Pretty Little Pinhole Photo

A couple of pictures from the Comments that I would like to...well, comment on.

Photo by Darlene Almeda

First up is this lovely thing from regular reader Darlene. Darlene Almeda is one of those rare photographers who manages to be an accomplished professional and also an art photographer doing personal work. (Carl Weese is another like that*.) This is Darlene's picture from Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. I think it's remarkably successful, speaking as one who has never really cared for pinhole photographs all that much**. This uses the natural softness of the image to good advantage, implying a vintage look with appropriate subject matter, tonality, and color, and I think flare really does complement the pinhole "look" well. An exceptionally nice pinhole photograph any way you cut it, and to do it "on demand" to celebrate a specific day shows impressive skill.

The other one I didn't want anyone to miss, a very different kind of photograph, is this visual by reader Niels of the Friedlander books he owns:

Photo by Niels

Awesome. You could actually be a meaningful photobook collector by only collecting Friedlander books...not only his own (although that would be a formidable task***), but books in which he is represented or discussed. It would be enough to absorb a collector.

Here's what he says about it:

"I wish you didn't do this [he means that I mentioned the new book selected by Joel Coen —Ed.]. This one hadn't reached my radar. I already have more Friedlander books than I feel I should, but I enjoy his work too much. This is what my Friedlander stack looked like at World Photobook Day (Oct. 14) last year. Two additional books were added since then. America By Car is the most expensive photobook I own. The 2010 Whitney show reached Copenhagen in 2012. The show blew my mind, but the book was long out of print. I was hoping for a reprint, but the price of the out-of-print version just kept climbing—to the point were it was approaching the price of the oversized signed special edition. So I finally caved in and forked over $395 for the special edition. It took me eight years to make that purchase decision and I am happy to say that I don't regret it."

Most of Niels' books I don't have, a few I haven't seen, and a couple I didn't even know about! (I will say that Cherry Blossom Time in Japan is my most expensive of his books and one of my least favorite. Anybody want to buy it? They're hard to find. My favorite of his books is Like a One-Eyed Cat, which amounts to a sort of representative sampler of his 35mm work up to the time it was published. Delightful, and I've memorized it. Amazingly, it is still affordable. Go figure.

Mike

*Generally, my take on this has been that most professionals who claim they also do personal expressive work are saying so for marketing purposes, mainly, and are actually pretty lame at it...and, from the other direction, that many art photographers who claim they can do professional work are usually just chasing the paycheck without the professional/business chops to really do justice to the client's needs. Almost all photographers like to think they can do any kind of photography—we're typically very bad at knowing our strengths and weaknesses and, er, focusing (sorry) on what we do best. Most pros are pros, and most art photographers are art photographers. It's rare that one person is good at both...although there have been some famous photographers who do both very capably, such as Irving Penn or Martin Parr. A lot of the pure artists you know from history also did commissioned work for clients, including even Ansel Adams, Elliott Erwitt, and Diane Arbus. Lee Friedlander started out shooting record covers. Well, I could go on (as you know, I do go on), but let's stop there.

**Mostly, successful pinhole photos strike me as blurry pictures that would have been better sharper. Darlene's is one exception. But don't let me discourage you; you do you.

***Unless you were to pay him for it. I'm pretty sure I heard that Lee's son Erik, who is a fantastic jazz cellist by the way—he's involved in the experimental downtown music scene in NYC and often plays with John Zorn—is helping Lee sell full sets of all his books put together from all the remainders Lee has stuffed in his house. That's going to set you back about as much as a nice new car, but it's the easy way to get all the books at once.

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Dogman: "The only one of those Lee Friedlander books pictured that I don't have is Lee Friedlander & Pierre Bonnard. Why? Well, it was probably too expensive at the time and I'm living on retirement income, so.... Despite the dearth of dollars, I recall buying The First Fifty [a catalogue of Friedlander's first 50 books —Ed.] and counting how many of them I did not have. The answer: very few. One is even autographed. (I'm such a groupie.) I've told my wife that when I kick the bucket she should get my photo book collection appraised and sell it to fund something she wants. God knows I've spent a fortune on books that only I enjoy. By that way the new L.F. book is gorgeous! Just buy the damn thing, OK?"

Mike replies: I already did.

Gary Nylander: "Re: your comment on most professionals who claim they also do personal expressive work. I'm guilty of doing that. For over forty years I worked as a newspaper photographer and on my time off for 30 of those years I pursued my own personal photography shooting black-and-white landscapes, Ansel Adams style. To be honest my personal work was crap and I would never have made it as an artist as I didn't have the talent. It's a good thing I stuck with my day job as a newspaper photographer because it's what ended up paying the rent and putting food on the table plus other associated financial bills for day-to-day living."

Mike replies: At least you managed to make a career as a shooting photographer, which is more than most of us ever manage!

Comments

[darlene]

Thank you, Mike, for your kind words and for the recognition. There was a time when I did not understand why any straight-shooting photographer would want to shoot a pinhole image. But then I tried it out of curiosity, and it has become another lens in my image toolbox. I hope your readers who miss shooting film give it a try. It is the simplest form of photography, and how light behaves inside the box can surprise you.

[John Camp]

I have the big Friedlander book by MOMA as well as a couple others, and he always struck me as a photographer desperately in search of an editor. According to my MOMA book, there are 860 reproductions in it, and I think 200 would have made a better book. Even 100. When you look at collections of Ansel Adams photos, you realize that he made maybe a dozen great photos in his life, and many, many very good ones. I think that's somewhat true of Friedlander as well...a small number of great photos, quite a few very good photos, and a very large number of "eh" photos. (He was much more interested in brush than perhaps he should have been. ) Just because a guy's a genius doesn't mean that all his photos are acts of genius.

[William Cook]

Speaking of thinking one can do any kind of photography because they know their way around a camera … I’m a half-ways decent landscape photographer and we recently decided to sell a rental townhouse—for sale by owner.

I figured I could easily take some pretty good photos of the property since I have a good 16-35mm lens. It’s taken four days of frustrating post-processing to straighten out all the converging lines that should be parallel. Then find that when these corrections are made, it skews the size of objects within the photo to the point that things look ridiculous. So, a balance has to be struck and it is extremely time consuming.

Then there are the bright windows. This required a shot underexposed and blending the two together. The photos turned out great, but what a headache!

I have new found respect for real estate photographers and am humbled into realizing I need to stick to landscapes. It might be a fun exercise for folks who’ve never done this type of photography to give it a crack. It’s easy to take a photo IN a room, not so easy to take one OF a whole room.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Catching-up late. I have that same MoMA (Peter Galassi) catalog of Lee Friedlander's show. I admit to not sharing the high enthusiasm for Friedlander's work with so many of my contemporaries. But I admire his reflexes and longevity. Still, yeah John, that book (and show) could easily have made a greater impact with <=150 images. But Galassi just couldn't say no. Consequently it became a gray blur in my memory.

[Denn]

I saw the NYT article and was "how did i miss this guy???" anyway: any thoughts on the top 2 or 3 books with price something of a consideration.

Also ok, who's the other greatest photographer of the second half of the 20th century.

[Bill S.]

Bought the book! Unfortunately some pages are damaged, so I will have to exchange. I’m not a big Friedlander fan, I consider the book more of a learning experience. I find “I’m Looking Through You” by Tim Davis (heard about it on Sasha Wolf’s Photo Work podcast) more to my liking.

[Darin Boville]

Mike,

You should read my blog. :). Just a few posts back I reviews “First Fifty” and there you would have read if the origins of that book and how it was put together with Giancarlo Roma.

https://www.abiggercamera.com/book-review-the-first-fifty-of-lee-friedlanders-books/

—Darin

[scott kirkpatrick]

I also quickly sent off for the Friedlander, Fraenkel, Coen book and am delighted with it. To answer John Camp's complaint, I think in Joel Coen, Mr. Lee may have found an editor. The pictures are tied more tightly together in a visually meaningful series, than in any of his Sonoran desert or Olmsted park or cherry blossom books. The hand of man, and sometimes the shadow of the photographer are a theme in all of the pictures. Frances McDormand's end notes underscore the connection between the two contributors.

Incidentally, in the 50 Books catalog with commentary, it appears that Friedlander's grandson, Giancarlo Roma, did the bulk of the work. His wife, Maria is quoted frequently as well.

[QT Luong]

As hinted by others, it is not Erik Friedlander, but Giancarlo Roma (son of Anna Friedlander, also quoted in First Fifty) who is selling the books from Lee Friedlander's stock. Besides the complete collection, one can also purchase each of the individual signed titles at: http://www.haywirepress.com

The following link would have been more fitting in response to the Lee Friendlander Framed by Joel Coen post, but since the comments are closed there, I'll mention here that I attended the opening reception and wrote about it at: https://www.terragalleria.com/blog/looking-for-the-friedlander-signature/