Random Excellence: Ainslie Ellis, 1970

Ainslie Ellis's contact sheet of portraits of the late Tony Ray-Jones was loaned to the National Media Museum, Bradford (U.K.), by Anna Ray-Jones, for the museum's show "The Lives of Great Photographers." According to the notice in The Independent, the exhibition pairs "portraits of the masters with some of their most famous works, alongside illuminating snippets from their notebooks."

Mike
(Thanks to readers numerous, perspicacious, and erudite)

UPDATE: Amplify that last! I logged into the comment moderation page to find more than eighty comments responding to my earlier request for help in locating the source of this. For the sake of not clogging up the comments to this post I've elected not to publish them all, but thanks to everyone.

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Original contents copyright 2011 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Comments

[Roger Bradbury]

Mike,

I reckon it's this one:

http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/PlanAVisit/Exhibitions/LivesOfGreatPhotographers/Gallery.aspx

The photo of Weegee at the link shows him with a Zenit 3M, the first SLR I ever used, though I used them (the school had two) with the good old 58mm f/2.

I expect you'll be back on form once your poor ol' dog is better. I know what it's like, so good luck there.

Roger

[Bahi]

Apparently The Lives of Great Photographers. Looks good…

[Gerry]

Might it be the 'Lives of Great Photographers' exhibition at the National Media Museum in Bradford?

One of my favourite Tony Ray-Jones images shows two people at the Glyndebourne music festival dressed formally for dinner and eating at a folding table in the middle of a field, with cows behind them. The humour of his photos reminds me of Elliott Erwitt.

[Chris Livsey]

PS :-)

The .pdf has the sheet as a large image.

http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/PlanAVisit/Exhibitions/TouringExhibitions/~/media/Files/NMeM/PDF/PlanAVisit/TheLivesOfGreatPhotographers.ashx

Best
ChrisL

[Blake]

This contact sheet was shot by Ainslie Ellis in 1969 or 1970, depending on which web source you believe. It ran recently in The Independent among other places.

[Jeffrey MacMillan]

Mike-
Don't know but I doubt Tony Ray Jones ever asked anyone's permission for his marvelous street photography. ( this is in reference to Kirk Tuck article about ediquette of street shooting). TRJ was a delightful and creative artist whose work should be better known.
Cheers
Jeffrey

[Anders]

The Lives of Great Photographers at the National Media Museum.

See also the article Interpreting the Lives of Great Photographers by curator Brian Liddy.

[john krill]

how about this one:
http://www.guernseyphotographyfestival.com/page/tony-ray-jones

[David]

Close but not quite
http://richflintphoto.blogspot.com/2009/04/profile-tony-ray-jones.html

[Jack Foley]

I find that seeing a photographer's contact sheet published ( by someone else ) is a bit disturbing. A contact sheet is created for editing images. The originator of the images, along with anyone chosen to contribute to the editing process, chose which image or images to show the world. We have no more business seeing his culls than we do listening to alternate takes of famous musical recordings. However interesting it is to discover an artist's creative process, it's unfair to judge work not offered up for judgement.

[Jim Kofron]

Where's my thesaurus when I need it? :-)

[Hudson]

I love seeing contact sheets, it's a peek into the minds of the photographer and his client.

I do Newspaper, Magazine & Calendar production, if you dropped a stack of photos on my desk they would get sorted differently depending on how they will be used.

Newspapers like small, simple, high contrast one or two column photos.

Magazines like verticals.

Calendars like big, broad photos.

I look at contact sheets (thumbnails) and think, calendar, calendar, newspaper, magazine cover, magazine inside cover, etc.

-Hudson

[richard]

Just another slightly off-topic comment regarding contact sheets. There may or may not be an unwritten rule "never show anyone your contact sheets" but I suspect many photographers, like myself, love the insights they provide - one way or the other.

Readers may already know of the three volume DVD collection "Contacts" - brainchild of William Klein, I think. It might not strictly all be about contact sheets, but there are certainly some great insights there.

I haven't provided a link - MIke might want to do this via his Amazon Associates account if he thinks it's worthwhile. (He may already have done so n a previous post - I haven't checked)