The Online Photographer

The Worst Exhibition Lighting I Ever Saw

My new picture "One Gull" highlights the problems of controlling viewing environment for pictures. It is, first of all, exaggerated modestly in order to preserve the feeling of what it was like to stand there and experience the sight; that is, the primary goal was something other than a judiciously objective recording of the relative luminances of the scene.

Small problem: looking at my computer screen in ambient daylight, it looks too dark.

I work on the front porch of my small home. I have a family room that could be converted to an office nicely, but it's a former one-car garage and the WiFi stubbornly refuses to reach it, regardless of various repeaters and extenders placed in various spots—and anyway, it, too, has too much daylight, with windows on all four walls. The ambient light on the porch (which has wondows all along three walls) is bright, and varies throughout the day as the sun passes through its arc and filters through the trees. This is what led me to abandon my 27" 2011 iMac four or five years ago and invest in a NEC MultiSync PA272W monitor*: the Mac's screen was reflective, and looking at it all day was frustrating. The NEC has a hood and a non-glare surface, and works much better. New Mac displays (their word for monitor), especially the nano-texture glass models, have much better glare control, I'm told.

Typically, I work on pictures on the computer in subdued lighting in the evening, after sunset. I have a color-corrected light placed in back of my monitor, and overhead light in the living room comes through the windows between the living room and porch illuminate the keyboard adequately. In this environment I can see tones much better, and I typically correct for the way pictures look in this environment. However, with "One Gull," the values of the sky on top and the water of the lake are delicate; a little change too much either way either closes the picture down or opens it up too much. With many pictures I compromise, seeking an average, because, of course, I can't know how you're viewing the picture, or how anyone else is—you probably have a color-calibrated monitor, but a lot of people don't. Either way, I don't know if your workspace is brightly lit (in which case this picture will look too dark) or has subdued lighting.

In the dark
This was always an issue with darkroom printing as well. When galleries and museums used strong viewing lighting, it was usual to try to reproduce that light level, minus a little bit as a fudge factor, for controlled viewing lighting in the darkroom, where the prints were made. But now, museums, at least, have adopted dim, murky lighting as a cost-saving measure [UPDATE: this is wrong, it isn't done for cost saving] (which is truly cutting off the nose to spite the face, but I've already ranted about that several times elsewhere), so pictures printed for bright viewing light look terrible. The worst, most catastrophic exhibition lighting I ever saw was a Paul Strand show in Chicago; Paul printed strong, bold darks, with a tonal palette tilted toward the lower end, and under murky Sav-a-Buc lighting the shadow contrast vanished and the highlights** just looked depressed and gloomy. Put a bright light on the same print and it comes alive. (But you should not let a museum guard catch you using a flashlight to inspect a print, and please don't ask me how I know that.)

When viewing exhibitions of B&W prints from film in museums and galleries, I could often tell you what the printmaker's darkroom inspection lighting was like. If the print tones looked tepid and the darks were too elevated, pale and weak, it meant they were judging their prints under lighting that was too dim. If the prints were too dark and the shadow contrast clotted up, I knew that their darkroom printing light was overly strong. Personally, I usually tried for just the right intermediate balance; at one school darkroom, where I couldn't control the viewing lighting, I would wander around looking at the wet test print in a tray under different light levels: over by the window, in a shaded corner, under incandescent lights, under fluorescent light. Of course, after a while I had a firm grasp of what I wanted and I didn't have to do that.

Anyway, if you would like to see "One Gull" (here's the link again) as it probably should look, try turning the lights down or off in the room in which you have your computer, and see how that looks.

Prints and sales
The only way to really make sure the tones are right is for the artist, who gets to say, to lock them down in an immutable medium: the fine print. As you know if you've been following along, we're going to have a print sale of some of these monochrome prints soon; I've been through the JPEG review with the master printer who will be making the prints, and the set of guide prints will be shipped to me for review this week. This sale will follow the time-honored strategy I developed years ago, which has served us very well (and has been copied or adapted here and there around the Internet): we take pre-orders for a short period of time, close the order window, and only then make all the prints in one batch. This makes it efficient to produce the prints while also keeping the price-per-print quite low.

But the scale has changed over the years. TOP's audience has consolidated to a smaller group of more committed readers, and traditional photography in general is getting less popular and less "status-y" in the general culture, in this age of Instagram and Facebook, of color as the default, of phones as the most ubiquitous cameras, and of printmaking going the way of the dodo (how terrible to be the go-to metaphor for the utter annihilation of extinction! Poor dodo). We're never going to reach the heights of the go-go years of the 2010s again: we had one sale in which we sold well over 700 prints, and another that grossed over $130,000 (most of which went to the photographer). The conditions for that level of success have vanished.

So I'm thinking of a new method, one much more similar to the gallery model: making a very small, limited run of prints of my best B&W pictures from the Sigma fp(m), and offering only a handful for sale—but offering them more regularly and more often. Let's say we do it every Friday. On one Friday I might offer a custom 17x22" print of "One Gull" at $495, but limited to say, seven prints; and then the next Friday there would be another image offered. Miss one you like? No matter; keep an eye peeled for the next. Finally find one that really speaks to you? Jump on it. I could tailor the number of prints based on what I imagine the popularity of the image might be: for "Corn at the Harvest," which everybody seemed to like, I could have, say, 13 prints made, a large run; for "Little Girl with Alpaca," which is not the sort of picture most people would display on their walls, maybe only two. For images that don't sell out right away, they would simply remain available until they do.

I have no idea if that would appeal; the proof of the pudding is to eat it, and the only way to test this idea would be to try it. We'll see.

At least it's not an impulsive idea: I've been considering it for years.

Mike

*I looked for a current model, but it appears NEC doesn't really make one. They appear to have scaled back on color-correct monitors for photography; their representative suggested the NEC EA271U as being an appropriate replacement, but, although it has higher resolution, it has less color gamut. Specifically: the EA271U covers 73.6% of the Adobe RGB color space, 69.5% of NTSC, and 95.1% of sRGB, whereas my monitor, which "feature[d] enhanced color accuracy," covered 99.3% of Adobe RGB, 94.8% of NTSC, and 146.4% of the sRGB color space. So it's not really a replacement, which is why I'm not linking to it. The EA272F-BK-SV 27" comes with built-in Spectra-View calibration like mine did, but has a color gamut similar to the business model. I can't find an NEC monitor with the color accuracy of mine, although I—and the rep I talked to on the phone—might be just missing it.

Probably grist for a future post: current recommendable monitors for photographic work.

**"Shadows" is the term of art for the dark areas of B&W photographs and "highlights" is word for the light areas.

Jim Meeks: "I've worked in museums for 36 years now...it's not a cost cutting measure to exhibit works on paper in dim light! It is a means in which to preserve works for future generations. Works on paper (photos, prints, drawings, etc.) are sensitive to light and deteriorate when exposed to UV, bright light and even infrared. I've seen many, many examples where something has been on display for a long time and the paper turns brown, colors fade, etc. You might not like the light levels, but please stop saying museums are trying to save a buck on our light bills."

Mike replies: Nothing personal Jim, but why bother preserving works for future generations when nobody between then and now will be able to see them properly anyway? The reductio ad absurdam of this principle is to store everything locked away in darkness all the time. What good would that do? I'm a photographer. I was a printmaker. I want people to look at my work and to be able to see it the way it was intended to be seen.

Even the Niépce Heliograph is "Currently on View" at the Harry Ransom Center.

Sal Santamaura: "It's doubtful museums made that change to save on electric utility and lamping costs. LEDs rendered any potential savings minuscule. Rather, conservators' influence transcending that of curators is the likely culprit. As a result, institutions will prolong the life expectancy of prints that no one will be able to see as intended. Thereby ensuring fewer and fewer visitors will return, thus endangering museums' survival and putting the prints at greater risk than they would be from a few more lumens."

Keith B.: "NEC has given up on providing wide-gamut monitors after their merger with Sharp Corp. The current equivalent (through specs comparison) of your [now] old NEC PA272W is the EIZO ColorEdge CS2731. It is sold with calibration puck for about $1,350. If/when my NEC PA271 needs replacing, this is what I'll get."

Bear.: "I have the luck of doing two exhibitions in a row in the same gallery space—the second was significantly better than the first because I figured out that I should work backwards from the lighting to the prints. I'm planning a third for later 2023—which I have yet to shoot—so I will start my consideration of the process in camera. Ahh luxury...."

Jeff: "One of my favorite exhibits, at MOMA, in New York, in 1996, featured Roy DeCarava prints. Thank heaven that the curators ensured appropriately adequate lighting; otherwise I would have not been able to see the gloriously dark and rich tones. I’ve collected vintage silver/platinum prints, and printed my own work, since the '70s, and display lighting has always been a priority. Viewers often under-appreciate, or are completely unaware of, the importance of this issue. It can make the difference between what seems a mediocre picture/print, and one that 'sings.'"

Greg Boiarsky: "If museums are reducing lighting to preserve prints, they're doing both the prints and patrons a disservice. First, as you've noted in a response above, is the problem of preserving the art but not allowing the patrons to enjoy it. Second, the primary causes of print degradation are UV light and free-radical airborne chemicals. UV light can be controlled with filters or by using low-UV lighting sources. The free radicals can be controlled with air filters and other airborne pollution controls. Second is the fact that almost all modern photographic prints are created using pigments rather than dyes. Pigments are inherently more stable than dyes and require much less babying. Also, modern photos are usually printed on low-acid or acid-free papers.

Steve Rosenblum: "The incredibly dim lighting at museum photography exhibitions also drives me crazy. I so look forward to seeing actual prints instead of reproductions in books, and then I get there and it feels like I'm viewing the prints with my sunglasses on."

David: "At the co-op darkroom I used to belong to, there was a viewing board just outside the darkroom entrance. It was lit by an overhead spotlight which simulated gallery lighting. You placed the wet print, or test strips, on the white board to view the print or compare the tests. I am not sure how accurate the light source was in comparison to gallery lighting. But at least it was a consistent, even lighting. I do miss printing at that darkroom. The sink was large enough that you were sometimes processing with three other people, and there were often really good conversations (photo-based or otherwise)."

Joseph L. Kashi: "About the most egregious example of misguided lighting that I've seen occurred in a university gallery where the museum-grade medium intensity halogen lights had been replaced by a motley mixture of compact florescent bulbs and other mismatched lighting. It was explained to me that the faculty 'wanted to save the planet.' We did find some of the units 'liberated' by faculty but the gallery lighting was significantly degraded."

Kye Wood: "Prints in very limited numbers? No. Great prints beautifully printed in very limited numbers? Most definitely, yes. You'll have to lean on publishing positive feedback from your buyers, to help push prospective purchasers to commit. If running a software company taught me one thing above all else, it's the importance of perceived value. Your best most discerning customers are your priority. You share their aesthetic and speak their language."

Luke: "Re poorly lit visual displays: It's like a zoo with 'natural habitats' for the animals to hide in, so the paying public can't see them."

Adam R: "Dim lighting is the car bra of the museum world: By trying to preserve something so it looks good at some indeterminate point in the future, you succeed in making it look awful all the rest of the time."

Landscapes in Oz

Charles Conder, A holiday at Mentone, 1888

Not THAT Ross Cameron writes:

...As a PSA for those TOP readers living down under, especially in Melbourne, there’s an exhibition of Australian Impressionists at the NGV [National Gallery of Victoria]. Turns out COVID was a good time to take paintings off the wall and give them a clean. Disclaimer, I’m not employed by or affiliated with NGV in any way shape or form. I don’t even live in Melbourne (though I lived there for nine months about a decade ago for work).

As a landscape photographer, I find these works inspirational. I might even have to buy the book of the exhibition.  ;~)

Ross
(from a comment)

From this video, I found this nice quote from Guest Curator Anne Gray: "Friendship between artists is so, so important."

Australians will want to buy the book from the Museum, but if any Americans are interested it's available from Amazon, and for those elsewhere in the world, from The Book Depository.

"She-Oak and Sunlight" kicked off yesterday and runs through August 22. Thanks Ross! (And by the way, around here you are the Ross Cameron.)

Mike

P.S. A "she-oak" is "Any of various Australian trees in the genera Casuarina or Allocasuarina."

Book o' this Week:
Sugar is the silent nutritional crisis that is hiding in plain sight. The best book about it might be the prescient 1972 classic Pure, White and Deadly by the British scientist John Yudkin. Recommended. <—This is a portal to Amazon; also available at the Book Depository for global delivery with free shipping.

Original contents copyright 2021 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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Featured Comments from:

Bruce Hedge: "Hi Ross from here in Central Victoria—thanks for alerting me to the NGV's Australian Impressionists exhibition...just a quick note to say that the NGV's current 'Triennial' is simply sensational—I've been twice; but I must go again before it closes on April 18...it has a Steiglitz and a Weston (or Steichen?) in the small photography display as part. I'd never seen a genuine print before, and they were illuminating! Sorry to all of you in the rest of the world, but it has been a life-saver here. We are indeed fortunate to have such an extraordinary gallery here when we can't travel to the other great galleries around the world."

Irony of the Week

1932: Group ƒ/64 has its first group show at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. The public packs the house. The name of the loosely affiliated group of like-minded friends "refers to a small aperture setting on a large format camera, which secures great depth of field, rendering a photograph evenly sharp from foreground to background" (Wikipedia).

2021: Common cameraphones render almost all pictures "evenly sharp from foreground to background," so almost every digitographer on the World Wild Web with a larger-sensor camera shoots almost every picture wide open most of the time, regardless of the subject, with no thought to what ought to be in focus or not, presumably to signify he has a camera better than the ones in phones.

(A further irony: I'm the one poking fun.)

Mike

P.S. At that Group ƒ/64 show in 1932, everyone's prints cost $10 (about $190 now) except Edward Weston's, which cost $15 (about $285 now). seven or eight years ago, Matt Witkovsky, chair of the photography department at the Art Institute of Chicago, told me that "a good Weston" was going for about $800,000 at that time.

Product o' the Week:

A fantastically comfortable ergonomic mouse for PC users. Should be considered incompatible with Mac unless you want to use only default settings. Available in regular and small sizes, right and left hand, and wired and wireless. WARNING to Mac users: Do NOT download USBOverdrive! It broke my computer. But really, for you PC users, you won't believe how easy on your hand this mouse is.

The link above is a portal to Amazon, through which most anything you purchase will be credited to TOP. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

And here is a portal to...

Original contents copyright 2021 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:

Kenneth Tanaka: "Cute irony, indeed. The ultimate in democratic focus has arrived...on your telephone, no less! (As for me, I'm more often trying to get more depth of field into many of my images, not more bokeh!)

"Re: Weston prints, yes they're still pricey and I suspect that his most seminal prints approach the figure that Matt noted. But the market has cooled a bit and there seem to be more prints out there for sale, mostly for much less money. For example, one of his vintage dunes prints is currently on auction at Sotheby's with a top estimate of 'only' $150k."

John Krumm: "I guess the further irony is that those smartphones mostly do it with fixed-aperture, fast lenses, and they use computers to mimic larger sensor background blurring, while the larger-sensor cameras sometimes use computers to achieve focus stacking for good front-to-back focus. Like with this shot of the Golden Gate Bridge."

Mike replies: That's lovely. Is that yours?

John Krumm: "The photo of the bridge belongs to Cookdog, real name not known. I just happened upon it in an image thread in the Z forum. People were surprised to see an image of the bridge from a new perspective, since it is photographed so often."

Mike: I was too!

John Robison: "I believe that Golden Gate image really proves the point that the most important equipment for a photographer is between his ears. What a great shot."

David Aiken: "Another irony. In 1932 when photographers chased more depth of field, their problem was getting more depth of field because large format cameras required longer focal lengths. Now a lot of people are chasing less depth of field because of the shorter focal length lenses they use with smaller formats. Ansel Adams would be using a small format camera today, in order to get the depth of field he wanted. Why aren't the people chasing shallow depth of field today using large format cameras?"

Mike replies: It would certainly be the most logical way to get the most bokeh, eh?

Arg: "That link you provided for the ergonomic mouse—if you scroll down a bit, it says 'frequently bought together'...and lists the left-handed version!  :-)  "

Mike replies: That actually makes sense—it's because sometimes people who are battling RSI regularly switch mouse hands from left to right and back again.

Tommy Brown

Photographer Tommy Brown at his exhibition

Neil Swanson wrote in the Comments the other day:

Fifty years of shooting in formats from 35mm to 8x10, 22 years of making my living with a camera and what do I miss? Prints. I just don’t print or pay someone else to. It’s not a photo till it’s a print, and yet I’ve got no idea what to do with dozens of boxes of prints I did make and nobody ever sees. But I miss prints.

I know what Neil means. I realize it anew every time I get to see great photography in the form of great big beautiful prints.

The weekend before last I went to visit my old friends Scott and Marlene in their beautiful hilltop home in Manlius, a suburb (exurb?) of Syracuse. Together the three of us made the drive to Utica, New York, to see the Tommy Brown show at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica. Marlene and Tommy were friends in college at Colgate University in Hamilton; he later studied photography at Yale.

The exhibit consisted of dozens of prints, about the size you see above—some larger, some smaller—lining the four walls of a generously large oblong gallery space. Neat and clean, and eminently viewable even at the artist's lecture, which is what we were attending. There was a nice-sized crowd.

The show was primarily a pleasure to see, by which I mean good to look at. An odd thing to say, maybe, but the pleasure of seeing is something some curators forget or ignore these days. The show was curated by Mary Murray, whose title is Department Head, Curatorial and Exhibitions, and Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. She and her staff did an outstanding job.

The show amounted to a "themed retrospective," a phrase I don't think is actually a thing. What I mean is that the pictures all related to one theme—"Upstate," meaning they were all taken here in rural upstate New York—but were drawn from all periods of Tommy's life, from early B&W "street style" rural portraits of people taken on Tri-X, to a more social documentary style later on, and finally to quieter, more lyrical scenic views and details. So while it's only one area of Tommy Brown's shooting, you could trace clear demarcations in his evolution as a photographer and the changes in his visual style and subject-matter concerns. A nice window through which it was easy to sense a deep and longstanding involvement with the practice of making pictures.

Tommy Brown, Dead End, 2014

I liked it all, but personally I was fondest of the social documentary style pictures such as "Dead End" and "Joseph" (below).

Tommy himself is genial and warm, straightforward and unpretentious. He shoots all in one exposure, with 50mm lenses or the equivalent, gets the cropping right in the camera, and doesn't make his own prints. It's difficult to convey here the presence the prints have on the wall. As we know, most pictures are not printed these days, but prints like these would change anyone's mind. Given how beautiful inkjet prints from digital files can be, it's a shame we don't see more of them in the culture at large.

Curator Mary Murray (left) observing the gallery talk from the back of the room

I was pleased to find out that Tommy has been a TOP reader for some time. Which I guess is something I should have known, as he told me he emailed me some time back. I'm ashamed to say that thousands of faceless names pass by my eyes every year and I can't keep them all sorted in memory. They say as you get older your brain shrinks, so that's the excuse I'm going to go with. But it was very nice to get such a warm and friendly greeting from a "fan."

Tommy Brown, Joseph, in the gallery

I'm a fan of his right back. I've only lived Upstate for three years and a bit, but I could feel the place in Tommy's photos—its quiet beauty, the shabby and worn aspects of old things weathering through time, its quiet little corners, the casual quirkiness of some of the local denizens. Brown is a photographer who doesn't play tricks and doesn't mess with viewers' heads—he's just a gentle, compassionate, forthright observer of the deeper qualities of the places and people he's loved. It's not the height of fashion, but it's what I happen to want most from photography, for one. And it's enough. Especially presented like this, prints on the wall.

You can see more of his work at his website.

Scott and Marlene at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute

The exhibit is up till April 7th. Nothing is close to anything else Upstate, and nothing Upstate is close to all that many people, but hopefully this post has given you a little taste of the show. Big thanks to my friends Scott and Marlene for making the weekend possible. If I could get to a show this fine every weekend of my life, I'd do it. Always good to see friends, and prints.

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.

Want to help?

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Featured Comments from:

Michael Perini: "I love this post and I love Mr.Brown's work. I have been at this for a long time, and you are completely correct about how beautiful modern pigment inkjet prints can be. It is almost hard for me to believe that given the relative ease with which stunning prints can be made (good color prints have always been hard) that printing is declining. I've been using an Epson P5000 with the 10-color 11-ink HDX ink set, along with the Image Print RIP, and I am astonished at the relative ease with which it can print images that I struggled to print well on the Epson 4000. I tend to make two sizes of prints, most 6x9" for the pictures that look better small, and 16x24 for those that benefit from a larger print. Thanks."

Animesh Ray: "'Dead End,' 2014, is a wonderful photo—the glow off the slightly wet dead end street, the woman in wheelchair almost heading towards the glow, the blue overcast sky, and young woman separated from the other by a faint smartphone light—so very nostalgic and sad simultaneously. The print promises to be a classic."

Neil Swanson: "Since I made that comment I've been looking at printers. My Epson 2200 is gone. I like the P800 though do I really need a 17" wide printer? I do like the far larger ink cartridges than the P600 offers. I'm sure either printer would surpass what my 2200 did. Still, just looking even though there is another rebate going on the P800. I wish I were closer to Upstate NY. 'Dead End,' love that one."

Rod S.: "Re 'It's difficult to convey here the presence the prints have on the wall': Yes, it's easy to say, as we often do, that prints in a portfolio or on a wall 'are more real,' but it's hard to nail down why that makes them look better and more convincing than images on a screen.

"Here's a clue, I think. I've come to regret having spent twenty years shooting 35mm transparencies and being satisfied with projecting the slides onto a screen. I simply went along with the advice and advertising repeated in the big magazines.

"Those projected images were really wonderful; they were huge, bright and sharp. They were affective and became a very real part of my life. But, quietly, something bothered me. The images seemed to live only in inadequately short bursts. The visual spirit was momentarily freed from its containment, then, suddenly, abruptly, it was gone, stuffed back in the tiny slide, invisible.

"Digital images on an electronic screen are similar in this respect to 35mm images projected to a screen, with even less physical presence.

"My feelings for the physical presence of a real print as an artifact grew from going to exhibitions, something that my work locations had previously prevented. In more recent years, photographing architecture with 4x5 cameras and having my photographs printed and exhibited has totally changed my practice and understanding of photography. My second exhibition finished at a local gallery here in Sydney just two nights ago. Having the 30 photographs printed onto heavy cotton art paper was a thrill.

"So, as a foreigner, it's very interesting to see a glimpse of someone else's exhibition from so far away, and the marvelous way it is being presented. Congratulations, Tommy."

Museum Tricks

Many (even most) photographic prints look best displayed under strong or generous lighting. It makes them technically better: brightness makes prints more vivid, improves their contrast, and makes colors richer and details easier to see. And not only is it more comfortable to look at well-lit objects, but bright light actually makes viewers' eyes "better," by making our pupils contract (like using a smaller aperture on a lens). Not for nothing is dim light associated with eyestrain and described by words like "murky," "flat," and "muted." Just look out your window in sunlight compared to the same scene at dusk and you'll see.

Yet in recent years, conservation concerns have encouraged museums to exhibit photographs in conditions dim enough to cause frustration among viewers. When seeing famous prints in the half-dark you might well wonder what the fuss is about them.

Here are a few ideas for displaying prints in museums with proper (strong) lighting:

• Cover each print with an opaque cloth curtain, with enough room on the top of the frame to get the cloth out of the way temporarily without making the viewer have to hold it up manually. One downside: you can't be "attracted" to pictures from far away and encounter them gradually as you approach them, which I like to do in museums. Also, not very practical for larger prints.

• With the ambient light low, allow viewers to press a button that would turn on a brighter light temporarily (sixty seconds, say), illuminating one art object at a time. Downside: doesn't help much in very crowded exhibits, where the bright lights might be on more or less continuously. Also, a room in which brighter lights were going on and off randomly here and there might not be conducive to contemplation of the artwork or to the general feeling of peacefulness and quietude that many people have come to expect in museums. (A reader suggested this but I haven't been able to locate where. Sorry not to give credit.)

• Conservation science solutions, like Ken T. mentioned. I'm not up on these, but surely advances in types of lighting coupled with types of protection could mitigate all or most of the damage potential of display light. We made it to the moon—maybe the challenge of optimally lighting a piece of paper in a room is similarly not beyond human ingenuity, science, and technology, and aspiration.

• Exhibitions of shorter duration. Downside: although it's variable, generally a great deal of time and effort goes into the preparation of shows, and keeping shows up for a reasonable amount of time both eases the burden of production and (theoretically at least) allows more people to get to the show and see it.

Here are a few more iconoclastic ideas:

• For contemporary acquisitions of new work, ask artists to provide two or more prints, one for exhibition and one for conservation. Downside: almost certainly not practical for exhibitions of work of mixed origin, since it would be unlikely that every work the curator wished to include would be available in this format. But it might work for acquisitions of works by single artists. Another downside is that it doubles the storage requirement for prints, and some museums are already pressed for adequate storage facilities.

• Develop a system whereby the "original" is mapped carefully and kept in informational (digital) form, and printed only temporarily for display. A big advantage is that it would make artworks accessible to more exhibitors, even simultaneously. Downside: removes the "aura" of an original art object that has a physical connection to the maker, and that ages in real time from the date of its creation.

• Separate the artifact from the experience, as John C. suggested. Display originals under subdued light and also carefully made copies under bright light. Downside: occupies up to twice as much gallery space. A solution to the downside just mentioned could be to only display a selection of originals, not every piece in the exhibit. That would give viewers both a reference and experience of the numinous presence of some of the original objects, while not requiring that very fragile pieces—or the originals of pieces on loan—be exposed to display conditions to their detriment. This would also allow curators to pick and choose the best or most instructive originals with which to augment the larger "experiential" exhibition.

(I personally like this solution best, for photographic prints at least. It's rather ironic that art world simultaneously insists that the idea of a work of art is most of what's important about it, while at the same time insisting on the primacy of the original artifact. A mix would suit me, as long as I had something to calibrate to. It's better than letting my experience of the artwork suffer because I wasn't allowed to see it as it was meant to be seen.)

• Display of digital originals on monitors. I haven't read up on this recently, but years ago I read that Bill and Melinda Gates have a system like this in "Xanadu 2.0," their 66,000-square-foot mansion in Medina, Washington. Downside: would you travel to see such an exhibit? Not sure I'd bother. Granted, it might be nicer than seeing something on your home monitor, but it seems to lack a sense of...occasion. Or something.

The middle way
The concept of reductio ad absurdum ("reduction to absurdity" or the appeal to extremes) can help us here. The extremes would be, on the one hand, to display art in such a way that the viewer's experience was optimized even if it wantonly damaged the artifact, and the other extreme would be to entomb the object permanently in conditions ideal for its longevity and never let a photon fall on it or anyone ever look at it under any circumstances. The first is somewhere on the scale between irresponsibility and vandalism, and the second is pointless and futile. So the "middle way" would be to take reasonable measures to protect and preserve the object, but also accept that slow deterioration and eventual decay are integral to the weakness that objects, like flesh, are heir to; that all things must one day pass.

The way I feel is that to take a print that was made to be displayed under bright light and ruin peoples' experience of it in order to enhance its longevity is inherently absurd. Prints aren't magic fetishes that work in the dark. Why preserve something meant to be enjoyed if it can never be enjoyed?

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.

Here’s the situation

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tex andrews: "So, I can speak to this a bit, since both my wife and I work in museums. My wife works as both a curator and a registrar (very unusual in the west), and I work in exhibitions doing the hanging and handling. We both work closely with conservators.

"One thing to understand is that a lot of this is institutionally driven, with overarching best practices coming from different groups like the AAM (American Alliance of Museums) and the various art conservation organizations, and, in the case of the Smithsonian, the governing body itself over all of the different museums in the Smithsonian system. Understand also that Collection Management departments, which may include conservation departments under them, are looking at ultimate preservation and protection. And then there is the moving target of advances in the field that drive new best practices.

"But I completely agree with you, Mike, and it's not just photographs suffering, either. With paintings not much can be done, but often the difference between the object being brightly lit (and probably how the first viewer, the artist, saw it) and the much dimmer museum lighting is stark.

"For photographs, however, exhibition copies can often be made, at least for contemporary work, and we do that—it's often an understanding reached with the artists/owners/galleries. But I am afraid there will be no solution for historical prints, if you want to see the original.

"Here's a great moment to reach out to a guest writer in the field to comment with an essay that you would run here, or an interview."

Rob Campbell: "You might want to take a second look at the idea that bright lighting is invariably the way to go. I remember being drawn to a set of photographs on the wall of a darkish restaurant; the low light gave a sense of depth to the prints, so much so that I left my seat to go and have a closer look. They were fashion shots, made by the son of the restaurateurs. The restaurant was in Mallorca, the owners English and the photos made in Manhattan. I think the restaurateurs and the restaurant are long gone, but I bet the prints are doing very nicely, thank you.

"On my own walls I have some prints with which I am very familiar, seeing them both in daylight and lowish electric light at night. In the lower illumination they take on a richer tonality. In both cases the images are black and white, mine off my late HP B9180, and the Manhattan ones wet prints. Yes, there is a critical level beyond which things get lost, but sometimes that helps accentuate the more important story they tell, and inject a little intrigue, mystery if you like."

MHMG: "One thing that amazes me about many museum exhibits is that the chosen gallery lighting design fails to make use of well known visual adaptation tricks which help humans see paintings, prints, and drawings better under low light levels. These tricks include:

1.) Setting the main gallery ambient room illumination to an even lower level than the print illumination ( e.g., 10 lux which is dim but enough for people to navigate easily in the space)

2.) Choosing lights with high CRI and optimal color temperature which is about 3500K for best color discrimination at typical museum illumination goals (e.g. 50 lux at the print surface)

3.) Painting the gallery walls a darker shade of gray rather than leaving it white or off-white.

4.) Spot lighting each print with focused lighting systems (e.g., projection lenses with masks and/or 'barn door' shades, etc.) that raises the print illumination to about 50–100 lux while maintaining the lower ambient levels on the surrounding walls, ceilings, floors and other surfaces in the room.

"Items 3 and 4 both trigger what color scientists call lateral adaptation in the human visual system. Darker surrounds thus help to lift the tonal values in a reflection print such that it appears brighter and with more tonal separation overall. Also note: lateral adaptation effects play an important role in getting a proper screen to print match using a color managed workflow."

Jim Meeks: "I've worked in museums for over 30 years and the one I'm at now has seen a reduction of staff nearing 50% in the last 10 years due to state budget cuts. Many of the suggestions are not practical from the standpoint of cost or manpower at ours and likely many institutions. We have been able to implement LED lighting in our galleries which benefits us and the works on display. LED emits little to no UV and IR, but you still need to consider the brightness of light shining on the item and the duration it will be display as that can still cause damage such as fading. UV glass or acrylic can also help and appropriate archival materials to house the item. One of the suggestions mentioned is something we are currently doing, which is making high-res scans of photos, documents and other works on paper and displaying those. The photos are typically enlarged and printed to a high quality on an Epson printer. I do like the idea of displaying an original along with a copy and may make that suggestion for a future exhibit."

Jim H.: "Mike, I bet you will get a chuckle out of my first reaction—this argument reminds me of the debate on whether vintage sports cars should be preserved and displayed or maintained and raced! However, I'm not a art conservationist but I do deal in light—fiber optics. When we went to the opening exhibition of the Annenberg Space for Photography, the first person I met was their lighting expert. His job was to create lighting of the right intensity and color to maximize the viewing of photographs. And it showed. But they do seem to create their own prints for every exhibition so the aim is viewing now.

"The Getty Museum photo exhibitions are often of period prints and the lighting is much less successful. Prints are often behind glass and reflections are problematic. Lighting is often very low and they do use shrouds sometimes.

"But about ten or fifteen years ago many museums started using more fiber optic lighting especially for small artifacts that are sensitive to light. Fiber optic lighting is cold—the source of the light is remote—and filtering can remove harmful UV (ultraviolet) and IR (infrared) light. However it might be problematic to get adequate illumination using fiber—it's better for small areas. LEDs are now being widely used for lighting, are highly efficient (more light than heat) and can be chosen to have a spectral output tuned to the human eye, correct LED choice and filtering can again remove harmful UV and IR light.

"We spend a lot of time at galleries and I must say the lighting is generally terrible. High intensity halogen lights are most common—they are black body radiators, creating tons of IR— ~85% of their output is IR—that's what does the heating— and only 1% is UV. I would think that a properly designed gallery could offer better viewing. White walls and light colored floor and ceiling. Use LEDs, have ambient light bright enough that spotlighting is minimized. Maybe if museums and galleries spent a few bucks on researching lighting...."

Ernie Van Veen: "I had two experiences that tried to address this problem recently. In a Chinese museum, with calligraphy artefacts nearly 2,000 years old, they used motion detection to turn on the brighter LED lighting inside the cabinets to allow a proper view. Also, recently in the National Library of Australia, a large exhibition of photographs by Peter Dombrovskis was printed entirely from digitised materials. (In fact, my wife was part of the team that performed the digitisation of the Dombrovskis collection of thousands of negatives.) This was a great method, and the exhibition was generously lit, but unfortunately, the curators decided to place these temporary photographs in frames under glass and then shine the lighting from exactly the right position to create a reflection on most of the works. Perhaps they were secretly recording a time lapse of the funny 'dances' people were performing as they squatted and twisted to see the photographs."

Andrew Molitor: "Museums have a somewhat unhealthy obsession with originals. They view their mission as acquiring, conserving, and from time to time letting people look at, original objects. John Berger in the 1960s ('50s?) was advocating the use of good quality reproductions in museums, as well as a host of other good ideas which would have recast the role of museums to align with what civilians think the role is: letting people look at these objects."

Julian: "In the maritime museum in Amsterdam, they have a collection of old maps that work on the 'allow viewers to press a button that would turn on a brighter light temporarily' system. This worked well in a space that was not busy."

K4kafka: "When I visited the Van Gogh Museum In Amsterdam in 1973 there was a room dedicated to his small sketches and ink drawings. When I returned in 2017, that display was gone. I was told the 100+ -year-old drawings were too fragile for public display,and were being preserved, locked away for private viewing by scholars."

Doug Thacker: "I recall seeing none other than Nelson Rockefeller on a talk show sometime in the late '70s. The reason he was on this show was to talk about a device he'd discovered, or maybe had developed, that could replicate an artwork to such a high degree of exactitude that it would be necessary to label it as a copy lest it be mistaken for the original. [I recall that too —MJ] He thought this device would enable everyone to afford great artworks and have them in their home, not just the wealthy, and he seemed to be really enthused. Not too much later, though, he died, and I don't recall ever hearing another word about it. Fast forward forty years. I still don't know what this technology was that he was so excited about, but by now it seems like something we should be able to do. So maybe that's the answer. Make a kind of 3D scan and display that.

"Apropos the topic, a number of years ago I printed a number of photos for a show and had them custom framed. It cost me a bloody fortune, way more than I could afford, but I wanted them shown right. A period of several weeks had passed between the printing and the framing. Once hung, I had carte blanche to light them as I preferred using halogen track lighting. I flooded the wall with light, and then fixed on each frame as many spot lights as I could. The result was brilliant! I'd never seen color prints look so vibrant. Why doesn't everybody do this? I wondered. But before too long, the glass in front of the prints started clouding up. It took some time to figure out what the problem was: the intense lighting was causing the prints to outgas, totally ruining my show (and my expensive framing job). That was when I found out: as light giveth, so it taketh away. "

Henk: "I was at the 2013 exhibition of Nick Brandt's 'Across the ravaged land' in the Young gallery in Brussels. Large prints, behind reflecting glass and small spotlights on them that reflected in the glass. A waste of my money and of the two-hour travel to Brussels. Later I bought the book On This Earth, A Shadow Falls. Pricey for my budget but now I can see what the prints should have looked like."

Speed: "The Cleveland Museum of Art has 6,031 photographs in its collection. Forty-three are on display. I would be happy to see high quality reproduction prints. Better than none."

Kenneth Tanaka: "as someone pretty close to being one of the villainous and anonymous 'powers that be' at one museum I would like to add just a few notes in the spirit of the post.

"Covering prints with curtains: It’s been tried and is sometimes done with non-photographic objects. But it’s really a pain to maintain and guard daily. In some relatively rare circumstances in a low-traffic show it can make sense. But generally, no, it’s not practical.

"Displaying facsimiles: That is sometimes done. There are, for example, certain types of 19th-century prints that are so fugitive that exposure to full normal room light would completely erase them in a relatively short time. The only way they can be shown is by using a reproduction. But for less sensitive prints it wouldn’t be deemed acceptable, for obvious reasons.

"Traffic modulation of lighting: Not practical for single pieces in a show, especially in higher-traffic museums. The gallery would look like a disco. Traffic modulation of lighting is, however, not uncommon in museums (of all types) with cavernous galleries that see little traffic. Some of the galleries at the Field Museum of Chicago are perfect examples.

Exhibitions of shorter duration: That is already standard practice for certain types of objects (or types of photos). The duration of most exhibitions is primarily dictated by factors outside of conservation. But it is not uncommon for certain objects (prints, in this case) to require early replacement in a long show due to light exposure budgets. It’s even more common for substitutions to be made between segments of a multi-city show.

"Fun Facts (to Know and tell):

"Sarah Wagner, a senior photograph conservator at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. prepared a handy brief reference, Guidelines for Exhibition Light Levels for Photographic Materials.

"The Philadelphia Museum of Art has a nice overview page titled What effect does exposure to light have on a museum’s collections? outlining the key topics and measures the PMA takes.

"Once again, the Art Institute of Chicago currently has a full-blown exhibition on Conserving Photographs, in Gallery 10 until late April. It is extremely rare for a museum to have such a show, particularly one curated by a true luminary and leader in the field of photo conservation (Sylvie Pénichon).

"Finally, I think it’s important to come to terms with a few closing points: 1.) The primary mission of all major museums is to preserve their collections. Mike asked, earlier, who are museums saving this stuff for? The answer: indefinite future generations. 2.) Nearly all photographic prints fade. This is especially true of chemically produced photographic prints. Keeping them in cool total darkness merely slows the deterioration. Generally speaking, their longevity decreases by the length of time they are exposed to light, so ten days of very bright exposure might produce the equivalent of a year of much lower exposure. 3.) If you still cannot accept the compromise of seeing some photographic prints in dim light, then books might, indeed, be a better choice for you."

Mike replies: Thanks Ken. I might take issue with your characterization of "the primary mission" of museums—preserving collections is the business of archives, I'd say. Museums must perforce be archives in part, but their mission is much more dynamic. As I said, the reductio ad absurdum helps us here: taken to a logical conclusion, the mission of preserving artifacts for "indefinite future generations" would mandate never taking many items out of cold dark storage for any reason and never letting anyone look at them. I would merely ask, if that were paramount, then what would pay for the archiving functions of the institution? Never mind admissions fees, do you think public and private donations would continue to flow for "museums" that never held any exhibits or displays of any kind and never gave scholars access to anything? It hardly seems reasonable to characterize exhibition, education, and study as only secondary goals, when giving the public and scholars at least limited access to the institution's holdings is what keeps the whole ship afloat.

I think this establishes that what is necessary is a balance, and that is indeed how all museums operate, by finding a balance between sensible use and sensible preservation. The arguments are only in the details.

Joel Bartlett: "Sometimes the best place to see prints is not at a museum. In January, my wife and I visited Photography West in Carmel, CA and viewed a brightly-lit gallery of Ansel Adams prints. These were prints that were a gift from Adams to an assistant over a period of 20 years, They had never been exhibited and had been stored in perfect condition. I have seen Adams's work at SF MOMA and a number of West Coast galleries. This exhibit blew them away! Bright light and immaculate prints. This was like a 'barn find' in perfect condition would be for car fans. Wow!

"Keep looking at museums, dealers, auctions, etc. and you may be lucky enough to see something like this. Look for the Donohue Collection at this link for background."

Frank Gorga: "I just read an article in today's New York Times about a newly rediscovered painting by Rembrandt. Apropos to your post, this article contains the following passage, referring to the author's viewing of some of Rembrandt's paintings: 'When I was working on my book about the history of Amsterdam, Six invited me here and conducted a remarkable little demonstration. He turned off the lights and lit candles, and in an instant the paintings were transformed. They took on new energy; the golds and reds and flesh tones became warmer. The flicker of the flames seemed to breathe life into the two-dimensional figures. Six’s eyes gleamed as he saw that I had registered the point: These paintings were made for candlelight.' Interesting!"

Mike replies: Indeed. It does emphasize something very important, which is that the creators of work for display can adjust them for the lighting they'll be seen under, and, sometimes, that is an integral part of the art. Since my background was in custom printing, that's more or less where I'm coming from myself.

Thanks to all the commenters on this topic!

Yousuf Karsh (It Helps to Have a Mission)

Yousuf Karsh, Self Portrait [with 8x10 negative in holder], 1954

Yesterday I journeyed to Corning to the Rockwell Museum with my friend Geoff Wittig. He's a primary care physician from nearby* Dansville and, despite being busy at his job, he's very interested in, and engaged with, art—a longtime landscape photographer, he took up plein air landscape painting four years ago. We went to see a small show of photographs by the late "Karsh of Ottawa," midcentury portraitist extraordinaire. 

The Museum is really nice and the little gallery where rotating exhibits are shown is really nice, except for one little glitch, namely, the automated sliding entrance doors. Whenever you stand looking at one of the pictures hung next to either of the doors, the door unhelpfully slides open and shut, open and shut, again and again, like a demented servant demanding to be of assistance, until you move on. Like those "motion activated" paper towel dispensers in public restrooms that never quite work right, this strikes me as one of those problems that were formerly solved but that we have un-solved. Really, it is not necessary to motorize every single thing. A manual door with a handle on it would have been sufficient, and familiar.

One big advantage of never having engaged with a particular artist: it means there are still new works of his or hers for you to discover. I saw several new Karshes in this show that I had never seen before—one of Helen Keller, and a particularly nice print of his picture of Russel Wright. Some of the new-to-me ones I liked better than the big hits, although Karsh's celebrated portrait of Georgia O'Keeffe is a masterpiece, enjoyable online or in reproduction but considerably better in the original. The gallery lighting was sufficient, if barely—the darks in the prints were somewhat too dark and could have used a few more lumens of light. Some prints don't come fully alive until you have enough light shining on them, and Karsh would have been printing for more generous lighting conditions.

All the placards were about the subjects. I learned that "Jacqueline Bouvier was working as an 'inquiring camera girl' for the Washington Times-Herald when she began dating Congressman John F. Kennedy in 1952." There was very little on offer (well, that I managed to find) about the show itself, which originated at the National Portrait Gallery and features prints that were given to the NPG by Karsh's wife Estrellita after his death at age 93 in 2002. The show was curated by Ann Shumard, who has been the National Portrait Gallery’s senior curator of photographs since 2001. I reached out to Ann to find out a little more about how she curated the show, but her answering machine says she's out of the office until Monday. Seeing as I myself have been out of the office recently, I can't complain. If I do hear from her, I'll post an update.

In the main informational wall bloc about Karsh, it relates that he apprenticed in Boston to photographer John H. Garo, and that by the time he returned to Canada, he had "set his heart on photographing those men and women who leave their mark on the world." Well. That's a mission statement, right there. It helps to have a mission.

A rewarding day. I enjoy Geoff's company a lot, and it was good to get out of my usual routine, and it is always a pleasure to look at prints.

Mike
(Thanks to Geoff)

*Nothing is nearby anything here in Upstate. What I mean is that Dansville isn't really far away, only far away.

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Here’s the situation

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John W: "Many years ago while I was still living in Ottawa I worked for a company named Ginn Photographic, the largest camera store in Ottawa. I had the pleasure and honour of meeting and serving Mr. Karsh on a couple of occasions; he was a close friend of the Ginn family. He was a small (5'4"), dapper man who looked more like a very successful banker than a photographer and was unfailingly gracious and polite. What a pleasure....

"Yet we probably saw more of his lesser-known younger brother Malak's work. Malak Karsh was an award winning landscape, commercial and illustrative photographer who also frequented Ginn Photographic. Both are national treasures of Canada and the photographic world."

Earl Dunbar: "In 1974 I spent a few nights in Ottawa between Christmas and New Year's day. My colleagues and I stayed at Chateau Laurier, next to Parliament. In the lobby were Karsh originals and wow, I was blown away. This was before I seriously took up photography, so those prints served as a seminal event and inspiration to plunge into the art and craft. Unrelated but seared into my brain was watching the CBC news television broadcast of the death of Jack Benny on Boxing Day. I also had my first ever bowl of French onion soup in the restaurant frequented by members of Parliament, Ottawa mandarins, and others in the political class who were, of course, not in town. It still feels surreal."

Wolfgang Lonien: "Am I the only one who finds the English term 'print' to be a bit lacking? It doesn't make any difference if you develop an original onto photographic paper in the darkroom, dodge and burn old style with your hands or other helpers, and then really develop it in chemicals—compared to what simply comes out of a printer, and what can be reproduced at the press of a button. I really think there should be different words for it, as the results are so hugely different—especially in black and white—that 'print' simply doesn't give it justice (and makes it hard for a potential buyer of art to distinguish between the two, except of course that you will see it). Sorry about my short 'rant.' In German we would say Photoabzug or Ausbelichtung instead of Druck (print). Only the latter would come out of a printer. But no dictionary I've found makes any difference in (British or American) English."

Mike replies: And "print" further conflates with what comes off a printing press, as in the phrase "in print." Photographic terminology has always bugged me—there are lots of small awkwardnesses and oddities and even a few outright misnomers.

Regarding what you're talking about, I would say we usually distinguish in English by adding words—the first type of print you speak of, and what I was looking at in the exhibit, would usually be called "silver gelatin prints," the latter kind "inkjet prints" which then might get a further descriptor such as "pigment" or "dye" perhaps. And that's just the tip of the iceberg—there are a great many kinds of prints.

But of course those additional descriptors usually get dropped in repeated mentions and casual speech.

William Furniss: "I had a similar experience (the work not the doors) at the Sally Mann exhibit at the Getty Centre in Los Angeles 10 days ago. I had no idea she had done so much work beyond photographing her family, to point it is a shame she is so well known for that work. Her pictures of battlefields are amazing and her tintypes in person are really special; anyone in the Los Angeles area should go."

Benjamin Marks: "Just out of interest, Mike, were there any of Karsh's photographs that showed evidence of retouching with pencil? I saw an exhibit of Karsh's work in Montreal (I think), and the pictures I saw were retouched in this way. I don't know whether it was because the photographs were intended for reproduction or whether they were work prints, but I was impressed with his desire to do what was necessary to get the shot 'right' for its intended purpose, whatever it was. Karsh's pictures, or many of them anyway, are the pictures that come to mind when I think of the subjects. His 'Winston Churchill' is like that."

Mike replies: The only picture I thought looked retouched was his picture of FDR, who was standing—knowing FDR could not stand unassisted, it's easy to see him hanging on to the fellow next to him, and other things about the print seemed a bit off to me, although I couldn't tell you exactly how. It's exotic to think, now, that FDR's disability was kept mostly hidden from the public.

Photo by Robert Demachy (imitation of sanguine [red chalk] drawing)

Retouching was quite common with large negatives (it's far easier to retouch a large negative than a small one), especially among portraitists. If you've ever read Edward Weston's Daybooks, he frequently grouses bitterly about the demands of his retouching tasks on his time. You can't help but feel this influenced his later artistic principles. Of course the pictorialists took it quite a bit further—photographers such as Robert Demachy created images that were meant to appear to be drawings, and partly were.

Kenneth Tanaka: "Good outing. Karsh’s portraits are polarizing among the photographic appreciation crowd. Many find them fascinating and engaging while many others find them phony and excessively theatrical, reflecting more of the photographer than his sitters. To the extent I think of them at all I am mostly of the former group, although the latter group makes a valid point.

"Some years back David Travis, the long-time former chair of the Department of Photography at the Art Institute of Chicago, curated a wonderful exhibition of Karsh’s work at the AIC. During the show Jerry Fielder, Karsh’s longtime assistant, visited to give a very memorable and revealing talk about Karsh’s practices and quirks. It was my introduction to Karsh, and a delightful one at that.

"The catalog from the show was excellent but is no longer in print, although it's available in the secondary market: Regarding Heroes. Interestingly, David Travis’ associated work, Karsh: Beyond the Camera is available in a Kindle edition (as well as paperback). It’s largely composed of Jerry Fielder’s tape transcripts of Karsh's recollections and is guaranteed to be worth the tiny cost for anyone who likes Karsh’s work or who’s interested in the history of celebrities."

Addendum and P.S.

...I'll tell you what, if I ever do that Kickstarter and build that "Visitor Center" here*, I'll include at least one "Always-a-Frame, Never-a-TV" (thanks, robert e) Samsung Frame TV and have a rotating display of horizontally-oriented pictures on it. That would be cool, amongst the rest of the display. (To make it environmentally friendlier, it could be turned off except when visitors are present.)

Mike

*This is a plot I've been fomenting for some time now, to build a small outbuilding for my pool table, which is sadly now in storage. The garage-sized building would double as a photographic display space so visitors to TOP could have something to see other than my ratty self. I envision the two long walls would be for hanging pictures, the short solid wall would be for all my photobooks, and the short wall with the door in it would feature a display case for cool cameras and neat photo-related gewgaws of every description. I have a number of such items stored away already, a little seed-box of the dream. And of course the pool table, well-lit, would be a great table for spreading visitors' prints out on. I'm planning on...middle-gray cloth, of course.  :-)

Simonis 860 Grey

P.S. I'm just talkin', never mind me.

P.P.S. Boy, the people who hate cars and pool are not going to be happy with me this week.

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

TOP/Yale Spring Photo Book Offer
(Ends June 30th or when supplies run out)

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Peter Foiles: "I am pretty sure when I was checking the details of The Frame TV that it has a motion sensor so that it turns itself off if there is nobody around."

Manuel: "The only hate I'll bear will be if you start raving about 8-ball pool tables instead of Snooker ones. It only takes watching Ronnie O'Sullivan play—at least when he's inspired—for all other types of billiards to become irrelevant. Now tell us your feelings about that Fiata....

Mike replies: Yes, I've become a rabid snooker fan of late. It's a much better game than any pool game—subtle, with distinct phases, requiring different skills, and endlessly varied in the ways the frames play out. And requiring great skill. I'm astonished at some of the things those players can do with position.

Snooker is very much like baseball is to aficionados—a game of fractions and great subtleties. There is always much more going on on a baseball field—and behind it, in the stats, scoring, and strategy—than meets the untutored eye. British people like to scorn baseball because they entertain themselves by disdaining all American sports, but the irony is that baseball would suit the British temperament wonderfully if they only would bother to understand it. But then, you have to grow up with it (and play it while you're young) to truly understand it, I'm told.

Pool is an indoor, miniaturized substitute for golf; snooker is an indoor, miniaturized substitute for baseball.

As for the Fiata (you knew I couldn't resist answering this, didn't you?), I approve of both the Fiata and the Miata RF, because other people will prefer them and the more the merrier, but I don't need either one—the regular mainstream version of the regular manually-operated ragtop would still be my preference.

John: "The new outbuilding sounds good. Except for the pool table. Tables, cushy chairs, and lamps for a reading space would be much better. And how about soliciting self-published photo books? The Center for Creative Photography had an exhibit like that and it was wonderful. Hey, you would sell the pool table to fund all this. :-) "

Mike replies: An outstanding idea, about the library section for self-published books by others. I would love to do that. Consider it adopted as part of the plan.

Cushy chairs and even a couch are do-able even with the pool table—all that is needed is a few feet around the table for standing and clearance for the end of the cue, so furniture below the level of the pool table-top does not interfere with playing, as long as it is not too close to the table. A couch might interfere with the viewing of prints on the walls, so maybe reading chairs in the corners would be the extent of it. And I would probably locate the reading light in the ceiling to reduce clutter.

Awesome and Brilliant Samsung The Frame TV

Samsung photo

Hang it just like a picture, in your choice of mouldings.

This is awesome. Actually in this case the British translation of that word might well be more appropriate: brilliant!

Here's an idea that makes so much sense I hope it becomes standard, or at least widespread: A 55" screen that mimics the look of framed artwork, which switches between displaying your high-res photographs digitally or converting to a regular TV.

You can pick the look of the frame, limited to a few choices. The kind of people who would buy a real frame from Target and display the dummy picture it comes with can choose from stock art, which of course Samsung hopes to sell to you, but why would we want to do that? The point of the product for us would be to display our own work when The Frame is in "art mode" rather than "TV mode." No wires [UPDATE: except for power; DD-B and others suggest a "clock outlet," which is recessed in the wall. —Ed.]

It's wireless, and you can choose different "matting" and layout options.

Here's a link to the Samsung page for The Frame TV; here it is at Amazon. I didn't find it at Amazon UK, although it's no doubt coming (the product is brand new as yet). There's also a 65" version for $800 more.

Another of my unpedigreed ideas
A while back, I conceptualized a sort of contemporary photography museum which would consist of physical spaces across the country, each hung with 40 to 80 viewing screens. Identical curated digital shows of a photographer's work would be shown at all of the galleries simultaneously. The shows could even rotate with a morning and afternoon exhibit, or even more frequently. An admission fee would be charged from which the artist would be paid. I have no idea if it could be a financially viable idea from a venture capital standpoint, but surely there are worse things that are done with grant funds and endowments for the arts and so forth.

You could even virtually attend the show with a friend, keeping a line open between you as you look at exactly the same artworks in different cities.

Something like these Frame TVs would be perfect for that idea.

Awesome and brilliant if you ask me.

Mike
(Thanks to Speed)

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

TOP/Yale Spring Photo Book Offer
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Featured Comments from:

emptyspaces: "I saw these at CES, when Samsung was calling them 'Lifestyle TVs' (good thing they changed that!) They're really cool, and very impressive how they create the matte board effect. Samsung has a new fiber-optic connection that, while not invisible, is pretty close. I'm guessing you get an electrician to install a recessed wall outlet in order to complete the effect, because it still needs to be plugged in. They were pretty sweet, but I did not get to see them work as TVs, only in the art mode. The well-heeled could sprinkle these around a house just to work as enormous picture frames."

Kurt Triebe: "Our TV gets used more frequently as a 'picture frame' than as a TV. It doesn't have some traditional 'frame' but it's mounted on the wall just like art would be, and all of the wires are hidden, just like this. We've got a screensaver on it set up (we don't have cable/satellite, so the TV is driven by a dedicated HTPC) to just rotate through a folder of images. It starts after a minute of inactivity, and we've populated the folder with hundreds of images of our family members, so that our kids (four and two) regularly see the faces of their grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles, etc., and know vividly who each of them is, even though we don't have a chance to see them in person too frequently. The screen is a gorgeous 70" 4k display that you can easily see from anywhere in the main living areas of our home. It stays on most of the day, even though we may only watch an hour of actual TV on it. Works great."

Sophia: "I dunno, but I think you are captured by the advertising more than the reality. There will be wires in real life (read the fine print) and what about screen burn-in, heat generation, and cost of having the monitor on all day? All the other clutter associated with TVs (speakers, devices, etc.)? Plus you can already do this with Apple TV or whatever devices you probably already have. It's just the advertising that is brilliant—who wouldn't want such a nice soothing living space?"

Speed: "Bill Gates' house...you can change the artwork on the walls with just the touch of a button. $80,000 worth of computer screens are situated around the house. Anyone can make the screens display their favorite paintings or photographs, which are stored on storage devices worth $150,000. So for the price of a good lens, we can all live a little bit like Bill Gates."

psu: "Reminds me of Clay Bavor's post "A Canvas Made of Pixels." The iMac 5K screen is smaller, but better, than most TVs."

Peter Croft: "I had this idea myself a few years ago—buy a good computer monitor and hang it like a picture on the wall. Make slide shows of your pictures, changing very slowly (maybe every half hour?) with a frame of any kind as part of the image. The slide shows are self running on an SD card or USB stick. Change your show any time you've had enough.

"The one problem, which applies especially to this Samsung, is vertically oriented images. Many of my best ones are verticals. Perhaps have two or more screens, some for horizontals and some for verticals.

"Did I actually do it? Nah. But the cost is coming down all the time, sizes are going up and so is quality. One o' these days, Norton, one o' these days."

Hugh Edwards: Unknown Icon

Written by Kenneth Tanaka

The history of photography, much like any other history, is anchored by its share of icons. Cartier-Bresson. Frank. Avedon. Penn. Arbus. Kertesz. Et al.

But for each one of these (sometimes over-celebrated) figures there are many other equally influential but largely unknown figures. Hugh Edwards would be exhibit A in that thesis. Although he is known within photo museum curatorial circles chances are that you’ve never heard of him.

Unlike today's art curators Hugh Edwards didn't percolate through the world of art academia. Quite the contrary, in fact. He was from Paducah, Kentucky and held only a high school diploma. But everyone who knew Hugh Edwards reported that he was among the most literate people they had ever met. Although he had deep and lifelong interests in American, English and French literature, he had many varied interests and knowledge pools, including photography, which he both appreciated and practiced.

In 1959, after 30 years at the Art Institute of Chicago, Hugh Edwards became the museum's first curator of photography. By his retirement 20 years later he had acquired nearly 3,000 objects, largely seeding the Museum's relatively new photography collection and sculpting its early form. He had also curated almost 80 exhibitions, generally preferring monographic shows at a time when thematic group shows were more the norm in photography. Perhaps most significantly, Edwards’s efforts and personal relationships provided early support for a remarkable number of future "icons." He was, for example, the first curator to give Robert Frank a solo American museum show.

Hugh Edwards never really received the commemoration he deserved. But that's now been well-remedied thanks to the dynamic young photography curator Elizabeth Siegel (here's Liz) and a team of researchers. Their months-long efforts have produced a web module that meticulously documents Edwards's fingerprints on the museum's photography collection and, of wider public interest, on the general field of photography.

Also, if you're planning to visit the Art Institute of Chicago this summer you'll want to catch a huge exhibition, also curated by Liz Siegel, titled "The Photographer's Curator: Hugh Edwards at the Art Institute of Chicago," which is running now through October 29, 2017. And, touchingly, a separate unique pop-up exhibition titled "Robert Frank: Photos" is up through August 20. This exhibit was designed and personally installed by the book publisher Gerhard Steidl, who also delivered this year's third annual Hugh Edwards Lecture at the museum.

I think most TOP readers will enjoy learning more about Hugh Edwards and browsing through this new web module. He was truly one of the most influential guys in photography ya probably never heard of, until now.

Ken

P.S. By the way, in case you're wondering about that portrait of Mr. Edwards on the website, reproduced above, it was made by Dave Heath in 1964, shortly after he left the Institute of Design for New York. Yes, that Dave Heath. Dave and Hugh met at the I.D. and Hugh gave Dave his first show some time between 1965 and '67.

©2017 by Kenneth Tanaka, all rights reserved

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Featured Comments from:

Steve Rosenblum: "This is pretty funny. While in Chicago for a medical conference late last week I visited the AIC and spent all of my time at the 'The Photographer's Curator: Hugh Edwards at the Art Institute of Chicago' and the Robert Frank exhibits. I was so impressed by the Edwards exhibit that I started writing an article about it to post on TOP, but then thought, 'Nah! Ken Tanaka would be a much better person to write this. I should ask him to do it....' And, here it is before I could even ask him!

"I will say this: the Edwards exhibit is the finest and most comprehensive exhibition of photographic prints that I have ever seen. No question. If you have ever wanted to learn about photographic prints 'in the flesh' instead of in a book or on a computer screen, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to do that. It is hard to convey just how incredible this exhibition is. There are (my guess) over a hundred vintage prints spread over four or more rooms—all beautifully printed, framed, and presented. Most of the giants of photography spanning the time period between the mid-1800's (Brady and Atget) through the mid-20th century are well represented. Some of the photographers that were championed by Edwards have entire walls of photographs displayed: Robert Frank (I estimate 10 photos from The Americans), Walker Evans, Lewis Hines, W. Eugene Smith, Lee Friedlander, Danny Lyons, Ansel Adams, have walls. Dozens of other photographers have prints there including Cartier-Bresson, Harry Callahan, David Vestal, Duane Michals, Jan Saudek, Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, Bruce Davidson, Ray Metzker, and many more.

"Importantly for me, there were amazing prints from a number of photographers that I did not know, and I busily scribbled down their names so that I could find more of their work. For me, this exhibit is literally a 'Greatest Hits' of photographic prints—a tour de force.

"Unfortunately, I didn't discover it until I was on my way out of town and short on time, but I plan to return and spend a day or two with these prints. My recommendation: If you are on the same continent, beg, borrow, or steal, but find a way to see this exhibit! It's truly a once in a lifetime opportunity. Truly amazing. Kudos to the AIC!"

A Gem of a GEM

Volunteer docent and photo-history expert Jim Ulrich next to the Museum's lunar module camera in the History of Photography Gallery at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York

I had a red-letter weekend this past weekend. I had a date on Saturday (I felt a bit like Mrs. Hughes in "Downton Abbey": "I'm astonished that at my age..."), which was a lot of fun. I drove to Rochester—her backyard—and we went to the George Eastman Museum (GEM)—a little patch of my territory. She knew her way around Rochester but not the Museum, and I knew my way around the Museum but not Rochester. So we complemented each other in that regard like Jack Spratt and his missus.

The GEM cannot quite decide what its name should be. I grew up with it as "The George Eastman House," or GEH, which is how I still think of it. I can't parse its naming history for you, but at some point its full name was "George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film."

The genteel facade facing East Avenue in Rochester might make you think it's some sort of quaint decaying house museum with just a bunch of some dead guy's random old things lying about. Don't be fooled. The sprawling mansion comprises a whopping 35,000 square feet and contains vast underground vaults and a 500-seat theater (which shows classic movies among other things). And even that facade is a fooler. It's (appropriately) in the Georgian Revival style, designed by the famous architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, but George E. was more than a bit of a nut—the whole mansion is constructed like a massive bunker, with walls of 14-inch-thick reinforced concrete. Even the roof is thick concrete underneath its demure shingles. Altogether, including George's eccentric renovations, the house cost more to build than the magnificent main building of the National Gallery on the Mall in Washington D.C.

And of course the photography collection is one of the world's best, with more than 14,000 photographers represented and numberless treasures. I think our tourguide said there are more than 450,000 pieces in the collection (films, photographs, objects, and ephemera), although with my innumeracy affliction you should please take that figure as provisional.

Pilgrimage
We were looking at the strange documentary work of objects by Robert Cumming, which is full of humor and at the same time emotionally barren, an odd combination (and not particularly date-friendly), when we were buttonholed by an affable docent named Jim Ulrich who was doing a sweep of the galleries rounding up people for his lecture on the history of photography. In the history gallery they were showing examples of Mexican photography, and Jim warmed to the Daguerreian era, which was fun. I will say that the GEM does a better job than any museum I know of showing equipment along with photographs—the cameras in the little history of photography room were awesome. Just the lineup of Leica rangefinders from first to latest was probably worth well into six figures, if not seven.

Later we met up with Jim again in the house, and he regaled us with more stories and even played the massive pipe organ for us. The pipe organ that serenaded George for an hour as he ate breakfast every morning was destroyed by fire in 1949, but the current replacement is the largest residential pipe organ in the world. Surround-sound, too!

George Eastman's famous suicide note under glass in the children's
classroom that used to be his bedroom. "To my friends /
my work is done / why wait? / GE."

Can anyone recommend a good biography of George Eastman? I get more curious about him every time I visit the GEM.

Long story short, the GEM is a gem, and worthy of a pilgrimage at some point in your life. Come in the temperate months when you can see the gardens and grounds, and check that the show on view at the time you'll come is something you want to see. It's a lot more than just an old mansion—it's a major photography museum on par with the best in the world.

As if that weren't good enough for one weekend, on Sunday an old college buddy from Dartmouth was in the area with his wife and several members of his far-flung, charming, sociable family—Scott was definitely one of the cool kids in school—and they invited me to join them for dinner at one of the best winery restaurants in the area, called Veraisons. We had a great time.

Despite all the activities on my date on Saturday, I do have to say that the best part of it was sitting in the near-deserted café for an hour and a half, just the two of us, chatting.

Oh, and one more thing—Jim Ulrich told me that "ordinary people"—that would be me—can request to view original prints from the GEM vaults, to look at up close and personal with white gloves on, just like I used to do all the time at the Library of Congress.

So if you never hear from me again, now you know the reason.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

Make a date
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Huw Morgan: "I would heartily second your opinion. GEM is a gem. For people who can afford it, I would recommend taking one of the excellent courses at the museum. Not only will you learn a new skill, but you'll also get to spend three days hanging around in the museum soaking up the atmosphere."

Mark Hobson: George Eastman: A Biography by Elizabeth Brayer—a magnificent, painstakingly researched book—702 pages—about a very interesting man. It is an absolute must read."

Bryce Lee: "All too many years ago was able to spend at day at the GEM. That was over 50 years ago; suspect it is no less impressive now. Mind it's not every residence that has a 'proper' non-digital pipe organ in-house...."

Speed: "Innumerate or not, you were in the ballpark.... 'The photography collection at the George Eastman Museum, among the oldest and best in the world, comprises more than 400,000 photographic objects dating from the introduction of the medium in 1839 through to the present day. It encompasses works made in all major photographic processes, from daguerreotype to digital, includes work by more than eight thousand photographers, and continues to expand.' From the Museum's website."

'On & In New York'

Leonard Freed, Wall Street, New York City, 1956.

Magnum Photos has opened a newly curated show of early Magnum photographs at the National Arts Club, a private club on Gramercy Park in New York City. Many of the prints are for sale at reasonable prices.

A signed print of Dennis Stock's James Dean in New York City, 1955,
is the most expensive print in the show, at $9,500.

There are classic prints by Eve Arnold, Dennis Stock, Erich Hartmann, Elliott Erwitt, Bruce Davidson, Inge Morath, Leonard Freed, Cornell Capa, and others. The show notices quote Magnum photographer Bruce Davidson on the show's subject, the city: "New York is a state of mind. It’s about vitality and taking chances and the surprise. It’s vibrant, sexy, beautiful, ugly, and depressing."

George Rodger, The Empire State Building observation deck
on the 86th floor, New York City, 1950.

The article at the Magnum website shows a number of the photographs and you can see the prints for sale online.

The National Arts Club is open to the public from 10 to 5 weekdays. There is no charge for admission.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

Jolly good show
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The Alfred Stieglitz Collection at the AIC

Reviewed by Kenneth Tanaka

As anyone who has studied any art or photography history probably knows, Alfred Stieglitz was perhaps the most prominent early figure in getting photography admitted into the world of art. As a somewhat elitist, self-anointed connoisseur and relentless promoter of photography (and other modernist works) Stieglitz became point-man for the medium in the influential American East coast art world.

What you may not know about Stieglitz is that he also became a major art collector. By his death in 1946 he and his wife, the renowned American artist Georgia O’Keeffe, had amassed a collection of photographs, paintings, and sculptures so large that no single public institution could absorb its totality. It was left to O’Keefe to organize and allocate segments of the collection to various public and academic museums throughout America. In 1949, as one of 13 institutions to receive collection allocations, the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) acquired over 400 works from the collection, 244 of which were photographs (159 by Stieglitz). It was a transformative event for the museum’s then-budding photography collection. Many of these pieces have since been among the museum’s most viewed and exhibited photographs.

Fast forward to 2016. Thanks to grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation, the AIC’s Department of Photography was able to undertake a very ambitious project to fully digitize the 244 photographic works in the museum’s Stieglitz Collection. This was a far more extensive effort than simply putting images onto a website. In addition to full conservation analysis reports, each object’s research would be updated and centralized along with condition reports. The end result of this work was to be not only extensive object documentation on this collection but also an organized, easily-approachable presentation of this information freely available to the general public anywhere in the world.

And that’s exactly what the project team delivered. Recto and verso views of each object, mounted and unmounted, are just the start. Full conservation analysis reports, object research, exhibition histories and cross-references with other collections are presented for each object. It was a stunningly successful deep digitization project, among the best that any art museum has ever produced. A tremendous resource that serves scholars as well as high school paper-writers and hobbyists.

I think most TOP readers will find the AIC’s new Stieglitz Collection module an interesting place for any of three reasons. First, it documents some of the most significant works of photography’s early modern history. Second, it’s interesting to see what Stieglitz collected beyond his own stuff. Third, and most importantly, the module gives the public a glimpse at what museums really do. The world’s great museums are actually bastions of scholarly research, only necessarily dressed as showrooms. Deep in their bowels, behind and below the galleries, are armies of rarely-seen curators, conservators, educators, etc. devoted to preserving and plumbing the mysteries of their collections. So the depth and breadth of object information shown in this module is not really extraordinary for a museum to have. What is extraordinary is to see it so neatly gathered and exposed to the general public. Even as museums gradually open some of their collections for free viewing on the Internet, such depth of presentation is, and may remain, relatively rare.

So make a pot of coffee on a cold, wet afternoon and explore the Alfred Steiglitz Collection of Photographs at the Art Institute of Chicago!

Ken

©2017 by Kenneth Tanaka, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2017 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.

Mike adds: This might shed a little light on how that collection got to be so large. Here's Georgia O'Keefe talking about Alfred Stieglitz, transcribed from the 1977 PBS documentary "Georgia O'Keefe." Remember, as you read this—Stieglitz was an art dealer! Makes me laugh.

Miss O'Keefe: I was interested in what he did and he was interested in what I did. Very interested. So much that his favorite word was ‘no’ as I told you before.

Interviewer: To whom?

To anyone who wanted anything.

Oh really?

Oh, certainly. He didn’t want people to have anything. He wanted to keep it all. He liked it and he didn’t want to sell it.

But didn’t he try to sell the…the paintings…

He never tried to sell a painting. He tried to keep people from buying. And if I had had any particular feeling about money we would have been fighting all the time, but I didn’t care. He’d come home and tell me how somebody came in and wanted a particular painting and he didn’t let them have it. And this would go on, maybe, till, along in April, and I’d say, ‘well, Alfred, you know it’d be nice if I made my living this year’ [laughs].

Well he liked what I did like I liked what he did. That’s how we got along at all.

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Featured Comments from:

Peter Wright: "It's certainly a wonderful collection, and the AIC is to be commended for making it available in this way. One thing in particular that struck me in looking through these pictures was how very different my response was to each of them. The city pictures like 'Terminal' and 'Steerage' have a major resonance for me, likewise most of the portraits, but the tree pictures and the clouds leave me pretty cold. It is interesting (for me) to reflect on why that is and what it means for any work I might do. As always, art tells us much about ourselves if we let it."

Jack: "OMG. This is a treasure trove. Now I'll get nothing done for the next six months. Thanks a lot! No, I really mean it—thanks. A lot."

Blue, Teddy Jack, Tina Rose, Sugaree, Honey and Coco

Record company promo photo of Leon Russell
from 1980, when he had short hair.

I know I should title my posts with words more likely to be searched. It's the business I'm in. But I couldn't resist this post's title. Those are the names of Leon Russell's children.

The man could write.

Leon, a piano player, died a week ago last Sunday. His resumé includes a dazzling list of accomplishments, yet he never really did become a household name. He played piano on the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and on Sinatra records; he put together and led the band Mad Dogs and Englishmen for Joe Cocker; his album Carney reached #2 on the album charts; he was at George Harrison's "Concert for Bangladesh" in New York City, where he shook up the proceedings with a rollicking medley of the Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and the Coasters' doo-wop classic "Young Blood," complete with revival-tent-style vocal interludes; he wrote jazz guitarist George Benson's biggest hit; and he collaborated with Elton John and also Willie Nelson. He started his own record label, Shelter Records, which released Bob Marley's first song outside of Jamaica. Leon both played for an immense number of other artists and bands and also wrote many songs that were hits for himself and many others. But he didn't relish the spotlight, and such fame as he achieved slipped quietly away. Gradually, Leon settled back into semi-obscurity—maybe better called "semi-fame"—remembered mainly by old hippies and (no question) other musicians.

Not apocryphal: he actually did get his start playing piano in honky-tonks. The first guy to hire him was Jerry Lee Lewis. He wrote a song for Ray Charles that won a Grammy. He played on a Monkees album; he played on an Aretha Franklin album. He wrote a hit for Karen Carpenter. Eric Clapton, three Rolling Stones and two Beatles were guest performers on his first album. He played on "Strangers in the Night" and also "Monster Mash." Read one of the longer obituaries; it was quite an astonishing career, never quite at the center but never far from the center of a tumultuous era in American and international music.

I was trying to remember where I'd heard about Leon recently, and then I remembered it was because of one of the last musicians Leon collaborated with, Elton John—who has always been famous and has never been forgotten. Elton was one of those other musicians who never forgot Leon. He aided and abetted Leon getting inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a few years back. It was a nice thing Elton did for Leon—returned a long-ago favor and helped him get a little late-in-life appreciation. Leon was grateful.

R.I.P., Leon, and respects to Blue, Teddy Jack, Tina Rose, Sugaree, Honey, and Coco, and all of Leon Russell's family and friends.

Switch gears
Segue to Elton. Soon after Elton John got sober, for some reason he got lit up by a passion for photography. Since then, he's gone from knowing virtually nothing about photography to being one of the world's major collectors. Now there's to be a major show drawn from that collection at the Tate Modern in London.

Most of us don't live in London (I'm jealous if you do), but you can take a virtual tour of Elton's photography collection via YouTube:

I had a brief flirtation with Elton John's music when I was young due to a marvelous song called "Bennie and the Jets" that my little brother and I both liked (I still do). Then I sorta didn't like him for a long time because he was kinda poppy and I got turned off by his Liberace-style stage persona (never quite grokked the whole thing with all the wacky eyeglasses). But that was a very nice thing he did for Leon. And then—well, anybody who collects photography and actually hangs it so he can live with it? Our kinda guy.

I've come around. Elton's a good guy.

The show is called "The Radical Eye: Modernist Photography from the Sir Elton John Collection." See it if you can.

Mike
(Thanks to several readers)

Original contents copyright 2016 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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Doug Thacker: "I remember seeing an interview with Leon Russell where he talked about how he got his start, his first break. As a young man he was living somewhere in the deep south and working at a convenience store, when one day none other than Richard Penniman—AKA Little Richard—came into the store. I don't remember exactly what happened next, or if indeed he ever said—and a cursory search doesn't turn up the story—but I do remember Leon saying that it was Little Richard who told him how talented he was, and who encouraged him to pursue a career in music. In later years, of course, Leon penned and performed a musical tribute to Little Richard called 'Crystal Closet Queen.'

"I was living in Ohio during the height of Leon's popularity. He was huge, with an almost fanatical following. Many of these followers, at least in Ohio, were self-styled rednecks, proud of their southern roots when they had them, and pretending to have them when they didn't. In their eyes Leon Russell could do no wrong.

"But then, at the apex of his popularity, Leon Russell did something no one expected. He married Mary McCreary, a black woman, and released Wedding Album, featuring the two of them together on the cover. 'I always said if I ever met someone who was a better musician than me, I'd marry her, and that's what I did.'

"I recall hearing many of his suddenly former fans react with great hostility to this. Among these fans Leon Russell went from redneck golden boy to persona non grata, in one fell swoop. His new album got little airplay.

"In the year following Wedding Album, Leon released 'Leon and Mary Russell Make Love to the Music,' with an equally defiant album cover. By this time his career was really on a downer and it never recovered. He released a number of albums after this, but none of them did well and Leon Russell faded into obscurity—until rescued from it late in life by Elton John.

"In the America of the 1970s, such a public interracial union as Leon and Mary had was a brave and defiant thing, and a powerful political statement. There's no doubt he knew what it would mean for his career and he didn't care, he did it anyway. I've always admired Leon Russell for this, and don't think he gets enough credit for it. His convictions and defiance were as strong as his music."

Mike replies: I had kinda forgotten about that, although I knew Mary was black. Maybe we should all go see that new movie, "Loving," as a way to honor Leon's memory.

PhotoDes: "I went to high school with Leon Russell (Russell Bridges) along with David Gates (Bread) in Tulsa in the late '50s. They played together for student functions and dances on many occasions and recorded a couple of 45s, I think locally, on small labels—Perspective and Robbins. The Perspective hit was 'Pretty Baby' and David was the vocalist, though at the time he used the name Ronnie Franklin (with the Vibes). The other was 'Lovin' at Night' with David Gates and the Accents. Russell played piano for both. We all bought their records and cheered them on, but I was surprised when they both headed to the West Coast after graduation and frankly didn't expect to hear a lot from either of them. I think it was in the '70s when I was told that Leon Russell, who I never recognized on the album I had (wearing what you call 'short hair,' was Russell Bridges. At first I thought 'hometown boy made good,' but I discovered several of his songs on other singers' albums I owned and realized that would be short-changing him. He was a genuine and unique talent."

Mike replies: What a great comment! Thanks for letting us hear from you.

'Fishermen and Kings' (Olive Edis)

Photo courtesy Norfolk Museums Service (Cromer Museum)

Self-portrait by Olive Edis, c. 1912

Oh, for Pete's sake—I've forgotten Olive Edis!

Olive was the instigation for the British-themed post yesterday. And then what did I go and do but leave her out altogether. I'd say I'm getting absent-minded, but I've always been absent-minded. I'm just getting more absent-minded. (One of my takeaways from the otherwise overwhelming The Thing About Life is that One Day You'll Be Dead by David Shields, a book about aging, is that as we get older, we tend to get better at the things we were always good at and worse at the things we were always bad at. Which means I ought to be a superhero as a lover by now, and yet...oh, never mind.)

Anyway. The excellent Olive Edis (later Edis-Galsworthy), who was a discovery for me, is in the middle of a show called "Fishermen and Kings" at the Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery, in Norwich, a city in East Anglia, an area rich in photographic history. "Although relatively unknown," says a posting at the Heritage Lottery Fund, "Olive Edis was one of the most important photographers of the first half of the 20th century and the first accredited female war photographer. Edis also used portraiture to record the lives of influential women of the time to demonstrate the changing role of women in society." There are 190 of her photographs on display in Norwich, taken between 1900 and 1955.

Here's another self-portrait—taken for a tour, she's wearing the badge of the National War Museum to signify her status as an official war photographer.

There's more (much more) here.

Mike
(What's worse, I can't recall who sent me this tip—thanks, whoever it was. UPDATE: It was Andrew Lamb, who sent me the link to this article at the Times Literary Supplement. Thanks Andrew!)

ADDENDUM:

Mrs. Einstein and Albert were leaving the house for a dinner. Before they got in the car, Albert turns to his wife and says, "Do I look all right?"

"Albert," says Mrs. Einstein, "your socks don't match. Go back in the house and put on matching socks."

Albert is gone for ten minutes, too long a time, and when he returns he is wearing one sock.

"Albert, you got distracted and forgot what you were doing, didn't you? You were to put on matching socks."

"Oh, yes, I remember," says Albert, and disappears into the house again.

This time he is gone even longer, and when he returns he is wearing no socks at all.

"Albert! We're going to be late! Go back in the house and put on socks!"

This time he is not gone very long, but when he returns, he is again wearing socks that don't match. "I've forgotten what I went in there for," he says, "But I noticed I'd neglected to put on socks. Have I forgotten anything else?" he asks.

"You look fine, dear," says Mrs. Einstein. "Get in the car."

Best joke I know about absentmindedness.

Original contents copyright 2016 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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David Miller: "thank you for the introduction to Olive Edis. Wow! (And other inarticulate exclamations of amazement.) Let's see—with the money I'm going to save because these images have wiped out my desire to buy new flash equipment, could I get a cheap flight to Norwich before the exhibition closes?"

Andy Crouch: "It's a great exhibition in my home town of Norwich, England. The exhibition is in the Norman Keep of the Castle in the centre of our 'fine city.' The Castle has had many great exhibitions, e.g. Jeff Koons, and a permanent display of Norfolk Artists. If you're over give the Castle a look! N.B. I haven't received any money for saying this!"

Big Words and Sports Fans

It might surprise you to learn that most "big" (little-known) words aren't big. The least-known words (fylfot, gossypol, absquatulate, obloquy) are on average only one letter longer than common words known to most English speakers. Many five-syllable words (university, humiliation, electricity, vocabulary) are well known to most people who are fluent. "Incomprehensibilities" and "uncopyrightable" are long words, but not hard ones. But very few English speakers can define "fetial" on the fly.

Another oddity: writers don't tend to have big vocabularies. They're typically only on the middle to middling-high side. The reason is plain once you know it: if you use words your audience doesn't know, you have failed to communicate. This is especially true when the main word in any given sentence, the one that needs to do the most work, is little-known—which is a pet peeve of mine and something I try to avoid when I play with words. For instance, "The professionals are blessed and cursed with being hierophants of our cult." Hierophants—smarty-pants—huh? The sentence is meaningless unless you happen to know that "hierophant" is a word derived from Greek that means "a person who brings religious congregants into the presence of that which is deemed holy."

That's a sentence by Peter Schjeldahl, writing in The New Yorker about an important show of sports photography at the Brooklyn [NY, USA] Museum called "Who Shot Sports: A Photographic History, 1843 to the Present," curated by Gail Buckland.

The show begins with the earliest known sports photograph [the article begins]: a calotype, from 1843, by the pioneering Scottish team of David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, of a gent who holds a badminton racket across his smartly clad body in an oddly worrying manner, as if it were a weapon. We get that his pastime is glamorously serious and seriously glamorous. (Peter Schjeldahl)

It's the second review at this link; you'll have to scroll down past the first one.

Exceptionally high vocabularies are impediments to communication. Despite having a rather fat vocabulary myself (I test well...a little too well to be a writer, actually), I tripped over the following sentence by Schjeldahl: talking about Neil Leifer's famous photo of Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston, he says, "But it lacks neither that nor the dramatic irony of Liston's collapse: in effect, prostration to a demiurge of history on the turn." Prostration to a demiurge of history on the turn? I read that three times; sort of get it now, although let's just say I hope there's not going to be a test on that.

The New Yorker has a bit of a problem with this. In the same (July 25th) issue, Hua Hsu's article "Pale Fire: Is whiteness a privilege or a plight?" is finely written and subtly argued, but I suspect I know actual college graduates who would give up on its language before reaching the end of its two and a half pages. It begins, according to the standard New Yorker template, with a specific, concrete event firmly planted in place and time, and then (also typically) shifts to more abstract thoughts, the watery course marked by buoys of book citations and other marker events, help doled out to earnest swimmers who need something to hang on to now and then.

Harold Ross, the founding editor of The New Yorker, considered his somewhat unschooled ignorance to be an asset: he was always getting after his writers to say things more clearly, under the premise that if he didn't get it, lots of his readers wouldn't get it either. He understood the peril of big words, in other words. Hua Hsu's graduate-level language might have slid past, but I'm pretty sure those two single sentences I cited of Schjeldahl's wouldn't have survived the Ross Test.

Here's another review of the "Who Shot Sports" show: "Treating Sports Photographers as the Artists They Are."

If you can't make the show, there's also a book, featuring nearly 300 outstanding or historically important photographs by 165 photographers. Author/curator Gail Buckland is former curator of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain and former Olympus Visiting Professor of the History of Photography at Cooper Union in New York City. Here's the UK link and here it is at the Book Depository. Sports, as you've got to admit even if you don't like sports, is one of photography's great subjects.

And isn't it cool to know what the first sports photograph was? I didn't know that before today.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2016 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: "One of the biggest problems I have teaching university writing courses is convincing some of my students that fancy words and convoluted constructions don't make them sound more important; they just interfere with communication. The best example I can think of—and one that I always use in class—comes from one of my own long-ago high school English courses. After our teacher told us to revise our stories and make them more descriptive, my friend John, writing about a disappointing hike to the top of a mountain, only to find, in his original version, that 'it was so foggy up there that I couldn't see anything at all,' revised his piece to read, 'The evanescent tendrils of moisture obfuscated my optic organs.'"

Tom Burke: "I read this post and then, just for the hell of it, read Lewis Carroll's 'Jabberwocky' (for the first time for several years). Not only did Carroll not care whether people knew his words or not, he made sure they didn't by making some of them up! He obviously did a good job, because several of them (chortle; galumphing; and possible burble as applied to speech) have since made it into the language. In fact, on reading 'Jabberwocky' the meaning is perfectly clear, it's just individual words that are opaque, and somehow they don't obstruct the meaning. An extraordinary achievement."

Mike replies: One of the great things about the whole literary enterprise is that most readers can read at a level well above what they could write. That goes for vocabulary too—I'm convinced I learned the meaning of lots and lots of words just through context...encountering them in texts and getting a sense for what they probably meant given how they were being used. (I still occasionally come across a word I thought I knew from contextual encounters but that I had wrong. "Erstwhile" was the most recent one I remember: I thought it meant "earnest," but it doesn't, it means "in the past"—"erstwhile lovers" are not earnest lovers, but former lovers.)

That we can read above our comprehension level and yet somehow still comprehend is one of the felicitous features of written language.

Jim Richardson: "Besides being so very thankful that sports photography has hereby gotten the artistic honor it so richly deserves, it's just so good to see so many names of hard-working photographers included, most of whom simply labored to do a good job so that their images might effortlessly convey a moment of truth. Not quite so with the quote from Schjeldahl who seems to labor mightily (but fruitlessly) to say what is meant. We might start with the simple difference that every writer should know: the difference between lie and lay. Prostration is when someone lies down in front of a superior power. Sonny Liston did not willingly lie down. He was laid low."

Christopher Mark Perez: "Perhaps it comes from years of reading philosophy, technical and scientific papers, but I find The New Yorker to be a great read. I enjoyed the two articles Mike mentioned. I wish I could write like that."

Mike replies: I find it a great read too—I often find the articles too short—although I find the writing increasingly formulaic under Remnick. The occasional article by a stylist makes the contrast more clear and points out that most of the writers no longer display much individual style.

Random Excellence: Two Color Photographers

Two discoveries that come to us via readers over the last couple of posts:

By _xST on Instagram (real name Shawn Theodore), who does street portraits. He shoots in a highly distinctive style yet finds an impressive and and lively range of creativity and inventiveness within that style. The pictures all look like they're his, and like they belong together, but there's little "sameyness."

It looks to me like _xST blends cooperative pictures in which people model for him with true "found" street photography, meaning the subjects don't know they're being photographed. Not sure of that. In any case, beautiful work and an exciting find.

 

By Chris Dorley-Brown, who has a light touch with both color and tone, via Lenscratch. Chris, who is well established as a photographer, was one of the winners of Lenscratch's "Foreign Exchange" contest, on exhibit until April 30th at 2731 Prospect Contemporary Art in Cleveland, Ohio. Scroll down at the link for a full explanation of what Chris's work is all about, and to see a selection. Well worth the look.

Chris posted in the thread, which was nice of him. As far as color is concerned he says he's made an effort to portray the "thin watery feel" of London light. Very different from the light on the street in _xST's work.

Two color photographers who are very different from each other but are both the real deal, I think. Both new and welcome discoveries for me.

Mike
(Thanks to John Krumm and Michael)

Original contents copyright 2016 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.

Give us a Likes, preciousssss*: the main reason TOP exists is because people use our links when they buy stuff (no matter how insignificant) from Amazon, Amazon UK, and B&H Photo.

*Hobbit reference.  —Gandalf

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Eric Perlberg: "Having walked and photographed in many of the same East London locations as Chris Dorley-Brown I was blown away by his ability to create and/or capture a magical lighting that for me transforms his photos from good to special. I'm not sure how much of this is down to in-camera settings or how much is down to the compositing techniques he talks about in his interview here, nor do I know if I care. I haven't yet thought it through but while I found the NYTimes photos of Cuba you linked to the other day rather clichéd and Flickerised I find Chris's work transcendent. One of my definitions of important photography (important to me of course) is that I can only stand to look at a certain number of images before I'd rather go out and shoot to see how I can incorporate something of the magic into my own work. I wish I didn't have things to do today because I'm itching to get my camera out, lace up my trainers and start walking."

Dflanaganphoto: "I've been following _xST since I listened to his interview with Ibarionex Perello on the excellent The Candid Frame podcast. Here's a direct link to that episode."

Please Tell Me If This Is Crazy

It's my birthday today. My brother is wrong—I am not older than dirt. Technically, at least, dirt is older than me. I am older than the Hills, though—my friends Scott and Catherine, who are somewhere around a decade younger than I am. Bah-dum-pah.

Being older is good in some ways—the average 60-year-old knows four times as much as the average 20-year-old, for instance—but not good in other ways. Cell regeneration is not working as well as it once did, and there are signs that said cellular decrepitude is affecting the gray matter as well. Notably "proper noun aphasia." But then, I never could remember names. A book on aging I read once said that, mentally, as you age, most of the things you were always good at you'll get better at, and most of the things you were always bad at will get worse. That seems to be playing out with me—except I could not be a worse cook, so that's just staying the same. (The problem there is not the will to chop and dice. The problem is a lack of imagination. I am a grateful audience for good food, but get somewhat lost when put in charge.)

Anyway, I've just turned 59. But I hardly look a day over 58. (Things like that are why Xander hates my jokes.)

Curiously, three weeks ago I was 54, and about four months ago I was 42. That's what it seems like, anyway. Young humans, hearken: do not your years waste; there are fewer of them than it at first seems, and they roar past like a freshet after rain.

My current pet project
So I need you to tell me if this is a crazy idea.

I have a big spread of yard here. There's lots of room. Over in Himrod, near Seneca Lake, there's a company called Woodtex. They built the prefab barn on my property, a two-and-a-half car, two story garage. It's well built. Turns out that Woodtex, which is owned by Mennonite brothers Ben and Kent Lapp, will build any structure you ask for. So I had them write me an estimate for a one-car, one-story garage-style building. It would by 16x20' more or less, and have one door and—this is important—no windows. The ceiling inside would be 9' high to accommodate lighting.

The structure would cost just about $9k. An insulated slab would run another three. Interior finishing I have not priced yet. I haven't priced electrical work either. It would not be plumbed. I'm going to guess the whole thing will cost less than 20 grand, all in.

Inside (here comes the fun part), there'd be a permanent exhibit of photographs. With such limited space, I wouldn't be able to "afford" the stark, modernist museum-style display of prints with large mats surrounded by open space. Rather, I'd cheerfully embrace the 19th-century salon style of jam-packing the walls with all the frames I could jigsaw-piece together.

Samuel Morse, Gallery of the Louvre, 1833

It wouldn't be an art exhibit exactly. Rather, it would be an exhibit of pictures and artifacts of special interest to photography enthusiasts in some way, shape, or form. Examples of different printmaking methods, for instance; portraits of photographers; an antique printing frame with a whole-plate negative in it. There would be some objects. Wouldn't there have to be an electronic exhibit? That could show thousands of JPEGs, including some gathered from readers. And there'd be a story behind everything. I have lots of interesting things—a platinum print by Spiros Polemis showing Walden Pond from the original location of Henry David Thoreau's cabin; an old, beat-up dye transfer prints of Leopold Godowsky and Leopold Mannes, a.k.a. "God and Man," the inventors of Kodachrome (next to that would have to go some Kodachrome slides with backlighting that comes on with a button push, of course, and a yellow box with a roll of Kodachrome in it); David Vestal's portraits of W. Eugene Smith and Minor White....

I don't have enough cool stuff to fill up the whole room. But I bet once I have the room, I could track down enough cool stuff to fill two rooms.

On my own
I'd do a Kickstarter if this was just going to be a gallery, but here's why I can't: in the middle of this room I'd put a big table. Specifically, one like this! Removable leaves go on and off to convert it from a regular table to a pool table. Perfect for spreading prints out on, as a table; also perfect for after-hours recreation for the proprietor.  :-)

It would be somewhat dubious to ask people to contribute to a gallery they might not ever visit. But I'm certainly not going to ask anyone else to contribute to my gallery if it's also my pool room. Even though they're both the same room. But really, the one purpose is perfect for the other, isn't it? If I built a little building for a pool table, the walls would just go to waste; and if I built a little building as a gallery, the middle of the room would go to waste. So, yin and yang. Two birds, one stone. Perfect.

The "gallery" wouldn't be open to the public. There might or might not be anything in it for sale. (Print bins? Could do.) I envisage it being the focal point for visitors (I got a lot of visitors last fall, more in three months than I'd ever gotten in any three years in Wisconsin), and I have in mind using it for talks and mini-tours for groups from local arts organizations and colleges and so forth. Most of my objects have stories behind them.

I think the main part of the fun would be deciding what to display and trying to acquire it.

Anyway, this is where the proceeds of the current 'Red Chair' print sale will go. The profits will seed the savings account toward the future gallery/pool room.

Print sale aside, I'm probably two years away from starting to save up for this. Xander is in his last year of college, and in two years the car will be paid off, and I have several other expenses which will come to an end by then. At that point I can start saving in earnest. I've also started a list for ideas for things to show. (I have an original print of the picture from this poster, for example.)

Oh, and one other refinement: I think I'll have Woodtex build an opening for a garage door and then fill it in with insulated wall. That way, a future owner of the property can tear out the infill part, install a garage door, and use the building as a garage. That way the structure stands a chance to actually add some value to the property.

So...?
At my age, I know myself pretty well—and I know I tend to get carried away by my enthusiasms. So tell me what you think of this plan. How does it sound? Does it make sense? Am I being completely impractical? Is it worth it anyway?

(If you're going to rain on my parade, though, be gentle. It's my birthday....)

Mike

ADDENDUM by Kenneth Tanaka: If anyone near, or visiting, Chicago would like to see how a "salon"-style photographic installation might appear, I urge you to visit Columbia College's Museum of Contemporary Photography before April 20, 2016. The Museum is celebrating its 40th anniversary with a remarkable exhibition spanning its in-house collection. The main gallery (which is just a bit larger than Mike's proposal) is installed with prints from eye-level to 12 feet high, very much like that Morse painting. A numbered key sheet is provided to visitors for reference.

It was great fun to try to identify the photographers without the key! The MoCP is on South Michigan Avenue, just a short, lovely walk from the Art Institute of Chicago.

Original contents copyright 2016 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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Featured Comments from:

MarkB: "Yep, crazy. Bat-guano insane. No sensible person would think of that, much less attempt to do it. Go for it! 'Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood...Make big plans, aim high in hope and work.' —Daniel Burnham." 

ScotInDortmund: "Michael, the technical term for 'jam-packed' walls is 'Petersburg Hanging.' Just saying...."

Mike replies: I did not know that. Thanks. Named after the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Google reveals.

Jeff: "Sounds a bit like a mini- Barnes Foundation, now in Philadelphia (Barnes just rolled over in his grave), just as he laid it out in Merion, PA. It consists of paintings and objects, juxtaposed in very specific order and location, up and down walls, and used as part of his teachings and education for participants. Of course he had the bucks to do it in style."

Mike replies: And his timing was right—he was collecting Impressionism when it was cheap to buy. But yes, I'm a Barnes sympathizer.

Darlene: "Happy Birthday Mike! Where is the powder room? I am giggling because it seems like a man-cave to me. :-) Not that there is anything wrong with that."

Steve G, Mendocino: "Coupla comments—first, I was finally, after wanting to for many years, able to see the Barnes Foundation collection, now in Philadelphia. There, at least, the 19th century style of art jam-packed on the walls works. Helped, of course, by the quality of the collection.... In fact, I found myself much less visually fatigued there than I often am at more modern museums, which struck me as somewhat paradoxical. Next, allow some budget for ventilation. Not necessarily full heat and A/C, but if there will be people and artwork in the same room you've got to change the air. Come to think of it, that was one of the problems with the original Barnes location in Merion. Anyhow, good plan—keep working on it. And Happy Birthday."

Kenneth Tanaka: "Happy Birthday, Mike. How does it sound? Emotional and impulsive. Does it make sense? No. Are you being completely impractical? Yes, on every level I believe so. Is it worth it anyway? No. Paraphrasing your proposal: You want to raise money to build an unconditioned storage building on your rural New York property to house, conserve, and display an eclectic (and mainly non-existent) collection of photographic history items for an undefined audience."

Mike replies: Ken, were you ever on the panel on a show called "Shark Tank"? For the record, one small misunderstanding—I was specifically talking about not raising money, but using my own.

Geoff Wittig (partial comment): "Time's a wastin' at our age. For instance, I have discovered that it takes about five years of diligent discretionary-time effort to become a reasonably competent plein-air oil painter. I'm greatly enjoying it, but...damn it, I wish I had started years earlier. I may not have enough time left to become really good, and my eyesight isn't getting any better. So I say, go for it. Dreams are for living."

Joseph Reid: "Crazy? No, but you are a dreamer. If you do this, you'll regret no plumbing. You'll have a pool table and fabulous pictures to linger over. Would you really want to be forced to put on your coat and walk all the way back to the house just to go to the bathroom in the middle of an upstate New York whiteout? And you know the times you will most want to go to that space will be those upstate blizzards. Not to mention the needs of guests. So two words of advice: powder room."

Michael Wayne Plant: "I really love the idea of a salon, somewhere for curious and photographic artefacts. We have many modern museums but few collections of curiosities of the dedicated especially in photography. As a multifunctional space it sounds great shame it will take you till you are 65 to realise it. The room/gallery/pool hall would become a focal point and regular hangout for many photography enthusiasts who would find it a stimulating place to call their home away from home and you may find yourself holding court far more often than you realise. It would be a fun place that you would have many very happy and highly interesting conversations within."

Svein-Frode: "'The days run away like wild horses over the hills' —Henry Charles Bukowski. Happy Birthay Mike!"

scott kirkpatrick: "Your virtual, hypothetical garage pool mancave cum gallery was accompanied by enough fascinating links that I almost couldn't find my way back to report in with a comment. By all means get the Orland chart up on the wall, with its great quotes like 'when man creates a sharper lens, Nature will produce a fuzzier object,' and 'Expose for the secrets, develop for the surprises.' And in the course of reading Jim Hughes' reminiscences on David Vestal, I came across The Whole Photography Chart, a copy of which also belongs up there. Not only will you have no problem covering three walls, I think you will need a storage space as your new house will likely be crowding you out by the time you get this to happen."

Rod Thompson: "Love it. Shame it will be such a long drive from Tasmania!"

Mike replies: Isn't everything a long drive from Tasmania? That's our problem here, too—everything is far away from everything else. The lesser of my two grocery stores is a 15 mile drive; the better one is a 46 mile drive.

Rob Young: "Happy Birthday. In 2017 I am planning to visit friends in New Jersey, then drive through New York to visit friends in Toronto. Can you have it finished by then?"

Mike replies: No, but stop by anyway!

Joel Becker: "Exhibit I want to see: The same image: Web JPEG on an older CRT. Higher-res web JPEG on an LCD, and then a real print, perhaps even in two sizes. To really drive home the difference."

Mike replies: Oh, believe you me, this sort of thing is definitely part of the plot. I have long wanted to set up perceptual experiments. Many are possible that would be interesting and educational both ways: for me as the "researcher" as well as for the viewers whose preferences are being collated. To name one such experiment I tried to do in the '90s: I made six prints, two of which were pictures made with different Leica lenses. The other four were made with good lenses of other brands. The idea was simply to see if people could actually recognize Leica lenses in prints. The big difficulty was in trying to get the prints to people for evaluation. With the curio gallery, I'd just have to be patient while the test subjects sequentially came to me.

Glenn Brown: "OK, it's crazy. I have a small heritage house and have crammed the walls with photography from 40 years of collecting. I see them every day and sometimes move them around. If they were in a separate building I would not see them in our Canadian winter (similar to New York's). Our bedroom has the best images, all vintage platinum, and there is a great comfort to see them going to sleep and in waking."

Bill Pelzmann: "I like your concept. However, hosting the throngs of visitors could become a burden on your time—especially those that come to play pool! For all that wasted space in the center, you could add more surface area by installing free standing display panels instead of the pool table.  :-)  Happy Birthday! We are also celebrating our son's 32nd today. I swear his 21st was only a few years ago!!!"

Alvin Langdon Coburn

I had a splendid photographic day yesterday. Geoff Wittig and I (Geoff wrote yesterday's book reviews) journeyed to the George Eastman Museum (GEM, formerly known as George Eastman House or GEH) in Rochester, former epicenter of the photographic world. We went to see the Alvin Langdon Coburn exhibit before it closes; it was Geoff's second visit to the show, my first.

Here's Geoff next to Alvin at the entry to the show. He looks a bit punk and insolent, doesn't he? (Alvin, not Geoff.) All of my pictures are blurred by camera shake; I couldn't hold the camera steady in the low light.

Alvin Langdon Coburn, if you don't know the name, born 1882, was a pictorialist enfant terrible (nevertheless dominated by his strong-willed mother) who did his best work before the First World War—he gained substantial fame and reputation while still in his teens and twenties. But speaking of sharpness, it was pretty amusing to see Coburn's strongly pictorialist photographic style in light of today's torrid discussions of resolution and sharpness. Everyone who was anyone in his day considered an impressionistic unsharpness to be the mark of artistic interpretation, and photographers across the Western world prized "diffusion." The public now, not knowing any better, thinks that old lenses from around the turn of the 20th century were not sharp because the technology simply hadn't progressed far enough. Not so. Lensmakers vied with each other to make lenses deliberately designed to be unsharp, first for portraits, then for everything. Photographers went to great lengths to seek out lenses with just the proper degree and type of blurriness. And, at clubs and salons and in photographic journals, they argued about just which lenses were the most perfectly unsharp. (I know it appears that I'm kidding, but I am not.) I recall reading about one photographer who kept the identity of his prized portrait lens a secret so his competitors would find it harder to mimic him.

A non-pictorialist pictorialist picture by Alvin Langdon Coburn

Virtually all of Coburn's prints in the GEM show are floridly, extravagantly unsharp. As you might expect, it works for some subject matter and not for others. Coburn was visually adventuresome (credited as the first to master high viewpoints, for instance), but his Western landscapes simply fail in comparison to the work of Group ƒ/64 photographers and later practitioners; blurry, dark waterfalls with no detail just kinda fall down. The other main aspect of the pictorialist aesthetic is a relentless, unreal darkness, rendering even bright sunlight tepid and murky; whole pictures take place in the lower tones. Compare that to the demotic style of great swaths of the Digital Tsunami, dictated not by intention but by the natural look of early and bad digital, which is to cheerfully lose the whole top part of the tonal scale to featureless white. However, also as you might expect of a great photographer, Coburn more often makes his technical aesthetic work. The best of the many prints on display are profoundly lovely. And in many cases still original.

Alfred Stieglitz by Alvin Langdon Coburn

I have a bit of a thing for pictures of photographers, so as you might guess I loved this fine portrait of Alfred Stieglitz, the most important American figure in the early history of photography as art. I didn't see another of my favorite Coburn portraits, an autochrome color picture of Mark Twain in a red silk robe, in bed, reading. I think that one's in England(?).

Coburn's later experiments with Vorticism might have seemed edgy at the time, and are dutifully remarked as early "pure abstract" photography (the very term a bit of an oxymoron in my view), but they seem like empty pretension (again, to me) now. His famous Vorticist portrait of Ezra Pound would have been better straight, in my view. To each his own taste. Coburn reached the end of his life (quite late—he didn't die until 1966) growing increasingly eccentric. Eventually he put aside photographic pursuits in favor of an increasingly heavy involvement in spiritualism, mysticism, and the occult.

Coburn's opium pipes. Opium was legal until 1905, when the
photographer would have been 23.

The George Eastman Museum did an over-the-top great job with the show. Seldom will the world see a greater number of exceedingly fine original Coburn prints exhibited all together in adjacent rooms. The supporting material added just the right level of richness. The wall placards were in English, not artspeak. Curator Pamela G. Roberts, former curator of the Royal Photographic Society, drew mainly from the GEM's own collection (the GEM's being the largest Coburn holding extant—he willed his estate to them), but, crucially, filled key gaps with loans from other museums.

I wasn't at all surprised to learn that the museum store was sold out of the show catalog. Seeing so many exquisitely crafted prints—not for nothing did Coburn have a reputation as a maestro in the darkroom—unexpectedly lit a fire under my own enthusiasm for Coburn, and I felt a certain urgency to try to preserve the experience by buying the catalog. Turns out even Amazon is almost out of them. And GEM won't be getting more—I asked. Amazon UK is almost out too. It's possible the publisher has more, of course.

Applause from here. Very nice job*.

That ain't all
Amazingly, my day with Geoff got better from there...we were allowed down into the Museum's vast underground treasure vault—the one where they keep what is arguably the world's most important and extensive collection of cameras. I'll tell you all about that in a little bit—I need to go have my breakfast first. But here's a tiny taste (of our visit to the vaults, not my breakfast!):

It's Alvin Langdon Coburn's Pinkham & Smith lens. Cool, huh? And yes, they really did spell his name wrong in the engraving! Oh well.

More soon**. And many thanks to Geoff for suggesting the outing, and getting me to unchain my ankle from the leg of the TOP Command Post, a.k.a. my desk.

Mike

*Except for the low lighting, following the current dumb fashion in alleged conservation at many museums, which appear to be trying to ruin their own reputations with the public and get people to stop coming to museums. In this case, however, the muddy lighting didn't hurt all that much, because the prints themselves are pretty dark and murky! It actually seemed to suit them. Well, almost.

**Might be tomorrow, to be honest.

ADDENDUM #1: An earlier version of the post had a picture of the wrong lens! Sorry about that. Fixed now.

ADDENDUM #2: Lest you doubt my comments about our photographic forebears' preference in lenses, here's a marvelous little sampling of Alvin Langdon Coburn's thoughts about his lenses. In case you don't make it down that far, he writes:

I now have about a dozen P. & S. (Semi-Achromatic) lenses of various focal lengths, most of which have been especially made for me. When I am in Boston, I always make my way to 288 Boylston Street, to enjoy a chat with a tall, kindly man who thinks in glass. I tell him my troubles and my needs, and not long afterward, I receive a package which, after burrowing through the excelsior packing, gives up a small glistening object. This is the lens—nothing like it has been made before—nothing just like it is apt to be made again, for Mr. Smith is a revolutionary in photographic optics, and he gets lots of fun out of life.

Is that a very early version of an unboxing video, or what?!

Click on the image to make it larger and easier to read. Many thanks to Todd Gustavson for providing this and the picture of Alvin's lens.

Original contents copyright 2016 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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Kevin Purcell: "Semi-Achromatic lens? Isn't that like being a bit pregnant? I had to look it up: the semi-achromatic lens has all the 'pictoriality' of a pinhole but faster exposure times."

Chap Achen: "I had the opportunity to attend a church auction and there was a beautiful wonderful 8x10 studio camera with film holders, reducing backs for 5x7 and 4x5 film, several film holders, but no lens. I asked the photographer's widow as to the location of the missing lens. She replied that her husband asked her to bury the lens with him when he died. He did not want anyone else to use what he considered was his 'trademark' look."

Chris Wentz: "When I was in high school in the '70s I did a work study term at the local portrait studio. The photographer did posed portraits in a classical style. I remember the man raving about his favorite lens being needle sharp. But then, and I’m sure I remember this correctly, while printing, he waved a piece of lens tissue under the enlarger for a moment to soften the image. I think we are currently experiences an orgy of sharpness. Why? Because we can. It's a kind of stunt: sharpness for the sake of it. It certainly has little to do with whether a photo is worth looking at."

Steven Willard: "I had grown increasingly frustrated by the fact that all of my images shared the antiseptic look of unrelenting sharpness and no 'romance,' for want of a better term. I kept looking at one of my prints from a negative made on 4x5 by an old Turner Reich triple convertible probably made before WWI. It is sharp enough, but has a glow I had been missing in my images. Modern lenses are a treat to use, but the results can sometimes (for me) be like sitting too close to the stage at the ballet. I don't want to hear the grunts and groans or see the sweat! I want romance."

'Moments of the Human Condition' in Havana

Peter Turnley with Liliany Rodriguez Mola, 29, and her baby, Lia Tenay Diaz Rodriguez, subjects of the photograph behind them on the wall, at the opening last Friday. The picture was taken at the Iglesia Merced in Havana when baby Lia was only 16 days old. Photo by Roger Dunham.

Our friend Peter Turnley is in Cuba for his retrospective exhibit "Momentos de la Condicion Humana" (Moments of the Human Condition) at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana, Cuba's National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana.

I think because I know Peter so well, I enjoy his accomplishments almost as much as if they were my own. He lives the life. Assuming some of you can't easily get to Havana, this stirring video contains all 130 pictures from the exhibit (do try to watch it full screen if you can. Note that it's clearer in full screen if you click on the link and watch it on Vimeo).

Moments of the Human Condition from Peter Turnley on Vimeo. Set to the music of Common and John Legend.

I've watched it several times.

I should point out that the show in Havana is not a show of the work from his new book. The book, Cuba: A Grace of Spirit, is an extended portrait of the people of the island nation, taken over many visits over many years. The show at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes is a full career retrospective from Peter's many decades as a photojournalist. The show runs until February 15th.

The show catalog

More than 1,000 people from Cuba and all over the world attended the opening last Friday, and Peter told me he was treated "like a Major League ballplayer" (who are among the biggest of celebrities in the Caribbean) during the evening. He said he thought the presentation of the show was exceptional, and called the opening " one of the most important moments of my life."

Visitors to Peter Turnley’s major retrospective exhibition “Momentos de la Condicion Humana” at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes
In Havana, Cuba.

Paris
A note about recent events. At the end of this month we will be offering signed 16x20-inch silver prints of two of Peter Turnley's most popular and peace-affirming photographs of the lyrically beautiful city of Paris (both are seen in the last section of the video). Purchasers of more than one print will receive a free, signed and slipcased copy of Cuba: A Grace of Spirit that Peter can inscribe for you on request. The sale will begin on Monday, November 30th at noon, U.S. Eastern Time.

The choice of the two Paris photographs was made many weeks ago. In light of Peter's close connection to Paris (it has been his home for 37 years), we intend to work out an effective way to donate a portion of the profits to a fund for victims of the recent terrorist attacks. We will have the details worked out by the time the sale starts, and I'll share the specifics of the plan with you then.

The opening of "Moments" must have been really something—I would have loved to be there. I hope you get a chance to watch the video.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2015 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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Bob Smith: "Wet eyes at the end of that video. But also warmth and hope in my heart and a feeling that Good is going to win this world in the end. Peter Turnley, PHOTOGRAPHER! Been all around and captured the horror. But always manages to capture the strength, grace and spirit in people. Perfect example as to why the world needs eyes and hearts like his."

'Cuba: A Grace of Spirit'

So, this day, two news items of equal import from my friend and friend-o'-TOP Peter Turnley, who visited me here in Upstate New York last week.

First, today is publication day for Peter's newest book, Cuba: A Grace of Spirit.

Peter's first self-published book (although he had many books published commercially prior to it, both with his twin brother David and alone) was French Kiss: A Love Letter to Paris, and TOP readers were instrumental in its considerable success. (It sold out its first press run, which was large for a photobook, and is now in a second printing.) Cuba: A Grace of Spirit is similar in a lot of ways: it's a premium production with a deluxe hardcover binding, fine reproductions, and a beautifully made slipcase. Every copy will be signed by the photographer and the book will not be available in bookstores.

More about the book in a moment.

The second item of news is something I find quite amazing: Peter is going to be the very first American artist of any kind since the Cuban Revolution to receive a major show at Cuba's most prestigious art museum, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana (the National Museum of Fine Arts of Havana). It will be a comprehensive career retrospective of his work.

This is undoubtedly a high point of Peter's ongoing career as well as a significant moment in the new epoch of Cuba's relationship with the United States and the world. I find it extremely impressive, and also, somehow, curiously encouraging...real "from life" photography getting some serious, respectful, celebratory attention on a major stage. The show, which is called "Momentos de la Condicion Humana" (Moments of the Human Condition) will run from November 13 through February 15th.

The curators at the Museo Nacional could not have made a better choice, in any event. Peter Turnley loves Cuba. He first went to Cuba to photograph Mikhail Gorbachev and Fidel Castro in 1989, and the new book is the culmination of half a lifetime of constant travel to the island. As some TOP readers know firsthand, he teaches workshops there. More recently, he became convinced that Cuba was approaching a turning point in its history and he intensified his travel schedule—he estimates he's been there, for different reasons but always to photograph, 20 times in the past four years.

My first reaction to the book was that it's the first time I've seen such a forthright portrait purely of the Cuban people. Cuba is picturesque, and so many photographers treat it like a "photo opportunity," mining the low-hanging fruit of its bright colors and signs of poverty and the obsolete '50s American cars for their quaint picturesque qualities in ways we've all seen before. Of course those elements are present (if subdued) in the new book. But what Peter calls "the vibrant, joyful, resilient, courageous, beautiful, and elegant spirit of the Cuban people" is what he loves best and respects most, and that's what you'll find front and center. It's really the subject of the book. (He also notes that this spirit "transcends politics and change," and signifiers of both take a back seat.)

I also think the book shows some interesting things about Peter's growth as an artist, but I'll leave those thoughts to another time.

Price
Last time, French Kiss was planned from the first to sell at a regular price of $85 (perfectly reasonable for a self-published book in a sturdy slipcase—self-publishing is more expensive than commercial publishing), and $69 was supposed to be a temporary, introductory price; but copies sold so fast Peter simply never raised the price. After the first printing sold out, he invested in a second printing, and there are still some of those left—still offered at that introductory price of $69.

So, the introductory price of Cuba: A Grace of Spirit is $69. And may stay there. Or might not. The edition is 3,000.

You can see some of the page spreads at the sale page, plus a video.

Oh, and if you missed French Kiss: A Love Letter to Paris, Peter is offering both books for a special price. (Saves on shipping and handling if people buy both at once.) Scroll down on the sale page for that. (Even if you already have a copy of French Kiss, you know what a great gift book it could be...for anyone you love, or for anyone you know who loves France.)

Every copy of both books will be signed.

And, any sales that come from here benefit TOP as well.

Photo by David Burnett

Congratulations to Peter, on both counts, and I look forward to hearing what people think of the new book. I'll present a "mini-portfolio" of my favorite pictures from the book sometime in the next few weeks. I might actually go to Havana for the show. When else am I ever going to get to Cuba?

Here's the link to the book again.

Mike
(Thanks to Peter)

Original contents copyright 2015 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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