The Online Photographer

Tamron 60mm f/2 Macro 1:1 with IF

Tamron has announced a new medium-telephoto macro lens designed specifically for APS-C digital cameras, the SP AF 60mm ƒ/2 Di II LD (IF) Macro 1:1.

This is an interesting lens, for a couple of reasons. First, it's a direct replacement for one of the film lenses that put Tamron on the map as a lensmaker: the company's 90mm ƒ/2.8 Macro 1:1 (still in production lo these many years later). First introduced in 1979 as the SP 90mm ƒ/2.5 Apadtall II with dedicated 1:1 converter, the film lens significantly undercut the camera manufacturers' expensive longer macro lenses in price while directly competing in quality—always a sound recipe for success with customers. By the time of the ƒ/2.8 AF revision in 1990 it also went to 1:1 (true "macro" magnification) without an extender, unlike some of its competitors at that time. The press release for the new lens notes that the older film version has been updated no less than seven times, which I did not know. Official sales in the thirty years since 1979: one bazillion.

The new lens features a bright maximum aperture of ƒ/2. Although exceeded in speed by Pentax's non-macro 55mm ƒ/1.4 portrait lens (which I've been shooting with lately), it's the fastest macro lens of its focal-length family today. In speed, it harkens back to Olympus's OM Zuiko 90mm ƒ/2 for 35mm, also a pretty special lens in its day. (Olympus also made a 100mm ƒ/2 "near-macro"—meaning it focused very close—that was one of my favorite lenses for years.)

Tamron's new lens also features IF, meaning internal focusing, meaning that the lens doesn't extend as you focus closer. Now, I'm not a macro photographer, and I'm quite sure to be corrected emphatically and frequently if I'm wrong, but as far as I know this is still pretty unusual for macro lenses, most of which extend in a manner that would make a Victorian lady faint.

No word on dates or prices yet that I know of. Mounts: Canon, Nikon, and Sony (in all cases for APS-C cameras only). The optical construction is an elaborate 14 elements in 10 groups, minimum working distance is 100mm (~4 in.) from the front element, and it has full-time manual focusing. Size is 80mm (3.15 in.) in length by 73mm (2.9 in.) in diameter, and it weighs 400g (14.1 oz.).

Mike
(Thanks to Robin Pywell and Adam Maas)

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Featured Comment by T: "Of course, I hope it's good, but I'm not entirely convinced of its utility.

"In the non-macro, wide-aperture department, it also has to compete with the 50mm ƒ/1.4 and ƒ/1.8's (or, on Pentax, the 55mm ƒ/1.4; or possibly with the manual-focus Voigtländer 58mm ƒ/1.4).

"In the macro department, longer is often better—for the sake of working distance (as long as it doesn't get out of hand for indoor work; things are still fine at 90mm). A 100mm working distance at 1:1 would be something, since the Tamron 90mm macro has a 95mm working distance from the filter ring (not the front element). But the latter hardly needs a hood, since the front element is deeply recessed. With a hood, the working distance of the new 60mm might get cut down quite a bit.

"I would have rather Tamron came out with a competitor to Sigma's 150mm macro (which occupies the sweet spot of being significantly longer than the 90/105mm macros, but much cheaper than the 180/200mm macros)."

Lssy Cmprssn

Generation loss, from Hadto via Vimeo.

Mike
(Thanks to Stan B.)

Featured Comment by Will: "Though that's an interesting piece, I'm not sure if I come away thinking 'man, JPEG compression is horrible' or 'man, I've always known JPEG was lossy, but wow, look at how long it takes before it destroys an image.'

"I think I lean for the latter. Still, I'll keep shooting RAW, and ensuring that images make, at most, one trip through the JPEG pipeline, and at the highest allowable quality level."

Pirkle Jones 1914 - 2009

Pirkle Jones was a longtime fixture of the San Francisco photography scene. Photo by Eric Luse/The Chronicle.

Pirkle Jones died on March 15th, at the age of 95. He was a close friend and former assistant of Ansel Adams's and a longtime teacher in the Bay area. Although he made many fine California landscapes in the Group f64 style, he was perhaps best known for intimate photojournalism of the Black Panther movement in the 1960s.

San Francisco Chronicle obituary

Brief bio written by (I think) Gary Hardy

Mike
(Thanks to Ken Tanaka)

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Featured Comment by Jason: "PixChannel.com has a video interview with Pirkle (click on the lower left image)."

Shapes of Some Things Long to Come

By Ctein

My holiday column talked about the near-term improvements we could expect in digital imaging technology. This time, we're going to go far out. There are technological possibilities that are way beyond anything we've got now. Mind you, this won't be "wantum physics," Greg Benford's lovely name for the made-up science that solved problems on the good Starship Enterprise. There will be no funneling of beams of anti-expositrons through a tachyonic memory to get extra-long exposure ranges. (Note to the physics-impaired: the preceding sentence has no fact-based content whatsoever.) Everything I'll describe is already existing science and engineering; it's just so far away from production-level technology that there's no telling when we'll get it or just what form it will be in.

• Photon-counting sensors—today's camera sensors don't try to detect individual photons, they just collect photoelectrons in a charge bucket and measure the aggregate charge. Fast-enough detectors can report on each and every photon individually and are markedly more light-sensitive, sharper, and accurate.

• Full-spectrum-recording sensors—these sensors not only detect individual photons but measure their energies as well. The sensor is panchromatic; there are no colored filters that throw away most of the light. In combination with photon-counting, each pixel could be reporting the amount of light and its spectral distribution. That's huge. Performance is just as good whether you're doing black and white or color, and your color fidelity is now limited solely by how good your models of human color vision are.

• Pixelless sensors—maybe you don't even need physical pixels. There are tricks one can play with excitons and surface plasmons (yes, those are real; no, please don't ask me to explain) that allow one to determine where on a sensor the photon was detected. No need to create physically isolated pixels; the sensor not only reports the arrival of photon, but its coordinates.

Combining all three of these sensor qualities would probably be problematic because each is somewhat antagonistic to the other, for reasons of bandwidth, response times, and signal-to-noise ratios. It's hard to see how current electronics would let you make a full-frame pixelless photon-counting full-spectrum sensor. Attosecond electronics might make that possible, but they're far enough off that I don't want to speculate.

A compromise, though, is feasible. Imagine a camera sensor with relatively large physical pixels; 10x10 or even 20x20 µ in size. Each pixel counts photons individually and determines their energy and position (don't worry, we're not anywhere close to the Heisenberg limit). How that information gets used becomes an artistic and photographic choice.

If you're doing really low light black-and-white work, you could decide to throw away the spectral information, and collectively count all the photons detected in the physical pixel. It's the digital equivalent of loading up your camera with high-speed, coarse-grained black-and-white film. At higher light levels, you might choose to start parsing up those electrons by position; the more light, the more you could computationally subdivide the physical pixel into image pixels without excessive noise. Essentially, you "dial out" your coarse-grained high speed film and dial in finer grained, slower, sharper film. Similarly, color and color fidelity become adjustable artistic parameters.

What you'd get would be a kind of "soft" film; image quality characteristics that were previously fixed in physical film and sensors become variables that you control. Fast or slow, black-and-white or color, fine grained or coarse, these are no longer determined by the physical medium but by your artistic choices.

In closing, remember that Ubergeek technology is not inherently in conflict with the traditional craft and art. They can nicely go hand-in-hand. Consider the sheep of things to come...

Ctein

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Petitioning the Prime Minister

Our British readers will want to check out this petition. It states, simply and eloquently, "We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Remove new restrictions on photography in public places."

Mike
(Thanks to Miguel Teixeira)

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Featured Comment by Chris Bertram: "Okay, so I feel just a tiny bit conflicted about this...not about police harassment of photographers (or the harassment from PCSOs, security guards etc.), most of which is annoying and probably illegal, but, rather about the overexcited response to this bit of legislation, both here and elsewhere.

"As far as I can see:

"1. The legislation, which doesn't actually mention photography at all, doesn't give the police any powers they didn't have before, since all the 'eliciting of information' stuff was already potentially an offense.

"2. The overwhelming likelihood seems to be that the guidance under which the police will operate (issued by the Association of Chief Police Officers) will actually result in them behaving better than they have in the past. (And for those who say that it is only 'guidance,' it is the standard the courts would use to determine if the police acted reasonably.)

"3. The revised guidance is going to have input from photographers—so is likely to be a bit better than the existing version.

"By all means lets be vigilant about the police hassling photographers, but mostly when they do so it is out of ignorance of the law, and this new law doesn't amount to the Rubicon-crossing step it is being made out to be."

OT: Contribute to TOP

The Online Photographer (T.O.P.) is a free site, not a paysite. You're always welcome if you contribute or not. The "Subscribe" buttons below (so-called because they sign you up for a recurring contribution) are voluntary payments that you can set up if you like the site and want to wish us well or help us continue to prosper—as a means of saying "thanks" or "keep it up."

Remember, any contribution is generous! Thousands of people—quite probably, tens of thousands—will read the site every day and never pay a cent (alas). So anything you can contribute is extremely kind; it puts you in a small (hopefully not too small) minority; it makes you into a genuine T.O.P. patron and sustainer.

The subscription amount is $6. You can vary your contribution by choosing how often you wish to send it.

The largest (most frequent) amount is very generous.

The smallest (least frequent) subscription is inexpensive. It amounts to 25 cents per month from you (we get a bit less, because of administrative fees). Since we average 45 posts per month, it works out to just about exactly half a cent per post. I know, some of them aren't worth that much. (Hey—I do not want to hear about it!) Hopefully, the ones where we give you our 2¢ worth will make up for that.

You can unsubscribe at any time. (In a few days, I'll create a permanent link to this page that's easy to find on the main page of the site.)

Choose a frequency that seems the best to you:

Monthly:

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Semi-annually (once every six months):

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Thank you for helping to support our efforts!

Mike

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ADDENDUM: Even with more than 30,000 readers a day, I'm quite sure I don't rate 1,000 "True Fans"—but I'm very hopeful that I have 100 or even 150. So far so good. But you can imagine my chagrin when people who want to sign up for this are stymied by PayPal problems....

PayPal swears up and down that it's possible to make a secure credit card payment without being signed up for an account. You click on the line in the screen shown below where it says "Don't have a PayPal account? Use your credit card or bank account (where available)." If this doesn't work for you, I guess you're not "where available," and too bad for me about that. But thanks for trying.

Here is the page you're supposed to see when you click one of the "Subscribe" buttons above:

If you're not seeing this, I don't know what's going on. I'll get on the phone with PayPal later today and try to find out what's up with that. I'll post an update if and when I learn anything.

And to those who've signed up, thank you; you're very kind, and I'm grateful. For those who have tried, and can't...well, @#$%! And sorry 'bout that. All too sorry.

We'll get back to regular programming later this morning, with a new column from Ctein about possible far-into-the-future technological developments in digital. —MJ

A Life in Art

By John Camp

The discussion of Ctein’s print-subscription offer, and the ruminations on the monetization of artwork, are among the most critical topics ever addressed on this site, and I was astonished that so many people seem upset by the idea, or the process, or the fact that’s it’s being publicized here.

I’m a professional writer of thriller novels. I’ve been doing it for twenty years now, having written a couple of non-fiction books before I finally got launched in fiction. In that time (since 1990) I’ve published twenty-seven novels. I have another coming out in May and another in September. All of them have, in one form or another, made the New York Times Best Sellers list, several of them going to Number 1.

In addition, I have a lifelong interest in art—painting, in particular, but also in photography, ceramics and fabric art. When I was a newspaper columnist, I tried to write two columns a month about artists, which meant that I spent a lot of time in artists’ studios, many of them heart-breakingly primitive. I’ve seen middle-aged women living illegally in industrial buildings with no private bathing facilities, cooking with illegal hotplates, just so they could do the work. One of my non-fiction books, The Eye and the Heart: The Watercolors of John Stuart Ingle, published by Rizzoli, a New York art publisher, grew out of my interest in painting.

I’m trying to say that I’ve been doing this stuff—writing for a living, and looking at art and talking to artists—all of my life, and I know quite a bit about it.

So let me share the following with you...

OT: Movie Question

I have a completely off-topic lazy Saturday movie question for the TOP Brain Trust. I'm wondering if you can name a well-written, compelling, engaging movie that meets both of two conditions:

1. Doesn't use any fantastical premises, and
2. Doesn't use guns or gun-substitutes as a means of adding to or driving the dramatics.

(By "fantastical" I mean anything having to do with fantasy—talking cars or lions; monsters; vampires; futurism; science fiction; comic book characters; myths; ghosts (I mean ghosts presented as if they're actual—ghosts as a psychological reality, as in Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now, wouldn't be a disqualifier); sentient robots; superheroes; etc. And by "gun substitutes" I mean anything serving the same function in drama as guns do—say, bows and arrows in Deliverance or swords in a swashbuckler or samurai movie.)

Any good ones come to mind?

Mike

ADDENDUM: I'm sorry, I forgot to mention—the film must be in English (I want to read screenplays, and I only read English).

CODA: Thanks very much for all the suggestions!

Random Excellence: Andrew Ilachinski

This might not quite convince as a middlin'-sized JPEG, but I'll bet it's a gorgeous print. (When I look at Andy's work I'm imagining superbly crafted large-format prints on fiber paper, but I haven't asked him. I wonder if that is indeed what they are, or if I'm being fooled.) See if you can find some things you like in Andy's portfolio on Picasa.

You might also like his blog, Tao of Photography. Since posting about Josef Sudek the other day, I've had several nice and very interesting email exchanges with readers who are disabled. Regarding Sudek, I used to joke with Sally Mann that I'd use an 8x10 like she does, except that it's too big and heavy for me (Sally's about half my size). But seriously, an 8x10 outfit really is too much camera for me. So I think that, from now on, whenever I feel lazy about some obstacle or another that's standing in my way, I'm going to think of Josef Sudek using his 8x10 camera and doing all his darkroom work with one arm. That's seriously inspiring. As if his work weren't inspiring enough all by itself.

But I digress. I meant to mention that you might be interested in an insightful and well-written article that Andy Ilachinski wrote on Tao of Photography called "Learning to See from the Blind." Worth the read. (It's about a book called Seeing Beyond Sight: Photographs by Blind Teenagers.)

Do check out Andy's work. I'll bet you can find some you really like.

Mike

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Giving Us a Power We Don't Have

I am stunned to learn, from a comment written by Peter Adamski to the previous post, that

"On the 16th of February, the U.K. Government passed a law (in the Counter Terrorism Act) making it illegal to take a photograph of a police office, military personnel or member of the intelligence services—or a photograph which 'may be of use for terrorism.' This definition is vague at best, and open to interpretation by the police—who under Home Secretary guidelines can 'restrict photography in public places.' "

To say this is a huge blow to freedom is an understatement. It is antithetical to the ideals and practices of a free people, and illustrates that the creep of totalitarianism continues apace in the West.

Consistently, fearful anti-terrorist hysteria has given to photographers a power we simply don't have. The act of taking a picture has never been demonstrated to have any value whatsoever as a predictor of a future terrorist event; surely, the problem is that when ten thousand people take pictures and one turns out to be a terrorist, being suspicious of people with cameras is of no value in finding that one needle in that vast haystack. Not only that, but it has never been demonstrated that actual terrorists use cameras or take pictures. In short, photography is not a terrorist activity—never has been, never will be, not in any way, shape, or form.

We simply have a falsely "reasoned" idea that terrorists probably do take photographs of their targets beforehand. It's never been proven, but it seems likely. That seems to be enough for most people. Never mind that Google is putting the world online (a reader who learned my address recently, from my email sig file, shot me back a photo of my street taken from in front of my house) and that evildoers can get photographs of practically anything from a large variety of sources, without even having to take them themselves. And never mind how easy it is to take pictures surreptitiously.

It seems reasonable to infer that terrorists use the toilet. Therefore anyone who uses the toilet is a potential terrorist, and using a toilet should be considered a suspicious activity. Anyone caught using a toilet may be detained and questioned, and is subject to having their their toilet tissue confiscated.

(Why not? It makes just about as much sense.)

The only effect of laws like Britain's new one is that photographers can now be persecuted, on a whim, at any time, for no good reason.

The inescapable conclusion is that Britain has handed the terrorists a win: we are, in fact, terrorized. We are so scared that we will pass inane laws that fly directly in the face of our traditional rights and freedoms and give effectively unlimited power to our police to persecute and harass innocent citizens—us—for any reason, or for no reason. If this had any value whatsoever in combating terrorism, we could discuss its desirability; but it doesn't. It's a giant, fat red herring that does nothing but cede unreasonable power to authorities who, as most photographers can attest from direct experience, are poorly trained with regard to policies and procedures regarding photography, and act capriciously toward photographers anyway.

Incredible, and deplorable. My sympathies and condolences go out to all photographers in the U.K., and indeed to all U.K. citizens. You lost something important on the 16th of February. I wish I felt that such a thing could never happen in the United States. I'm not so sure.

Mike

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ADDENDUM: MUST READING: Bruce Schneier's June, 2008 essay, "Are Photographers Really A Threat?" (Thanks to ggl for reminding me of this.)

Featured Comment by Jeffrey Hornaday: "I live in NYC and I'm on assignment in the U.K. photographing Lionel's Richie's current world tour. We were in Belfast on St. Patrick's Day, and during the afternoon before the show I walked in a small park, shooting the Paddy's Day festivities. I also photographed a few police officers chatting on a street corner adjacent to the park. One grabbed my arm and forced me to cycle through the images on my camera and delete those he deemed 'dangerous,' including a nice sequence of young people dancing on the grass, the officers blurry in the background. Humiliation is a strange thing to feel for taking snapshots in the park."

Amtrak's Newly Published Photo Guidelines Developed With NPPA's Input

By Donald R. Winslow, News Photographer magazine

Durham, N.C. (March 10, 2009)—Back in January the National Press Photographers Association, through its general counsel Mickey H. Osterreicher, asked Amtrak in a letter to stop harassing photographers and to take immediate steps to remedy circumstances where law-abiding photographers working in public places were being confronted by the railroad's police and personnel.

In response, the general counsel for the Amtrak police invited NPPA to participate in a review and updating of their existing policies and suggested that NPPA might want to contribute potential guideline language and input on both the railroad's photography guidelines (for their employees and the public to follow) and on new photography policies for Amtrak police...

READ ON at nppa.org

Mike
(Thanks to Oren)

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Featured Comment by Bruce Appelbaum: "Funny, I was thinking the other day about the story of the photographer seeking to enter an Amtrak photo contest who was arrested in Penn Station in NYC.

"Last Sunday I was on one of my NYC perambulations and found myself in Greenpoint (Brooklyn) near the Newtown Creek sewage treatment plant. It was a gray, cold day, and nothing really had caught my eye until I looked into the open gate and saw an almost fluorescent yellow pipe stand supporting a huge gray pipe.

"So I took a couple of pictures, standing outside the gate. After a few minutes, a rent-a-cop appeared yelling at me to stop taking pictures. I told him that the gate was open, I was standing in a public area, and that there were no signs saying that photography was not allowed. I asked him if he was a police officer, and all he would say is 'I'm on duty.'

"I told him again that there was nothing keeping me from photographing the pipe stand, and he kept yelling about my lack of ability to understand English. Finally he decided to call the police on me using his cell phone. I took a few more shots while he was dialing, and then started walking away. Then he started yelling at me for walking away. I told him 'I'm on duty' and kept going. I think he photographed me with his phone camera.

"It was early Sunday morning, I had a copy of that short piece on photographers' rights, but you never know which cop is going to pissed about having to deal with something like this. So I didn't hang around. On the other hand, I walked slowly and never saw a cop car come around.

"There are lots of photos of that plant on the internet (google Newtown Creek wastewater treatment plant and look at the pictures), so I didn't do anything that lots of others haven't already done. The guy did ruin my mood, though."

Featured Comment by Jon Bloom: "It's not enough to have a policy. That policy also has to be communicated to the staff and they need to be held accountable for following it. Frequently, the problem turns out to be not the policy but rather the ignorance of it by the security people.

"Also, there is this from the policy: '...where actions are deemed suspicious or inconsistent with this policy by observing/reporting persons, photographers and videographers may be approached and questioned to determine if further investigation or action is necessary.'

"That leaves the interpretation of 'suspicious' entirely up to the 'observing/reporting persons,' which naturally include many who are utterly untrained.

"Whether this represents a change in practice remains to be seen."

Pentax Falters in Toxic Economy

Q: Why aren't you writing about the layoffs at Pentax?

A: Because these are just the contractions that Hoya already announced it would make after its Q3 losses? Because I don't want to pile on or add to rumors? Because I'm not yet convinced the sky is falling? Because I'm not into Hoya Inc. short?

Everybody's adjusting.

Mike

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Vintage Prints

Photographers who aren't collectors of photography might be only vaguely aware of the art market's obsession with so-called "vintage" prints. I consider it almost a form of hysteria, a sort of derangement.

A "vintage" print is one that the photographer made within a certain short time of taking the picture. The idea is that it's supposed to be more authentic, because it reflects how the photographer was working and visualizing at the time. Really, of course, it's yet another way of increasing scarcity and hyping rarity—important means of jacking up prices.

It makes a certain amount of sense, as most fundamentally bad ideas do. It's meant to distinguish between artifacts made in the thick of the creative drive that spawned them, and editions made later to capitalize (perhaps) on a picture's popularity or a photographer's increasing reputation.

There's nothing worse to the art market than a printmaker who can flood the market with perfectly good new prints of pictures that have already established a track record for value. It destabilizes prices, and acts as a sort of ex-post-facto deflation on the value of products that dealers might already have sold. If Great Photographer A made thirty prints when he was young of a picture that later becomes sought-after, those prints create a market value based on their scarcity and availability, one that is reflected in the established auction record. If GPA then makes another edition of 300 new prints of the same picture as an old man, the older prints would naturally be worth less—unless you could somehow distinguish them from the later prints.

Another reason vintage prints might be more "authentic" is because materials change over time. If Great Photographer B made a picture when he was printing on "real" Portriga (the good stuff, before they took the cadmium out), then presumably he visualized the picture and made the negative for printing on that paper. A modern paper might have a different characteristic curve and a different print color, etc., and the same negative couldn't be printed the same way it was originally. So even if the same photographer makes a print from the same negative, it might not result in a similar print to what what was originally intended.

All very sensible.

Arthur Rothstein felt he made his best prints of his famous dustbowl picture later in his life, on Agfa Portriga. This is a "vintage" print from the Library of Congress archives.

But the practice leads to all sorts of idiocy and distortion of real value, if "real" means the inherent value of a print as an art-object and craft-object, as something someone would want to own. Because if GPA makes a small batch of prints of a given picture right after he took it, and then a large batch of prints from the same negative 30 years later, it's clear which are vintage and which are modern, and preferring the vintage version might make sense. But what about Great Photographer C, who makes a few prints from the same negative every year for years after she took the picture—say, to fulfill sales orders for it?

In this case, the art market has a ready answer: vintage prints are considered to be those made within five years of the time the negative was made. Which is, of course, absurd. It means that GPC could have made five prints of a 1980 negative in 1984 and five more exactly identical prints in 1986 and the former would be worth more than the latter. Really? (I always wanted to schedule a printing session for a certain negative exactly five years after it was made, so prints from the very same darkroom session would be split between "vintage" and "modern" versions. I'd do it, too, except for the considerable fly-in-the-ointment that nobody in the art market cares about my prints whatever their age.*)

And what about the case of a photographer who shoots a lot during a hectic youth, and prints a lot in a more leisurely older age?

The vintage and the modern David Vestal.

More than that: what about a photographer who learns to be a better printmaker later in life, and makes later prints that are much superior to his earlier ones? This is David Vestal's main objection to the "vintage print" mania. He feels he's making much better prints recently than he used to, but that collectors and galleries prefer, and pay more for, his inferior earlier prints than for his superior later ones. (He'd also probably like to be able to make the same money for prints he could make now as he gets for older ones.)

Of course the materials argument can be turned on its head too. What if an old negative can be printed much better on newer materials? What if the photographer was simply too impoverished to buy good paper back when he took the picture, but later in life can lavish more money and time on making great prints?

An absurdity that's unfortunately not uncommon these days is that some really crappy scraps of peoples' early work—repro prints, file prints, proofs—are going for highly inflated prices just because they're vintage. They're rare, don'cha know. Oooh.

Is it good?
Personally, I think two things should mainly have an impact on the value of a print: whether the photographer made it—or, in the case of photographers who didn't ever make their own prints, whether it was made under their supervision and with their approval during their lifetimes, which would mainly be signified if they signed it; and how good a print it is. Personally, I'd much rather have a really good modern print of a picture I liked than an obviously inferior but "vintage" one.

There should be no distinction made between the age of prints made by a living photographer, certainly. As long as a print is made or approved by the photographer as meeting his or her standards as his or her art, it makes no sense to me to exalt some and scorn others, except on the basis of intrinsic merit.

...In a perfect world, that would be.

Mike

*They'll be sorry when I'm dead!

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Featured Comment by John Camp: "I have a collection of prints both vintage and non-vintage, although the vintage prints are usually the ones that were not so sought-after (by photographers who were out of fashion, or 'lesser' images by photographers who were in fashion) because the very designation drove the prices of sought-after prints out of my buying range.

"And my feeling is that, in general, the later prints are better. As a photographer becomes better known, and more experienced, and has more money to spend on printing, and is more sensitive to reputation, the technical quality of the prints seems to improve.

"Also, the flip side of the concept of 'initial authenticity' is 'he thought about it longer and more deeply.' This last aspect is pretty visible in iconic prints like Adams' 'Moonrise.' I've seen some vintage prints that seem not so good to me, because I'm not sure he'd fully conceptualized them, to use an offensive cliche. Art ideas do evolve, and later is often better.

" 'Vintage' isn't always a sales tactic. There are genuine 'vintage prints'—prints by people like Julia Margaret Cameron, of which only one or two exist. But what is a 'vintage print' by someone like Richard Prince, who didn't even make the original? I think 'limited edition' would be a better designator in those cases...."

Featured Comment by Maxim Muir: "Hello Mike,

"Years ago, the Joslyn Museum in Omaha had a deplorable exhibit of Dorothea Lange vintage prints. Many well known classic images were included, but the prints had bad to horrible fading/sulfiding from age and environmental (air pollution) exposure. To make matters worse, the lighting on the prints was poor (as if the dim lighting would effect the deteriorating prints further). Archival printing methods were not practiced in the 1930s–1940s and it clearly showed in this exhibit.  :)

"My poor wife had to listen to me make variations of the same remark endlessly the entire time we were there; 'let me get my hands on the negatives, and I will make prints that do not sully Ms. Lange's reputation.' What value is there to a vintage print when it makes the viewing experience a positively painful one?

"I had a similar experience with an Edward Weston show at the same venue. I was hoping to see some beautiful Cole Weston prints of the classic images (Cole was a better printer of his father's work IMO). What I saw was more deteriorating/random sulfiding of some of my favorite Weston photos. Since Weston is among my photographic heroes (along with Bruce Davidson and John Sexton) the sight of these prints literally filled me with sadness, and tears were visibly flowing from my eyes! (My wife thought I was being moved emotionally for other reasons:))

"Honestly, I would gladly pay more (if I had the funds) for a Cole Weston print than any vintage Edward Weston original. How are deteriorating/ badly printed vintage prints going to convince any non-photographers among us to appreciate the artists involved? It sure beats me!"

Unemployed in Minneapolis?

Are you unemployed and living in or near the Twin Cities area? If so, this might interest you. Professional photographer Scott Streble recently noticed the poor quality of some of the portraits that his unemployed friends have been using with their resumés. So, on Tuesday, March 24th, he is offering to shoot professional portraits of anyone who is looking for work, so they'll have good photos of themselves to use on their resumés, LinkedIn pages, and with their other networking efforts.

The portraits are free. In return, Scott's hoping to earn some goodwill. Once the economy turns around and they've found great new jobs, some of his subjects might remember him!

He'll be shooting at his northeast Minneapolis studio. Each session will take about ten minutes, and needs to be scheduled to minimize your wait time. If you're interested, please email Scott. You can find his email address at his new blog, which he set up just a few days ago and which he admits is still pretty rough around the edges.

Mike

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The Great Czech

Today is the birthday of the great Bohemian Josef Sudek, one of the fathers of 20th-century photography in the Czech nation, which has always punched above its weight in our art. Fittingly, Penny L. Richards has posted a nice note about him at Temple University's Disability Studies blog (Sudek, who lived to be an old man, lost his right arm in WWI).

Her link to "Josef Sudek's work" leads to a nice and fairly extensive gallery of his pictures online. Just a sampling—still reductive—but a good one.

Mike
(Thanks to William Stothers)

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Featured Comment by Michal Daniels: "Did you know that at the end of his life Sudek made three color photos? Two of them were on the front and back covers of Revue Fotografie 89. The translation of the editorial note at bottom of the last text page of the magazine says: 'Shortly before his death, Josef Sudek could not resist the temptation of color. Three compositions, now in the collection of Umeleckoprumyslove Museum in Prague, are the only color photos in Sudek's work. Two of them are on the covers of this issue.' I own a c-print of the one on the back cover. It's presently on loan to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which will exhibit it in their upcoming Czech Photography exhibit. Here is a link to the front and back cover of Revue Fotografie 89, along with the Sudek article."

Featured Comment by Bill Poole: "I have been a fan since I came upon a slim Artfoto collection of his work in a used bookstore some years back. (Text by Jan Rezac in Czech with an English translation. 1994. Pretty good reproductions.)

"There are three images of Sudek by Rezac in the front of the book, including one of him trudging through a rainy park with the 8x10 camera, open, over his good shoulder (the one with the arm).

"Romantic? I guess so. To me it looks like he photographed what he found beautiful—a reasonable and perhaps redemptive way to spend a life after seeing the horrors of WWI. Very complex and lovely images. In a word: art."

Featured Comment by Vladimir: "As a young boy, living in then Czechoslovakia, I was at the school excursion in 'Cesky Raj'—Bohemian Eden, a very dramatic country of eroded sandstone rocks. There we met an old, 'scruffy' looking man, with one arm, carrying big wooden tripod and large, I think,wooden camera over the shoulder. I knew about him so I recognised who he was. He lived in very modest home/studio near Vltava river in Prague."

Thank You!

I've gotten so many compliments in the past 24 hours that I'm almost embarrassed. Grateful thanks to everyone for the many responses—comments, emails, contributions, analyses, suggestions, reactions, and praise.

There have been some good suggestions, and I do have some ideas, but by far the consensus is that people like TOP the way it is and just want it to keep on coming. You got it. Thanks again for all the kind words.

Mike

No Eire

Regarding yesterday, Geoff did feel a little sheepish that the Bruce Davidson book, Circus, has gone out of print already. It's partially my fault, because I've had that review in the queue for a month. I blame Steidl, too, whose distribution is starting to seem a little suspicious to me—like somebody somewhere is playing games, or there's a power struggle going on somehow, or—something. Maybe they just have production irregularities or problems with the pipelines. I don't know. But it seems I get jerked around a lot with Steidl titles going in and out, and in and out of print all the time.

Bruce Davidson is a photographer you should know about, if you don't already, unless his social documentary style is just too far from your own visual interests. I can see how that might be. He's on my list of "100 Photographers You Should Know About," though. I think the best place to start is probably England/Scotland 1960. (It's a Steidl book too, so please don't blame me if it goes away tomorrow and then comes back again next week.) Some of Davidson's work is too "project-oriented" for my taste, in the words of one of our readers, like an (over-) extended magazine assignment. And I have to admit that I never clicked with his "big and important" book, East 100th Street. It's always been a bit too blacks-by-a-white-guy to me (see if you can find Roy DeCarava: A Retrospective in your local library for a far more engaging look at  black communities and culture in New York City and elsewhere—that one would make my all-time top ten list of favorite photo books). I feel that some percentage of the pictures in East 100th Street have a clinically over-descriptive quality that lend the subjects something of the feel of stuffed fauna in a museum diorama. It's funny (as in funny-peculiar) that would be true, too, because most of Bruce Davidson's 35mm work has the appealing grabshot quality of life caught on the fly, the aesthetic of the "casual-but-intense glance" that I personally like so much.

England/Scotland 1960 is more wide-ranging and lyrical that some of Davidson's more focussed, project-oriented books...which, oddly, makes it more consistent in feel to me. Bear in mind that I have a tendency to like minor masterpieces as well or better than more ambitious and politically relevant ones; I like Cannery Row better than East of Eden and First Love and Sketches from a Hunter's Album better than Fathers and Sons—and Sherwood Anderson better than F. Scott Fitzgerald—and I suspect my affection for England/Scotland 1960 is another, similar case. So beware of that.

But it's a very fine book, easy to like. Given what day it is today, I sure wish it were called "England/Scotland/Ireland 1960." Alas, no Éire. But Happy St. Pat's to all you Irish, and all you honorary Irish.

I also like Bruce Davidson: Portraits a lot. It's out of print too, like nearly everything.

Mike

P.S. Maybe I should write a list of the top ten or twenty books you can't buy—favorites from my shelves that aren't available any more. It might be a little frustrating for you that you can't get them, but then again, who knows? Maybe it would help encourage a publisher or two to reprint one or two of them. And that wouldn't be a bad thing.

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Bruce Davidson, Minor White

Reviewed by Geoff Wittig

Circus by Bruce Davidson
Hardcover: 101 pages
Publisher: Steidl The Masters (August 1, 2007)
11.8 x 11.6 inches

~Out of Print~

Used copies from Amazon U.S.
Used copies at Amazon U.K.
email Howard Greenberg Gallery for possible availability

Bruce Davidson is a major figure in what might be called humanistic photojournalism, having produced a number of brilliant studies over a long career. He has consistently worked in the classic black-and-white documentary mode. He's probably best known for East 100th Street, a photo documentary of a Harlem neighborhood in the late 1960s, but he also produced the early 1960s Brooklyn Gang and a large body of work on the civil rights movement. This book collects Davidson's photographs of three different circuses over a decade. The first and by far the most poignant is Clyde Beatty's in 1958, in the waning days of traveling Big Top circuses. Next is Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey, looking out of place in a huge concrete coliseum in North Carolina in 1965. Last is an almost quaint family-run circus in Ireland in 1967.

Davidson's focus isn't so much on the show-biz side as on the prosaic reality of the lives of the circus folk. The great Emmett Kelly makes an appearance, but The first section of the book in particular delves into the life of Jimmy Armstrong, dwarf-clown of the Beatty circus. Some of these photographs have become iconic; here they are presented as intended, part of a sympathetic look into the lives of these working people. The photographs themselves are remarkable; incisive, beautifully composed, all rich tones and glowing highlights, with grain actually adding to the impact.

The book itself is also beautifully crafted. It's relatively large, of simple embossed cloth adorned by inset photographs on both front and back covers. The photographic reproductions are excellent; varnished tritones with remarkably good shadow detail. The book is introduced by a short but touching preface by Davidson. Sam Holmes contributes a much longer post-script that explains how Davidson came to photograph the circuses, and goes into some detail about the lives of the characters involved.

All in all a lovely book, especially for anyone who likes documentary photography as art. Or, if you just like the circus.

Eye Mind Spirit: The Enduring Legacy of Minor White
Hardcover: 80 pages
Publisher: Howard Greenberg Gallery; 1st edition (February 1, 2009)
9.7 x 8.7 inches

~Warning: availability may be limited~

Published at $50

$31.50 from Amazon U.S.
£36.90 at Amazon U.K.

Given his immense impact on photography in America, it's amazing to me how little is available in print regarding Minor White. He taught an entire generation of prominent photographers during his years at Rochester Institute of Technology. Pete Turner, Paul Caponigro, Jerry Uelsmann, Peter C. Bunnell, Nathan Lyons, even David Plowden all studied under White.

Currently you can still find The Moment of Seeing: Minor White at the California School of Fine Arts (2006). It's a rather dry account of his early years teaching in San Francisco just after WWII, but it scarcely touches on his artistic or æsthetic philosophy, and contains very little of his actual work. Rites and Passages (Aperture monograph, 1978) is quite good, but long out of print. His classic Mirrors Messages Manifestations goes for $500 and up if you can find it.

Hence this new book is a welcome, if slender addition to available sources. It's associated with an exhibit late last year at Howard Greenberg Gallery. It's a modestly sized but beautifully printed book in simple red linen cover with an inset photograph. There's a concise preface by Peter C. Bunnell, well known critic and curator of the Minor White archive at Princeton—and of course a student of White's at RIT. Next is a thoughtful essay by Nathan Lyons, describing the intense circle of devoted students and photographers orbiting around Minor in the late 1950s, a time when the world of photography was far, far smaller than today.

The selection of images includes some "greatest hits," but also many I've never seen before. The duotone reproductions are quite good, comparing favorably to those (admittedly much older) in Rites and Passages. If you like Minor White's work, or merely want something of him in your library, you'll want to seek this out. It's only an edition of 1500, and my copy is labled #1329, so don't delay.

Geoff

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Featured Comment by Ken Tanaka: "I echo your remarks regarding Circus, Geoff. I purchased a copy last spring but forgot about it until last fall. It was like finding a $50 bill in my sofa cushions. I find Davidson's bodies of work completely immersive, rather like a good movie. I had the privilege of meeting Bruce two years ago. He's a remarkably humble fellow despite his many accomplishments and accolades.

"The most remarkable memory I have of that evening was learning how he has kept touch with so many of the subjects featured in what appear to be casual 'street' images. Walking through his 'Subway' series, as well as his 'East 100th Street' work he could often recount post-image life histories of so many of his subjects it just dropped my jaw. ('Oh, she became a NY public librarian and married a professor at NYU. This guy served a 5-year stint in jail for armed robbery but now works at a community center and has three kids. I went to his wedding.' Etc.)

"When I met him he claimed to be winding-down, now that he was well into his 70s. He remarked that much of his time was being spent quietly reorganizing his image archive with an assistant in his NY apartment. He commented briefly on one large personal project looming but gave the impression of slowing down.

"So it has been with quite some chuckles that I have since seen his name appear as a featured speaker / participant at what seems like a steady drizzle of events! Go get 'em, Bruce!

"Also, thank you for the heads-up on the Minor White book. It immediately brought to mind that I know relatively little about this influential fellow's work. So, despite having taken a pledge (to myself) not to buy any more photo books, I clicked the link above and a copy is making its way to me. (Now I have to take the pledge again.)"

Featured Comment by Bob Zimmerman (not Bob Dylan): "Odd that you would be writing about Bruce Davidson just as Bob Dylan releases the cover of his new album featuring a Bruce Davidson photo."

Bruce Davidson, New York City, 1959, from Brooklyn Gang

Open Mike: Site Notes

Well, as long as I've got people complaining about ethics and advertising and greed and all (see the comments to "Ctein's Big Deal," below), and since it's Sunday (when I do my off-topic posts, theoretically at least), I figured I might as well go whole hog and hit you with yet another craven, self-serving, Peter-Lorre-like (hey, a new adjective!) post about the website.

First of all, I've decided to stop referring to TOP as a "blog." I went to an old friend's house for dinner recently, where I met some neighbors of theirs who have recently moved here from Australia. When the gentleman of the couple asked me the quintessential American question—what do you do?—I answered, "I have a blog."

My friend (who's in traditional media) took me aside later and gently pointed out that that answer sounds imbecilic, since most "blogs" consist of trivial diary-type twitting that are seen by approximately twelve people a day*. It's not quite as bad as answering, "I like M&Ms," (I'm thinking of Brian Baumgartner's Kevin Malone character on "The Office," when the new HR director mistakes him for a differently-abled affirmative-action hire), but it doesn't quite rise to the level of implying constructive endeavor. So I've decided that when someone asks me that question, I'm going to answer, "I'm the editor of a large photography website." That word "large" is a fib—we're definitely a middlin' photography website, not large, not small—but overspecifying would be too much information, and would bog everyone down mid-phrase. The new answer does two things the old one does not: it gives me a title (editor), implying that I actually do some work from time to time, and, helpfully, it names an actual field (photography). Altogether more of a conversation-starter, and hopefully one that will make me sound a little less like a moron.

So You Say You Like Small Cameras?

Well, if you like really small cameras, then you will be very joyed and excited than the little child with the Omake of Glico. The finder even comes off, and you can change lenses! Very cool.

And I must confess, I kinda want one. And I bet there are Nikon F collectors out there who feel the same way....

Mike
(Thanks to David Owensby)

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Featured Comment by Robin P: "Ah, but the real gem there is the link to 'UEHARA's Railway Photo Gallery.' Follow the link, get a Google translation of the page and then enjoy 'Smoke in the North 2008.' "