The Online Photographer

Book Sale Upcoming

I'm going to be working on Featured Comments this morning on the last several posts, going back to Sunday. But I wanted to give you a heads up that I've just entered into discussions to have another of our fantastic book sales, just like in days of old—pristine new copies of two beautifully printed books that complement each other and are hard to get now. With one, the price of used copies on the secondary market has risen above the price when it was new, whereas our price will be less than it cost when it was new. I don't know yet how many copies there are, so no word on that yet. Could be a lot, could be just a few. It'll be first come first served in any event.

Keep an eye out, and clear a couple of inches of space on your shelf. I love these sales, so I'm fired up!

—Mike

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.

Book of interest this week:

Picture This: How Pictures Work, By Molly Bang
(clicking on the link above takes you to Amazon from TOP)

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Photographers on Process and Practice

Contributed by Rob de Loe

I hope you had a nice Christmas with some snow. Unlike a lot of Ontario, which had a wet, green Christmas, we had a nice dumping of snow here in Guelph.

I have a book recommendation for you. Without a doubt this is one of the best books about photography I’ve read in a very long time. Paradoxically, it contains not a single photograph. Instead, it’s simply 12 questions answered by 40 photographers—like a Proust Questionnaire for photographers. Here are the first three questions:

1. What comes first for you: the idea for a project, or individual photographs that suggest a concept?
2. What are the key elements that must be present for you when you are creating a body of work? (Social commentary, strong form, personal connection, photographic reference…)
3. Is the idea of a body of work important to you? How does it function in relation to making a great individual photograph?

The editor, Sasha Wolfe, selected people who fit very loosely within the "straight" photography family, but it really is very loosely. Some I knew about beforehand, e.g., Robert Adams, Alec Soth. Others were entirely new to me, e.g., Kelli Connell, Lois Conner.

I answered the 12 questions myself before beginning (which was fun and instructive). Before I read the responses from each photographer, I’ve been checking out their work online.

I'm only up to Matthew Connors, but I’ve already learned more about my own approach, why I do what I do, and the constraints (good and bad) that I'm operating under than I have from the previous dozen books I've read. Some of the things I wrote in my own responses are already starting to look a bit shaky (which is good—mustn't be complacent!)

Of course I’ve also learned a lot about the photographers themselves—vastly more than I would have had I just browsed one of their books or poked around a website. I can only read a couple at a time because it's so much to take in.

There doesn't seem to be a Kindle version, which is unfortunate because it would be easier to read in electronic format due to the thin paper on which it is printed; the text on the reverse side of each page shows through a bit much in the physical copy, which sometimes is distracting.

In Light on the Landscape, one of the books recommended on TOP recently, William Neill suggests that once a year we should take stock of our past year's work and evaluate whether or not we've made progress. That's solid advice, but I'd go a step further: to really understand what's happening in your work, read PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice.

Best wishes for the New Year,
Rob

Reader Rob de Loë lives in southern Ontario, Canada, where he works at the University of Waterloo. A year ago he flipped the switch and closed down a thirty-year program of teaching and research on water governance so he could spend the remainder of his professional life teaching, studying and practicing environmental photography. His work can be found at Rob de Loë Photography.

Book of interest this week:

PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice, Edited by Sasha Wolf
(clicking on the link above takes you to Amazon)

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

robert e: "Thanks for the review, Rob. Sounds terrific! Did you know that Sasha Wolf continues on with PhotoWork in podcast form? (I presume without the thin-paper problem.)"

Thomas Rink: "I agree with Rob de Loe—this book is a very interesting read. Highly recommended to all those working in terms of projects."

Turnley Book Update

For those of you wanting a copy of Peter Turnley's new book, Friday is the last day you can order to guarantee delivery before Christmas. 

Because books are getting increasingly expensive to ship overseas, Peter split the shipment from the printer into two batches. One went to France for shipment to Europe and the rest of the world. The other is due into the Port of NY & NJ in a couple of days. Buyers in Europe and the rest of the world might already have received their books, or will very soon. North American orders will begin shipping this weekend.

You can order after Friday and indeed up to Christmas Day and beyond. And orders placed after Friday might arrive in time for Christmas. But Friday is the deadline for orders that can be guaranteed to arrive before Christmas. Got it?

Here's the order link. The book is selling very well by the way and has gotten a lot of attention. The Washington Post Magazine just chose one of the pictures from the book to lead off its 2020 Photo Issue (scroll down to see the whole portfolio, and several others).

Mike

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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Speed: "North Americans have to wait for their ship to come in to enjoy and appreciate Peter's photographs. Worth the wait, I'm sure."

The Princess and the Photographer

Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon
(illustration from the Vanity Fair article)

Princess Margaret, the younger daughter of King George VI and his wife Queen Elizabeth and the only sibling of Great Britain's reigning Queen, was married for 18 years to a celebrated and charismatic British photographer. She was the first daughter of a King in Britain to marry a commoner in 400 years, paving the way for other royals in more recent generations to do the same.

In the Vanity Fair Archive there's a lengthy illustrated article called "The Princess and the Photographer" that paints a picture of the rosy early days of Princess Margaret's relationship with her husband Antony (Tony) Armstrong-Jones, who was given the title of 1st Earl of Snowdon after the marriage. Their wedding was watched on television by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, and while their romance lasted they were among the world's most watched celebrities.

'Beaton paled'
The article is more a look into British high society of the era than a portrait of a photographer and his work, naturally. A brief quotation:

At the top of his profession before his marriage, Tony had never envisaged giving up work, although he knew that the commercial photography he had done previously was no longer a viable option. One day when he and Margaret were staying with Jeremy and Camilla Fry, Cecil Beaton came over for a drink before lunch. When Beaton fulsomely congratulated the Princess on her marriage, adding, “May I thank you, ma’am, for removing my most dangerous rival,” Margaret replied, poker-faced, “What makes you think Tony is going to give up work?” Beaton paled.

(Sir Cecil Beaton was one of the leading British professional and society photographers of the first half of the 20th century.)

The article, written by Anne de Courcy, was excerpted from her 2008 book Snowdon: The Biography.

Princess Margaret died in 2002 at the age of 71 and Lord Snowdon died in 2017 at the age of 86. Here's a book of his photographs.

Alice Liddell by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)

Alice
I like to read, and probably a quarter of the 50 or 60 books I read in any given year are recommended either directly or indirectly by TOP readers. (I'm now embarked on Hitler: A Biography, which, at 1,073 pages, is the abridged version of Ian Kershaw's original two-volume set! Recommended by reader Dave Sailer.) A TOP reader recently posted a link to his own portrait of the prolific nonfiction writer Simon Winchester (wish I could find that), several of whose books I've enjoyed in the past, and it inspired me to read a couple more.

Due to public fascination and the enduring popularity of his famous books, which are known the world over, much has been written about Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll. But Simon Winchester's The Alice Behind Wonderland might be the only full-length book to concentrate almost entirely on Dodgson as a dedicated, enthusiastic early amateur photographer. Along the way Winchester tells us almost everything that's known about Dodgson-as-photographer and his most famous picture (and surely one of the most famous photographs in the world), his portrait of little Alice Liddell posed as a beggar-maiden. Alice, of course, was the reason Alice's Adventures in Wonderland came to be—it was a story that Dodgson improvised for the Liddell girls on a rowboat expedition that Alice, then aged ten, insisted he write down for her. He complied, of course, and, after testing it with a focus group (the children of his friend and fellow writer George MacDonald, who loved it), he determined to find a publisher. And the rest is history.

The only problem with telling us all that's known about these things is that...not all that much is known. But that makes for a slight book, and (unlike the Kershaw...), a quick read.

Alice Hargreaves in later life. I believe this was taken
on her visit to America in 1932.

Alice Pleasance Hargreaves (née Liddell)—who was also a model, in her twenties, for Julia Margaret Cameron—lost two sons in WWI and was fêted as a celebrity when she visited America in old age. She sold the original manuscript of Alice's Adventures Underground—the working title for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland—for the equivalent today of about $1.2 million, but the manuscript was later purchased by a consortium of American businessmen and returned to the people of Great Britain. Curiously, the original photograph of Alice as the beggar girl is now so carefully protected that Simon Winchester himself was not allowed to lay eyes on it! Like most of us, he's only seen reproductions, never the real thing. Looking-glass, indeed.

There are a zillion editions of Alice, but if you're looking for a nice one, I can at least recommend the Books of Wonder edition from Morrow if you can manage to find it. That's the edition I own, but (curiouser and curiouser, cried Alice!) I've actually never read the book. (So many books, so little time.) It was also available in a boxed set with a matching edition of Through the Looking Glass.

Mike

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:

Michel Hardy-Vallée: "Am I the only one who spotted the reflection of a Rolleiflex in the window of the car where Margaret and husband are seated?

"Rollei: the choice of paparazzi since 1929...and until 1959."

Mike replies: Wow, good catch. I did not see that, and that's the kind of thing I'm usually quite good at catching. It's right there in front of our noses, too.

David Aiken: "Dodgson was also a lecturer in mathematics and logic and the two Alice books have long been appreciated by philosophers because in them Dodgson included examples of probably every logical fallacy and paradox known to him, most of which are not noticed by those readers without some knowledge of logic. Philosophers have been plundering the books for examples to use in lectures since soon after they were written.

"My favourite edition of the two books is Peter Heath's The Philosopher's Alice which provides annotations identifying and commenting on all of the logical and philosophical 'wonders' of the books with the kind of humour that led Dodgson to work them into his narratives. Very well worth a read by anyone who wants to know just what really is going on in the books when things get weird."

Open Mike: Readings, Movies, and Music

[My apologies! I finished this this morning and thought I published it around 11:00 a.m. But apparently I just forgot to click the "Publish Now" button. That's only happened rarely in years of blogging. Anyway..."Open Mike" is the off-again on-again Editorial Page of TOP. Today's is a grab-bag. When Yr. Hmbl. Ed. is caught up with himself, it appears on Wednesdays. Even if only barely.]

-

Strange & curious: Been feeling like a hermit lately? You've got nothing on Christopher Knight:

For decades, the residents of Maine’s Kennebec Valley believed that the North Pond hermit was a myth. According to local lore, a hermit had been living undetected in the woods since the 1980s; every so often, he would break into seasonal cabins to steal food and other resources. But no one could prove the hermit’s existence—if he was out there, he had taken great pains to guarantee his isolation.

Then, in April 2013, a man was arrested in the deep woods of Maine. His name was Christopher Thomas Knight. According to societal records, he didn’t exist. For 27 years, he had camped out in the forest, surviving on meager supplies that he’d burglarized from houses in the area. He endured winter temperatures of 20 degrees below zero. Every morning, he watched the sun rise over the foggy valley that he called home. He hadn’t had a single conversation with another person for nearly three decades.

His greatest challenge was surviving the Winters. He would deliberately fatten himself up at the end of the Summer and into the Fall. A night camping in the throes of a Maine Winter is not for the faint of heart; a week of it qualifies an outdoorsman as a tough guy. In twenty-seven years at his encampment in the woods, Knight never slept in anything but a tent. The cold was so intense it drove him close to suicide. He would wake himself at 2:30 in the morning in the dead of Winter because he knew he stood a better chance if he faced the worst of the cold awake. "It's dangerous to sleep too long in Winter," he told the reporter who visited him in jail.

But apart from finding an intellectual who loved to read (and loved Lynyrd Skynyrd!), who knew who the Kardashians were, and was so averse to human connection that he seldom made eye contact, the reporter could get little out of him about the central mystery, "why":

Anyone who reveals what he’s learned, Chris told me, is not by his definition a true hermit. Chris had come around on the idea of himself as a hermit, and eventually embraced it. When I mentioned Thoreau, who spent two years at Walden, Chris dismissed him with a single word: "dilettante."

The first quote is by Emily Buder. The second is from a long article in GQ from 2014 by Michael Finkel called "The Strange & Curious Tale of the Last True Hermit." Fascinating article; recommended if you think you're "isolating"!

Snob about fiber-base: When I was young I was a snob about fiber-base black-and-white papers. They were the traditional material, made the old way. RC paper was "plastic," and was tainted by its early reputation for self-destructing. Good for intermediate prints and prints for repro only. Don't extrapolate this any further than it goes, but I will say this: I have plenty of workprints made on Ilford RC papers from thirty and thirty-five years ago, and they look  as fresh and clean as the day I made them. I can't say if they'll last 70 years, or 200. But I like their chances.

Opinions about Bogart: I'm mildly a fan of movies made before I was born, especially the genre called "Noir," and if you like Noir you'll have opinions about Bogart. In his top three for me (the other two are The Caine Mutiny and of course Casablanca) is a little-remembered suspense thriller about a writer. To enjoy In a Lonely Place you can't focus on the murder mystery, which is nothing but a sub-plot—you have to get into its psychological portrayal of the doomed love affair. Movies that take this tack have to resonate with you in some way or they might not appeal much. But they can be deep and meaningful if they do touch you.

In a Lonely Place was directed by Nicholas Ray, who directed Rebel Without a Cause and influenced Godard and the French New Wave. It co-stars his now little-known wife, Gloria Grahame. Their marriage broke up during the filming but the two kept the breakup secret so as not to jeopardize the project. The script departed greatly from the book, and the director and actors departed greatly from the script—Ray cleared the set and crafted a new, more subtle ending with the two leads when the planned finale, which had already been shot, rang false. The movie creates characters who might now be understood as having what's called an avoidant/dismissive adult attachment style, but with sympathy for the tragedy inherent in being trapped in such a state. Glenn Erickson of DVD Savant put it beautifully:

Relationships are delicate animals—they can be killed by the wrong words, the wrong actions. Dix and Laurel are madly in love with one another, but that trust is destroyed when her terror and his rage go over the edge. It doesn't matter that he's innocent, or that they are both in intense remorse over what happened. It can't be taken back, and the romance is finished. Both will have to go back to their personal 'lonely places.'

Brilliant lines of criticism—so very much on the mark.

Of course another reason I love old Noir films is for the black-and-white. In a Lonely Place was shot by the cinematographer Burnett Guffey, who also did Bonnie and Clyde, a movie whose cinematography is naturalistic and plainspoken. Cinematographers have trouble being artists because they seldom get to pick their projects; the best they can hope for is to become the go-to of a great director. Guffey was a get-it-done pro whose life's list of accomplishments is a motley of good and bad, television and film, the trivial and the profound. But In a Lonely Place is as outstanding in 1950 B&W as Bonnie and Clyde is in 1967 color. A treat. I'd like to see more of his work.

Gloria Grahame and Humphrey Bogart in In a Lonely Place

Carrie Rickey of The Moviegoer considers the performances the best of of both Grahame's and Bogart's careers. The most disturbing thing I've read about the film? Louise "Brooksie" Brooks said that of all his roles, the role of Dixon Steele in In a Lonely Place came closest to the real-life Humphrey Bogart she knew.

As with all old Noirs there are numerous versions floating about. The print on Amazon Prime Video is great, and it's available on DVD and Blu-Ray from the Criterion Collection.  

Young Girl Blues: Like guitar? My good old friend Kim's latest is a lilting and wistful mix of guitars across genres—indie, Brit-folk, blues, alt, folk-rock. It's been raining here for a week, and it's a great hour's listen on a rainy day. I loved the Band of Horses song, which I had never heard before. And yes, the "cover" art of Young Girl Blues is in beautiful black-and-white.

Something I happened to hear on XM Radio in the car: it's a version of Led Zeppelin's "Going to California" with the vocals removed. It's one of those songs I've always loved and never tire of, but I found it fascinating how much the vocal serves as another instrument and another line, and how different the music sounds as an acoustic instrumental. Just a curiosity. Lend an ear if you're so inclined.

Aromatically yours: One final reading. Another of my old friends you've met in these pages before, Jim Schley, just published a review of a new book of poetry, Elizabeth A.I. Powell's Atomizer (Amazon).

Vermont poet Elizabeth A.I. Powell's way with words is daring, sardonic and ingenious. She enjoys mixing registers and realms—pop and literary culture, consumerism and religion, self-help and sacrament.

That just makes it sound like something I would enjoy.

The structure (or "scent and architecture," as Powell puts it) of Atomizer is fascinating. Along with its zany variety of forms, the book has a powerful through line, investigating the ancient, arcane and insidious role of perfume, tangled in seduction and deceit. The three sections of the book are named for terms used to categorize layered qualities in synthesized scents. "Top Notes" are "that which evaporates most quickly"; "Heart Notes" are "the distinctive aspects, most...charming, most intelligent"; and "Base Notes," the poet avers, "stay the longest...heavy and deep."

I liked the little tastes and teasers so much I had to order the book. Jim's reviews do that to me every so often. Here's Jim Schley's review of Atomizer, at Seven Days.

Mike

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.

Thanks to all our Patreon contributors!

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

HR: "With regards to your comment about RC papers I am reminded of this.  :-)  'We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.' —Mark Twain"

Mike replies: Thanks! Yes, that. In this case I can only personally recommend Ilford RC papers. I used several others too, decades ago, but they're gone now.

David Evans: "I'm really loving Young Girl blues. I'm not familiar with Mixcloud—is it possible to see individual track information?"

Mike replies: Only if you sign up for a Premium account, which is $8 a month. But there's another way for most cuts. Download the Shazam app from the App Store. It allows your phone to listen to music, compare it to a database, and identify it. Kim will fool it sometimes because his mixes sometimes include extremely esoteric and rare music, but most of the cuts it will identify. I'll ask Kim if he can provide a set list for Young Girl Blues.

Kim was a legendary disk jockey at WHFS in Washington DC back in the station's heyday.

Bob Curtis: "Michael Finkel expanded the article into a book, The Stranger in the Woods [Amazon]."

scott kirkpatrick: "My favorite Bogart has always been Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which captures the bottled anger in 'Nobody puts one over on Fred C. Dobbs!' But I wasn't aware of In a Lonely Place, which leaves out the humorous touches and the sentimental ending, and thus is truly terrifying."

David Comdico: "In a Lonely Place is my favorite Bogart film. It peels beneath the surface of the Bogart character. On the other hand, Johnny Guitar [Amazon Prime Video] is my favorite film by Nicholas Ray. He was a real American original."

Keith B.: "Burnett Guffey's outstanding lighting in Bonnie and Clyde may feel naturalistic, but is actually fairly romantic in style. Naturalistic cinematography (no theatrical lighting, existing light taken as found) was then, and is still, considered too ugly to be employed for commercial narrative motion picture storytelling. There are exceptions, but not many."

Andrew Bearman: "Thank you for turning me on to Mixcloud and to your friend Kim's sets. I am now willingly lost in the woods of great music! And that Bogey still captures a look that only an experienced, weary cat like he could give. A look not too far from how many of us have felt at least a few times during this pandemic. Off to watch In a Lonely Place."

johnbabineau: "Hunch re KK’s Mixcloud: Handstanding athlete on diving board is the actress Doris Day. KK’s comedic gifts endure...."

Animesh Ray: "Your post made me remember a funny experience. I used to do extensive black-and-white printing for work when I was a grad student in the late 1970s–early 1980s. This was related mostly to printing of black-and-white photomicrographs and autoradiograms, for which we were supposed to print on multigrade silver gelatin papers. After that period I did not do any darkroom work, because most of those tasks was taken over by Polaroid for B&W or Kodachrome slides for color.

"Some 30 years later, in 2003, I wanted to do B&W printing as a hobby, so I went to the local city recreations department, which had a darkroom for the photo enthusiasts. The deal was that the use of the darkroom was free if you passed a test; otherwise you would need need to take a two-week course on printing. So I thought I would take that test. As it so happened, I had never heard of RC papers until that time, as I had only used fiber papers in the past—in fact we never called it that! We just called it a printing paper of a certain grade. All the test questions had to do with how to print and process RC papers, so to my utter disbelief I ended up failing the test. In science, we often feel like hermits stuck in lonely towers."

Look What Else Came

The package arrived from Paris so I knew what it would be...the first time I've seen Peter's newest book. I can't do justice in a few words to this tonight, and I haven't read the text (of which there's a fair amount) yet. Two things I can say. One is that it's almost amazing that it's been barely more than half a year since Peter began the shooting for this book, and yet here the book is in my hands already—and almost every picture is one that I would have been very proud to shoot in this difficult year and in these dangerous circumstances. And my second thought is that this book is about humanity—in peculiar straits and dire circumstances, yes, but it's curious how the work can be so somber and dreadful and yet still show the spirit of so many people coming through so clearly, with forbearance, stoicism, sympathy, grief, helpfulness, unity. Even, in glimpses here and there, joy. Through the pictures, I really do feel the connection with the people Peter photographed.

I'll have more to say about it in the future but I wanted to get this up tonight. The book is barely out and the entire press run is almost half gone already. If you're a fan of Peter's work (there are many here), you should get one before they're gone. Here's how to order. It's an impressive and important piece of independent photojournalism, unquestionably.

My friend Peter Turnley with his book of 2020. Photo by Carl Westergren.

Have a nice Sunday! It's 10:45 p.m. Saturday as I write this and I've had quite the stressful couple of weeks. I'm taking tomorrow off, and will be back on Monday. Goodnight....

Mike

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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Peter Turnley's Harrowing and Beautiful New Book

Just published! Signed copies of Peter Turnley's newest book are now available for pre-order. A New York – Paris Visual Diary: The Human Face of COVID-19 is a deluxe softcover with 60 images from each of the two cities, 120 total.

The book is a testament to our shared humanity in the face of difficulty, a reflection of both trouble and hope.

You can also order the book with a limited-edition, signed, silver gelatin 8x10-inch print included. You can choose one of these three pictures:

I apologize if anyone misses the print opportunity; given the size of Peter's Facebook following these are going to go quickly.

I'll have more once I get to see the book. It's exceptionally strong work, and an exquisitely judged, finely balanced, well-paced set. There really isn't a weak picture in the book.

Ahead of time
TOP is off tomorrow, so please come back for a new essay (which I've actually written in advance for once!) mid-day Sunday.

May you have a good and restful weekend, and a safe and healthy one. If you happen to be any kind of health care worker, special gratitude to you.

Mike

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.

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

Albert Smith: "Wow, this is great. CBS Sunday Morning had a segment on this project some time back, which led me to the web to see more photos. But I'm old school (or just old) and prefer actual, tangible photos between covers that can't disappear on the whim of who ever is hosting them online. Thanks for bringing this news to us."

Sunday Support Group for Earthlings: Wise Man (OT)

My younger brother Scott, who is a wise man, has always had a good record with me where book recommendations are concerned. Knowing I like nonfiction, he turned me on to things like The Beak of the Finch (which later won the Pulitzer), The Botany of Desire (great on its own, and, as a bonus, it led me to one of my all-time favorites, The Omnivore's Dilemma by the same author), The Sports Gene, and Disrupted.

In fact, as I page back through my Kindle history, it's like a catalog of friends whose recommendations I value...TOP readers included (although I tend to lump all of those "finds" together as having come from discussions here, because I don't always remember who brought up what book).

Scott is first among equals.

This morning I read articles on the iPad about the energy shortages in California and a new study showing that the Greenland ice sheet has destabilized past the point of no return—it's likely to do nothing from now on except continue adding to sea level rise. And the thing that popped into my head was something I read in Scott's latest book recommendation: that my iPad, which I was using to read those articles at that very moment, is powered by fossil fuel! Something the author, whose name is Hope, says most people forget.

The book is called The Story of More, a bland title it took me a while to set in my head. Hope Jahren, the "lab girl" who wrote it (that's her own term for herself, and it's the title of her first book), points out that when she assigns her classes to document all the times during the day when they use electricity, some of them simply give up—there are too many instances to write them all down. For most people, she reminds us, our phones, tablets, and laptops can be coal-fired devices! You're reading these words right now while most probably liberating just a tiny bit of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Global warming (and global weirding, a term for increasingly chaotic and unpredictable weather) is a subject that, some time ago, I decided not to read about any more. Why? Because it's terrifying—far more frightening than any horror flick, any nightmare, any demagogue. I normally have a lot of intellectual courage; I'm not afraid to look at any question in the eye and decide for myself, even ones that have social stigma or are heavily loaded. I read the Bible for myself and I read Marx for myself. I'm not scared of demon words or of going straight to the works of those I most disagree with. But the Sixth Extinction and the helplessness of climate destruction? Too damn scary for me.

So if you're a denier, I'm down with that. Oh boy, do I sympathize. If there were ever a subject to bury your head in the sand over, this is the one. I mean, we gotta get through the day, and God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and so forth. On the other hand, when I was six, the world had the same relationship to nuclear Armageddon, and we've somehow managed to go on living under that Sword of Damocles, dangling, as it has my whole life, from its single strand of horsehair above our heads.

Hope Jahren. Photo by Erica Morrow.

So it was with trepidation that I took Scotty's advice to read The Story of More (got that title yet?). But hey, it's a short book, and she gives it to you straight and sweet, almost breezily, crafting a clearheaded vision of the changing world over 18 short plainspoken chapters that wrenches old worldviews into a new order. Author Jahren (you pronounce the "J"), so aptly named, is much given to variations of phrases that all mean "yes but no" or "no but yes," and, true to form, at the end of the book she appends (literally—it's the Appendix) an extra 20 pages of, yep, hope. She admits that she can't see how we're going to get out of this mess we're in. Yet, at the same time, she's hopeful.

It's what I needed on the subject.

If you're ready and willing (a big "if") to have the big mess put in perspective for you, I can pass along Scotty's recommendation—The Story of More is a fine, wise little book looking down from overhead on a big, scary topic.

I'm fond of saying that human beings are extraordinarily clever and very unwise; but part of that is that we are extraordinarily clever. Hope, capital H—and hope, small h—counsels: never underestimate the human race. We can't foresee the future. But just because we can't right at this moment imagine a solution to our extinction doesn't mean a solution isn't out there.

One thing's for sure, though: from now on (really for the past 50 years, we just didn't accept it), the true story of humanity is how, and whether, our species can continue to live and thrive on a finite planet.

An excellent primer about how the frantic, never-ending race for more has put us in a pickle. Recommended, to those who can stand the subject. Gratitude, as ever, to Scott.

Mike

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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Charlie Ewers: "I was so impressed by this book that I specified it as one of the two texts for my Intro to Sustainability class in Environmental Studies. (The other text is Drawdown, edited by Paul Hawken.)"

Schralp: "I have not read the book yet (but plan to do so; many a good recommendation I have gleaned from your blog). However, with regard to reading this on an iPad; how does the solar powered recharging of this device through production of electricity compare with the cost of printing, distributing and recycling printed materials?I feel certain you would not suggest that we stop reading...."

Mike replies: You know, I've always assumed that digital photography pollutes less than chemical photography, and that an e-book consumes fewer resources than a paper book. But is that really true? I'd love to see someone who really knows their stuff discuss resource and pollution issues with regard to photography. I'd be interested.

New Gordon Parks Book

It's been several years since I've looked forward to a book with as much anticipation as I have Gordon Parks' The Atmosphere of Crime, 1957 from Steidl. There are some stone masterpieces among these photographs. Among those I've seen, I mean. The prospect of a carefully curated book from the whole body of work is highly promising.

I'll reproduce the entire blurb for you:

Gordon Parks’ ethically complex depictions of crime in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, with previously unseen photographs

When Life magazine asked Gordon Parks to illustrate a recurring series of articles on crime in the United States in 1957, he had already been a staff photographer for nearly a decade, the first African American to hold this position. Parks embarked on a six-week journey that took him and a reporter to the streets of New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Unlike much of his prior work, the images made were in color. The resulting eight-page photo-essay “The Atmosphere of Crime” was noteworthy not only for its bold aesthetic sophistication, but also for how it challenged stereotypes about criminality then pervasive in the mainstream media. They provided a richly hued, cinematic portrayal of a largely hidden world: that of violence, police work and incarceration, seen with empathy and candor.

Parks rejected clichés of delinquency, drug use and corruption, opting for a more nuanced view that reflected the social and economic factors tied to criminal behavior and afforded a rare window into the working lives of those charged with preventing and prosecuting it. Transcending the romanticism of the gangster film, the suspense of the crime caper and the racially biased depictions of criminality then prevalent in American popular culture, Parks coaxed his camera to record reality so vividly and compellingly that it would allow Life’s readers to see the complexity of these chronically oversimplified situations. The Atmosphere of Crime, 1957 includes an expansive selection of never-before-published photographs from Parks’ original reportage.

Gordon Parks was born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1912. An itinerant laborer, he worked as a brothel pianist and railcar porter, among other jobs, before buying a camera at a pawnshop, training himself and becoming a photographer. He evolved into a modern-day Renaissance man, finding success as a film director, writer and composer. The first African-American director to helm a major motion picture, he helped launch the blaxploitation genre with his film Shaft (1971). Parks died in 2006.

Can't wait. Really looking forward to this one.

Mike

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Cliff McMann: "I was fortunate to see a Gordon Parks exhibit at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond a few years ago. My wife and I went back twice to see it again while it was there. There were several pieces from the Life crime series. I had been familiar with his early B&W work from my younger days. His color work and portraits of criminal gang members is a large reason we went back. I was so impressed with how he managed to see with a consistent vision in both color and monochrome. Something I have never managed to do. I will buy the book for sure just as I did the museum book. If the opportunity ever arises, I recommend seeing actual prints of all his work, but of the color work in particular."

Hans Muus: "Even the preview (thank you, Kenneth Tanaka) is impressive. And what a relief these telling photographs are not hyped by extra micro contrast, ‘clarity,’ ‘sharpness,’ or ‘HD.’ They have a visual subtlety that moves me, getting their message across in a deeper way. Though I thought I was over buying photobooks (age- and spacewise) I will order this one, planning to circulate it between me and my two sons—artists in their own right, with a keen sociological interest."

'LIFE Magazine and the Power of Photography' (Book Review)

Reviewed by Ken Tanaka

LIFE Magazine and the Power of Photography
By Katherine A. Bussard, Kristen Gresh, and 11 other editors and contributors
Princeton University Art Museum, April 2020
336 pages, 9 x 1.5 x 12.8 inches

The book at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and The Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping)

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Depending on your age it’s probably either hard to remember or imagine a world not saturated with images. We have long become completely accustomed to having instant access to visual support for nearly every subject or news item 24 hours a day. The thought of waiting until the arrival of a magazine to see photos of anything is simply beyond quaint; it’s inconceivable today.

But for much of the past century that’s exactly how Americans consumed much of their visual news. Weekly and monthly periodicals became a staple of the regular news information flow throughout middle-class America. Among these publications none made a deeper and broader impact than LIFE magazine, which, at its peak, had a subscribed circulation of over 8.5 million and reached an estimated 25% of Americans each week.

Published from November, 1936 to December, 1972 LIFE magazine’s strategic objective, as stated by its founder Henry R. Luce, was to exploit "the tremendous unrealized power of pictures." LIFE was certainly not the first photo-essay style magazine. It wasn’t even the second. But its quality of content and bold design soon made it the the leader of the pack. This book, and its currently COVID-shuttered exhibit at the Princeton University Art Museum, vividly illustrate why.

At this point you might be imagining that this is just another greatest-hits-of-LIFE-magazine photo collection. Nope. This is a solid body of scholarly work created by very knowledgeable art museum curators and historians. Although it’s certainly rich with imagery, this is unquestionably a reader’s book, not a "coffee table" book.

The book’s body starts where the magazine started, in 1936, with a reproduction of the simple three-page prospectus Henry R. Luce drafted to propose the magazine’s conceptual and strategic design to the Time Inc. executives. From there a series of 27 essays and features explore various facets and eras of the magazine, from its physical production, its navigation through many periods of social and political change, and its innovations in incorporating photography into the news essay. It ends at the magazine’s final issue cover and farewell statement by Ralph Graves, LIFE’s final managing editor.

LIFE Magazine and the Power of Photography is co-edited by two art museum curators who also created the current (2020) exhibition by the same title. My long-time friend Katherine Bussard is the Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography at the Princeton University Art Museum, the current-but-shuttered home of the show. Kristen Gresh is the Estrelita and Yousuf Karsh Senior Curator of Photographs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where the exhibition is scheduled to travel later this year, hopefully to an open museum.

So is a study of the late LIFE magazine’s history relevant today and, more specifically, relevant to photographers? I’d say absolutely to both questions. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better concise romp through America’s 20th century history and culture than this book. Now, more than most moments, you might actually find it comforting and anchoring to glimpse America experiencing crises during a century that featured plenty of tumultuous and frightening times. Yet here we still are.

Photographically relevant? Where else can you find a single place where some of the best works of Berenice Abbott, W. Eugene Smith, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gordon Parks, and many other photographic pathfinders were published? This was ground zero for sculpting the form of the photo-essay and the photographic essay (not the same thing). This is where many founders of the medium’s standards strutted their stuff as young, energetic, inquisitive pros. This represented the moment when photographers were the nation’s eyes. Still relevant? Duh.

Ken

Some links:

Princeton Museum of Art

At the link above, be sure to take time to watch Kate Bussard’s wonderful short topical videos filmed in the exhibit. Nobody does this type of quick, razor-sharp exposition better than Kate. Also included is the exhibition’s opening lecture.

Yale Press flip-through video

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Sanjeev: "The LIFE magazine exhibition at the Princeton Art Museum was fantastic. I wanted to go back and see it a few times (the Museum is free thanks to the university) but the Covid shutdown happened."

Bill Tyler: "Mike, can you elaborate a bit on how you distinguish between a photo-essay and a photographic essay?"

Mike replies: That's a question I had too. Ken?

Ken replies: "Good question, Bill. The principal distinction, according to the book’s essay by Nadya Bair, was largely invented by LIFE's creator, Henry R. Luce. In brief, it comes down to who’s telling the story; a journalist or a photographer. In a 'photo-essay' it’s a journalist using words with photographs playing a supporting role. In the 'photographic essay,' Luce’s term, the photographer is telling the story, admittedly with a point of view. (Think Gene Smith.)

"Today, of course, the two terms are used indistinguishably. But in LIFE's early years Luce wanted to 'turn the dial up to 11' and go beyond what so many other photo magazines had already been delivering since the 1920s, especially in Europe. He really wanted to exploit 'the tremendous unrealized power of pictures.' That meant he wanted to let photographers tell stories, not just illustrate them.

"By the way, Be sure to explore the Exhibition Didactics and Installation Images documentation on that Princeton page. This is material that curators normally prepare for museum education staffs and docents to aid them in giving tours. It's unusual for this material to be given to the public but I suspect that the museum's emergency closure made it a logical decision to post."

Peter Culpepper: "My college library contained yearly bound volumes of LIFE. I found it difficult to study there."

John Camp: "I'm sure there are many great photos in the book, but in my opinion, the greatest single photo book ever published was Life's Picture History of World War II. The book was published in 1950 and there are dozens of photos in it that can only be called astonishing, many (most) uncredited. Given the risks being taken in some of the photos, I have to believe that many of the photographers were killed in the war. A few of the photos are in color, and the book also includes quite a few color paintings by military artists. (It's "Life's Picture History" not "Life's Photo History") although 90% of t he images are photos. The photos come from all sides in the conflict, American, British, French, German, Polish, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, North African, etc.) My father and two uncles with whom I was close fought in the war, and my father bought the book as soon as it came out. Over the years of my childhood, I literally destroyed it, turning pages until it fell apart. Forty years later, a friend bought me a vintage copy in good shape, and I remembered dozens of the photos in detail (and one haunted my dreams for years.) It is a book of its time—'German' and 'Nazi' were used interchangeably in the brief texts, and 'Jap' was often used. I have never seen another photo book that came close to it, not just because of the topic, but because the photos are simply so good."

Mike replies: I'd be interested to know the history of that book. I seem to have a dim memory that it was originally published in 1946 by Collier as Collier's Photographic History of WWII, which was later changed (by Collier) to The Picture History of WWII. I know I read about this long ago...either the LIFE volume in 1950 was the same book, abandoned by Collier and picked up by Time Inc. (which owned LIFE but was not then called Time-Life), or the LIFE title was a similar competitor but not the same. I just don't remember the details.

(By the way, this is why I abandoned my early ambition to become a bookman—all the bookmen I knew, such as William F. (Bill) Hale, Larry McMurtry, and Andy Moursund, had encyclopedic memories for details about books...Larry actually tracked individual books around the country in his head as they were exchanged between various parties. If he had sold a book ten years before he could tell you where it was, even if it was no longer owned by the party he sold it to. It's said that the founder of Kalmbach Publications, Al Kalmbach, a train man, could hear a train whistle during a car trip anywhere in the country and could tell you what train it was and where it originated and where it was bound, because he had memorized (or, probably more accurately, simply remembered) all the train schedules for the whole country. Bookmen have minds like that for books. I lacked the requisite kind of memory to be a real book man. I remember 'significant stories' (and visuals), not factual details.)

-et-: "One (very non-original) thought that this article brings to my mind is how much more of a factor print media was in those days than it is now. I grew up in a city of ~70,000 in West Virginia. It had a morning newspaper and an evening newspaper, and my parents subscribed to both. They also subscribed to the Sunday edition of The New York Times, and to Life, Look, Colliers, The Saturday Evening Post, National Geographic, The New Yorker, and The Ladies Home Journal. In addition, my father subscribed to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, plus Galaxy SF, Astounding SF, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. My mother also subscribed to several other magazines that I have mostly forgotten except for the Smithsonian magazine and Archaeology. They did listen to the radio for news and for drama programs like Suspense, but did not get a TV until 1955, long after television had become part of the lives of most people. I suspect that this was because there was only one network station that could be received in that area in those days. —Tom"

Mike replies: On the other side of that divide, one thing I cannot seem to get used to about today is people walking along talking to another person remotely on some device which cannot be seen. Not only is it still strange to me to see someone animatedly talking to themselves, or appearing to, but the degree to which their focus is elsewhere is something I still find mildly disconcerting. They're not there—that is, their focus is not where their bodies actually are. I find it weird that you can encounter someone—on a walk, say—and have them completely ignore you. Your encounter with them in the real world is not as important as the virtual encounter they're having with whoever they're on the phone with. I just find it peculiar, is all. I haven't gotten used to it.

This is maybe a strange complaint from someone who spends all day online! 

Sunday Support Group: Readings (OT)

A few reading suggestions for those who are dutifully sheltering...

The first one is just a few paragraphs long. I tried but couldn't secure permission to reprint those paragraphs, so here's what you'll have to do if you want to read them:

First, go to Amazon and look up The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett; then click on the book cover to "Look inside"; then scroll down to the Preface, and read down through the paragraph just before the one that begins "Laurie Garrett has written a pioneering book." I was particularly struck by the opening sentence: "We always want to believe that history happened only to 'them,' 'in the past,' and that somehow we are outside history, rather than enmeshed within it." Got that right.

What will be sobering is the book's date of publication: 1994. The short Preface was written by Jonathan Max Mann, MD, a disease researcher who died, with his wife of only two years, when Swissair Flight 111 crashed into the Atlantic southwest of Halifax International in September of 1998. Trump's dawdling, downplaying, dissembling and diverting for two months are not the only tragic squandering of time so terribly affecting the fix we're in—clearly, we wasted time in a general sense, too. For years. And now we all get to suffer for it.

Next up: The book I'm reading currently was written by Daniel Defoe, most famous for Robinson Crusoe...who some of us might feel kinda like right now! (I can feel marooned in my house.) The publication date of that one is an interesting story too—although presented as a first-person account, Defoe himself was actually only five years old when the events he writes about occurred. The book was published in 1722 about events that took place in 1665. The narrator, identified as H.F., might represent Henry Foe, Defoe's uncle, whose journals might have been one of his nephew's sources. Although scrupulously researched, it's not exactly nonfiction; yet it's not exactly fiction either, because Defoe went to great lengths in the service of verisimilitude. You might call it well reported historical fiction.

Whatever section of the bookstore it belongs in, most agree that it's a remarkably vivid portrayal of life in London during the last great visitation of the bubonic plague, also known as the black death. The parallels to the present contagion make its themes, and the narrator's dilemmas, all the more immediate to present-day readers.

Lastly, a book I've always meant to read, and soon actually might...Giovanni Boccacchio's Decameron. Also written in a plague year, the structure of the Decameron consists of stories told by a group of young people, seven women and three men, who are "sheltering in place" from the black death in a villa outside the city of Florence, Italy, probably during the epidemic of 1348. To amuse themselves, each in turn selects a topic for the day, and each tells the others a story on that topic. They do this five nights a week for two weeks, making 100 stories in all.

So it's essentially a collection of short stories. "Collection" has another meaning, too, because, following the tradition of the time, many of the tales are retellings, and Boccacchio collected these from far and wide, from many lands and many sources. Some of the tales were believed to be centuries old even at the time. The Decameron is considered a masterpiece of early Western literature and was an influence on Chaucer, Shakespeare (who based All's Well That Ends Well on Boccacchio's Tale III, 9) and many others.

In one of those strange little coincidences, in the first picture in Part I of our "Baker's Dozen" the other day, the one by Benjamin Kelley of his little daughter in front of a dramatic painting with sunlight falling on it, the painting is by John White Alexander and is titled "Isabella and the Pot of Basil." It illustrates a poem of that same title by John Keats...and Keats based his poem on Tale IV, 5 of The Decameron.

When we read Defoe we simply read the original but with modernized spellings and punctuation, but for English-speaking people reading a book written in the vernacular Florentine of the 14th century, translations loom large. I surveyed the ones I could (meaning, I read the Kindle samples for a bunch of the ones available on Amazon), and preferred the translation of Wayne A. Rebhorn as being the easiest to follow. Wayne, who is 76 and lives in Austin, is Celanese Centennial Professor of English at the University of Texas, where he teaches English, Italian, and comparative literature. His translation came out in 2013. Seeing as the tellers of these tales were also sheltering in place, it seems a perfect time to finally read this. I've got it on deck.

The Decameron is said to be uncommonly bawdy, too.

Cheers to you, and stay safe this Sunday. I'm too stuck in my own head, so I'm going to get out for some exercise.

Mike

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

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Frank Booth: "Another book concerning our present situation is The Great Influenza by John Barry. The Afterword written in 2018 is especially interesting."

Q: "For anyone interested in an hour's worth of Laurie Garrett's take on the current situation, she's the guest on this week's Radio Open Source. She's not the type to mince words and the conversation gets a bit political, but it also has a lot of intelligent perspective on what we can do and what we should have done to prevent a local outbreak from becoming a pandemic."

A Visit to Jenia's Farm (One Thing Leads to Another)

Photo by Jenia Fridlyand, from Entrance to Our Valley

In the life I lead, one thing often leads to another.

For example, in the Comments to the "Test Shots" post, two readers were discussing Michael Ashkin's recent book HORIZONT (one liked it, one didn't.) So I looked it up, just to see what they were talking about. Not on Amazon. I found it on the TIS Books website, here.

Not quite my own cuppa, didn't seem like*. But I had never heard of TIS Books before, so I poked around a bit on the website and discovered Jenia Fridlyand. (Not hard, since the publisher emblazons her book on its landing page.) Her book, Entrance to Our Valley, sold out its first printing and will be printed again in a second edition—reasonably rare for a photobook these days—in April. Turns out it attracted a whole lot of attention and won awards. That was news to me too.

You can see a video runthrough of the book here, but be sure to look at larger, better JPEGs first, to get a sense of the quality of the pictures—you can then apply that to the images you'll see in the video.

The backstory of the photos is fascinating too. But let her tell you about it:

Our main motivation for buying it [the farm] was to establish a multi-generational home: for our parents, who are now living more than five thousand miles from the place of their birth; for my husband and I, both first-generation immigrants; and for our children, so they could have the privilege of coming back to a place where they grew up. Both my husband and I are third generation Moscovites—our grandparents came to Moscow from Ukraine as students in the early years of the Soviet Union—so we grew up and always lived in large cities, with no experience of rural existence or farming; and, as I mentioned, there was no history of land ownership in our families going back centuries. It was quite confounding to find ourselves on, and in charge of, over 200 acres of land, in the middle of the Hudson River Valley, whose own rich history begins in the pre-Columbian era. Photographing there, intensely, was my way of getting to know the place and making it my own.

I read that and I just thought, cool.

Entrance to Our Valley's awards included The British Journal of Photography's Best of 2019, as well as my old friend John Gossage's "Photobooks of 2019," a top ten list. John is interesting in that his photobook collection is exceptionally large—or was, rather, when I knew him in the 1980s and early '90s—and it contained almost no "chestnuts" (standard accepted classics), and very few of what you might call "the usual suspects." For instance, in his many thousands of books at that time there was no Ansel Adams and no Joel Meyerowitz.

As you might know I like filing books in pairs where each seems to amplify or add to the other. I think I'd file Entrance to Our Valley next to Paula Chamlee's High Plains Farm. The latter is a sort of inverse of the Fridlyands' situation: she left the farm she grew up on and that had been in her family for generations, and photographed it (using techniques very similar to Jenia's) on return visits.

I confess I'm somewhat susceptible to the lure of pastoral myths and fantasies myself, so chronicles of a countrified home life (like Sally Mann's Immediate Family, still in print after all these years, or Larry Towell's The World From My Front Porch) appeal to me. I'll probably like Entrance to Our Valley. I'll let you know when it gets here.

Here's the publisher's page for preordering the reprint.

Snow and fox
It snowed this morning. I love that. A coating of snow the thickness of cake frosting can transform the land around the house from grim and bleak into a vision that charms the eye.

Another instance of one thing leading to another: when I was researching the "Bandana Republic" post, one of the many articles I read was "The Best-Case Outcome for the Coronavirus, and the Worst." Nicholas Kristof interviewed a number of leading epidemiologists and summarized the consensus in the article. If you need hope, he advises that you read the first half—about the best case outcome—only! Factoid from the first half: viruses do mutate, but they typically only get worse in the movies. In real life, they tend to get more moderate and less deadly. (The reason is a bit macabre: it's not good for their survival if they kill their hosts. Mosts colds are just coronaviruses that have learned over time not to kill us.)

Anyway, that article led me to Nicholas's and his wife Sheryl WuDunn's new book Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope, about the decline of low-income and lower-middle-income families in the U.S. Nicholas (does he go by Nick? I don't know) and Sheryl were the first wife-and-husband journalists to win a joint Pulitzer, awarded for their reporting of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989.

So guess what? Tightrope turns out to be illustrated with photographs by none other than Lynsey Addario, the photojournalist who wrote the memoir It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War that we discussed back in 2015. (I still haven't read all of it, I'm ashamed to admit—I fear that photo-related reading often takes a back seat to books about things I know less about. Curiosity drives me. I should absolutely catch up with It's What I Do, however.)

But looking at pictures, that's something I can do. So even though I've already downloaded Tightrope for consumption on my iPad, I requested a paper review copy from the publisher. I'll let you know about the pictures if and when I get the book.

...A red fox just went trotting by right up the middle of the road! Smug as you please. Five years here and it's the first time I've seen that.

Mike

*Just going by the small sample. I haven't actually seen the work or the book, so I'll keep an open mind.

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William Lewis: "Beautiful work. I am so jelly. It reminds me of David Plowden whom I have always loved deeply as well. His barn work has been especially influential on me. Thank you for sharing this."

Brad: "He does go by Nick. I have met him; sat at a dinner table with him once. I've even said hello to his mother a couple of times in our local grocery store."

Random Excellence: Giants?

Might call this "random interest" rather than excellence, but it's curious. You might want to look at the picture carefully before reading on.

We were talking about the novel Giants in the Earth the other day, and I ran across the old snapshot above on a site called Ipernity. The original poster, Alan Mays, was given it as a Christmas present. A few different elements conspire to create a visual illusion. The small size of the tractor and the boy driving it, the looming hill in the background, and the fact that we can't see the adults' feet can make it read as though the adults, who are actually standing on the far fender of the tractor, are far behind the tractor...and about sixteen feet tall!

Can you see it that way? I have a strong "reality bias" in my mind, and I default to an assumption that adults are adult-sized, so I had to work a little to see the illusion. But it's there, all right. And once I want to see it, I can.

Here's something this made me think of: someone told me last night (my pool league team won 8-1 last night and we're still in first place) that the pool genius Efren Reyes likes to watch amateurs play. The reason is that professionals are so methodical, and know exactly which shots work in which situations (not to mention that they can do every sort of shot) that they're predictable to a degree—they're not often forced to get inventive or creative. Amateurs, on the other hand, get themselves into all sorts of odd or awkward dilemmas and then take highly unconventional routes to try to get themselves out of trouble—and watching them do so is entertaining for Efren.

Analogously, interesting snapshots are rare, perhaps, but I really love them, and for similar reasons—they show all sorts of whimsical and serendipitous oddities and surprises that more practiced photographers know to avoid. I have what amounts to a mini-library of books that feature "found" snapshots.

There's a good book available of early photography from the plains, but I can't find it. And the only pioneer photographer I can think of is Solomon D. Butcher. Population has been in decline on the great plains for years, as people move to places where life is easier.

Speaking of Giants in the Earth, it's been nice to hear that so many readers have indeed "engaged" with works of literature, such as Wayne, who said: "Among my favorite things to experience over and over are Lawrence Durrell's exquisite Alexandria Quartet and just about any Leonard Cohen music. Open to any page of Durrell or set the needle down on any track of Cohen, and I'm done for the day."

From The Alexandria Quartet (I'll just note that the Folio Society editions [OoP] are all illustrated with photographs):

As for me I am neither happy nor unhappy; I lie suspended like a hair or a feather in the cloudy mixtures of memory. I spoke of the uselessness of art but added nothing truthful about its consolations. The solace of such work as I do with brain and heart lies in this—that only there in the silences of the painter or the writer can reality be reordered, reworked and made to show its significant side. Our common actions in reality are simply the sackcloth covering which hides the cloth-of-gold—the meaning of the pattern.

By the way, while we're on quotes, the "Giants" title is from Genesis 6:4 in the KJV: "There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown." There's a sequel to Giants, called Peder Victorious: A Tale of the Pioneers Twenty Years Later.

Mike

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Open Mike: Rereading and Anne Fadiman (and an Aside)

['Open Mike' is the often off-topic, anything-goes Editorial Page of TOP, wherein Yr. Hmbl. Ed. rambles afield very slightly more than usual. It appears either on Wednesdays, or when I get it finished.]

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In response to this, a couple of days ago: "I loved C.S. Forester's Hornblower books...and read the whole series through twice," Stephen Gilbert commented: "You only read the Hornblower books twice?"

Made me smile. But to answer seriously, I'm not actually a big rereader.

I've gotten to the age, however, that it's become a valid topic. I wanted to recommend a wonderful—well, promising—little book called Rereadings by Anne Fadiman. Her 'Introduction' alone is worth the price of admission. I'll use that as my justification for breaking the Pinker Rule.

The book is a compilation of the best essays from a feature in the journal American Scholar from the time Anne edited it, also called Rereadings, in which authors and writers would reread a favorite book from earlier in their lives and write an essay about their relationship with it—how they themselves had changed since the first reading, how the book changed for them upon rereading.

Which books were influential and important to you in early life will be different for most everyone, of course, but there are a few that I think could particularly benefit from rereading. Alice In Wonderland, for instance, is a truly weird little book, and you don't really get that when you're a kid and your reading tastes have been formed by Batman comic books and the gentler fantasy of things like James and the Giant Peach. A particularly valuable book to reread in adulthood in my opinion is A Christmas Carol, which might be the most celebrated and vivid depiction in classic fiction of a spiritual awakening and the changes in thinking that necessarily precede such an awakening. You need to be a reflective adult to read it that way, not just someone sopping their bread in the gravy of Christmassy effusions. Counterculture classics from the '60s and '70s like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Herman Hesse's Siddhartha (a retelling of Buddha story) benefit from revisitings. Most especially, Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter begs to be reread as an adult, since its action (if not necessarily its themes) are adult by definition. If you haven't yet reread Joyce's Dubliners, that's an experience.

Many great readers and literary critics are famous for revisiting touchstone books. Susan Sontag famously read The Brothers Karamazov again and again, and Clifton Fadiman (Anne's father) estimated he had read Moby-Dick five times. Harold Bloom (who died just this last October) reread Shakespeare again and again, and show me a real Jane Austen fan who has not reread at least one of her books! Following the advice of my great friend Jim Schley, a writer on poets, what's important is not who you reread but that you reread someone, because it's important to your personal intellectual culture to engage at a deep level with at least one great author. On account of you cannot engage at that level with everyone.

A book that comes to mind that I've reread is O.E. Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth, the 1927 translation into English of the Norwegian I de dage, published by H. Aschenhoug and Company of Oslo in two volumes in 1924 and 1925. The Nation called it "the fullest, finest, and most powerful novel that has been written about pioneer life in America." I read it as a young teenager, and at the time it struck me as a serious, adult book, and I was was proud of myself for reading it all the way through and finishing it—it seemed as bleak and featureless as the prairie, as serious as breaking the earth with plows to survive, and very long. On rereading it a few years ago I was surprised at how short and full of action it actually is! A great book either way, and a classic of the literature of America (although it's not American literature).

Anne Fadiman. Photo by Gabriel Amadeus Cooney,
compliments of MacMillan Publishers.

Anne Fadiman is a recent discovery, but she's a gem, a minor treasure. She can write. Fun fact: her family's dog is named Typo. She hasn't written much, so I intend to read it all. (Hey, I can intend.)

As an aside, as I was browsing through Clifton Fadiman's New Lifetime Reading Plan—chock full of entertaining little thumbnail reviews—it crossed my mind that I no longer have enough life left to read all the books he discusses. That's one of life's tragedies I can feel: "Life is Short, Books Long." Choose wisely!

Mike

UPDATE Wednesday: As usual with book posts, this one has cost me money! And the last one too—I had to buy By Brooks Too Broad for Leaping, the selected writings of automotive journalist Denise McCluggage, which turned out to be quite expensive, and Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, which I've never read. Al C., hugh crawford, and JimH all mentioned Denise, and Martin D recommended Magic Mountain—thanks to them.

It was costly in time, too—I had to spend an arduous hour rummaging in the attic of the barn where my library is now kept (and where it is gradually being destroyed by insects) looking for the copies of The Brothers Karamazov I know I have (didn't find them), and spent a number of hours comparing translations of several books from other languages.

There are so many fine old photography books up there in the attic of the barn. I just don't have room for them in the house. I was blinded by love when I bought this place—the next house I buy will have room for a pool table and bookcases, dammit Gumby!

By the way, I have to say that Amazon does a poor job with translations. You can look for just the translation you want, then click the Kindle e-book option on the proper sale page, only to find that the Kindle version reverts to a different, older, rights-free translation. There doesn't seem to be a way to get the Grossman translation of Don Quixote or the Woods translation of Magic Mountain as e-books, for example. In the case of The Brothers K., you can go the P/V translation, click Kindle, and the order page still says Pevear and Volokonsky...but the file you get if you order it is not the Pevear and Volokonsky translation at all but the old Constance Garnett translation. In the scope of the world's troubles this isn't much I suppose, but it's frustrating. At the very least, they should inform you which translation you're buying when you buy a Kindle version.

I did find my hardcover copy of The Scarlet Letter, the one with Barry Moser's illustrations, which I bought, according to the mark, as a remainder.

UPDATE #2: I had to laugh...just after I posted the above, this comment came in:

Richard Nugent: "MIKE! You have to slow down on these literary 'Open Mike' essays!! Between your recommendations (or mentions) and those of the commenters, I wind up ordering two, three, or even four books with every essay. I have a stack of eight unread ones on my table right now and I just now ordered three more through Amazon. I may have to give up eating and sleeping (and maybe talking with my wife) to keep up. Have some mercy, man!"

At least Richard knows now that I suffer because of the same problem too!

 

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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Lance Saint Paul: "Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth reminded me of Faulkner, but more lyrical, flowing (he's a better poet in his prose than Faulkner). I first read it about 15 years ago (way late by the way)—I look forward to another reading in the future. Beautiful and harrowing. My roots are there, too."

Clayton: "Only two books that I remember reading several times—Love in the Time of Cholera by Garcia Marquez and The Tunnel by Ernesto Sabato. Some Kurt Vonnegut books got two or three readings. Seems I am drawn to hilarious tragedy."

Mike replies: Then you might enjoy The Brothers Karamazov.

Robert Roaldi (partial comment): "I read Catch-22 three times, saw the movie twice."

Mike replies: Did you ever read any of the books that purport to tell the true story the novel is based on? Such as The Bridgebusters: The True Story of the Catch-22 Bomb Wing by Thomas Cleaver. Looks like an interesting book to read alongside the novel.

Eric Peterson: "Put me down for rereading Anthony Trollope. The more things change, the more they stay the same."

DavidB: "I'm in the process of rereading many of the fiction books I've held on to for many years. Of these, the one I have reread the most is Robert Heinlein's The Past Through Tomorrow. Some of those futuristic science fiction short stories are happening now."

ChrisC: "I made the mistake of rereading Orwell’s 1984 a year or two back. It was much more scary this time round."

Darin Boville: "I re-read book occasionally but not as any particular philosophy of reading, just whenever the mood strikes me. I’ve re-read Moby-Dick, yes, five times seems right. I keep a copy on my vehicle’s dashboard so I can ask people who ride in my FJ Cruiser for the first time to open to a page at random, read whatever sentence their finger strikes upon, and then treat that as a sort of fortune cookie. (It works.) I’ve re-read Lord of the Rings, all 1008 pages, including once out loud to my young daughter as a bedtime story (in many parts!) when she was too young to read.

"In my mid-40s I was having a long spell of bad luck with book, movies, music and culture in general. I started to wonder if maybe I’d discovered all the good stuff, touched on all the mountaintops and that maybe the rest of my life would just be filling in the nooks and crannies of my cultural map. But then I picked out Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. I’d never heard of him. I read the book, finishing as I lay in bed, closed the book, stared at the ceiling a bit, then re-opened it to the first page and read it again. I'd never done that before, read a book twice in a row.

"For some reason that experience broke the spell."

Jeff Thompson: "For me, it was Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men, Cannery Row and The Grapes Of Wrath. Prescribed reading at school when I was 15 or 16 years old. Tedious reading then, but I reread them as a 'knocked around by life' adult and loved every word."

Alexander P. Schorsch: "William Faulkner said that he reread Don Quixote every year."

Mike replies: Setting aside holy books, Don Quixote is believed to be the number-one bestseller of all time, with an estimated 550 million copies printed and sold in a great many languages over its 415-year lifespan. There is a fine recent English translation by Edith Grossman that has received very high praise. Carlos Fuentes, writing in the New York Times, said this about it:

[I] celebrate the great new translation of 'Don Quixote' by Edith Grossman. Nothing harder for the traduttore, if he or she is not to be seen as the traditore [the Italian words mean "translator" and "traitor" —Ed.], than to render a classic in contemporary idiom yet retain its sense of time and space. Up to now, my favorite 'Quixote' translation has been that of Tobias Smollett, the 18th-century picaresque novelist, who rendered Cervantes in the style proper to Smollett and his own age. His 'Quixote' reads much like 'Humphry Clinker,' and this seems appropriate and, even, delightful. The family relationship is there.

"Edith Grossman delivers her 'Quixote' in plain but plentiful contemporary English. The quality of her translation is evident in the opening line: 'Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing.' This 'Don Quixote' can be read with the same ease as the latest Philip Roth and with much greater facility than any Hawthorne. Yet there is not a single moment in which, in forthright English, we are not reading a 17th-century novel. This is truly masterly: the contemporaneous and the original co-exist."

Larry Wilkins: "I read The Sun Also Rises for the first time when I was in high school, and then re-read it several times over the next decade or so. I picked it up again in my late 20s or early 30s—and was appalled. For the first time, I understood an essay topic that a college English professor proposed, 'The only pity that you can find in a Hemingway novel is self-pity.' On finishing the novel, for the last time in my life, I felt like a needed a shower.

"And I second Stephen Gilbert's comment on the Horatio Hornblower books."

Martin D: "I first read Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain as a young man, when I was at university. This is the novel to end all novels. I immersed myself into its world. The book changed my life forever and it keeps a clear presence in my life today. It's a long novel, a fat volume, and in those innocent days of my youth I read the book cover to cover three or four times within a few years. In the decades since, I always have a copy lying around somewhere in the house, and not a month passes where I don't pick it up and read a few pages.

"I have the advantage to be able to read it in the original German; Mann's complex sentences don't translate all that well into English, but I have coaxed many of my English friends into venturing into Magic Mountain land, and they didn't reproach me for it!"

Jimmy Reina: "In the early 1950s, I stumbled upon a used bookstore in the block where my father had a business. In those days, such stores also carried secondhand comicbooks and magazines, and I was injected with a drug that took 40 years to withdraw from. For a reader that loves books with pages, I can't think of a more indulgent pleasure than Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris. Now, when I haunt used bookstores, I buy all the copies I can find, and give them out to fellow book lovers."

Robert Stahl: "It doesn't get any better than rereading good and compelling poetry. A few favorites: Rumi, Emily Dickinson, Rilke, and Mary Oliver."

Three Books Chosen by Ken Tanaka

Written by Ken Tanaka

2019 saw the publication of another crop of excellent, engaging photobooks. Frankly I cannot imagine nominating any of those I’ve seen as “best.” But if I had to choose a few most likely to be of interest to my fellow TOP readers it would be these.

Let’s start with two books associated with museum exhibitions. 2019 was the year that photography’s first commercial format, the daguerreotype, got new and deeper looks. The Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art each produced superb 2019 exhibitions that highlighted the earliest roles of daguerreotype photography in various documentary work.

Golden Prospects: Daguerreotypes of the California Gold Rush
Jane L. Aspinwall, with contributions by Keith F. Davis
Hall Family Foundation / The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2019

The California Gold Rush of 1848-1855 was inarguably one of most significant social, political, and economic events in 19th century American hisory. Today such events (or even our lunch plates) are covered by photography in every imaginable (and unimaginable) way. But in 1848 photography was brand new. There were no conventions or best practices for its use. And yet dageurreotypists soon “became the mediators of the world’s truth.” They quickly learned to weave a contiguous visual story fabric from what otherwise seemed like utter chaos.

Golden Prospects represents a remarkable body of curatorial scholarship on a foundational moment in photography’s history. It also represents an eye-opening view of just how good photography became so quickly. Considering the cumbersome nature of producing usable dags at all, it’s astonishing to see so much work from so many collections gathered to put such clear focus on such a big moment.

Golden Prospects is not technically a photobook. But it is a mesmerizing deep stare into one of photography’s earliest opportunities to construct a big story for the rest of the world.

Monumental Journey: The Daguerreotypes of Girault de Prangey
Stephen C. Pinson (and many other contributors)
The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2019

Here’s the basic setup for Monumental Journey: Girault de Prangey, a rich 37-year-old single guy from northeastern France with some formal art education, becomes obsessed with the new daguerreotype photo tech. About 1842, just a few years before the start of the California Gold Rush (above), he begins three years of travel throughout the Mediterranean region, where he extensively and methodically photographs landmark sites and scenes he visits. Upon returning to his home he meticulously labels and organizes the roughly 1,000 resulting plates and stores them in custom-made wooden cases. He writes a few articles on his work and even self-publishes a book of some of this work, but his work is largely ignored. So eventually the wood cases are stashed in his attic, not to be re-discovered until long after his 1892 death.

There is a long, somewhat sinuous story between the rediscovery of this work and today. Some pieces were lost and nearly a century of neglect have not left this work in pristine condition. But it still shines as among the most thoughtful and skillfully-created collection of amateur dauguerrotypes in existence. Many of Girault’s images represent first-and-only records for many archeological sites and subjects which have since been lost to time and change. Additionally, since Girault had no need to conform to commercial practices (i.e. standard enclosure sizes and aspect ratios) he could make his plate exposures according to the needs of his subjects. So we see far more panoramic and vertical plates than are usually seen in other collections.

Like Golden Prospects, Monumental Journey is not a photobook, per se. It’s an exhibition catalog and a body of scholarly work. But Girault de Prangey’s work represents one of the first and most earnest efforts at architectural and archeological documentation with photography.

And here is one standout book not about daguerreotypy:

André Kertész: Marcher Dans L’Image (Walk in the Picture) [French only]
Cédric De Veigy
André Frère Éditions, 2019
Link to the exhibition website

If you’ve admired André Kertész’s work as long and as deeply as I have you may imagine you’ve seen everything there is to see. And then something like this comes along to make you realize you’re not there yet.

Drawn from scans of Kertész’s archive negatives in Paris, Marcher Dans L’Image is a largely passive analysis of how Kertész made his framing and composition choices for a variety of scenes he shot with his Leica between 1930 and 1936. I can guarantee that most of the images and scenes will be new to your eyes, as most have never been published.

If you’re someone fascinated by looking at famous photographers’ contact sheets you’ll be over the moon with this book. Images, all beautifully printed, are not presented as raw contact sheets but rather as page layouts showing series alternatives.

Do note that the book is entirely in French. No, I don’t really read French. But due to the magic of the Google Translate app and my iPhone I can read just about anything. Mercifully, there is relatively little text to translate as the presentation is mostly visual. So no need to fear that you’ll not understand the material.

Marcher Dans L’Image is only available from the publisher or on the secondary market. It accompanies an exhibition, open until February 9th, 2020, at the Robert Doisneau House of Photography, 1 rue du Division du Général Leclerc, 94250 Gentilly, France.

Ken

Longtime reader and occasional contributor Kenneth Tanaka has been actively engaged in photography and the arts for many years. His own recent book To Build, a lyrical look at the accidental beauty of large-scale construction sites, was recently published on Blurb. It was distilled from approximately a dozen years of working. It's expensive in paper, but you can see all the photos in the preview at Blurb—and I recommend you do that! —Ed.

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

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Featured Comments from:

JOHN B GILLOOLY: "Just purchased the Kertesz book and really look forward to getting it. This is a perfect intersection of my photographic interests. He is one of my favorites and I'm always very interested in the editing process employed by various photographers. Thanks for the suggestion."

hugh crawford: "Thanks for the pointer to Girault de Prangey. I can't believe I missed this up until now."

Moose: "Re 'His own recent book To Build, a lyrical look at the accidental beauty of large-scale construction sites, was recently published on Blurb.' It's only half January, and I'll bet Mr. Tanaka's book will be my photo book of the year. Not my sort of subject, other than a few abstract reflections, but I was mesmerized. The colors, shapes, perfect moments in human motion, are wonderful. But the compositions! What a masterful eye. Also a great sense of order and facing page selections. I've enjoyed some of your work before, but none has grabbed me like this."

Wednesday Open Mike: A Writer's Writer (OT)

["Open Mike" is the often off-topic Editorial page of TOP, in which Yr. Hmbl. Ed. sometimes wanders into double, double toil and trouble. It appears on Wednesdays.]

-

Things have slowed down here as I'm a bit under the weather. I don't feel bad, but I'm very tired—listless—and once again I've got the voice I always wanted...about two registers lower than my normal voice. As often happens when I get a "bug."  :-)

An off-topic placeholder: If you remember the TV shows "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Tales of the Unexpected," and "The Twilight Zone," or ever watch them on YouTube, you might be interested to know that one of the strongest influences on that style of storytelling was a writer from the UK named John Collier, who wrote short stories among other things. Fourteen episodes of those three television shows came from Collier's short stories.

Collier, who never graduated from college but was an admirer of both Swift and Joyce, came to the US from England in 1935 and landed in Hollywood. But he was hardly a typical Hollywood writer. An early screenplay that flopped nearly wrecked Katherine Hepburn's career, and his style marks him as "a category of one," playful yet wicked, with plentiful overtones of myth and fantasy. He began a minor literary tradition when he wrote an anonymous negative review of his own whimsical first book His Monkey Wife, which was about a man married to a chimpanzee. "From the classical standpoint his consciousness is too crammed for harmony," goes his self-assessment, "too neurasthenic for proportion, and his humor is too hysterical, too greedy, and too crude." That might work as a review of some of those old TV shows.

His quintessential book of stories is Fancies and Goodnights from 1951, which won the very first International Fantasy Award as well as an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America. The book was famous for years and is still in print. (The subtitle of the first edition [pictured], is "TALES UNLIKE OTHER TALES," and the book cover got that right!) If you'd like to read the first story in the book online, a tale of a treacherous genie in a bottle, as a sample, you can read it at Esquire magazine's website. Although a written story, you'll find it as short and to the point as the 22 minutes of a half-hour TV show.

There are also more complete compendiums, The Best of John Collier and The John Collier Reader. (I could swear I bought the latter, but it has mysteriously vanished.)

Collier was a favorite of many writers, including Roald Dahl as well as Ray Bradbury, who wrote the introduction to the linked edition. Other than his books, Collier seems to have left little trace: there are few interviews and not many photos. His biographer said of him: "Collier saw humans, flawed but with potential, everywhere contaminated by narrow creeds, institutions, coteries, vanities, and careers."

Anyway, try Fancies and Goodnights. Perfect reading if you're just a bit sick!  ;-)

Mike

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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jerry: "My mother bought me Fancies and Goodnights when was in junior high in 1969. I just reread it about two years ago. Uniquely lovely and wicked little tales. Truly unforgettable to the youngster I was then."

Matthew Liggett: "I haven't read Collier, but I will definitely give him a shot, thanks. Your post immediately reminded me of Ben Loory's Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day. Some are bleak and most are surreal. They're very short—what's sometimes called micro-fiction."

Mike replies: Those look wonderful. Thanks back at you!

My Book of the Year

Written by John Camp

Interesting that Mike should ask me about my favorite books of 2019. In addition to being a thriller writer [John writes thrillers under the pen name John Sandford —Ed.], I’m a thriller fan, and also read a bit of sci-fi and general adventure novels and also quite a bit of non-fiction. I think I probably read 60–70 books a year—something more than one a week—plus dip into quite a few more that I don’t finish. For me, the outstanding thing about 2019 was the number of extremely reliable, excellent writers who produced books that were sharply sub-standard. I don’t want to get into names, but boy, some famous writers really turned out poor books last year. Embarrassingly poor.

One exception was Stephen King—I’ve always had a soft spot for him, because while he sometimes writes too fast and drops in a lot of extraneous stuff, he is capable of writing really well. He did that in the set-piece introduction to his book this year, called The Institute. You could live in that intro.

And my favorite photobook? The most outstanding book I got—and I mean this sincerely, I’ve gone back to it dozens of times since Christmas—was a photo book produced on the Shutterfly site. Several years ago, we adopted a German Shepherd from a German Shepherd rescue kennel in Los Angeles. When picked up by the rescue people, the dog had nearly starved to death—he was young, but terribly emaciated, hardly able to hold his head up, from living on the streets. Years went by and Scout died last summer of cancer. We did everything we could to save him, including spending three weeks at Colorado State University and their animal clinic, renowned as an animal cancer research center, through which he was given a serious course of chemotherapy.

The cancer was non-operable, though, and he died in August. He was the dog of my life; I can still break down and cry when I think of him. Unbeknownst to me, a friend of ours from the Twin Cities collected a bunch of photos of him (and there were quite a few) and put together a Shutterfly book that showed his progress from a seriously starved rescue dog to a big, happy, confident shepherd who loved to romp, ride in the car, and meet new people. Always looking for something to do. We used to go for long walks, with Scout on a leash, making sure the rabbits in the neighborhood didn’t get too bold. I called them "bunny walks," and all I had to do, at a certain time not long before dusk every day, was mouth the words "bunny walk" and he’d be running around in circles, eager to go.

Anyway, that was my book of the year, made by our friend Cindy, and sitting on top of everything else in our library.

John

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

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Kenneth Tanaka: "Thank you for sharing that story, John. Believe me, I’m with ya. Our beloved cat of 16 years, KC, died of renal disease in 2016. Our home features more photos of him than of our family. We also have a private gallery of some of his photos online that we can browse from anywhere at any time. (And we do!) No other medium has the power of testimony and recollection that photography has offered from its very first moment of inception. Isn’t that a truly magical and wonderful thing?! My condolences on your loss of Scout. My enthusiastic head-nod on your photobook-of-the-year nomination."

Jim Arthur: "Nice post, John. I did something similar for my younger brother after his dog, Sandy, died. In hindsight I should have offered to make a photo book but he asked me to print his favorite photos of Sandy and put them in an old-school collage photo frame. He loved it. Sandy was a once in a lifetime dog for me as well so I really enjoyed the project.

"A few years later I did another photo project for the same brother after he suffered a traumatic brain injury. I printed photos of friends and family and brought them to the hospital to help him place names with faces. Luckily, brother has recovered and I like to think that photography helped him along the way.

"The power of two-dimensional photography to trigger a memory, tell a story, remember an association, or elicit emotion is an amazing thing. After all that’s passed, it’s especially nice to see brother pause to look at his Sandy collage when I’m there for a visit."

Al C.: "I am guessing responses to this post may break the record. Here's mine.

"Shortly after I finished school and got my first job, my then girlfriend, later wife, saw a beautiful terrier mutt puppy get hit by a car. She took her to the vet (the dog was fine), then home. We looked for her owner; none came forward. To keep her, we moved to an apartment next to a small lake, which quickly became her domain. Here's a soul who greets every day as a special gift, every stranger as a new friend, every outing as a great adventure. She was also independent, and saw us not as owners or parents, but peers and pals. She had her own circle of friends and admirers. Kids in the neighborhood would drop by after school and take her off to play in their yard. She would take long swims in the lake with the resident ducks. She was always mischievous, never missed a chance to show off her charm, to stick her nose in things, to be in the middle of the action and attention. But she instinctively knew when it was proper, and when not. Well, mostly.

"One day, there was a fire in the laundry room on our floor. When the burly firemen came stomping in, she rushed to and past them to make sure not to miss the excitement.

"We constantly talked to her. She understood everything. In return, she taught me how I should live my life. I try, but fall short. After all, no one I know possesses her reserve of good cheer, good will, and good sense.

"I started my own company for the sole and express purpose of being able to take her to work with me every day. It used to break my heart every morning, knowing I was ruining—stealing—her day. Thus, everything I have now I owe to this 25 lbs. bundle of irrepressible spirit and joy.

"We lost her after 19 short years. I continue to re-tell and regale my friends with tales of her funny, endearing antics, tales which would overflow a children's book. A few years ago, I wrote them down, more a catalog than a book, for when I start to forget. Silly thought: I shall never forget. I keep the snapshots I took of her—with the Voightlander Vito my father gave me in high school—in the very front of our family albums. I look at them, as often as I could bear to. The colors have faded, but not the feelings of joy, pride, and eternal gratitude."

Dave Hodson: "'We take photos as a return ticket to a moment otherwise gone.' Not sure who said it (Katie Thurmes? [Yes —Ed.]), but it's always stuck in my mind. Funny how a bunch of crappy little snaps of our pug of 16 years can still choke me up."

The Pillar by Stephen Gill (Mike's Book of the Year 2019)

A fashion lately: photobooks without a photo on the cover. It's a thing.

Birds as art
A problem with photography these days is that many approaches are becoming trite through no fault of their own, due simply to overdeployment. Too many people taking the same sorts of pictures, and, in that way, the pictures become unoriginal and lose their incantatory frisson. Not their fault, but ours, because we're saturated.

A spread from American Winter. Beautiful book, but been done.

One example: Swedish photographer Gerry Johansson's otherwise fine book American Winter. There's a long tradition of European views of the USA, dating to Frank's epochal The Americans, and before that de Tocqueville, and it's true you often see a place "with new eyes" while it remains foreign in its essence. Johansson "travelled through semi-deserted towns in Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado, finding as much beauty as there was misery in landscapes cloaked in snow," according to the writeup, and the pictures are quite fine. They're also quite familiar to many American photographers who have perhaps seen enough of the same sort of thing.

So I'm always alert to new and different ideas*.

Topmost among these for 2019 for me is The Pillar by Stephen Gill. Gill pounded a post into a bleak Swedish landscape and mounted a camera with a motion sensor nearby. (And then, I'm assuming, exhaustively edited the results.) The resulting pictures of birds perching on the pillar and coming or going in all weathers has an almost mystical beauty. They make me feel the way photography used to make me feel.

The following words are by Karl Ove Knausgård, the memoirist who created a literary sensation with his obsessive multi-part My Struggle (in Norwegian, Min Kamp), six "damned, thick, square books"** completed in 2011. Min Kamp in English inspired James Wood's famous mot: "even when I was bored, I was interested," which IMO conveys seamlessly to The Pillar. Knausgård's description of these photographs:

A pillar knocked into the ground next to a stream in a flat, open landscape, trees and houses visible in the distance, beneath a vast sky. That is the backdrop to all of Stephen Gill's photographs in this book. We see the same landscape in spring and summer, in autumn and winter, we see it in sunshine and rain, in snow and wind. Yet there is not the slightest monotony about these pictures, for in almost every one there is a bird, and each of these birds opens up a unique moment in time. We see something that has never happened before and will never happen again. That it takes place in the midst of a landscape characterised by repetition, in which time is cyclical, sets up a keen existential dynamic: on the one hand, everything has happened before, there’s nothing new under the sun; on the other, every moment is unique and carries the hallmark of the miracle: what happens happens only once and never again.

But this wasn’t what I thought about the first time I looked at these photographs. In fact, I barely thought at all, for I was shaken, as a person so often is when confronted with an extraordinary work of art. I’d never seen birds in this way before, as if on their own terms, as independent creatures with independent lives. Ancient, forever improvising, endlessly embroiled with the forces of nature, and yet indulging too. And so infinitely alien to us.

The book is not available on Amazon. Or it is, but only in the form of overpriced new and used copies. (New for $240, used starting at $333? Eh?) The Book Depository doesn't have it either. But you can still buy it directly from Stephen Gill's own website as of this writing, for £48 and shipping. The book made a lot of year-end "best of" lists, and it won the Author Book Award at Rencontres d'Arles, so the price will do nothing but go up. Unless it's reprinted. Which it might be. We never know.

Then again, Gill moved to rural Österlen, in Skåne, Sweden, from heavily peopled London, so maybe the pictures have that new-but-not-new, familiar-with-a-sigh feeling to denizens of rural Sweden like the Swede Gerry Johansson's do to to this originally Midwestern American. I don't know. The Pillar earned a place on my shelves, anyway, and is this past year's special book for me.

Mike

P.S. A heads up: We are shifting to books for a few days. No more gear for a while, much of books.

*Well, if they work. Museums apparently think projects should be judged entirely on ideas, but I'm an iconoclast to that view. Ideas are intermediary, and subservient to to the work. Some ideas which sound good simply do not work, and in that case the work is still a failure. I'll give just one example here too: Vogue photographer Benjamin McMahon has been handing his Leica to his famous subjects so they can take pictures of themselves in mirrors. The resulting pictures are souvenirs, maybe, but nothing more. They're approximate and piecemeal, short of charm and interest. Bland snapshots that do not rise to being "self-portraits"; students do better. To quote the words of a song Huey Lewis wrote for Thin Lizzy that was later covered by Dave Edmunds (and which struck me as funny—due to, you know, truth): "sometimes bad is bad." Of course that's just one opinion. Decide for yourself. The point is, sometimes promising ideas don't work, and you've got to be open to that. The idea itself is not enough.

**Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, in 1781, upon being ceremonially presented with the latest volume of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: "What! Another damned, thick, square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, Mr. Gibbon?" One of my favorite amusing quotes.

Original contents copyright 2019 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:

Samuel Dilworth: "Poetic idea, fascinating photos, and a worthy winner of this famous accolade. I thought Michael Ashkin’s Were It Not For was another good one from 2019. Black-and-white landscapes of the Mojave Desert alongside evocative lines of text starting 'Were it not for ….' (Were it not for the distant haze, were it not for the evidence-based decision, were it not for the general indifference, were it not for the endless repetition, etc.) It’s interesting that so many photographers have reverted, so to speak, to black and white for photobooks. Consider Gábor Arion Kudász’s Human from last year (small print run sold out before I discovered it). 'I wasn’t able to find the correct language for this project in color, because it made the bricks too literal. A brick needs to have a little help to become a human, a figure, and vice versa.' Gill’s birds may have needed a little help to become the ethereal creatures in the book. (I know some of the photos are colour of a sort.)"

Thomas Walsh: "Seriously, a photo of a bird on a fence post (now that is original) and the 'art' world gushes. Give me a break. Clearly, the emperor has no clothes."

Andre Y: "Yay for more book posts instead of gear stuff! Also I just ordered the book, and noted that I found it through TOP."

BrianD: "Darn it, looks like a great book. It's going to be hard to refuse. It's not a question of £48, it's more about what to retire from the shelves on my study."

Greg Heins: "I was more impressed by Gerry Johansson's book than you were. Beyond the photographs themselves, I thought it a fine example of appropriate bookmaking in its physical characteristics. Also, it is a pure photo book: the only text, beyond the town and state below each photo, is on the very last page: 'Photographs made during the winters of 2017 and 2018.' That's it. No intro, no outro, no technical notes, not even the photographer's website. Nice."

Sunday Support Group: Thorny Issues (*Added: Sale Update)

[Ed. note: This is my second-to-last post until December 27th. I'm taking a few days off for Christmas. The problem with that is that this is what I like doing, and I don't particularly like not doing it. But our year-end holiday break is traditional!   :-)  ]

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A few supportive recommendations this Sunday, some reiterated:

Confused about food? How Not to Diet is out, and it's utterly wonderful. An encyclopedia of diet demystification. I've been reading it since two weeks before it was published (thanks to the publisher for the advance copy). Michael Greger (and team—I refuse to believe any one man could do all this on his own) gives an exhaustive rundown of the latest state of the science of what to eat and why demonstrably poor diets (keto, paleo, low-carb, etc.) are so popular. Michael goes through every single scientifically validated strategy for weight loss, all of them "put to the test" to use his catchphrase.

Here are his latest two fascinating videos, which I'm putting to the test myself: "Time Restricted Eating Put to the Test" (watch this one first) and "The Benefits of Early Time Restricted Eating" (this is a continuation of the first). I just love eating for health, and I find this stuff fascinating.

Keep yer nose clean: Blackheads...um, seriously, Mike? But sure. If you have blackheads—those little black dots on your nose (they're clogged pores) try Bioré strips. They work so well it's quite astonishing. Made me marvel at the cleverness of us humans. We really are clever; I could wish we were more wise instead, but we truly are clever.

Problem with alcohol, and/or curious as to whether you are an alcoholic or just a person who likes to drink? Under the Influence is a landmark in my life, and my latest run through it was just as rewarding as the earlier ones. Really wonderful, clear book about this most mysterious of maladies. Just the chapters about the stages of alcoholism (chapters 4, 5, and 6) are worth their weight in gold. A brief, practical, plainspoken, disburdening read.

Sleeper lens: A lens I keep forgetting to talk about is the Sigma 45mm ƒ/2.8. Small, portable, reasonably priced, of a natural focal length, with nice bokeh...what's not to like? For Leica L mount and Sony E mount.

Suffered trauma? Arguably the world's leading authority on trauma is Bessel van der Kolk, who is going through (ahem) his own trauma right now (he's been fired from the institute he founded, for undisclosed reasons); but let us not throw the bathwater out with the baby. (We should have a discussion of this sometime—do questions of personal integrity invalidate works? Certainly pertinent to artists. I first confronted this years ago in the case of Bruno Bettelheim, who wrote a wonderful book called The Uses of Enchantment that I liked (a Freudian look at fairy tales) but who was later beset with personal and scholarly accusations, including that he borrowed the ideas of others too liberally in that very book. The question of whether it's still a good book is thorny*. Most recently I confronted the issue in the case of photographer Fred Herzog, who was accused of being a holocaust denier on the basis of an awkward answer in an interview. I studied the issue considerably, even hearing from some of Fred's personal friends, and have decided—just for myself—to forgive him. I do think he was struggling with the issue in his mind, which he too freely revealed; I imagine he was looking for plausible explanations other than the obvious one, and did not want to believe the worst of his countrymen (Fred was born German); but in my judgement he was doing so in the spirit of inquiry, and was very far from having taken the sorts of hardened positions that should rightly tar a man's character.)

But back to Bessel. The work in this case is The Body Keeps the Score, a summation of a lifetime of work in the field. I'm a good reader and reasonably sharp, but this book was tough. It's just a difficult and complicated subject, and the ideas are challenging, the writing weighty. But if you have suffered traumatic experiences (or suspect you have—trauma memory is not processed like normal memories), this difficult book may open your eyes and might even alter your life.

Stuck with a project? An excellent book on creativity and how normal people can succeed at artistic pursuits is Art & Fear, which lays out useful strategies for overcoming roadblocks and getting your creative juices flowing.

I'd like to thank all our readers collectively for their book recommendations over the years. I think half the books I've read in the last five years have been recommended by TOP readers! Thank you.

Mike

*I think yes.

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

Please help support The Online Photographer through Patreon

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

LL: "How did the big sale go?"

Mike replies: Really splendidly. Big success, lots of happy customers. In $, second only to Peter Turnley's first sale here—and barely, at that. Really helped my year. Ctein writes:

"Two-thirds of the orders are shipped, but not much will be happening for the next week because of the holidays. Then shipping will resume. Everyone who placed an order should have gotten an email from me confirming their order OR an email indicating that their order has shipped OR their prints. There will be no communication from me between confirming the order and shipping it, but anyone who has not gotten at least one of those things should contact me."

The only reason they're not all shipped yet it because it was such a success! Big thanks and best wishes to everyone who participated.

David Dyer-Bennet: "The question of the author's belief system is particularly important for artists, arguably—art communicates in many ways, and I'm not sure I want to allow a piece of slime (some hypothetical artist whose positions I don't like) that great an access into my head. I find this in many ways more important than the question of 'giving my money to some evil person'; there are so many ways for me to experience the art without giving money, many of them even legal (especially for books, the thing I really care about: libraries, borrowing from friends, used copies, etc.). For a chemist, on the other hand, it hardly matters what they believed, since anything important they worked on, if it's going to remain part of chemistry, is being or has been verified by others both explicitly and by building on the old work (the tower will collapse if the lower stories are unsound). Philosophers and even political scientists and to some extent historians are closer to artists for the purposes of this distinction, though."

Jack: "I already bought the Sigma 45mm via your B&H link this past summer. It’s a wonderful buy. Let me add a book recommendation. Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis, by Timothy Egan. If you like stories about Indians, the American West, and photography, you will be enchanted. You last promoted it October 21, 2012, but it’s worth reminding readers."

Mike adds: Has it been that long? Wow. That ebook is free if you have Kindle Unlimited, or you can buy a used hardcover for as little as $2.68. Still recommended. Here it is for the rest of the world.

Sunday Support Group: Myths About Alcohol (OT)

["Sunday Support Group" is a weekly article in support of projects, aspirations, resolutions, self-help and self-reform. Although not always germane to photography, SSG was inspired by the insight that photographers tend to be happier if they have a project and/or a purpose.]

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We all have those touchstone books—the ones that were important experiences for us and became part of the story of our lives. Today I'd like I to recommend a book that was important to me, and that I just found out is "still good" you might say.

I'm an alcoholic—sober 29 years, one month, and ten days, plus part of today. The book I want to recommend, Under the Influence by James Milam and Katherine Ketchum, was part of the "welcome package" inpatients received on arriving to the rehab center where I first got sober.

I wouldn't normally recommend a nonfiction book on a scientific topic that was published way back in 1981. But I spoke on the phone the other day to Beth Kane-Davidson (right). Although neither of us remembers the other, she was working at Suburban Hospital's Addiction Treatment Center when I was there ("so our paths crossed," she said). She is now its Director. And she endorsed Under the Influence. I asked whether things haven't changed since 1990, and she said, "the cellular science hasn't changed." We had a nice conversation—she was happy to speak to a successful "alum." The book helped change my life at the time, so I was happy to learn that it's still well regarded by an expert in the field. Now I'm reading it again...for the third time, but the first in more than a quarter-century.

There's a fascinating short section about myths and realities at the beginning of the book that I wish I could quote in its entirety. (To do so would be a copyright violation.) Here are a few as a sampling:

MYTH: Alcohol is predominantly a sedative or depressant drug.

REALITY: Alcohol’s pharmacological effects change with the amount drunk. In small quantities, alcohol is a stimulant. In large quantities, alcohol acts as a sedative. In all amounts, however, alcohol provides a rich and potent source of calories and energy.

MYTH: Alcohol is an addictive drug, and anyone who drinks long and hard enough will become addicted.

REALITY: Alcohol is a selectively addictive drug; it is addictive for only a minority of its users, namely, alcoholics. Most people can drink occasionally, daily, even heavily, without becoming addicted to alcohol. Others (alcoholics) will become addicted no matter how much they drink.

MYTH: All sorts of social problems—marriage problems, a death in the family, job stress—may cause alcoholism.

REALITY: As with psychological and emotional problems, alcoholics experience all the social pressures everyone else does, but their ability to cope is undermined by the disease and the problems get worse.

MYTH: If people would only drink responsibly, they would not become alcoholics.

REALITY: Many responsible drinkers become alcoholics. Then, because it is the nature of the disease (not the person), they begin to drink irresponsibly.

MYTH: An alcoholic has to want help to be helped.

REALITY: Most drinking alcoholics do not want to be helped. They are sick, unable to think rationally, and incapable of giving up alcohol by themselves. Most recovered alcoholics were forced into treatment against their will. Self-motivation usually occurs during treatment, not before.

MYTH: Some alcoholics can learn to drink normally and can continue to drink with no ill effects as long as they limit the amount.

REALITY: Alcoholics can never safely return to drinking because drinking in any amount will sooner or later reactivate their addiction.

MYTH: When the alcoholic is drinking, he reveals his true personality.

REALITY: Alcohol’s effect on the brain causes severe psychological and emotional distortions of the normal personality. Sobriety reveals the alcoholic’s true personality.

That's skirting the upper limits of what's allowable to quote without permission, but there are more.

The book is chock-full of insights and information that are absolutely fascinating. Did you know, for example...

• That alcohol is the only drug that is also a food...but that all alcoholics are malnourished no matter what they eat? (Because active alcoholism interferes with the body's ability to absorb nutrients.)
• That alcohol is one of very few substances which can penetrate the brain's primary defense in the body, the blood-brain barrier?
• That alcohol's very first victim is the organism that creates it? (Yeast, a microscopic fungus, which voraciously converts sugar to alcohol in the fermentation process, is itself killed off when the alcohol concentration reaches about 14%, which is why that's the upper limit for the alcoholic content of naturally fermented, i.e. non-distilled, beverages such as wine.)
• That alcohol's most surprisingly quality is its ability to relieve the very distress it creates? (It's the cure for a hangover and it offers relief from the harrowing symptoms of withdrawal.)
  
• That alcohol is a very poor painkiller, because palliative effects are only evident when the dosage is dangerously close to being lethal? (So much for all those movies where a wild west desperado is given whiskey before having a bullet dug out of his side or a Civil War soldier is having his leg sawn off—if the movie is realistic, the patient will still cry out in pain. The whiskey wasn't helping.)

It's a very readable book despite a few stretches that will be tough for the less scientifically literate. Those don't go on too long, and you can still get the gist, even if you don't come to it knowing things like what MEOS stands for (the microsomal ethanol oxidizing system, if you're curious). The whole book doesn't go on too long either—256 pages, short and sweet and to the point.

One of the book's priorities is to clearly distinguish alcoholism from problem drinking. So if you happen to be curious about that—either in your own case or on behalf of someone else—then it could be what you need to answer that question.

Alcoholism is a subject worth learning about. It's a very dangerous disease. It's especially dangerous for alcoholics, but for many others too. First of all, the majority of alcoholics either die of the disease or die drinking, an average of 11 years earlier than they would have died otherwise—statistically speaking. But you don't have to be an alcoholic to die of drinking. Many problem drinkers and recreational drinkers who are not alcoholic die of acute alcohol poisoning—like the two perfectly healthy young friends who bet each other one night in a bar to see who could down a fifth of vodka the fastest. Both chugged their bottles. Both passed out—but unconsciousness didn't stop the alcohol from continuing to pass from their stomachs and intestines into their bloodstreams, and their blood alcohol levels continued to rise. Both were dead within hours.

It's pretty amazing that in our booze- and wine- and beer-soaked culture, most young people don't even know that it's possible to die pretty much on the spot from merely drinking too much too fast. (Tell your kids.) That's undoubtedly one of the reasons why six people die of acute alcohol poisoning every day in the U.S., according to current data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One hundred percent of those deaths are needless and pointless and a waste.

It should be obvious to most intelligent people that many non-alcoholic people get drunk and die from accidents of all sorts, too. Automobile accidents are only the main and best-known of these. The leading cause of deaths at college fraternity houses is falling out of windows or falling off roofs, for example. How often do you think a stone cold sober 20-year-old falls out of a window?

It's a disease that kills non-drinkers, even, because alcoholics impaired by drunkenness sometimes kill other people—most often with a motorized vehicle of some sort weaponized by an alcohol-addled operator. Even sometimes when they're in "blackouts," periods of time they'll have no memory of later.

Were so many of these deaths not masked by the descriptions of their more immediate causes—from liver failure to suicide to falling out of windows to car wrecks—alcoholism and long- and short-term alcohol consumption would rank much higher than it does among all causes of death in the U.S. It might even be first.

If alcohol affects you, your family, or someone you know—or if you're just interested in coming up to speed on the subject—read Under the Influence. It's the kind of book I like: a clear discussion of a cloudy topic.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 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.

Please help support The Online Photographer through Patreon

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

c.d.embrey: "Very interesting. I'm not addictive. If I want to quit, I just quit—worked with cigarettes and beer. Never did drugs or had GAS. My son is NFL linebacker big. If it wasn't for friends he'd have died from acute alcohol poisoning. He thought that with his body mass he'd be OK chugging...wrong! Thanks for posting this!"'

Lynn: "Alcohol is also a major contributor to drowning deaths. It's a significant problem in Australia where waterways and backyard pools are the ideal place to hold a party in the warmer months. Drinking alcohol and going for a swim in the ocean to celebrate or sober up often has tragic consequences. Alcohol and water don't mix! It impairs judgement about when and where it's safe to swim or when to get out of the water. It can accelerate hypothermia. Young people are particularly vulnerable—the Royal Life Saving Society of Australia says alcohol contributes to at least 41 percent of drownings in the 15–29 years age group, compared to 20 percent of all adult drowning deaths.

"I've always liked wine with meals, but after a family member almost died from alcohol poisoning I gave up in support. That was at the beginning of 2018. I've never regretted it, or felt better."

KeithB: "Re 'Most drinking alcoholics do not want to be helped. They are sick, unable to think rationally, and incapable of giving up alcohol by themselves.' When a person close to me was acutely mentally ill, I was amazed at how the illness worked to prevent the sufferer from recognizing the fact that they were ill."

adamct: "While I cannot claim that the European model is perfect, I do think that there is something deeply flawed about how many young people encounter alcohol in this country. Many (though certainly not all, given that not everyone goes to college and many students begin drinking in high school) young people first encounter significant quantities of alcohol in college, specifically as freshmen. Think about what kind of an environment that is:

• Far away from family and trusted friends
• Absence of responsible supervision
• Peer pressure to fit in and be accepted
• Illegal to drink at that age

"The last point has significant consequences, in terms of (i) legal jeopardy (fake IDs, etc.), (ii) how and where people drink (in hiding), (iii) reluctance to call authorities or for help when someone drinks too much (see the case of the fraternity that waited too long to call an ambulance after a pledge had clearly consumed a life-threatening amount of alcohol), and (iv) in terms of what students wind up drinking. What is the cheapest form of alcohol, and also the easiest to conceal? Hard alcohol. Per unit of alcohol, beer and wine are both more expensive, and harder to hide (try walking back to your dorm with a case of beer without people noticing). And unfortunately, students (and many adults, for that matter) are ill-prepared for how quickly hard alcohol can become dangerous, especially given that your blood alcohol level can continue to rise after you have stopped 'drinking.' (Which shouldn't be read to imply that drinking beer and wine are safe. They're not.)

"I believe all of this means that we introduce young people to alcohol under the absolute most dangerous circumstances possible. I hesitate to recommend introducing students to alcohol earlier, while they are still at home, although it is at least worth considering. Another option would be to permit drinking at official college 'bars,' where students could be monitored and consumption could be limited (or at least the forms of alcohol offered could be restricted). None of that would prevent alcoholism or abuse, but it might help at least some students."

Dave Sailer: "Left out: Alcohol is also a type 1 (or group 1) carcinogen. I.e., it has been proven to cause cancer in humans."