Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => Discussing Photographic Styles => Topic started by: Rob C on December 31, 2017, 05:40:18 am
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Unfortunate surname - if you think about it with/from an anglophone point of view, but a talented snapper nonetheless. Another chap I first met via the pages of French PHOTO lo those many years ago. During my period of buying, it was a great source of both books and Internet connections. I stopped buying all magazines quite a long time ago... not absolutely certain why... probably a general feeling of their irrelevance to my own life. I definititely think good magazines were aspirational at one time.
http://www.bitesnich.com/biography/
Have a good 2018.
Rob
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It's interesting how most successful photographers are also good filmdirectors. Maybe it proofs that photography, particular fashion etc, is more about being able to communicate directions well, not to dismiss any mutual chemistry of course.
On a not entirely unrelated note: saw a docu about George Michael where apparently the video for "Freedom" was inspired by a Peter Lindbergh photo for Vogue. He wanted all of the supermodels in that particular foto to star in the video, to lipsync where he would normally be present. It was at the beginning of his realisation that superstardom was detrimental to his own identity and being.
If i had any investigative journalistic aspirations i would try to find a link to the actual photo, but i neither know which photo to look for, nor do i have the aspirations, the latter being the more determining factor in my laziness. As the saying goes: google is your friend. I'm afraid for a lot of people that is all too true.
Have a healthy one, Rob, hope to read a lot more from you in the new year, not to mention waiting anxiously for the first entries of your bucketlistroadtripblog.
~ O ~
ps. Send Moira my best wishes as well
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It's interesting how most successful photographers are also good filmdirectors. Maybe it proofs that photography, particular fashion etc, is more about being able to communicate directions well, not to dismiss any mutual chemistry of course.
On a not entirely unrelated note: saw a docu about George Michael where apparently the video for "Freedom" was inspired by a Peter Lindbergh photo for Vogue. He wanted all of the supermodels in that particular foto to star in the video, to lipsync where he would normally be present. It was at the beginning of his realisation that superstardom was detrimental to his own identity and being.
If i had any investigative journalistic aspirations i would try to find a link to the actual photo, but i neither know which photo to look for, nor do i have the aspirations, the latter being the more determining factor in my laziness. As the saying goes: google is your friend. I'm afraid for a lot of people that is all too true.
Have a healthy one, Rob, hope to read a lot more from you in the new year, not to mention waiting anxiously for the first entries of your bucketlistroadtripblog.
~ O ~
ps. Send Moira my best wishes as well
I think I heard that about the George M video too. I was so disappointed when I discovered he was gay that I kinda lost interest in his career beyond thinking what a bloody waste! All that hair, just as I was losing much of mine; great looks all for nothing. Sad you can't buy looks off the shelf. Knowing his inclinations made all those music videos of him interacting with girls look so hollow. I didn't give a damn about his desires, on a personal level - his choice - just that it ruined the entire music/visuals for me, and without the visuals there was only half a show. IMO. Same with Rock Hudson: I think of Gina Lollobrigida as his co-star in Come September (also with Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin) and what a great relationship it looked on the screen, and then it, too, ends up as farce, a bad joke.
Regarding the photo that may have inspired the video: there are a couple of shots of Lindberg with Christie Turlington, Tatjana Patitz, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford and Linda Evangelista: New York, 1989, British Vogue. I don't know the date of the video in question, and not entirely sure any longer who was in it other than Linda. Of them all, given choice of one to photograph, it would be Ms Turlington I'd love to work with for a while. There's also another Lindbergh shot of some of the girls together in white shirts on a beach, but again, I can't remember the casting accurately, though it is in the latest book.
Moira is going through a phase. Sometimes she's there and again other times not. I end up carrying carrots (and an apple, a day or two ago!) on both legs of my walk which gets annoying. Temperamental females I don't need at all. I want to walk back home lighter than I began.
However, in another field, the one where I shot the "white horse anywhere" snap, there are three horses. As Moira was AWOL on the out leg of my recent walk, I assumed she'd also be absent on the return leg. So, I decided to pay the other field a visit and two horses were there. Both instantly came up to the fence and took from my hand. The first time was not a problem, because the other horse just watched, but once it saw what the other was getting, it wanted fed at the same time. That made me a bit nervous, especially when one showed its teeth: they are huge! One normal hand and two massive hungry mouths? Not a good idea. Anyway, it ended up with them picking stuff up off the ground. Yep, you guessed: when I reached her field, there she was. Fortunately, I had saved a carrot and a bit of apple just in case, and she eat that, but she refused to come close enough to hand-feed. That is a bit of a drag, considering she had overcome her fear of fence and possibly of moi, but for some reason, she's as spooked again as ever she was.
Great 2018 to you, too, and trust me: if this place sells, that road trip happens!
;-)
Rob
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I think I heard that about the George M video too. I was so disappointed when I discovered he was gay that I kinda lost interest in his career beyond thinking what a bloody waste! All that hair, just as I was losing much of mine; great looks all for nothing. Sad you can't buy looks off the shelf. Knowing his inclinations made all those music videos of him interacting with girls look so hollow. I didn't give a damn about his desires, on a personal level - his choice - just that it ruined the entire music/visuals for me, and without the visuals there was only half a show. IMO. Same with Rock Hudson: I think of Gina Lollobrigida as his co-star in Come September (also with Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin) and what a great relationship it looked on the screen, and then it, too, ends up as farce, a bad joke.
Regarding the photo that may have inspired the video: there are a couple of shots of Lindberg with Christie Turlington, Tatjana Patitz, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford and Linda Evangelista: New York, 1989, British Vogue. I don't know the date of the video in question, and not entirely sure any longer who was in it other than Linda. Of them all, given choice of one to photograph, it would be Ms Turlington I'd love to work with for a while. There's also another Lindbergh shot of some of the girls together in white shirts on a beach, but again, I can't remember the casting accurately, though it is in the latest book.
Moira is going through a phase. Sometimes she's there and again other times not. I end up carrying carrots (and an apple, a day or two ago!) on both legs of my walk which gets annoying. Temperamental females I don't need at all. I want to walk back home lighter than I began.
However, in another field, the one where I shot the "white horse anywhere" snap, there are three horses. As Moira was AWOL on the out leg of my recent walk, I assumed she'd also be absent on the return leg. So, I decided to pay the other field a visit and two horses were there. Both instantly came up to the fence and took from my hand. The first time was not a problem, because the other horse just watched, but once it saw what the other was getting, it wanted fed at the same time. That made me a bit nervous, especially when one showed its teeth: they are huge! One normal hand and two massive hungry mouths? Not a good idea. Anyway, it ended up with them picking stuff up off the ground. Yep, you guessed: when I reached her field, there she was. Fortunately, I had saved a carrot and a bit of apple just in case, and she eat that, but she refused to come close enough to hand-feed. That is a bit of a drag, considering she had overcome her fear of fence and possibly of moi, but for some reason, she's as spooked again as ever she was.
Great 2018 to you, too, and trust me: if this place sells, that road trip happens!
;-)
Rob
Gosh, is it really the first day of 2018 tomorrow? Have I lost half a century somewhere?
Anyway, given that it is, I wish you a happy New Year!
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Yep, centuries fly. A little half, here or there, means nothing at all in the grander scheme of things.
To think that most of us will be long gone come the next one. And nothing will have really changed very much. Oh, maybe it'll feel a little warmer, so perhaps this could be a good place to say: told you so!
Anyway, I discovered a BBC video about GM just after I penned my post, above, and the Freedom filmlet is included on it. Try as I might, I couldn't spot Cindy Crawford: perhaps I was distracted by searching all those mouths for a mole which, for some reason, may well have been make-upped out. It's all of 75mins long, the video, but somehow it doesn't seem to come to very much of any conclusion, which I suppose, is BBC diplomacy.
All the best to you and Viv.
Rob
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I think I heard that about the George M video too. I was so disappointed when I discovered he was gay that I kinda lost interest in his career beyond thinking what a bloody waste! All that hair, just as I was losing much of mine; great looks all for nothing. Sad you can't buy looks off the shelf. Knowing his inclinations made all those music videos of him interacting with girls look so hollow. I didn't give a damn about his desires, on a personal level - his choice - just that it ruined the entire music/visuals for me, and without the visuals there was only half a show. IMO. Same with Rock Hudson: I think of Gina Lollobrigida as his co-star in Come September (also with Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin) and what a great relationship it looked on the screen, and then it, too, ends up as farce, a bad joke.
I can get this regarding George Michael as he was presenting himself, or at least an idealized version of himself, in his early songs & videos. But Rock Hudson? He was an actor playing a role. Fiction. When, say, Tom Hanks plays an astronaut or a commercial airplane pilot in a movie, no-one objects that he's never been in space or in charge of an Airbus A320 crew. Because such characters are extraordinary, outside of normal experience, it's easy to separate the actor from them.
Yet there's a not-small population of folks who do at times have trouble grasping that *actors are distinct individuals from the roles they play. I think the confusion happens when such people connect with strong emotion to a character. The emotional connection **overwhelms rationality. So we have the phenomenon of actors getting fan mail, or now Tweets, either addressed to the character they're playing in a current film (or hit TV show) or written such that it's clear the writer doesn't or can't distinguish between the person and the role.
-Dave-
*Actors in the gender-neutral sense.
**This is a cognitive/emotional glitch with implications and impact far beyond the entertainment sphere. You can even end up installing a character in a "reality" TV show as your putative leader.
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http://www.bitesnich.com/biography/
Have a good 2018.
I recall some of his photos, but not his name. Thanks for posting, thus reminding me.
Another year has passed. All the best to our LuLa friends.
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I can get this regarding George Michael as he was presenting himself, or at least an idealized version of himself, in his early songs & videos. But Rock Hudson? He was an actor playing a role. Fiction....
A virtuoso performance as singer and actor, then.
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I can get this regarding George Michael as he was presenting himself, or at least an idealized version of himself, in his early songs & videos. But Rock Hudson? He was an actor playing a role. Fiction. When, say, Tom Hanks plays an astronaut or a commercial airplane pilot in a movie, no-one objects that he's never been in space or in charge of an Airbus A320 crew. Because such characters are extraordinary, outside of normal experience, it's easy to separate the actor from them.
Yet there's a not-small population of folks who do at times have trouble grasping that *actors are distinct individuals from the roles they play. I think the confusion happens when such people connect with strong emotion to a character. The emotional connection **overwhelms rationality. So we have the phenomenon of actors getting fan mail, or now Tweets, either addressed to the character they're playing in a current film (or hit TV show) or written such that it's clear the writer doesn't or can't distinguish between the person and the role.
-Dave-
*Actors in the gender-neutral sense.
**This is a cognitive/emotional glitch with implications and impact far beyond the entertainment sphere. You can even end up installing a character in a "reality" TV show as your putative leader.
Fan mail: I remember, at around the age of thirteen or so, sending Kathryn Grayson a fan mail letter. I'd seen her in a film during one of our illegal entries into a cinema (illegal, in the sense that the people running the boarding school where I was at the time, would have caned us to death if caught; they were baptists extremists, yet in the event, little difference to ayatolas, is there?). I can't even remember what she looked like. I did have a crush on Ava Gardner, and got a nice picture back from Culver City, which was pleasantly exciting at the time, but she ended up a short while later playing second-fiddle to BB. I did even better with BB, actually sending her pictures of herself, and getting a sweet little note in return!
But I don't know that it's really about the people; I think that what happens is that some looks instantly personify a sense of what might be a unique, ideal image of the opposite sex. Some photographer whose name currently evades me - as more does every day - when speaking to an editor at Vogue in an attempt to get a foot in the mag, was challenged: show me your woman. I understand exactly what that editor was saying. In modelling terms, I would have loved to have had the Shrimpton experience, and the next one to the Shrimp would have been Paulina Porizkova. So there you are: frustration. Musically, I loved Chuck from the first time I heard him. I never felt inclined to send him any fan mail; before him I was into Armstrong, Bechet et al. as well as some UK bands such as Chris Barber's and Humphrey Lyttelton's.
The rôle that some of these people that become icons play might also be that of safety-valve: in a world where many realities are nightmares, when your life sucks, where do you turn when there is no escape available to you? Making judgement calls from positions of plenty, or at least comfortabe life styles, can't apply when about dreadful situations not experienced, knowing about something is not the same thing as living it. Of course, taking the latter point to extremes would mean that nobody would say anything about anything. I think it would suit some political parties very well indeed. An alternative, again, could be a self-perpetuating situation like climate change threads; you know: yes, no, yes, no and so ad infinitum... I suppose it's what we've actually got all around us.
;-)
Rob
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This was the docu and these are some of the key take aways apparently:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/george-michael-doc-freedom-9-things-we-learned-w509176
Two issues struck me as relevant and believable:
1. The standard music contract of those days (15 year contracts signed before you're even old enough to drink in some countries) were like a modern form of slavery. GM wanted to talk about the terms in the contract regarding promotion because he felt he was losing himself in the rollercoasterride that always follows the release of an album and where he had to maintain some image or role he was portraying. His growth and maturation is what led to his best albums and music.
2. The Sony manager that was interviewed about this issue and the legal confrontation that followed seemed to have been so caught up in his economic technocratic brethren that even today he still weighs his actions economically, and probably won't understand that perhaps by their doing we have lost half the productive ability of one enormous artist, god only knows how many more talent is being crippled by that thinking.
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Yes, Oscar, I get the point, but the other aspect is that those record deals are, afaik, seldom successful, and so the studios have to cash in enough from acts that do hit the number, to allow themselves the cash to take chances on unknowns. They can't sit on a handful of stars anymore because of us, the public. Was a time a Sinatra, an Ella Fitzgerald could continue into dotage and make pots of money for the entire system. I think we have possibly outgrown those days of assurance.
However, though I try to understand both sides of it, there really should be a legal position where no contract that is intelligible only to another lawyer should, in fact, be legally enforceable. Plain speech should be de rigueur so that there can be no later pretence on either side. But that depends on the concept of fairness, which as we all know, is a kindergarten one with no place in the real world outside. At least, that's been my experience.
Yes, those about to sign on the dotted line should have their own lawyer, too; my granddaughter is currently in contract law, and she makes a fortune by my standards, but I wonder if she could afford to hire herself. What chance a group of kids off the street?
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Yes, Oscar, I get the point, but the other aspect is that those record deals are, afaik, seldom successful, and so the studios have to cash in enough from acts that do hit the number, to allow themselves the cash to take chances on unknowns.
Ha, of course, let other people "pay" for your lousy trackrecord. I vaguely remember a global financial crisis solved similarly.
Just jesting of course. But the docu never mentioned the size of the cake or pieces thereof. Just his maturation being hampered by contractual promotional obligations. Could be the docu just wanted to make him look more like an angel then he really is, but from the documentary it all appeared quite understandable.
I suppose the Sony's of this world have never really managed to get a grip on true stardom, thinking it's more like surfing a wave. The artist never gets a sabbatical. But we all know that it sometimes can be quite beneficial to take a roadtrip for purposes of growing. And, no, that doesn't include a filledtotherim wallet per sé, you don't send your kids on a trip and then say: and here's a million dollars and i'll throw in a brand spanking new Leica for good measure and bad selfies.
That wouldn't present a challenge necessary for actual maturation.
Does that make sense? Or did i just drink too much bubbles last night?
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Congratulations on the bubbles: been years since I savoured the taste, the tang that all too soon turns metallic.
However, it's hard to base anything on how much info a given documentary supplies; especially after the death of the subject, people can have widely different rethinks... what would be interesting is to discover how this would have run had it been released prior to his death. AFAIK, it was not (I don't regularly watch TV anymore, apart from news at breakfast, and Sky's brief business slot four times a week, unfortunately right in the middle of France24's debates - especially enjoy Chris Dickie on Fridays - which means I have to make a quick guess at 19.30hrs. local time, as to which will be the more rewarding to watch.), but my state of up-to-speedness on variety shows is way behind!
Of course, solviing the financial problems of late 2008 was never going to be simple; but what alternative but to assist with public cash? The banks are not some anonymous entity that lives in the sky - that's government - the banks spend/invest and once grew! the money of savers, and it's in everybody's interest that millions of families are not left penniless because of mistakes, because not only families with their savings get burned, but also the pension funds, which is possibly even more of a disaster for everybody. The lesson should have been more stringent control, but of course, exactly the opposite is being put in place by the current USA politicians...
Stardom in music. I think it has no more automatic right to have its way than do we who try to make it in the visual arts. It doesn't come with rights to a golden life: it comes as part and package of something else: the needs of business. Anybody not happy with the status quo can always opt to remain an amateur.
We can never have it both ways unless we have already made ourselves rich or, as Jay Meisel said, we pick our parents carefully! But then it would represent the situation you describe with the zillion-dollar trip and complimentary Leica. If that were given to anyone like me, it would be a waste of investment: even my muse knew I could only function at 100% when up against a deadline; I was a classical example of a job taking up as much time as was available - I had to be stressed just enough to stop effing about and constantly looking for something better as b/ground or whatever. As a landscape photographer, I would never have made the first exposure.
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An example of someone who got smart about the music biz after his first taste of exploitation is Bruce Springsteen. He fired his first manager, sued for copyright control and ownership of his songs (he won) and has since IMO done a fine job of cooperating with the *"star-making machinery" when it has suited him while otherwise creating music with little concern about commerciality.
This is My Father's House, a live solo performance from 1990. It's the kind of thing you can get from someone who's gone through the meat grinder and come out the other side scarred but still intact. The video is poor but the sound is from a recent official release.
"'Something went wrong, and you keep going back [home] to see if you can fix it or somehow make it right.'
"And I sat there and I said, 'That is what I'm doing.'
"And he said, 'Well, you can't.'"
https://youtu.be/HVAHR2jLnW8
-Dave-
*Joni Mitchell, Free Man In Paris
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Touching song... as you suggest, you need to go through shit to get inside some emotions. Anyone can clinically, theoretically write abut sorrow, loss, frustrations and similar emotions, but when you have been devastated by events you find yourself on another plane altogether - not one you'd ever choose, but one you can't escape. It informs your future character and relationships with whatever - and whoever - is around you. And then you get people, often well-meaning, who give you advice. As if they knew.
Rob
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Unfortunate surname - if you think about it with/from an anglophone point of view,
Not so great in French either: la bite = the penis.
Great portraits though... not so taken by the nudes, they seem to be of the architectural-no-emotional-involvement type... like Mapplethorpe photographing Lisa Lyon.
Was that the "but he was gay" discussion that wizzed past in the preceding posts?
Meh, Mapplethorpe did great work with Patti Smith, based on a real relationship that was less about direct sexual tension. It's more complicated than just straight/gay, I thinks. Definitely less Terry Richardson, which can only be a good thing...
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Not so great in French either: la bite = the penis.
Great portraits though... not so taken by the nudes, they seem to be of the architectural-no-emotional-involvement type... like Mapplethorpe photographing Lisa Lyon.
Was that the "but he was gay" discussion that wizzed past in the preceding posts?
Meh, Mapplethorpe did great work with Patti Smith, based on a real relationship that was less about direct sexual tension. It's more complicated than just straight/gay, I thinks. Definitely less Terry Richardson, which can only be a good thing...
Yes, architectural nudes seem to have made a comeback recently. But for Bitesnich I don't see it as comeback: he was doing the same in Africa (?) during the years I was into French PHOTO which must have been the 80s.
I think that nudes are not exactly terribly exciting or interesting to do. The problem is that they are literal. Back in the day, when I used to subscribe to Playboy, I used to leave it lying around the house for anyone to look at it should they wish. I'm not sure either my daughter or son bothered - they were aware of photography from birth - but I do know my mother-in-law used to look at it when she came around to see her daughter. Two things from those days: both she and my wife could thumb through it and know exactly which shot would take my socks off (I had a better resistance to the cold in those days); I remember the mother saying: women are always better with a little mystery, some little need for imagination to work. That stuck with me - obviously - and she was right.
Today, all opportunites available again, I'd have tried to stick with fashion pix instead. The work is just more open to invention and glamour in the old sense of that much maligned word. The problem with pin-ups is that it all too soon becomes ridiculous. Frankly, I'd rather look at a Vargas painting than most glamour snaps. Not to say you can't make sexy fashion pix: what else was Sarah Moon's Pirelli as well as the two Francis Giacobetti versions? However, I was running a business and had to go where the money was.
Gay content thread: I'm not sure it was or ever intended to be; I mentioned that I lost interst in GM when I realised his orientation. Not a matter of my approving or not approving: he had no need to consult me, believe me! The problem was that it ruined the entire concept of the music videos and, as I saw them after knowing about him, made them a mockery of the message of the songs. I couldn't really care less about his private life - I never bought his music. I wouldn't have bought it even if he'd been as straight as a new telegraph pole. Worst of all was his cop-kissing-cop video. That was nothing to do with art or music: it was about sexual politics and a rich guy getting his revenge for getting caught in a public john.
I had no issue with Herb Ritts being gay and many of the old fashion photographer heroes pre-60s were like that; I still love their work. To try to answer my own questions about it - perhaps what bugs me is the whole outing thing, the politcal correctness horse that it has ridden round and round the block so many times. If folks want to be that way cool; just keep it to yourselves and within your clubs and magazines, but don't flaunt it as if it was some badge that requires special respect: it doesn't.
I have never liked/admired Mapplethorpe. I find it hard to respect "art" photgraphers who don't make their own prints. It's one thing for busy fashion or press snappers to have no time to do all the work, but art? Your art is the bit of paper you flog; if that's not your own work, then you should split 50/50 with the printer every time and let him get public credit and co-signatorial rights, too. I would not have liked Mapplethorpe even if he was the best printer in the entire world. I don't like pornography which, as the saying goes, I recognize when I find it under my nose. Apart from anything else, it gives the rest of us in the model photos biz a bad name. Just as the Richardson Jnr. character to whom you referred.
It's a shame that photography has so much crap sticking to its fur. It should learn to stop rolling in the park when it goes walkies.
;-)
Rob
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The Mapplethorpe image I was thinking of...
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Yes, architectural nudes seem to have made a comeback recently. But for Bitesnich I don't see it as comeback: he was doing the same in Africa (?) during the years I was into French PHOTO which must have been the 80s.
I think that nudes are not exactly terribly exciting or interesting to do. The problem is that they are literal. Back in the day, when I used to subscribe to Playboy, I used to leave it lying around the house for anyone to look at it should they wish. I'm not sure either my daughter or son bothered - they were aware of photography from birth - but I do know my mother-in-law used to look at it when she came around to see her daughter. Two things from those days: both she and my wife could thumb through it and know exactly which shot would take my socks off (I had a better resistance to the cold in those days); I remember the mother saying: women are always better with a little mystery, some little need for imagination to work. That stuck with me - obviously - and she was right.
Today, all opportunites available again, I'd have tried to stick with fashion pix instead. The work is just more open to invention and glamour in the old sense of that much maligned word. The problem with pin-ups is that it all too soon becomes ridiculous. Frankly, I'd rather look at a Vargas painting than most glamour snaps. Not to say you can't make sexy fashion pix: what else was Sarah Moon's Pirelli as well as the two Francis Giacobetti versions? However, I was running a business and had to go where the money was.
Gay content thread: I'm not sure it was or ever intended to be; I mentioned that I lost interst in GM when I realised his orientation. Not a matter of my approving or not approving: he had no need to consult me, believe me! The problem was that it ruined the entire concept of the music videos and, as I saw them after knowing about him, made them a mockery of the message of the songs. I couldn't really care less about his private life - I never bought his music. I wouldn't have bought it even if he'd been as straight as a new telegraph pole. Worst of all was his cop-kissing-cop video. That was nothing to do with art or music: it was about sexual politics and a rich guy getting his revenge for getting caught in a public john.
I had no issue with Herb Ritts being gay and many of the old fashion photographer heroes pre-60s were like that; I still love their work. To try to answer my own questions about it -perhaps what bugs me is the whole outing thing, the politcal correctness horse that it has ridden round and round the block so many times. If folks want to be that way cool; just keep it to yourselves and within your clubs and magazines, but don't flaunt it as if it was some badge that requires special respect: it doesn't.
I have never liked/admired Mapplethorpe. I find it hard to respect "art" photgraphers who don't make their own prints. It's one thing for busy fashion or press snappers to have no time to do all the work, but art? Your art is the bit of paper you flog; if that's not your own work, then you should split 50/50 with the printer every time and let him get public credit and co-signatorial rights, too. I would not have liked Mapplethorpe even if he was the best printer in the entire world. I don't like pornography which, as the saying goes, I recognize when I find it under my nose. Apart from anything else, it gives the rest of us in the model photos biz a bad name. Just as the Richardson Jnr. character to whom you referred.
It's a shame that photography has so much crap sticking to its fur. It should learn to stop rolling in the park when it goes walkies.
;-)
Rob
I wonder, should those of us who are straight with wives, husbands, partners, girlfriends and boyfriends just keep it to ourselves and not mention them here? Should those here who are gay really stay shtum and keep it within their clubs and magazines?
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... as compared to
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I wonder, should those of us who are straight with wives, partners, girlfriends and boyfriends just keep it to ourselves and not mention them here? Should those here who are gay really stay shtum and keep it within their clubs and magazines?
Excellent point, although I can respect Rob's desire not to look.
It would be nice to say that gay photographers have treated their models better, but in fact it seems that male models have been abused at much the same rate as the women. Whether the heavy presence of gay men within the fashion industry has resulted in systematic abuse through the products they've induced women to wear would be a too-long discussion...
My personal opinion is that there is a market for images of intimacy, which may or not be connected with increasing isolation, forces of marketing etc etc... and that a relatively easy way of creating images that fill that need is to go for the shock-value of the explicitly sexual. It seems that Richardson's modus was to take rather young and vulnerable models and throw them into a frenetic party mood where they did things without having time to think... and by the time their doubts appeared, they were already out the door.
Pornography is too difficult a classification for me: I've seen images of genitalia alone or in concert that I've simply found beautiful, and photos which meet all the tick-box conditions for social media acceptability that seem incredibly crass, violent and insulting. I suspect that setting up censorship teams, or even censorship robots, tends to favour the creation of the second type of image :(
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"I wonder, should those of us who are straight with wives, husbands, partners, girlfriends and boyfriends just keep it to ourselves and not mention them here? Should those here who are gay really stay shtum and keep it within their clubs and magazines?"
Or, we could all go fantasize!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub0XS8OZGB8
;-)
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Excellent point, although I can respect Rob's desire not to look.
It would be nice to say that gay photographers have treated their models better, but in fact it seems that male models have been abused at much the same rate as the women. Whether the heavy presence of gay men within the fashion industry has resulted in systematic abuse through the products they've induced women to wear would be a too-long discussion...
My personal opinion is that there is a market for images of intimacy, which may or not be connected with increasing isolation, forces of marketing etc etc... and that a relatively easy way of creating images that fill that need is to go for the shock-value of the explicitly sexual. It seems that Richardson's modus was to take rather young and vulnerable models and throw them into a frenetic party mood where they did things without having time to think... and by the time their doubts appeared, they were already out the door.
Pornography is too difficult a classification for me: I've seen images of genitalia alone or in concert that I've simply found beautiful, and photos which meet all the tick-box conditions for social media acceptability that seem incredibly crass, violent and insulting. I suspect that setting up censorship teams, or even censorship robots, tends to favour the creation of the second type of image :(
Nobody is forcing women to buy fashion extravaganzas.
It's a mistake to think of the fashion industry in the same sense as the garment trade. Fashion sells brand, and to a very, very tiny minority of women with the money to blow an unthinking couple of grand on a pair of knickers. I don't know anybody who ever bought an original, made-to-measure dress from Versace but I do know someone who shops regularly at a branch of Versace. Not the same deal. High fashion, as I said, sells brand and, above all else, perfume.
Closer to home, my wife always wore Chanel No.5 exclusively (semi-tautology?) but would never have thought of buying a Chanel item of clothing. Publicity of the one creates awareness of the other.
Oh well, out of asprins, so better walk to the chemist for the rest of the fixes... doesn't life improve with the passing years!
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Excellent point, although I can respect Rob's desire not to look.
It would be nice to say that gay photographers have treated their models better, but in fact it seems that male models have been abused at much the same rate as the women. Whether the heavy presence of gay men within the fashion industry has resulted in systematic abuse through the products they've induced women to wear would be a too-long discussion...
My personal opinion is that there is a market for images of intimacy, which may or not be connected with increasing isolation, forces of marketing etc etc... and that a relatively easy way of creating images that fill that need is to go for the shock-value of the explicitly sexual. It seems that Richardson's modus was to take rather young and vulnerable models and throw them into a frenetic party mood where they did things without having time to think... and by the time their doubts appeared, they were already out the door.
Pornography is too difficult a classification for me: I've seen images of genitalia alone or in concert that I've simply found beautiful, and photos which meet all the tick-box conditions for social media acceptability that seem incredibly crass, violent and insulting. I suspect that setting up censorship teams, or even censorship robots, tends to favour the creation of the second type of image :(
Well, it would seem that it was consensual abuse. I don't know whether to laugh or cry!
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If you carry out a medical trial in which participants deeply regret signing the consent form and are offered no way to de-consent... you will be shut down.
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If you carry out a medical trial in which participants deeply regret signing the consent form and are offered no way to de-consent... you will be shut down.
Which is what happened - I don't know for how long - with our Terry: several top fashion mags closed their doors to him.
However, I'm not so sure it was all coercion that had unpleasant things happen, or even that all of our heroines objected. I remember a snap of our icon, Kate, walking down a beach, coat open in the breeze to reveal a flourishing pubic area. Did she, one of the top-earners in the model business, need coercion, could anyone pressure her, or would it be the other way around?
In all of this, don't forget the effects of snow. And it wasn't just photographers that were held to account: the model agency, Elite, one of the most successful in the world, had serious problems through allegations regarding young models and a director of that agency... It, showbiz, has always been a dangerous game for the young of either gender. People use your own desires for fame and success to further their own desires for you. It's very hard for youth to refuse, when just a little bit of rationalisation makes it all seem so little for a potential so much.
But the hell with it; I'm here to talk photography, and other people's morals, hang ups etc. are not truly my bag: I'm far too old to find them novel, interesting or magically revealing. I simply see them as bloody dangerous. AIDS, anyone?
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Graham, regarding the nude and topless shots you posted: they leave me cold because they have no point. I far prefer looking at your own images of young women because they come with some style and are nor stupidly posed in unlikely, uncomfortable and unexplainable positions. (Anyway, didn't Amazons have one removed so as not to impede the bowstring?)
The French used to call the art "charme" which, to me, explains the big difference between the stuff that appeals to me and that which does not, even if not at all pornographic.
Rob
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The shot of Lisa Lyon firing the arrow was meant to illustrate a photo that left me cold, so point proved.
The one of Patti Smith (crouched and holding the heating pipes) speaks to me... I think because of the eyes that engage with the viewer, but maybe because I already know some of the history. Yet I'm not actually much of a fan of Smith's music :) The two bald men because it seems to contain some real affection... it's far more interesting to me than his bondage shots, which were intentionally (so they say) shot with a lot of emotional distance. At the same time it was transgressive because of the US racism issue, whose consequences continue to an extent I'd never have guessed.
Mapplethorpe I find interesting: none of his images stun me, but somehow he represents a window into a time when the world was re-arranging itself. I'm sure that other people were taking better photos at the time, but Mapplethorpe is the one who is most available because of the random action of fame.
Anyway, the most beautiful and engaging photo I've seen for weeks is this one by Michel Valdrighi... no people, no movement, no political significance, just fascinating examination of the ordinary from an unexpected angle...
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Now you've ruined my lunch: I'm trying to figure out what the hell that driver was trying to do - whether he knew if he were coming or going...
:-)
Rob
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Anyway, the most beautiful and engaging photo I've seen for weeks is this one by Michel Valdrighi... no people, no movement, no political significance, just fascinating examination of the ordinary from an unexpected angle...
That's terrific…like Fan Ho stuck in a cold locale.
I really like the Mapplethorpe photo of Patti Smith too. The geometry of it. It kinda thumbs its nose at the fashion/beauty thing as well, which makes me like it even more. :)
-Dave-
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Now you've ruined my lunch: I'm trying to figure out what the hell that driver was trying to do - whether he knew if he were coming or going...
:-)
Rob
And me, Rob. It's like an Agatha Christie mystery. The evidence is there. The driver returned alone to the car after it snowed, got in and drove away. But those other marks? I can't resolve their origin.
Anybody?
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But those other marks? I can't resolve their origin.
Other marks?
It's a beautiful demonstration of the way front and rear wheels react to steering. There is the mysterious second change of steering that probably wasn't needed: he or she started forward, hesitated, stopped and reversed a tiny bit, cranked the wheel a little more left and left.
But are there other things that I'm not seeing?
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Other marks?
It's a beautiful demonstration of the way front and rear wheels react to steering. There is the mysterious second change of steering that probably wasn't needed: he or she started forward, hesitated, stopped and reversed a tiny bit, cranked the wheel a little more left and left.
But are there other things that I'm not seeing?
Of course: the car, for a start! But wait: perhaps it's the real, victimless crime?
;-)