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Author Topic: Best of the Bunch  (Read 95128 times)

Rob C

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #160 on: October 09, 2016, 09:45:52 am »

Manoli

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #161 on: October 09, 2016, 11:02:24 am »

A photo by June of Helmut's super-special tripod and lighting set-up ;)

Way too *cool* - is that Profoto or Bron ?
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GrahamBy

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #162 on: October 09, 2016, 02:47:25 pm »

Ha ha...  personal joke for me, I live in a suburb of Lyon called Bron  :)
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Rob C

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #163 on: October 20, 2016, 03:11:46 pm »

Still hackin' it in his 80s!

https://models.com/people/harri-peccinotti

Rob

GrahamBy

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #164 on: October 21, 2016, 05:43:14 am »

I'm copying this across from Rob's post in another thread, to allow me to go off on a tangent:

Watching the Richard Avedon documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpIZ_S38A_0

There were two fascinating insights for me (and a number of irritating ones, but never mind):
  • The aura of a "great photographer" lets you get away with a lot, but less with people who don't buy into the culture of art etc. Avedon made very unflattering portraits. Subjects from New York, the world of art etc, accepted that this was a gift from the Great Artist who allowed them to see their soul. Those from the "In the West" series were less convinced. One of them says, in a nutshell "I was Homecoming Queen, you made me look like shit." He tries to weasel out of it by suggesting that as a photographer he had distorted what he saw, whereas what he saw under the shell of superficial appearance was probably accurate... and that's what made it cruel.
  • He became his father. He starts off saying how his father reduced everything to its ability to make money. That is maybe not so different to focusing 110% on his work, never letting up: the image of him directing a shoot from a bed after his heart attack (I'm not sure it's in the film or i saw it out there), his statement at the end about his determination to launch himself again at 100% at the end of his life... that he was never able to back away and do anything else, or at least with a different perspective on personal success.
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Rob C

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #165 on: October 21, 2016, 06:40:55 am »

I'm copying this across from Rob's post in another thread, to allow me to go off on a tangent:

There were two fascinating insights for me (and a number of irritating ones, but never mind):
  • The aura of a "great photographer" lets you get away with a lot, but less with people who don't buy into the culture of art etc. Avedon made very unflattering portraits. Subjects from New York, the world of art etc, accepted that this was a gift from the Great Artist who allowed them to see their soul. Those from the "In the West" series were less convinced. One of them says, in a nutshell "I was Homecoming Queen, you made me look like shit." He tries to weasel out of it by suggesting that as a photographer he had distorted what he saw, whereas what he saw under the shell of superficial appearance was probably accurate... and that's what made it cruel.
  • He became his father. He starts off saying how his father reduced everything to its ability to make money. That is maybe not so different to focusing 110% on his work, never letting up: the image of him directing a shoot from a bed after his heart attack (I'm not sure it's in the film or i saw it out there), his statement at the end about his determination to launch himself again at 100% at the end of his life... that he was never able to back away and do anything else, or at least with a different perspective on personal success.


There's the moment where he speaks about the Duke and Duchess, and the trick with the run-over dog; I'm still wondering what to make of that, still trying to work it out. Yes, the war, alleged sympathies with the Nazi ideals of the time, but still... wasn't getting the shot enough, was it necessary to render public the personal motivation above and behind the image?

The other session with the Rollei (of a guy in a room with lot's of people attending), almost two feet from the subject's face, was never going to be kind. But I think this isn't just about being harsh with people. I think he knew better than most shooters about the effect of distance from subject; I tend to think that it's the problem of being seen to be a maestro: you have to deliver the unexpected, the opposite of the simply flattering, the anodyne and/or mundane. So, it maybe comes down to shock value being the only tool left you.

Our very own Cooter quotes (in LuLa) a chance meeting with Avedon in Industria Studios in NY: on the suggestion of moving over and giving the rest a chance at the top, he remarks that if you're good, you never quit. He's right. He also had the advantage that the rest of the commercial world, as well as the arts one, also recognized, magnified his talent, and let him continue.

Long out to pasture, I can't quit either, regardless of how good I was or otherwise; the basic thing is even more simple than the having or not having of success: it's something inside you that becomes your life, however or wherever you manage to channel that reality and drive. Photographers aside, the same applies to painters and perhaps all forms of artist. It runs you, which is why you do it in spite of the cost to everything else.

Rob

GrahamBy

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #166 on: October 21, 2016, 07:58:47 am »

Long out to pasture, I can't quit either, regardless of how good I was or otherwise; the basic thing is even more simple than the having or not having of success: it's something inside you that becomes your life, however or wherever you manage to channel that reality and drive. Photographers aside, the same applies to painters and perhaps all forms of artist. It runs you, which is why you do it in spite of the cost to everything else.

Yes, but that's why I was trying to separate the photography from success.

I'll always be a mathematician/physicist/statistician: it's how I think about things, if I see a piece of machinery I immediately start wondering how it works, how does this compensate that so it stays in control, is that shape really more efficient than some other one, can you really draw that conclusion from that data, what were the hidden hypotheses...

...but that's not the same as the continued need to fight to get published in the right journals and to be admired. Or to force my colleagues to admit that my analyses were correct... at a certain point I just started to say "nah, fuck 'em, if they don't want to know, their problem."

Then again, I see David Cox has just won some new award in statistics. i'm sure he didn't chase after it... he's 91 years old and still working away in an office the size of a broom closet at Nuffeld College Oxford. He happens to be master of the college and I'm sure he has a very grand office somewhere for shaking hands of important people... I feel far more honoured to have been sent up the back stairs to where he actually works. Brilliant ideas just keep falling out of him, and he keeps writing them down and they get published... but not in Nature, or Science. Publishing in them is like being in the big office, it's impressive, but it's not for working with the people who understand what you're really doing and share the struggle.

So I have the feeling Avedon liked the big office :)
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Rob C

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #167 on: October 21, 2016, 10:19:18 am »

Yes, but that's why I was trying to separate the photography from success.

I'll always be a mathematician/physicist/statistician: it's how I think about things, if I see a piece of machinery I immediately start wondering how it works, how does this compensate that so it stays in control, is that shape really more efficient than some other one, can you really draw that conclusion from that data, what were the hidden hypotheses...

...but that's not the same as the continued need to fight to get published in the right journals and to be admired. Or to force my colleagues to admit that my analyses were correct... at a certain point I just started to say "nah, fuck 'em, if they don't want to know, their problem."

Then again, I see David Cox has just won some new award in statistics. i'm sure he didn't chase after it... he's 91 years old and still working away in an office the size of a broom closet at Nuffeld College Oxford. He happens to be master of the college and I'm sure he has a very grand office somewhere for shaking hands of important people... I feel far more honoured to have been sent up the back stairs to where he actually works. Brilliant ideas just keep falling out of him, and he keeps writing them down and they get published... but not in Nature, or Science. Publishing in them is like being in the big office, it's impressive, but it's not for working with the people who understand what you're really doing and share the struggle.

So I have the feeling Avedon liked the big office :)


No doubt, and he seems to have had the ability to handle it and make it work for him.

I think people are split into broad types, whatever work they do. Some like lots of commotion and company, and in their way of working, maybe it's essential in order to reach the desired conclusion of what they're doing. I always felt the opposite: the fewer folks about, the better. But working almost alone brings limitations as well as serenity, which in pro photography is a level of difference easily reached.

Rob

Rob C

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #168 on: October 22, 2016, 03:03:11 pm »

GrahamBy

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #169 on: October 23, 2016, 07:15:39 am »

Some like lots of commotion and company, and in their way of working, maybe it's essential in order to reach the desired conclusion of what they're doing.

This I found interesting... about 3/4 of the way through Cleese talks about what facilitates creativity (whatever that is). It seems that for most people, it requires calm and security: once you are under pressure you feel anxious, so you naturally opt for a solution that reduces your anxiety, ie something you've already done or seen others do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-p44-9S4O0

Of course there do seem to be people who thrive on pressure. Personally I find I can do that for short bursts... I can stock up on interesting ideas, then bring them out under pressure (I have this image of someone putting their foot on a tube of toothpaste :) ). However if there is no let-up, there is no refilling of the tube: currently I'm just getting back to being able to produce good ideas again after a very damaging period of working for a psychopath, and the lag period in which I couldn't do much original work was noticeable (fortunately there is always the option in my job of being useful helping other people with relatively elementary stuff).
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Rob C

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #170 on: October 23, 2016, 10:59:03 am »

You mustn't give these links anymore: I was going to go out and play with the camera, and instead, I watched. Very depressing: the guy's memory is better than mine. I can't remember anyone's name these days; not that I ever could, but it counts more now - it gets greeted with a knowing smile. As if I couldn't see through that friendliness! However, he manages to make good points using his humour. Didn't the audience members who spoke look young!

;-)

Rob

GrahamBy

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #171 on: October 23, 2016, 02:55:00 pm »

Very depressing: the guy's memory is better than mine.

There is an art to that though, he says a couple of things that are wrong with such confidence you're sure he's right :)
Kekulé's dream was about benzene, not carbon... but then buggered if I could have remembered Kekulé's name without looking it up  ;D

https://web.chemdoodle.com/kekules-dream/
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Rob C

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #172 on: October 25, 2016, 11:29:12 am »

I find this chap's site ever nore interesting.

http://leicaphilia.com/tag/robert-frank/

Rob

RSL

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #173 on: October 25, 2016, 02:55:50 pm »

Thanks, Rob. Robert Frank introduced a new branch of photography. It's roots were in Cartier-Bresson and street photographers contemporary with Henri, but Frank's work was a new departure.

I remember when The Americans came out, and I remember when Popular Photography got on Frank's case about what they felt was his insult to the United States. I never could understand that. I'm old enough to have experienced a large part of what's in The Americans. The book felt like the America I knew. History has shown that Pop Photo was wrong. Although he never actually admitted it, I think Garry Winogrand was heavily influenced by Frank, and Garry continued in the direction Frank had pointed.

These were the people who made photography an art. Ansel Adams made some great pictures for bank walls and waiting rooms, but Robert Frank, his predecessors and successors captured essences of human behavior that reveal truths about all of us. That's genuine art.
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Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.

Rob C

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #174 on: October 25, 2016, 03:45:58 pm »

Thanks, Rob. Robert Frank introduced a new branch of photography. It's roots were in Cartier-Bresson and street photographers contemporary with Henri, but Frank's work was a new departure.

I remember when The Americans came out, and I remember when Popular Photography got on Frank's case about what they felt was his insult to the United States. I never could understand that. I'm old enough to have experienced a large part of what's in The Americans. The book felt like the America I knew. History has shown that Pop Photo was wrong. Although he never actually admitted it, I think Garry Winogrand was heavily influenced by Frank, and Garry continued in the direction Frank had pointed.

These were the people who made photography an art. Ansel Adams made some great pictures for bank walls and waiting rooms, but Robert Frank, his predecessors and successors captured essences of human behavior that reveal truths about all of us. That's genuine art.


I agree, and I would add that part of the reason is that we are drawn to the human condition more than to the natural one (as in Mama Nature's bounty).

It will not be good news to many, but the photography of humans beats that of ARAT for the simple reason that we can identify, deeply, with human images but only go wow! ooh! or my! to the other sorts. As bad (or controversially), ARAT depends mostly on factors well beyond our control but human interaction can be both ways: directed as well as stolen. A little harmless petty crime goes a long way to inspiring excited delight!

I've just spent a while prior to clocking in here looking for the umpteenth time at a collection somebody made of Jean Shrimpton pictures. Those shots tell the history of an era, its fashions and the looks that made hearts pound in dozens of studios across the world.  I don't think Moonrise ever did much of that... Folks love folks. One can see the mess Americans made of her: they just didn't get the entire thing. They piled her up with massive false hair extensions etc. etc. and it wan't even good enough to be parody. Twiggy didn't fare much better. (Ironically, the very best portrait of her I've yet seen came from Saul Leiter! Bailey has a sort of similar one too...) Another example of nations divided by common language and magazines.

Incidentally, Popular Photography Annual got Saul Leiter absolutely right when they titled their paean to him A Painter's View of New York all those years ago.

So, why do we consider paintings of ARAT to be art, but very seldom, with exceptions, of course, photography of ARAT? I think because, in the end, photography comes out of facility with a mechanical device, whereas painting needs far much more than good mechanical aids. And in the opposite direction, I don't think painting does the best job of presenting people. Yes, of course, some artists can make highly evocative pictures of humans, and Freud and Bacon can both concentrate the mind wonderfully, but when paint tries to make people look good, it becomes saccharine or obsequious.

Somebody whose name unfortunately now escapes me remarked that he'd trade every painting of Christ for a single photograph.

Rob
« Last Edit: October 25, 2016, 03:50:20 pm by Rob C »
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Rob C

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #175 on: October 28, 2016, 03:44:33 pm »

Rob C

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #176 on: October 30, 2016, 03:22:03 pm »

Rob C

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #177 on: November 01, 2016, 05:17:37 pm »

À propos of nothing much: standing here looking again through Sieff's last book up on the prespex table-top lectern from Sumo, Fay Simmons singing from way back, I realise again that wondrous as digital may be, it hasn't got what creaky old, romantic old film has got: soul. Page 62, Maria Solar for Jardin des Modes, Paris, 1959. Dirty, gritty, harsh but beautiful.

Rob C


Rob C

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #178 on: November 02, 2016, 05:04:08 pm »

GrahamBy

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Re: Best of the Bunch
« Reply #179 on: November 04, 2016, 04:46:12 am »

À propos of nothing much: standing here looking again through Sieff's last book up on the prespex table-top lectern from Sumo, Fay Simmons singing from way back, I realise again that wondrous as digital may be, it hasn't got what creaky old, romantic old film has got: soul. Page 62, Maria Solar for Jardin des Modes, Paris, 1959. Dirty, gritty, harsh but beautiful.

Rob C

Ah yes, although I'm a little disturbed by the model's apparent lack of eyebrows. Page 88 is the one that knocks my socks off, but it wasn't really professional work...
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