The Online Photographer

The Basketball G.O.A.T.

Ever know a person who seems to want to be your friend but actually doesn't know you all that well? Even though they think they do? That's what YouTube reminds me of.

I recently watched a bunch of videos about the GOAT (greatest of all time) debate in basketball. A lot of which centers on: Team Michael or Team LeBron? I find disputes about meaningless things sort of soothing somehow—as if to say, yeah, we're gonna fight, but we don't really mean it. "Happy disputation" you might call it. Similar to that old joke about academe: the arguments are so heated because the stakes are so low.

Anyway, YouTube, which knows I'm an old white guy, decided on its own that I must want to watch Larry Bird stories. Because apparently Larry Bird is the GOAT candidate favored by old white guys. When they were first presented to me, I did watch a few, and that was it—YouTube was convinced I needed to be offered Larry Bird content at every turn. Couldn't get rid of it.

Not only do I not particularly care about Larry Bird, but I'm not even that interested in basketball. I just liked the way some of the videos educated me about the history of a sport I don't know all that much about.

Courtesy U.S. Department of State

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 2012

It did get me mulling over the whole "Greatest of All Time" concept, though. What's so appealing to people about that idea? It's a sort of lazy "competitiveness porn," if you will. The conclusion I came to is that it's really only useful for purposes of hero worship. What seems more pertinent to me is the idea of what might be called a "pantheon," although I'm not really convinced that term is appropriate. Pan = all plus theos = gods, a shrine to all the gods. In other words, my top o' the tops would be a group, not an individual. Because in any conversation about greatness, it's much more interesting to consider all the great players—what they accomplished, how they stood out, how they differed, what was amazing about them. The drama of their stories and career arcs.  I'd put 16, 20, or 24 players in the GOATheon. More fun, more meaningful, more respectful. At any rate, I'm just not comfortable leaving people like Hakeem Olajuwon or Stephen Curry out of the conversation.

21st century only
Where photography is concerned, I sometimes say that IMHO Ansel Adams was the greatest American photographer of the first half of the 20th century and Lee Friedlander was the greatest American photographer of the second half of the 20th century. That's the best I can do: Americans only, and 50-year periods, not "of all time." ("Of all time" = "since 1839" where photography is concerned anyway.)

But why even make such a statement? What, do I need heroes?

The trouble with it is the same problem: it leaves so many people out. Never mind that you could choose Weston and Erwitt as alternatives (at a college program where I taught long ago, the faculty had collectively agreed that Weston was the GOAT, in the same too-willful way that Ken Burns decided Ellington and Armstrong were the GOATs of jazz). If you came up with fifty great American photographers of the 20th century, you'd still be impoverishing your list, because even that would leave out people you should know. Or who dovetail with your own tastes and concerns. I wouldn't be comfortable excluding Dorothea Lange or Roy DeCarava, for example.

The best thing I can come up with to explain why I like the Adams/Friedlander idea is that the choices are representative and didactic. The coolest thing about pairing them that way is that they're so radically different than each other, and yet each expresses something essential about their era. It's interesting to think of what they had in common—huge talent and voracious appetites for work, to name two—but I love thinking about all the ways their work differs.

Here's a book I'd like to write: fifty great photographers of the 21st century so far. That would be a challenge. But wouldn't you love to set aside everything that came before Y2k and look at contemporary photographers in isolation? That would be really interesting I think. It wouldn't mean much but it would be a tremendous way to engage with new work and compare, contrast, and sort. Of course, it would take two years and when you were done you'd be utterly exhausted and virtually no one would care about your conclusions. In other words, just quixotic enough to tempt me.

OldNorm YoungNorm
Now my haywire YouTube algorithm sort-of friend thinks I'm mad about Norm Macdonald. Apparently also much beloved of old white guys—although that doesn't speak very well of old white guys. In truth, until his recent demise I barely remembered him from "Saturday Night Live," and get this—although he was a perfectly decent-looking fellow in his older age, I actually didn't connect the old Norm Macdonald to his young self because he looked so different after he gained weight. On the rare occasions I encountered random clips from his radio show or whatever it was, I just got that sort of vague celebrity-I-should-know-but-don't feeling. (I get that a lot.) I'm only mentioning that to indicate how little I knew about Norm Macdonald. He had barely entered my radar field in any phase of his career.

But now he seems to be all that YouTube wants to talk about. The more it offers Norm videos, the more I click on them, and pretty soon I'm lost in a ghetto of nothing but Norm. And I actually don't click with the guy's humor all that much.

I'm currently not clicking on anything having to do with him because I don't want to encourage my clueless clingy friend. I mean, I just recently managed to get rid of Larry Bird. Sigh. I gotta get algorithms that know me better....

Mike

P.S. Team Kareem.

Book o' the Week

  Friedlander First Fifty. A very fun little book that gives a tour of the first fifty of Lee Friedlander's books—extra copies of which are apparently stashed all over every floor of his house. By his grandson, who is trying to sell full, signed sets on eBay. This is very enjoyable, but also might be the most unique book about photobooks ever. Who else has published fifty photobooks?

This is a link to Amazon from TOP. The following logo is also a link:

Original contents copyright 2020 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.)
Featured Comments from:

A Scream**

[Comments have been posted]

SA*

Another great victory in the neverending battle to keep America safe from photographers occurred last Saturday at LaGuardia Airport in New York. A Republic Airways aircraft operating as American Flight 4817, full of patriotic Americans going about their everyday business, was proceeding from Indianapolis to LaGuardia when an alert woman correctly identified a man seated near her as a vintage camera enthusiast. Fearing that at any moment he might try to capture her image on a negative without obtaining a model release from her, thus violating her God-given copyright to images of herself, she properly alerted authorities—okay, flight attendants—that he had a device.

She was correct: he did. The device might have been something like a Certo 6 folder with a Synchro-Compur shutter built in East Germany (the former Communist part) in the 1950s. Experts from counter-photography watchdog agencies who monitor the activities of suspicious photographers say it is possible to use this shutter to MacGuyver a detonator for a 1950s Russian nuclear warhead, and that for this reason photographers are always attempting to smuggle these shutters from one terrorist cell to another.

"It's DA BOMB!!"

It was later determined that the passenger was merely engaged in an activity known as "camera fondling" and was not actually planning to take any pictures without permission. However this form of fondling is well known to quickly lead to pederasty and the permitting of male animals to legally marry each other in civil courts with their hoofs or paws on the Holy Bible and with an American flag not all that far away.

Fearful that this aberrant passenger might actually have more vintage cameras in his carry-on or even packed away in the baggage compartment, feet or even inches from the vulnerable essential systems of the jet, pilots immediately panicked, requesting that air traffic control divert the plane to...well, LaGuardia, where it was headed anyway. Air traffic controllers of course complied.

The pilots, however, made the landing as quick and rough as possible in order to heighten the drama, while responders massed on the ground to quickly close in on the deviant. Passengers were rewarded for the scary landing by being allowed to slide down those cool inflatable slides, which is something many passengers—well, okay, many male passengers—have always secretly wanted to do. The vintage camera collector was forced to lie down on the runway while people kept their distance just in case he had a Minox or a Minolta TC-1 secretly duct-taped to his midriff ready to go off.

Some background for context
The public is reminded yet again that photographers are always up to no good. In 1997 following the tragic death of Princess Diana, everyone became hyper-vigilant about the cult of extremist fanatics known as the paparazzi, who relentlessly hound celebrities to death by chasing them to the point of exhaustion and bad judgement, similar to the way English aristocrats on horseback in cool costumes used to molest foxes. (Photographers of any type may be damned by association to paparazzi, because close enough.) Then after 9/11 it became known that anyone photographing the outside of any building or any other feature of our national infrastructure, no matter how remote or insignificant, were secretly planning to blow it up. In response, bored security guards were given carte blanche to harass said terrorists until they went away. These miscreants are often cunningly disguised as tourists and are often seen with camera backpacks or camera bags that probably contain bombs. One telltale is that these "photographers" are constantly seen with different bags. Why? It is believed to be because the old ones were used in the commission of crimes—why else would anyone need so many different bags?*** Finally, anyone taking any picture with a child visible in any part of the image can automatically be deemed a predatory pedophile even in the absence of other evidence. And so forth. 

Torches and pitchforks Dept.
Disappointingly, although the vintage camera collector was detained, he could not be executed or even imprisoned, for the very inconvenient reason that he had not actually broken any, well, you know, laws. But he was definitely stressed out and shamed, which should make him think twice the next time he settles down with a three-quarters-full bottle of cheap Chardonnay and opens up eBay on his browser instead of going to bed.

However, support among the passengers for the heroic actions of everyone involved, from the Governor of New York (who Tweeted soothingly to calm the populace [seriously, she did]), to the police, the fire crews, airport authorities, pilots, cabin crew, and the lady who sounded the alarums, was strong. Some passenger comments in the aftermath:

"You just never know when you're going to be trapped on a flight with one of these freaks. Why can't he just collect guns like everyone else?"

"This was a close one, and I agree with the decisions made. He should be taking pictures with his phone like a normal person."

"Honestly, taking out a camera and fondling it in public? What did he expect would happen? Certain things, like picking your nose or doing Elaine Benes dancing in your undies, you should do in the privacy of your own home."

"I guess this turned out to be just precautionary. But the slide was great. They should let us get off the plane like that every time."

"I was trapped in a window seat next to a Leica collector once, so I know what she was going through. At least she realized she could get an emergency landing and a super-quick deplaning out of it. I wish I had known that."

"You just dread the day when your slightly odd eight-year-old says something like, 'Daddy, what's a view camera?' Your heart just sinks."

In the end, everything was fine. Fox5 News New York got a really alarming news segment out of it to agitate the public with the unimportant half of a story, another photographer was harassed for God and country, and all the survivors had quite an exciting story to tell when they got home, without ever actually having been in any danger.

The advice for air travelers is clear: if you're on a plane and you see someone taking out an old camera, don't think. Scream.

Mike

Disclaimer: I have seen no report yet about what camera(s) the passenger actually had.

*Satire Alert. I was especially miffed by PetaPixel's headline, "Man’s Vintage Camera Mistaken for Bomb, Causes Emergency Landing," the syntax of which clearly implies that it was the man's vintage camera that caused the emergency landing. Whose side are they on?! The asinine woman jumping to completely incorrect conclusions and sounding a false alarm caused the emergency landing, not the poor fellow's vintage camera!

**Re the title: My grandmother, born 1901, used to call a funny story "a scream."

***I was going to link to that amazing video called "Bag World (with Dr. David Alan Harvey, Professor of Bagology)" showing the famous Magnum photographer rummaging through his absolutely vast collection of old camera bags. Sadly for photo-geek culture, that video is no longer available.

Book o' the Week

  Friedlander First Fifty. A very fun little book that gives a tour of the first fifty of Lee Friedlander's books—extra copies of which are apparently stashed all over every floor of his house. By his grandson, who is trying to sell full sets on eBay. This is very enjoyable, but also might be the most unique book about photobooks ever. Who else has published fifty photobooks?

This is a link to Amazon from TOP. The following logo is also a link:

Original contents copyright 2020 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.)
Featured Comments from:

Christopher Kleihege: "Yes, the alleged satire above follows my train of thought exactly. Like I said, the photographer should have taken Amtrak. Remember the old Dudley Do-Right cartoons with the damsel tied to the tracks?"

Don Parsons: "As a former regional pilot and a current teacher of many of Republic Airways pilots, I find this both funny and alarming. Don't people think any more?"

Daniel M: "At first, I was thinking that you have presented a funny story to entertain us. But, with the link you have posted, I have discovered that it was real, very sadly...."

Dillan: "You never know what you're going to read here! That was great! As an aside, I can just imagine your grandmother as a flapper girl in the 1920s, telling her bestie that she had a funny story to tell. 'Oh Gertie, you have to hear this! It's such a SCREAM!'"

John Krumm: "This morning, after dropping off a car at my auto mechanic, I was walking down a residential street with my still new Fuji X100V, taking the occasional photo of interesting houses. A woman came out of one house, loudly saying, 'excuse me' to get me to stop. She was super concerned because I had taken a photo of her neighbor's house and it had kids inside, apparently. She wanted my full name, which I refused, though I did explain I was a hobby photographer, and she can see some of my neighborhood photos on my website. Two blocks later I was talking to a cop, who had received a 'suspicious person' call from said woman. He asked for my ID and checked for warrants, which surprised me. I was in no mood to argue with a cop, but I know that was wrong. Frankly my whole morning was kind of a mess emotionally after that."

Mani Sitaraman: "From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's news story about the incident. 'The woman was traveling with her husband and children, sitting across the aisle from her spouse, when she spotted another man in her husband’s row scrolling through videos and photos of vintage cameras, sources said.' Life with Mom."

Lee Rust: "I thought you were kidding at first...like a spoof article in The Onion...but no...I looked it up and all the initial news stories were about the threat and the drama and the emergency slides and etc....and then, nothing. 'No further information is available at this time.' it seemed like the 'authorities' were pretty embarrassed and just wanted the story to go away, which it did. Except for here, of course."

Eric Rose: "That lady should be sued by the owner of the camera plus have to pay compensation to all the passengers who were affected by her hysterics. The crew should also be better trained in what is and what is not a bomb. This whole thing just shows how hysterical and unhinged America has become."

scott kirkpatrick: "Two-three days later, it's not news and in several pages of Googling I can't find any further information about who was the photographer or what camera he had. The picture of a TLR was the result of a reporter going to Willoughby-Peerless and asking 'what is a vintage camera?' So not much of a clue. I realize that deep in my Leica bag is an external self-timer. I can imagine the reception I might get if I wound it up in public and let it buzz down to its 'click!' And, at Oren G.'s suggestion, I will never again go out in public with my Pentax Spotmeter in its holster. But why did nothing happen to the lady who caused all the trouble? Neither embarrassment nor education resulting from the moment...."

David Lee: "I hope this woman is added to the no-fly list as soon as possible.

"Years ago in the Denver airport, a TSA guy asked me to take my camera out of my bag so he could inspect it. He started looking at it with that gesture in his face that can only mean 'I won’t get fooled.' He asked me to turn the camera on. I can’t, I said, it’s an old camera, no batteries inside. Then he removed the lens cap and looked through the viewfinder to make sure he could see through the lens (it was a Leica M3). After he convinced himself it was a real camera, he gave it back to me. The funniest thing is that I was one of the pilots in the flight…."

New New Schedule (Blog Note)

Note that TOP is on a new schedule, posting every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with comments posted on the day following.

Yr. Hmbl. Ed. rashly promised a few weeks ago that each M-W-F post would appear at 7:00 a.m. Eastern U.S. Time. However, at the time I wrote that I was apparently momentarily insane. Stark barking. Loopy, crackers, bonkers, barmy. Daft, in short....

Must'a been. At least overly hopeful. You would think I would know myself better by now. I don't know what gets into me when I make promises like that.

Tomorrow's post will appear at 7:00 a.m., but that's the last one. After that, reality, and sanity, must return. Posts will in future appear on those days at some time or other.

There, that's more like Mike.

—Mike the unrealistic idealistic overoptimistic Head of the Dept. of Planning Dept.

 

More about Clichés

1.
You know you're getting old when...

...You can go to InstaRepeat and a.) not only recognize the motifs, b.) not only recognize specific places in multiple cases, but c.) remember famous photographs by name photographers taken at that same location, or remember books in which pictures taken at that location were printed.

Nevertheless, I find this fascinating, and I have to say I love some of the composites.

One thing I was gobsmacked by: a commenter who acknowledges that people will stage view-from-the-tent photos just to get the picture...to put on Instagram. Seriously? I guess it's like bird-watching. You collect motifs, adding them to your life-list. Or maybe you just want to show off by implying that you live the good life because you go camping. Have to ask them I guess.

Thanks to Rob de Loe for mentioning InstaRepeat. Even InstaRepeat is a repeat, though; InstaRepeat repeats other instances where motifs have been collected and collaged. Somewhere in the barn I have a book by a photographer who took pictures of people he encountered on the street who are dressed almost identically, proving that even our outfits are memes.

I have to mention again that in general I'm frustrated by Instagram because all of the pictures are so small and there's no way to see larger versions. This is twelve times as true for the combined pictures on InstaRepeat. I guess the reason is that people are looking at them on phones—? And I shouldn't talk, because pictures on this site are relatively small.

As I mentioned the other day, I have transmogrified into a dinosaur. One proof for this is that I come from an era long past and mostly forgotten when seeing pictures online was considered to be an inferior substitute for actually seeing the actual picture, which was accepted to have a separate and independent reality as part of the real world...and which would be better experienced there. Now, of course, "onscreen" is how many pictures are seen period, and there is only very seldomly an alternative in the real world. And that alternative, if it exists, is accepted to be seldom seen. Sigh.

2.
Ned Bunnell, ever witty (great guy—although we've never met in person, I'd like to meet him), linked to a picture he took as a joke-slash-homage to Lee Friedlander, in my humble opinion the greatest American photographer of the second half of the 20th century. Here it is. And here is the original. This is not a cliché at all; rather, Ned's riffing. It's different when it is done with full knowledge of the antecedent, like John Pfahl's "Moonrise Over Pie Pan" is a riff on "Moonrise Over Hernandez, New Mexico."

Now then, in support of the point just above, I have to point out that three of these four images were not originally tiny JPEGs. If you haven't seen a print of "Moonrise Over Hernandez," you haven't really seen it. I've seen a print of it about six times. The most interesting occasion was in a private back room at the Art Institute of Chicago, where a small group of us were shown the Institute's collection of different vintages of "Moonrise" prints showing the evolution of Ansel's interpretations. I was asked not to take pictures. I did anyway, furtively, but I can't show them to you.

3.
Tom Hill mentioned the book Photo No-Nos by Jason Fulford. Now, I've always had this idea, which I've mentioned several times over the years, that it might be entertaining to compile a list of photo clichés and then set yourself the challenge of making personal pictures of all of them—a sort of "make it yours" exercise, or even Ezra Pound's "make it new." Just from reading a few pages of the sample of Jason Fulford's book, however, I think I might have to retire that idea. Perhaps its time has simply passed, in this brave new world. He makes it clear that it's not just the subject that makes a photo a cliché, but the way in which it's photographed...and he's right, of course.

But for some reason I think I'm going to enjoy that book anyway.

Mike

Book o' the Week

The Atlas of Beauty: Women of the World in 500 Portraits. "Since 2013 photographer Mihaela Noroc has traveled the world with her backpack and camera taking photos of everyday women to showcase the diversity of beauty all around us. The Atlas of Beauty is a collection of her photographs celebrating women from all corners of the world, revealing that beauty is everywhere, and that it comes in many different sizes and colors."

This is a link to Amazon from TOP. The following logo is also a link:

Original contents copyright 2020 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.)
Featured Comments from:

James Weekes: "Let me add another vote for Lee Friedlander as best photographer of the last half of the twentieth century. I collect photo books but my sub collection of Friedlanders is my prize possession."

Mike replies: I wish I had more of a sub-collection. I just got the astonishing Friedlander First Fifty which details the contents of his "first" fifty(!) books. That's amazing in itself. I'm really enjoying it—kinda like candy. I wish I had more than the five or six I do have. At least I have Cherry Blossom Time in Japan which is exquisitely printed. I'm amazed to find it's still pretty affordable—probably because it's full of flower pictures in black-and-white, which would seem just perverse to a lot of normal people.

Mark Jennings: "I’ve never done it, but I’ve read many times that copying great work can be highly instructive. Often the work isn’t straightforward either.

"John Constable, the early 19th century British landscape painter, and countless other painters, enthusiastically copied the actual paintings of many admired paintings. He did it for the instruction, the inspiration, and the pleasure.

"In 2009 I left Ghost Ranch late one afternoon and headed back to Santa Fe. Nothing clicked in my mind when a short time later I passed a road sign 'Hernandez,' but a minute later strange sensations ambushed me. On the left and down a little slope stood the old Adobe church and the cemetery, the flat river valley a ways beyond, and in the far background the mighty Sangre de Christo mountains bathed in the soft late afternoon sun.

"The light was changing fast, and I too veered onto the shoulder, gave explanations and requests to my tired, hungry, and baffled friend, and then jumped out of the car with my trusty Leica point-and-shoot.

"The location has changed since Adams's heyday. The church and graveyard in 2009 stood at the back of a broad swath of sprawl that included modest cottages, house trailers with white picket fences and flamingoes, an auto repair garage, and other Americana. I’d been taken by surprise, but even without previously knowing where Adam’s picture had been captured, I did know its core enough to feel the hair on the napeof my neck go up when I got near the scene. But that’s what photographers are known for, that improbable sense."

Mark: "This series on photographic clichés is fascinating, and I thank you for writing it. I don't spend much time in hotels, but I think one could compile a semi-comprehensive inventory of modern photographic cliches from the prints hanging on hotel room walls. The three stacked round rocks, and the bow of the canoe pointing toward the cleft in the mountains are two of my favorites."

Albert Smith: "Re 'If you haven't seen a print of "Moonrise Over Hernandez," you haven't really seen it. I've seen a print...', I agree. In 1986 (two years after his death), my now ex-wife and I were touring San Diego, doing all the tourist stuff, Sea World, the Zoo, etc. In Balboa Park, adjacent to the Zoo, unexpectedly was an Ansel Adams retrospective with many dozens of his handmade prints. I was a fanboy of photojournalists and knew of Adams only from magazine articles, which never excited me with their small, low-res images of his work. We went in only because we were there. When I walked into that gallery, I was floored with the size and quality of those prints. As a photographer who never shot anything bigger that 6x6cm in my Rollei, I could not believe the detail in Adams's work. My wife had to pull me out of there to continue our itinerary, but as Mike said, you have to see the real thing to appreciate it."

Jeff: "As a print collector (back when prices were sane), I’ve had the privilege of seeing various mammoth, mural sized, Adams prints, including 'Grand Tetons and the Snake River,' one of which sold from David Arrington’s collection for $988,000 at Sotheby’s last year. It sold for several hundred thousand more than a smaller, early vintage 'Moonrise,' which came with a much higher auction estimate. People are wowed by the huge prints, especially nowadays when bigger seems better. I prefer smaller prints, but it hurts a bit to know that I could have privately bought one of the few 'Grand Tetons' mammoth prints for low five figures many years ago. I’ve also seen Arrington’s collection showing changing versions of 'Moonrise,' shown here."

Dennis Buss: "Andreas Feininger addressed the problem of photo clichés in a few of his many books. He acknowledged that conscious imitation is part of one's growth as a photographer but should be avoided once technique is reasonably mastered. One of my favorites that he identified are photos of coiled ropes on fishing piers."

Jim Henry: "This is somewhat tangential to your main points today, but I need to speak up on behalf of screens. Don't get me wrong, I like prints, I have thousands from the 1960's up until now. They are on my walls, in boxes, have been gifts, sold a few, etc. Nothing against prints. But a good screen display can be wonderful, because the light is being transmitted from the image, not just reflected. Prints are always reflecting the light that falls on them. Screens and (remember them>) slides transmit light; the light emits from them. They are like little jewels, especially when the display has a good color gamut and high resolution. My old iPad 4 (retina display)is just spectacular. Compare a stained glass window with (even a good) post card of one. Perhaps I belabor the obvious. And of course, you are mostly talking about phone cameras and Facebook postings. But don't lump all screen renditions with them!"

Geoff Wittig: "Well, now I have my sadness for the week. I'm mostly a traditional landscape photographer, but I have long admired the work of John Pfahl, a post-modernist who spent many years in the Buffalo, New York, area. A Distanced Land (1990) is the best monograph of his work. He produced all kinds of visual wit. He created a weirdly beautiful series of photographs of industrial smokestacks with their toxic effluent perfectly lit by the setting sun. And a series of forest scenes with carefully placed stretched ribbons creating visual puzzles. Sadly, Pfahl was another victim of the early wave of COVID19."

Mike replies: I wrote about John Pfahl's passing and even posted a picture of him in April of 2020.

In that same post I noticed that I passed along the same Ned Bunnell picture that I passed along again here! I knew I had seen it before but I thought maybe Ned had sent it to me privately, or I had seen it while browsing his Instagram. Oh well, at least I'm consistent. And Ned is too!

A Distanced Land is a little-known treasure. I saw a show of those "weirdly beautiful series of photographs of industrial smokestacks" you mentioned in original prints, at the Jones-Troyer Gallery in D.C.

On Glass Orbs and Pictorialism

Words and photo by Dave Levingston

As a fan of Clarence White, Sr., and someone who has used orbs in his own photos, I thought I'd give you a little info on orbs that goes beyond what I put in my comment on TOP. White was a native of my home town, Newark, Ohio, and I have often photographed in some of the same locations, such as Blackhand Gorge, where he did some of his most well-known photographs.

White was fond of orbs. Stieglitz, not so much. There are quotes of him complaining about White using them. I've not dug those quotes up, but here is a note from page 227 of the book Clarence White and His World by Anne McCauley:

"The glass orb, which became one of White's trademark props, had been used since the Renaissance as a symbol of the Holy Spirit (because it echoes the orb of the world), of the transparency of the soul (as in Johannes Vermeer's Allegory of the Catholic Faith [ca. 1670–72], in which it hangs from the ceiling), or of the vanity of earthly things, akin to a soap bubble (in seventeenth-century vanitas still lifes). It was also traditionally associated with virginal purity, as in Cesar van Everdingen's Amor Holding a Glass Orb (ca. 1660). Later it reflects the mystical practice of scrying, in which the future appears in a crystal orb. A typical Aesthetic movement example of the use of glass orbs is Edward Burne-Jones's cycle The Days of Creation (1870–76), in which each stage of creation is envisioned in a crystal orb held by a female allegorical figure. Underlying all its symbolic uses, the glass orb presented painters and photographers like White with an interesting play of transparency and reflections that challenged normal optical perception and complicated the process of representation."

So as I've been working on a project in homage to White, I've used orbs quite a bit. Above is one of my favorite and most popular examples.

On a related note, in photo school I was taught that Pictorialism was a mistake, a dead end that didn't actually advance photography. I think that is wrong. The modernist ƒ/64 group photographers reacted against Pictorialism and put it in disrepute. But I think it was crucial in the process of photography being accepted as a legitimate medium for art and not just a representative craft. And, looking back from today, I think we can see that Pictorialism is one way to do photography, just as valid as any other technique or genre.

Dave

Mike adds: The most famous glass orb in art recently was of course the one in Christ's hand in Leonardo's Salvator Mundi, which (the painting, not the orb) sold at Christie's in New York City for approximately $450 million in 2017. That one caused quite a bit of controversy, which appears to be resolved now. P.S. here's me and Dave last time he was in town.

Book o' the Week

The Atlas of Beauty: Women of the World in 500 Portraits. "Since 2013 photographer Mihaela Noroc has traveled the world with her backpack and camera taking photos of everyday women to showcase the diversity of beauty all around us. The Atlas of Beauty is a collection of her photographs celebrating women from all corners of the world, revealing that beauty is everywhere, and that it comes in many different sizes and colors."

This is a link to Amazon from TOP. The following logo is also a link:

Original contents copyright 2020 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.)
Featured Comments from:

Bill Tyler: "The controversy Mike alludes to is in part whether Salvator Mundi is actually by Leonardo, and in part about the fact that Jesus' robe, seen through the orb, is not shown inverted. I'm astonished at the misunderstanding about the inversion. Writing on the topic seems to reflect a mistaken belief that objects viewed through a glass sphere always appear inverted. This is not always so. A glass sphere is in effect a lens with a focal length that is quite short relative to its size. Looking through such a lens at an object more than one focal length away will indeed show the object inverted. However, if the object is closer than one focal length, it will appear erect, not inverted. That orb in the painting is very close to Jesus' robe, and thus the lack of inversion is completely optically accurate.

"Here's a photo of a solid glass sphere resting on my keyboard, illustrating the point. The letter G seen through the sphere is right-side-up, not inverted. It's how an ordinary magnifying glass works—the focal length there is a bit longer relative to the magnifier's size, and you see the subject erect. The article Mike references has a bunch of computer scientists doing simulations with hollow and solid spheres. If they'd bothered to open a first-year physics textbook, or any introduction to optics, this point would have been explained in detail. Failing that, glass spheres are easy to obtain and inexpensive. An actual experiment seems to me to be far more convincing than a numeric simulation."

Jnny: "That is a mesmerizing photo. Kudos."

Eschew Cliché

The urge to make clichés stems from a desire to make pictures that look like everybody else's pictures. Why would anybody want to do this? Personally I think it's because it relieves us from having to rely only on our own judgment when evaluating what we've done. Photographers, far more than other kinds of artists, are perpetually insecure about whether what they've done is going to be accepted as good. I also think photographers like clichés because, at an early stage of our development, it's a way of demonstrating competence and accomplishment. You can tell you're in this stage because the phrases "that looks like a professional took it!" and "it looks like a postcard!" are construed as compliments, and make us swell up with pride. (Later, of course, those kinds of comments become insults.)

So what's a photographic cliché? As with pornography, you're supposed to know it when you see it. I suppose we might define it as "conventional subjects shown in a conventional way." That this leaves each of us to define "conventional" for ourselves is probably a good thing.

Conventions, of course, change. In the style known as "pictorialism"—largely defined through the journal Camera Work by Alfred Stieglitz, who later grew bored by it—it was conventional, for some reason I never understood, to include a large glass globe in many pictures (guild secret? Masonic talisman? Esoteric symbology? Beats me). During the Eisenhower years, it was conventional that pictures be robust, cheerful, forward-looking, even heroic (which fortunately didn't hamper the ebullient Eisie, one of the great photographers of those days). Lately, convention can be found on tony art-gallery walls, where "photographers" no other photographers have heard of display fey, fatuous, flat, fuzzy, foreboding photos of nothing, interchangeably.

If you're smiling at that, don't get cocky. Amateurs are even worse. What informs the taste of amateurs who pursue clichés is their idea of the taste of others. Not the actual taste of others, mind you, but just the photographer's best attempts at second-guessing.

Be confident, baby
That's no way to live. As with many things, photography is often about self-confidence. The point is not so much to learn what other people like—that's ultimately a fool's errand—but to learn what you like. Only by identifying your own concerns and becoming comfortable with your own taste will you stand a chance of developing an organic style, or signature, or way of seeing, that is neither imitative ("designed to be like something else, but usually inferior to the original") or derivative.

Photo by Lee Friedlander

I think this is why rebellious and nonconformist teenagers often make the best photography students. They don't want to conform. They don't work to please.

We each are stuck with using our own taste as the foundation for what's good or bad, because the taste of others is so varied and unpredictable. If I found one person who loved one particular picture of yours and and gushed about it on and on, praising it to the skies, and another person who hated it and pronounced it worthless, what would that teach you? If you learn your own taste and cultivate self-confidence, you can be secure in the face of either reaction.

When you know with a quiet but solid confidence that you truly like one of your pictures and you're not shaken in the least when someone says, "What the hell is the point of that?" or "I hate that!," you're there.

Go for it. Dare to be different; be yourself. Eschew cliché.

-

A version of this post was first published in 2003! (Jeez. Time flies.) I found it when I was poking around in the archives for the previous post. In the meantime, I found this. It's a page from a 1937 issue of U.S. Camera. Pretty funny that it starts with the same mysterious glass globes I mentioned. Notice which of M.F. Agha's clichés are no longer popular or would be politically incorrect today.

Wikipedia says Dr. Mehemed Fehmy Agha was a "Russian-born Turkish designer, art director, and pioneer of modern American publishing" who was "instrumental in...delivering the full force of European avant garde experimentation to the pages of Vogue, Vanity Fair, and House & Garden, the Condé Nast publishing company's flagship magazines in the United States."

Mike

Book o' the Week

The Atlas of Beauty: Women of the World in 500 Portraits. "Since 2013 photographer Mihaela Noroc has traveled the world with her backpack and camera taking photos of everyday women to showcase the diversity of beauty all around us. The Atlas of Beauty is a collection of her photographs celebrating women from all corners of the world, revealing that beauty is everywhere, and that it comes in many different sizes and colors."

This is a link to Amazon from TOP. The following logo is also a link:

Original contents copyright 2020 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.

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Featured Comments from:

Roger Bradbury: "Typical subjects at the first camera club I joined, over 40 years ago: 1.) Windmills. 2.) Sunsets. 3.) Swans. 4.) Any combination of the above. So when I entered an almost abstract photo of a top corner of my bedroom, with two different coloured walls, the top of a coloured door and frame and a white triangle of ceiling, I was laughed at. I grew disillusioned with the club from that point. At least I'd tried something different. But I do remember it. Not that I'm still holding a grudge or anything....  :-)  "

Kenneth Tanaka: "I agree with your general suggestion to strive to make distinctive images. But I’d prefer to place emphasis on what to do, rather than to avoid clichés (which have a habit of changing over time anyway).

"Re 'The urge to make clichés stems from a desire to make pictures that look like everybody else's pictures.' No, I don’t agree. Or at least I don’t feel that the sentence accurately covers the observation. Photography is fundamentally a craft. Technology has automated most of its ickiest aspects, but it still requires learnin’. 'Making pictures that look like' pictures that you admire is a landmark in that process for many, perhaps most, people. So I’d encourage newbies to make many such pictures and study them, whether the person is 17 or 75. Once you’re able to intentionally make that trite image of the Grand Canyon, the Eiffel Tower, or the Brooklyn Bridge you’ve achieved competence with the gadget. Now for the fun part.

"Which leads to understanding why people make photos at all. Generally not for art. Not for recognition. And generally not for compensation. They make pictures to commemorate and, increasingly, to communicate. So as soon as someone mastered the basics or controlling their camera I would encourage them to concentrate of using it to communicate. Don’t be self-conscious about being cliché. Forget silly amateur photo 'composition' rules (that weren’t made for photography or art or the 20th or 21st centuries at all). Pay attention to what you’re putting in that frame, and where you’re putting it. Everything in the frame matters. Forget 'pretty.' Does it communicate what you want to say or depict? Does it record what you want to remember in, say, years to come? That’s the main purpose for using a camera for most of us.

"If some of your photos turn out to look very similar to many others you’ve seen…so what? As long as you created the image purposefully, who really gives a damn?"

Mike replies: I like your comments, as usual, and would only suggest that our differences hinge on one thing: you're considering "eschew cliché" as it represents a restriction, a limitation, a rule that one has to abide by; whereas, when I wrote that piece, I considered it might be a liberation, which might be freeing for some people. It's been my observation that people really do have a tendency to restrict their picture-taking to subjects that they've already seen as pictures by others.

Brian Cormack: "When I was in high school back in the 1990s, the school had a literary magazine that also included photography. My junior year I submitted a few pictures taken around town, including a few at the biggest tourist attraction here (called 'The Old Mill'). I joined the staff of the literary magazine my senior year and was surprised to see that the advisor adamantly refused to ever print any pictures of The Old Mill, since they received so many submissions of it every year. They even had a wall of photos in the office filled with all the pictures of the Mill that had been submitted over the years. I looked closely and found the one I had submitted the year before. I think about that every time I go out to that Mill to take pictures. It is a photogenic little spot, at least!"

Mike replies: That's great. The editor might have suggested an "Old Mill Issue," jam-packed with nothing but pictures of the Old Mill. Just as a joke. She could have included an open invitation to submit more pictures of the Old Mill for the next Old Mill Issue, which would be announced as being definitely scheduled for, say, a date 30 years in the future.  :-)

My predecessor at the magazine I edited hated pictures of kids, and refused to print pictures of children unless he couldn't help it.

Ten Years Ago!

A post we published ten years ago yesterday:

Fuji Goes on the Attack

Shigetaka Komori, Fuji CEO, has announced that Fuji will enter the mirrorless interchangeable-lens market by next Spring (2012) with a line of products that will share the "Fujifilm X" nomenclature with its recent fixed-lens cameras the X100 and X10.

Komori-san says that the sensor quality of Fujifilm X mirrorless will exceed that of current full-frame sensors, although its sensor size will likely be smaller than 24x36mm. The claim reminded me of something...I have a hazy memory of someone with knowledge of the industry telling me long ago that an official of Canon said that Fuji is the only company Canon is scared of—not Panasonic, not Sony, not Nikon—because of Fuji's expertise with sensors. (I might not have that right, so please don't quote me.)

Fuji also confirmed that demand for the X100 has far exceeded expectations. More than 70,000 have sold in six months, and the total is expected to top 100,000 by year's end.

Note: About that anecdote, I did have it right. I was being circumspect because the source had given me permission to quote him but asked me to please camouflage his identity as best I could. He has since passed away, but I'll leave it alone.

Shigetaka Komori retired at CEO of Fuji last Summer. He certainly presided over a wonderful renaissance at that company.

Yesterday was also the tenth anniversary of the death of Steve Jobs.

Mike

(Thanks to Lex Stewart and Richard Man for corrections)

Book o' the Week

The Atlas of Beauty: Women of the World in 500 Portraits. "Since 2013 photographer Mihaela Noroc has traveled the world with her backpack and camera taking photos of everyday women to showcase the diversity of beauty all around us. The Atlas of Beauty is a collection of her photographs celebrating women from all corners of the world, revealing that beauty is everywhere, and that it comes in many different sizes and colors."

This is a link to Amazon from TOP. The following logo is also a link:

Original contents copyright 2020 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.)
Featured Comments from:

Albert Smith: "Well, I was one of the 70,000 that bought the original X100, literally the day it hit the shelf of my local camera store (now, sadly, gone). The images of that Leica look alike in the many photo magazines (now sadly gone too) had me salivating after jumping to digital and relegating my M6 to a shelf. I'm glad that I allowed Fujifilm some growing pains because if that original X100 were my impression of the brand, it would have been my last Fuji. They certainly have evolved, and today a Fuji camera is in my hand 99% of the time. It's great to see a mission statement actually be realized also to the letter."

Zave Shapiro: "I'm old enough to remember when people who sold things were familiar with products, their own and competitors. Today we have product managers who claim expertise in 'marketing' and 'product positioning.' I remember fondly when I was offered Good, Better, Best rather than today's 'I can sell you features. How much money do you have?' I just bought a new car so I'm disgusted, of course. The great thing about phone cameras is the return to Good, Better, Best. If Fuji, CaNyKon, etc can hang on I'm sure the MBAs will foul up the phones. We'll have seven Apple phones within $22 all distinguished by feature set (software), and the customers will need classes."