Weekend Video

The flow of talented young British female singers continues unabated with 20 year old newcomer Adele (born Adele Laurie Blue Adkins). A neo soul/jazz singer, Adele was the first recipient of the Brit Awards Critics' Choice, given to an artist who yet to release an album. A few months later, Adele released her debut album 19, which went straight to #1 in the UK charts and was certified platinum within a month of its release.

This weekend’s video shows Adele performing her hit single "Chasing Pavements" live on BBC 1's "Friday Night With Jonathan Ross"

The First Mugshot

This photograph (top) has been somewhat incongruously making its way around the internet recently. However, I guess this should not be altogether surprising as it’s a powerful and seductive picture. It appears heroic in a Che Guevara kind of way, and it’s very chic! However, it is in reality 143 years old and a precursor to the mugshot, being a prison portrait of Lewis Paine (who attempted unsuccessfully to murder Secretary of State William Seward as part of the conspiracy in which John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln).

The photograph was taken in 1865 by Alexander Gardner, the famous civil war photographer also known for his definitive portraits of Lincoln. He photographed Paine and his co-conspirators on board the prison ship on the Potomac where they were incarcerated. Three months later they were hanged.

What is so haunting about the picture is the confidence and poise with which Paine looks at the camera and the modernity of his whole look. As you scroll down, you can see in the picture where the guard is standing beside him that he was enormously tall and if you study the photographs closely, there is certainly a kind of jock arrogance about the man. He’s a fanatic and a fashionista at the same time.

But as we all know pictures can be deceiving. While Paine failed in his task of killing Seward, he brutally stabbed him as well as injuring his two sons Fredrick and Augustus. And while Booth was the only assassin who succeeded in his task, the conspiracy not only robbed America of one of its greatest presidents but set a path of violence that continues to haunt America.

Bodies of the four condemned prisoners at Fort McNair, Washington, following their execution on July 7, 1865. From left, Mary Surratt, Lewis Paine, David Herold and George Atzerodt. Photo by Alexander Gardner.

Assisted

I’ve been incredibly lucky to have great assistants and last night Samantha Contis, my first assistant when I opened Danziger Projects, and Julia Baum, my current assistant, presented an irresistible photo-op. The occasion was the opening of the Yale MFA Photography 2008 exhibition at Danziger Projects which included Samantha Contis's work. If you want to see what the other eight graduates of what is generally considered the top photography MFA program in the country are up to, the show runs through this Saturday.

One other thing that Samantha and Julia have in common is that both have extremely good websites. Samantha’s features a range of her work which is both pastoral and cinematic. She’s terrific at landscape, great with skin, and given any opportunity to combine the two she’s off to the races!

Julia’s website features an ever growing body of portraits of redheads, shot in a luminous outdoor studio she has found for the project. Any genuine redheads living in or passing through New York and wanting to be photographed for the project should contact her via the site or at juliabaum@gmail.com.

Samantha Contis's photographs:





Julia Baum's photographs:

Erupted

At the beginning of this month, the Chaiten volcano in southern Chile, which had been dormant for many thousands of years, began to erupt. Fortunately, there was time to evacuate the town although the ash has now begun to spread its way south across the entire country.

Photographer Carlos Gutierrez of UPI took these dramatic photographs. If you’re a fan of these “hand of god” kind of pictures, which I most certainly am, there’s an apocalyptic element to these images that’s literally incredible. In reality, however, the drama has been caused by the erupting ash and smoke colliding with a lightning storm.




Nevertheless, these kind of images have always had a place in the history of art. The eruption of a volcano was in fact so compelling that it spawned an entire subgenre of landscapes - Vesuvius paintings. Sir William Hamilton, English ambassador to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (as Naples and Sicily were known) from 1764 to 1800, was the great patron of this school. In addition to guiding an entire generation of wealthy and artistically inclined young Englishmen up the slopes of the volcano, he commissioned the artist Pietro Fabris to do paintings of the mount in all its moods. Fifty-four of the resulting works were gathered together with Hamilton's own notes and published as Campi Phlegraei: Observations on the Volcanoes of the Two Sicilies. This became a highly sought-after collector’s item as soon as it appeared in 1776. At the same time, Joseph Wright of Derby (one of the greatest British painters of the time) journeyed to Italy to paint Vesuvius and his painting “Vesuvius from Portici” is generally considered the masterpiece of the genre.

Remember that in pre-photographic society an event like this could only be experienced directly – no National Geographic, no evening news. The burning desire to see and record was the force that drove artists to cross oceans, trek the desert, and hack their way through jungles in search of the sublime, the mysterious, the unstoppable force of nature. While today we can travel further, know more, see more second-hand, our opportunity to experience this kind of wonder has changed and become more rare. So when photographs like Gutierrez’s come along, un-photoshopped, unconstructed, and looking the cover of a Meatloaf album, they are a reminder and a warning of the turbulent times we live in and the deceptive sense of connectedness we feel to the planet.

Joseph Wright's “Vesuvius from Portici”, painted 1774 - 1776.

A detail from Joseph Wright's “Vesuvius from Portici”.

Wright's "Vesuvius in Eruption, with a View over the Islands in the Bay of Naples" painted on his return to England.

Also taken on the first day of what turned into a five day eruption in Chaiten was this photograph by Alvardo Vidal, below.

Memorial Day Weekend Video

In this week of all things Indiana Jones, I’m featuring a 2006 t.v. clip from when its director Steven Spielberg was awarded a Kennedy Center Honor.

The awards, now in their 31st year, are broadcast every Christmas, and for anyone who hasn’t seen them I would highly recommend catching the next one. The premise is simple. Five individuals in the arts are selected each year based on a lifetime of contributions to American culture through the performing arts. Each honoree is introduced by
a friend or colleague, followed a short but always fascinating filmed biography. The tribute is then capped off by some sort of surprise performance.

In Spielberg’s case the performance was of the finale from Leonard Bernstein's Candide, “Make Our Garden Grow”, sung by Gregory Turay and Harolyn Blackwell. Other than being conducted by Spielberg’s longtime composer John Williams, I’m not sure exactly what the connection was but the piece was so movingly and powerfully sung
I promptly downloaded three different versions!

More P.J.s!

Just a few days after my post on pyjamas as outdoor wear, I got an
e-mail from the photographer Justin Guariglia announcing a book signing at ICP this coming Friday for his new book “Planet Shanghai”. The book, which is essentially about the look and style of Shanghai, features dozens and dozens of pictures of people wearing pyjamas outdoors, as well as close-ups of Chinese footwear, Shanghai shoppers, and futuristic looking motorcycle riders.

Taken mostly in 2005, the rapid development in Shanghai is already changing how the city looks and feels and so the book is as much about a moment in time as current Shanghai style, but the images are nonetheless mesmerizing.

The prevalence of pyjamas, Guariglia explained to me, was due to both the extreme summer heat and the lack of plumbing. The area where most of the pictures were taken was one where many people had to use outdoor communal toilets and thus the boundaries of what was considered home expanded past people’s houses to the public bathrooms. Once that relaxation of the dress code became acceptable (starting around the 1980s) the perimeter for p.j.-wear just kept expanding until many people were wearing them day in day out.

In addition to the inherent quality of Guaraglia’s pictures, one of the things many readers of this blog will notice is their similarity to The Sartorialist’s photographs. What is equally interesting is the ways in which they differ. While superficially almost identical, the two photographers are worlds apart in spirit and intent. Guariglia depicts, Sart endorses. Guariglia is a journalist, Sart is an editor. In John Szarkowki’s parlance Guariglia is a window, Sart is a mirror.

What never ceases to be a source of wonder is how a mechanical instrument like the camera can produce images that in the hands of different photographers are so distinctly and personally expressive. It’s a miracle! And it’s why people like me have been involved and committed to photography for such a long time.

Puzzled

Worth noting - Kent Rogowski’s new work, currently on show at the Jen Bekman Gallery through June 14. Rogowski creates surreal pictures by combining pieces from different puzzles into his own original compositions. Because each manufacturer tends to use he same die cuts on different puzzles, the pieces when kept in their proper position are interchangeable within different puzzles of the same brand.

Mixing flowers, blues skies, puffy clouds, and idyllic scenery, Rogowski creates his own alternate fractured universe, one that undergoes yet another transformation when he photographs the finished object. Humorous and cheery, they are not without their own sly commentary on the commodification of happiness and idealism.

Whether they’re photography or re-photography or collage (or a combination of all three) is beside the point. Kent Rogowski’s work demonstrates yet again that although it may be increasingly hard to come up with new ideas, where there’s a will there’s a way.

75,000

Somewhat buried in the back of today’s New York Times was this terrific photograph by Chris Carlson of the Associated Press. It’s of Barack Obama at Sunday’s rally in Portland, Oregon where an estimated crowd of 75,000 came out to hear him speak. I think it has to be the best photograph of the campaign so far and I’m surprised it didn’t make the front page.

Because of the Times’ production, however, it appeared in black and white in the paper while the original color version appeared online. So it was not an aesthetic or design choice, but while I originally liked the graphic quality of the black and white, on reflection I prefer the color, largely because of the red, white, and blue bunting. Again – your thoughts ….?

The Greatest

The photographer Flip Schulke, who I had the honor of representing for many years, died last week at the age of 77.

Flip was a wonderful guy and a photojournalist with the soul of an artist. When the job called for it, as in his coverage of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement, he was a powerful witness to history. But when the opportunity presented itself he would use his imagination and resourcefulness to create situations out of which he could draw memorable images.

The best example is his famous image of Muhammed Ali training underwater which is perhaps the most successful image I ever represented as a gallerist. The story behind the image is as striking as the photograph itself. Schulke was introduced to Ali in 1960 and mentioned that he also did underwater photography. Hearing this Ali confided to Schulke that his secret training routine involved a strenuous underwater workout. The boxer would allow Schulke to photograph him if he could guarantee that the pictures would appear in LIFE. Schulke got the O.K., the session proceeded early the next week, and the pictures dutifully ran in the magazine. It was not until decades later that Ali confessed that it had all been an elaborate ruse on his part to get into the magazine. But with Ali’s flawless showmanship and Schulke’s artistry the picture is not only completely convincing but a great and iconic photograph.


Flip Schulke at home in Palm Beach. Photograph by Allen Eyestone.

Mrs. Gordon Cooper watches her husband pass overhead in Gemini 1. 1965.

Coretta King at the funeral of Martin Luther King. 1968.

Martin Luther King Jr. and his son Martin. 1965

Comfort and Joy

A year ago when I was a judge at the Hyeres Photo Festival, one of my fellow jurors was Simon Foxton – the Fashion Director of the magazine Fantastic Man. I'm sure that like many of you, this was not a magazine I was familiar with, although I particularly liked the name as it sounded like something you would make up if you were caricaturing a men’s fashion magazine! Anyway, when I finally saw Fantastic Man for the first time, somewhat to my surprise, it was a very good magazine – accessible, original, creative, fun - in spite of being as insidery as you can get.

I bought the current Spring/Summer issue because it featured a long interview with my friend and colleague, The Sartorialist. But the feature I liked best was a fashion story on wearing men’s pyjamas outside. I’ve always liked the idea and been impressed with Julian Schnabel’s predeliction for P.J.s (as opposed to Hugh Hefner’s). I think the basic rule is that P.J.s should look preppy and rumpled, not shiny and boudoiry! Anyway, the photographs by Daniel Riera, and the styling by Jodie Barnes are natural and unaffected and present a completely convincing case for how to mix comfort and style this summer!

Please feel free to send in your pictures of outdoor P.J. dressing. A bottle of good champagne will be sent to every entry published!

Weekend Video

It’s been a good month for Jersey boys. On Tuesday, the U.S. Postal Service released a new stamp featuring Frank Sinatra, one of the state’s favorite sons. The week before, Old Blue Eyes and Bruce Springsteen were among the first group inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.

Sadly it was not televised, but these days there’s always someone with a camera, so thanks to “Backstreets208” we see (or perhaps more accurately we hear) Bruce not only introducing Frank’s award, but then receiving his own (from Danny De Vito).

Covered

Photograph by Richard Avedon. Cover subject Steve McQueen. Design by Ruth Ansel. Bazaar 1962.

Once upon a time, covers were selected because of their graphic boldness and visual panache. Now they are chosen based on market research that tests the appeal of various stars and cover lines. Is today’s method really more effective or does all this testing just make up for a lack of imagination?

Take this 1962 Bazaar cover featuring Steve McQueen. You might get George Clooney today but you would never get the arm, which to me is what really makes the cover.

Truth and Beauty

Another day, another controversy involving Annie Leibovitz although she seems above reproach to me on this one. This time it’s the Dove “Campaign for Real Beauty” ads. To sum up, the women’s cosmetics company Dove has been running an ongoing multi-million dollar ad campaign decrying the unrealistic depiction of women being perpet-
uated by the beauty, fashion, and media industries and especially (as
in the video above) the rampant use of photoshop. The campaign has garnered prizes and been rightly lauded as a brilliant, empowering, and necessary corrective.

Then last week, in a fascinating 6000 word profile of industry leading retoucher Pascal Dangin in The New Yorker by Lauren Collins, was this passage:

"I mentioned the Dove ad campaign that proudly featured lumpier-than-usual 'real women' in their undergarments," Ms. Collins wrote. "It turned out that it was a Dangin job. 'Do you know how much retouching was on that?' he asked. 'But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone's skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.'"

Shortly after the piece hit the newsstands, the beauty cream hit the fan (so to speak). With denials, counter-denials, etc.. We have just begun to hear the beginning of this debate.

The New Yorker is standing by its story -- with one small correction. The publication acknowledged that one of the 6,308 words in the piece was inaccurate -- the word "undergarments." So while the story suggested that a Dove ad showing real women in "undergarments" was retouched by Mr. Dangin, the women in the ads he retouched were nude. These were the photographs shot by Annie Leibovitz, and as you can see from the images below, the Leibovitz images were pretty gutsy pictures. And all credit is due to Dangin for keeping the integrity of Leibovitz’s photographs.

Annie Leibovitz's photographs for Dove

An earlier campaign with photos of a more glamorous group of “real” women in underwear received a lot more publicity, but this was shot by the British photographer Rankin and I think people are getting the two campaigns confused. In any case, I am 100% sure both campaigns were retouched. It is simply inconceivable that any major ad campaign would appear today without some kind of digital help. The novelty in Rankin's photograph was more in the women's weight.

Rankin's photograph for Dove.

In a joint statement provided by Unilever, Annie Leibovitz, and Pascal Dangin all deny "substantially" altering images. Dove's "real beauties" were not airbrushed says the statement but their photos were treated to eliminate dust from the film and provide "color correction".

So what does this all mean? If anyone were ever to doubt that we are living in a digital age, this should be the final proof that this is not a conspiracy but a reality. Note the word “substantially” in the statement above. A photograph can never be assumed to represent reality, but nor has it ever – from the 19th century collages of Henry Peach Robinson to the artfully retouched glamour shots of the Hollywood stars of the 1930s.

Any photograph used in a magazine, a billboard, an album cover, whatever – can only be presumed to be a photo-based illustration. The issue, which Dove's well-intentioned campaign addressed, is the effect these illustrations have on the psyche, self-esteem, and well-being of women (in particular) not to mention the unrealistic view men might have of women. It brings to mind the shock the eminent Victorian art critic John Ruskin was said to have experienced upon discovering his wife’s pubic hair, after which he was unable to consummate the marriage. Annulment followed thereafter.

The hypocrisy that Dove is now being accused of is understandable but, let's face it, not of a Spitzerian magnitude. However, it is compounded by the fact that the product their ads were pushing were skin firming, cellulite reducing creams. So much for accepting "real" beauty! Perhaps we should just all agree that we are living in both the digital age and the age of hypocrisy.

The relationship between truth and beauty, reality and idealization, has always been fertile but tricky ground. That these “scandals” create attention and debate is not a bad thing.

Spirit Pictures

For those who have been following this blog from the beginning, you may remember a post about Katherine Wolkoff and her silhouette portraits. Katherine has made a practice of alternating between pictures of people and landscapes but what connects them is always the specific physicality of the person or place and the technical virtuosity of the prints.

Katherine’s latest series are photographs of deer beds, and they are both subtle and stunning. (Deer sleep in beds of deep vegetation they press down with their bodies in order to hide from predators. They never lay down in the same bed twice, but the imprints can remain for several days.) What we see in the photographs are swirls of trampled grass, wild flowers, and a shadow outlining the hidden impression of the deer’s body. What we feel is the animal’s spirit, if not something deeper.

I spoke to Katherine for some background on the pictures and she explained that she had made the work on Block Island, following deer trails in the fields until she found the beds. It was an incredibly emotional experience. She chose to make the prints 40 by 50 inches - close to life size - so that the viewer can enter the space more easily and ponder the connection between what is there and what is not.

A number of the photographs can be seen for the first time in the Chisel exhibit curated by Kathy Ryan - part of the forthcoming New York Photo Festival which opens tomorrow.

Masked

It never ceases to amaze me how certain themes miraculously present themselves. Last week this card (above) arrived from Phillips auction house promoting their upcoming London sale, followed the next day by the catalog itself. The day after I was browsing in Rizzoli's bookstore and two different books on display presented photographs of masked women. They were both striking pictures so I snapped them on my iPhone and filed them in the back of my mind. This weekend I was in the gallery organizing j-pegs of some of the pictures in my collection and noticed that there were two mask pictures - an Arbus and an Elliott Erwitt. Finally I was looking up Adam Fuss on Artnet and discovered an entire series he had done on masks that I had never seen before!

If you were to ask me what my least favorite subjects for photographs are, I would say without hesitation: clowns and mimes. So you would think masks would be next in line, but there's something different and intriguing about masks - the play of concealment and revelation, the graphic boldness of the shape, the power they bestow on the wearer. The depiction and use of masks goes back as far as the cave paintings of Lascaux so there's something inherent in the human character that compels us to use masks. The making of elaborate masks was a vital part of Greek, Roman, African, Japanese and Chinese culture. Not so surprisingly, in America masks seems to have more sporting than cultural associations. Think catcher's mask, goalie mask, football helmets, etc.. I can't think of another country whose sports need more protection. The Canadian artist Brian Jungen made an enormous art world splash a few years ago with masks made entirely out of reconstituted Nike Air Jordans, tying together a critique of consumerism and the co-opting of native culture with the creation of compelling and original new works.

To finish off this mask round-up, I Just saw Iron Man which was as good as I hoped it would be and the metallic armor and mask the Robert Downey character creates is probably the best made superhero outfit ever. (Subject for debate?) In addition I pulled out a few of my other favorite mask pictures.

Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinez Matoodhin from The Phillips catalog

Peter Lindbergh

Albert Watson

Irving Penn

Diane Arbus

Robert Capa

Elliott Erwitt. Candice Bergen at Truman Capote's Black and White Ball.

E.J. Bellocq

An Adam Fuss photogram

Brian Jungen

Ironman

P.S.

A few hours after posting this mask story, I received the following comment:

While I agree that the image is powerful and beautiful; and I appreciate your discussion on masks and its socio-cultural context. There is an additional angle an image like this brings up - that is the "black face" of minstrels in America of not too long passed. This is just another context for this image, not a critique. To think about image is to understand it many meanings in a multicultural world.

I think the writer makes an extremely valid point and my only response was to agree, and also to point out that because of the hair and make-up etc., I saw the image only as a fashion update of the baroque use of masks in balls, opera, commedia, etc., similar to the styling of the masked ball scene in Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette". (See below.) The important lesson to me, though, is never to underestimate the different ways in which an image can be interpreted and to make clear no offense was intended.

Sofia Coppola. Kirsten Dunst in "Marie Antoinette"

Weekend Video - The Raveonettes

The Raveonettes are a Danish rock duo whose music is characterized
by two-part vocal harmonies inspired by early American pop coupled with hard-edged, distortion overlaid, electric guitar. Their songs juxtapose the structural simplicity of 50s and 60s rock with an intense blown-out sound, driving beats, and dark lyrical content similar to The Velvet Underground. "We are not scared of being blunt about what the references are in our music," says vocalist Sharin Foo. "For instance, if you look at our name, The Raveonettes, it's a complete direct reference to The Ronettes and Buddy Holly Rave On!" They’ve even had Ronnie Spector (lead singer of the Ronettes) guest on one of their recent albums.

I first heard their music on WFUV's "World Café" two nights ago and was mesmerized by the song “The Beat Dies” based on Angelo Badalamenti’s theme music for the t.v. mini-series Twin Peaks. For anyone who remembers that show and the music, this song connects straight to the subconscious. (On the radio Foo decribed it as burlesque meets rock and you can hear the bump and grind drum beat at the opening of the song.)

The sound quality is pretty bad on all the video clips available, in fact almost unlistenable, so this is more of a trailer to encourage you to go to iTunes and download the song, although be warned - the sound is somewhat murky on the album too. But I do really like the song and the color and unintentional verité feel of the film. I think the image that illustrates the clip (above) is pretty cool too - and even cooler for being randomly generated by YouTube.

Also below, a short clip of Sune Wagner and Sharin Foo talking about the song.

More Freedom

Catherine Burks

Many thanks to those who e-mailed with additional information on the Freedom Riders pictures. As Eric Etheridge pointed out in his e-mail, “I think the Mississippi Freedom Rider mugshots are a great addition to the Civil Rights visual record, especially given their provenance (they were collected and filed by the state agency dedicated to thwarting the Civil Rights movement.)”

And thanks to Frank Ezelle for providing the correct link (it’s hard to find) to where the The Mississippi Department of Archives and History keeps the full visual record of these mugshots.

I have made another selection of some of the pictures I felt were the most interesting as I can't keep from feeling what a beautiful portrait of America they make!

Finally, for those interested in attending the book launch for Eric Etheridge’s book Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders, it will be at the Steven Kasher Gallery at 521 West 23rd Street, New York City. Wednesday, May 21. 6 – 8 pm.

Stokely Carmichael

C.T. Vivian

Jane Rosett

Jean Thompson

Charles Myers

Clarence White

Gwendolyn Green

Joan Trumpower

Mark Lane

Geraldine Edwards

Albert Lassiter

Jorgia Siegel

Reverend Grant Harland

Rita Carter

Jessie James Davis

John Lowry

Karen Kytle

Leo Blue

Alluring Images

Lisa Kereszy

From cherry blossoms to civil rights mugshots to photographs of the female figure. I know it’s sometimes a leap, but that’s what this blog was always intended to be – an appreciation of the kaleidoscopic breadth of photography that I am lucky to engage with in my daily life.

The pictures above and below are from a benefit auction I helped ALLURE Magazine curate, all proceeds of which go to fund skin cancer research. Nadine McCarthy, ALLURE’s Director of Photography worked with me on their end. The theme, based on the magazine’s May issue, is “Alluring Bodies”. The auction takes place tonight.

Above and below are a number of my favorites from the 60 pictures being auctioned. And no, I do not think these pictures objectify women in an inappropriate way. And yes, that is Carla Bruni, the first lady of France, at the end. (Last month the first nude picture of her to come up at auction since she married President Sarkozy sold at Christies for over $90,000 to a Chinese collector! And once the picture began to garner an undue amount of publicity the seller gave the entire proceeds to charity.)

Lillian Bassman

Michael Dweck

Flor Garduno

Susan Meiselas

Fernand Fonssagrives

Juergen Teller

Jeff Hornbaker

Craig McDean

A unique collaboration by Edward Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith

Annie Leibovitz

Regan Cameron

Pamela Hanson

Freedom Riders

Fred Clark

We are so used to seeing mugshots of intoxicated celebrities it’s easy to forget that this type of picture can have a more serious police purpose – or as is the case in the pictures above and below – can be a visual record not of justice served but of massive injustice.

These mugshots were taken of the Freedom Riders arrested by the local police in Jackson, Mississippi, in the summer of 1961. The men and women pictured had boarded buses in Washington and were heading through the deep South to challenge states who were upholding Jim Crow laws and flouting the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision prohibiting segregation on public transport. They were met by violence at almost every stop and after one of the buses was firebombed outside of Alliston, Alabama, CORE leadership wanted to call off the rides. However, an undaunted (and integrated) group of protesters continued to Mississippi where they were arrested and jailed. Far from being intimidated, their example encouraged even more civil rights workers to head south, and before long Jackson’s jails were bursting.

While it would take considerably longer for the situation to improve even slightly, if you want to see what dignity and courage look like – these pictures say it all. You can only be awed by the courage displayed by people who had every right to fear that their lives were in danger, but whose moral certitude allowed them to stare down a police photo- grapher, hold their head up, and in the case of Helen Singleton even allow a knowing smile to cross her face. (She just knew that history would prove her right.)

Celebrating these heroes, the photographer Eric Etheridge has just published a remarkable book Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders, in which he tracked down over 70 of the former Freedom Riders, took their portraits and recorded their stories. His contemporary portraits appear alongside many of the original mugshots, and as you can see in the very last picture, Helen Singleton has lost none of her twinkle!

Helen Singleton

Robert Singleton

Richard Steward

Helen Singleton by Eric Etheridge

Thinking Pink

Here's a promise: this will be the last post on cherry blossoms for at least a year! However, biking through Central Park this weekend with camera in pocket, this tree was hard to resist. To me the most resonant moment of the cherry blossom cycle is when the petals fall and the grass is carpeted in pink before the petals start to turn brown. I was initially the only person photographing here, but as the picture shows, within minutes it became a hot location and I realized that pictures of people taking pictures of other people underneath the cherry blossoms was a lot more interesting than the blossoms themselves. It helps to click and see this picture in a larger size, but I love the matched pair posing demurely in the middle with their faces obscured and the guy on his back behind them. However, I'm well aware that this is more of a "snap" than a "photograph" in the artistic sense of the word.

To see what I mean by this, you just have to go to Tod Papageorge's recently published book. Passing Through Eden, a collection of pictures he took in Central Park from the 1970s to the 1990s. It's a book that is at once documentary, sensuous, and allegorical. Revelatory both because Papageorge who heads Yale's graduate photo program has been famously absent from the exhibition world and because the pictures are so good. As well as being decisively and artfully composed every one of Papageorge's photographs hint at more complex narratives underneath and all have a certain psychological intensity and edge.

Papageorge has said, “One of my attractions to photography was that I felt it was much closer to writing and literature than any other visual art.” which helps explain why he stuck to black and white photography while his peers made the move into color. More importantly, like writing, his work seems to be where the outside world and the inner voice meet and even the most random moments are brought together into some kind of highly personal order.

From Passing Through Eden:

P.S.
After looking at all these Tod Papageorge pictures, would my picture be improved by a tighter crop?

Weekend Video - Dylan Tribute

I’ve been holding on to this video for a while not quite sure what to do with it. It’s a tribute clip to the Dylan song “Make You Feel My Love” from SoniaGS of Spain, who's posted 115 videos over the last year, mostly Dylan tributes. You have to admire that kind of devotion! Other than the song, which I love, I just like the combination of homey film-making mixed with a drifting Bruce Weber-y camera quality. A lazy kind of pre-summer video for a grey weekend.

A Short History of Subway Pictures

I’m always trying to figure out exactly how to best use flickr. I know there are untold photographic riches to be mined – but how exactly to extract them?

I was recently sent a link to a series of photographs of sleeping Japanese commuters which inspired me to look up what other pictures there were on the subject, and - BAM! – a little treasure trove that’s funny, and interesting, and illustrates the vast cultural differences in the world.

These pictures got me thinking about subway pictures in general and I figured I would post an incredibly brief history of the genre, starting with Walker Evans’ famous series taken in the late 1930s. In this groundbreaking work, shot surreptitiously with a 35mm lens poking through his buttonhole, Evans aimed to break free of the artifice of conventional studio portraiture and went on to create one of the most important and influential series in American photography. It took twenty years for the pictures to be published, but the series became a seminal point in the medium. "It was" he said, "my idea of what a portrait ought to be: anonymous and documentary and a straight-
forward picture of mankind."

This definition and a reliance on the hidden camera became both a mantra and a direct template for Harry Callahan’s “Women Lost in Thought” and P.L. DiCorcia’s “Heads” – two of my favorite bodies of work which while they happen to be taken on the street are really "subway" pictures in the Evans tradition.

In between Callahan and DiCorcia, there was a true return to the subway, Bruce Davidson’s 1980 “Subway” with its adventurous blend of Color photography (with a capital C) and photojournalism. Four bodies of work – four totally distinct visions. (And to prove that everyone is influenced by someone, Evans was specifically inspired by Honoré Daumier's “Third-Class Carriage” of 1863 - a painting he saw at the Met.) Now build on that!

Two of Walker Evans' photographs.

Three Harry Callahans.

Two P.L. DiCorcias.

Four Bruce Davidsons.

Honore Daumier.