Around the Web on a Wednesday

Quote 'o the Month: Ken Jarecke, from a hard-knuckled little snarl entitled "Short-Term Thinking": "Since when is not being as dishonest as the Iranian government a valid journalistic standard for the American news media?"

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And Speaking of Iran and the infamous fourth missile... It appears they're at it again. (Are Iranian propagandists stupid, or do they just think we are?)

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Pat Boone Signature Leica: Making fun of Leica special issues and commemoratives is an old and honorable sport, but this one is almost too easy. In which upper-crusty staple of Eastern prep school English classes is it explained that white bucks are cool only when they're pristine, until such time as it's just impossible to keep them clean any more, at which point "dirty bucks" become all the rage? Was that John Knowles? J.D. Salinger? John Updike? F. Scott Fitzgerald? Must have been Fitzgerald. One thing seems indisputable: the latest value-added M camera should only be used while wearing white cotton trousers, or a linen suit...

...Just remember that if you buy one in June, it had better be dirty by November.

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National Geographic's Infinite Photograph

Read more about it here.

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The March of Convergence: The editors of Esquire magazine imagine [vide] that Greg Williams' March 4 cover of the magazine, featuring Megan Fox, is the first magazine cover ever shot with a movie camera—the Red One.

It's certainly the first time we have encountered the title "photographer-director," in the following sentence: "Using the RedONE, a video camera that captures images at four times the resolution of high-definition, photographer-director Greg Williams...recorded ten minutes of loosely scripted footage with Fox—getting out of bed, rolling around on a pool chair, inexplicably lighting a barbecue." (We're curious as to how he held the camera steady while he rolled around on a pool chair, putting aside entirely our puzzlement as to how exactly one goes about lighting a barbecue "inexplicably.")

But, apropos our April 16th post, look what happens when he, too, wants to signify "camera" in an advertising photograph:

Photo: Greg Williams, from his website

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The Shifting Contradictions and Beauties of the World: Speaking of convergence, this gem comes from a 2006 Bomb interview with Yale's Tod Papageorge (who left an interesting comment about this post the other day regarding his old friend, the late Garry Winogrand) ("RW" is Richard B. Woodward):

RW Are the mistakes that your students are prone to now the same mistakes that students were prone to when you were teaching back in the late '60s?

TP No. I think now that, in general—and this includes a lot of what I see in Chelsea even more than what I see from students at Yale—there’s a failure to understand how much richer in surprise and creative possibility the world is for photographers in comparison to their imagination. This is an understanding that an earlier generation of students, and photographers, accepted as a first principle. Now ideas are paramount, and the computer and Photoshop are seen as the engines to stage and digitally coax those ideas into a physical form—typically a very large form. This process is synthetic, and the results, for me, are often emotionally synthetic too. Sure, things have to change, but photography-as-illustration, even sublime illustration, seems to me an uninteresting direction for the medium to be tracking now, particularly at such a difficult time in the general American culture. All in all, I think that there’s as much real discovery and excitement in the digital videos that my students at Yale are making as there is in the still photography I see either there or in New York, perhaps because the video camera, like the 35 mm camera 30 years ago, can be carried everywhere, and locks onto the shifting contradictions and beauties of the world more directly and unselfconsciously than many photographers now seem to feel still photography can, or should, do.

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And You Thought Kittens Were Bad: On Photo Synthesis, University of Illinois molecular phylogenetics postdoctoral researcher (and photographer) Alex Wild interestingly speculates that anthropomorphism makes even scientific photographs more accessible to the primate brain (we humans, he means) and thus, more popular.

Alex Wild: Are these two ants sharing an intimate moment?

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Sensitive Summicron Surgery: We're not big fans of adaptors that necessitate stop-down metering, but in case that's one of the ways you have fun with photography, you might want to know that Leitax is now making Leica lens to Nikon body adapter kits. We're all thumbs, and feel that any operation involving loose ball-bearings is best avoided, lest the [expletive deleted] little bastard end up hidden in a tiny crack in the floor on the far side of the room; but maybe you're a bit more competent.

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New Life for the Old Gang: Bob Dylan's new music video from "Together Through Life," like the album cover, uses photographs from Bruce Davidson's "Brooklyn Gang" project. Check it out (under "Check Out Related Media").

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And for a humpday smile... The wry visual humor of René Maltête.

Mike
(Thanks to Ken Jarecke, Stan Banos, Edd Fuller, Albano Garcia, Sungazer, Robin Dreyer, Dale Moreau, and Eolake.)

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Featured Comment by bobdales:

"Damn! I forgot my white Leica."

Featured Comment by Stuart Hamilton: "That's a very interesting interview with Tod Papageorge, and as a bonus includes a link to another with Emmet Gowin. I like to be reminded that photography, like all the arts, is mysterious and difficult, and that technique is just the beginning. Thanks Mike."

Comments

[mcananeya]

I spilled my coffee laughing when I saw that last picture. The parents were surely aware of what they were doing, but that picture is priceless nonetheless. The light in the picture is really striking as well. Well exposed/processed for such conditions.

As for Greg Williams...I still say he should have used a Yashicamat!

JK - I'm done now.
Adam

[Robert Roaldi]

I don't understand. Why change the colour of the swim trunks?

[John Brewton]

Who in the world sold Leica on the idea of a white M? Blindfolded and shot at dawn without a last cigarette, I say.

[John Simon]

so, will steidl reprint Brooklyn Gang? does anybody know?

[Bill Bresler]

Re: Papageorge.
I understand what he's saying about students and recognition of visual possibilities. My photo 1 class is entirely digital. In photo 2, however, we back up and start out making pinhole cameras with cigar boxes. This causes a seismic shift in what they consider for subject matter and what they want to say. The pinhole experiment is only supposed to take 2 class sessions, but this last term I had two students who continued working with their cigar box cameras until the end of the term.
The other plus is that it gives me an excuse to smoke cigars...

[Mike Peters]

1- Go Papageorge! Right on! Yeah! Somebody finally said it! Hoo-Humping Ray!

"This process is synthetic, and the results, for me, are often emotionally synthetic too. Sure, things have to change, but photography-as-illustration, even sublime illustration, seems to me an uninteresting direction for the medium to be tracking now, particularly at such a difficult time in the general American culture."

2- You'd think that a photographer who is directing a photo shoot would be able to tell the numbskull holding the Rolleiflex not to hold the lens hood as if her were trying to focus it! You'd think. Duh!

3- Too bad about the white M8, you can't use it after Labor Day without hearing the snickers of the upper crustics about how uncouth you are. You'll have to switch back to your all black model.

[bobdales]

I wouldn't buy the white M8 unless it comes with a white strap.
bd

[erlik]

"Using the RedONE, a video camera that captures images at four times the resolution of high-definition,

That would be nice if the cover occupied the full resolution. But given the nature of video shooting, the actual cover is apparently quite less than that.

So what did a glossy publication do with the cropped 3-4MP to make them technically acceptable?

[Mike C.]

1. How curious that "white shoes" make you think of John Fowles... Have you ever seen a picture of John Fowles??

I once bought a copy of "Finders, Keepers" by Rosamond Wolff Purcell (terrific photographer) from John Fowles in the Lyme Regis museum shop, and although I couldn't see his shoes, I'd have been very surprised if they were elegantly distressed white leather...

2. Those shirts! After the initial satisfaction of seeing how the patterns merge in the child's top, I then noticed the oncoming woman also in vertical stripes, and the man's slightly turned head, and the missing handhold between him and his partner... Every picture tells a story.

[yclee]

(1) re the white Leica: Why not just make a shell, without any internal mechanisms? The camera obviously isn't intended to be used, anyway, or to be bought by actual photographers (as opposed to camera collectors).

(2) re Papageorge: He's been saying the same thing for a long time now. Papageorge, along with Szarkowski and others from the same tradition, dislike (or find suspicious) photography in the "directorial mode" (A.D. Coleman's term), preferring straight photography to staged photography.

Personally, I share that inclination as a picture maker. But I do so only because I do not believe that my personal talents, such as they are, lie in the directorial direction. I don't discount the possibility, however, that others may be differently talented, and can do terrific work in the directorial mode (whether via staged scenes or post-exposure adjustments (chemical or digital)). Uelsmann, Lorca-Dicorcia, and Crewdson, e.g., come quickly to mind. I admire their work, and wish that I had their talent for staging (or post-exposure creations), but I don't. So, I'll stick to "straight" photography.

(Of course, the difference between directorial and straight photography, though clear at the extremes, is quite often not so obvious. Most portraiture and still-life, e.g., is as much staged as straight. Where, then, do Weston and Strand, often presented as exemplars of straight photography, fall?)

I think it's a mistake to tout a personal taste, or personal talent, for straight photography (in pictures generally or in picture-making) as, somehow, intrinsic to the medium of photography, as Papageorge does. There are as many ways of "doing photography" as there are creative individuals. The test is simply whether the final image "appeals," regardless of who made it or how.

[glenn Brown]

Regarding today's post of girl being photographed by a rollieflex, did you notice the photographer is trying to focus it by using the lens and not the focus knob. strange. GB.

[Michel]

will I be able to use that Leica after Labor Day?

[charlie d]

I always find something new or interesting in these ATW features.

I do think however, that the white M8 is less preppy and more Italian.. Think Formula1 or this.

http://www.63images.com/photobucket/Picture_1.jpg

BTW my last pair of white bucks were the color of Chicago in the winter! The trick when we were kids was to immediately send them through the washing machine before wearing them. My father still shakes his head...

[Will]

Dirty by November or not, Mike, I hope you know better than to use if after Labor Day. You are, after all, a man of breeding, are you not?

The last picture, with the family on the boardwalk took me awhile to "get," but when I did, it made my week. Thanks.

[Tom]

If we keep getting SARs, Mexican Swine Flu, salmonella (not Sal Monella, the fictional head of NBC's commissary while Carson was still hosting the tonite show, but the peanut butter tainting salmonella), bird flu, dysentery, etc, outbreaks, "sterile white" will become all the rage.

BTW, if you've never looked at Flickr's Commons, you should. Was just looking at this http://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryofnsw/3481163841/ before I stopped by.

[Ken N]

That white M8 sure is purty. I'd take it over the army green version.

[James McDermott]

Presumably the special edition M8 is for pimps, drug dealers and those who want it to be mistaken for the Pentax KM 'Stormtrooper'?

[Rana]

Having had the misfortune to buy a UV filter with a light colored ring, I have to say that having a white camera strikes me as really limiting.

Have you ever tried taking a picture of a reflective surface without getting the camera or photographer in the picture? I find that with a dark camera, and dark clothing, it's not that difficult.

But when I've tried it with the lens with that filter on it, bam! - it is impossible to ignore that little white circle in the reflection. An all-white camera body seems guaranteed to magnify that problem ten-fold.

I wonder too about things like glare - since I wear glasses, I can't press my eye socket directly to the viewfinder window frame, and so I'm always a bit aware of the rest of the camera in my peripheral vision. I think that a shiny white body, in bright sun, would be distracting.

I also wonder if, like with the white Macs, there might not develop an unattractive greenish-grey tint around the areas where you hold it or manipulate the dials.

That said, as an aesthetic object, rather than a piece of functional technology, it does look pretty cool.

[Lynn]

I am disappointed that NGS thinks this is good practice. From their terms of use for the Your Shot:
5. By uploading material, posting comments, or providing other content to the Site ("User Content"), you grant National Geographic (which includes its subsidiaries, affiliates, joint venturuers, and licensees) the following rights: a royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual license to display, distribute, reproduce, and create derivatives of the User Content, in whole or in part, without further review or participation from you, in any medium now existing or subsequently developed, in editorial, commercial, promotional, and trade uses in connection with NG Products.

[Dierk]

What's with the 'first time' photographer-director? It's a well-known, oft-used contraction in the film business [or at least in film criticism]; Gordon Parks comes to mind, as does David Hamilton - and these are only the originally-still-photographers-turned-movie-director examples. Jan de Bont would be a relatively current DoP cum director.

Or did I miss something?

[Mike Johnston]

Mike C.,
Sorry, I was thinking of John *Knowles*, author of "A Separate Peace," a forgettable book which for some reason was read in prep school English classes for thirty years or so. I hope and trust it's drifted out of the curriculum by now.

Mike

[aizan]

the white m8 is real? i thought that was a photoshopped joke. the only good thing about this and the safari m8.2 is the silver 28mm elmarit asph, which i wish was a regular production item. *sigh*

[marcus]

@ Robert
I don't understand. Why change the colour of the swim trunks?

I guess it's because the blue shorts clashed with the otherwise 'red on black' theme of the rest of the cover.

[John Camp]

As a Leica owner, I have to say that the white camera seems to me to represent Leica's definition of "creativity." In the meantime, their camera concepts are stuck in the 1950s -- even those with digital sensors.

Papageorge: right on. I think that beginning with Picasso and perhaps James Joyce , "imagination" has been so dominant in the arts that the insistence on its dominance (along with politics) has severely damaged all of them. IMHO, imagination should be a leavening that makes the material an artist is working with, combined with high craft, into something extraordinary; attempts to extract it as pure essence wind up creating unreadable books and "un-lookable" paintings and unlistenable music. This is a problem even in the hands of genius, as Picasso (after about 1940) Joyce (Finnegan's Wake) or John Cage (4'33").

JC

[Chris Gibbs]

Surely the biggest sin in this entire post isn't the white Leica. Just take a look at the tacky body art all over the very beautiful Megan Fox!

"Yes, hello, I have this smokin' hot '86 Ferrari and I'm looking for some furry dice and those really cool go-faster stripes."

[Rob Griffin]

The person holding the Rollei also seems to be holding a microphone so I guess the mic must be hooked up to the Rolleiflex and maybe this is the first picture of the much anticipated "Rolleiflex Professional Camcorder." I hope it is available in white.

Rob

[Roger Bradbury]

Re: Sensitive Summicron surgery.
That moment where a small and vital component escapes at high speed is known as a 'Pingfuck'.
Thus: Ping! (Moment of disbelief) 'Fuck!'
Had one this evening.

[Dave Kee]

A random thought. Is ironic the correct term for the fact that of the many forums I participate in, T.O.P. is one of the few that does not permit readers to insert (guess what?) photos directly in their responses?

[Weng Ho]

Mike:
Thank you for linking the "Bomb interview", I wouldn't have found it otherwise.

[Spiny Norman]

"(1) re the white Leica: Why not just make a shell, without any internal mechanisms? The camera obviously isn't intended to be used, anyway, or to be bought by actual photographers (as opposed to camera collectors)."

What makes you think they didn't? It's not like anyone would ever find out.