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
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Featured Comments from:
Fer: "That conversation you linked to made my day. Thanks."
. Anyone who likes cameras might enjoy spending some time in Ivor's good company.
being one of my favorite photographers.)
(now the same price as Micro 4/3 and APS-C premium mirrorless cameras) and $200 off the 
(shown) today. Just thought you'd want yet one more seasonal temptation to torture yourself with. What can I say, I'm always looking out for you.
of the work of he's-everywhere man-o'-the-moment Martin Schoeller, who I don't know and about whom I know nothing. I don't really care for Martin's Sunday-magazine style much, to be honest, although I certainly admire his level of accomplishment and work ethic, from my vantage point way down here in the foothills far below the snowy Olympian peak he inhabits.
(same publisher) is a bit more to my own taste, although I don't know much about these genres in general. "How can a photographer of internationally known stars create iconic portraits that linger in the memory—especially since these actors have already been photographed and filmed millions of times?" asks the blurb—and then answers itself by saying that Vincent Peters "relies entirely on the classic art of portrait photography for his pictures."
, who seemed to ply his trade mainly in zones V, VI, and VII. Ignoring what you might think of his subject matter, I can't think of anyone who could coax more glowing beauty out of a black and white photograph than he did."
out and 
just about to hit the pipeline, is there any book that cries out more urgently for a reprint than Paul Caponigro's 
? One of my top-ten all-time photobooks and a great masterpiece of the photographic book, as well as a must-have for any fan of large-format film photography.
I use is small but the normal lens I use for it, 
