I've been procrastinating badly over this, but I suppose I must face it. I don't do obituaries very often, despite the fact that the recently deceased all richly deserve remembrance, because there are too many to cover without becoming "the death channel," so to speak. Losses are...depressing, and sad. The older I get, especially, the more it seems that those who pass away simply belong in the world. You just want them to...remain. Even if we didn't know them personally, they were, in many cases, people we felt we knew, people we looked up to, people whose work we admired, people who were important in our world.
Paul Caponigro [d. November 10th, 2024, aged 91] has, and always will have, a special place. He was widely known as a master photographer when I was young, a spiritual seeker, a pure artist, even if his reputation seemed (inexplicably, to me) to settle more toward oblivion in recent years, probably because he was not a self-promoter. This video was produced by Epson, hence, perhaps, the opening quote, "Without the print, what the hell have you got?" But it's a gem, and well worth watching twice.
Here's an obituary from the Portland [Maine] Press Herald.
We were honored to have Paul's participation in two print sales, pairing a photograph of his with one by his son John Paul, the latter an important artist from the cradle years of digital who remains a leading voice. Here's the first of those—a scan from a 5x7 B&W negative of Paul's next to an exquisite color photograph by John Paul taken with a phone! It captured the changing times in 2013.
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Photojournalist Paul Lowe [d. October 10th, 2024, aged 60] was stabbed to death on a hiking trip in the San Gabriel Mountains north of Los Angeles. Paul had gone to Los Angeles to help his 19-year-old son Emir, after Emir had been gone for months on a trip that was scheduled to last only a few days. Emir, who has been charged with his father's murder, has a history of mental illness.
Paul Lowe, who was born in London and grew up in Liverpool, was a member of VII Photo Agency, and is best known for his extensive coverage of the Siege of Sarajevo and the Bosnian War during the breakup of the old Yugoslavia. However, he was an accomplished and seasoned photojournalist who worked in more than 80 countries from the 1980s to the 2000s. He considered himself a photographer of conflict; he was Professor of Conflict, Peace and the Image at London College of Communication. His wife Amra is native to Sarajevo and the city was the family's home base.
There is a full article about Paul Lowe's tragic and untimely death, with more information, at PetaPixel.
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Constantine (Costa) Manos [d. Jan. 3, 2025, aged 90], born in South Carolina of Greek immigrant parents, joined his local camera club at age 13 in 1947, the same year the Magnum Photo Agency was founded. He said it "began a lifelong search for beautiful and poetic images." His parents, Dimitri and Aphrodite, ran the Washington Street Café, where they served "soul food" to an exclusively Black clientele. Encouraged by Cartier-Bresson, he became a member of Magnum in 1965, and was identified with the agency all his life. An early project was a documentary book made from three years of shooting in his parents' native Greece. There is an excellent obituary at Magnum, with a selection of pictures, and one at The Provincetown Independent. Although he lived a long life, he died after suffering for a long time from the scourge of Alzheimer's disease. If you don't know Costa Manos's work, it rewards looking into.
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Heinz Kluetmeier [d. January 14th, 2025, aged 82] was one of the three superstar Sports Illustrated photographers during the magazine's heyday. The other two were Walter Iooss Jr. (84) and Neil Leifer (82). In 1980, in what is known as the "Miracle on Ice," an amateur USA team composed of college hockey players beat the formerly unbeatable Soviet team, seasoned and mature professionals in all but name, in one of the great David-and-Goliath stories in recent sports history. SI famously ran Heinz Kluetmeier's cover photo with no cover blurb at all. He also took what must be the best picture ever made of a tackle in (American) football. I first learned of his death from a testament on Andy Roddick's tennis podcast, Served, in which he spoke movingly about how much, and how universally, Heinz was liked as well as admired. You can see his best known shots and read about his career in the obituary at The New York Times.
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George Tice, [d. Jan. 16th, 2025, aged 86], the poet photographer of New Jersey, had his roots in amateur clubs and contests but became a major artistic photographer with many books to his credit. Writer Vivian Raynor said that "Mr. Tice has done so much of his greatest work in New Jersey that he has become a metaphor for the state—a photographic equivalent of William Carlos Williams." One thing I recall hearing is how he methodically saved up for all his darkroom and camera equipment, one piece at a time, and that he created a window between his darkroom and his living room, which was his children's playroom, using a big sheet of Rubylith (a transparent red masking film that is safe for orthochromatic films and papers) so he could work while keeping an eye on the kids. A few brief excursions excepted, he lived in New Jersey all his life, and did many projects there, although he is best known for his almost musically composed urban landscapes in large format. His most famous picture is probably "Petit's Mobil Station and Watertower, Cherry Hill, New Jersey (1974)," a time exposure he took by covering the lens of his camera every time a car went by, because he didn't want the headlight trails in the picture. A perfectionist, he was a virtuoso printer. It looks like his limited edition retrospective book Lifework might still be available from Veritas Editions. There is an obituary here, but possibly the best tributes to him and his story are John Paul Caponigro's interview with him and especially Bruce Wodder's film about him and his work, Seeing Beyond the Moment.
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Our condolences to the families and friends of these photographers, and again, I apologize to those who deserve being remembered whose deaths we fail to mention here.
Mike
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