November 28, 2013 By Jay
Everyday mysteries: Saul Leiter, a master of lyrical color street photography
Saul Leiter, perhaps the most famous non-famous New York street photographer, has just passed away at age 89. A pioneer who worked mostly in color in an age when street photography was still a predominantly black and white medium, Leiter captured the ineffable details than can only be seen and appreciated if you slow down and pay attention. Notes the obituary in today's New York Times:
Mr. Leiter was considered a member of the New York School of photographers — the circle that included Weegee and Arbus and Avedon — and yet he was not quite of it. He was largely self-taught, and his work resembles no one else's: tender, contemplative, quasi-abstract and intensely concerned with color and geometry, it seems as much as anything to be about the essential condition of perceiving the world.
"Seeing is a neglected enterprise," Mr. Leiter often said.
Where other New York photographers of the period were apt to document the city's elements discretely — streets, people, buildings — Mr. Leiter captured the almost indefinable spaces where all three intersect, many of them within a two-block radius of the East Village apartment in which he had lived since the early 1950s.
… Unplanned and unstaged, Mr. Leiter's photographs are slices fleetingly glimpsed by a walker in the city. People are often in soft focus, shown only in part or absent altogether, though their presence is keenly implied. Sensitive to the city's found geometry, he shot by design around the edges of things: vistas are often seen through rain, snow or misted windows.
"A window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person," Mr. Leiter says in the recently-released feature-length documentary, In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons in Life With Saul Leiter, by the British filmmaker Tomas Leach. Here is the trailer for the film:
The New York Times continues: [Read more…] about Everyday mysteries: Saul Leiter, a master of lyrical color street photography
Filed Under: Film, Photography Tagged With: New York, Saul Leiter, street photography, Teju Cole, Tomas Leach, video
June 1, 2012 By Jay
With God On Our Side: K'naan's brilliant interpretation of a Bob Dylan classic
K'naan, born Keinan Abdi Warsame in 1978, is an amazingly talented Somali-Canadian poet, rapper, singer, songwriter and instrumentalist based in Toronto after surviving a harrowing upbringing in war-torn Somalia. He recorded the song above, a cover version of Bob Dylan's "With God On Our Side," for a compilation album that came out earlier this year, Chimes Of Freedom: The Songs Of Bob Dylan Honoring 50 Years Of Amnesty International. K'naan's version of the song, with substantially new lyrics, is fantastic, with his own desperate wartime childhood history woven into it. I've included the lyrics, below, side-by-side with Dylan's original lyrics, and a stunning early Dylan recording of the song below. Enjoy.
With God On Our Side (K'naan / Bob Dylan) With God On Our Side (Bob Dylan)
It's a movie and the whole world is viewing it
And the popcorn is dreams torn, but we're always chewing it
The set design is by God but the costumes' by the devil
And the screenplay is adapted from a book that's embezzled
This is where I grew up
This is where I grew proud
This is where neighbors never say music is too loud
This is where the streets have no name, but they have history
This is loss's victory
Oh my name it ain't nothing; my age it means less
The country I come from could be like the rest
I was taught and brought up there, laws to abide
And the land that I live in has God on its side
I was young; I grew. I could tie my shoe
I was blind, but I knew, that I would always see blue
Blue seas I see through, on the bottom I'll meet you
And when we come up for a breath, would you mind if I kiss you?
Childhood came up for the kiss, but its lips was painted with mist
And the sunny skies came and I missed it
Vanished and windswept
Landed and we slept in the arms of convenience, blanket obedience
Now the Somali-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too was soon laid away
And the names of our warlords
I was made to memorize
With guns in they hands, they say
God's on their side
I had an undying wish to keep from dying
I had an untimely hitch keep me from climbing
But I climbed the hitch itself and I tried flying;
I had an uprising in my soul
The left was fighting the right
And the right was fighting the light
And the light was blind in the night
And the night woke up in tears
When my fingers went to wipe them
They became a poem but to write them
They would have to speak tears in another language;
That would take years
So now as I'm leaving
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feeling
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor:
If God's on your side then
Would you ever need war? Oh my name it is nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I's taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side.
Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side.
Oh the Spanish-American
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I's made to memorize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side.
Oh the First World War, boys
It closed out its fate
The reason for fighting
I never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side.
When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side.
I've learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war starts
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side.
But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we're forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.
So now as I'm leavin'
The confusion I'm feelin'
And fall to the floor
If God's on our side
He'll stop the next war.
And for comparison, and because Mr. Dylan was just awarded the Medal of Freedom this week by President Obama, and because it's such a great song, here's a great live bootleg version of Dylan performing With God On Our Side from 1963:
As a Forgotten Nomenclature aside, the name shown on the video above, Elston Gunnn, was an early alias for Robert Zimmerman, before he changed it to Bob Dylan. Here's the story told by Bobby Vee about the time that a young man named Elston Gunnn briefly joined his backing band, The Shadows:
"He [Dylan] was in the Fargo/Moorhead area. He was working as a busboy at a place called the Red Apple Cafe. We didn't know that at the time. Bill [Velline] was in a record shop in Fargo, Sam's Record Land, and this guy came up to him and introduced himself as Elston Gunnn–with three n's, G-U-N-N-N.
"He said he heard we were looking for a piano player, which we were, and he said that he had just gotten off the road with Conway Twitty. Bill was blown away. 'Man, how good can this be? This was as good as it gets!' And went over to the radio station with him, over to KGFO, and there was this piano in the studio and auditioned him on the piano. He came back and he said, 'He played pretty good in the key of C.' We didn't realize it at the time, but that's all he could play in, was the key of C. I-IV-V in the key of C.
"So we hired him to come out. And he was a neat guy. He was friendly. I remember his dark, curly hair. We bought him a shirt to match ours and paid him 15 bucks a night, which was about what we were making. Went to pick him up for the show, and he didn't have a piano. There weren't a lot of piano players in our area anyway–there were mostly guitar players–but they had the little Wurlitzer pianos, and we just assumed he had a piano. He didn't, of course. We took him to the gig anyway, and there was a piano there. It was terribly out of tune. He sat and he played that, and when he got lost he would come up and do background parts and do Gene Vincent handclaps. It was a trip!
"It was ill-fated. I mean, it wasn't gonna work. He didn't have any money, and we didn't have any money. The story is that I fired him, but that certainly wasn't the case. If we could have put it together somehow, we sure would have. We wished we could have put it together. He left and went on to Minneapolis and enrolled at the University of Minnesota. A couple of years later I was in New York in Greenwich Village. I was walking down the street. There was a record store there, and there was an album in the front window. And it said, 'Bob Dylan.' And I thought to myself, 'Looks a lot like Elston Gunnn!'
"I probably plugged into him on the second or third album, and the stuff was really unusual. It was so far removed from what I was doing. Not long after that, I started listening to his stuff and really became a big fan."
(Source: The Bob Dylan Who's Who)
Now it's clear that if Bobby Vee had had God on his side, Elston Gunnn may have made his career as a member of The Shadows. Oh well, you can't always get what you want….
Filed Under: Music Tagged With: Amnesty International, Bob Dylan, Bobby Vee, Forgotten Nomenclature, Greenwich Village, K'naan, Minnesota, New York
May 3, 2012 By Martin
Handball by Ben Shahn
Ben Shahn, Handball, 1939. Tempera on paper over composition board, 22 3/4 in. x 31 1/4 in. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Filed Under: Art Tagged With: Ben Shahn, New York, The Museum of Modern Art
I Can Be Your Monday June 4th, 1962 No. 296 Issue of The New York Mirror
Editor's Note: The following text is a dramatic retelling of actual events it is based on painting lore, hearsay, a BFA, a few assorted books and television.
One morning in 1962 curator, art historian and critic Henry Geldzahler and Andy Warhol were having breakfast. Warhol was basking in his new found success over an order of dry wheat toast and black coffee. Geldzahler looked up from his newspaper and said: "Andy, You know you can't just paint happy flowers for the rest of your life" Andy wiped his mouth with a stiff cloth napkin, squinted and replied "I can't?" Geldzahler insisted "No you can't, you need to start paint what's going on in the world." Andy sheepishly replied, "Going on, what's going on?" Geldzahler picked up his newspaper wagging his index finger instructively at to the front page "This is what's going on Andy, tragedy, agony and disaster."
The tattered remnant of the Monday June 4th 1962 Volume 37, No. 296 of the New York Mirror pictured below is the actual newspaper Geldzahler presented to Warhol that morning, and which Warhol with great acumen rendered that afternoon. Besides being one of the most incredible paintings I have ever seen (yes it is in fact a painting not a silkscreen, and under close scrutiny this is truly one of those painters' paintings we hear so much about), I admire Warhol's ability to listen to his friend's suggestion. But Warhol's true brilliance is in his decision not only to follow the spirit of his mentor's suggestion–i.e. paint more dramatically charged subject matter, but the fact that he literally follows thorough in rendering exactly what he was handed. This act demonstrates not only a profound suspension of ego (most painters/artists like to call the shots) and an incredible willingness to accept constructive criticism, but a good measure of personal courage as well, for through this painting (experience), Warhol might have been confronting, reliving and re-feeling the "accidental" death of his father when he was 13.
Death and disaster. Warhol would focused on this theme for the next year (Red Car Crash, Purple Jumping Man, and Orange Disaster). And if you would like the "official story" behind the Death and Disaster series, view this clip from PBS's American Masters.
Image Credit: Andy Warhol, 129 Die In Jet (Plane Crash), 1962, Synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 254×183cm, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany
Filed Under: Art Tagged With: Andy Warhol, disasters, Henry Geldzahler, New York, painting
March 13, 2012 By Martin
Kerouac's On the Road Scroll & Rauschenberg's Automobile Tire Print
Two significant artifacts or two-lane blacktop events that came to mind immediately after posting our piece, Ruscha's "Every Building on the Sunset Strip": Plotting a motorized city, paper route style the other day was the similarity between Jack Kerouac's (1951) 120-foot-long rant, Robert Rauschenberg's (1953) 23-foot-long tire track, and Ed Ruscha's (1966) 25-foot-long survey.
First a brief history of the Kerouac manuscript for On the Road. Kerouac produced the single-spaced text without commas or paragraph breaks on one massive continuous scroll in only three weeks. The 120-foot-long player-piano-like (Jelly) roll (Morton) was created by taping semi-translucent paper together and feeding it through his "That's not writing, it's typing" 1928 Underwood Portable typewriter. But oh what a typist he was; according to legend (or Allen Ginsberg), Kerouac was clocked at speeds approaching 110-120 words per minute on the straightaways and perhaps those speeds can be attributed to the "nearness" of Kerouac to the subject matter.
"His subject was himself and his method was to write as spontaneously as possible…What resulted he would later transcribe for forwarding to his publisher, but never revise, in principle he regarded revision as a form of lying."
~The New York Times
"I'm just reading what I wrote all night. There are better things coming than what I wrote all night. Straight from the mind to the voice".
~An excerpt from On The Road, Jack Kerouac Reads On the Road, Rykodisc (1999)
Straight from the mind to the voice. This desire or act of accepting /embracing things for what they are, flaws, flies in the ointment, warts and all, is a reoccurring aspect to Robert Rauschenberg's work as well. Rauschenberg is perhaps best known for his late 1950s, early 1960s Combines. But for me Rauschenberg's most significant work besides Erased de Kooning (1953), is his 1953 collaboration with his 'printer and press' John Cage entitled "Automobile Tire Print. This 23-foot-long "print" was executed with black house paint, twenty sheets of typewriter paper, and a Model A Ford one weekend on a semi-deserted street in in Lower Manhattan.
Unfortunately it rained. Fortunately it rained. Thankfully it rained. Just by chance it rained and everything was salvaged. Or as Rauschenberg explains in this wonderful 1999 interview at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: 'And I just poured the paint on the… it rained… and the paste didn't really hold up too well… yeah I salvaged it all, but anyway it didn't have to rain… and so I pored it in front and I told John to really… I poured it in front and I told John to drive just as straight as he could you know, be careful, keep going straight you know and John was fascinated by the fact we were doing this and he did a good job.' Yes a lovely effort indeed.
Additional Video:
Unrolling the On The Road scroll:
"On the Road Again with Jack Kerouac and Robert Frank"
Indianapolis Museum of Art – IMA
Additional Audio:
Jack Kerouac's Famous Scroll, 'On the Road' Again
National Public Radio: All Things Considered
by Andrea Shea
See also: "Tire," by Roy Lichtenstein, which arrived in 1962, nine years after the Rauschenberg/Cage tire track print.
Filed Under: Art Tagged With: Allen Ginsberg, Ed Ruscha, Jack Kerouac, John Cage, New York, Robert Rauschenberg, San Francisco, Willem de Kooning
March 12, 2012 By The Directive
A Collective Interview with Garry Winogrand: Rochester Institute of Technology, 1970
Garry Winogrand, Central Park Zoo. New York City, 1967.
As a follow-up to our recent posts, Sightseeing with Garry Winogrand and On the Road with Garry Winograd, we present the following collective Garry Winogrand interview, Monkeys Make the Problem More Difficult, excerpted from American Suburb X. Originally Published in Image Magazine by George Eastman House – Vol. 15, No. 2, July, 1972. Yes, monkeys DO make the problem more difficult. Especially if, as in the photograph above, they are chimpanzees.
Monkeys Make the Problem More Difficult
A Collective Interview with Garry Winogrand
Rochester Institute of Technology, October 9, 1970.
Garry Winogrand (1928-1984) spent two days in Rochester, New York, in October, 1970. On Friday, the 9th, he was the guest of the Rochester Institute of Technology. On Saturday, the 10th, he visited the Visual Studies Workshop, also in Rochester. The format was identical on both occasions: Winogrand, without comment, showed slides of his latest work and then answered questions from the student audiences. All in all, he talked for over five hours. The following transcript, edited from a tape recording of the proceedings, represents but one idea among the many ideas that were touched on.
STUDENT: I saw a photograph that—there's a photograph that had "Kodak" and there's a kid holding a dog—
GW: Yeah.
STUDENT: —and the people kind of wandering in and out. Now, it might be due to my own ignorance or something, but could you give me like a straight answer as to what you're trying to say in that photograph?
GW: I have nothing to say.
STUDENT: Nothing to say? Then why do you print it?
GW: I don't have anything to say in any picture.
STUDENT: Why do you print it if it has no meaning?
GW: With that particular picture—ah, I'm interested in the space and I maybe can learn something about photography. That's what I get from photographs; if I'm lucky, I can learn something.
STUDENT: Then you're trying to reveal something about space?
GW: I'm not revealing anything.
STUDENT: Then what do you think is the purpose of the photograph if you're not revealing anything.
GW: My education.
STUDENT: Then what's the purpose of that? That's what I'm trying to find out.
GW: That's the answer. That's really the answer…
The discussion continued the next day.
STUDENT: Yesterday at R.I.T. somebody asked you what are you trying to say in a certain picture and you said you weren't trying to say anything. He jumped to the conclusion that it was meaningless and if it was meaningless why did you bother to print it and they seemed very confused about this. Could you tell me what—I think I know what you're saying and I like it but I—
GW: Tell me.
STUDENT: I can't tell you, but if you'd do it again I might get a closer idea.
GW: My only interest in photographing is photography. That's really the answer.
STUDENT: In other words it isn't social comment, it isn't ah—
GW: When you photograph—there's [sic] things in a photograph. Right?
STUDENT: Yeah.
GW: So this can't help but be a document or whatever you want to call it. It's automatic. I mean if you photograph a cake of soap, in the package or out of it, it goes without saying—
STUDENT: But that's not what you're concerned about. I mean, your concern is photography.
GW: That's it. And I have to photograph where I am.
STUDENT: If you were somewhere else—if for some reason you went to Arizona or Alaska, would you photograph—
GW: Then that's what the pictures would look like, whatever those places look like.
STUDENT: Is your choice of subject matter just limited by where you are, by the fact that you live in New York?
GW: Yeah, I mean there are pictures in here from California and some other places, too.
STUDENT: Yeah. But you return to certain things, though, which have more to do than just with place. Like you've got a thing about dogs no matter where they are.
GW: Dogs are everyplace.
STUDENT: You've got a thing about, say, personal injury.
GW: That has to do with photography—I'm not interested in injuries. Believe me I'm not.
STUDENT: What about the reoccurrence of, say, oh, monkeys which goes back—
GW: Listen, it's interesting; but it's interesting for photographic reasons, really.
STUDENT: What are photographic reasons?
GW: Basically, I mean, ah—well, let's say that for me anyway when a photograph is interesting, it's interesting because of the kind of photographic problem it states—which has to do with the . . . contest between content and form. And, you know, in terms of content, you can make a problem for yourself, I mean, make the contest difficult, let's say, with certain subject matter that is inherently dramatic. An injury could be, a dwarf can be, a monkey—if you run into a monkey in some idiot context, automatically you've got a very real problem taking place in the photograph. I mean, how do you beat it?
STUDENT: Are you saying then that your primary concern is a kind of formal one?
GW: Of course.
STUDENT: In what sense "formal?" Getting things on the page? Filling up the space?
GW: You can't help doing that either; I mean, it just automatically happens when you make an exposure.
STUDENT: Well, then I don't understand what the "formal" problem is.
GW: It's, ah—
STUDENT: to make it not look formal.
GW: No, sorry. . . . You've got a number of things that take place that are peculiar to still photography. One: how a picture looks—what you photograph is responsible for how a photograph looks. In other words, it's responsible for the form.
STUDENT: It, or are you?
GW: What you photograph is responsible for how a photograph looks —the form, the design, whatever word you want to use. Because of that there's no way a photograph has to look … in a sense. There are no formal rules of design that can apply. In other words, a photograph can look anyway. It just depends basically on what you photograph.
STUDENT: Well, the choice of the 28 mm. lens over a 50 mm. is going to give you a different looking photograph.
GW: It makes the problem—it ups the ante in a way, if you want to put it that way. You have more to contend with. Maybe it makes the problem a little bit more interesting.
STUDENT: I always feel very precarious when I look at your images. I feel like I'm falling over. Is that because you're not—you don't use a view-finder?
GW: I don't know why you feel the way you feel. . . . What are you asking?
STUDENT: Actually, what I'm asking is do you often shoot without using your viewfinder?
GW: I never shoot without using the viewfinder—Oh, yes, there'll be a few times,—I may have to hold the camera up over my head because for just physical reasons, but very rarely does that ever work.
STUDENT: Are you conscious of that?
GW: Of what?
STUDENT: Of sort of an off-kilter thing happening?
GW: Oh, yeah, sure. I pretty much know what I'm doing.
STUDENT: Is that an attempt to solve a photographic problem?
GW: Generally it's to make one. Another reason can be just because physically I might have trouble to get what I want to include in [the frame] in, you know, just physically. And that's a good reason.
STUDENT: I'm wondering what, like, your concern with this is. Why photography?
GW: I told you before. It's, ah—the thing itself is fascinating. The game, let's say, of trying to state photographic problems is, for me, absolutely fascinating.
STUDENT: You keep trying to know more and more about the game?
GW: I'm trying to learn more and more about what's possible, you know—really, I am answering your question.
STUDENT: Yeah
GW: I'm not dissembling.
STUDENT: Any change in your work you would attribute to somehow learning—the learning process?
GW: Yeah. I think if I did a tight editing, let's say, of this bunch [of photographs], I'd say I'm a different photographer here than from those animals or whatever.
STUDENT: Were the animals done in a concentrated period of time or did they just kind of pop up as you—
GW: Basically, they were done in a relatively concentrated period of time. I mean, I wasn't just working on them. But, I'd say I can safely say over a year's—about a year I went on—yeah, when I knew I had a game to play there. . . .
STUDENT: Do you look at a lot of other people's photographs?
GW: Sure. I look at photographs.
STUDENT: Whose photographs do you find interesting?
GW: Quickly, off the top of my head: Atget, Brassai, Kertesz, Weston, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Bresson.
STUDENT: Do you like them for different reasons or do you find a reason?
GW: I learn from them. I can learn from them.
STUDENT: On the problem level, do you feel they've solved a problem and you think, "Thank God, I don't have to do that?"
GW: It's not a question of solving. It's a question of stating.
STUDENT: Stating?
GW: Yeah. You don't solve anything ever, really. You simply state a problem which, when you're lucky, gives you some idea of what possible problems you can—it indicates, you know, your future headaches.
STUDENT: But that's all related to the idea of the "game"—it's being a "game"?
GW: Whatever word you want to use—you want to use "work"? Use the word "work."
STUDENT: Work—play—
GW: I use the word "play"; but you understand the word "play"—if you ever watch children play—what do you observe when you watch children play? You know, they're dead serious. They're not on vacation.
STUDENT: If the problem you're working on now is the contest between form and content, what was the problem before?
GW: It's always—every photograph, every—somehow bang of the shutter—basically, I'm playing the "game" in a way.
STUDENT: When you first started photographing what was your, like primary interest in picking up the camera? Did you like people?
GW: No, the process, really. I really liked—it was a very crazy thing to me, I mean, this business of being uncertain that it would come out. I still enjoy—I still don't understand why when you put a piece of paper in a tray with solution in it, it comes up. It's still, in a sense, magic to me. It's a funny thing, you know. I've got two kids, and when they were very young, they used to come in the darkroom and I thought they'd be astounded by that. Nothing. When they got a little older, then they got astounded by it. . . .
STUDENT: Is it relevant to ask what you were doing before you began to take pictures?
GW: I don't know. … I had a camera but I had no darkroom facilities, nothing like that was available. And so, you know, I shot a roll of film, I sent it in, and stuff like that. And I was painting. I was studying painting which is not valid because it's ridiculous to talk about it. But I was at Columbia [University] and they had a camera club. I think I registered there for the fall term. And so I found out about this camera club and they told me they had this darkroom available twenty-four hours a day. And I'd never done any darkroom work, so I went down. It must have been two weeks after I started there and, I'd say, give it another week and I never went back to class. I'm telling you, it was basically the process. . . .
STUDENT: Well, like let's say, [Robert] Frank's book of photographs—
GW: What about it?
STUDENT: You talked about learning from—
GW: Yeah—
STUDENT: —his stuff—
GW: I hope I did. I learned—
STUDENT: I'm interested to learn, like, when you looked in the book, like, do you think there's anything you can say afterwards what, you know, "I learned" or what might be different in your work afterward?
GW: Well, let's put it—you have to talk, speak about photographs, specific photographs. . . . Let's say, primarily—let's say Walker Evans in a general sense was maybe the first man who, in his book, states that you could—or rather the work states that America was a place to photograph in. Just on that level. Of course, there's much more about those photographs; they're astounding.
STUDENT: You think you can get different things from a specific photograph?
GW: Yeah, you can go into your own mumbo-jumbo.
STUDENT: Would you go into a mumbo-jumbo about [Robert] Frank's photograph of the flag or would you just look at it?
GW: That photograph doesn't interest me that much. There are photographs in there far more interesting. The gasoline station photograph would be.
STUDENT: Would you go into a mumbo-jumbo or would you just look at it?
GW: That [the gasoline station] photograph, in the first place, is an exercise in, ah—it's a lesson, number one, in just camera operation, in a sense. It's a lesson in how responsible that machine is for how photographs can look. Begin with that. To me that was one of the most important pictures in the book. It's also a photograph of nothing, there's nothing happening there. I mean, the subject matter has no dramatic ability of its own whatsoever and yet somehow it looks, what it is, it's the most mundane—and there's nothing happening, there's no physical action.
STUDENT: You get the feeling that he played the game very well?
GW: Extremely well. That he could conceive of that being a photograph in the first place, is, ah—I don't know if he, on any conscious level, thinks in terms of this "game" or whatever. And I certainly don't really, in a conscious way, worry about it when I'm working. The contest between form and content is what, is what art is about—it's art history. That's what basically everybody has ever contended with. The problem is uniquely complex in still photography.
STUDENT: How so?
GW: Well, in terms of what a camera does. Again, you go back to that original idea that what you photograph is responsible for how it [the photograph] looks. And it's not plastic, in a way. The problem is unique in photographic terms.
STUDENT: Well, if what you photograph is responsible for what it looks like, what if ten people take a photograph of the same thing?
GW: The same way? If they're standing in the same place, the same kind of lens on the camera, the same film, the right exposure and their cameras are in the same position? It would be the same picture—The camera's dumb, it don't [sic] care who's pushing the button. It doesn't know—
STUDENT: What is it, say, in a picture that makes it interesting instead of dead; what makes it alive instead of dead?
GW: Well, let's say—let's go back to that gasoline picture. . . . Let's say, [it's] the photographer's understanding of possibilities. Let me say something else. When he [Robert Frank] took that photograph he couldn't possibly know—he just could not know that it would work, that it would be a photograph. He knew he probably had a chance. In other words, he cannot know what that's going to look like as a photograph. I mean, understanding fully that he's going to render what he sees, he still does not know what it's going to look like as a photograph. Something, the fact of photographing something changes—I mean, when you photograph—if I photograph you I don't have you, I have a photograph of you. It's got its own thing. That's really what photography, still photography, is about. In the simplest sentence, I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed. Basically, that's why I photograph, in the simplest language. That's the beginning of it and then we get to play the games.
STUDENT: But the thing that's intriguing is not really knowing what the result is going to be like.
GW: Of course. What I know bores me. You know, you get into the business of commercial photography, and that's all you do is photograph what you know. That's what you're hired for. And it's very easy to make successful photographs—-it's very easy. I'm a good craftsman and I can have this particular intention: let's say, I want a photograph that's going to push a certain button in an audience, to make them laugh or love, feel warm or hate or what—I know how to do this. It's the easiest thing in the world to do that, to make successful photographs. It's a bore. I certainly never wanted to be a photographer to bore myself. It's no fun—life is too short. . . .
STUDENT: Do you shoot pool?
GW: What?
GW: I have, yeah. I was good. Ah, yeah, why?
STUDENT: I shoot pool, I don't know— [tape unclear]
GW: There was a time in my life when I lived in one [a pool room?], you know when I was a kid. Once in a while I get a chance—
STUDENT: I feel the same thing, like how you're talking about photography— I don't know— I can't—
GW: All right.
STUDENT: You feel you've been hustled in a pool room. . . . Are there any other things that relate photographically that are not necessarily other photographs? By this I mean, do you ever get ideas—not ideas—is your education ever expanded by an interest in something else other than photography?
GW: I would think so. A heck of a lot. Reading and music and painting and sculpture and other stuff. Basketball, baseball, hockey, etc. Certainly, you know, you can always learn from some—from somebody else's—from some intelligence. I think. I hope. Nobody exists in a vacuum. Where do you come from? The first time I really got out of New York as a photographer was in 1955 and I wanted to go around the country photographing. And a friend of mine at that time, I was talking to him about it—a guy named Dan Weiner. I don't know if you know his name. He's dead now. [He] asked me if I had ever seen Walker Evans' book and I said, no. I had never heard of Walker Evans. He said, if you're going around the country, take a look at the book. And he did me a big fat favor.
And then it's funny, I forget what year when Robert Frank's book came out. He was working pretty much around that time, '55 or whenever it was. And there were photographs in there, particularly that gas station photograph, that I learned an immense amount from. I mean, I hope I learned. At least, I feel very responsible . . . [tape unclear].
STUDENT: What you're responding to, is it the quality of the intelligence that states the problem?
GW: Yeah, I don't give a rap about gasoline stations. . .
Source: Excerpted from American Suburb X / ASX, Monkeys Make the Problem More Difficult. Originally Published in Image Magazine by George Eastman House – Vol. 15, No. 2, July, 1972. Transcribed and Edited by Dennis Longwell
Filed Under: Art, Photography Tagged With: André Kertész, Atget, Brassaï, Edward Weston, Garry Winogrand, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Kodak, New York, Robert Frank, Rochester, Walker Evans
March 2, 2012 By Martin
Sightseeing with Garry Winogrand
I should start by saying that the following reflection on Garry Winogrand is based mostly on my memory, so when you see a question mark it's because I am uncertain as to the specifics. I have chosen not to Google or fact-check any details besides the year of his death, 1984. It was important to me to verify that single solitary fact for several reasons, the first being that it was the year George Orwell's 1984 was released as a film; the second because after several years of trudging through life on the RTD (Los Angeles Rapid Transit District), I purchased my first Los Angeles automobile; thirdly, having secured said wheels, this native Detroiter mutated into a fully semi-functional Angeleno.
And so this is where it gets fuzzy. I recall seeing Winogrand's work first in a photo magazine called Picture(?) several years earlier and was immediately attracted, fascinated, enchanted, dazzled, charmed, enthralled, captivated, beguiled, mesmerized, hypnotized, and spellbound by his "road" images – cruel and inhumane rodeos, cruel and inhumane suburbs, cruel and inhumane airport terminals, cruel and inhumane roadside attractions.
The first time I encountered Winogrand's work in an exhibition was what I assume was a posthumous retrospective(?) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles(?) in 1984(?). Much of Winogrand's more studied New York City street photography – "Black Eyed Mobster Driving Away In Sports Car With Kidnapped Girlfriend"(Title?), "Interracial Couple With Chimp In Central Park"(Title?), "Mildly Amused Mobsters at Copacabana Supper Club"(Title?) – were included. And believe me I love and admire this body of work along with other street photographers such as Weegee, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï, and particularly Robert Frank.
But what impressed me most was Winogrand's last body of work, which he executed while living with his daughter in Los Angles. Legend (or my fading Rashomon manufactured memory / imagination) has it that the photographer had his daughter drive him aimlessly around the same very streets I was simultaneous discovering in my brand new 1984 Nissan Sentra. (White, base model, no factory installed radio. Why? A twin-cassette mix-tape-loaded boom-box works just as well, and at a fraction of the cost.) Winogrand rode shotgun armed with a 35mm single-lens-reflex motor-drive camera and a couple 10-blocks of Tri-X film(?), while I was struggling just to get my bearings in this land of perpetual double decker strip malls.
The result of this restless and relentless shooting regiment was evident in the last room of the exhibition. In this space three Kodak carousel slide projectors sat abreast of each other on a central pedestal, spewing a constant barrage of images upon the wall. This visual assault from the trio of World War One machine gunners flashed on the wall like a flip-book animation. Random, accidental, haphazard, drifting, messy, willy-nilly, scattershot, potshot visual rants of nearly ever street corner in Hollywood, El Monte, Rampart, West Covina, Vernon, Commerce, Bell, Bell Gardens, Maywood, Rosemead, Whittier, Florence, Pico Rivera, Downey, Duarte, and Inglewood. Or so it seemed.
What I was most impressed with was the reckless abandon of his "drive-by" shooting style, the unedited display of the mass of images coming from the slide projectors, and finally a trio of large, clear garbage bags stuffed with countless rolls of exposed but undeveloped film. At the end of his life, Winogrand had transformed into the pure essence of a photographer, a seer, a witness, unencumbered by the desire to produce a visual record of what he was participating in: driving 'round and around with his daughter, camera pressed to his face. The pure act of seeing was all he needed in the end, and as a seer he was prolific.
See also: On the Road with Garry Winogrand
Filed Under: Art, Photography Tagged With: 1984, Atget, Brassaï, Garry Winogrand, George Orwell, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Kodak, Los Angeles, New York, Rashomon, Robert Frank, street photography, Weegee
Stanley Kubrick's brown bag photographs of 1940s New York City
A few months ago I blogged about Flavorwire's previous collection of Stanley Kubrick photos from Chicago, circa 1949. Now they're at it again, having posted a new group of 15 Kubrick photographs from New York City in the 1940s.
Notes Flavorwire:
…Stanley Kubrick was a poor kid from the Bronx who worked as a photojournalist for Look magazine. (He was their youngest staff photographer on record.) Kubrick's striking black and white images of 1940s New York City — which were often shot on the sly, his camera concealed in a paper bag with a hole in it — hint at the dark beauty and psychological drama of his later creative output.
They also note that Kubrick took some 10,000 photographs, most never before seen. Check out the 15 Kubric NYC photos on view, and watch the future director training his eye and learning the craft of visual narrative.
Filed Under: Art, Photography Tagged With: New York, Stanley Kubrick