journalist in Australia. But with change come opportunities and I hope I grab a few of them on the way through. Bottom line is I only feel limited by how many hours there are in a day and how much energy I have to put into it."

Random Excellence: Albarrán Cabrera

Sevilla, 2013. Photograph by Albarrán Cabrera.

"Albarrán Cabrera" are the photographers Anna P. Cabrera and Angel Albarrán, platinotype masters from Barcelona, Spain.

There's a nice slideshow at LensCulture called "The Mouth of Krishna," and here's the photographers' website.

Mike

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Robert Newcomb: "Visiting the website of Albarrán Cabrera is kind of a good news bad news thing. It's good news to see that someone can create such lovely images. The bad news is that I know in my heart, on my best day I'll most likely never make anything so beautiful."