The Online Photographer

Random Excellence: Benoit Paille

William Gibson. Photo by Benoit Paillé.

Or not so random—this is the portrait of William Gibson that adorns the article I quoted yesterday. It breaks every rule of portraiture, and it's brilliant. It looks splendid as a full page of the New Yorker print magazine. I can't stop looking at it there.

The head is placed just subtly northwest of dead center in the frame; the flash implies a brief moment of lucidity in gloom; the heavy foliage in the lower right anchors the picture in chaos from which the man emerges, as if previously hidden, and the eye is led further back in space by the perspective distortion of the hulking dark house; everything leads back to the blank dark twilit sky which reveals nothing. The faux "cross-processed" color lends an otherworldly air, and the soft spottiness all over everything—you'd like to think it's snow, but who knows—looks alien. The figure leans in quizzically. The facial expression is enigmatic, blank, but accepting.

Perfection in imperfection. 

Paillé has been on the road living in a camper since 2013. His bio informs us, or rather does not inform us: "Of a disdainful nature, he yearns to be excluded from any renowned circle. Despite his international recognition, Benoit remains humble and open to others. He has the ability to intrude easily in the authentic life of people to wreck and corrupt their traditional habitat with technology. When children ask him what his THC vaporizer machine is, he lies and tells them it’s an asthma device. Wishing to step apart from institutionalized biographies, Benoit is making a lot of efforts to break through. Ambitious he masturbates only once a day. Either way, he’s putting a lot of energy in transgressing conventions. Art sustain him more than leftovers hot-dogs." (Translated, one assumes, from the French.)

Whoever at the New Yorker got the idea to hire Benoit to do the illustration for this article, a pat on the back and big kudos to that person, and to his or her boss or bosses. Inspired choice. Paillé is the ideal portraitist for the enigmatic, influential, cerebral science fiction writer. The portrait alone makes me curious to read Gibson's books. And to see more of Benoit Paillé's work. You will find him on gbuffer, Instagram, flickr, Lensculture, 500px, and elsewhere.

I keep going back to it and it looks more imperfectly perfect every visit, like a jazz piece that is opaque at first and reveals itself only on repeated hearings. Trés bon.

Mike

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The Magic of Photography

Mike Plews wrote: "If you go to places where photographers tend to gather (like national parks) pulling out a vintage piece of film gear generally strikes up a nice conversation. If you break out large-format gear and get under the dark cloth you will attract a crowd of both photographers and non-photographers alike, and inviting them to take a look at the ground glass is an excellent way to generate a little positive energy in a time when we could use some. After all, as every TOP regular knows, half the fun of photography is talking about it with people."

That's something I forgot to mention yesterday about my long-gone old Wista view camera. I used it extensively when teaching photography classes. It was always a big day when students lined up behind the camera for a chance to go under the dark cloth and look at the image on the ground glass. There were always exclamations of amazement and delight from under the shroud. It didn't hurt that the camera looked so exotic and old-fashioned, beautifully crafted of beautiful materials. High spirits were the order of those days. They were events.

I even used this to get out of a potential mugging! One day in DC I emerged from the dark cloth to find myself closely surrounded by three inner-city teenagers, who must have been purposely stealthy as they came up to me. As soon as I saw them they began to talk threateningly about why a white guy like me thought he could wander around in that part of town and how much a camera like mine might be worth if they were to sell it. I stammered awkwardly for a minute or two about how there's no market for old cameras, then remembered an article I'd read: if you feel threatened, the article advised, make friends. People don't attack friends. If you feel a cop is about to penalize you for something, for instance, ask for his help with something—it transforms you, in his eyes, from a miscreant requiring correction into a member of the public requiring assistance. It changes his own conception of his relationship to you. I ended up showing all three of those guys the view on the ground glass, and explaining to them why the image was upside down and how photographs are made and so forth. As soon as the first guy saw the ground glass and exclaimed "Wow! That's so cool!" in an excited voice from under the dark cloth, well, then the other two couldn't wait to see it too. We were all quite friendly by the time we parted ways twenty minutes later.

As far as I'm concerned there are, or were, three magical aspects to photography. The first was what we're talking about—seeing the world on the ground glass. The image is at the same time remarkably precise and yet completely transformed. Movement becomes magical. It's Alice-in-Wonderlandish, somehow, literally topsy-turvy, both this world and an alternate world, at the same time. It's like it renders the world into an abstracted scale model of itself. Sometimes I would stare, transfixed, at the ground glass for many minutes on end. Sometimes I'd set up the camera just to watch the world that way. Photographs were, if not superfluous, secondary.

The second is the emergence of the image on the photo paper in the developer try. There was something wonderful about a solution that looks like water under the safelight revealing an invisible latent image you'd just created with nothing but light. The magic of that might recede with repetition but it never entirely got old.

Remnants
The third is more complicated—it's the way photographs are physical impressions of the past which are always changing in their relation to the present. If you're walking in the woods and you find a bearprint in the mud, that's a physical impression of an actual bear—the real bear had to have made it, meaning she'd been there, in the spot you're standing, not long earlier. When you find an arrowhead or a Civil War Minié ball in the woods, it's not the objects that are magical in themselves—one's a bit of chipped stone and the other's a lump of lead. But each is a physical remnant of the people who made them and used them, and the objects are direct connections to a fundamentally mysterious past.

In an article about the science fiction writer William Gibson written by Joshua Rothman, I read this:

The ten novels that Gibson has written since [his first, Neuromancer, in 1984] have slid steadily closer to the present. In the nineties, he wrote a trilogy set in the two-thousands. The novels he published in 2003, 2007, and 2010 were set in the year before their publication. (Only the inevitable delays of the publishing process prevented them from taking place in the years when they were written.) Many works of literary fiction claim to be set in the present day. In fact, they take place in the recent past, conjuring a world that feels real because it's familiar, and therefore out of date. Gibson's strategy of extreme presentness reflects his belief that the current moment is itself science-fictional. "The future is already here," he has said. "It's just not very evenly distributed."

Couldn't something very similar be said of photographs? In fact, every single attempt to capture the present becomes a picture of the recent past. Human beings are most comfortable with what feels familiar (it's the secret to how we actually choose mates or partners, for example), and conjuring the recent past with photographs is comfortable because it's familiar. But photographs continue to change as they continue to move away from us, receding in time. Soon they become un-replicable and then they grow more and more unfamiliar. Finally they pass out of living memory (defined as experiences or events remembered by people who are still alive—the experience of buying a new Ford Model T, for instance, has recently passed out of living memory). As they do so, they simultaneously become both more and less valuable to us. Historical photographs are physical connections to irretrievable people, places, and things, but "antiques" stores often features tables of old photographs no one really wants.

It's like the old Mitch Hedberg standup joke: "One time a guy handed me a picture. He said, 'here's a picture of me when I was younger.' But every picture of you is a picture of when you were younger. 'Here's a picture of me when I was older.' You son of a bitch! How'd you do that? Let me see that camera." Michael Lesy's cult classic Wisconsin Death Trip was an early book that explored this aspect of photographs. Very briefly summarized, Lesy's insight was that sooner or later, all photographs of people will be photographs of dead people. This tension is a part of almost all photographs, in my view. A picture which is meant to be "read" and consumed right now, a reflection of the present moment, will always have some aspect of tension with the fact that the pictured moment can no longer change. I can't get too far into this here, but one thing I love is that the characteristic styles of the present moment tend to be invisible to us while the pictures are new, but are revealed much more clearly as the pictures age.

Joel Baldwin, Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, from the
pages of LOOK magazine, April 1969. A photo which was
intended at the time of publication to simulate a then-present moment.

Whether you tend to value or dismiss aging photographs is up to you, of course. But all photographs are of the past, and personally I'm with The History Guy: "history deserves to be remembered." For me that's true of the comfortably familiar very recent past or the unknowably mysterious distant past. For me, that connection, like the ancient arrowhead nestled in the leaf-mold of the forest floor, always has been the essential third aspect of photography's magic.

Mike
(Thanks to Mike P.)

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View Cameras

I've been at least low-level obsessed with view cameras since I started in photography seriously in 1980. I used to go by Ferrante-Dege, an old-line camera store in Cambridge, Massachusetts (I loved and miss old camera stores), to "visit" a resplendent Deardorff 5x7 they had on semi-permanent display (it was for sale, but didn't sell, so it was there for a long time). It was profoundly beautiful—well, to my photogeeky young self it was—and also profoundly unaffordable, which made me covet it all the more.

My second major purchase (after my first Contax of sainted memory, and 50mm Zeiss lens) was a rosewood Wista 45DXII that I bought from a guy in Chatham, in Upstate New York, who ran a small business called "Fields and Views." It cost more than $600—an extravagant purchase.

Wista 4x5-inch view camera in rosewood, identical to the one I owned

I only really used my Wista for two projects—for one, I shot color film in the "Tip of the Mitt" region in Michigan, around the lakeshore; and for the other, a different summer (on a faculty grant, woo-hoo), I shot Polaroid Type 55 P/N (positive/negative) film in the same area, everywhere but home. My conceit was that I was going to drive over every single road in Charlevoix, Emmet, Cheboygan and Presque Isle counties. I came pretty close. I loved that camera and I wish I still had it. Current Wistas are not nearly as well made as they were then.

The Wista, which turns 40 this year—it was first available in 1980—has been made over the years in numerous iterations, and in Japanese cherry, Japanese rosewood (shown), ebony, and a few other woods. Various versions have distinct features such as back shift and removable bellows. All share the strong family resemblances imbued in the camera by designer Sadamu Yasutake. The bellows have changed from leather to synthetic over the years, although ten years ago I was told that leather bellows could still be special-ordered in Japan. Don't know if that's still true. Rising prices in the U.S. and much more advantageously-priced newer Chinese cameras such as those from Shen-Hao and Chamonix overshadow the Wista now, and I'm told it gets very little mindshare among LF shooters these days. I owned one from 1984 to 1989—had to sell it because of financial hardship—and have always remembered it with inordinate fondness. It will always remain a sentimental favorite with me. I would have loved to be the type of photographer who could use a view camera for life, crafting beautiful traditional silver prints in the darkroom.

Not con
However, "we are what we are," and there's no getting around that. My two projects with the Wista should have been enough to demonstrate to me that I'm not a view camera photographer. It didn't suit my temperament and personality.

Also, I got an early reputation as a view-camera hater that dogged me for years and years. The story, which I'm sure a few of you have heard before, is that I was told by my editor at Camera & Darkroom magazine that they were planning a "pro and con" article about view cameras, and they wanted me to write the "con" piece. The "pro" article was supposed to be written by Ron Wisner, of Wisner Classic Mfg. Co., now out of business but at the time a bespoke maker of opulent Edwardian-style view cameras. Unfortunately, however, Ron never submitted his "pro" piece (I later learned, when I was an editor myself, that this was typical behavior for him). Against my protests, the editor decided to run my "con" piece anyway, by itself, as a stand-alone article. So, without even meaning to, I authored a long, well-debated article about view cameras that was—yikes!—entirely one-sided, taking the negative position. (As I recall, Ron did write a short counterpoint, which might have been published as a Letter to the Editor? I would get my assistant to look that up if the fellow were not so lazy.) The fallout has died down now, but I'm sure, with my luck, that there are still LF people out there with elephant memories who still think I'm anti-LF.

And of course then digital came along, and large format moved down one thick layer deeper in the strata of niches.

So, view cameras: I'm not good with them, don't use them, have a reputation as someone who dislikes and disapproves of them, and they're obsolescent.

...None of which has dimmed my love for view cameras or view camera photography one bit. I still think they're lovely, fascinating devices, and I love work done with them. A circa 1903 Rochester Optical Pony Premo No. 6, a beautiful old "self-casing" whole-plate camera made not far from where I live, in a splendidly preserved state, is the first thing that greets visitors when they come into my house from the porch. I've never taken a picture with it.

Mike

This is a "TOP Classic" rerun, a pastiche of posts from 2010 and 2016.

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Open Mike: Good News

["Open Mike" is the Editorial Page of TOP, in which Yr. Hmbl. Ed. lets his neuroses out to romp in the yard. It usually appears on Wednesdays, and is very often late, and very rarely early.]

-

An ecologist once explained a formula for the conservation of wetlands. He said that the loss of the first 30% of wetlands was inconsequential; the environment could absorb, and adapt to, that much loss. The survival of the middle 40% was provisional and could be up for discussion, or taken case-by-case. But the survival of the last 30% was absolutely crucial for the ecology as a whole, essential for a great variety of reasons, and needed to be preserved at all costs.

Hold that thought. We'll circle back around to it.

When the Internet came along and people were able to share pictures, there was a whole new crop of photographers who enthusiastically embraced the new medium, and who showed their work online without restraint. Many of these people weren't fastidious about their pictures being shared. As a consequence, many of these photographers "grew followers" and began to become better known.

Meanwhile, many already established photographers listened to dire warnings that their work would be stolen and misused if they posted it online. Many "name" photographers severely limited the number of their pictures they posted online, and posted only quite small JPEGs, and were strict about their rights and privileges. As a consequence, they weren't known on the Internet and, eventually, a whole generation of photo enthusiasts grew up not knowing who those previously famous photographers were or what their work looked like.

Two examples: there was a photographer who I wanted to publicize. I wanted other people to get a sense of his work and I wanted to discuss his work. But his website (or web "page" as we used to say, since, back then, entire websites sometimes consisted of just the landing page) was rudimentary—only eight pictures were shown, and each one of those was tiny, maybe 300 or 400 pixels wide. When I suggested that his website was outdated and needed to be expanded and enlarged, he explained that he had gotten someone else to make it for him and he didn't care about "all that" either way. He'd drop off his portfolio at museums and work toward gallery shows and try to get his pictures published in art books, but he didn't see any point in sharing his pictures for free on the Internet.

In the other case, I wrote about a photographer and included two quick snaps of his pictures from a book. The snaps were obviously book pages, with distortion from the bend of the paper and flare from the lighting. Soon he contacted me a state of high agitation, demanding that the pictures be removed immediately. Of course I complied—I always comply with takedown requests even if I feel I have a clear right to use the pictures under Fair Use, because we support photographers. He explained that his photographs were his livelihood and that he never, ever allowed them to be posted online under any circumstances, because people would steal his pictures and make prints from the JPEGs that would compete with his own print sales. I didn't point out the technical impossibility of that...it was his business, and his call. That photographer (he's deceased now) was otherwise quite savvy about publicity, and avid for fame. I doubt many younger people have ever heard of him.

Their reasons for doing what they did were sound, but the overall effect was a negative one: they limited their own publicity and effectively "walled off" their work from the online audience. Granted, both those examples are from the late '90s / early 2000s, and not everyone understood then how pervasive the Internet would become. They earned their bones under the old rules, and they don't want to adapt to new conditions. On the other hand, you still see the old attitude in place with some artists—their only online presence is a few small JPEGs at a dealer's site.

Paywalls are walls after all...
I worry now that traditional, established media are now doing a version of the same thing. Again and again I find myself researching stories and coming up against a paywall. It's quite reasonable for a newsgathering entity to want payment for their work, and I do pay for the sites I visit regularly. But often I'm researching, and I simply don't have the budget to pay full subscriptions to get one random article from each of five different outlets, none of which I visit regularly. The default is simply to revert to free sites—which might not be nearly as scrupulous, factual, or ethical.

Good news sometimes appears to me to be ghettoizing itself in much the same way that old-line photographers did.

I suspect that the diminution and decline of our media could be described along the same lines as wetlands: the first 30% we can let go; the middle 40% we can talk about, and pick and choose; but the last 30% are absolutely crucial to functioning Democracies, to civil society, and the informing of a well-educated populace.

Where are we now with media? Well, we're no longer at 100%, that's for sure. We're almost certainly not still as high as 70%; too many good publications and TV and radio stations have gone down (although the tabloids still survive, and those pustular boils on the ass of society sure should go away ahead of a lot of other entities). And yet we're probably not down to the crucial final 30%, either. 

It would be great if there were some systemic solution, some way for content to be available but supported, and not behind walls. Barring that, it's going to be increasingly important for individual citizens to support the enlightened news media outlets of their choice.

Mike

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nextSibling: "There have been attempted solutions and some are ongoing. The keyword is 'micropayments.' The concept is a seamless way to enable you (via your browser) to make small, seamless contributions to content providers as you browse the web. The most promising current example is Brave Micropayments in the Brave browser. Although even they admit we're a long way from widespread adoption."

Geoff Wittig: "I would argue politely but strenuously that here in the U.S. we are rapidly losing that last 30% of our traditional, professionally researched and written published journalism. Wikipedia, Facebook and Twitter are not a valid substitute.

"Not to go all 'get off my lawn,' but I grew up in Buffalo, New York, in the 1960s. At the time Buffalo supported two very well-sourced and well written daily newspapers. One of them was originally edited circa 1870 by a guy named Samuel Langhorne Clemens. (Look him up, kids.) They sported full sections on local news including politics, a business section, and so on. By 1980, both papers were pale shadows of their former selves. In 1982 one closed. The other is down to a small broadsheet, just a ghost really.

"It's even worse than it looks. Print media are far more hospitable to complex ideas and nuance, the lifeblood of democratic societies, than broadcast media. They are simply deeper by nature. Video and on-line media are by contrast great at conveying emotion and outrage—free of context, history, or nuance. This tectonic shift in the media landscape is a large part of our escalating polarization and political rage because video is much better at conveying heat than light.

"The large cities are losing their solitary surviving newspapers left and right. The bedraggled remainders are often entertainment-oriented McPapers."

Clayton: "In Venezuela all reasonably honest newspapers have been eliminated by the government. The good news there is that many of the honest journalists have continued to publish online. I would love to support more of them than I do, but the Venezuelan fiasco also destroyed my bottom line. Important news finds a way."

Eolake Stobblehouse: "Yes, yes, yes, probably, yes, absolutely, I agree, yes, and yes. I’ve been on about these things for over twenty years. I’ve been saying that putting postage stamp-sized pics only online is like a greengrocer pouring gasoline on the wares he puts on the street. I participated in a big micropayment platform years ago, and it worked for me, to a degree. But ultimately it failed. I honestly thought, along with usability guru Jakob Nielsen, that micropayments would be the savior of the commercial web. But people don’t like it. I’d love to pay everybody, but like you say, I simply can’t pay ten dollars to fifty different web sites, each of which I rarely visit."

John Krumm: "For news, I think the world is ready for some kind of reporter-driven, publicly funded independent 'wiki-media.' I would like that. All media has a bias, and I occasionally cancel my NYT subscription because I tire of their centrist-elite bias that you can read in the political and international reporting. Then I resubscribe in a month or two because I feel like I'm missing out. I prefer reading articles from Jacobin magazine, which is a quarterly but publishes free material daily on the internet, and has a great podcast as well (I do pay for the quarterly and podcast). It has a strong left bias, which I prefer. But for good, fact-checked reporting of breaking events and more in depth stories, I think some kind of cooperative Wiki-Media model is past due."

The Hasselblad 45P

Hasselblad has come out with "my kind of lens" for its medium format X (again with the X!) camera system. Described as the smallest and lightest medium-format lens, the upcoming 45P is meant to be the system's "pancake." It's an 11-ounce, 9-element ƒ/4 lens that's only two inches long. The full-frame angle-of-view equivalent is about 36mm. The lens has a leaf shutter and has been designed specifically to be quiet in operation.

Doesn't that look like a sweeeeeeet package? Mmm-mmm. Hasselblad's lead optical designer is Per Nordlund.

The thing that interested me and that leads me to comment is that it's been described as being extremely inexpensive for a medium-format lens. This is certainly true in the Hasselblad lineup—it already had a lens of almost identical focal length and maximum aperture (ƒ/3.5 being only negligibly faster than ƒ/4) for two and a half times the price.

Perhaps wiser heads (Eamon? Ned? Roger? Thom?) can school me, but I can't see any actual reason why lenses for larger formats need to be more expensive in the first place. There's only one actual reason I can think of: economies of scale. If you can manufacture a run of 30,000 lenses, each one will be cheaper than if you have to manufacture a run of 3,000. And medium format always sells less than smaller formats.

It always mildly amuses me when I see lenses conforming to a price scale based on sensor size. There's really no reason why lenses for Micro 4/3 "should" be cheaper than lenses for APS-C, or why lenses for medium format lenses "should" be more expensive than FF lenses. Apart from materials costs, which can't be very significant (and are all over the board anyway—there are bigger lenses for smaller formats and smaller lenses—as in this case—for larger formats), it's just as expensive to make a smaller lens as a larger one, all else being equal. I really don't see any rational reason why a 9-element 35mm-equivalent lens for Hasselblad needs to be as expensive, much less more expensive, than an 11-element 35mm-equivalent lens for APS-C. Except that Fujifilm presumably can sell many times more of its XF 23mm ƒ/1.4 R than Hasselblad will sell of its new pancake.

It's really just down to what the market will bear, and what seems "reasonable" in consumers' heads, isn't it? Bigger = you pay more.

But never mind. I applaud the new lens, and agree it "lets creatives go physically further with their creative visions" (i.e., it's more portable easier to carry).

Mike

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Blog Note: An Apology

That view camera cartoon by Siné I linked to turned out to be the most controversial thing I've published in months. Since the link went up I've been called more names than a blind ump at a baseball game. A couple of people cancelled their contributions and one person said he'd never come to the site again. Several people (most complainants are men) have written multiple messages to explain their positions in greater detail (no need—I get it), and the messages kept coming this morning even though the post is no longer at the top of the heap.

Limpets. Limpet teeth outperform spider silk
as the strongest biological material.

It was just filler. I'm sick. (Day 13 today, if you can believe it—this bronchial thing hangs on like a limpet. I first noticed it Monday before last. Yes, I'm tired of it.) I just figured I'd throw up a few things to keep y'all distracted so I could take a little time off. You see, I'm a bit low on energy and needed a rest.

It wasn't meant to start a fire.

To anyone who was offended or put off or simply didn't find the d*mn thing funny or clever: I apologize. I sincerely didn't mean to offend anyone.

Mike
(Photo by Tango22)

[UPDATE: Given some of the responses to this post, I'd like to reiterate that my apology is sincere. I don't want to make anyone feel offended or unwelcome, or unheard, or disrespected. Seriously. I certainly don't want people who objected to the cartoon to be offended anew. I do respect everyone's reaction, and I do appreciate feedback. It always helps me to further "calibrate." —MJ]

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Regarding the Comments:

There is quite a bit of "outrage about the outrage" in the comments to this post, so I'll tell you what I've chosen to do...I'm going to read all the comments, and then I'm not going to publish any. Except these five, which show the diversity of opinion but not a lot of the...er, crosstalk. Hope you don't mind this solution, but I have fanned the flames with this post and I didn't wish to do that either! —Ed.

John: "Get better, Mike. I honestly have no idea what the excitement could be regarding that view camera cartoon. It is funny!"

David Dyer-Bennet: "I was worried; I was hoping I was wrong (and, it was already published by then of course). You at least knew it was high-risk, right?"

Craig Wilkinson: "I have never commented before. I thought it was very funny. Hope you get well soon."

Ken: "That cartoon was sophomoric humor beneath the level of the typical discourse on this blog. I groaned when I saw it, shut the browser and went on with my day."

Neil Clarkson: "Sh*t Happens Buddy. Nobody died. It's all good. Get better. Cheers."

Photographer Desiree Rios

I was struck by the pictures in this interesting and somewhat offbeat feature in the NYT*: "A Luxury Dish Is Banned, and a Rural County Reels."

Politically you could have any of a range of reactions to the story, but let's not go there. In a nutshell, a traditional delicacy for wealthy people is banned in New York City as being gratuitously cruel to animals, echoing many other such bans worldwide, but the poor people who produce it—some of whom have had a dreadful odyssey to reach safe haven—are going to have their lives upended. The article tells the story from every perspective. I guess it touches me a few ways, as I live in rural Upstate New York, and my investment banker grandfather (d. 1993) happened to love duck liver pâté.

But...to the pictures.

They're the work of a young photojournalist named Desiree Rios (right). From the opening montage (I watched it several times through) to the inline illustrations, it struck me as a excellent job of photo-reportage. The pictures don't cry out for attention and don't insist on some forced signature style—they tell the story. But they're beautifully done all the same, and they work in concert with the written story. Words and pictures are full partners, you might say—something I look for, and like, in photojournalistic work.

As far as technique goes, they made me reflect that digital is finally coming of age, not looking like film but not overburdened by the old digital nasties either. And (importantly for me) not looking too much like photo-illustration, all fakey and manipulated. The opening picture ("Vacant buildings...") is perhaps the exception, the weakest picture in the set, too dark and too saturated and with too much perspective distortion, but let your eyes rest for a while on the picture of the duck food mill ("Last year, Cochecton Mills..."). An atmospheric photograph, informative but visually elegant.

Photojournalism is difficult. You have to put the story above your ability to pick and choose what works best visually.

"Desiree Rios (b. 1991) is a Mexican-American photojournalist and documentary photographer from Fort Worth, Texas. She received a Bachelor of Science in Photojournalism at St. John’s University in New York and a Master of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute. Rios is currently based in New York City and Dallas-Fort Worth." That's lifted from the "About" page of the photographer's website.

Nice work. She made a difficult task look easy.

Mike
(Inset photo by Ricardo Mexia)

*A.K.A. "the world's best photography magazine." Regular readers will recall that I recommend subscribing for the rich and varied photographic content. [UPDATE on this: see Ken's Featured Comment below.]

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Kenneth Tanaka: "Re '...it struck me as a excellent job of photo-reportage. The pictures don't cry out for attention and don't insist on some forced signature style—they tell the story. But they're beautifully done all the same, and they work in concert with the written story.' I heartily agree with your opinion of Ms. Rios' work, Mike. More generally, I highly recommend that all hobbyist photographers, from 17 to 70 years old, study featured story work in the NYT. It's about as good as it gets. But, more to the educational point, study how the images hold together. Light. Gesture. Context. Color. Figure spatial relationships. Damon Winter produces much of my favorite humanist work. But the NYT has many of today's best photogs producing a variety of work for them each week. It beats a workshop, at least in my book."

Gary Nylander: "Good to see that young photojournalists like Desiree are being championed and that the NYT is willing to give new talented photographers the recognition that they deserve. As an ex-photojournalist who was laid off due to declining revenues on a small daily paper, it makes my heart glad to see there is some photography work out there for these photographers."

Dave Millier: "Photojournalism is an interesting field. This series tells a great story. But it also shows that journalism always comes from a particular perspective or slant; it can't be objective, and the selection of the images demonstrates that.

"I have every sympathy for the livelihoods of the people involved in the production of this food product. Having their entire product line come under threat with minimal warning must be devastating. On the other hand, it is hardly unique: many, many, businesses close all the time with the commensurate misery to employees.

"Imagine if this photojournalism had been done from a different perspective, to tell the stories of the food animals rather than the workers. How would the photos have differed?

"People are cruel enough to one another but the cruelty dished out to animals in the food industry usually has to be hidden away safely from the cameras. A lot of people might by put off their lunch if they were forced to face up to exactly where it had come from and how their enjoyment came at the expense of, in some cases, some pretty extreme suffering.

"I've been a vegetarian for 25 years—at some personal sacrifice, because I do love my food. But one day when my then-flatmate saw me making meat food with carefully homogenised and disguised meat, he pointed out how hypocritical I was to eat products that have been designed to hide from me their true nature. I reflected on that and came to the conclusion it was true. I liked the taste of meat, hated where it came from and bought products that hid the truth from myself and thus circumvented my conscience for entirely selfish reasons. So I became a vegetarian.

"The food industry uses some pretty horrible practices and does a lot to hide this from consumers. A parallel story from the animals' perspective would make a useful counterpoint to this human interest story and demonstrate how story telling is always from one angle or another...."

Mike replies: I'm not sure journalism is ever supposed to be objective, truly, because what we are looking for from it is not an ethical stance or judgement. What it's supposed to do is present a coherent picture of the facts, which I think this piece does. What interests me about this piece is that the ethical and political issues are so complex and interwoven that a clear and plain values-based interpretation is impossible to arrive at quickly and surely. What's important to me about journalism is that I be made aware of the slant or bias of the journalists, so I can take that into account when digesting the information they're presenting to me—I don't have any problem reaching a personal conclusion that is opposed to that of the journalists.

Kenneth Tanaka adds: "With special regard to Dave Millier’s featured comment, readers may enjoy a recent essay by Jacqueline Lopez, an intern at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Department of Photography."

Mike replies: Jacqueline's essay is good and on point, but the "context" I'd like answered is: who is the white guy really and what was his actual relationship with the black men sitting behind him? Who is the white person on the extreme left who the white man on the right appears to be talking to, and what were they talking about? Dorothea has already forced the issue somewhat with her image title, making all of them stand for something other than just themselves. But even so it's we the viewers who assume any relationship at all between the white man on the right and the black men. The word "plantation" is possibly leading, too (in 1936 people would have been widely familiar with Uncle Tom's Cabin in which the word is also used). One feature of photography, however, is its insistent specificity: those were actual people, and presumably they have actual stories. For instance, consider these imagined scenarios:

—The white man is a local farmer who is at the store hiring day laborers. He bucks the local trend by hiring black workers instead of poor whites who also want the work. They men behind him were hoping to be hired but the ones he hired are already seated in the car.

—The white man is an overseer at a huge local cotton plantation and has 75 black workers under his direction. He is known for being ruthless and a stern disciplinarian. He has a high position in the local KKK. The black men in the picture, who work for him, know they are safe in public but feel cowed generally by the power he has over their lives.

—The white man owns a local plantation but the black men behind him have nothing to do with him—they're local guys who often hang out at the store loitering on the steps. They're just listening to the white people talking only because that's what happens to be going on at that moment.

See what I mean? We really have very little context except that which is supplied by the title in concert with our own prejudices and assumptions. Which could be right or wrong. Dorothea was a truth-teller by nature and conscientious by the standards of the time, but we know there were others among her pictures where she got the title or caption substantively wrong.

I suppose the real details are lost to history, but it's what I'd want to know about that picture.

If There Was Ever a Cartoon for TOP Readers...

This is very slightly school/work inappropriate, I guess, so a mild NSFW warning. However, if there was ever a cartoon that TOP readers are more likely to "get" than the average population, this is it.

Let me know if you don't get it! I'd be interested.

Mike
(Thanks to JG)

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.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Pierre Charbonneau: "Humor on photography, I love this one too."

Mike replies: Ha! That's great. I should buy that and put it up on my wall....

robert e: "OK, I got it and laughed, about which I feel both a bit ashamed and a bit affirmed as a photo nerd (for better and worse). Regarding my relief that the subject wasn't a man in a kilt, I'm not so sure."

Hans Muus: "Assuming TOP readers have film roots. I still find it hard to realise how much of what I regard as basic photographic knowledge is unnecessary in the digital age. As an enthusiast relative of 35 recently asked when we were talking photography: ‘Hans, please tell me—what is a negative?’ (Whereas he helped me out with Photoshop already more than a decade ago.)"

Sharon: "  :-D   Loved this one."

hugh crawford: "Funny, the first thing I thought of when I saw this was this classic Penn and Teller bit—and when I saw that broadcast back in the '80s I thought of my view camera."

Mike replies: I love how connections are made on the Internet. I had never seen that Penn and Teller performance before—really clever. And then, later that night, it led me to this old Bravo Profiles show about Penn and Teller from 2001, which I found fascinating in several ways, from the tours of their weird houses in Vegas (Penn is really quite an odd fellow) to the insight of Penn's that they are just famous enough to be able to interact with their fans—famous but not too famous. I was interested in both the link you suggested and the Bravo Profiles piece too. Theirs is a very unique act with lots of layers—more than meets the eye indeed.

Peggy C.: "I don't know which is more funny...the fact that I 'got it' right away or that I seem to be the first female to comment on it. LOL. Here is the photography comic I love. This strip ran from 2006 to 2016 but I still love them."

Mike replies: You weren't actually the first, but the comment moderator has been sick and dragging his feet...for which, sorry!

New Year's Card from Peter

Havana, 2020

"The gift of seeing, feeling, and the joy of response!

"We live in a world full of immense challenges—often personal and maybe more often, generalized challenges to the spirit presented by the major forces at play all around us—politics, economics, ideology, attitudes, and environmental realities. In the midst of all of this—among the daily blessings and joys that offer so much amazing life in the present moment—is the opportunity to go out, and use one's eyes, heart, movement, and presence to not only see, but to feel, and respond by registering with a camera, our very personal now. For many of us, it is not only photography, but more importantly, this opportunity to exist and live in the present among all that life can offer daily, that is an essential nourishment for the soul. And, it all starts by simply being out, present, and alive, by seeing and feeling. This opportunity is such a blessing for us all."

—Peter Turnley

Original contents copyright 2020 by Peter Turnley. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Mike Plews: "What an enchanting photograph! It is a great picture but it also perfectly illustrates the relationship between image sharpness and clarity of vision. If every element of this picture was tack sharp it would would be much less charming. A solid hit right over the center field fence. Well done."

Blog Note

I apologize, but I'm going to take a few days off. I'm into Week Two of a respiratory bug of some sort—it's going around where I am. A cough, low energy, and a headache. (At the window at a doctor's office yesterday I saw a sign that said "If you have a cough, please put on a mask," and I thought, well, they mean me.) I almost never get headaches.

Rightly or wrongly (I admit I have no way to tell), I believe my good plant-rich diet is helping my immune system fight the virus. I've been struck by how much worse other people are reporting feeling with this. They say it's a really bad one. I haven't been feeling all that bad. In fact for the most part I've just continued with my life—I've been aware I was sick, but I've felt like I was getting away with it.

But today I try to work and keep going around in circles. I need to rest for a day or two. It happens from time to time; I'm used to it.

I will keep working on the comments for the previous post.

Back soon! Sorry again...this is one of the problems with being a one-man band. When the drummer gets sick....

—Mike the bedraggled Ed.