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Author Topic: Aaron Siskind  (Read 3010 times)

Rob C

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Aaron Siskind
« on: January 06, 2018, 11:30:48 am »

Check him out via the Bruce Silverstein Gallery.

Again, technique on iPads defeats me (instead of an address I get the google name and a padlock, so it probably isn't something that copies and pastes) so I can't offer you a direct link, but it's pretty simple if you open the gallery website. Well, it worked here!

I find myself drawn ever more into a closed mental loop where b/white photography just seems to overrule colour. There's something about wonderful black and white tonality that leaves colour sitting all alone by the wall as the others dance. At the kindest, I'd say that the two should not really be displayed side by side. The role of colour really does sit more happily with commerce, despite Haas! Leiter, forgive this moment - I still love you.

(For personal safety, I guess I better add IMO to these opinions!)

:-)

Rob
« Last Edit: January 06, 2018, 01:31:36 pm by Rob C »
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RSL

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Re: Aaron Siskind
« Reply #1 on: January 06, 2018, 12:19:08 pm »

Rob, I'm inclined to agree with you, though occasionally I run into exceptions. The Wabi Sabi picture of a degraded two-story building I just posted on User Critiques is the kind of exception I'm talking about. Here are a B&W and a color version. And now that I look at them side-by-side I find I'm not sure any more. The B&W may be the better picture, though I opted for the color when I decided what to post.

I've been pulling pictures from my wabi sabi catalogs. Eventually I'll post a collection on my web site. I'll send you a link when I get that done. Everything in that collection will be in B&W, which I think is appropriate for something titled "For the Wind Passeth Over It."
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KLaban

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Re: Aaron Siskind
« Reply #2 on: January 06, 2018, 01:06:46 pm »

When I was working as a painter I regarded B&W photography as artifice. Little has changed.

IMO

;-)

KLaban

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Re: Aaron Siskind
« Reply #3 on: January 06, 2018, 01:28:07 pm »

Perhaps I should add, I then watch a film such as Salt of the Earth (Wenders/Salgado) and my prejudices vanish into thin air.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2018, 02:00:15 pm by KLaban »
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Rob C

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Re: Aaron Siskind
« Reply #4 on: January 06, 2018, 01:47:41 pm »

When I was working as a painter I regarded B&W photography as artifice. Little has changed.

IMO

;-)

That was generous: had my painting been worth a damn I would not have been a photographer - I think. However, the lure of women may have confused me somewhat... I don't think a lot about paintings of women, other than the tongue-in-cheek Vargas style of it.

Now that I think even more about it, I think that the photography of women really works best for fashion, more than anything else. Perhaps that's why I have Sarah Moon and Hans Feurer as my idols in that genre. However, Sarah manages to make it as interesting in her grainy colour as in b/white; Feurer excels in his critcally crips technicolours, perhaps precisely because he keeps the b/grounds so soft. He hardly ever shows b/white, claiming to have stopped doing anything but colour as a conscious decision, so I can only judge from his book and the few websites that show his old stuff from Nova.

Rob

32BT

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Re: Aaron Siskind
« Reply #5 on: January 06, 2018, 02:04:32 pm »

Rob, I'm inclined to agree with you, though occasionally I run into exceptions. The Wabi Sabi picture of a degraded two-story building I just posted on User Critiques is the kind of exception I'm talking about. Here are a B&W and a color version. And now that I look at them side-by-side I find I'm not sure any more. The B&W may be the better picture, though I opted for the color when I decided what to post.

I've been pulling pictures from my wabi sabi catalogs. Eventually I'll post a collection on my web site. I'll send you a link when I get that done. Everything in that collection will be in B&W, which I think is appropriate for something titled "For the Wind Passeth Over It."

Maybe because there is not enough differentiation with the high doors/windows and the wall. This one is interesting since it is an example where it may be useful to dial in a very steep white balance so the doors/windows become blue and the wall remains on the red side. That way you can control the tonality relative to each other in conversion to b/w...
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Regards,
~ O ~
If you can stomach it: pictures

Rob C

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Re: Aaron Siskind
« Reply #6 on: January 06, 2018, 03:47:26 pm »

Maybe because there is not enough differentiation with the high doors/windows and the wall. This one is interesting since it is an example where it may be useful to dial in a very steep white balance so the doors/windows become blue and the wall remains on the red side. That way you can control the tonality relative to each other in conversion to b/w...


Achilles Heel of the Monochron - if you want the best of both worlds.
..............................

Just for you, Oscar, a girl who loves a wolf whistle:



Rob


« Last Edit: January 06, 2018, 03:53:36 pm by Rob C »
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GrahamBy

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Re: Aaron Siskind
« Reply #7 on: January 06, 2018, 05:07:20 pm »

Oh, you've fallen for a blonde :)
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Rob C

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Re: Aaron Siskind
« Reply #8 on: January 06, 2018, 05:24:11 pm »

Oh, you've fallen for a blonde :)


Or has the blonde fallen for my carrot?

In the last shot you can see a twisted ribbon along the bottom of the frame. That's a recent addition to the perimeter of the enclosure, and is a little above the electrical wire that promises Moira a gentle electrocution should she take wolf whistles too seriously and trust enough to reach out...  Thing is, before the damned fluttering ribbon was put up, we had got intimate enough for her to take from my hand. Not anymore: she keeps quite far off that ribbon - could be she thinks it a swaying cobra she's never seen. Perhaps the reality may be that the electricity is never switched on? It's very expensive in Spain. If that's so, then I guess the wire had no effect when she risked it.

:-)
« Last Edit: January 06, 2018, 05:35:06 pm by Rob C »
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GrahamBy

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Re: Aaron Siskind
« Reply #9 on: January 07, 2018, 06:30:35 am »

When I was working as a painter I regarded B&W photography as artifice.

There is no art in artifice ?
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KLaban

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Re: Aaron Siskind
« Reply #10 on: January 07, 2018, 07:02:21 am »

There is no art in artifice ?

If there is then it's almost certainly chicanery.

;-)

KLaban

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Re: Aaron Siskind
« Reply #11 on: January 07, 2018, 07:34:59 am »

Hey, Moira, you're a belter!

Rob C

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Re: Aaron Siskind
« Reply #12 on: January 07, 2018, 08:51:14 am »

Art and artifice - I'd thought that all of human art was artifice because it's created by artists and is not a natural happening or condition. In fact, it has to be recognised as art before it can even be thought of as such. You imagined this was going to be easy?

But returning to Keith's point about black/white snaps: it mustn't be forgotten that for years and years b/white was all that there was; even within my own lifetime, b/white was the general route for photography if only because of the costs involved in both shooting and printing pictures in colour on ads and in magazine features. I never had a single colour shot printed in Vogue because of the costs involved in buying space. Everything that my featured advertorials covered was in black and white whereas the editorial parts of the magazine were long into colour, but it was the advertising pages that companies bought that enabled the editorial people to indulge. Lucky them, but it didn't make the same photographers any the more or less brilliant, as their labours in both proved.

Rob

KLaban

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Re: Aaron Siskind
« Reply #13 on: January 07, 2018, 10:30:27 am »

You can tell Moira is a thoroughbred, just look at her red dot.

Rob C

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Re: Aaron Siskind
« Reply #14 on: January 07, 2018, 11:24:58 am »

You can tell Moira is a thoroughbred, just look at her red dot.

Yep, a hyped carrot special!

:-)
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