The Instrument Is Not The Camera: Eve Arnold

If you do a Google image search for Eve Arnold, the majority of the photographs that come up are of Marilyn Monroe. It’s not surprising, considering  she spent ten years documenting the starlet; whether on movie sets, at special celebrity events, or just her everyday life. The photographs of Monroe, however, are just a small portion of her work. There is an incredible diversity to her photography which rivaled any photographer of her day. Her subjects range from migrant laborers to the Queen of England; from prostitutes in Cuba to First Lady Jackie Kennedy. It didn’t matter who the subject was, she treated them all with the same amount of respect and interest, all while capturing thousands of photographs from around the world.

Born in Philadelphia to Russian immigrant parents in 1912, Arnold took up photography when a boyfriend gave her a Rolleicord (the cheaper version of the Rolleiflex) at the age of 34. She had been working at a photo-finishing lab for several years, so she knew the technical side of photography, but she quickly became enamored with the artistic side. She soon ended her studies in medicine, and began seriously pursuing photography as a career, beginning with a six-week course at New York’s New School for Social Research (where Richard Avedon was a classmate). As soon as it was over, she took off and began taking pictures. Her first project was photographing fashion in Harlem. She spent months in places most photographers would never have gone, especially as a white female. She spent the next year and a half in bars, restaurants, church halls; wherever these models were showing their homemade gowns….Being rejected by most publications in the US because of the subject matter, her husband sent some of her prints to Britain’s Picture Post, who published the story in 1951. She had applied to become a photographer for the Magnum Photography Agency and the publication of these images were a big part of her acceptance. She so impressed the agency’s founders, including Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, that she became the first woman photographer accepted into the organization, working for them as a free-lance photographer until 1957 when she became a full member…..READ MORE

The Color Of Genius: Saul Leiter

Saul Leiter is a bit of a favourite of mine so imagine my joy when I found the excellent Faded + Blurred had a spotlight feature on him.

Some people say that photography is easy, that anyone can do it. You just have to have a camera and the ability to press the shutter. It seems that many photographers use the “spray and pray” method, hoping that if they click enough times they will capture something interesting and worthwhile. To me, that simply isn’t photography, at least it’s not what I would consider to be the art of photography. Producing photography that goes beyond snapshots into the realm of art is a skill. It takes a gifted person to be able to see elements such as color, shape, and composition all come together for that one perfect moment. As a photographer, especially a street photographer, you have to be able to anticipate the elements in your head, watch them come together in front of you, then take action. There isn’t time to think about what colors you want to use or what shapes or angles. You have to use what is right there in front of you and make it work. Knowing that moment and being able to take advantage of it is a gift and Saul Leiter has it…..READ MORE

 

A Fiend Inside: Lee Miller

Another wonderful post on Faded + Blurred

A New York fashion model, a partner and muse to Man Ray, a fashion photographer, one of the first (and one of very few) photojournalists during the second world war, and a gourmet cook. To call Lee Miller a free spirit is an understatement. Her life was a composite of one adventure after another. “Being a great photojournalist,” she said, “is a matter of getting out on a damn limb and sawing it off behind you.” This seemed to be her philosophy of life as well, not just photography. Never one to sit still for long, she was always looking for the next thing and that next thing was never simple, but it was definitely always exciting.

“I looked like an angel, but I was a fiend inside.” – Lee Miller
Miller was born in Poughkeepsie, NY in 1907. She suffered the horrific trauma of being raped at age seven by a family friend, which left her with gonorrhea and years of treatment which was painful and invasive. This experience, as well as being photographed nude by her father from the age of eight all the way through her teens, had a tremendous effect on her and dramatically shaped who she was to become. Thankfully, she was able to escape her dysfunctional family life and move to New York City when she was just 20. It was there that she had a chance encounter which was to change her life.

While attempting to cross a street in midtown Manhattan, she was abruptly pulled out of the way of an oncoming truck by publisher Condé Nast. Nast was struck by her classic beauty and immediately took her on as a model for Vogue and, before she realized it, she was on the cover. This began a 30 year relationship with the magazine, although modeling for Miller did not last long. In 1929 she posed for the first photographic ad for Kotex. This caused such a controversy that the modeling calls quickly stopped coming. It was actually fairly good timing, however, because, typical of Miller, she was becoming bored with having to stand still all day while the camera was pointed at her. She decided she wanted to try her hand at being the one taking the pictures instead, so she packed her bags and moved to Paris…..READ MORE

Master of Moments: Henri Cartier-Bresson

From the rather wonderful Faded + Blurred

The decisive moment. If you have studied photography even in the slightest bit, you will likely have heard that saying. Just about every hobbyist and professional knows that you always need to be on the lookout for the precise second when you know you should press the shutter. It has become a philosophy, particularly of street photographers; an idiom to live by. What’s ironic is the man to whom that saying is credited to didn’t actually like it. The phrase, “The Decisive Moment”, came from Henri Cartier-Bresson’s book, Images à la Sauvette, which, when published in America was renamed. The actual translation means “Pictures on the Run”. Cartier-Bresson, while known for his spontaneous shooting style, didn’t particularly care for the saying because he thought it was used to pigeonhole him. He just did what he did, and although he would agree that there is a certain decisive moment, he did not want that to define who he was. He said, “Photography is not like painting. There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.”….READ MORE

see more here

 

Faded + Blurred

I stumbled across this blog and realised it has the same ethos as ours namely it is people who are interested in photography talking about photography

Initially a way for a group of friends to keep track of monthly photo walks, Faded + Blurred has evolved into a fantastic online resource for creative inspiration, shared by a community of photographers, both amateur and professional, who are dedicated to the art and craft of making images. This is what they say about themselves, sounds like us.

Here for example is a brilliant article about Bill Brandt

“It is part of the photographer’s job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveler who enters a strange country.” – Bill Brandt

Heralded by many as Britain’s greatest modern photographer, Bill Brandt was a man who never took a photograph unless he had something to say. On par with Man Ray, Brassai, and Atget, Brandt accomplished what few photographers have been able to do (either before or since), which is to successfully bridge the gap between photojournalism and documentary photography all the way to the other end of the spectrum of fine art. His work is characterized by stark contrasts between black and white and strong geometrical structures, whether the images are of a miner bringing home his coal for the day or the nude form of a woman on a rocky beach…..READ MORE HERE

 

and here is another about Gregory Crewdson

“My pictures must first be beautiful, but that beauty is not enough. I strive to convey an underlying edge of anxiety, of isolation, of fear. ” – Gregory Crewdson

Few photographers have had such a dramatic impact on photography as Gregory Crewdson. Like Richard Avedon or Henri Cartier-Bresson before him, Crewdson fundamentally changed not only the photographic language, but also the process of creating images and, in doing so, established himself as one of the most visionary photographers of the last decade. His photographs hang in museums, galleries and private collections all over the world and can sell for upwards of $100,000, but seeing him on the set of one of his productions, you might think he looks more like a film director than what has traditionally been the image of a photographer. In fact, he rarely even presses the shutter button. “I prefer not to be behind the camera,” he says, “because I want the most direct experience with the subject as possible.” Creating one of his photographs means dozens of crew members, unbelievably large budgets, and magnificent environments that require sets to be built or streets and neighborhoods to be temporarily shut down. Large in scale and obsessively detailed, they are made even bigger by what the viewer doesn’t see. “In all my pictures,” he says “what I am ultimately interested in is that moment of transcendence or transportation, where one is transported into another place, into a perfect, still world.” READ MORE HERE

 

The people behind Faded + Blurred are Jeffery Saddoris is a mixed media artist and designer whose love for photography started in the darkroom of his high school photo class. Jeffery is also the co-host of the weekly photography podcast, On Taking Pictures on the 5by5 Network. Nicole Rae (Nikki) is a food and fine art photographer. In 2008, Nikki won the Aperture photo contest, just one year after picking up a camera. In 2012, she co-wrote and photographed Chill, an eBook all about ice cream. See her fantastic food photography at Simmer & Shoot.

I would suggest you hurry over to their wonderful blog site for more of what you love 

William Eggleston

William Eggleston could be considered one of those annoying photographers who have great acclaim but seem to photograph just what is in front of him and it is then considered ‘art’. There is no doubt, that on one level the simplicity of his images and the feeling that they are only a stones throw away from being snap shots is frustrating. Frustrating because it is so difficult to pin down what makes them so absorbing. As with many artists when you show their work to people they either get it or they don’t, and this is telling; somehow those that do are more likely to become your friends. There is an outside nature to his images, domestic as many of them are you are still drawn to the edge by them. Should you be interested in Eggleston, well yes if you are interested in photography. Those photographers who provide decoration, amazing images but essentially decoration give you answers immediately but Eggleston mostly gives you questions and that is intriguing. “His first exhibit was a one-man show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. This was the first photography exhibit to show solely color work. Up until that point, black-and-white was considered the only true photographic art form. The curator of the museum, John Szarkowski took a big chance. He loved the work. He called it perfect. Most didn’t consider it perfect though. The show was strongly criticized. Hilton Kramer, of The New York Times, wrote, “Perfect? Perfectly banal, maybe…perfectly boring, certainly.” Even Ansel Adams wrote to Szarkowski asking him what those photos were doing hanging on the walls of the MoMA.” (from Faded + Blurred) I think the point about Ansel Adams just reinforces my views on Eggleston.

As Nicole Rae says on the blog Faded + Blurred “Despite his often mundane subject matter, he is simply not your ordinary photographer. His first one-man exhibit at the MoMA in 1976 was both heralded as being genius and was criticized as being the most hated show of the year. Some see his work as being perfect – the angles, composition, color, everything pushing the edges. While others see a jumbled mess of boring things, just thrown together, like he just shot from his hip with no thought behind it whatsoever. Love him or hate him, William Eggleston changed photographic history and changed the way we look at the world.”

A potted history of his life and achievements starts in 1939, born in Memphis, Tennessee

1957 Acquires his first camera, a Canon rangefinder.
1958 Acquires his first Leica.
1959 Sees Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “The Decisive Moment” and Walker Evans’ “American Photographs”.
1965 Begins to experiment with color transparency film.
1967 Starts to use color negative film. Goes to New York and meets Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander and Diane Arbus. Presents his work to John Szarkowski at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
1974 Harry Lunn publishes the first portfolio of dye-transfer photographs, “14 Pictures.” Receives a Guggenheim Fellowship. Appointed Lecturer in Visual and Environmental Studies at The Carpenter Center, Harvard University. Completes his “Los Alamos” project.
1976 The Museum of Modern Art exhibits work in first solo exhibition of color photographs accompanied by a monograph, “William Eggleston’s Guide.” Commissioned by Rolling Stone to photograph Plains, Georgia before the election of President Jimmy Carter. Project becomes “Election Eve,” the first of the artist’s books of original photographs published by Caldecot Chubb.
1978 Appointed Researcher in Color Video at Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the invitation of Richard Leacock. Photographs the Gulf states on a commission from A.T. & T. Receives another award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Visits Jamaica.
1979 Chubb published three smaller volumes of original photographs, “Morals of Vision,” “Wedgwood Blue,” and “Flowers.”
1980 Travels to Kenya with Caldecot Chubb and creates a body of work known as “The Streets Are Clean on Jupiter.” Commissioned to produce the “Louisiana Project” and to photograph throughout the state.
1983 Begins to photograph in Berlin, Salzburg and Graz and titles the series “Kiss me Kracow”. Commissioned to photograph the mansion of Elvis Presley, Graceland.
1986 Invited by director David Byrne to visit and photograph the making of his film “True Stories”. Commissioned by the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art to photograph in Egypt.
1988 Begins a series of color photographs of England he calls “English Rose”.
1989 Photographs in the orange groves of the Transvaal. Accepts one of 54 Master Photographers of 1960-1979 awards from Photographic Society of Japan. Plays the role of musician Jerry Lee Lewis’ father in the movie “Great Balls of Fire”.

1996 Commissioned by Coca-Cola to photograph their plants in four cities in the U.S. Invited by producer Caldecot Chubb to visit and photograph the making of the film “Eve’s Bayou”. Receives the University of Memphis Distinguished Achievement Award.

2000 Commissioned by Paramount Pictures to photograph studio lot in Hollywood, California. Commissioned by the Cartier Foundation to photograph the American desert.

2002 Travels extensively and photographs locations including Pasadena, California; the New Jersey Shore; Queens, New York; St. Petersburg, Russia; and Tuscany, Italy.
2003 Travels to and photographs the Niagara Falls area. Travels to Arles, France to attend Rencontres d’Arles and meets Henri Cartier-Bresson. Accepts Gold Medal for Photography from National Arts Club, New York.
2004 Receives the Getty Images Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Center of Photography (ICP) Infinity Awards. Travels to Hawaii and photographs with new panoramic format camera. Travels to Madrid to accept 2004 Photoespana Award. Travels to Clovis, New Mexico and photographs the city and Norman Petty Recording Studios.
2005 William Eggleston In The Real World, a documentary film on Eggleston by Michael Almereyda is completed. Travels to Xilitla, Mexico to photograph Las Pozas. Longtime advisor and friend, Walter Hopps dies. Invited and travels to Tokyo to be guest judge at Canon’s New Cosmos Photography Contest.

In between these many awards and citations he was commissioned to travel and photograph for corporations, national art bodies and film directors.

Eggleston said, “A photographer friend of mine bought a book of Magnum work with some Cartier-Bresson pictures that were real art, period. You didn’t think a camera made the picture. Sure didn’t think of somebody taking the picture at a certain speed with a certain speed film. I couldn’t imagine anybody doing anything more than making a perfect Cartier-Bresson. Which I could do, finally.”

More from Faded + Blurred by Nicole Rae “Although he started his career working in black and white, he soon changed to color. The biggest problem he found was getting the colors the way that he wanted them. He tried having them developed commercially, which didn’t give him the results he wanted. He then went to Kodak slide film, which still didn’t work. In the early 1970s, he came across a process called dye-transfer. Also used by the artist Robert Rauschenberg, dye-transfer is a long and complicated process involving separating the individual colors from the master negative. It was a technique used mainly for advertising but, when Eggleston saw it, he knew it was perfect for his prints. He often said he could never get his colors as rich or as saturate as he wanted until he started using this process.”

“Sometimes I like the idea of making a picture that does not look like a human picture. Humans make pictures which tend to be about five feet above the ground looking out horizontally. I like very fast flying insects moving all over and I wonder what their view is from moment to moment. I have made a few pictures which show that physical viewpoint. . . . The tricycle is similar. It is an insect’s view or it could be a child’s view.”WE

Nicole Rae again…”Color became the main subject in his photographs. The objects are secondary to how the color looks and fits within the composition. He has been highly influenced by artists Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, which you can see in his images. There are blocks of color, there are shapes, there are angles and lines. He is not concerned about his photographs having meaning behind them. He says, “A picture is what it is… It wouldn’t make any sense to explain them. Kind of diminishes them.”

The William Eggleston Trust has a wide range of information on their site including details of all of his books, monographs and portfolios, also there is a list of articles and essays with links through to the original pieces where they exist on line.

From the Getty Museum site...“This plain, unassuming suburban house dominated by its television antenna could be titled Anywhere, USA. The image demonstrates William Eggleston’s interest in tract housing and particularly in new Southern suburbs. This theme runs through the over two thousand photographs of his seven-year “Los Alamos” project, for which he had actually photographed all over the United States. “

Nicole Rae says “Eggleston is able to simply capture moments, without being overly concerned with the why behind it. He takes one photograph and moves on. If he doesn’t get it the first time, he doesn’t go back to try to recapture it. The moment is over and he has moved on. His subjects are things most of us would consider to be boring, but he takes the everyday, often mundane objects in our lives and makes them beautiful. He turns them into works of art. If you look at each of his images and take the subjects themselves out and just see the color, shapes, and lines; seeing how it all fits together. That is art.”

There is an excellent TV documentary as part of the Imagine series and it can be found on line here

Many of his books are still available on Amazon and are  beautiful and engaging, I recently purchased William Eggleston Guide from his first MOMA exhibition for £15 They might not be first editions but they are true to the originals and looking at images on paper is always better than on a screen, somehow it demands more of your attention. I also bought” Two And One Quarter” but I see it has now nearly doubled in price so get them while they are still cheap.

I had planned to write a long piece on Eggleston myself but having found the excellent Nicole Rae I found she had said all I wanted to say, so do go and visit Faded + Blurred, I will leave the last sage words to her

“When you look at Eggleston’s work, you get out of it what you get out of it. There is no correct interpretation of it, no right or wrong. It either affects you or it doesn’t. There is no reason behind it and maybe we need to stop looking for a reason. Maybe that’s what art is – just something that affects us on an emotional level. We don’t always need an explanation for it. Sometimes we can just look at an image and appreciate it for what it is without looking for something deeper.”

Eggleston has published his work extensively. He continues to live and work in Memphis, and travels considerably for photographic projects.

Here is another page full of pictures and editorial you may find useful Artsy