Book review: Szarkowski, John. Atget. NY: The Museum of Modern Art, 2000.

The book begins with an 8-page introduction covering what little we know of Atget’s life (“Scholars have pummeled and shaken them [the facts] without mercy, but for the most part they have stood mute.”), and historical details about the the photographic process within the photographer's lifetime.   Although known towards the end of his life as reliant on outdated technology, when Atget began his photographic career he did so at a technological turning point.  No longer was it necessary for camera operators to treat their own plates and paper.  These were now manufactured and could be purchased from suppliers of photographic equipment.  What this meant was greater geographical range for the photographer, who no longer had to carry with him a small chemist’s shop.  Szarkowski sees this technical development as having opened up the range of photographic subjects.  It was now easy to travel about and shoot most anything and everything.  Another technical development of the period was the ability to print photos on ordinary paper, but as Atget never worked for the popular press, this advance seems to have hardly impinged on his photographic career.

Review: Master Photographers: André Kertész , BBC, 1983

Andre Kertesz Martinique 1972

I never heard of Kertesz before opening this episode of Master Photographers.  He doesn't seem to be covered in the surveys I have read.  And what a shame.  Such delightful photos.

Like other photographers in this series, Kertesz was a European Jew who took refuge from the mid-century German pogroms in the United States.   Unlike the others, though, he found himself isolated from the professional photographic community.  According to the film, his work was believed to be too sentimental.  It appears also Kertesz had a streak of stubbornness.  He says of himself and his work that anything he does, he does first for himself.  This kind of attitude got him in trouble with Life magazine, which refused to publish photos he thought were interesting but which the magazine had not requested.  In addition, he had difficulty with English, which is evident in the film and have may exacerbated feelings of isolation.  During WWII he was designated by the government as an enemy alien because of his Hungarian background.  He longed to return to France, where he had been a part of the city’s art scene, but travel was impossible. It seems he did not like his life in the US, even though he later became a naturalized citizen and remained in New York.

DPP: Assignment 3: First Look

It was a rare cloudy morning this past Friday when I visited the old Christian cemetery.  Took lots of good images and look forward to a sunset visit this coming weekend.

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Review: Wells, Photography: A Critical Introduction: Ch 4: Photography and the human body , 4th ed, 2009

Wikipedia: 19th cent. post-mortem photography

The Subject as Object:  Photography and the human body

Michelle Henning - lecturer in Dept of Culture, Media, and Drama at University of the West of England, Bristol

The author begins by noting the academic interest in the 80s and 90s in photographic perceptions and portrayals of the body (to which she has presumably contributed).  Among the issues of concern were gender, ageing, race, and sexuality, and the role of photography in the generation of desire.  Emergence of these concerns was tied to political issues of the same categories.  By the 21st century concern had turned to designer genetics, cloning, posthuman cyborgs and the translation of the body into data.

Cites Carol Vance’s “The Pleasures of Looking” [found, but not yet read] as important in describing the connection between ideas of the body and ideas about how how photographs are used, basically as a means of controlling identity and defining acceptable practices.

The chapter is organized thematically rather than chronologically

DPP: Exercise 18: Colors into Tones 2

This exercise is a continuation of the previous, creating monochrome effects through the manipulation of color channels.  The brief calls for the use of particular types of photos from which we may choose one.  I settled on what seems the most enigmatic:

A landscape in which you emphasize the depth by strengthening the visual effect of haze.

I tried googling key words from this sentence but nothing particular to what we are doing here turned up.  I take it to mean that in an image with a considerable amount of cloudy sky, we can use the color channels to create more dramatic clouds, thereby emphasizing depth.

A confluence of events led today to taking a photo of the Burj Khalifa on a cloudy day and - voila! - exercise completed.

On the right is the processed color image.  A b&w copy of this is immediately after, followed by a copy in which the blue channel has been increased, and WB shifted slightly toward blue.

DPP: Exercise 17: Colors into Tones 1

The brief for this exercise calls for manipulating the tones of a black and white image.  The image in question should have strong contrasting colors, such as this one with red and green.  A b&w control was then produced and copies of this were manipulated to demonstrate how colors-as-tones can be exercised.    

DPP Assignment 3: Monochrome: Planning

I think I've finally got my subject.

I've been mulling this over for days without much success.  The assignment calls for 5-10 monochrome images on a theme or subject of choice shot to highlight aspects of form, tonal contrast, texture and key.  Since I don't typically shoot b&w, I've been at pains to conceive of a project that justifies its use.  I don't want to just shoot anything in b&w simply because its a b&w assignment.

I've been wanting to explore time through long exposures, but since form tends to be lost in these kind of images it might be best to wait for a better opportunity.  My thinking shifted to what themes or objects lend themselves to monochrome. Religion came to mind, but I couldn't come up with any decent ideas until I hit on the idea of cemeteries, inspired by an article on the work of Susan Fox.

I haven't been to any cemeteries here in the UAE.  I started googling and found a couple of interesting prospects.  I stopped by one of them on my way to work today and it looks fantastic.  The site appears to be not well cared for.  There are rusty bits of metal, crooked headstones, overgrown bushes, piles of wind blown trash in the corners, and very little color, mostly just concrete, marble, and sand, perfect for b&w treatment.  Thematically, what could be more black-and-white than life and death?

The plan is for an early morning first round of shooting this weekend.

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Review: Howarth and McLaren, Street Photography Now, Thames and Hudson, 2010

As this book is several years old and a number of reviews can be found here and there across the internet, there is not much new to say about it.  I can confirm the accolades afforded in many of these reviews.  I don’t have a huge collection of photo books, and I haven’t yet seen a dedicated street photography book outside of this volume, which is to say my opinion about street photography books is not well informed.  However, this volume strikes me as an excellent printed introduction.  It ably demonstrates the range of approaches and subject matter:  b&w and color, people and things, candid and composed.

The book contains over 300 images from 46 photographers, most of whom I had never heard of.  Unlike many of the surveys of street photography I have read, which tend to focus on the historical centers of London, Paris, and NY, this volume features selections from most parts of the world, though Africa is notably absent.

DPP: Exercise 16: Strength of Interpretation

The purpose of this exercise is to demonstrate the range of interpretive possibilities with the removal of color.  Essentially, a greater range of tone is available in monochrome.  This can be seen in the image collection here.  The original exposure is above and is followed below by low and high key treatments, both in color and black and white.  

The unreal

The BJP ran an article on the Hamdan International Photography Awards, a Dubai-based competition sponsored by the prince of Dubai, Sheikh Hamden.  I couldn't help but notice that while all of the winning images might be considered documentary in style, they don't feel like documents of reality.  Were you standing in these scenes, it's hard to image they would appear to your eye as they appear in the photos.  The color is too vivid, the light too dramatic, the detail too exact.  In fact it is the overwhelming amount of detail that makes you feel these images are something more than minimally or mildly filtered reality.  (All photography, of course, being a form of reality filtering.)  The abundance of detail makes the images seem flat.  Nothing stands out among all the other details.  Everything calls for your attention. The only photo where this is not true is that of the boats. Your eye can rest on the boats because the background of fog and misty mountains gives them relief and allows them to stand out.  The image of the pair of men and boys is less busy than the two school images, but even here the shadows have been over-developed.  There is too much definition and consequently there is no definition of any one thing or group of things within the image.

HIPA announces prize winners at grand ceremony
Hamdan International Photography Awards (HIPA) announces the winners of its third competition, Creating the Future, in Dubai
Gemma Padley — 17 March 2014

http://www.bjp-online.com/2014/03/hipa-announces-prize-winners-at-grand-ceremony/

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Update: I see on the BJP Facebook page that others also find these images unphotographic.

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DPP: Exercise 15: Black and White

The brief for this assignment class for the production of a black-and-white image.  Technically, this is not difficult to do, either in-camera or afterwards on the computer.  With the Nikon D5100, I selected RAW+Fine image capture, and set the jpg capture to b&w.  While I had to compose in color, I was able to view the monochrome b&w on the camera LCD.  

Review: Wells, Photography: A Critical Introduction: Ch 3: 'Sweet it is to scan...' , 4th ed, 2009 CONTIUED

Photogenetic Draft No. 24, 1991 ©
Joachim Schmid

Kodak
The arrival at the turn of the century of the Kodak camera marked an important change in personal photography.  Cameras now became accessories of middle class life, tools for shaping the identity of the family. Holland quotes Don Slater on how the new consumer technology arrived denuded from its mechanical and conceptual processes.  By just clicking a button and returning the package to the lab, the operator was deprived of the means of understanding how images are created and from being able to use those skills and knowledge to create something more radical.  Holland notes, though, that a new skill was in fact introduced, that of framing and arranging the content of the image.

Outside of professionals, the full photographic process became the province of “amateur photography,” a mostly male pastime fascinated with technology and aesthetic control and which has “retained its long-lived aspiration to ... pictorialism...” p143

DPP: Exercise 14: Interpretative Processing

The purpose of this exercise is to experiment with interpretations of a photographic image through the tools provided in processing software.  My program of choice is Lightroom and included here are photos of recent vintage that were shot and processed before arriving at this exercise.  I display them here as evidence that I understand the intention of the exercise.

DPP: Exercise13: Managing Color

For this exercise, you should find two or three images that have what you judge to be a significant color case, as the main purpose of the exercise it to 'correct' it.

Review: Wells, Photography: A Critical Introduction: Ch 3: 'Sweet it is to scan...' , 4th ed, 2009

A personal photo from my own collection:
the church family

The chapter title comes from an 1899 poem printed in a book of advice for amateur photographers in which the author reflects on the joy of looking at the photographically immortalized faces of deceased family and other loved ones.  It has been used, presumably, because of the shift in meaning of scan, which can now mean to digitize an image.

As with academic treatments of other forms of photography thus far encountered, chapter author Patricia Holland cautions private photography is fraught with exception making generalization difficult.

Holland prefers private or personal to family photography, for though in its history it has been associated with the family, it often covers far more than family life.  That we have come to see it as “family” photography, though, may tell us something about how we conceive of image making and the purpose of family.  What is unique about photography as a family activity is that it produces objects that are loaded with meaning and subject to interpretation.  They are typically taken to portray the subject as he or she wishes to be seen.  They are also valued less for their quality than for their content and context in confirming identity.

DPP: Exercise12: Managing Tone

This exercise seems intended for those just beginning to work with image processing software. It requires taking any image, preferably one in need of processing, and performing adjustments to exposure, brightness, contrast, and white balance.

The image I have used here was taken during my work for assignment two.  I had just stepped into the street and was checking the settings on my camera when I saw a young father with his two daughters, one in each hand.  As we walked toward each other, I made eye contact and held up my camera.  He smiled and nodded and when I went down on one knee he paused for a moment, the camera shutter released, and he began moving again.  I able able to take one more image of the girls, with the father cut off at the waist, and then our encounter was over.

Book Review: Aperture Masters of Photography: Berenice Abbott, 1997

I found this book in the UAE college library system, one in the Aperture Masters of Photography series profiling important photographers in affordable hardback editions.  This 1997 volume is approximately 100 pages and features 41 black and white images, an essay by Julia Van Haaften in English, French, and German, as well a chronology of Abbott’s life, and lists of selected exhibitions, collections, articles, and bibliography.

I was interested in viewing Changing New York, but this is the only book in any of the country’s university libraries on Abbott. About half the images here are from the NY series, the remainder from her science work, as well as what looks like an interesting road trip down US 1, and photos centered around her home in Maine.

Changing New York appears to be out of print (and as I discovered quite heavy and expensive to ship to Dubai), but fortunately the NY Public Library has a fabulous collection of this work available online.

DPP Exercise 11: RAW

The purpose of this exercise is to demonstrate the processing advantages of raw, but at the same time to put these advantages in perspective.  Higher image quality from raw is often over-praised.  

Isn't that the truth?

I rarely hear praise for jpg.  Following the advice of every “serious” shooter on the internet, I have been using raw nearly since I started at OCA about 18 months ago.  This is the first time I’ve actually done a head-to-head comparison and I find I now have more respect for jpg.

DPP: Assignment 2: Seeing Like Your Camera (revised) + Reflection

As reformatting all this text to fit into the blog is rather time consuming, I'm experimenting with posting jpgs ripped from the pdf of the text file.  If you want to read the assignment in its entirety, click on the text Read more » below, then click on the first page to launch a photo viewer.

The original posting included the first draft of the assignment.  This has since been deleted and replaced with my reflection on the tutor's notes and a revised assignment prepared for assessment submission.