The Online Photographer

Deaths in the Family

...If you accept, as I do, the notion that the far-flung society of Photo-Dawgs (those who love photography and are devoted to it) comprises a sprawling extended family.

Evelyn and Jim Hughes, 1982. Photo by Bill Jay.

I'm extremely sorry to report that our friend Jim Hughes died on the afternoon of the Tuesday before Christmas. Jim was the editor of the original Camera Arts magazine, the best photography magazine I'm familiar with, and he was the biographer of W. Eugene Smith. But those two twin peaks of his accomplishment are only the tip of the iceberg. Jim knew a little bit about everything and a lot about a lot—he was a student and a scholar of photography, and he had a great mind and a great memory. And he was a photographer. He was also my onetime hero, my role model as an editor. I didn't come close to measuring up; he was brilliant at it. We later became friends, and although he could be irascible and I suspect that occasionally he didn't like me very much (I can be difficult too), I loved and admired Jim always. He was principled and insightful and endlessly knowledgeable. His passing creates a void. You can find his many writings for TOP under his name in the Categories in the right-hand sidebar. His wife Evelyn Hughes survives him.

Michael A. Smith

Another huge loss: friend of TOP Michael A. Smith has passed away; I don't know when, but recently. Michael was a force of nature, an independent spirit with a devotion to quality and bounteous energy for following through. When Kodak stopped making his favorite photo paper, he undertook to manufacture a replacement; when he couldn't find anyone to publish his books to the level of quality he demanded, he learned how to do it himself, and started his own publishing house. He called it Lodima, which is the word "amidol," his and Edward Weston's favorite paper developer, spelled backwards. We worked with him several times; we offered the superlative Edward Weston book he published, and we offered contact prints of his work in a husband-and-wife print sale in 2012. Here's another article I wrote about him. He is survived by his wife, the photographer and artist Paula Chamlee.

Neither was a close personal friend, although I met both in person and we emailed and spoke on the phone occasionally for years. But I knew them in that way you know people in your own field—through their work, through our common interest, through my appreciation for them. I have taken both these losses hard, and procrastinated madly over writing this post. It makes me very sad they're gone. Sincere condolences to Evelyn and Paula, and all the friends and loved ones of these fine men. They are deeply and sorely mourned and missed.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 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.

B&H Photo • Amazon US • Amazon UK
Amazon Germany • Amazon Canada • Adorama

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

Geoff Wittig: "Sad news indeed. Michael A. Smith's beautiful panoramic print of a Tuscan village graces my library wall, as do multiple Lodima books. And Mr. Hughes' crackling intelligence came through bright and clear in his admirably pithy essays."

Bill Bresler: "Jim Hughes and his work shaped how I see photography."

Kenneth Tanaka: "I’m very sorry to read of Jim’s death. I very much enjoyed his occasional articles and comments here. He seemed like the kind of fellow I would have enjoyed spending an afternoon with.

"I was also sad to learn of Michael Smith’s death. He was a fellow who I did spend an afternoon with some years ago (perhaps thanks to a connection you made?). Michael, and Paula Chamlee, visited a tiny bygone photo group of which I was a member, ostensibly to talk about book publishing and production. But as the afternoon progressed through lunch Michael and Paula were extremely engaging and informative on a broad range of photo subjects. It’s always fun to be with people who are so relentlessly enthusiastic on their field...and that’s exactly what they were!

"I have two oddly indelible memories of that day. The first was buying my copy of Edward Weston: Life Work from Michael at a slight discount, as he wanted to lighten his traveling load. (And that book is a load.). The second is my memory of the old white van Michael and Paula were driving cross-country. As veterans of the road they had clearly learned that security takes precedence over style on long-distance photo trips. Opening the back doors of that van was a feat that Brinks would have admired!

"My deepest sympathies to Paula Chamlee and to Evelyn Hughes."

Black Holes & Bright Lights, by Jim Hughes

A number of years ago, at an estate sale, probably (I can't remember exactly where or when, or even what), I came into possession of a leather-bound, gilt-edged album of what appeared to be late 19th Century albumen prints documenting the travels, I now conjecture, of an unnamed man, himself an evidently well-heeled amateur photographer. He seemed to be enjoying, perhaps accompanied by his family, an extended Grand Tour, by rail I assume, that stretched from Central America and Mexico through the western U.S., across Canada, then down to New York City and over to Chicago. Prints seem to have been purchased along the way from the studios of accomplished local photographers. While the street scenes and landscapes were fascinating, for me the most astonishing image is the one reproduced below. 

 

On the heavy but discolored album page, below the photograph, hand-written in pencil, is the following legend: "Eclipse of the Sun, 1st January 1889. Taken at Cloverdale, California."

 

There was indeed a full, and fully visible, solar eclipse that day on the western edge of Sonoma County, and it was documented by many photographers and observatories in its path, not always successfully. As I have subsequently determined after some research, the photographer in this instance, one W. H. Lowden, was part of the Pacific Coast Amateur Photographic Association, which had traveled to Cloverdale and had to overcome such obstacles as a large cloud obscuring the sun almost up to the very instant of exposure and a farmer who had decided that day to burn a field in a valley below the perfect vantage point the group's advance scouts had chosen earlier. A member of the party was dispatched that morning, by horse, to convince the farmer to douse his fires, which he willingly did; the heavy smoke was dissipated by a cooperative breeze — just in the nick of time, apparently. The cloud drifted past of its own accord.

 

Here is Mr. Lowden's description of how he made his two exposures, from the files of the Lick Observatory, where a full report of the expedition was preserved:

 

"Taking an ordinary 11x14 camera, I enclosed it in a wooden box open at each end. This box was hinged at one end to a stout plank which rested (when in position) on two wooden trestles. Under the other end of the box, and between it and the plank, was placed a screw [a kind of jack] which, when operated, raised or lowered the end. At one side of this end was placed another screw which, when operated, moved the box in azimuth. On top of the box I mounted a telescope, carefully adjusted, so that when an image was seen in the centre of the cross wires, it was at the same time projected on the photographic plate of the camera, exactly in the centre.

 

"I used a rapid rectilinear lens, made by R. & J. Beck, of 24 inches equivalent focus. In this I used a 3-inch diaphragm, thus reducing the aperture to F/8. The plates were [coated with] a special emulsion prepared by Dr. S. C. Passavant, of San Francisco, and registered 12 on Warnecke's sensitometer. At the beginning of the first count by the assistant, which I learned was some 52 seconds before totality, I brought the Moon's image [and its shadow] into the centre of the cross wires in the telescope, and by aid of the screws, above mentioned, kept it there. The wires were placed in the form of an 'L," and enabled me to see the slightest movement much more readily than if the wires were crossed in the usual way. When 'time' was called for totality, I occupied the first 15 or 16 seconds in looking at the Corona with the naked eye, and again getting the image fairly centered. At 19 seconds after totality, my assistant, Mr. J. W. Stafford, removed the cap from the lens and at 60 [seconds] replaced it, thus giving an exposure of 41 seconds. During this time we kept the Moon's [shadow] image as steadily as possible in the centre of the wires of the telescope.

 

"After reversing the plate holder and allowing the camera to cease vibrating, the lens cap was [again] removed, at 76 seconds after totality, and replaced as 'time' was called at 104 seconds. This plate had, therefore, a 28 second exposure....The plates were of course very much over-exposed. I used the ordinary pyrogallic acid and carbonate of potash developer, modifying it, however, by using three times the usual quantity of water. A normal developer would have produced a thin foggy image, while restraining the action either by the use of bromide or by reducing the volume of potash would result in clogging up the inner Corona hopelessly. As development proceeded, I was compelled to add more water, the action being exceedingly rapid. The image on the 41 second plate made its appearance in 7 seconds, and was fully developed in 6 minutes. I did not observe any difference between this and the second plate worthy of note. [The emulsion was doubtless orthochromatic, allowing open-tray development by visual inspection under dim red safelight conditions.]

 

"An examination of the negatives shows the inner Corona a mass of light without detail, while the extreme ends are developed into the light of the sky. This would seem to prove that the limit of the photographic image had been reached in both cases, and while the eye may have been able to discern the contrast between the faint light of the Corona and the sky for a greater distance than the negatives show, the photographic value of these faint rays seem to have been no greater than that of the sky at the same point." 

 

The negatives were used to make positive prints, which were available to the public. One of them made its way into the travel album.

 

Making pictures of an eclipse back then was an even trickier task than it is today. The photographer clearly approached this as a scientific experiment, exploring, in addition to a celestial wonder, the boundaries of the still-pubescent craft of photography. I, on the other hand, see a significant historical moment documented in a nearly 130-year old print whose aging beauty is only enhanced by its border of oxidating and blue-tinged silvering.

 

And earthbound though I may be, I do tend to see art most everywhere I look.

 

But it turns out that the year 1889 also holds great significance for me personally:

Mounted contact print found among my father's family effects.

 

The woman pictured on the porch above is my grandmother, the former Mary Jane "Jenny" Fitzroy, whom I know only from this photograph made in the very same year as the eclipse discussed above. Jenny was the second wife of my grandfather, John Henry Hughes, who was born in 1845 and as a teenager walked from Cos Cob, Connecticut, to lower Manhattan in New York to enlist as a drummer boy for the Union forces in the Civil War. Henry, as he was called, grew up to become a locally well-known builder-architect. He designed and constructed this house himself for his new bride in 1889, the year of their marriage, as one can see proudly displayed on the portico, above the front door. My father was born in this house on Orchard Street in 1892. As I would be 45 years later, in 1937. I would own this house still today if my father, beset by alcohol and the Depression, had not lost it shortly thereafter for non payment of years worth of  long-overdue property taxes.

 

I've always thought that my grandfather took this photograph himself. Otherwise, logic tells me, he would have been in the picture with Jenny as well. Along with being a skilled craftsman, he was, according to family lore,  an inveterate tinkerer and a sometime inventor. As I was growing up in our "new" and much smaller and more modest home not far from this one, I used to play with a contraption in our basement that my father said his father had conceived and built but never patented: an incubator for baby chicks that utilized for its heat source some clear glass cabonized-bamboo filament bulbs of the sort that had been introduced by Thomas Edison in the 1880s. Indeed, it was said that while observing another, earlier eclipse, in 1878, that the idea for the electric light bulb first lit up Tom's fertile mind. 

 

My grandfather's device, of only slightly later vintage, was made not out of wood, but hand-formed galvanized sheetmetal, and had perforated trays and a small venting chimney at the top. It survived into my childhood only because it was, in fact, metal. One particularly cold winter during World War II, coal became so scarce that all the wooden heirlooms that had come from the Orchard Street homestead when we moved, such as a beautiful cherry breakfront and two oaken rockers, had been chopped up and tossed by my father into the belching black furnace that heated our little bungalow. I remember his running up the cellar stairs, yelling that he'd just cut off the tip of his profusely bleeding thumb with his hatchet. 

 

I never did find my grandfather's camera. I would eventually have to find one of my own. At which point, a corner of the cellar would become my darkroom.

 

Another Eclipse, Another Wedding:

July 20, 1963. Photographer unknown.

 

 This faded, color-shifted print was taken by a stranger, a man with a 35mm camera and potato masher flashgun who had been asked by Evelyn's mother to photograph her daughter's wedding. New mother-in-law instructed the man to place us behind an elaborate, frilly, and of course overexposed cake, underneath a chandelier in her Fifth Avenue apartment that the cake was evidently intended to emulate in an upside down way. For her part, Evelyn, who worked in fashion retailing, had chosen to wear a tailored outfit that was anything but frilly, a stunning look completed by what she called a pill-box hat (more on that later!). The ceremony itself had happened earlier, in the lliving room, facing white-lace curtained window looking out on Central Park. The stranger with the camera arrived late, and missed our vows. Too bad. It was quite the momentous event. As the judge, a neighbor we had met near our East Village apartment on St. Marks Place who agreed to conduct the ceremony, began reciting the required incantations, a commotion seemed to erupt among the gathered friends and family standing behind us. My "best man" and Evelyn's "maid of honor," who had introduced us for a blind date a few months earlier, both rushed past us to peer intently out the window. They were followed by most everyone else, leaving the betrothed to wonder what the hell was going on. It was mid-day, but, unnaccountably, darkness seemed to be falling.

 

Seems we had scheduled our wedding to happen at precisely the moment of "totality" on July 20, 1963. That's the day another famous Solar Eclipse occurred, this time passing directly above Fifth Avenue in New York City. Evelyn and I had been so busy planning this joyous event that we had failed to keep up with the news. Hadn't watched television in days. Not only that, we almost didn't make it to our own wedding. That morning, as she got dressed, Evelyn suddenly exclaimed, "Where's my hat?" We searched everywhere. No hat. Her outfit could not be complete without that hat. "When did you last see it?" I asked. She described a small brown paper bag that she had kept it in, the very bag the saleswoman put it in when Evelyn bought it. We looked for the bag. No bag. After what seemed like hours, and skipping breakfast, I went downstairs and pounded on the Super's steel door. "Evelyn can't find her hat," I pleaded. "Maybe you could check the incinerator?" 

 

"No way," he said. "But I'll open the door for you." He handed me a scorched steel rake as I climbed through the fireproof hatch. Fortunately, no trash had been burned that day (incinerators were still legal in New York back then!). So I raked through what seemed to be a ton of stinking garbage, as more kept falling noisily down the chute and hurtling toward my head. It seemed like hours, but it was probably closer to 45 minutes, when I found a small, crumpled, brown paper bag. Inside was the hat, miraculously no worse for wear. I crawled out, ran upstairs, showered, then we both got dressed for a wedding and uptown we went on the subway. Invited guests were already there when we arrived, breathless.

 

It was an auspicious beginning to a memorable day. Last month, we celebrated our 54th anniversary. Evelyn remains my best friend.

 

A Light in the Dark:

"Seeing" a Sculpted Woman. (Digital copy of original print; still looking for the negative.) Photograph © 1965 by Jim Hughes

 

 On November 9, 1965, as a workday was waning and daylight was beginning to fade, I was in the courtyard of a classic old church in Brooklyn photographing an outdoor sculpture exhibit. Evelyn and I had just moved to Brooklyn from Manhattan, having found a duplex in a brownstone for $125 a month, and I had taken the day off from a job I didn't much like as an associate editor of a trade magazine. I had recently purchased a fast f/1.9 85mm pre-set lens from Spiratone for my Miranda, and wanted to try it out in low light. I saw a man with a white cane using his free hand to "see" an almost life-size torso of a female nude. The lens gave me some distance, and threw the background nicely out of focus. I shot a few frames before the blind man moved on.

 

Shortly after 5 p.m. as rush-hour traffic was beginning and subways were filling with commuters, a power transformer tripped in Ontario, near Niagara Falls. Before long, like dominoes, other transformers tripped. The Power grid became overloaded and, to protect itself, started to shut down. Thus began the Great Blackout of 1965. Most of New York City went dark, and some areas stayed dark for as long as 13 hours. Since there was still some daylight, I walked the half-block back to our new apartment. Evelyn was in Manhattan, on her way home. I didn't know it, but she'd been in a subway station waiting for a train when everything went dark and the trains just stopped running. She finally made her way back up to the street and found a payphone that still worked. She said the streets in the City were mobbed, but everyone seemed polite and helpful. Regular citizens had begun directing traffic, and restaurants opened their doors to the public and were handing out refreshments. She told me where she was. I said stay right there, I'll come and get you. After a couple hours and with no light in sight save the occasional bobbing flashlight, I had found a young man with a car who was itching to take a drive through the maelstrom. It took a while, but he inched across the Brooklyn Bridge, and we finally found my wife and drove back home. Half a day later, the power had mostly returned. But 800,000 people had been stranded on stalled subway trains in New York City, and in the northeast region more than 30 million people across 80,000 square miles had been left without electricity during the ordeal.

 

When I first moved to New York, I had found a job working for a business magazine providing advice to corporate executives. Then I signed on to write for a graphic arts and design publication. Finally, from a co-worker, I heard that the editor of my favorite photography journal at the time, Camera 35, was leaving to become editor of Modern Photography. I called and applied for the job. Besides editing magazines I didn't really like, I'd been writing unfinished plays and photographing panhandlers on the Lower East Side, not to mention one blind art lover in Brooklyn. In fact, I'd just added an appropriately dark print of the sculpted woman being "seen" in a new light to my portfolio, and it was the first picture I  showed.  A few days after the interview, I received a telephone call from the editor of the company's principle publication, U.S. Camera. I was informed, politely, that I wasn't qualified. Of course, I knew I was, although I had yet to join his exclusive club. That night, I initiated a long conversation with an artist friend and Brooklyn neighbor who told me she knew that editor's boss: the legendary Tom Maloney, owner and publisher of U.S Camera Publishing. The next day, I received a phone call. "I'd like to know just who this fellow is that our former baby sitter says is so damned good," Tom Maloney said in an offhanded and good humored mumble that I would get to know well over the next few years. I returned to the magazine's offices and showed him my writing samples, and that print. Two weeks later, he was my boss, as well.

 

Tom gave me the freedom to bring new ideas and thinking to photo magazine publishing. Camera 35 represented my dream job (actually, the first of several I would hold over the years). The famous Blackout, the one that had informed my portfolio print of two men, a blind subject and his sighted observer, both chasing shadows on that singular day, had actually gone a long way toward changing the course of one of our lives — mine. 

 

As Flannery O'Connor once wrote, "Everything That Rises Must Converge."

 

---

Weather permitting, a total solar eclipse will be visible across much of the continental United States on August 21st of this year. Check your local newspapers, or just Google it.

 

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.

W. Eugene Smith at the 1959 Miami Photojournalism Conference: More Pages from the Cutting Room Floor

Volumes one and two (open, on top) of the second draft (of five) of the manuscript of W. Eugene Smith: Shadow & Substance by Jim Hughes. On the wall is a print of "Dance of the Flaming Coke" that Gene left to Jim in his will.

Written and illustrated by Jim Hughes

[Author's note: Below is text that I ultimately deleted, for reasons of space, from my Smith biography. The story of the Third Annual Miami Conference—and it is a story, and an important one, historically, that still needs to be told—made it through all five drafts, but at the very end was cut when push finally came to shove. This was the cut I regretted more than any other.]

In 1957, Wilson Hicks, by then a lecturer in journalism at the University of Miami, had established what quickly became a much anticipated event: The Annual Photojournalism Conference, sponsored jointly by the university and the A.S.M.P. [then known as the American Society of Magazine Photographers]. For the 1959 meeting, to be held in April, Hicks—whose sense of story evidently remained keen even in retirement [from his longtime post as Picture Editor of LIFE magazine]—asked Ed Thompson [Managing Editor of LIFE] to deliver the opening keynote address, and W. Eugene Smith, his one-time star photographer and perennial thorn in the side, not only to exhibit his photographs in the lecture hall through the four-day confab, but to give the closing talk.

Hicks sent Gene a sketch of the hall. According to Gene's notations on the sketch, he decided to show original Pittsburgh layouts as drawn [to his specifications] by his friend, the photographer Harold Feinstein, perhaps displayed flat on tables, and a combination of 11x14 bleed-mounted prints supplemented by a scattering of 5x7 proof prints all hung to utilize every inch of the available 128 linear feet of wall space.

With Harold's help, Gene loaded Pittsburgh into his station wagon; then, just to be on the safe side, he included selections from his most famous essays. Cardboard cartons were packed window to window and floorboard to roof. The two men, accompanied by Gene's wife Carmen, drove straight through to Miami. They arrived after midnight, only hours before Thompson's scheduled 9 a.m. opening talk.

Photographer Flip Schulke, then a young teaching assistant who had been assigned to help Gene and Harold mount the exhibit, was up and waiting.

"There were just hundreds of prints, covering every inch of floor," Schulke recalled in a 1976 interview with me for a profile of Smith I wrote for Quest 77 magazine [the initial stroke, truth be told, in my own 12-year biographical quest to understand the enigma named Smith]. "If he could have done a book on Pittsburgh," Schulke continued, "all these people who have been screaming about the changing American city could have seen the beginnings; the old cities, how the changes occur, the power structure, it was there like a dictionary, like an encyclopedia.

"...When he shoots, he said, he has a layout in mind, a feel for which pictures will go with the others, which will stand alone. Then he works hard to light one thing. Gene said there are two ways to light: one, to build up the light intensity to reproduce exactly the way it looks to almost anybody's eye; two, to use emphasis to show what you feel it looks like, rather than what you know it looks like.

"You come into some situations where there's a feeling, and you want to make light to give others that feeling. I asked Gene, 'Do you feel this interferes with the truth?' He said that it is terribly important, for truth, to know a hell of a lot about the situation and the people.

"He had a picture of a house, a rich man's house; there were two window panes that he made to look like two eyes of a bat, really evil; he was showing us the people who'd made Pittsburgh look the way it did at the time. He described how he'd gotten an oppressive feeling from that house, and then had to translate that into an image that would actually scare people looking at it. The viewer [of photographs] is not walking around among gray and dirty buildings being influenced by the air.

"...By taking me by the hand—he was a very soft, gentle guy, you know, and he was very kind to this young kid asking stupid questions. He showed me how. Nobody had seen [the entire] Pittsburgh essay. He had a linear story there.

"He changed my life."

That morning, the conference opened with a comparatively small Pittsburgh show on the walls. Schulke remembered a feeling of sadness when hundreds of prints had to go back into their cartons.

Ed Thompson's keynote speech was titled "Who's Looking? Who's Listening?" According to Popular Photography's John Durniak, who reported on the conference for the magazine, "Thompson, the most important man in photojournalism today, took the rostrum...rolled up his sleeves, loosened his tie, and proceeded to talk about the limitations of space in LIFE in relation to the number of stories that come along each week, the inadequacy of television news coverage and interpretation, the courage he has seen displayed by LIFE photographers, [and] of the 'partnership' he believes should exist between the editor and the photographer in high-calibre photojournalism."

In a 1980 interview I taped-recorded for my book, Thompson remembered that when he mounted the rostrum, Gene "had just barely got his last print up. I saw Gene in the back of the room, and I started to speak. I thought I saw Gene go to sleep; I knew he had driven all night. Then there was a thunderstorm, and the lights went out.

"They gave me a flashlight with a red lens on it, and I couldn't read my notes. So I decided to take the opportunity, just to get it off my chest, to say that in Gene's notable stories, the 'Midwife,' 'Spanish Village,' and so forth, in each case someone else had spotted the subject and gotten the factual material for backup. I didn't think I made much of an impression."

[It should be noted here that for the two essays specifically cited by Thompson, and many others published by LIFE, my subsequent research consistently showed the opposite to be true. Gene Smith always proved to be his own best researcher. Smith surely heard Thompson's self-serving comment; that he held his tongue is a testament to Smith's restraint at that difficult moment, particularly in light of Thompson's earlier reluctance to publish Pittsburgh as envisioned by Smith. But Gene's apparent composure would be short-lived. —J.H.]

That night, there was a party at a nearby motel and at one point, as the evening wore to a close for most participants, Ed Thompson found himself alone in a room with Gene Smith, John Durniak, and Romeo Martinez, the legendary editor of Swiss Camera magazine who on Friday was scheduled to talk about European photography.

"Gene still hadn't had any sleep, I don't think," Thompson recalled, "and Durniak said he was going to be a go-between. I said that I didn't realize that there was anything really to be made up between Gene and LIFE."

"Actually, John Durniak was fighting with Thompson about me," Gene later told a friend in a conversation he himself tape recorded, "and I came into the middle of the argument. Somebody asked what I thought of the Pittsburgh essay [as just published in the 1959 Popular Photography Annual], and I said I thought it was a failure that is going to outlast its flaws. Thompson glared at me with the most diabolical look in his eye that I had ever seen."

"That confrontation between Thompson and Gene was epic," Romeo Martinez told me during our 1980 interview. "They were eye to eye. Two men who hated one another, or rather, Gene who hated Thompson.

"Thompson said, 'I do my job as I intend to do it, and you think that I sacrificed you. All right, you can think that. I had to protect what I am doing, and not what you are doing.'

"Two people with two bottles of whiskey. The whole thing between them came up. Just facing each other until they can see the bottom of their relationship. Sometimes, with Gene screaming. Sometimes, very, very emotional."

"There was this fake mantle in the room," Thompson told me, "and Gene kind of leaned on it and cried quite a bit. So finally, I half carried him to his room."

"It went on from 1 a.m. to 6 in the morning," Martinez remembered, from a somewhat different perspective, "when Thompson said, 'Oh, my plane, I have to leave.' They looked at each other, and it was a moment when, I suspected, these two men would come, finally, one toward the other. From Gene it was very clear.

"Fortunately for the sake of Gene's pride, Thompson just turned and went out."

The next afternoon, Romeo Martinez gave his scheduled talk—in essence, a call for individualism, fresh thinking and higher standards. "I call myself a 'utilizer' of pictures, the editor announced to a somewhat surprised audience, according to Rus Arnold's report in Writer's Digest. "Creative photographers are rule breakers, while editors tend to be conformists."

At that opportune moment, "in a series of informal moves," as Durniak described the maneuver in his Pop Photo article, "Gene Smith joined Martinez on the platform, and the talk turned into a semi-panel discussion.

"Before long, the question of the photographer's 'control' of his [or her] pictures came up. How far should he be allowed to go in controlling layout, or what is 'said' with them? Harold Feinstein raised his hand in the audience. A microphone was delivered to him and for the next five minutes he delivered one of the finest arguments for the rights of a photographer this writer has heard.

"He placed the emphasis squarely on the photographer being a man, and not just a tool editors push around. 'It's not a matter of communication, it's a matter of what you have to say,' said Feinstein. 'It's the man, and what the man has to say.' "

"A musician as well as a photographer," Rus Arnold reported in Writer's Digest, "Feinstein insisted that what's happening in photography is what's happening in music, the clash between the creative urge and commercialism. 'Music,' he cried out, 'is Beethoven, not Muzak.... In photojounalism, too, we have our artists who dare to be individuals.... This is what editors seem to forget about.

"'The greatest problem seems to be to move the photojournalist into being himself, into revealing himself.'

"He pointed to Eugene Smith's pictures on the walls. 'You are seeing the revolution. Here it is.'"

Most of the audience seemed moved by Feinstein's impassioned plea, but not everyone agreed. One editor in attendance got to his feet and announced, evidently addressing himself directly to Gene, based on tape recordings made of the entire proceedings by photographer Al Woolley, "This business of aesthetics in photojournalism—it is a thing that we can handle [only] occasionally, mainly because people read magazines, they don't look at them.

"You cannot assume—any more than a Van Gogh or a Hemingway can assume—that you have communication through being an artist. You can express yourself, but you can't assume you have communication. Communication is a thing that people get through understanding, let's face up to it, through mediocrity."

Considering that this challenge struck to the core of Gene's concerns, his response was surprisingly moderate and controlled. "I don't think that, necessarily, mediocrity will communicate best," Gene responded from the podium. "I think that there has to be such a superb clarity, at times, that there may be many levels which can be interpreted, and I do believe that in such instances there has to be a very direct, straightforward level.

"But I also think that there should be quality in the photography, or the story, or the layout, or the writing, which can build for those who are usually insulted by picture magazines."

Gene closed the conference with a talk titled "My Way with the Camera." Wilson Hicks, in his introduction, said he'd just made a tour of Gene's "new" exhibit. Again staying up all night, Gene and Harold Feinstein had taken Pittsburgh off the walls and replaced it with a survey of Gene's long career—including, most notably, the essays Thompson had referred to so bitingly in his keynote address.

"I just can't believe some of these things," Hicks announced. "This business of photography is a lot of things, including detail. And the printing, the exposure! Here's perfection.

"These pictures are only up this morning, and I hope you will take as much time as you can to have a good look at these marvelous prints. I have just never seen anything like them myself in such gorgeous number."

Gene began his talk in a determined but weary voice, speaking from a pastiche of notes from previous lectures. Its theme: the "dream of photography" that he had pursued since he was 14. "It has been my own great adventure," he declared. "It was always something that had an automatic goal which moved on and on and on. Wherever I reached, it reached even further. I never dreamed that I could never see the horizon of it, where its limitations rested. I have limitations. I don't know where the limitations of photography are. I have never seen them."

About the photographs on the walls that now surrounded him, Gene said, "I have found it necessary to come very close with situations until the people involved either accept me or reject me, and from this I proceed until I can photograph as a participant in their lives rather than as an intruder.... The pictures that are around us today are both old friends and new friends. I can feel every one of them. They have twisted my body in the making of the print, or the moment of anxiety, or the feeling that crossed between us as it happened."

It didn't take long for Gene to deviate totally from his planned talk and make, with obvious passion, a call to the future. "There is a way to reach the average reader," he declared, "and not alienate the un-average reader...I believe the future is where it is possible, and must be possible, to take this profession from however far it has come and to see and to grow with it.... We have a great many problems of understanding in the world today, and they are grave.... I have both dread and excitement in this age that we are being born into. I don't know where it will go. I am not sure I can keep up with it. But it is tremendous with danger and potential of greatness. And I think one of the things we must try to do is to find a way within that to preserve a measure of the greatness of past cultures, and the dignities that have been possible.

"Whatever is coming, I doubt if it will eliminate the need for arts, and the compassions and the faiths and the homes that man has gained, used, lost, and gained again, so many times—and has never quite let go out."

At the end of the talk, Wilson Hicks looked around to thank Gene, who had disappeared from the podium. Gene did reappear at the final luncheon to accept the A.S.M.P.'s Photographer of the Year plaque, given as much for his "inspirational force" as for past accomplishments. At the presentation ceremony, Hicks called Gene, "W. Eugenius Smith."

Carmen flew back to New York with Gene's award, and Gene and Harold packed up the station wagon for the long drive home. On a backcountry road in North Carolina, they passed a black sharecropper's cabin on fire. "We pulled off and went to help this guy who was running in and out of the house with his meager belongings," Feinstein remembered during our 1980 interview. "Both Gene and I began running in and out, too, carrying out what we could.

"But at one point, it became an inferno. I stopped, and the man whose house it was stopped. But Gene kept going in. Finally I grabbed my camera and photographed Gene carrying out some sort of picture in a frame.

"That photograph says a lot about Gene. It also wasn't lost on me that I was the one standing there with a camera, and not the other way around."

"I kept trying to find whatever legal papers the man had," Gene later explained to some friends in a taped conversation in 1969. "Keeping an eye on the ceiling which was about to cave in, I made another trip and when I came out, all these whites were lined up on the road, just kind of enjoying the scene. I was furious."

—Jim Hughes

From Draft 2, Volume 2, W. Eugene Smith: Shadow & Substance. Deleted Material did not appear in the published 1989 McGraw-Hill edition. Restored text © 1987 / 2017, all rights reserved, by Jim Hughes. When I originally wrote this section, the working title for the book was "Larger Than Life."

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:

Mark Roberts: "Coincidentally, there is an article in the Guardian today (6 August) about W. Eugene Smith and a new book about him."

Michael Perini: "Just brilliant; thanks to Mr. Hughes and to Mike. It was also wonderful to see recognition of the role of Harold Feinstein, a brilliant photographer in his own right."

Mike R: "Thank you, Jim, I really enjoyed this. The gift from Gene must mean a great deal to you. I saw the exhibition 'Let Truth be the Prejudice' in the 1970s when it came to London. I had to make a 400+ mile train journey to see it. Worth every mile. I was impressed to read, here, Gene's statement of how he used 'emphasis to show what you feel it looks like, rather than what you know it looks like.' He would have had fun with the World Press Photo judges."

Jim Hughes replies: Re 'I saw the exhibition "Let Truth be the Prejudice" in the 1970s when it came to London. I had to make a 400+ mile train journey to see it. Worth every mile': I believe the exhibit you saw was hung the Barbican Art Gallery in London in 1986. It was a remounting of the 1971 retrospective "Let Truth Be the Prejudice," which was held in 1971 at the Jewish Museum in New York City, and was shown once more in Japan before it was put into storage. The Barbican exhibit was essentially a remounting of original prints based upon photographs of Smith's initial installation, which he did himself with a lot of help from his friends. I know, because the curator, the photographer John Benton-Harris, asked me to write a long text, which the Barbican offered to the show's visitors in a nicely printed and illustrated six-page gatefold booklet.

I hope you kept yours, Mike.

Here's an excerpt from my text: "I first met Gene Smith while he was preparing the exhibit that would be called 'Let Truth Be the Prejudice.' Visiting his loft on Sixth Avenue, I was confronted with what seemed like thousands of photographs floating in the dark air of a cave. Prints hung from clotheslines strung every which way, and I quickly lost any sense of direction as I was ushered into the depths of the place and seated in a leather recliner, the only piece of furniture that wasn't covered with pictures. I remember thinking, 'If there's a fire, I'll never find my way out of this maze.'

"The mess was ungodly, but it was an accurate reflection of the way Smith worked. 'When I edit,' he once told a friend, 'I spread my ideas out, trying to find a way through them.' For Smith, an idea could be anything, one of the thousands of 3x5 file cards on which he recorded his thoughts; a Beethoven violin concerto; a passage from Sean O'Casey; a tumbler full of Scotch. Mainly, however, Smith's ideas were in his pictures. 'Aware to think in many lights,' he wrote, '...my cameras as note takers for my mind, so I may place evidence before others...telling them why I am seldom bored.' "

Jim Hughes on Stanley Greene and W. Eugene Smith

After Stanley Greene died on May 19th I received the following email from Jim Hughes, here edited by Jim for publication. To answer two questions that might arise from the text, Jim is the biographer of W. Eugene Smith and was Editor in Chief of the famous magazine Camera 35. —MJ

Mike,

Here are a few pages—plus a little added current commentary—that, strictly for space reasons, I was forced to remove from my Smith biography in order to get the book published at the time. The excerpt below is from my two-volume, 2,000 page Second Draft (there were five drafts in total), the only one I kept with me when I moved to Maine. The other drafts, plus all the underlying interviews and research, were donated to ICP in New York in 2009 to establish the W. Eugene Smith / Jim & Evelyn Hughes Research Archive, to make it publicly accessible for scholarly/historical research.

There were, unfortunately but necessarily, many such deletions. I bled profusely after each one.

Here is the deleted material, direct from the cutting-room floor:

In 1970, Stanley Greene, a 21-year old whose wife had recently left him, was dating Sandi Perpetua [she was one of the cadre of young people coming in and out of the Sixth Avenue Loft who had enlisted to help Gene Smith organize and print his monumental Jewish Museum exhibit, "Let Truth Be the Prejudice"]. Perpetua evidently wanted Gene to meet Greene, whose father had been a photographer [not to mention a blacklisted Hollywood actor, as I would later learn].

"On an acid trip, I'd torn my apartment to smithereens," Greene related to me 10 years later, in an interview for my Smith biography. "The police had come, and Sandi brought Gene, and he told them it was all right, he'd take care of me.

"I woke up in his arms. He was rocking me. He said, 'I know what it is like to lose someone, not through death. Wouldn't it be better if they died? When they are alive, you still know they are alive.'

"That's just what he said. He was crying. I was crying. Sandi was crying. We were holding on to each other, crying. The next day, he asked me to come over to his loft. Then one day he asked me if I could get him some speed. As far as I know, speed was the strongest thing he did. Speed and Scotch.

"The amusing thing was, at first I had no concept of who Gene Smith was. I thought he was this crazy old guy. He would give these rambling lectures while talking to you. I remember one day, Sandi was treating her Nikon like a very valuable item, and Gene got angry about it.

"He was already using an old Rolleiflex as a doorstop. So he took a Pentax—he had cameras all over—and used it to hammer a nail into a board for a sink stand he was building. He said, 'A camera is only a hammer.' He was adamant that she understand that cameras were tools.

"I would stay at that loft for hours on end, and I never once saw him sleep, eat, or lose energy. There was always a pile of stuff on a table that he never wanted to be thrown out, or even touched. He would go over there and start poring through it. It was almost like the 'Rosebud' scene from Citizen Kane.

In the pile were pictures and books, letters, war paraphernalia, filters, an original print of his two kids walking up the path, a picture of him recuperating after the war. He would pull something out, turn around and talk about it, then throw it back on the table.

"Or he would stare out into space, walk back and forth, become reflective. It was like you could see him rolling the reels of his life through his head.

"I was there one day when he didn't say anything. He was completely lost. I left. He didn't say goodbye. I asked Sandi that night, 'Did he say anything all day?' He hadn't.

"I saw him print once. It was like he was conducting an orchestra. He had the TV on with a red filter over the screen, and he had a tape he played that was nothing but sounds. That's when I thought he was crazy.

"Every time I got there he was awake, and every time I left he was still awake. Sandi and Leslie [Teicholz] would be all crashed out, but he would still be going, talking about things even if no-one was there to listen."

I first came to know Stanley Greene in the early 1970s, shortly after his time with Smith caused him to seriously consider giving up the painting he had studied at the School of Visual Arts and pick up a camera instead. Smith had shown him the potential power of photography to cut to the quick and reveal the rhythms of life. At Camera 35, Greene arrived in my office with a number of small and a few large B&W prints, everyday images of his family in New Rochelle, a Westchester County suburb of New York City. I asked him to return when he finished the project. I think he went on to bigger challenges.

Consuelo Kanaga, W. Eugene Smith and Aileen, 1974

When in 1979 I announced in The New York Times Book Review my intention to write a biography of W. Eugene Smith and was looking to interview people who had known him, Stanley was one of the first to respond. By then, he was living and photographing in San Francisco, where he had formalized his study of photography at the Art Institute. The interview quoted above, conducted by telephone in 1980, was one result of my public query. Greene also sent me a tape he had made earlier, in the summer of 1976, of Gene lecturing at the Institute.

"Time is running out on me," a clearly exhausted Gene Smith announced when asked a question from the audience about his long-planned, and ultimately never completed, Big Book of his lifetime  of closely observing the world he lived in. "I do not think I will have time...."

Gene died in 1978. He was 59, but appeared far older. The following year, along with friends John Morris and Howard Chapnick, I co-founded the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund, which sponsors the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography. In 2004, Stanley Greene applied for and received that very same Smith Grant to help him continue and expand his incredible and courageous work in Chechnya to the wider Caucasus. I don't think he mentioned his connection to Smith in the application, but I knew. At the awards ceremony, I told Stanley that I wished Gene could have been there, to see what the man who considered him his mentor had accomplished, and would surely continue to accomplish.

Earlier that same year, upon the publication of his book Open Wound: Chechnya 1994–2003, he had told Newsweek magazine, "I have been accused of having lost my objectivity. But when you sit on a fence and watch genocide without doing anything about it, you are as guilty as those who are committing it."

And in a 2012 interview at LOOK3, Greene said, "When you watch someone on your left and right being killed, you become angry, and have this naive idea that pictures are going to stop it. You go back more and more to show proof, and you hope pictures that get published will make people stop it. But it’s not the case."

At the end of a comment on TOP last week from Stan B., Mike responded: "I'm still boggled that Stanley Greene died of cancer."

Stanley himself has told the story of an earlier period in Paris when he tried fashion photography, hung out in cafés and shot heroin. He had visions, he said, of Gene Smith wagging his war-damaged finger at him, admonishing him to straighten up and move on. He tried, but it may already have been too late. It is no secret that Stanley subsequently suffered for many years from Hepatitis C, which can occasionally lead to liver cancer. He fought it to the end, and kept working to the end. We are the better for his relentless efforts to show us what we needed to see. Yes, the cancer killed him. But I prefer to think that like his friend Gene Smith, he simply ran out of time, a finished vision just out of reach because, despite everything, with the making of each picture, Stanley still believed the world could change.

—Jim

©2017 by Jim Hughes, all rights reserved

Ed. Note: We do not mean to slight Stanley Greene by showing a picture of Gene Smith but not one of Stanley. We asked for permission to publish a picture of Stanley Greene but his agency refused.

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)

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

Manuel: "There is certainly much more to say when it comes to W. Eugene Smith, a photographer I revere, and Stanley Greene, but whatever can I add? I just want to thank Jim and Mike for this simply wonderful reading."

[A different] Mike: "Thank you for this. I've been a passionate admirer of W. Eugene Smith for decades, and greatly enjoyed the biography by Jim Hughes. I was unaware of Stanley Greene until after he died. But somehow it seems inevitable that he would have been mentored by Smith. Both seemed like men who led with their hearts."

Bill Mitchell: "I have always been a fan of Gene Smith's work (thank you Jim Hughes). Googling 'images W. Eugene Smith' brings up to me a passel of great pictures, but I am viewing them through a lifetime of familiarity and a 20th-century point of view. I wonder how those images are holding up to 21st-century sensibilities."

Robert Newcomb: "In my younger years I was very good about actually going to photography shows. I would even travel hours to get to some. I once went to a W. Eugene Smith exhibition at the High Museum in Atlanta. The images were so powerful that I had to stop and sit down for a rest about halfway through the show."

Look Up / Look Down / Look Everywhere

Words and photos by Jim Hughes

I was just discussing the value of "looking up" with an attorney friend, an enthusiastic photographer here in Camden. His hobby was about to become more expensive, apparently. He had just asked if I thought the new Fuji GFX, with its 50-megapixel sensor, which costs more than twice as much as my old $3,000 Miata, would make his pictures better. He was already thinking of upgrading from his new X-T2. No, I answered, it's not the camera that makes the picture, it's the eye. I showed him a print of one of my most recent photographs, taken at a worksite just across the street from his home and office, where a bridge is being replaced, fouling traffic for these past many months. He studied the print for a long time, then announced: "I would never have seen that, not in a million years." I pulled out my own camera, an X-Pro1 purchased last year for less than $500 when it was discontinued, to which I have affixed an ancient 28mm ƒ/2.8 Canon rangefinder lens, and started reviewing for him the images I'd decided not to print, showing cement being poured and bent-over workers smoothing it like glass. "A record of an event is not a picture," I said.

Here's the frame that caught my eye:

Jim Hughes, Triangulated Apparatus, 2017

That happened when I looked up. The next day, again in town, as I was about to enter the local grocery to buy a jug of cider, I happened to look down and made this photograph, which I am about to email to my friend who is still learning our mystifying craft, as of course we all are:

Jim Hughes, Apples, Pears & Skateboards, 2017

Years ago, while doing research for Shadow & Substance, my biography of W. Eugene Smith, in his files I came upon a well-read copy of Zeiss Magazine, from 1938, when he had just begun freelancing in New York City, had been offered a job at the Daily News, and turned it down. "I'd decided I was not really cut out to be a Daily News photographer," he later said.

In my book, I wrote about young Gene's quest to find himself photographically: "He walked the city's streets looking for unusual angles...then holed himself up in his darkened bathroom, often printing through the night. And when he wasn't photographing or printing, he was reading books and magazines about photography.

"He seems to have read one article over and over, practically memorizing it: 'What is Your Viewpoint?' by Leo Nejelski, one of Zeiss Magazine's stable of accomplished photographers. Following normal sight patterns and merely recording on film what one sees, the author suggested, 'has nothing in common with picture making, the expression of thoughts and emotions by means of photography.'

"In a series of carefully drawn examples, Nejelski outlined the advantages of photographing from what he called 'low-point perspective,' 'high-point perspective,' and relative to a given subject, any vertical camera position in between—or, for that matter, any horizontal position a full 360 degrees around the subject. His point was, let the mind's eye roam to set the creative spirit free."

Not too long ago, I received an email from Nejelski's daughter. My book, it turns out, had finally come to her attention, and she just wanted to thank me for remembering her father as the teacher he always had been.

Jim

For many years, Jim Hughes was the editor of Camera 35. Later, he was the founding editor of Mike J.'s all-time favorite photo magazine, the original Camera Arts. His books include the superb biography W. Eugene Smith: Shadow and Substance—The Life and Work of an American Photographer, and the monograph Ernst Haas in Black and White. Retired now, he writes occasionally for TOP (see his other articles by finding his name in the "Categories" list in the right-hand sidebar). He and his wife live in Maine.

©2017 by Jim Hughes, 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:

David Dyer-Bennet: "Yes, work the subject, by all means. Either taking actual pictures, or just moving around and visualizing what you could get. Or even standing still, if your head does 3D modeling that well! It's not inherently better to shoot all the ideas you come up with and pick one later, it's not inherently better to figure it out and just shoot one which is wonderful. They're all equally valid (there's a continuum between those extremes of course).

"Of course, for some subjects, there is less time available to work them than others; that's a real-world constraint that cannot safely be ignored.

"These ideas, by the way, apply (in my allegedly humble opinion) throughout photography; they're just as applicable to shooting a wedding reception, grip-and-grins, wildlife, landscape, abstractions, whatever. Every level from the artiest art to the basest commercialism. (Okay, they don't actually seem very applicable to medical imaging, for one example; so not absolutely all photography.)"

Geoff Wittig responds to David: "I would argue that the same principles absolutely apply to medical imaging! Okay, not so much to MRI scans, though they can sometimes be compelling and beautiful in their own way. But (for example) photographs of surgical procedures can be dry technical illustrations, or they can be dramatic and artistically beautiful photographs without losing any teaching value. One of the nurses I work with took a cell-phone photograph (with the patient's permission!) of a cesarean section. It was perfectly composed, with the emerging infant and surgeons' hands dramatically lit by the overhead operative lights, the rapid light falloff letting the OR clutter fade into darkness. A beautiful image, even ignoring the compelling subject."

Happy Columbus Day...

...From Jim Hughes.

Jim came across this sardonic commentary on Columbus Day yesterday while wandering the streets of Camden, Maine.

Posted by: Mike

©2015 by Jim Hughes, all rights reserved

Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

Phil Wilkins: "In Australia our equivalent to Columbus Day is Australia Day celebrated on January 26th. Aboriginal people, the indigenous people of this country, call it Invasion Day."

Gaspar Heurtley: "In Argentina, this has always been 'Día de la raza' (raza means race). When I was a teenager, I studied how Cristobal Colón discovered América. But a couple years ago, things changed: now it's 'Cultural diversity day'; kids learn about the civilizations that where here before Europeans, about the multiple wars, advantages and disadvantages of that coming, and so on. I wish I was at junior high now."

KeithB: "Actually, I prefer 'Explorer's Day.' Then we can honor the brave Asian who said 'Do you think it is safe to cross?' as well as astronauts and other folks who dared the unknown."

Derek: "There are many reasons we should not be celebrating Christopher Columbus (and sad it has taken this long to start acknowledging the fact). That graphic text [the sheet in the middle of the picture —Ed.] was penned not by Columbus but Michele de Cuneo. Columbus is the 'Lord Admiral' referenced."

More Bad News in Print Photojournalism

New York Daily News Staff Photographer David Handschuh was badly injured by falling debris on the job on 9/11. Photo by Todd Maisel/New York Daily News

Written by Jim Hughes

As rather gleefully announced in today's edition of its arch-rival, the New York Post, the New York Daily News has fired veteran photographer David Handschuh, whose injury and survival while photographing during the twin towers' collapse on 9/11 has become the stuff of legend. "For me," David wrote on his Facebook page about the World Trade Center site he had earlier driven past, "it was the place where my life was luckily spared while photographing for the Daily News. The ironic part, I was driving into the office to be fired from my job, a position I have so proudly held for 27 years this month.... My co-workers, who are the most dedicated of creative spirits, are living in an insane asylum."

Also shown the door, according to the Post, were Deputy Photo Editor Jim Alcorn, Night Photo Editor Kevin Coughlin, photo editors Karlo Pastrovic and David Pokress, and photojournalists Mark Bonifacio, Andrew Theodorakis, Enid Alvarez and Aaron Showalter, along with Copy Chief Phil Cornell. These firings follow a similar purge at the News last year which saw some two dozen from the editorial staff let go. Speculation is that owner Mort Zuckerman, who made his fortune in real estate, wants more emphasis and resources directed toward the digital side.

The Daily News once billed itself as "New York's Picture Newspaper," and even now includes a symbolic press camera as part of its logo. There was a time when I would advise young people wanting to get into photojournalism to start with a staff job at a daily newspaper. Print, I believed, was a learning laboratory that would live forever. Seems that is no longer true, and my well-intentioned advice is no longer good, and hasn't been for some time. I can only wring my ink-stained hands.

Jim

For more of Jim's writings for TOP, see his category in the right-hand sidebar.

©2014 by Jim Hughes, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2014 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's links!

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

John Camp: "Do you think there's a possibility that they're firing photojournalists because they're replacing them with...something better? Or, at least, in some ways better? How many of the most amazing 9/11 shots were done by pro photographers—like the plane about to hit the tower? I was a news guy for much of my career, until I was in my mid-forties, and though I was a 'pencil' reporter, I also shot quite a few photos because of my photographic hobby, so I both sympathize and empathize with PJs.

"But: the 'best' PJ photos are almost always accidents—few PJs are standing there with their Nikon or Canons when a building explodes, a cop goes down, etc. But the photos of those things often can be quickly 'crowd-sourced,' and for almost no cost. PJs react to events, and get there later; crowds take photos of the event itself. It wasn't a PJ who took the photos of the Rodney King beating that set off the LA riots...or, for that matter, of the assassination of John Kennedy or the prison shots at Abu Ghraib, or, judging from their quality, most of the shots coming out of the crash site of Flight 17....

"I think a lot of PJ work in the future is going to be set events and portraits, and you don't need a huge staff for that, or even a lot of experience—it was work that was given to rookies in the past. And newspapers, which have become financially weak, are also struggling toward a future that is more on-line, and do believe they need to shift resources. (That apparently was part of the reason that the top editor at the New York Times was fired—she wasn't moving toward digital quickly enough.)

"It's a complicated mess, and a lot of people are going to get hurt. I don't have a lot of faith that news gathering will be improved, but I do have some feeling that we will actually see more (at least viewable) photography of critical events, just because everybody carries an iPhone now."

The Besotted Bird: Love Is in the Air!

By Jim Hughes

From my office window which overlooks our driveway, I have been observing one pretty little bird's odd behavior for the past three weeks. From first light to dusk, it seems, he (I'm assuming the creature is a male, for reasons that will soon become obvious) can be seen darting between our Honda van, which mostly sits undriven and unloved, and our giant tangle of forsythia, which is immediately adjacent to the van's passenger side. First, he perches on the rubber sill outside the closed passenger-side window, seeming to peer inside. Then he hops forward, toward the side rearview mirror with its wideangle perspective. Soon, he...well, maybe the pictures tell the story best:

One day I decided to get a closer look at this fascinating little bird with what appeared to be obsessive-compulsive behavior problems. So I quietly slid into the driver's seat with my camera, and focused on the standard warning printed across the bottom of most right-side mirrors. At first I thought the bird, which looks to me like a sparrow (but I'm no expert), was peering at me. Eventually, I realized he was looking at his reflection in the window, which showed his own handsome profile in the mirror.

Seeming to work up some courage, the bird hops closer to the object of his desire, which I realize he has, in all likelihood, convinced himself is a potential mate (it was suddenly Spring, after all, up here in late-blooming Maine). Could it be, I wondered, that he sees his reflected self as an alluring female?

The bird offers his chosen love a close-up look and a peck on the beak. So far, so good...

...then shows himself to any and all competitors, and with a shrill song warns them off.

He makes his approach, and tries to fly into her world...

...only to realize that she has disappeared. Yet again.

This sequence, repeated over and over again, was photographed over the course of maybe an hour, with the photographer (me, cramped arms and all!) trying to remain absolutely still (and invisible to the bird) inside a closed and stifling car. The bird's odd behavior happened with lightning speed in constantly changing light. Camera was a Fuji X-E1; my lens was an antique 35mm (50mm-e) ƒ/2 Canon screw-mount RF.

The courtship ritual is still going on (I am watching it out my office window as I write), although, in evident frustration, the bird has expanded his efforts to now also include the mirrors on the Subaru parked next to the Honda (the latter's mirror is now all but obliterated by white bird poop, incidentally). I regret to say I am soon going to have to find a way to divert the bird's attention elsewhere, since the Honda will shortly be needed for runs to the town dump and the local supermarket, not necessarily in that order.

Perhaps I should call this series "a story of life in six frames."

Jim

For many years, Jim Hughes was the editor of Camera 35. Later, he was the founding editor of Mike J.'s all-time favorite photo magazine, the original Camera Arts. His books include the superb biography W. Eugene Smith: Shadow and Substance—The Life and Work of an American Photographer, and the monograph Ernst Haas in Black and White. Retired now, he writes occasionally for TOP (see his other articles by finding his name in the "Categories" list in the right-hand sidebar). He lives in Maine.

©2014 by Jim Hughes, all rights reserved

Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

Ranjit Grover: "This is a common sight here in the tropics. Not just one variety of bird, but several ones come here and peck at the mirrors in the breeding season. If you do not protect your mirrors they will one day break it. I have seen that happening. The birds are trying to frighten away potential rivals in the mating season. They cannot make out between a reflection and the real. They will peck at any reflective surface. The best way to protect the mirror is to cover it with a paper bag while you are not actually using the vehicle."

GKFroehlich: "Your bird is a Song Sparrow. The behavior you witnessed is actually fairly common, but it's almost certainly a territorial dispute between the male and an imagined would-be interloper. I've seen this behavior many, many times, involving species that are sexually dimorphic (i.e., the males and females have very different plumages). And it's always a male attacking a (presumed) competing male. In our sparrows, the Song Sparrow included, both sexes wear the same plumage, so your courting interpretation is understandable. Still, a nice story in six frames!"

Jim Hughes replies: The male vs. male territorial theory makes sense, and in fact I considered from the outset that explanation for my little bird's repetitive behavior. But after extensive close observation and reflection (could never resist a decent pun), I saw considerably more attraction than aggression. Besides, I am doubtless, as Mark Kirkpatrick notes, an incurable Romantic, at least in a Blakean sense, and when given a choice usually prefer Songs of Innocence over Songs of Experience.

That, and unrequited love generally makes the better story.

Shortly after sending this piece to Mike a few weeks back, I did notice in the local press a story about an evidently crazed raven that had attacked three cars in the town of Richmond, Maine, severely damaging rubber windshield gaskets and wipers in the process. (This followed the previous month's report of two goats clambering atop a car and doing some sort of mating dance on its roof.) We endured one hell of a long, cold winter up here. The understanding chief of police gave car owners permission to 'safely dispatch the nuisance bird.' No word yet on any denouement. I did clip and save the story, incidentally, to cite in just this circumstance.

The Case of the Purloined Prints

Spread of Robert Steinberg's portfolio for "The Albumen Alternative," published in the March 1983 edition of Camera Arts magazine. The four-color reproductions were good, but could not do justice to the originals.

-

Written by Jim Hughes

Who among us can truly fathom the undeniable allure of a work of art? In its first incarnation, Camera Arts published a portfolio of hand-crafted albumen prints by the photographer Rob Steinberg (March, 1983) that exhibited a certain subtle, and fragile, beauty. Each print was one of a kind, an amalgam of the seemingly long-neglected arts of paper making, pictorialism and, some might even say, alchemy.

Although most of our stories at the time were written by freelancers, these images so enthralled my editorial assistant at the time that she asked to write it herself. Her first feature. In her open cubicle of an office, she surrounded herself with the oversize still-life prints, essentially living with them each working day, literally breathing their rare air. In the end, her carefully wrought words caught the essence of one artist's passions. To forestall any possible damage, we made large copy transparencies and reproduced from these for the magazine rather than sending the irreplaceable originals to the printer.

The portfolio was well received by our readers, and the photographer called to express his satisfaction. But a few months later, I received another call from the photographer. "Now that everything is finished, when can I expect to receive my prints back?" he wanted to know. I think he may have had a gallery exhibit planned.

I thought the portfolio had already been returned, shortly after publication. I asked my assistant why it hadn't been. "I haven't been able to find it," she admitted. Her eyes welled up. "It was here; then it wasn't. I’ve been looking everywhere for it, but I didn't want to tell you the prints were lost because I thought they must just have been misplaced somewhere."

She remembered putting everything back in the photographer's large portfolio box, then sliding that back into its original packaging, which we always tried to save. The sturdy package was finally placed back on a shelf. Our records showed a log-in date, but nothing to indicate a return or a pickup.

We—meaning the whole staff, top to bottom—proceeded to turn the office complex, which we shared with Popular Photography, upside down and inside out. Nothing. Had the work been stolen, right under our noses, by a visiting photographer? Or was it an inside job? Perhaps one of our own staff members had developed an uncontrollable lust for the images. Or had our nightly cleaning service accidentally tossed the package? Everything and everyone was suspect. After a week of fruitless searching, we finally had to admit that the portfolio had simply disappeared. It was not only a mystery—it was a photography magazine's worst nightmare.

I called Rob to tell him the bad news. In a neat bit of rationalization, I think I used the word "misplaced." In any event, I said, it was clearly the magazine's responsibility. We intended to keep searching, but if all else failed, we ultimately would pay for remaking the prints—knowing full well that in his case, no amount of money could make up for the time, energy, skill, and passion involved. For his part, the photographer displayed more understanding than I might have had I been in his place.

•     •     •

Months passed. One day I received another call from the photographer. I thought he might finally be requesting recompense. No. Seems he'd been contacted by a woman—she sounded quite elderly, he said—who told him she'd found something she thought might belong to him. Asked to describe it, she said it was package of "lovely photographs, I think they are, that look like paintings."

She found them in a pile of trash in her Greenwich Village neighborhood, waiting at the curbside to be picked up by a New York City Sanitation truck. "I don't know why," she explained, "but my little dog pulled me right to them and started sniffing. Your address and phone number were inside the box, and I thought you might want the contents back."

Before long, Rob and his portfolio were reunited. Nothing was damaged and no prints were missing, he reported. But the mystery remained. How did a large portfolio belonging to a Boston-area artist make its way from an office building on the East Side of Manhattan down some 30 blocks to end up in a trash heap in the far West Village? What sort of thief goes to the trouble of making off with something so large and specific, of such obvious aesthetic and probably significant monetary value—even managing somehow to evade the watchful eyes of knowledgeable professionals—only to later totally abandon the endeavor?

Perhaps the episode represented something far more complicated, even more sinister, than I had imagined. As for the theft, if that's what it was, I had my suspicions, but never came up with anything resembling proof. So we would simply never know.

The case of the purloined prints remains unsolved.

Jim

For many years, Jim Hughes was the editor of Camera 35. Later, he was the founding editor of Mike J.'s all-time favorite photo magazine, the original Camera Arts. His books include the superb biography W. Eugene Smith: Shadow and Substance—The Life and Work of an American Photographer, and the monograph Ernst Haas in Black and White. Retired now, he writes occasionally for TOP (see his other articles by finding his name in the "Categories" list in the right-hand sidebar). He lives in Maine.

©2014 by Jim Hughes, all rights reserved

Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

hugh crawford: "There used to be a well established 'thieves market' on Second Avenue in front of the Kiev restaurant, where I ate on a pretty regular basis. Every time I saw something that looked like a portfolio I'd check the name and phone number, call the artist or photographer, and get a window seat and keep an eye on things while eating my pirogi.

"Did I mention that these were the most stupid of all thieves? The police couldn't do much besides tell them to move, NYC being the sort of place where almost anything can show up on the curb (I've picked up a Kilfitt bellows setup, a Crown Graphic, and a process camera from the curb, and I know someone who retrieved a bunch of Irving Penn prints from a couple dumpsters), but the NYC Hell's Angels lived a couple blocks away, and the Hell's Angels' sense of due process is somewhat more casual than the NYPD's."

Luis Nadeau: "Hi Jim, Long time no see. Rob Steinberg was, in my opinion, the top printer in the world who could handle both albumen and platinum/palladium. Albumen was especially difficult. He tried to commercialize a palladium paper (with a trace of platinum in it) under the name of Palladio, starting in 1988. There is a (very poor) reproduction of one of his palladiotypes in my Encyclopedia of Printing, Photographic and Photomechanical Processes, p. 354. Unfortunately, his source of raw paper experienced a disastrous fire and even though they rebuilt their facilities, the quality of their products changed significantly. He had to abandon both albumen and palladium printing.

"By the way, thanks for that wonderful David Vestal obit. Regards from Canada."

[Luis Nadeau is a pioneering researcher and expert in the fields of photographic conservation and restoration, with a special interest in permanent and archival alternative processes, including the elusive Fresson process. He is the author of a number of influential books and is revered by many alt-process fans the world over. —Ed.]

Jim Hughes responds: "Luis, You may not realize it, but you are in no small measure responsible for my being able to write my biography of Gene Smith. I mean physically write it. Back in the early '80s, when our paths crossed in Maine, we had a discussion, actually more than one, about my plans to produce what I knew would be a massive book. But I had never used a computer, just a manual typewriter, to that point, and realized that what was then called 'word processing' might make a difficult job easier. But I needed something that could be transported back and forth to Maine, along with my burgeoning pile of research.

"You recommended a then-new Kaypro 'portable,' actually a 25-pound steel suitcase with a 7-inch screen and a full keyboard. You even sent me a color brochure after you returned to Canada. Based on your advice, I bought a Kaypro in, I think, 1983. This, of course, was before graphical interfaces, mice, wysiwyg, Windows and IBM machines. The Kaypro used the CP/M operating system, had a built-in memory of something like 64k and no hard drive, only 400k floppies (back then you could actually bend them!) yet still came bundled with a difficult but eminently customizable writing program called Perfect Writer (in all the years since, I've yet to find anything as good).

"My first draft of Shadow & Substance was more than 2,000 pages, plus 400 pages of perfectly matched endnotes. After seven years of research while running magazines came two full-time (jobless) years of writing and three years of revising and editing. Thereafter, I wrote the texts for two more books before finally succumbing to the allures of the Mac system, which I continue to use.

"So for this—and for your well-known encyclopedic knowledge of everything photographic—I thank you. Again and again...."

David Vestal: A Wonderful Life

Written by Jim Hughes

For years, every Christmas season after David Vestal moved from New York City to the Connecticut countryside, my wife and I would receive a small envelope postmarked Bethlehem, CT. Inside, neatly wrapped in archival tissue, would be a meticulously printed 2 1/2 x 3 3/4-inch black-bordered silver image of one of David's photographs on a piece of 3 1/2 x 5-inch black-and-white paper. Sometimes it would be signed on the back in David's unmistakable script, other times it would bear a cryptic "DV MCHNY," his version of "Happy Holidays." I never asked, but I wouldn't have put it past this brilliant, humorous, quirky and understated man to have moved to Bethlehem just so he could send those exquisitely crafted gems to his friends around the world with that postmark. In any event, we always regarded the prints as little treasures.

Christmas Print received from David Vestal.
The photograph was dated 1987.

I met David Vestal on the pages of Popular Photography, where I learned much of what I knew about photography as I was growing up in the 1950s (it was a good magazine back then). In 1966, three years after I'd moved to New York to get married (50 years and counting!) and just as I'd accepted my dream job as editor of a photography magazine, Camera 35, I read a long piece by David in Pop Photo entitled "'...a great unknown photographer' — W. Eugene Smith." Unlike the usual technical fare in the magazine, it was more like one of those classic New Yorker profiles, full of quotations and contrasting opinions from friends and enemies. Vestal presented a fractured, stream-of-consciousness view of one of photography's heroes. One of my heroes. The story left an indelible impression.

As David later told me, the idea for the story originated on the Amazing Randi's late night radio show, where a panel consisting of Popular Photography's Charlie Reynolds, John Durniak, and Vestal had sat down with Smith to discuss the world's problems. Smith, having famously resigned from LIFE and subsequently failed, to his way of thinking, with his impossibly ambitious Pittsburgh project, had been feeling much maligned of late. On the air, he said, "I wish someone would do an honest story on me." Later, David sent Gene a note offering to do one, and in return received a note from Gene penciled on a torn piece of paper: "No Spray Gun Job."

In the resultant article, Vestal began: "W. Eugene Smith is an unknown photographer hidden behind a reputation. Like other legends, his has a core of truth and a thick coating of fantasy. While the whole business is much too tangled to sort out, I don't doubt that he is partly responsible for his myth.

"...It seems to be true that Gene can't work with some people because of his llimitations: and that others can't work with him because of theirs. And at the end of some of his successful jobs, the feeling on both sides—his and the editors'—has been one of pain and defeat.... I don't much understand Gene; most of the people I've talked to seem to understand him still less: and it's a fair guess his own self-understanding is full of holes. Certainly, he spends energy and passion on defense and justification he doesn't need.... He feels he is on trial with every undertaking, and the feeling somehow is converted into fact. But how all this happens is not understood."

Young buck that I was, I felt I needed to meet Smith, and eventually did, a year or so later, when I worked up the nerve to call the number under his name in the phone book. I went to his legendary loft. Published a portfolio. Became a friend. As some may know, I managed to help him get back to the U.S. after he was brutally beaten while taking photographs for his Minamata essay about mercury poisoning in Japan. In fact, I published that essay in Camera 35 in 1974, and ultimately, after his untimely death, spent a dozen years researching (with my wife) and writing the biography, W. Eugene Smith: Shadow & Substance, published in 1989.

Much of this was due in no small measure to David Vestal, with whom I've had a long history. In the middle of 1969, about when I met Smith for the first time, I hired David to join the staff as associate editor of both Camera 35 and Travel & Camera (the magazine that the venerable U.S. Camera had turned into when Tom Maloney sold his publishing company to American Express, which magazine two years later would once more metamorphose, this time into Travel & Leisure, leaving me to again concentrate on Camera 35). I seem to remember something about a change of editors at Pop that didn't sit well with David at the time.

David lent us his usual cerebral self, and did great work. In 1971, David even served as editor, with Regina Benedict as his picture editor, of the U.S. Camera Annual. But he soon seemed to tire of the constraints of the staffer's life. I think he was uncomfortable with corporate cubicles, assigned stories, and regular paychecks. David Vestal was nothing if not a free spirit. So back he went to writing and photographing what he wanted, when he wanted—and, of course, the teaching of small classes for photographers that had always been his lifeline.

David's own teacher had been the legendary Sid Grossman of the Photo League in the late 1940s (before that, David told me, he had been a student of dance, a fact that didn't surprise me, considering the lyric grace of his own photography). A list of David's students, who stayed with him as fast friends well past any sort of "graduation," is impressive: Charlie Pratt, Lilo Raymond, Helen Buttfield, Larry Siegel, Maggie Sherwood (how many old Villagers remember her Purple Houseboat gallery?), Shalmon Bernstein. I'm sure there are many others I can't think of at the moment. David once worked as Ralph Steiner's assistant, but Ralph would often call himself David's student as well. They had a lot in common, including no-nonsense writing styles.

In 1972, having personally benefited from so much of David Vestal's writing, I asked him why he hadn't put all that wisdom and knowledge between the covers of a book. He shrugged, and said something like he'd probably never get it done. "And how would I support us?" he wondered. I knew it was an issue. I doubted if his wife Agatha, a former student who photographed under the name Ann Treer and also designed jewelry, made enough to support both of them during what could turn out to be a long project. So I told David what I knew about writers from the past (I mentioned Henry James and Ernest Hemingway) who early on survived by serializing their work in magazines like Harper's Weekly and Scribner's, respectively.

I proposed a similar scenario to David. He could write, and illustrate, a chapter every month or so for Camera 35. We would pay him regular page rates as stories were published, or in advance if he needed. We would ask one-time only rights; he would not have to sign any sort of contract, and he would be free to sell the finished product to the book publisher of his choice and keep that money as well. I never mentioned the arrangement to my own publisher, and I was never asked. "It's a win-win for you," I said. "And we get a great series."

David agreed. The headline on our March 1972 cover announced "Exclusive: David Vestal's Book of Craft—An Advanced Course in B&W Photography for Beginners and Others." On the table of contents, I noted, "Beginning in this issue, David's Vestal's long-awaited first book: a complete education in 'straight' black-and-white photography...in serial form."

The opening page for David Vestal's "Book of Craft"
as it appeared in Camera 35

He was committed, and I was confident he would deliver. Here are some random excerpts from that first chapter:

"Look through the viewfinder at anything you want to photograph, then move around until you like the way your picture fits in the finder's rectangle."

"Get close enough to fill up the picture with what's most important. Get far enough away to include everything you need in the picture. What's important? You decide. It's your picture; you're the photographer. No one else can say what's important to you."

"If your seeing is good, your pictures should be good, even if they are slightly overexposed or out of focus. If they are lively or pertinent, and worth seeing, that is what matters. Only weak pictures need perfection. Strong ones can survive considerable faults."

—From "David Vestal's Book of Craft," Chapter 1: How the Tools of Photography Evolved, Camera 35, March 1972

Over two and a half years, Camera 35 published 21 chapters of David's "Book of Craft." The resultant book was published at the end of 1974 by Harper & Row as The Craft of Photography, By David Vestal, but I have to say I preferred our title. It was just a bit loftier, a little more befitting of the author. From our final chapter:

"The Zen people say that a novice sees mountains as mountains and water as water; later, he sees that mountains are not mountains and water isn't water; and finally (if and when enlightenment turns up), he once again sees mountains as mountains and water as water. This time he knows the score. Photographers go through the same process.

"...Technique is a means, not a goal. This is the beginning, not the end."

—From "David Vestal's Book of Craft," Chapter 21: What to Do With Your Pictures, Camera 35, August/September 1974

Over the course of the next several months, David, for reasons he termed "feelings of loyalty" to his original editor, who evidently was back on the job, struggled with a decision to return to the fold at Pop. Finally, he did. I understood. In any event, in those heady days the photo magazine business was something of a "moveable feast," as Hemingway might say. In July of 1975, Camera 35 itself was sold out from under me (that's how I felt, at any rate) and I too moved, accepting the editorship of the so-called "Annuals" division of Popular Photography, eventually leading, several years on, to my editing the then-new Camera Arts magazine. Along the way, David continued writing for me. Here are some more excerpts:

"Everything in a photograph comes from light and is seen as light. I don't just mean that, technically, light makes the picture exist. I mean that light conveys all the feelings and all the information that makes the picture work. Light carries both data and expression.

"Any photographer who is not alive to light is in trouble."

—From "The Language of Light," by David Vestal, Invitation to Photography, Summer 1976

"People often forget that the zone system is descriptive, not prescriptive: so remember that it is something to use, not something to obey."

—From "The Minimal Zone System," by David Vestal, 35-mm Photography, Winter 1977

"Claptrap trouble. [Edward] Steichen's most ambitious opus, the 'Family of Man' show [at MoMA], was widely promoted as the greatest thing since firmament. It was enormously popular and drew record crowds. It was lousy.

"'The Family of Man' included many strong and beautiful photographs, but they were murdered in front of your eyes by a showmanship that did not suit them. Most of the commercial-lab prints were too big, many were poor in quality, and all of them were jammed into too little space in ways that were too complicatedly clever. The good pictures were diluted by the inclusion of more mediocre ones. This wasn't communication, it was an assault. The show was also too popular to see well—rush hour in the subway.

"Those were the minor problems. The big mistake was to treat the photographs as raw material to illustrate a sentimental and essentially verbal (script by Carl Sandburg) idealization of our species. There is much to be said for mankind, but this was syrup pretending to have muscles. It was colossally mediocre; a still-photo counterpart of Cecil B. DeMille's Bible epic movies, and as convincing.

"Moral: Show good pictures only, and hang them so they can be seen well; don't try to show ideas. Intelligent or not, ideas are not visible."

—From "Getting the Hang of It," by David Vestal, 35-mm Photography, Summer 1978

"Ridiculous...is the word for all formulas, rules, and prescriptions that try to tell you how big to print any picture that the prescriber has not seen. There are no exceptions. The cleverer and more plausible they are, the more important it is to remember that they are nonsense: pernicious twaddle.

"When Abraham Lincoln's straight man asked, 'How long should a man's legs be?', Abe came right back with: 'Long enough to reach the ground.'

"Print size offers no punch line as good as that. However, when asked 'What size should be print be?', we can say: 'Big enough to fit the picture.'

"If you ask right, the picture will show you."

—From "How Big is Big Enough," By David Vestal, 35-mm Photography, Summer 1979

In September of 1982, two years into its brief but brilliant life, David joined the staff of my last magazine, Camera Arts, again as associate editor. His profile of Roy DeCarava ("In The Key of Life," Camera Arts, May 1983) proved to be one of the most finely wrought pieces I'd ever had the honor of publishing. In the next issue, addressing the allegedly technical topic of enlarging, David wrote:

"I should add that both originality and spontaneity are vastly overrated qualities. You can be both spontaneous and original, yet do nothing worth doing. And you can't be either thing on purpose by trying. Both are purely by-products of being yourself and not following the herd, and they have little or nothing to do with intentions. Like scarcity, they add no value, though they can be used to raise the price. Leave them alone. If you have them, fine. If not, don't worry—other qualities matter more."

—From "Enlarging Your Vision," by David Vestal, Camera Arts, June 1983

The quotation above came from the penultimate issue of Camera Arts. The July, 1983, edition marked its sad death. And now, my old friend David Vestal is gone as well.

While at Ziff-Davis (publisher of Popular Photography, et al), I had been able to perform a similar service for David's The Art of Black-and-White Enlarging (also Harper & Row, in 1984) as I had with his The Craft of Photography, by initiating the serialization of its contents in advance, this time in various of our magazines.

It was my pleasure.

One day in 1970, Charlie Reynolds, picture editor of Popular Photography, came crosstown to have lunch with his friend David Vestal, then associate editor of Camera 35. They returned to our office, then conveniently located on 32nd Street a few floors above the Spiratone store, with a rumpled restaurant placemat in hand—on the back of which was scribbled an almost indecipherable maze of names of people in photography, all connected by a bunch of lines and arrows. I took a long look and turned the mess over to our art director, Leo McCarthy, who produced what we decided to call "The Whole Photography Chart No. 1," which the authors, Reynolds and Vestal, laughingly claimed traced the entire history of photography and its various influences and confluences from its very beginning to the summer of 1970. Needless to say, Chart No. 2 was never produced. I must apologize for the condition of this spread from my only surviving copy of the September 1970 issue. Somewhere along the line, I obviously dumped a cup of coffee on it!

One of David Vestal's memorable mantras was, "Don't ask why. Ask why not."

As I understood his quiet words, everything is possible for those able to turn negatives into positives.

Jim

©2013 by Jim Hughes, all rights reserved

For many years, Jim Hughes was the editor of Camera 35. Later, he was the founding editor of Mike J.'s all-time favorite photo magazine, the original Camera Arts. His books include the superb biography W. Eugene Smith: Shadow and Substance—The Life and Work of an American Photographer, and the monograph Ernst Haas in Black and White. Retired now, he writes occasionally for TOP (see his other articles by finding his name in the "Categories" list in the right-hand sidebar). He lives in Maine.

Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

Car Talk: New Camera, Old Lens

Words and photographs by Jim Hughes

I beg to differ a bit with Bruno Masset ("Two Reasons...," Oct. 16), who proffered a well-reasoned warning about adapting wideangle rangefinder lenses to digital cameras. Okay, I know that he, and other commenters, said that certain lenses "might" cause problems with certain sensors. I also realize he was addressing primarily so-called legacy RF wideangle lens performance on full frame sensors, and not specifically APS-C, which is what I have in my Fuji X-E1. And I certainly appreciated all the knowledge he imparted, much of which I can't say I fully understood.

Nonetheless, I think my recent experience sheds a little more light (okay, pun intended...) on this issue. Back in mid-July, tired of carrying around a beer-can sized (but otherwise excellent) 18–55mm zoom lens that came with my compact X-E1, and exasperated by the inordinate wait for the new (and still large, not to mention expensive) 23mm (35mm FOV equivalent) ƒ/1.4 lens from Fuji, I decided to give my ancient (vintage 1956!) and truly minuscule 25mm ƒ/3.5 Canon RF lens (above right) a trial run. In truth, over the years I had used it very sparingly on my Canon rangefinders. My wideangle focal length of choice for FF has always been 35mm. For me, in fact, the 35mm focal length served as my "normal," and the 50mm was my "moderate telephoto."

As you might guess from the picture of it, much of the 25mm lens protrudes into the camera and, even mounted in an inexpensive Fotodiox adapter, comes close to the sensor (but never strikes anything). The steeply-curved front element is deeply recessed, which is why Canon never released a lens shade for it, or even advised the use of one. But while the lens is coated, point it toward a bright sun and you do get flare. On the other hand, for me a few spectral highlights just add to the retro feel of the imagery produced. As does this lens's rendition of color, contrast, and definition across the APS-C field. Moreover, the Canon somehow imparts a feeling of illumination from within—I don't know how else to put it.

In 1956, by the way, this Canon was regarded as a fast ultra-wide. David Douglas Duncan was said to have raved about its qualities. Its design was based upon the even more venerable Zeiss Topogon. Basically, a cutaway shows it to be similar to a marble—a glass sphere, split in two. Canon added a flat element at the back, perhaps more for protection than anything else:

Bokeh considerations aside (not much of an issue with wideangles as far as I am concerned), ƒ/3.5 is not a limitation for me, given that most of my photographs are made outdoors, generally on the street, as they say. ISO 800, not particularly fast these days, takes care of my exposure needs. I tend to keep the aperture stopped down to ƒ/8, and have encountered no difficulty focusing manually at that setting.

And I have come to love the way this lens gathers and interprets light. I am always working on several bodies of work, pretty much simultaneously. People, architecture, modes of transportation, etc. Anything involving evidence of the hand of man. One of my longest running series involves automobiles in color (45 years and still counting). Below are a few recent examples, all shot with the Fuji X-E1 / Canon 25mm since July 15th.

1924 Buick Touring Convertible running board

I saw this beautifully restored old car turning down the hill toward the parking lot at the Camden public landing, where the windjammer fleet docks. I ran after it and shot off a few frames before the owners returned and wordlessly drove off to their next destination, ice cream cones in hand.

1924 Buick Touring Convertible windscreen

Custom street rod, done to the nines. Originally a 1940 Ford Business Coupe.

The license plate read "Streetrod." The car was originally a 1940 Ford Business Coupe. Just imagine all the salesman's samples that could be stowed in that trunk!

Shelby Cobra. The front end design screams "speed." The hood was still hot to the touch. I believe this to be a first-year 1962 due to its not having the telltale air scoop on hood. The owner was not there to ask.

Cobra, open cockpit. I half expected to hear, "Gentlemen, start your engines," any second. Or maybe Indiana Jones to suddenly appear. Neither happened.

1956 Citroen 2CV meets Mad Max. A work in progress.

1929 Model A Ford Rumble Seat Roadster, complete with picnic basket

Newish Mini offering good advice

Experimental hand-crafted pedal car, ready to race

It should be noted that all of these vehicles were photographed just as I encountered them, parked on a public street in Camden, Maine, which I have come to believe must be the car capital of, if not the world, at least New England.

The moral here: don't be dissuaded from trying wideangle rangefinder lenses, even older ones, on mirrorless digital cameras. The results may surprise you. Fortunately, in my case, I just didn't know any better.

Jim
(Image credits: lens photo, yaotomi.co.jp;
block diagram: Canon Camera Museum)

Text and photographs ©2013 by Jim Hughes, all rights reserved

For many years, Jim Hughes was the editor of Camera 35. Later, he was the founding editor of Mike J.'s all-time favorite photo magazine, the original Camera Arts. His books include the superb biography W. Eugene Smith: Shadow and Substance—The Life and Work of an American Photographer, and the monograph Ernst Haas in Black and White. Retired now, he writes occasionally for TOP (see his other articles by finding his name in the "Categories" list in the right-hand sidebar). He lives in Maine.

Original contents copyright 2013 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's links!

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

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

How Affiliate Websites Work

I got a bitter and cynical complaint yesterday (which I didn't publish) about all the positive camera reviews on TOP. I thought it might be an opportunity to explain how all this stuff actually works. I know a lot about this subject, having made all or part of my living from this for eight years now. I'm one of a relatively few people who manage that.

Fuji X-E1: The Keeper (Part II)

[Ed. Note: In case you missed this in yesterday's Part I, Fuji XF lens rebates are back. Go to B&H Photo, search one of the interchangeable-lens X cameras, either ther X-E1 under review here or the X-Pro1, then click "Savings Available." Rebates are $300 for the 18–55mm zoom, 60mm macro, and 18mm, and $200 on the 35mm ƒ/1.4 and the 14mm. If you start from our link here, we get a little reward if you make a purchase. Thanks for using our links!]

-

By Jim Hughes (continued from yesterday)

...Picking up where we left off, some example pictures taken with the Fuji X-E1:

For sale: Baskets Crafted out of Recycled Outlawed Lobster-Line, Camden, Maine, 2013. Primary colors in outdoor display, photographed under full sun. 35mm Canon, f/5.6, 1/3500, ASA 800, -.67 EV.

Open for Business, Camden, Maine, 2013. Backlit banner in sun, clothes rack in open shade, window at right in deeper shade. 35mm Canon, ƒ/5.6, 1/1300, ISO 800, –.67 EV.

Mail Trucks in a Line, Camden, Maine, 2013.
35mm Canon, ƒ/6.3, 1/4000, ASA 800, –.67 EV.

"Special Edition," Antique Toy Pedal-Plane in Storefront Display Window, Camden, Maine, 2013. 35mm Canon, ƒ/5.6, 1/1200, ASA 800, –1 EV. Good shadow detail, even behind reflections in glass.

A Dog and a Bear in a Pickup Truck, Camden, Maine, 2013. Typical overcast day in Maine. Fuji 18–55mm Zoom set at 55mm, ƒ/7, 1/125, ISO 200, –.67 EV.

Bananas at the corner of Elm and Mechanic Streets, Camden, Maine, 2013. This is why I prefer to focus manually. 35mm Canon, ƒ/5.6, 1/400 sec., ISO 400.

Moose with Deer Antlers (original rack evidently wouldn't fit!), Cappy's Restaurant, Camden, Maine, 2013. Dark interior, available light, overhead incandescent mixed with faint window light. 35mm Canon, ƒ/4, hand-held 1/10-second exposure, ASA 800, –2 EV.

Hand-carved Wooden Bunny with Carrot Smells the Flowers on Main Street, Camden, Maine, 2013. Zoom lens, 37mm, ƒ/5, 1/280, ISO 400, –.67 EV. Open shade. I love the way the Fuji sensor renders muted coloring.

Abandoned House, Rockport, Maine, 2013. Bright sunny day, my normal color settings. Zoom, 32mm, ƒ/5, 1/3500, 400 ISO, –.33 EV.

Same abandoned house, in-camera Film Simulation set to B&W with Yellow Filter. Zoom, 32mm, ƒ/5, 1/1900, ISO 400, –.33 EV. File toned in Aperture by setting Color Temperature slider to 5750 degrees.

Tapestry of Woven Twigs, Camden, Maine, 2013. Full sun behind my right shoulder, peeling monochrome wall. Note shadow detail. Fuji sensor seems to handle subtle and intense equally well. 35mm Canon lens, ƒ/5.6, 1/3500, ISO 800, –.67 EV.

"Vandalism," Rooftop Graffiti, Camden, Maine, 2013. It even happens in a small New England village. 50mm Canon lens, ƒ/8, 1/450,
ISO 200, 0 EV. Bright backlighting.

One final note. As I was leaving the bank in our little town recently, I crossed paths with a well-known architectural photographer who has talked publicly, and eloquently, about his difficult, costly, and ultimately successful transition from large and medium format film to high-end digital. He looked casually down at the camera slung over my shoulder and said, "Hey Jim, is that a new Leica?" I explained that although its quiet shutter had something of the old Leica M4 sound, it was perhaps closer to my previous constant companion, a steel-curtained Canon. "It's a digital Fuji," I noted. He grinned. "Nice!" he said.

Once across the street, I went to the French & Brawn Market, shown in the last picture above, where our New York newspapers are reserved for us daily. In line ahead of me was a wet-plate collodion photographer whose book I reviewed not long ago on these very pages. I caught him staring intently at my Fuji. "That's really a beautiful camera," he finally said.

No one had ever heaped such spontaneous praise on a camera of mine before, and now it had happened twice in one day. I think this one must be a keeper.

Jim

For many years, Jim Hughes was the editor of Camera 35. Later, he was the founding editor of Yr. Hmbl. Ed.'s all-time favorite photo magazine, the original Camera Arts. His books include the superb biography W. Eugene Smith: Shadow and Substance—The Life and Work of an American Photographer, and the monograph Ernst Haas in Black and White. Retired now, he writes occasionally for TOP (see his other articles by finding his name in the "Categories" list in the right-hand sidebar). He lives in Maine.

UPDATE from Jim Hughes: Thanks to all for the comments, a few of which caused me to do a little more research. Although I have used Photoshop in the past, recently I have been teaching myself Aperture on two-year old MacBook Pro, whose 13-inch screen can be a bit misleading depending on its tilt (tilted back, it goes dark!) I previously used Curves to open up shadows and bring down the occasional highlight, a laborious process for me. But it seemed easier, given the greater range of the X-E1 even with JPEGs, to use the Shadow/Highlight and Contrast sliders in Aperture, which I generally like, avoiding Curves altogether. (I gather a RAW converter for X-E1 files in Aperture is just now available, but I read that it still has a few kinks and it won't work with Snow Leopard at the moment, so I'm content to just wait...)

For exhibition prints on my preferred medium, dye sub, I've always liked letting the shadows go fairly dark while exposing for highlight detail. But with the Fuji files, especially for a story intended for the web, I thought I'd try a more open approach, since on the screen all seemed to look good (I haven't started printing them yet), especially large.

But when I shrunk the files for incorporating into the email texts I was sending to Mike, something evidently went awry between the Fuji files, Aperture, my email program, and whatever happens on Mike's end. On the TOP page, I see what some others see, although perhaps not to the same degree. Clicking on the small image to get a larger version helps, as would looking at the even larger email versions I originally sent—if you could see them, which of course you can't. I did go back and look at my Olympus E-PL1 images published recently ("Jaws of Death"), and while my Aperture settings for both camera's files were essentially similar, the Oly files evidenced no haloing that I could see. In truth, the haloing around the "boat" I now do see on my lead picture of the lobster-line baskets I initially took to be faint shadows from secondary reflected light. I didn't think to check because I had taken only that single frame. My first attempt at a corrected version appears below.

This is essentially a version I would print at least as a proof, and then decide what more might be required to make a final print of this particular picture. Which is, I suppose, what I should have done in the first place.

Words and all photographs ©2013 by Jim Hughes, all rights reserved

Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

TOP's links!

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

Kent Phelan: "I'm guessing the well-known architectural photographer was Tillman Crane."

Keith B.: "For those that are without an X, but have been wondering about the dire descriptions from DigLloyd and others of weird raw converter artifacts—as I did until I recently acquired an X-E1—all I can say is that the horror stories are severely overblown and have been overplayed. I'm shooting RAW with up-to-date Lightroom doing the conversion, and these test guys must sharpening to a bizarrely high level to get the now-famous 'watercolor effect' on irregularly-shaped color patches such as tree leaves. I expect Lloyd to be critical of bad design, and picky about technical matters. As a subscriber, that's what I paid him to do. But, I'm just not seeing it with the Fuji X RAW conversions issue."

Rob L: "I would caution folks considering the X-E1 and X-Pro1 to at least try the hybrid viewfinder of the X-Pro1 before going the X-E1 route—both are amazing cameras, but man, the X-Pro1 viewfinder is seriously amazing. If the majority of your lens use is going to be adapted, manual focus lenses, then the XE-1 is a better choice: cheaper, more compact, and you'll very rarely use the optical part of the VF. But if you're going to be using Fuji glass(or the groovy new Touits), then giving the X-Pro1 a try may pay off—the hybrid VF is something Leica should have implemented. It's dead brilliant, and shockingly useful."

Stephen Scharf (partial comment): "I've been using an X-Pro1 since early November 2012, and am hard pressed to think of a camera I've been more impressed with since the advent of the Canon 5D. The image quality from these X-cameras (especially the APS-C sensor based cameras) continues to amaze me on an almost daily basis."

Doug Howk: "I rather doubt that Tillman Crane is shooting digital. He's an outstanding platinum printer using LF cameras. More likely the architectural photographer mentioned in the article is Peter Urbanski who switched to digital in 2006."

Jim Hughes replies: Good guesses, wrong names. It was Rockport resident Brian Vanden Brink, whose latest book is Iconic: Perspectives on the Man-Made World.

Fuji X-E1: The Keeper (Part I)

On the left, my new Fuji X-E1 with an old Canon 35mm RF lens (my new "normal") mounted via a Fotodiox adapter. On the right, my nearly 50-year old—and clearly indestructible—Canon 7s rangefinder film camera with a 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens, my old "normal," mounted via Canon's Leica thread mount. Note the soft releases screwed into the shutter buttons and the antique Leitz 50mm accessory bright-frame viewfinder now used with the Fuji, which allows me to compose on the normal with both eyes open.

By Jim Hughes

Not too long ago, maybe three years at the most, my wife and I were bussing our own table at our favorite breakfast restaurant in Camden village when an acquaintance, a local filmmaker of some note who teaches a volunteer course at the high school, walked by, spied my 35mm rangefinder camera on the table next to the empty plates, and asked, a little incredulously, "Do you still shoot film? That looks suspiciously like an old Leica."

I explained that as long as my stock of Kodachrome held out and Dwayne's, the one K-14 lab left in the country, remained willing to process it, I would continue to shoot film. But no, I told him, the camera wasn't a Leica, but it was an old rangefinder 35. What he was looking at, I informed him, was a 1967 Canon 7s, the feel of which I actually preferred to the high-priced brand. I had purchased that Canon, with an editorial discount, for not much more than $100, directly from Bell & Howell in Chicago, the Japanese manufacturer's distributor back in the day.

The filmmaker, a bearded fellow in heavy canvas motorcycle pants, was accompanied by a young man, probably one of his students, who seemed intrigued. "May I see it?" he asked politely. Sure, I replied. I picked it up and handed it to him. Whereupon my prized possession promptly slipped through his fingers and bounced off my foot, which I had reflexively stuck out, and onto the hard tile floor with a thunk. I don't think he expected the heft of brass and steel in this age of plastic composites. I winced, picked the camera up, examined the base upon which it had landed, saw no dents or dings, advanced the film with a flick of the Canon's butter-smooth lever, focused the lens through the bright rangefinder window and fired off a couple quick exposures. Everything still worked, as it had unfailingly for nearly half a century.

"No damage that I can find," I announced, "except to my big toe. This camera and its lenses were engineered like little tanks and built to last." And they're a joy to use, I might have added if I'd been in a better mood. Despite its fall, and countless previous unprovoked encounters with doorways and numbskulls, the Canon had always kept going like the Energizer Bunny, along with my even older and just as reliable Kodak Retina IIa, a folder that I often carried clammed-up in a coat pocket until needed.

But the next year Kodachrome died, soon to be followed by the inevitable cessation of its processing. I tried substituting Fuji Velvia. I found it good for some subject matter, not so good for others. Eventually, I gave up the fight and bought my first digital camera, an Olympus E-PL1, whose multitude of buttons, menus and submenus gave me fits, and whose otherwise pleasantly retro Pen-like appearance suffered massively from the huge hump of its accessory eye-level electronic viewfinder that this left-eyed photographer absolutely required. Worse, it kept falling off. Worse yet, like most smaller digital cameras, its shutter button was not threaded for a cable release—meaning I could no longer use the soft-release mushroom extenders I had equipped almost all my cameras with for many decades, allowing me to handhold at the ridiculously slow shutter speeds Kodachrome often dictated.  Still, the Olympus sensor and JPEG engine combined to give me a lot of well-rendered images, and its mirrorless Micro 4/3 design allowed me to use, in manual mode, most of my old Leica Thread Mount (LTM) Canon rangefinder lenses, glass that I had come to dearly love over the years, and whose characteristics were, and are, a good match for my particular way of seeing pictures. (As Ken Tanaka once wryly noted, "Wherever I go, there I am.")

Then one day during a snowstorm the Olympus' own lack of heft did it in. Its nylon strap slipped off my shoulder without my sensing it while I was crossing a street. The camera fell to the asphalt and landed on its backside. I tested it after brushing off a mess of slush, and everything seemed to work fine; but a couple nights later when I wanted to download the SD card and opened the door to its compartment, the adjacent battery just jumped right out onto my lap. The tiny plastic tab that is supposed to hold it in place had been shattered by the fall. So now every time I wanted to download a card, out would pop the battery like a little self-propelled rocket. When I realized that the out-of-warranty and probably already discontinued camera would have to be returned for service, and I would doubtless receive a refurbished model in its place, requiring me to go through the painful setup process all over again, I decided to just live with this and any future problems; it was time to relegate the Olympus to part-time status as a light-duty backup, and buy my second brand new camera in as many years.

After much research, I decided on the Fuji X-E1, second in that venerable company's X-trans APS-C interchangeable-lens line. Both look like real cameras, with shutter and aperture dials where they should be; both offer threaded shutter releases, and both have the same unusual random-pattern 16.3-MP sensor in 3:2 format (an important consideration for this 35mm no-crop shooter, who hated 4:3). I had at first considered the even costlier X-Pro1, but I thought the double-duty viewfinder (optical frames/electronic focusing) would prove too finicky for my purposes. Additionally, the Pro requires supplementary diopters to be attached to the eye-level viewfinder. The E1, on the other hand, has a fine-adjustment wheel built in, which allows me an exact match to the +.4 my left eye requires (for those who are wondering, my right eye needs no correction...it just doesn't visualize pictures the way my left eye does). Since the X-E1's excellent EVF provides a 100% view, and I've always liked frame lines that allow me to isolate a "picture" inside a shifting broader scene, at least with a "normal" focal length, I realized I could just slide the accessory finder, shown above, which I already had, into the camera's hot shoe.

I purchased the X-E1 in March, during Fuji's heavily discounted lens sale that in effect made the system, if not inexpensive, at least more affordable. [Ed. Note: Fuji's lens sale has just returned, as of midnight last night. Go to B&H Photo, look up any of the Fuji X cameras, then click on "Savings Available."] I went with the 18–55mm (27–84mm-e) ƒ/2.8–4  zoom, the kind of all-purpose lens I hadn't used since I traded my original Pen F many years ago, plus the normal 35mm (53mm-e) ƒ/1.4. If Fuji had offered an ƒ/2 35mm equivalent (as on its fixed-lens X cameras), I would have bought that as well. As it is, I am waiting for the much anticipated 23mm (35mm-e) ƒ/1.4  and/or the 27mm ƒ/2.8 (41mm-e) pancake. My two most used full-frame focal lengths for 35mm film cameras have always been 35mm and 50mm, and at my age I'm not about to change in that respect. And I've found the Fuji lenses I have been using for the past several weeks to be fine. Better than fine, actually, in terms of sharpness, tonality and color rendition, at least when teamed with the X-E1's sensor. My only problem is relative size. Relative, of course, to what I've been used to. Not that they are heavy (the Canons, in fact, are heavier). The Fuji lenses are just bulkier.

The Jaws of Death

The Jaws of Death, 2013, Camden, Maine. Photo by Jim Hughes.

By Jim Hughes

As usual, I come late to the party ("The Toughest Question of All"). A couple of months back, I heard that a wonderful old example of Maine vernacular architecture was about to be demolished, and in its place something akin to a McMansion erected. The home was known locally as The Frye House, situated at the intersection of Chestnut and Frye Streets in Camden (the street was named for the original owner). Much more than a century ago, it had been a blacksmith shop, and was unquestionably part of the Village Historic District. Problem was, when the Select Board (our version of a governing body) a couple of years earlier considered the issue of housing preservation, regulating such matters for the historic business district was voted up while regulating the equally historic residential district was voted down. Yankee independence, perhaps—another New England tradition. In other words, "don't tell me what to do with my own property."

The Frye House and its small but ideally located plot of land, complete with harbor view, was sold for something like $650,000, I was told. The realtor who sold it told me that he had no clue that the new owners planned to knock down a house that most agreed was still beautiful, and that had recently been respectfully restored. If the sellers had learned of their home's sad fate, he believed they would never have sold to these particular people. Anyway, the deal went through, applications were made, and a demolition permit granted. By the time I got there with a camera, the house had been flattened. All that remained was a brick hearth and few architectural treasures rescued by a woman who lived in another historic Maine house across the street (her companion is, in fact, a Frye descendent). She draped her door with a black mourning ribbon. The day was overcast, the light was fading fast, but I photographed the funeral anyway. To my everlasting regret, I never photographed the Frye House while it was still standing in all its humble glory.

Memento Mori, 2013, Camden, Maine. Photo by Jim Hughes.

©2013 by Jim Hughes, all rights reserved

Original contents copyright 2013 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's links!

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

Marty: "As a native of historic New York towns like Saratoga and Amsterdam, and now a New Englander in rural New Hampshire...a few words of advice: If you find it beautiful, photograph it. It's happened to me before and I always say it won't happen again. Recently, an older ('40s-ish) filling station/garage that I always thought would make a beautiful backdrop for 'something' was demolished for new construction. I passed that damned gas station hundreds of times and always said something like 'wait til there's nice evening light' or just plain 'next time.' Whoops, no more next time.

"...And that old architecture like the Frye home ain't comin' back, FYI."

Kent Phelan: "Oh my Jim, that's just awful. I just Googled the address and was surprised to see that is is literally 20 yards down the street from Francine Bistro, in my opinion the best restaurant in Maine. Camden is one of my favorite destinations in Maine, and we try to get there a couple of times a summer (from Boothbay Harbor). A great loss, and from my outsider's view of Camden government, a shocker. That town looks buttoned down and locked down, in terms of development. Hard to imagine they would let this happen.

"On another note, I seriously enjoyed your columns in Camera 35. They were something I looked forward to every month and had an effect on me as a photo student. Belated thanks."

Gary Briechle Photographs

Gary Briechle
96 pages
Published last December by Twin Palms Press
(U.K. link )

Review by Jim Hughes

One beautiful fall day in Maine a few years ago, I found myself sitting in the Subaru. I was just staring into space, admiring the spectacular foliage and wonderfully clear light while waiting for my wife to finish shopping. Suddenly, my attention was drawn to some activity in the distance on the Village Green. I saw a bunch of young people, wearing what appeared to be typical teenage grunge, gathered around a park bench. There was, if I remember, a blanket on the ground, and a young couple, literally wrapped up in each other, peering over at a man standing behind a big wooden box on an old fashioned tripod.

Approaching dusk made it difficult to see. I crossed the street to get a closer look. The box turned out to be a view camera, probably mahogany, with a well-worn bellows and a large brass lens aimed at the couple. The man behind the camera wore a floppy fedora. He held up a hand and ducked under a black oilcloth slicker of the sort worn by local lobstermen, deftly racked the lens forward to focus, hung his hat over what I soon learned was an antique shutterless barrel lens, pulled out a large dark slide, gently lifted the hat from the lens, and counted silently as the late afternoon light inexorably faded. Finally, he hung the hat back over the lens.

After quickly reinserting the dark slide, the man stood bolt upright and sprinted toward a nearby parking area, leaping over a heavy chain link fence in the process. Walking as fast as I could, I followed him. By the time I caught up, all I could see were two legs kneeling on the pavement. The man's torso had wriggled into a small opening in what appeared to be a makeshift orange-colored tent built into the rear cargo area of a Toyota RAV4 whose rear lid was open. A few minutes later, he extricated himself. He seemed surprised to have had an audience. I introduced myself.

"Oh, I know you," he said with an affable grin. I imagine he meant that he knew my writing about photography, not surprising since he was obviously a photographer himself. His name, he said, was Gary Briechle (he spelled it for me), and he had left the rat race behind in New Jersey to settle in small town Maine a few years earlier. I understood totally, I said.

"Are you doing what I think you're doing?" I asked. "Probably," he replied, pulling out from the back of the Toyota a small white plastic tray full of really murky, and smelly, liquid. "I'm teaching myself wet plate." Wet plate collodion, to be specific, using hand cut glass plates for which he had devised a way to partition an 11x14 back into various medium format dimensions. In the tray was, indeed, a small glass negative that he rocked back and forth in his home-made solution so I could glimpse the image in the lowering light.

"It's all about the light," Briechle said. "The whole process."

"Photography is seeing. Light is beautiful. Pure. I don't like the direction photography mostly seems to be going in. So I decided to take the next step. Backward, some might say. I coat my own glass with an orthochromatic [blue sensitive] emulsion in my portable little dark tent. The reddish light inside is pretty dim at this time of day, and doesn't affect anything. Then I run over to the camera, load the wet plate, remove my shutter hat from the big old brass lens, expose by feel and growing experience, then run the plate, still wet, back to the tent, where I have very little time to develop it out. Wet plate collodion is photography at its most basic. I'm still learning. I'm having fun. It's like magic again."

I thought of William Henry Jackson setting up camp next to a stream on the top of a mountain, his huge camera, a crate full of glass plates and his portable darkroom all strapped to his trusty mule "Hypo."

It's been at least five years since I first met Gary Briechle. In the interim, he has continued to photograph the old fashioned way. His subjects mostly have been friends and family willing to sit or stand for the long exposures in dim light his process requires. He has had a book in the works for years. It is finally published, by Jack Woody of Twin Palms Publishers, Santa Fe, New Mexico. The first edition of Gary Briechle Photographs (the cover of the book says "Photographs" but the publisher lists the book simply as "Gary Briechle") was 1,500 casebound copies. List $60. There is also a limited edition of 25 copies in a clamshell box, with an original print, numbered and signed by Gary, for $800, from Twin Palms.

There are 66 superbly reproduced photographs—complete with the flaws inherent to such a hand-made process—in this handsome 10x12-inch volume. Pages are meticulously coated in lustrous black ink as if they were from an album. The images themselves are reproduced in glossy duotone on glowing white-paper rectangles framed in black. In the right light, contact prints from glass seem to float above the page. The technique is a perfect match for Briechle, who somehow transforms the picturesque outer world that surrounds him into a deeply felt interior vision. Also included at the end of the book are photocopied excerpts from the journals Gary constantly scribbles in. Although there is a brief statement by the photographer on the Twin Palms website, no written introduction, or any sort of clarification, appears in the book itself. Knowing Gary, he probably felt it was better not to explain himself, to let his pictures do the talking. But as a a writer and editor myself, I believe a little context goes a long way, which is why I felt compelled to write my own brief introduction. Thus this review. I can only hope Gary understands.

Jim

Jim Hughes is the major biographer of W. Eugene Smith and the founding editor of the original Camera Arts magazine. His writings for TOP can be found here.

Original contents copyright 2013 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:

No featured comments yet—please check back soon!

Bill Jay's Vision

Jim and Evelyn Hughes, 1981. Photo by Bill Jay.

By Jim Hughes

More than three decades ago, Bill Jay jotted some words in the left-hand margin of a print from a photograph he'd snapped of me and my wife Evelyn at an SPE conference (I discovered the image itself only recently on a website devoted to Bill): "Jim is now editor of the photo-magazine Camera Arts. (I was amazed to find that I was listed as contributing editor although I had never been asked.) Jim is a refreshing change from the typical academic artist—he is irreverent, opinionated, direct, and speaks simple English. I like his writing for the same reason—I can understand it, and I agree with most of his opinions. I only wish he would reply to my letters......"

I had known Bill since 1968, when he had just been named editor of the British magazine Creative Camera, and he and his publisher, Colin Osman, were touring the States. They were looking for photographers who might inspire their readers back home and paid me a visit at Camera 35, which I was editing at the time. Bill and I had a lot in common; I came to like and respect him enormously. (Later, Bill and Colin had a rather acrimonious falling out and Bill started his own magazine, Album, which published only 12 issues that quickly became classics.) Eventually, Bill resettled in the U.S., became a distinguished educator at Arizona State University, and authored untold numbers of uncommonly intelligent articles and books.

My uncommunicative nature notwithstanding, I did publish that article of Bill's I'd been holding, in the third issue of Camera Arts, April/May 1981. I titled it "The Petrified Forest." Bill retitled it later, on his 2007 website, "Incest in Academia."

In it, he wrote:

Ten years ago, I was ardently engaged in a continuous and seemingly hopeless battle to establish 'photography as art.' The battle was being waged on many fronts in many lands by scores of committed individuals. My own particular frontline was England, where commentators wrote that I 'led a crusade rather than a campaign' and waged it with 'missionary zeal.' Others were no less zealous for the cause throughout Europe and America. In the past few years, the greatest rout occurred in the U.S.A.; photography has decisively stormed the art establishment. Here, at least, the battle is won. But...if I could have predicted the results of the victory I am not so sure that I would have been such an energetic fighter in the cause.

Photography-as-art has led us into a morass of problems that denigrate the medium. I am thinking of the fact that galleries—and not the photographer's peers—are now the arbiters of taste and photographic merit; that 'success' is equated with fame and not with an individual's struggle to transcend self; that photographic journalism is riddled with pompous, unintelligible art-jargon and that clear, informative prose is hard to find; that photographers' egos have become so inflated that the individual's integrity has floated out of sight; that differentness, perversity, and slickly presented banality is touted as photography of the highest quality; that gallery and media hype has replaced a long-term committed paying-of-dues and that instant 'stars,' created by publicity and comprising nothing more substantial than hot gases, have diverted attention from the serious worker who has quietly struggled to maintain his or her vision and faith over many years; that something inexplicably yet intrinsically photographic has been killed in the fight for art acceptance.

I can't say that Bill Jay softened his position in the decades that followed. In his acceptance speech upon receiving an Infinity Award in 2008 from the International Center of Photography, he declared:

Almost everybody I have met in photography I have a photograph of. I can look at that picture and hear the tone of voice of the photographer in that picture and recall clearly the subject matter of our conversations. But I have no desire to be considered a photographer. I got into photography because I loved the medium and I admired the people who became photographers.

Since photography has been hijacked by the art market I am feeling more and more alienated from the medium of photography that I first fell in love with. Where I came from, the term Artist was something that was bestowed on a person after a lifetime of achievement. So for a student photographer to call himself an Artist was ludicrous. I'm not against the idea that photography can be singled out as Art but only after a body of work, over a long period of time, has entered the pantheon of high achievement, rather than a 20-year old MFA student touting wares around the New York gallery scene.

And my big fear is that the histories of photography in the future will be based on the photographers who were saleable through galleries, not through the best photographers in the medium.

We need people who understand the history of the medium and have standards, who are saying 'photography has something extraordinarily important to say about our culture, our society, our political system'—these are the things we should be looking at and caring about.

Where are those people? I mean I don't read them, maybe they exist and I am just too isolated. But—and you say am I angry? I don't think I'm angry, I'm just sad…the medium just doesn't seem to exist in the form that I originally loved.

Writing for the Saturday Arts section of The New York Times ("An Art World Gathering, Divided by Money," Dec. 8, 2012), Patricia Cohen termed the recent Art Basel Miami Beach a "celebration of wretched excess." As Cohen reports, "Prominent art writers and critics...have been attacking the art world, arguing that the staggering sums of money being spent on works are distorting judgments about art and undermining its long-term cultural significance. [...] In its special edition for the opening day of the fair, The Art Newspaper asked whether 'the art world is facing a crisis of values' because of the 'pernicious influence of the market on art.'"

I regret to say that photography, now for the most part elevated to at least stepchild status in the heady world of fine art, has fallen prey to the seductress called Commerce. There is no denying it. And we can place at least some of the blame on no less an eminence than Bill Jay, the iconoclastic editor, writer, critic, scholar, historian, and teacher of photographic values who passed away too soon only a few years ago.

As you may have noted a few paragraphs earlier, he admitted as much himself.

Years ago, probably at about the time Bill photographed us, Evelyn and I, Charlie and Regina Reynolds, David Lyman and Kate Carter, and Bill Jay—I don't think he had a companion that night—all went out to dinner after a long day of portfolio viewing at the annual meeting of the Society for Photographic Educators. I think this was in Colorado.

Charlie entertained us with card tricks (besides being a picture editor of note, he was an accomplished magician who rarely performed in public; he preferred designing stage magic for the likes of Doug Henning); David and Kate regaled us with stories of miscreants who tried to pass themselves off as serious students at the Maine Photographic Workshops; after dessert, Bill, who evidently fancied himself to be something of a graphologist, asked to see samples of our handwriting. I showed him my driver's license, which contained my nearly indecipherable scribble. He nodded knowingly, and asked if I had an earlier example. Turned out I did: an ID card I'd signed when I was in grade school, and had transferred from wallet to wallet as they disintegrated over the years. Every letter in the painstaking script of my youth was clearly legible.

After some intense study, he announced, "Jim, you are trying to disappear!"

"What does that mean?" I demanded. "You obviously want to be a hermit," Bill answered, laughing, his hands gesturing with a flourish toward some sort of distant infinity.

Actually, I told the group after some introspection, his prescient observation was not entirely inaccurate. I had recently purchased a dilapidated old fishing camp on a pond in Maine, and was driving up for long weekends and vacations to make it at least habitable. It was about as far away from my workaday world in New York as I could imagine. But it wasn't until spring of 2009—close to the very day that Bill died in his sleep at his new retirement home in Samara, Costa Rica—that we finally sold our Brooklyn brownstone after 42 years, and moved to the Arts and Crafts bungalow we'd purchased for our own retirement a few years earlier.

"Snowed in" at our hideaway in Maine, 2012. Photo by Jim Hughes.

Another far more famous writer now lives in our former Brooklyn home. His name is Martin Amis (yes, the novelist, Kingsley's son). Based on what little I've read about him lately, he seems as comfortable shining in the spotlight as I am made uncomfortable by the very thought of it, shunning the attention it brings whenever possible. Like Bill, Amis is now a transplanted Brit, as they say in the tabloid press that seems to dog his every step.

Bill Jay in 2002. Photo by Burk Uzzle.

But I think that's as far as any comparison can be stretched. Bill Jay wrote fact, not fiction. And he clearly saw the dangers of chasing fame and fortune. Bill was a genuine visionary in the art we all love.

Jim

*The JPEG of the finished print of Jim and Evelyn reproduced at the top of the post is from the BillJayOnPhotography website referenced in the opening paragraph. The original written-upon workprint can be seen at the website of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago.

Ed. Note: "Pond" is what lakes are called in Maine.

Original contents copyright 2012 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:

Steve Rosenblum: "The book On Being A Photographer by Bill Jay and David Hurn influenced me more than any other prose I have ever read about photography. Required reading."

[The paper book is available as a POD on Lulu, and there is a Kindle Edition. —Ed.]

Quiet Combat

Danny Lyon, The Walls, 1967

By Jim Hughes

I first met Danny Lyon in 1968 at a sprawling Museum of Modern Art exhibit of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s work. A mutual friend introduced us. I was relatively new on the scene, a young photo magazine editor, and Danny was an up-and-coming star at Magnum. His resumé already included The Bikeriders* and The Destruction of Lower Manhattan. I remember a huge mane of curly hair with the texture of steel wool, and cowboy boots that clicked on the MoMA Sculpture Garden's tile.

As he turned on a heel and clicked away, Danny Scowled, "I have no use for camera magazine editors."

Nonetheless, and despite the attitude, it would not be long before I began publishing Danny's powerful photographs. One essay in particular, "Life Inside," a 14-page black-and-white documentation of Texas prisons taken mostly from the prisoners' perspective, proved particularly revealing. Conversations With the Dead was the book that resulted from the project. I assigned Dan McCoy, a Black Star photographer who had been writing a column for Camera 35, the magazine I was editing at the time, to conduct an in-depth interview to accompany the essay in America: Photographic Statements, a new kind of U. S. Camera Annual that I was putting together. It would include a portfolio from Eva Rubinstein, the first published essay by a young Jodi Cobb, who went on to be a staff photographer at the National Geographic, Jill Freedman’s "Circus" pictures, Bill Owens' Suburbia before it became a classic book, Robert Frank’s The Lines of My Hand, and Martin Schneider's color expose of pollution in America. Frank was interviewed by Sean Kernan, another fine photographer who regularly wrote for the magazine, and Schneider's no-holds-barred Q&A was conducted by Bob Nadler, Camera 35's technical editor.

For his interview with Lyon, McCoy was to meet Danny at an undisclosed location in the Southwest. But when he called as instructed for directions, McCoy was told there would be no interview. Danny suggested he would interview himself and mail it in.

After all, he pointed out, he had recently declined to be interviewed by The New York Times. McCoy, who had just been inside the Utah State Penitentiary for eight days photographing for the movie version of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, understood that Lyon was (and is) unique among working photographers. "He is a loner who guards his private life and its location with missionary zeal," McCoy noted.

"You are asking for a freedom in your answers that you are unwilling to give the interviewer in his questions," McCoy suggested to Lyon that day. "What kind of interview is it when the person interviewed determines both the questions and the answers?"

After a good deal of back-and-forthing, a compromise was reached. McCoy could conduct the interview then and there. The published result was appropriately titled, "Conversations From a Phone Booth on Route 66..."

Evidently, Danny Lyon liked our layout, approved of the concept for the Annual as a whole, and didn’t hate the interview. Over the years, we became friends. At one point, I even published a set of his black and whites whose borders he had hand-colored in magic marker. Well I remember the day in 1983 when we were to meet at our office to select a retrospective portfolio for Camera Arts, and I came out to find him lounging on the couch in our waiting room, launching perfectly folded paper airplanes at our long-suffering receptionist!

When Camera Arts was unceremoniously killed in a kind of corporate coup de grâce a couple of months later, Danny surprised me by writing an elegy for Aperture: "Jim Hughes, who…brought Camera Arts to its preeminent position among the popular photography magazines, has lost magazines the way a good cavalry officer loses horses in battle. Shortly after he published W. Eugene Smith’s essay 'Minamata' in Camera 35 in 1974, that magazine was sold (out from under him) by its owner, the American Express Company.

"We have lost our democracy, mostly through lack of courage. That was ultimately Camera Arts' finest quality, and its fatal flaw. In a world that nourishes mediocrity, it tried to be bold…. In this sad time, with our powers usurped, aesthetic success guarantees failure."

Or, as a friend cryptically noted upon learning of my magazine's death, "Sh*t rises!"

Kirk Decker kindly wrote in a comment to my recent piece on Ralph Steiner: "I still have the entire Camera Arts run. It was a great photography magazine, and I was crushed when it was over."

So was I, Kirk, so was I. Come next June, thirty years will have passed since that sad time, and I can honestly say I still haven't fully recovered. I suspect that was the point at which I began to understand, or at least recognize, my own reclusive impulse: the need to stay within oneself in order to see beyond more clearly.

Jim

[*I really hope you bought this when I told you to—take a look at the current price on the paperback reissue, which as I recall was $15 when I recommended it. —MJ]

Original contents copyright 2012 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.
A book of interest today:

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

Neil Swanson: "I also have every issue of Camera Arts. Dog eared they are. Wore them out. Nothing since has been as good. I was turned on to many many people I still admire. I also own The Bikeriders, and Suburbia ( signed by Bill at a Fred Picker workshop). I have an old original copy of Eugene Richards' Dorchester Days. I mailed him cash; a brown envelope came with a signed book. Decades later I heard him speak at a VII Seminar. He signed it again, much to our mutual surprise. He hadn't seen a copy of the book in ages."

Ralph Steiner Moments

Ralph Steiner, Typewriter Keys, 1921

By Jim Hughes

I met Ralph Steiner when he was already in his 80s. He arrived in my office at the original Camera Arts lugging a big cardboard box filled to the brim not with prints, as I'd expected from a legendary photographer, but with reams of typewritten pages—long, complex stories written in an inimitably impish yet amiably wise style about all aspects of photography's art and craft. It was from one of those stories, for example, based upon years-long correspondence between Ralph and Ansel Adams, that I first learned how much Ansel disdained the word "pre-visualization," calling it redundant (which of course it is). It was in fact Minor White, Ralph noted, who had applied the "pre" to Ansel's own theories of visualization when talking about how the Zone System could help photographers imagine, in advance, at the time of film exposure, what the final expressive print should look like in black and white.

Thereafter, whenever he was in town, we would try to have lunch at a small, inexpensive restaurant I liked. It was located around the corner from our offices at One Park. Ralph was a wonderful conversationalist, a veritable font of knowledge, and not just about photography. One day, as we were about to enter the restaurant, Ralph pointed to an exterior wall decorated with elaborate tilework, an eclectic collection of various designs, styles and architectural eras that were never meant to go together but did manage to add some much needed color to an otherwise drab stucco exterior. I had wondered about the building's history. "A long time ago, I used to live in this neighborhood," Ralph told me that day. "This place was our local grocery. The building's owner once had a tile business, which at some point failed, probably during the Depression. Rather than selling or trashing his leftover stock, the man had decided to use it to decorate his building before renting it out. As you can see, he was a pretty good craftsman, but no artist."

Ralph's writings were so interesting, and to my mind so important, that I promised him a regular feature in the magazine. After which, he proceeded to inundate me with postcards with scribbled ideas for articles, etc. He addressed the postcards to "Jim Choose," since as editor, he felt, I was the one whose job it was to select what went into every issue. He signed each pithy message "St. Einer," complete with a little stick drawing depicting his head as a view camera, its bellows drooping toward the ground.

Ralph lived in Vermont, but spent his summers on Monhegan Island, something of an artists' retreat, off the coast of Maine. When he learned I was working on a summer "camp" of my own in Maine, he asked if my wife and I would like to spend a weekend with him and his wife on the island. "I’ll make reservations for you both on the ferry, which is usually booked solid weeks in advance," he said. On the appointed day, we drove down from Camden to Port Clyde, parked in an all day lot, arrived at the dock, I think at 6 a.m. for a 7 a.m. departure, and checked in. Our name wasn't on the list. Looked again, for every conceivable spelling, including "Jim Choose." No luck. There were, in fact, 90 people ahead of us on the waiting list. The nice lady in the booth called up to the captain in his wheelhouse who stuck his head out a window and said something like, "Everyone knows Ralph, I would have remembered, and he never said a word." She suggested that we might be able to charter a private boat, or maybe a seaplane, for the trip. All were booked solid. We considered calling, except there was no individual phone service on the island back then. So we thought, what the hell, it's a beautiful day and a picturesque harbor, let's just wait. At 7 a.m. the nice lady found us on a nearby bench. "Well," she said, "the first 88 must have gone off to enjoy the sun, so you're next!"

When we arrived at the dock on Monhegan, we saw the strangest sight. There was this apparition in a bright red shirt at the bottom of the gangplank, waving a big red flag at the end of a long pole and yelling "Welcome, welcome." It was Ralph. He hadn't forgotten we were coming. He just hadn't remembered to make the boat reservations. "What's with the flag?" I asked when we finally disembarked. "Well," Ralph explained, "When Zero Mostel used to come here in the summer, he would shamble down to the dock wearing all black and wave a big black flag at all the people on the boat. 'Go back,' he'd scream. 'Go baaack.' Now that he's gone, I thought I'd carry on the tradition, just change it a little to make it a bit a more affirmative. I'm a photographer, you know, not a goddamned famous actor."

Jim
(Image credit: Haggerty Museum of Art, gift of Therese and Murray Weiss)

Jim Hughes is the major biographer of W. Eugene Smith and the founding editor of the original Camera Arts magazine. He writes occasionally for TOP.

Original contents copyright 2012 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:

Kirk Decker: "The article that Ralph wrote for Camera Arts comparing Edward Weston and Paul Strand is one of my favorite photography articles ever. I was in high school, and Edward was my photo hero. At that time I had just enough money to buy volume I of the Daybooks and a CA subscription. Best youthful money I ever spent. I still have the entire Camera Arts run. It was a great photography magazine, and I was crushed when it was over."

Mike replies: Re your last sentence: Amen, and ditto.

The Elusive Missing Issue

In the post Les Pères Spirituels, below, I mentioned an issue of 35mm Photography magazine in which both Edouard Boubat and the Turnley brothers appeared. It turns out that that was the first issue of that magazine that our friend Jim Hughes edited, after a happy eight year stint at Camera 35. It was dated Winter 1976.

It's also a bit of a problem for Jim, because it's the only issue of the magazine he doesn't have. I know this is a bit of a long shot, lo these 36 years later, but—anyone have a copy of that issue they'd be willing to part with? Or know where one can be had?

If you do, leave a comment or contact me by email, and I'll pass the intelligence along to JH. Thanks.

Mike

UPDATE: Found! By reader Doug Chadwick. It was part of a lot of six issues on Ebay. I bought the lot so I can have a few sample issues of the magazine for my own library (I don't collect magazines, even the ones my own articles appeared in, but I have a motley of samples of different ones going back to the 1930s). I'll pass the Turnley/Boubat issue along to Jim after I sneak a peek at it.

Good find, Doug!

Send this post to a friend

Please help support TOP by patronizing our sponsors B&H Photo and Amazon

Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More...
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.