Two Updates

Update 1: "Documenting the Face of America: Roy Stryker and the F.S.A./O.W.I. Photographers" on PBS last night. I thought the hour-long show was good, if necessarily superficial, serving as a primer on the FSA Photography Unit rather than an in-depth exploration of it. It's a decent introduction, though. It had some nice interviews, especially with Gordon Parks (who was hard to understand in places), Louise Rosskam, and F. Jack Hurley, whose book Portrait of a Decade is one of the best ones written about the FSA. The music was a bit heavy, like too much cologne; and, as is all too common with photography documentaries, the pictures were shortchanged: they showed a decent number (again in the context of a short overview of a show), but the camera work inexplicably cropped in on most if not all of the pictures, even when it obviously weakened them to do so, and the tonal properties sucked—even granted that video is never the best way to see photographs, still, it looked like a lot of the pictures were shot straight from middling-quality book illustrations.

The biggest strength of the show—its focus on the political and bureaucratic aspects of the unit—was also its biggest weakness, as it cast those issues too much in terms of today's politics. The implicit "socialism vs. capitalism" theme of the documentary is really incidental to the photographic story. The filmmakers could just as easily have cast Stryker's battles as bureaucratic rather than ideological ones, and concentrated more on his relationships with his photographers.

Still, entertaining to watch, and recommended, albeit not urgently.

(As a side-note, Portrait of a Decade could usefully be re-issued by some upstanding publisher—its reproductions were of barely adequate quality even in 1972, and the meat of the scholarly text remains excellent.)

Update 2: I promised a few days ago I'd look for my Duane Michals book, and I found it covered with dust (gak!) on a bottom shelf. It is The Essential Duane Michals, by Marco Livingston, Bulfinch 1997. After perusing it a couple of times I think it lives up to its title. It covers Michals' entire career, even including a decent indication of his magazine work. The bookmaking and reproductions are first-rate. It includes some of Michals' writing, and the commentary seems good. The design is especially good, flexible and dynamic yet never shortchanging the pictures. There are a few double-trucks but none really ruinous.

Moreover, all the big hits (well, that come to my mind, anyway) are here: Chance Meeting, Things Are Queer, I Build a Pyramid, The Illuminated Man, The Spirit Leaves the Body, a decent selection of portraits including the one of Joseph Cornell, and of course This Photograph is My Proof. Even Michals' cover for the Police album Synchronicity. The incidental homoeroticism that has seemed to increasingly preoccupy Michals the artist in his later years (I can't escape the sense that he just likes having his models around, although that sounds snarky) is present in about the right proportion, meaning, not overpoweringly.

Very naturally, I like to have more books by the photographers who are most important to me. I have many titles by people like Kertész, Cartier-Bresson, Koudelka, Friedlander, and Levitt. But I like to have good overviews of major figures too, and sometimes these can be harder to find, since a single book needs to stand in for a whole career. The Essential Duane Michals does a good job of doing this, better than most, and is an easy recommendation as a first or only title by this photographer.

Mine's been dusted good as new, and more carefully shelved.

_______________________

Mike

Comments

[mcananeya]

Thanks, Mike.

Best regards,
Adam

[Clayton Jones]

Hello Mike,

>I have many titles by people like Kertész, Cartier-Bresson, Koudelka, Friedlander, and Levitt. But I like to have good overviews of major figures too, and sometimes these can be harder to find, since a single book
needs to stand in for a whole career.

Two books in this genre that make the grade are "Pauses" by Edouard Boubat (Bookking Int'l, 1988) and "Photographs At Home And Abroad" by Marc Riboud (Harry Abrams, NY, 1986). Both are outstanding and are among my all-time favorites.

If you haven't seen these you are culturally deprived [g].

Regards,
Clayton Jones

[Bill Bresler]

I didn't find the political aspect of the FSA doc to be a problem. It's my opinion that we too often look at those photos as a real treasure that we all universally admire, forgetting that they were and still are hated by conservatives for their capture of a reality that doesn't fit their world view. (Sound familiar?) The current attacks on Social Security and universal health care are directly linked to the past hatred of FDR and his "socialist" policies.
The documentary reminded me how remarkable it is that the project lasted as many years as it did.
The cropping did bother me, but not as much as the sound of a 1980s shutter and winder as each photo was presented.

[Mike J.]

"The cropping did bother me, but not as much as the sound of a 1980s shutter and winder as each photo was presented."

Bill,
Yes, that was inane. I guess I'm getting inured....

Mike J.

[Bill Bresler]

I suppose if they had used the "ker-THWACK...wheeez" of a 4x5 Graflex
RB nobody would have recognized it as the sound of a camera.

[Chris Y]

The winder sound effect between the shots was the first clue, wasnt it? I thought the political context was interesting.... Roosevelt had to sell the idea of government intervention to politicians who did not consider it their jobs to arrange programs to support people. That fault line still exists. Even on the reproductions, the luminosity of southern daylight and slow film was still arresting. Wouldnt it be interesting to see it from a purely craft-of-photography viewpoint...

[Chuck Albertson]

Also take a look at the recent "Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange's Photographs and Reports from the Field." It's not an overview of the entire FSA project, but instead a detailed look at Lange's work on one year of the project, and how she went about it.

[Bill Mitchell]

The FSA documentary was shown here (Tampa Bay) at 4 AM this morning, so I'm a little bleary eyed right now.
I thought that I was pretty well informed about FSA, but I learned a great deal from this program. There were many images I wan't familiar with, but there was a lot of cropping, and they went by too fast to really appreciate.
Definitely superficial coverage, but worth watching.