The Online Photographer

'Chez Mondrian' and Other Small Pleasures

By Jim Hughes

Some years ago, a photo dealer and good friend from San Francisco was staying as our houseguest in Brooklyn for a week. One evening he returned from Manhattan carrying a large brown paper bag under one arm and a bottle of my favorite red wine under the other. After dinner, when the dishes were cleared, he retrieved the bag from his room and placed it, with a flourish, in the center of our dining room table. "I have something I think you’re going to appreciate," he announced. Ah, dessert, I thought—maybe Junior's famous cheesecake, a Brooklyn legend.

My friend pulled two old shoeboxes from the bag and dumped their contents on the seven-foot table, creating a small mountain of what looked like playing cards. Except they appeared to be photographs. Like the deft dealer that he was, my friend, palms down, in what seemed like a single motion, spread the cards out in front of us. "Pick a card, any card," he said in his best dealer's voice. I reached down and picked one of the larger ones, about the size of a 3x5-inch file card, but thicker. Only when I pulled the card toward me did I realize that it was familiar. There, depicted on a small hall table in the foreground, was the glowing vase with its artificial tulip, and through a doorway, only partly seen, a staircase rising like the very spirit of art. Rectangles and curves were layered in a composition of formal perfection. "Chez Mondrian," I exclaimed in a burst of recognition. At that point, Alley, our irrepressible calico, perhaps sensing my excitement, hopped onto the table to bat at an exquisite, golden-hued miniature of a fork on a plate. I shooed her off (a moment repeated as the evening wore on). Not until I began to examine the other prints—sliding the pictures around as if they were kings and queens in a giant game of solitaire—did it dawn on me that the miniature images, many familiar, as in from books and exhibits I’d seen, seemed to exhibit a particularly distinctive style.

"Are these vintage prints from André Kertész?" I asked. Our guest nodded. Some of the pictures seemed to be variously cropped contact prints from André's folding 4.5x6-cm and 9x12-cm plate cameras, others small-scale enlargements from the 35mm Leica the photographer was said to have begun using as early as 1925, about the time he arrived in Paris from his native Hungary. All were little gems, lovingly rendered by Kertész himself before an allergic reaction to photographic chemicals drove him from the darkroom.

Where could this treasure possibly have come from, I wanted to know. From the back of a closet in André's Greenwich Village apartment, I was informed. The shoeboxes had evidently lain untouched for many years. The legendary photographer, to his way of thinking never fully appreciated in his adopted country—and still bitter about it, as he might tell anybody within earshot—was in need of money. My friend indicated that he was going to try to sell some of these small prints. How much? I remember numbers ranging from $1,200 to maybe $3,500. I passed on the implied offer. Indeed, I rationalized, I could be just as happy purchasing a beautifully rendered and enlarged 8x10 or 11x14 silver print, signed by Kertész and printed under his supervision, for a few hundred (and a few years later, I did just that, buying at auction an 8x10 "Chez Mondrian" for $700—it hangs in our living room today, directly facing my favorite arts and crafts Morris chair).

André Kertész, Chez Mondrian, Paris, 1926

Years later, I happened to attend the 1996 round of auctions in New York. Astonishingly, the little print I have since called "Alley's Fork," after my rambunctious cat, sold at Christie's for $90,500, at the time a record for the photographer. A month later, "Mondrian's Pipe and Glasses, Paris" auctioned at Sotheby's London for $98,000—and it wasn't even signed. But that was only the beginning. The following spring, Christie’s held an auction within an auction, with its own special catalogue. All Kertész. Its original 21-print core had been discovered, like the shoeboxes in a closet, three years after the photographer's death in 1985 at age 91, in a folio tucked away between books on a library shelf. These prints had been made on creamy color postcard stock, presumably because it was more affordable back then, and had been presented at André's first exhibit in Paris. The poet Paul Dermée wrote for the occasion: "No rearranging, no posing, no gimmicks, nor fakery. Your technique is as honest, as incorruptible, as your vision. In our home for the blind, Kertész is 'Brother Seeing-Eye.'"

My sentiments exactly.

Christie's Lot 176, "Chez Mondrian," the cover illustration for the catalogue, brought $300,000. All told, the 37-print collection netted $1.36 million. Of course, bear in mind that an early Mondrian painting had previously sold for $1.8 million, by itself surpassing the entire Kertész collection auctioned that day. Indeed, an example of Mondrian's mature work would soon sell for $5.5 million. And those were 1997 dollars!

Memento mori
And here's a final postscript about André Kertész, the man I consider to be the most graceful photographer who ever lived. In 1985, I was shown a just-processed 35mm black-and-white contact sheet from a roll of film shot by a photographer from another country. This photographer, a great admirer who made a point to visit his hero whenever he was in New York, had gone to André's Washington Square apartment building and was let in by the doorman, who recognized him. He found the apartment door open. Not surprised, he knocked. Receiving no response, he entered, and discovered his friend stretched out on a couch. The visitor tried gently to wake him. Again, no response. During a nap, evidently, André had died peacefully in his sleep.

Rather than contacting authorities immediately, this man, being a foreigner, called a close friend of Kertész's, also a photographer of note, who happened to live nearby. The contact sheet I saw clearly showed the two younger photographers, while still alone with André's body and in what was no doubt intended to be a final photographic homage, taking turns posing for the camera, each evidently wanting to be recorded with an arm embracing the earthly remains of a giant, hoping perhaps that a little of his amazing spirit would rub off before it disappeared forever into the ether.

As subsequent events have shown, as long as the wonderfully lyrical photographs of André Kertész remain for us to admire, there is little chance of that.

Jim

Jim Hughes is an occasional contributor to TOP—for more of his work, click on his name under the Categories header in the right-hand sidebar. He now lives in Maine.

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Featured Comment by Jeff: "Touching end to this article; thanks for sharing it.

"I believe another vintage print of 'Chez Mondrian' sold in 2005 at Sotheby's for $464,000; I don't recall the size.

"I can't remember the year, but some time ago (perhaps in 1996 as Jim recounts), some of the carte postales by Kertesz went to auction. Kertesz prices hadn't yet hit the stratosphere, so I thought I might get lucky bidding on a far lesser known picture. Fat chance...it soared past my price point in no time.

"I should have learned my lesson. On a visit years earlier with a dealer friend in New York, I was shown and passed on a small contact print...about 1.5x2.5 inches...of a simple but lovely landscape by Kertesz. Not signed, but priced extremely high, or so I thought....$15,000. Plus, I wasn't sure how I'd frame such a precious little thing. Live and learn."

Back to the Future

By Jim Hughes

Introduction: This is a "Long View" column that I wrote for the April/May 1998 edition of Camera Arts. It was brought to mind when I read Mike's recent comments about black and white in movies.

Just keep in mind it was written 13 years ago—in photographic terms, a different era! —JH

Recently [1998, remember!], for the first time in nearly 30 years, "To Kill a Mockingbird" played on network television. The movie, based on Harper Lee’s true-to-life novel, starred Gregory Peck as a principled small-town southern lawyer who was chosen—conscripted, actually—to defend an innocent black man accused of raping a white woman. Watching this film, I found myself completely absorbed in the heartrending and ultimately tragic story. It felt almost as if I had entered the lives depicted, people whom I’d come to regard as more real than the usual Hollywood cast of on-screen fictional characters. In retrospect I realized that the film’s transformative power had as much to do with the medium as the message: this tale of blacks forced to live by white rules had been told in painfully revealing shades of gray—as seen through the lens of childhood innocence.

In 1962, color was already dominant in motion pictures. Even then, to shoot a film in black and white represented a conscious creative choice—and in this instance, clearly the correct one. It brought to mind such 1940s classics as "Citizen Kane" and "The Maltese Falcon." Now, these many years later, there can be little question that color is king in the world of photography: black and white has virtually disappeared from cinema screens, as indeed it has from television and, in still photography, from the pages of most popular magazines.

True, black and white still thrives in the darkrooms of many so-called fine-art photographers, and of course among the cognoscenti who read such journals as Camera Arts, but by and large black-and-white photography seems to be going the way of the magnificent Bengal tiger: an endangered species, admired for its beauty, respected for its power, prized as a trophy—and condemned to an increasingly circumscribed life (in zoos and preserves) to ensure its survival, not to mention humankind’s continued viewing pleasure.

Please understand that I, too, photograph almost exclusively in color—Kodachrome [in 1998, again!] to be exact, at least when conditions permit. And this from someone who is so "color impaired" that he has a hard time telling green from blue socks, and frequently finds he's left the house in the morning wearing one of each! (Last night my wife and I engaged in a lively discussion about a sweater she was wearing. I said it was dark brown, she said it was charcoal gray. Today, in bright morning light, I had to admit she was right, of course.)

For me, color is sufficiently elusive and mysterious that it has become one of my primary photographic subjects: its form, its shape, its hue, its texture, its interaction with light and, most especially, the illusions it creates on film. Garry Winogrand, a celebrated black-and-white practitioner, said he photographed to see what something looked like photographed. I suppose I share essentially the same philosophy, except that I often photograph to see how the color I think is there translates into the color the camera insists is there, as rendered on a particular roll of film. Of course, in no case is the final result reality.

And now, with the ease that digital manipulation offers in today’s increasingly computerized environment, color has become even more dominant. For example, where my predilection for using transparency film once mandated making internegatives in order to produce color prints—a difficult and never quite satisfactory compromise—I now simply pop my slides into my trusty Minolta scanner and, using Photoshop on my Mac, "print" to the screen and, if the spirit so moves me, ultimately to paper. No darkroom, no chemicals, no enlarger, no filter packs. Applying basic techniques I learned when doing midnight press okays for magazines, I find I have all the tools I need to change color, contrast, saturation and brightness to my heart's content. Again, the objective is not reality, but simply a good picture—verisimilitude, the appearance of truth.

William Clift, Volcanic Dike Shiprock, New Mexico, 1998

When it comes to describing the world in more objective terms, however—particularly when documenting the human condition—the editor in me still believes that black and white done the old fashioned way, wet-processed negatives expertly printed out by hand and eye, is by far the more appropriate medium. It can be no accident, for example, that of the 20 photographers—14 men, six women—who [again, up to 1998] have received the annual W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography, one of photojournalism’s highest honors, only two proposed photographing their projects in color (and only one of those, in my opinion, deserved serious consideration).

Being less literal, black and white, in my experience, actually offers the possibility of greater accuracy. Years ago, I remember being given the opportunity to examine an early mockup of Philip Jones Griffiths’ condemnation of war, Vietnam Inc., now regarded to be a classic of its genre. The photographs I saw, some in all their gory detail, were in color, as originally shot. When the book was finally published, however, the photographs were reproduced in black and white. The photographer had evidently decided that his horrific story would be best told symbolically. History has shown him to be right.

Photography is no less a language than its written and/or spoken verbal counterpart. Surely, photography is more universal, transcending countries, continents and cultures. Images, the individual components of a photographic essay, for instance, combine in somewhat the same way that letters of the alphabet do, forming, not words and sentences, but sequences that come together in meaningful ways to spell out visual stories of sometimes awesome power.

Black-and-white photography has a grammar of its own. Indeed, there is a certain poetry in black and white that color seems to lack. Consider the landscapes of Ansel Adams, Bruce Barnbaum, William Clift, Michael Smith or John Sexton. Now try to visualize any of their beautifully expressive black-and-white prints in the colors of nature. They didn’t see their pictures that way, and neither should we. For these photographers, I submit, color would be a distraction. Yet when seasoned viewers read those same pictures, their minds do the translation for them, filling in the blanks with a kind of subliminal color. Call it audience participation. Or simply imagination. For me, at least, it is this thought process, this reading between the lines, this need to reexamine and interpret the essential elements of an image, that sets black-and-white photography apart from color.

All language is abstraction, the representation of what we see, know and feel in a form that may be understood by others. Photography, too, is abstraction, a visual distillation that manifests itself in a complex tapestry of signs and symbols. My two eyes see in three dimensions; a camera’s lens records what it "sees" in two dimensions. It is up to me, the viewer of the final photograph, to make whatever conversions are necessary to combine the photographer’s intentions with my sensibilities: to reinterpret, if you will, the original interpretation.

Do your eyes a favor tonight. Rather than continuing to subject them to the ubiquitous and mindless bombardment of electronic rainbows, tune your television to your favorite dramatic series and turn off the color for at least the next hour. Slowly but surely, I submit, that rectangle of light will again become a transparent window on the world. Content will replace cacophony. Cross over if you can, and rediscover the subtle strength of black and white. Then apply any lessons learned to your own photography.

Jim

Jim Hughes, founding editor of the original Camera Arts and former editor of Camera 35 and the Photography Annual, is the author of W. Eugene Smith: Shadow & Substance, Ernst Haas in Black and White, and The Birth of a Century. 

Copyright © 1998 by Jim Hughes

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Featured Comment by Wayne: "Earlier in my career, I was frequently required to visit various buildings and businesses for the purpose of gathering information for insurance underwriting purposes. As part of the evaluation process I was required to submit photos of every side of a building or property. In instances where properties were in a poor state of repair or a housekeeping problem existed, color photos always made the conditions look less severe than they were. In extreme cases, I would include notes to let the underwriter know that the live view was considerably worse than that conveyed by the photos. One day, by virtue of the fact I accidentally purchased a roll of B&W film rather than color, I noted that B&W photos conveyed a much better representation of the subject than did color photos. That was the day I became a devout B&W fan. To this day, I do not fully comprehend the reason for such a significant difference. Maybe B&W forces us to concentrate on substance in the absence of distraction."

Featured Comment by Dennis: "The funny thing for me about reading this post today is that it immediately brings to mind Mike's recent post entitled "Do You Ever Feel This Way?" I love B&W photographs. My admittedly small bookshelf includes David Plowden, John Sexton, Robert Frank, Ansel Adams, and Cartier-Bresson among others. I fondly recall some favorite photographs among the relatively few rolls of B&W film I shot, and occasionally try a monochrome conversion in LR that just clicks. But bye and large, my enjoyment of other peoples' B&W photographs makes me feel like I should do B&W in the same guilty sort of way Mike describes. 

"It was easier with film, for some reason I can't explain, to find subject matter suited to black and white with black and white film in the camera. I can't seem to force myself to do the same with a digital camera. Maybe if it were a dedicated monochrome camera. Beyond that, I have the sense that there are so many people out there so much better at it than I'll ever be. The same is true of everything, but not to the same degree; I think I actually have an eye for color. And that's where I rationalize away the desire to do B&W.

"I think (I'm not sure) that I am pretty good at color; that I instinctively see compositions in which color contributes versus those in which it distracts (much more easily than I see tones that would show up differently in black and white). While those books of B&W photographs mentioned above are favorites, I recently bought Cape Light after reading about it here on TOP and found it very inspirational. While the B&W photos in the other books are thoroughly enjoyable to view, the color photos of Meyerowitz are photos that I can more reasonably aspire to. I'll leave B&W (somewhat guiltily) as an art form to be practiced by others and appreciated by me, much as Mike will leave winter photos to others."

Featured Comment by John Brewton: "Man, do I miss Camera Arts!"

Mike adds: I even still miss the first incarnation of Camera Arts, c. 1980–1983.

Quote o' the Day: 'My First True Visualization'

Ansel Adams with his "first true visualization," Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, 1927, an early picture that remained important to him for the rest of his life

-

As I replaced the slide, I began to think about how the print was to appear, and if it would transmit any of the feeling of the monumental shape before me in terms of its expressive-emotional quality. I began to see in my mind’s eye the finished print I desired: the brooding cliff with a dark sky and the sharp rendition of distant, snowy Tenaya Peak. I realized that only a deep red filter would give me anything approaching the effect I felt emotionally. I had only one plate left. I attached my other filter, a Wratten #29(F), increased the exposure by the sixteen-times factor required, and released the shutter. I felt I had accomplished something, but did not realize its significance until I developed the plate that evening.

I had achieved my first true visualization!

I had been able to realize a desired image: not the way the subject appeared in reality but how it felt to me and how it must appear in the finished print.

—Ansel Adams, Autobiography, p. 76

-

Mike
(Thanks to Rich; illustration photographer unknown; AP photo)

ADDENDUM: Here's the text of a post our friend Jim Hughes made back in 2000 to the Photohst (now PhotoHistory) list, in response to some misstatements of fact that had just appeared on that list. Lightly edited, and reposted here with Jim's permission with a postscript from him. —Mike

"Some factualization on the visualization thread:

"Whatever else he might have been, Ansel Adams was one of the most generous and giving people I've had the privilege of knowing.

The March/April 1982 edition of Camera Arts did not contain a letter from Ansel Adams, but did contain a letter from Mark Power*, who wrote in response to a long mail dialogue conducted over a period of time between Ansel and Ralph Steiner, as prepared by Steiner, and published in the September/October 1981 edition of that magazine (which I edited). The piece was titled "The Adams Chronicle" and blurbed on the cover, "Ansel Adams on Visualization." In his side of the dialogue, Adams used the word "visualization" consistently. The exchange between Adams and Steiner is illuminating, to say the least, and worth looking up.

The May/June 1982 Camera Arts does contain a letter-to-the-editor written by Ansel in response to the Power letter. "I dislike as much as anyone any implication that the Zone System is an esoteric end in itself," Adams wrote. "To begin with, I did not 'invent' it. It is a simple codification of sensitometry.... There is far too much 'yak' in photography. Too many people talk and write; too few make photographs of personal and enduring quality."

Here is what Ansel wrote in Polaroid Land Photography (New York Graphic Society, 1978, revised edition of the 1963 Morgan & Morgan edition): "I hope the reader will not be confused by...differences of concept and language.... The late Minor White, one of the great photographers and teachers of our time, adopted somewhat different terminology from my own: 'previsualization,' for example, which I have always considered a redundancy."

Ansel, in his autobiography, in addition to "visualization," did on one occasion use the term "quasi-visualization"!

In the book The New Zone System Manual (Morgan & Morgan, 1976) by Minor White, Richard Zakia and Peter Lorenz, the following statement is made: "Perhaps the most important thing to be learned from practicing the zone system is the concept of previsualization. The word itself means simply 'to see ahead of time.' "

In their preface, the authors state (collectively, I presume): "Practice makes us believe that visualization is of the essence when creativity relates to photography. Photographers can visualize before making the exposure, before printing the negative, and visualize how viewers may respond before showing the print. Once they have previsualized they may revisualize at any time they wish and for whatever reason."

Perhaps that's what Ansel meant by "quasi-"?

And that's all the time I have for digging around in my library today....

J.H., 2000

Postscript: In his introduction to the 1978 New York Graphic Society edition of Polaroid Land Photography, stipulated to be a "thorough revision" of the earlier 1963 Morgan and Morgan edition, Adams wrote: "Throughout this book, visualization of the desired image before the exposure is made constitutes the prime message. Visualization is not an arcane procedure; it is actually a fact of life. To visualize we must first look, and to look is to observe more of the world about us, not only for itself, but also for the aesthetic and meaningful relationships therein. Being aware of these values and relationships, we visualize them as images and—with appropriate technique—can express them through our prints."

J.H., 2011

*Coincidentally, Mark Power, whose blog The Salt Mine is a regular stop for me, is a TOP reader. —MJ

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My Summer in Maine: A Reunion of Sorts

By Jim Hughes

Back in 1972 (I only know the year because I happened to write about it in Camera 35 and saved the issue), I was cleaning out my childhood home in Connecticut, which I was preparing to sell after my father’s death, when I found a box full of stuff my deceased mother had carefully preserved in a cardboard box that she had for some reason hidden under an eave in our attic.

Among my mother’s albums of box-camera prints and newspaper clippings filled with our own family history I found a small illustrated brochure titled "1952 National High School Photographic Awards." Leafing through this silver-covered pamphlet, I came across several names, besides my own, that in retrospect I recognized: Bruce Davidson, Charles Harbutt, Constantine Manos and Douglas Kirkland. Above Bruce's name was a picture of a baby owl in a museum. The owl stared out with one round eye; the other seemed lost in shadow. Bruce had won first prize. I had received an honorable mention (along with Manos, I recently learned), which meant that my print of a rowboat mired in a mud flat would be published in our local newspaper and become part of that year’s traveling exhibit.

I do remember thinking that my boat, seen from above and surrounded by a tracery of sidelighted seagull prints, was at least as good as Bruce’s straight-on owl. But he was a senior from Oak Park, Illinois, soon to be enrolled in RIT, and I was a lowly high school freshman from Cos Cob, Connecticut, happy for any recognition at all. All this came to mind this summer, when I purchased Bruce’s magnificent three-volume retrospective, Outside Inside (Steidl). The first picture reproduced in Volume I, I quickly discovered, was his one-eyed owl, dated 1949. No wonder he’d won, I finally realized. Even then, he saw this young owl as a metaphor for himself, a photographer at the beginning of a lifetime of careful observation. It had only taken me 60 years to see the connection.

In August, during a heat wave that was unusually brutal for this part of the world, Bruce had come to Maine (the Maine Media Workshops, formerly the Maine Photographic Workshops) to mount a small but moving retrospective exhibit at the school's new gallery in Rockport, and to give a lecture at the Rockport Opera House. Not surprisingly, the place was packed. Bruce was his usual low-key self. If people listened carefully, they had a rare opportunity to learn from the master of serial (and compassionate) documentation.

Recently, an interviewer for The New York Times T magazine asked if Bruce wanted his pictures to change the world. "I want the world to change my pictures," he replied. Of his photography, Bruce said, "It's not about the history of art, it's about the art of history." Back in 1982, when I published his New York subway color in the original Camera Arts, Bruce wrote: "The subway interior was defaced everywhere with a secret handwriting that covered the walls, windows, and maps. I began to imagine that these signatures surrounding the passengers were ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Sometimes when I was looking at one of the cryptic messages someone would come and sit in front of it, and I would feel as if the message had been decoded." He would take a picture, then engage that person in conversation if possible, showing a potential new friend the small portfolio he always carried. In the Steidl book, Bruce wrote that our mutual friend Ernst Haas had once told him, "In photography, we do our reading and writing at the same time." Ernst had a way with words, as he had a way with pictures. John Whiting, a legendary photo editor during the 1940s, once authored a book titled Photography Is a Language. I turn to it still. In it, he wrote: "The photographer who is only a photographer is not a photographer.... All photographers are part of their world. They know that there are two keys to the language of photography, akin to the examining and transmitting function of the camera. The two keys with which one works are meaning and technique.... The devices of a language are no less important than what it says."

"Through fifty years in photography," Bruce Davidson writes in his introduction to Outside Inside, "I have encountered worlds in transition, seen people isolated, abused, abandoned and invisible. I work out of a frame of mind that is constantly changing, challenging perceptions and prejudices. I view my work as a series. I often find myself an outsider on the inside discovering beauty and meaning in the most desperate of situations."

His Maine lecture was full of such gems of illuminating and thoughtful observation, along with hundreds of rear-projected slide copies of his richly rendered black-and-white prints, none of them digital, all viewed under a historic, proscenium-arched stage usually reserved for the performance of classical chamber music. This day, it was Bruce Davidson’s visual music that resonated so deeply.

At the end of the lecture, a familiar figure ambled down the center aisle. Paul Caponigro had come up from his home in nearby Cushing to say hello to his old friend Bruce.

This past summer in Maine was full of such connections. In June, the new Maine Media Gallery’s first exhibit was Peter Turnley’s wonderful Paris photographs, a selection from which Mike and Peter have generously offered to TOP readers. In the slide lecture that followed at Union Hall, Peter was kind to remember that he and his twin brother David received their first national exposure when I published their McClellan Street essay, which they did while still in high school, in 35mm Photography in 1975.

In August, Costa Manos, as part of the regular masters and instructors summer-long weeknight lecture series, gave a revealing talk about his distinguished career, beginning with his early black-and-white photographs in the American south, work I don't think I had ever seen, then continuing through A Greek Portfolio and Bostonians, and culminating with his current fascination with color as embodied in his most recent book, American Color 2. I remember when he first began making the transition in 1981, and I published his first major color portfolio in Camera Arts in 1983.

"I was interested in more complex images," he told our writer at the time, "that incorporated a great deal of information." So he began to look for "density." In his introduction to his new book, Manos writes: "My favorite pictures are ones that ask questions and pose problems but leave answers and solutions to the viewer. These are images with a long and evolving life, in which the photograph transcends the subject to become the subject."

"It is magical to think," he adds, "of a specific 250th of a second of a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year, and to realize that all of the pictures in American Color 2 do not add up to one second of time."

Kodachrome was Costa’s film of choice, as it had been mine for more than a decade at the time, and would be still if it had remained viable. At any rate, it didn’t take long for a photographer of Costa’s skill and vision to master its idiosyncrasies and make them part of his vibrant palette. He has now wholeheartedly adopted digital, and announced that his new book, although mostly Kodachrome, did contain "a couple" digital images. I looked, but I couldn’t find them.

Jay Maisel, also teaching this summer, spent much of his evening lecture showing an impressive range of personal work, much of it made since the first of the year and all, of course, digital (Jay is another convert from Kodachrome). While he talked and clicked to advance images and make points in the darkened auditorium, I could see him raising his big-eyed zoom to photograph the audience. "12,800 ISO," he later quipped. "I kind of like the grain!" I liked the fact that Jay, even after all these years, has never, ever lost his enthusiasm for the act of photographing.

"When you speak of the photographer," John Whiting wrote in 1946, "there need be no distinction between the amateur and the professional."

These are the kinds of things I heard and saw—and remembered—during this past summer. In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit that never in my life have I taken a photography workshop, although I have taught a few. But a nice thing about living near a vital institution like the Workshops is the community it has spawned. The evening lecture series, for example, has always been free and open to the public. A random list of a few of the people, in addition to those mentioned above, whose talks Evelyn and I were privileged to attend this year: Sam Abell, Norman Mauskopf, Essdras Suarez, Tillman Crane, Cig Harvey, Sean Kernan, Keith Carter, Henry Horenstein, Susan Bloom, Craig Stevens, Amy Arbus, Dominic Chavez, Jim Megargee. The list could go on and on.

None of these people needed to be part of our long forgotten Class of 1952 to understand the magic we discovered all those years ago when we turned our Kodaks toward the world, converted our families’ bathrooms or basement storage areas into darkrooms and began our lifelong adventure in photography.

Jim

Jim Hughes is a regular contributor to TOP. His previous essays can be found by clicking on the "Jim Hughes" tab in the Categories, in the right-hand sidebar.

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Time Capsule

Antique Ingraham "Magic 7" Clock, photographed with a yard-sale Kodak Recomar 6.5x9-cm camera, Fuji Velvia 50 in Rada 120 adapter. © Jim Hughes, 2010

By Jim Hughes

This past winter, having finally settled into our new home, a 1920 Arts and Crafts bungalow, I became obsessed with finding an appropriately mature clock. It had to be wind-up, of course, and melodious chimes were a prerequisite. We needed something antique but gracefully simple, large enough to be seen from a distance but small enough to fit the space I envisioned for it atop one of the many mission-style bookshelves I had erected to hold our newly moved collection of books. There is no room in this small house for towering Grandfathers!

After considerable searching, I found what I was looking for in a sprawling barn of an antiques mall a couple towns away from ours. The clock, hiding in a dark corner, was a traditional mantel model. It was named the "Magic 7" on the still intact instruction label glued inside the hinged rear panel. Made by E. Ingraham of Bristol, Connecticut, the clock had evidently survived nearly a century of loyal family timekeeping until it was picked up at an estate sale and made available for sale, and rebirth.

I was told the clock was in working condition, but when I got it home and wound it up with a misfitting key, it tick-tocked for a few seconds at most and promptly stopped dead. After much fiddling with the intricate maze of brass gears and wheels, conveniently accessible though the back panel, I got it running again—but only temporarily. I tried again and again. Each time it would run a bit longer, but ultimately go silent. Finally, well into the night, I fashioned a long, tapered stick, found my wife’s sewing machine oil, and, by alternately dipping and dabbing a tiny bit at a time, proceeded to carefully lubricate every bearing point I could reach. Then, using constant pressure from a finger, I forced the most recalcitrant (and slowest moving) gear forward. My finger went numb eventually, but the improvised encouragement, to my surprise, had the desired result.

This time around, to paraphrase John Cameron Swayze, the old clock, having taken its licking, just kept on ticking as its miniature pendulum finally began to swing rhythmically and relentlessly. It was music to my ears. All that was left for me was to visit a local old-clock repairer a friend recommended and rummage through his winding-key drawer to find a match—one that included the required second tiny socket for making fast-slow adjustments. That trial and error process took another month, but the old Ingraham now keeps perfect time—almost as good as any modern quartz movement—as long as I remember to wind it every seventh day (I know, the clock’s face says "eight day," but there seems to be no manufacturer’s 800 number that I can call for an explanation).

What does this Luddite’s clock have to do with photography, you may well ask? Think about it. Aside from a certain aesthetic appeal, its design is such that, with no clock-repair experience whatsoever (aside from having dismantled my grandfather’s pocket watch when I was seven, after which it ran at triple speed!), I was able to get the Ingraham running properly using my own two hands and a little logical ingenuity. In other words, this clock, being analog and mechanical, was designed and manufactured in a completely transparent manner.

There was a time when I intuitively understood the way cars worked, as well, and would not hesitate to undertake most engine repairs myself. I remember tuning the twin carburetors on a 1956 Mercedes 190 SL by putting an inverted funnel to my ear and listening to the sounds their various needles and orifices made. Try that with today’s electronic computerized beasts. I couldn’t afford the tools required, let alone the schooling needed to use them.

The Day It Rained Bubbles in Maine, photographed with a Fuji GS 645 on Fuji Velvia 50. © Jim Hughes, 2009

I'm afraid I feel the same way about cameras. The more mechanical, from my perspective, the better. I don't want to think about Modes and Histograms (although I do understand the latter's value, just as I do regularly apply Curves when I scan my transparencies and print Dye-Subs via Photoshop), and I certainly don’t want a bunch of tiny buttons and wheels, not to mention menus and submenus, getting between me and a picture when I'm shooting. Call me old-fashioned.

A few months before purchasing the clock, I happened upon a small cardboard box full of photo stuff at a yard sale. Even folded closed, I recognized the camera: a 6.5x9-cm Kodak Recomar 18, the smaller brother of the 9x12-cm Recomar 33 that had been my first serious camera back when I was 12 or so and the local camera-store proprietor in Connecticut convinced me "the lens alone is worth the price." For $25, the camera’s fixed 135mm ƒ/4.5 Kodak Anastigmat—in truth, I learned much later, a rebranded Schneider optic—was indeed worth that, and considerably more.

Recomars weren’t really your typical Kodaks. They were precision instruments made at the Dr. Nagel-Werk in Stuttgart, Germany, the same factory that designed and produced the superb Retina line (one of which, the IIa, I still regularly use). Recomars were made from 1932 to 1940, and the original list price in this country for the Model 18, with its sharp if uncoated 105mm ƒ/4.5 lens, was $40.

Back in 1949, I used film packs with my "new" Model 33. Pull a paper tab, "advance" the film. I scale focused or squinted at the groundglass back, which provided a dim and grainy upside down image, of course. Not only was using the camera real work, but I couldn't afford the luxury of bracketing single sheets of film. So I quickly learned how to properly expose and compose with some sort of precision. In fact, I used that camera through high school, even taking our Yearbook "candids" with it. Just imagine running up and down the sidelines at football games with your bellows camera on a tripod! Talk about visualization.

Amber Alert: My Twin Is Missing, photographed with a Fuji GS 645 on Fuji Velvia 50. © Jim Hughes, 2009

These days, little computers buried inside plastic cameras do much of the grunt work, focus included, but I find myself unwilling to relinquish any sort of control over my pictures. It was with the Recomar, after all, that I learned how to see photographically. I still have that camera, but I now shoot mostly color, and 9x12 color is not a specialty film even Freestyle carries.

But back to the yard sale. In that box was not only a pristine "baby" Recomar, looking for all the world like a miniaturized view camera, but a batch of accessories: a six-inch cable release apparently sold with the camera originally, a groundglass back with a nice folding leather hood, a film-pack adapter loaded with still unexposed film, two unopened boxes of Kodak Super-XX (expiration date, October 1943) pack film, and six single-sheet plate holders bearing handwritten tape labels such as "Panatomic-X, Loaded 2/24/41" and "Super Ortho Press 100, Loaded 2/24/41." On one of the latter labels the word "Posed" was overwritten.

Unfortunately, all of the holders were now empty. I would have loved to have seen pictures, but none were included in the box, which apparently came from a house on the Maine coast, perhaps a fishing village, that had recently been emptied out in an estate sale. The photographer whose equipment this was evidently had been at the very least a serious hobbyist. He or she took meticulous care of everything, which was in perfect working order. Even the Compur shutter, which sounded pretty accurate to my ear. Mint, as they say. And all for $8 (I checked Ebay and found a Model 18, sans holders, for $328). At least in my instance, the gear found a good home.

One day, I will see what I can do with the unexposed pack film. In the meantime, I went on Ebay to see if I could find a roll film adapter. For $40 (not quite the bargain that the camera "kit" was!), I was able to buy a Rada 120, also, it turned out, in near-perfect condition. I loaded it with Fuji Velvia 50, then waited for an opportunity to use the set up. Time passed. Finally, the day came when the Ingraham "Magic 7" clock was up and running.

So what could be more appropriate, I thought, than one antique (me) photographing a second antique (the Ingraham) using a third antique (the Recomar)? So that’s what I did. The result appears at the top of this post.

But wait, there’s more in this particular time capsule. Last September, a photographer friend here in Maine, knowing my preference for rangefinders (my primary shooters since 1968 have been a pair of Canon 7s), asked if I’d be interested in one of her old cameras. She had transitioned completely to digital, and this medium format RF camera had been just sitting in a drawer for several years. Last she remembered, it had had a film transport problem, which was why she stopped using it in the first place. That, and the fact that in her recent work, she was more interested in macro and longer lens work, and this camera, a 6x4.5, had a fixed "normal" length lens.

Of course, I said yes. So one day she and her husband met my wife and I for breakfast, and she handed me the camera: a Fuji GS 645, a model introduced in 1983 (I remember that Bob Schwalberg had raved about it in the penultimate issue of the original Camera Arts). Over the next few years, it was supplanted by newer versions, but this one, a true clamshell folder with a bright-frame, parallax-corrected viewfinder, had always been the most compact. And its 75mm ƒ/3.4 Fujinon lens had been widely praised.

A quick inspection showed that the years, and the owner, had been kind to this camera. But when I ran a dummy roll of film through it, I realized that there was indeed a serious disconnect between the very smooth and convenient (for a street shooter) thumb advance, and the frame-counting and shutter-cocking mechanism. The counter needed five or more frames for the shutter to begin firing. Unacceptable, obviously. So I opened the back, turned on a desk lamp, and stared. Eventually, I saw what might be causing the problem. The narrow band of foam in the body’s light-trap channel had begun to disintegrate, turning into a gooey mess. It had fouled a little spring-loaded lever that protrudes from a small opening in the channel and in essence tells the camera when the back is closed.

With needles, dental picks (I use them for woodworking!) and some rubber-cement thinner, I managed to remove all the foam, including a few gobs that had worked their way into the camera’s innards.

When I reloaded the dummy roll, everything worked perfectly. So in went a fresh roll of Velvia 50, which took me a couple weeks to shoot. I just carried the camera slung under a shoulder, as I would one of my 35mm rangefinders, popping it open and lifting it to my eye when a picture seemed to appear in front of me. I have included three photographs from that first roll. Think of them as finger exercises (a good way for any photographer to stay in shape, by the way).

Across the Street from Rite Aid's Window, photographed with a Fuji GS 645 on Fuji Velvia 50. © Jim Hughes, 2009

Unfortunately, it is the only roll I’ve been able to expose with the camera so far, because on one of the frames I noticed what appeared to be a ghost. Not being a believer is astral spirits, I again opened the back. This time, I put my eye right into the film plane and aimed the extended bellows, not the lens, directly at the brightest light in the house. And there was the culprit: not one, but two fairly obvious light leaks.

I Googled internet groups and discovered that the bellows was this camera's weak point. Unlike the rest of the camera, it was cheaply made (actually felt like coated cardboard) and not designed to withstand the twisting motion required each time it was opened and closed. Replacing a bellows in a small camera is not my idea of fun, so back to the internet. Everyone who'd encountered the problem mentioned one repair facility, Camera Wiz in Harrisonburg, Virginia, whose highly regarded proprietor, Frank Marshman, told me over the phone that he had one reliable supplier of quality leather bellows, in London. He had a few other Fujis awaiting repair, and he was about to place an order. He said he’d call and tell me when to send the camera.

That was a few months ago. In the meantime, it seems, the supplier went out of business. But, Frank informed me, two of the craftsmen, the ones who actually did the fabrication, had decided to go into business for themselves. So I waited some more. This week Frank said to send the camera since the bellows was enroute.

I like this camera so much that I have been happy to wait. In the interim, my other, much older bellows cameras, the 75-year old Recomar and the nearly 60-year old Retina IIa and Super Ikonta B (not to mention my bellowsless 42-year old Canons with vintage screw-mount lenses), are holding up just fine, thank you very much. I should fare so well. Even just ten years from now, I doubt if you'd be able to show me a digital camera from today that hasn't made it to the scrapheap.

Okay, so maybe it is time for me to get with the program and go digital. But the only camera I’d consider is the Leica M9, I’d have to relearn a bunch of stuff, and I doubt my pictures would be any better, or even different. Besides, I like holding my slide sheets up to the light. I can see the images directly and immediately, and study my selects in great detail on my lightbox with a loupe. I certainly can’t do that with a CD or DVD (and I know my film will still be readable when said digital files have long since faded into oblivion). Besides, I have the sinking feeling that my digital files will always be obscured by increasing layers of technology.

Of course, I could save a lot of money by not having to purchase film and pay for processing—but at my conservative shooting rate, I’d have to live another 58 years to be paid back the $7,000 I’d be spending for the Leica! That would make me the world's only 131-year old photographer....

Jim

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Featured Comment by Arne Croell: "The defunct bellows bellows company in England you mention was Camera Bellows, and the active successor is Custom Bellows, if somebody needs bellows for a similar project. I had a new bellows for my Linhof Technikardan made by them and their quality is first rate (I am not affiliated other than being a customer)."

Featured Comment by Paris: "There are lots of reasons to give up photography, but if the last box of film expired in October of 1943, there's a better than even chance that the original owner was called away to someplace like Kwajelein, or Anzio. I've bought these estate-sale boxes, too, and I always wonder a little about the history."

Featured Comment by Dave Jenkins: "Jim, I guess I'm somewhat of an oddball magazine collector, but I still have all the issues of Camera 35 from the late '60s. I'm too lazy to get up and go look, but I seem to remember an article or two about your acquisition of the Canon 7s. I also have a magazine from that period (maybe U.S. Camera—like I said, I'm too lazy to get up and go look) where you shot a photo feature on the doors of Charleston, S.C. with your Canon rangefinders. For the record, and apropos of nothing in particular, I still have all the issues of the original Camera Arts magazine which you edited."

Jim replies: You have a good memory. I photographed Charleston when I was editor of Travel & Camera, 1969-70 (can't be more specific; misplaced that issue long ago). Travel & Camera replaced U.S. Camera when American Express bought the company from Tom Maloney. Soon after, T&C turned into Travel & Leisure, and I resumed editing Camera 35. I did use the same Canon 7s that I use now, and a lot of the pictures were made with the 19mm Canon because of that city's very tight quarters. Still a great lens, although I rarely need its unique properties. My primary wide angle is the 35, and my "telephoto" is the 50. Call it the RF shooter's mentality. Therein may lie another story....

Ansel Redux

 By Jim Hughes

One thing leads to another. My recent post on Ansel Adams got me thinking, and I dug into my collection of old photo magazines and found a "Proof Sheet" column I wrote for the January 1980 edition of Popular Photography. I had interviewed Ansel for a second time, this time in New York City in 1979.

This master of the optical/chemical darkroom and the silver print had an interesting, even prescient perspective on digital photography, which at that point in time was but a blip in anyone's consciousness.

As I wrote at the time: Few people realize that this titan of the straight and clear image (in his early days in photography, this represented a revolutionary concept) looks forward to the day when certain select students of his work will be able to interpret one of his negatives in new media, even using computer enhancement.

"I figured, what the hell is the use of having the negatives stored away in a trunk," Adams told me, explaining one of the motivating factors for his playing such a central role in the establishment of the [then new] Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson, which will house the Adams archive. "Stieglitz canceled every one of his negatives by putting a little 'x' in the corner. You can't print them. The only ones I've canceled are from Portfolio VI, which I withdrew from circulation in accordance with my agreements, and Portfolio V, which I actually canceled...and I'm sorry I did.

"I've always said that the negative is the score, and the print the performance. I want it to be possible for people in the future to perform my negatives. After all, when I was playing the piano, I was playing the music of people who had been dead for quite a few hundred years, and who had never heard the sounds of my modern piano -- they had written for the harpsichord, the clavichord. I actually feel that in the next few years—it won't be very long—the electronic image is really going to be the medium in photography."

Later in the piece, I wrote: No doubt there are photographers who don't like Adams' work, but they, too, must admit his importance. His intense and spirited presence through the years has helped make it possible for all photographers to enjoy the manifold rewards of legitimacy. Does Ansel have a philosophy of giving?

"If you're a professional, you contribute to the profession," he replies. "There is an underlying attitude for support, a pouring back of interest and thought. Musicians teach master classes. Doctors do research, write papers, give time to charity. The artist is a professional.

"If the art gives the artist life, then the artist in turn should give the art life. There has been a lack of understanding of this concept in photography. But you just can't live an independent, selfish existence. You lose on it."

Jim

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Ansel Adams, a Gentle and Generous Man

By Jim Hughes

In response to Mike's recent post about The Portfolios of Ansel Adams, Carsten Bockermann commented: "I bought The Portfolios of Ansel Adams on my first visit to the U.S. It was back in 1982, I was 16 at the time. The lady in a little bookstore in Carmel said 'Oh, that's too bad, you just missed Mr. Adams. He left a few minutes ago and went to the barber shop.' Needless to say, I found out where the barber shop was and got my copy signed right there, in the barber's chair."

I first met Ansel many years ago, at his home in Carmel, an unimposing structure at the end of a winding path leading to a bluff overlooking the Pacific. The place was not easy to find, but Maggie Weston, whose gallery I had just visited, had given me excellent directions. I wanted to interview Ansel for a piece I was writing on the intersection of art and commerce in photography, and he had graciously agreed.

In the midst of our conversation, my tape already spinning, I heard a chime. I looked toward the front door to see two small figures silhouetted against the wavy glass. Ansel answered the door himself. A middle-aged couple, tourists recently arrived from Japan, I soon learned, stood in the doorway. They wore broad grins. The man held a copy of Ansel's latest book.

"Autograph, please," the man said, handing the book to its famous author.

"Of course, of course," Ansel responded in a gentle voice that belied his craggy, weathered visage. "Please come in. You are welcome in my home."

It was clear that Ansel had not expected more visitors, but neither did he seem to feel the least bit put upon by their unannounced arrival. He asked them to spell their names, slowly please, then carefully wrote a personalized inscription, complete with a flourish, in their book. They bowed. He bowed. I even bowed. Then the man pulled out a snapshot camera and photographed his wife with Ansel Adams, the world's most famous photographer. She in turn photographed her husband with Ansel. Finally, they handed me the camera and I photographed all three, arm in arm, posing in front of Ansel's magnificent fireplace, beneath a huge antique gong that hung suspended above the fireplace.

With another kind of flourish, Ansel gave the gong a rap with a four-foot padded mallet, and the house reverberated with ancient tones. I imagined that even the whales migrating just offshore must have heard that deep, booming sound. More smiling and bowing followed. More unspoken communication between disparate cultures.

Finally, Ansel motioned his new friends, myself included, toward the grand piano in an ell just off the living room. He sat down to play, something short and sweet. I don't remember what the piece was. But if it wasn't Mozart, it should have been.

Jim
(Inset photograph by Nancy Newhall)

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Featured Comment by R. Edelman: "In 1983 I took a weekend trip to Carmel from San Francisco. While I was walking in Carmel, a Cadillac pulled up to the curb and parked. I figured that it had to be Ansel Adams' car, as the license plate read: 'Zone V.' A young man was driving and Ansel Adams was the passenger. After Mr. Adams got out of the car, I walked up to him and said: 'Mr. Adams, your photography has given me great pleasure over the years.' Well, he acted as if he had never received a compliment before! He smiled, grabbed my hand and shook it, and thanked me. What a gentleman!"

Featured Comment by Nancy Ori: "I think that I know Jim from many years ago. Let me know if that is true. My memory seems to be so full of so many things that stuff seems to get pushed to the back somehow.

"Anyway, nice story.

"I visited with Ansel many times at the Carmel house...usually with a cocktail in hand...he loved his cocktails too. I was a teaching assistant at his workshop series for eight seasons, probably some of the most important and memorable formative years for me as a young photographer.

"I have had a lifetime now as a professional photographer and teach all over the place. I try to always bring forth what I learned at Ansel's workshops...patience, sharing, looking, thinking, caring.

"In my experience, he was like a Santa Claus. You just wanted to hug him...which he was not opposed to. He was truly larger than life...being a big person didn't hurt either. But it was his energy that was so impressive. Granted, when I knew him in the late '70s he had already been discovered and had a lot of people around him to help with everything, but he had so much energy and excitement for his craft.

"I try to think about and draw inspiration from my times spent standing next to him on Glacier Point in Yosemite. What an awesome view and experience. There will always be great photographers coming along but no one like Ansel."

Fugitive Color

[Editor's note: I haven't been able to procure usable JPEGs of sample pictures from Photography Unplugged to use with this article. To give you an idea what the pictures in the book look like, there is a small selection of nine examples on the main page at www.harald-mante.de.]

By Jim Hughes

A while back, Mike asked people to talk about their favorite lenses. I was busy on a project at the time, so stayed silent. But I did think about it. And in the middle of the night I came up with an answer that surprised even me: over the course of many decades of photographing—generally carrying a camera wherever I go, not because I need to make a living or burnish a reputation but because I still love what it feels like to take pictures—my favorite lens turns out not to be a lens at all. The "optic" I feel most comfortable seeing my world through is actually a film. Kodachrome, to be precise.

Okay, if pressed, I could name a glass lens or three. At the top of my list would be the 50mm ƒ/2 Schneider Xenon fixed to my eminently pocketable Retina IIa folder. This 60-year old lens is really sharp yet still manages to render Kodachrome’s abundant tonalities with a soft brush. Then there’s my reliable "modern" antique, the minuscule 35mm ƒ/2 Canon that I regularly mount on my indestructible Canon 7s rangefinder (both circa 1968). Shooting color—all I do now—the Canon produces rich and deep transparencies that somehow possess the enduring look of old-time black and white. In fact, most of my compact Canon RF lenses perform similarly. Must have been a design philosophy back then. Many of today's lenses seem oddly cold and calculating by comparison.

Jim Hughes with his Retina IIa. Note the Leitz 1:1 bright frame finder. Blackberry photo by Peter Smith.

Brings to mind Ralph Gibson's comments the other day regarding books (which I agree with, no surprise). I've known Ralph since he arrived in my office at Camera 35 with a box full of prints under his arm and a plan to self-publish them in a book. He wanted a portfolio in the magazine to help make it happen, and I was more than happy to oblige (as I was later, with Larry Clark's Tulsa, at Ralph's suggestion). Ralph is, by the way, one of the smartest, most articulate photographers I've had the pleasure to work with. Even then, he thought of the photo book as a distinct art form; books offered the ability to pair images on facing pages, he said, expanding and deepening their meaning, which can't be done as effectively in exhibits (or today, on the web). "A less ephemeral experience," I think his words were regarding photographs in books.

I also agree with Ralph's comparison of digital versus film. When I did the Ernst Haas in Black and White book, the publisher, Bulfinch, wanted the reproductions be be made from digital tri-tone scans, the newest and "best" process in 1992 (these days, we would be talking Quad-tones, or maybe Octo-tones!). I wanted the reproductions to be made in old fashioned offset-lithography duo-tone, with the plates made from film produced optically in one of those giant room-sized repro cameras on tracks. I thought the look of the latter would be a better match for Ernst's B&W photographs, most of which were made in the '40s, '50s and '60s with Rolleis and Leicas. So the publisher—reluctantly and at no little expense—did a test, running both the old and new technologies on a sampling of prints. When we spread out the press proofs for comparison, the decision was clear: the digital scans seemed to cause ink to float more on the surface of the paper; done that way, Ernst’s images had less depth and were overly-sharp at the edges of things, imparting a harsh tonality he never envisioned. I wanted the ink to be absorbed by the paper more. The differences were subtle, but real. Low-tech won, expensive and labor-intensive though the production may have been. (Of course, this may go a long way toward explaining why the book has never been reissued, turning it into a hard-to-find collector’s item.)

Given digital's relatively rapid ascendancy, it can come as no surprise that today, virtually all books—pictures, words, whatever—are made using new technologies whose rough edges presumably have been mostly smoothed out since 1992. Scanning and the ability to create digital files can rightly be thought of as having brought about the democratization of publishing, a good thing if ever there was one.

And as Ralph noted in his email to TOP, "the book will surely prevail." Consider the volume currently in my hands. Photography Unplugged (2009: Rocky Nook, Santa Barbara, CA—here's the U.K. link), is its title—not a little ironic in the digital era. This handsome production, a 200-page, 50-year retrospective of German travel photographer and university professor Harald Mante, is a paean to Kodachrome, his film of choice for both personal and professional work. "Paean"—the word itself is ironic, considering that this first commercially viable color film was primarily developed by Leopold Mannes and Leopold Godowsky, an unlikely pair of classical musicians and amateur photographers, in the mid-1930s.

The two Leopolds—"Man and God," as they were called at Kodak—figured out how to incorporate RGB dye couplers into the processing chemicals, rather than the film itself as with the now far-simpler to process E-6 films, using a very complex infusion method that soon utilized an equally complex selective reexposure on what was essentially black-and-white film stock. From its beginning, Kodachrome has required very sophisticated processing at full-fledged labs. But the end result was spectacular: since the color was not built into the film but added later, actually displacing silver, emulsion layers could be significantly thinner, allowing for reduced light dispersion and superior sharpness. According to my 1939 edition of Color in Photography, by Ivan Dmitri, Kodachrome was manufactured in its early years with an ASA speed of 8. Not that long ago it was available in E.I.s of 25, 64 and 200. The slower versions offered a grain structure so fine as to be virtually invisible.

1932 Lincoln Cabriolet, Rockport, Me. Camera: Kodak Retina IIa. Film: Kodachrome 64. © 2001 by Jim Hughes.

Little wonder magazines such as National Geographic and Holiday for many years mandated its use by its photographers. Little wonder photographers such as Sam Abell, Costa Manos, Douglas Faulkner, Jay Maisel, Ernst Haas—not to mention Harald Mante, and yours truly—gravitated to it. But Kodachrome’s complexity was its undoing. Where once there were labs throughout the world working around the clock, slowly but surely the equipment wore out. In the face of a waning markets and disappearing profits, production lines were not rebuilt or replaced. Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas, stands alone today as the processor of last resort. And when Kodak announced last year it was ceasing production of K-64, the venerable film’s last surviving embodiment, Dwayne's, with more than a little regret, said it would shut down its K-14 processing line at the end of this year.

I had never heard of Harald Mante, or seen any examples of his impressive body of work, until Mike, knowing my connection to Kodachrome, had Mante’s book sent to me. It was a revelation (and a little like looking in a mirror, despite some clear differences in the ways we see). His editor and publisher (and clearly old friend and admirer), Gerhard Rossbach, wrote in his forward: "The idea for this book developed during numerous conversations with Harald Mante about the need to set a counterpoint to the increasing 'homophony' that modern, digital photographic processes produce. Here, we want to show you Harald Mante's work in its purest form, without the aid of computers or Photoshop. In other words: what you see here is Harald Mante unplugged, with each original, unprocessed image showing the moment exactly as Harald Mante saw it through the viewfinder of his camera."

In a brief statement, "Goodbye Kodachrome," Mante himself says, "Kodachrome was the first slide film I ever used, and [has] remained my staple for decades." His book, he notes, is "...a perfect way for me to say 'Goodbye' and 'Thank You' to this famous film!"

1956 Red Chevrolet Convertible, Rockport, Me. Camera: Kodak Retina IIa. Film: Kodachrome 64. © 2006 by Jim Hughes.

I have just loaded my final roll into the Retina, appropriate since it was probably the Kodak camera line that benefitted most over the years from Kodachrome's original popularity. While I shoot, I will also be trying to figure out how I will ever match Kodachrome's qualities: that deep, liquid color, those cool, muted shadows, that wonderful sharpness, the absolute clarity, the three-dimensional look and feel I've learned to see and capture. For me, rating K-64 at 100 and exposing for the highlights has become second nature. Like Harald, for 50 years I have visualized my pictures in Kodachrome color. Now I’ll have to learn new ways to see.

Jim

Both Kodachrome illustrations are from Jim Hughes' American Classics Series.

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H.C.-B.: The Invisible Man

By Jim Hughes

More than any other practitioner, I think, Henri Cartier-Bresson has defined the art of small-camera photography. Defying categorization (that bane of any true original), H.C.-B., neither photojournalist nor documentarian, seemingly traversed the earth in search of telling human images—decisive moments, he himself called them—that in their inevitable lyricism strike me as unspoken tone poems in black and white. It is too easy to say that he photographed people, often at their most vulnerable, or even that he captured the essence of their lives, both of which were certainly true. He somehow managed to photograph time itself, stopping that great equalizer in its tracks. It is almost as if the instrument of his art—and make no mistake, it is the music of life that he played—existed on another plane entirely.

Yet when I looked upon that instrument, it appeared to be a camera, nothing more. Indeed, the day I first met Cartier-Bresson, he was wearing not the famous black-taped classic Leica I expected to see, but an even more miniaturized version, the then-brand-new Leica CL, a superb design now long-discontinued and highly sought after, that was no bigger and almost as simple as some of today’s ubiquitous point-and-shoots. The International Center of Photography in New York (then located at 94th and Fifth on Museum Mile in what had once been a grand old mansion) was planning an exhibit, and as a photo-magazine editor I had been invited to meet the great man in person. History was everywhere. We gathered in one of the upstairs meeting rooms. Cornell Capa, ICP's founder and Robert's brother, was there. The conversation, conducted at first in a kind of Anglicized French no doubt to accommodate me (Cartier-Bresson made his reluctance to speak English quite obvious), quickly turned to Magnum, an unusual cooperative of independent-minded photographers who never seemed able to agree on much of anything, but who nonetheless managed, individually and as a group, to produce work of unparalleled excellence.

I had expected to encounter the gentle soul of a poet. Instead, the quirky man to whom I was introduced was edgier than I could ever have imagined, possessed of a sharply caustic intellect that, I realize in retrospect, might actually have been calculated to put people off—or perhaps just people like me. He was, I'd been told, an aristocrat. He talked of his growing frustration with (or maybe it was disdain for) photography, and his concomitant need to return to his roots: drawing and painting, the few examples of which I’d seen had left me cold, left me wondering how a great master in one field would fail so completely to recognize his mediocrity in another. But no matter. If Henri Cartier-Bresson chose to be full of himself, I was sure he’d earned the right. Genius is as genius does.

At one point, a young man with a Nikon F appeared at the open door. I paid him little mind; at ICP, one regularly encountered young people carrying cameras, all eagerly shooting each other's nooks and crannies as they earnestly went about learning how to make incisive pictures. But this fellow was different; he seemed barely out of his teens—if indeed he was—and he appeared to be genuinely starstruck. It is not often one gets to meet one's true-life hero in the flesh.

"Monsieur Cartier-Bresson," the young man exclaimed in what sounded like his best prep-school French as he brought his Nikon to his eye, moved in and squeezed off a series of exposures with, I think, a 105mm lens. At the last ka-thunk of the mirror, Cartier-Bresson sprung to his feet, literally sprung as if his wiry body had been coiled tight, just waiting for a reason to release itself.

"You must not photograph me!" he shrieked, his English suddenly crystal-clear. "No one is allowed to photograph me! Everyone must know that..."

Dennis Stock and Visual Haiku

The model is Dennis Stock and the photographer was
Andreas Feininger, at LIFE Magazine

By Jim Hughes

I was saddened to learn last week of the passing of my old friend Dennis Stock. I was surprised to read in obits and tributes references to him as unknown or under-appreciated, since in my circles back in the day he was a legend of sorts—although not, like some, of his own making. Dennis was never by nature a glad-hander, nor would he willingly suffer fools. By some accounts, he was "difficult," but I never found him to be.

If memory serves, I first met him in 1969, when the magazine I was briefly editing, Travel & Camera (formerly U.S. Camera and soon to be reinvented, without me, as Travel & Leisure), used his wonderful color photographs for a National Parks issue. "I'm glad to see you're not a member of the 'old boys' club' around here," I remember him announcing with a wry grin some time later at Pop Photo, where I had landed to do the Annual. Thereafter, we had many a long conversation, over lunch or in my office. He had strong, well thought out opinions, and they might spill out at the drop of a hat, so to speak. I found him to be as much philosopher as photographer. For some reason, he brought to mind a Talmudic scholar, although we never talked religion. In any event, there was nothing shallow about Dennis Stock.

In 1974, he did a book for Kodansha, A Haiku Journey, for which he undertook to follow the path of "The Narrow Road to the Far North" traveled by the 17th century Japanese poet Bashó, whose haikus Dennis illustrates with photographic poetry of his own. As Dennis wrote in a text for the book:

While reading haiku, I have often sensed a visual perception that must be at work while the poet writes. The haiku form, in its conciseness and with its candid expression of detail, reminds us of what is also necessary in photography. We reach into nature, frame poised and focus selective. Then with shutter-speed response, we freeze the fleeting moment—leaving just enough unsaid for the viewer to add or extract at will. There is a subtle collaboration between artist and audience—and so it is with appreciating a haiku.

...We were separated only by three centuries and the breadth of a blade of grass, and I sensed Bashó at my side.

Jim
(Thanks to Tyler Monson)

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Featured Comment by Rod S.: "I recall reading a fascinating interview with Dennis Stock that appeared in Popular Photography around 1977–78. What stood out to me then as a 21-year-old was the clarity of his insights into his actions and responsibility as a photographer. His comments impressed me to the extent that I put the interview into the hands of a best friend and insisted he read it (he, too, was impressed). Indeed, I can still visualise one of the pages, a left-hand page that had a central photo of Mr. Stock leaning on one knee."

Jim Hughes replies: Rod's memory is correct. A black-and-white and color portfolio by Dennis Stock was published in the March 1978 edition of Popular Photography. I know because I have the yellowing, dog-eared copy right here in front of me, which I saved, of course, because I wrote the text, helped select and sequence the photographs, and conducted the interview you mention, which appeared separately at the back of the magazine.

Here's a little of what I wrote back then, in the intro: "[Stock's] color photographs of nature are as sensually lyrical as his black-and-white pictures of people are intellectually cutting, and his opinions on the current state of photography make a lot of people uncomfortable, myself included. "I look for humor and beauty in life, and that's an unfashionable position these days," he says. The fact is, Stock has mellowed a lot. When I first encountered him in the late 1960s, I had the audacity to ask what lens he used for one of his National Parks photographs. 'Tell your readers that I shoot through the bottom of a Coke bottle,' he barked as he hung up. Now, he can note, 'Equipped with 35mm SLRs and a collection of lenses, I trip, stumble, trek, and climb into a playground of promise....'

"He has a lot more to say, and he says it with the zeal of a man whose religion is photography."

By the way, the photograph Rod recalls so vividly, of Dennis on one knee, a camera in one hand and a daisy in the other, was made by Dan Budnick, another old friend.

When Dennis was 18 and just out of the Navy, he took a course with Berenice Abbott under the GI Bill. "It wasn't quite right," he told me during the interview. "I asked her where I could get a job as an assistant." She sent him to "a man by the name of Smith. So I went up to see this man by the name of Smith—it was W. Eugene, of course—and he said he needed an assistant and hired me. Well, Gene can be very naive. I was this brassy kid off the street, who [still] knew nothing about photography. Gene needed somebody with real qualifications. So I worked for him about two weeks. But in the parting moments, he said in his sweet way—you know, I adore the man—'You ought to work for a guy by the name of Gjon Mili; he'll really kick your ass around.'"

Dennis worked for Mili for four years, and presumably the ass-kicking worked—"four years of real apprenticeship, European style. $25 a week, unlimited time for developing, printing until three in the morning, learning, learning, learning. Smith was right. Mili was a very good master, very demanding but very generous. I had a classic upbringing in photography."

In 1951, Stock won first prize in LIFE magazine's young photographers' contest, soon joined Magnum at the invitation of Robert Capa, and the rest, as they say, is history.

When I asked Dennis to comment on the then-current (1978, remember) state of photographic education, he replied in typically direct and irascible fashion:

"Bear in mind that a large portion of our critics, educators or historians cannot take a good picture or recognize one. So it's very easy for them to lionize the [William] Egglestons and the types who indulge in craftless banality. Push them up. It's perfect for them. Damn it, when I came into photography, a Smith, a Mili, a Haas, a Cartier-Bresson...boy, they were hard to reach for. You never believed you would reach that level, but you tried like hell. But they were immense distances ahead of you. Well, look who's coming down the pike now. How many people are doing Les Krims photographs? Ralph Gibson? I'm sorry, who's doing Diane Arbus? Everybody and his brother! They're easy to imitate. It's most distressing."

Okay, enough of my trip down memory lane. But a little history does go a long way, don't you think? 

The Lost Last 'Long View'

Introduction: For a number of years, Jim Hughes, one of the best writers on photography around, wrote a well received and always-eagerly-awaited regular column for the newer iteration of Camera Arts magazine called "The Long View." (Jim was also the founding editor of the original Camera Arts, circa 1980–1983). When the newer Camera Arts ceased publication, Jim's last column got caught suspended in the production pipeline, and never saw the light of print. Here for your reading pleasure, and for the first time, is the long-lost last Jim Hughes Camera Arts column. It's called "Instant Classics."

Jim is also former editor of 35MM Photography, Camera 35, and the Photography Annual, and the author of  W. Eugene Smith: Shadow and Substance, Ernst Haas in Black and White, and The Birth of a Century: Early Color Photographs of America. He and his wife Evelyn, after 42 years in the same Brooklyn brownstone, last July moved permanently to the small town in Maine where they have summered for many years. —Mike

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Instant Classics

By Jim Hughes

There was something vaguely familiar about the face zeroing in on me from the slick magazine cover in front of me. Rashida Jones was depicted holding a Polaroid SX-70 to her hip and a circled thumb and forefinger to her eye as if to form a viewfinder. "Quincy Jones' Daughter Shoots from the Hip," the blurb announced. Inside were more pictures of Rashida flashing us looking at her. The cameras in her hands, a different one for each image, were all throwbacks: another Polaroid, a Kodak Instamatic, even a wallet-sized Disc camera (hailed as "revolutionary" when it was introduced in 1982). It was then that I recognized not the name, but the face: she is the very image of her mother, iconic actress Peggy Lipton, star of the hip '60s television series "The Mod Squad," a show I watched with some regularity.

The significance of the obsolete cameras finally struck me. All once represented cutting edge breakthroughs. Now they are conversation pieces. Gestures to the past, as it were. In their moment, however, they were wondrous to behold.

I remember my excitement when the SX-70 was introduced in 1972 to such great fanfare (it even made the cover of Time). A folding single lens reflex that could be slung flat under a shoulder or snugged into a purse or a coat pocket, this elegantly designed camera spit out 3.5-inch square, one-of-a-kind, full-color prints that developed themselves as we watched. They had both presence and dimension.

Aimed at providing instant gratification to the mass amateur market, the SX-70 soon was quickly adopted by a parallel universe of so called fine-artists: Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Lucas Samaras, even Walker Evans and André Kertész, took to this newest form of instant photography like ducks to water. I, too, was seduced; for an extended period in the 1970s I put aside my sharper-than-life 35mm Kodachrome in favor of the soft palette of the enormously malleable SX-70 print film. I carried the ingeniously designed camera everywhere, along with a bag full of flashbars, some bamboo shish kebab skewers to manipulate the plastic-encapsulated emulsion when inspiration struck, and a small plug-in warming plate to enhance and extend the film’s remarkable workability.

Dr. Edwin Land was already a legend in the photography business. Instant photography was his brainchild, literally—his daughter was said to have asked why she couldn't see a picture right after he snapped it, so the inventor of Polarized lenses went on to devise the Land camera for instant photography, which was introduced in 1948. Over the subsequent years, a full line of remarkable black-and-white cameras and film ensued—progressing from simple to professional. Some versions also provided, in addition to true contact prints, excellent negatives from which to make traditional enlargements in the darkroom. Each film had its own unique properties. Ansel Adams was a fan, and Dr. Land became a patron, sponsoring, among other projects, an Adams book on what became known as Polaroid Land Photography.

I knew one man, Tom Maloney, publisher of U. S. Camera—he gave me my first job in photographic publishing—who very early on believed in Land when few others did, and invested, I was told, $10,000, a large sum for the time. Years passed. Stocks split. Again and again. By the 1980s, my last personal contact with this man, he had become a millionaire many times over, due in large measure to Polaroid’s performance....