The Happiness Report - Part 1

As good as many of the pictures are that have been sent in, I've been equally interested in people's explanation of their choices. So here are a few of my favorites for now, along with what the contributors have written.

Above from Janice McLean of Ontario:

For me, it's a book. Whenever I even spy the spine of Phillipe Halsman's Jump Book in my bookcase, a wave of happiness washes over me. Love the concept, love the subjects, love the photographer.

From Joseph Holmes:

As soon as I read your description of the project, one image jumped immediately to mind. I took this photo of my daughter Sophia on our family's trip to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico two years ago, and it brings such warmth to my heart that I framed a large print and gave it to my wife as a gift.

Sophia was a joyful child right from birth, and here she was in our hotel room in San Miguel jumping from one bed to the other and then to the window, back and forth over and over again. Which might be typical for a 6- or 7-year-old, but is certainly unusual in a 13-year-old. Her joy radiates out of that photo so strongly that I feel it every time I look at the picture. Which is often.

From Julia Wideman:

This is a portrait I snapped of three friends while I was dressed up as Andy Warhol this past Halloween.

It is particularly happy for me because it represents all the fun (and comedy) that is this holiday in New York City. We've got a child's cartoon character, a hot dog, and a vampire all in one frame. It is also special because it represents the surprises that occur when shooting film. The surprise here was that I caught them just at that exact moment of laughter and it made the image much more meaningful.

From Ula Rakusova:

Find attached a photo of our dog I took a couple of weeks ago. After read your blog post, I thought of her; the slight smile (she really can raise the corners of her mouth and smile) and the pink nose make my day and epress her happiness. I didn't caption the photo, but I just call it 'The Pink Nose'.
Best regards from Europe,
Ula
PS. The dog's name is Arisu.

From Dave Woody:

An image by Garry Winogrand always makes me think of the William Blake line... "Exuberance is Beauty".

And from Cherie Bender who coincidentally had photographed Twinka at about the same time as Cynthia MacAdams (who I just wrote about) :

I met Twinka while in California and photographed her in Yosemite. It was such a happy and free time and I also met Imogene Cunningham; this slide captures the sunlight and fragility of the moment... I had some great shots in black and white film which was stolen along with all of my photo equipment from my bungalow while I visited with the Ansel Adams family. They very kindly let me stay in their house after that in Yosemite because I was so young and scared!

********************************************************************

I also e-mailed a few colleagues in the photo world this request:

I posted an item on my blog about photographs depicting happiness and it started me thinking - when did the two become conjoined? Obviously there was little smiling in early photography because of the technical limitations. But was it faster shutter speeds or social factors that made capturing happiness such a part of photography?

What do you think about photographic depictions of happiness?

Would you mind sharing your thoughts?

From Paul Fusco:

The first thing that came to mind was the Kodak Brownie camera. I guess it was the first point and shoot. When I was a kid many families had them. Extremely simple and limited and used mostly to gather pretty ordinary things about daily life and things families did together. I remember lots of photos prefaced by "Okay, everybody look here and smile". Click. The photos were almost always for the family, to show and remember what we did. Maybe the semi formality and the permanence of the snapshot made us feel we had to be nice and friendly and happy.

From Martin Parr:

Not much to say on this, but delighted you are putting on V Sassen. I think she is great and am showing her at the Brighton Photo Biennnial.

Will drop in in March to see it.

From Peter Galassi, Chief Curator, Department of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art:

Well, you could say photo is pretty well linked to misery, too. But like so many other aspects of what we think of as essential to the medium, the dry plate is probably the culprit: it slashed exposure times + put a camera in the hands of everyone

From Jeff Rosenheim, Curator, Department of Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art:

Here's what initiallly comes to mind about the shutter speed/social factors issue:

In our Southworth & Hawes collection, there are numerous full-plate daguerreotype portraits depicting men and women seemingly happy and somewhat smiling. You can see them all on line through our web feature on the collection. The firm did make great advances increasing the sensitivity of the plates, thus reducing the exposure time. Please note, however, this is not a matter of shutter speed, but "effective" film speed. Of course, daguerreotypes are not exactly film, but you know what I mean.

The social factors influence is quite complicated to analyze and I will need several years to cogitate on the matter. I'd look at Leonardo's Mona Lisa as a starting point to any discussing of smiling in art.

From Philip Gefter, Writer.

You're right in terms of the technical limitations that prevented authentic, immediate or spontaneous smiling since exposures were so long. My first thought, though, is that Julia Margaret Cameron tried to "represent" happiness in her beatific portraits. Then Lartigue showed it in his lyrical pictures of his upper-class family and friends enjoying moments of leisure activity. All to say that the smile alone is not the only visual indication of happiness; mood, gesture, attitude, and activity seem to contribute to the idea. My two cents off the top of my head.

Weekend Video

It was fun to turn on the t.v. and find a pop video that makes so many references to contemporary art. See how many you can count.

From my iPhone

Harry Benson at his opening at Tomas Maier in Miami.

I'll be the first to admit that the quality of iPhone pictures is at best passable, but this is far outweighed by the convenience of always having a camera with you. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to capture my old friend Harry Benson at his recent Miami opening at Tomas Maier's Miami store.

For those not in the know, Tomas Maier is the photography-loving creative director of Bottega Veneta - and rightfully considered one of the best designers around. In addition to overseeing B.V., Maier produces his own limited line of vacation-y accessories which he shows in the coolest shops you've seen - a shack off the Montauk Highway, a 2nd floor walk up hidden off Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, and a two story building in Miami's design district where he mixes up photography, art books, accessories by people he admires, and his own designs.

Anyway, Maier and Benson became friendly resulting in the Miami show of some of Harry's classic black and whites. Interestingly in light of the previous post on happiness - unlike most photojournalists Benson's pictures tend to record the light rather than the dark side of life as you will see in the selection below. For those lucky enough to be anywhere near Miami the show is up through March 1.

Muhammed Ali

James Brown and friends.

Mia Farrow and Frank Sinatra at Truman Capote's Black and White ball.

Dolly Parton

A few other recent iPhone snaps illustrating the difference between New York and Florida

Palm Beach

New York

Palm Beach humor.

New York humor.

The Happiness Project

Happiness is in the air! My wife, Lucy Danziger, who is the editor of SELF Magazine has written a book "The Nine Rooms of Happiness" along with SELF's mental health expert Dr. Catherine Birndorf. The book is officially published next Tuesday, but you can now order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, etc.. Having lived with the genesis, the writing, the editing, and the book party, I can personally attest to it's efficacy and encourage all of you to buy the book. (It's genuinely great.)

It also occurred to me that this would be a good time to launch The Year In Pictures own happiness project - so I am going to encourage all readers to send in their happiest picture to info@danzigerprojects.com along with a caption explaining why the picture is meaningful to them. It can be a snap or a fine art photograph taken by someone else. (Could there be any happier photographer than Lartigue - whose pictures illustrate this post?) Show me what you've got. All published pictures will get a copy of "The Nine Rooms of Happiness".

: )

Lartigue and Richard Avedon

Don't Miss This Show - Cynthia MacAdams at Steven Kasher.

Woman with Mask. 1974

Gallerist Steven Kasher and I were both lunching solo at The Half King and joined up for the usual engaging chat that dealers tend to have with each other. I then walked back to his gallery on 23rd street where I was lucky enough to catch the Cynthia MacAdams show in its last week. It's good to get out of the office sometimes.

This was the first I had heard or seen of MacAdams, but there’s no question that she deserves to be more recognized. In the mid to late 1970s she was apparently the house photographer (so to speak) of the feminist movement, not only photographing the leading women artists, activists, and intellectuals of the time, but doing so from a specifically feminist point of view. Her subjects were portrayed as strong, independent, and self-assured and MacAdams style was refreshingly direct. It's hard to pinpoint exactly but the pictures do have a feminist spirit. Perhaps it's because with photography as with much else in life what you put in does come out.

Anyway, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves, but if you live in New York City and you hurry, you can catch the show as it’s up through Saturday.

Kate Millet.

Mary Ellen Mark

Michele Phillips

Laurie Anderson

Gloria Steinem

Twinka

Sally Kirkland

Stormy Weather

Scott Schuman (The Sartorialist) has always been good at catching weather shots, but he outdid himself this week with the snowy picture, above, which as of this writing had garnered 333 comments on his site!

So kudos to Scott for bravery beyond the call of duty during Fashion Week! And a couple of shots from seasons past, below.

On The Road Again

I'm on the road getting a first look at The Norton Museum's exhibition of Paul Fusco's "RFK Funeral Train" pictures and then moving on to do some business in Miami, so forgive me if there's a slight hiatus in posting.

As regular readers of this blog know, I never tire of these Fusco pictures and in addition to the set of 20 I originally published, the Norton requested some extra prints to help fill the space it was going in, so I had the pleasure of selecting 6 additional images to add to the set. The Norton layout is sensitive and stately, and with the pictures positioned close together like railroad cars it's also quite dynamic - as you can hopefully see from the iPhone shot below. So if you're anywhere near Palm Beach (and I know that sounds la-de-dah), be sure to catch the show which runs through May 2.

Viviane Sassen

DNA

Last month, I mentioned how much I was looking forward to the Dutch photographer Viviane Sassen’s forthcoming show at my gallery. In the cycle of gallery life, we’ve now posted the press release, uploaded the pictures on the gallery website, designed the invitation card, and the prints are at the framer’s. So now it’s time for my blog preview.

I met Viviane Sassen when we were fellow judges at the 2007 Hyeres Photo Festival, but as sometimes happens on these large panels, we barely got to know each other. I lost track of her for a while and then in November of 2008, a show of new work she had done in Africa opened at FOAM (Photo Museum of Amsterdam). A kind of collaborative portrait, these pictures were on one level connected to Sassen’s childhood experience of living in Kenya, and on another level dealt with everything from photography’s depiction of race to an exploration of color, light, and shade. But most importantly these pictures were stunningly alive and they blew my mind for their freshness, power, and complexity. I was also not alone in my appreciation. Sassen’s photographs won the prestigious Prix De Rome and were snapped up by museums and collectors all across Europe.

Then last year Sassen published a book of her African work titled “Flamboya” and after getting the book I immediately e-mailed her to offer her a show. I then had to go through the nail-biting process of persuasion and waiting for her to decide whether to do the show with me. (It’s certainly not always a given.) However, after flying to Paris to meet with her this past fall, we agreed to do a show that will now open on March 4. So mark your calendars – it’s going to be a hot night!

In addition to the pictures above and below, you can see more here and here, and read a little more here.

Entebbe

CMYK

Elvis

Traveler

Valentine Weekend Video - Part 2 of 2

Who has the number one album on the Billboard 200? You’re forgiven if you don’t know the answer. It’s “Need You Now” by the country trio Lady Antebellum. I’ve always been a big country music fan, but somehow Lady A. escaped me until this year’s Grammy Awards where they won Best New Artist and performed the album’s title song with its memorable refrain:

It's a quarter after one, I'm all alone and I need you now

I said I wouldn't call but I'm a little drunk and I need you now

And I don't know how I can do without

I just need you now.

I’m puttin’ it on up there with my two other country favorites, “If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me” (by The Bellamy Brothers) and “If You Ever Leave Me I’m Going With You.”

Good ol’ country lyrics and the stuff of real-life romance.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Valentine Weekend Video - Part 1 of 2

I've been saving this for Valentine's weekend. It's the final scene of "Cinema Paradiso" when Salvatore, the protagonist and childhood assistant of the projectionist Alfredo, screens the reel that Alfredo had left for him - and finds a veritable history of cinema in censored clips. Set to Ennio Morricone's romantic score, it's a bittersweet valentine to love and an unconditional valentine to cinema.

FYI - If you haven't seen the film, I would strongly recommend the extended Director's Cut, over the original version.

Random Shots From All Over

This photograph by Sean Doerr, used by the New York Times to illustrate the decline of Detroit, shows the once glamorous Michigan Theater, now used as parking garage.

This picture from TMZ.com purports to show a young John Kennedy on a wild cruise. It's a fun pic, but it sure looks fake to me.

From The New York Public Library's current show on Eugene Smith - one of a series of pictures shot from Smith's New York apartment.

And leading off our street fashion round-up - a golden glow from Garance Dore in Brazil

One of The Sartorialist's favorite subjects, Lapo Elkann. You either love or hate his style, but I think it's pretty cool.

A sassy moment (and costume) in Paris caught by Tommy Ton.

And lastly, from a series of pictures by Aaron Gustafson shot with a large format helmet-camera while freefalling from over 10,000 feet!

Corinne Bailey Rae

Just over three years ago, Corinne Bailey Rae breezed onto the scene with catchy singles like "Put Your Records On" and “Like a Star” - another blast of fresh air coming from the English music scene.

Not long after her initial success, however, Rae’s husband – a jazz musician and a recovering addict - died of a methadone overdose, and Rae’s follow up to her eponymous debut went on hold. Now two years later, Rae’s second album – titled “The Sea” has just come out.

Not surprisingly, it’s a deeper, less bouncy sound, and it takes some repeated listening to get fully into it, but the experience is worth the minor effort and the record is more moving than mournful. The title track, “The Sea”, particularly stands out for me. According to what I’ve read it was written before Rae’s husband’s death and is as much a song about recovery as loss.

There isn’t a video for it yet, so I’m thankful to "kdc21" for recording this performance at New York’s Hiro Ballroom. While the camera work could best be described as “impressionistic", the sound is pretty good. And if you don't know what she looks like, here she is in a recent picture:

Tasteless (but funny)!

I wouldn't call this tasteful, but it's so well done and so inside art that when critic Charlie Finch passed it on to me, I felt it was worth sharing.

For those not in the loop, this parody deals with the surprising news last month that in a move masterminded by L. A. philanthropist Eli Broad, Jeffrey Deitch, the flamboyant super-trendy New York dealer, had been appointed as the new director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and was closing his galleries. Many candidates fort he job were disappointed ....

Risky Business

Emily Cook, freestyle skiier. Sweater by Rodarte.

As readers of this blog will know, I'm a big fan of photographer Ryan McGinley and New York Times Magazine Director of Photography, Kathy Ryan. And I'm pleased to say - they've done it again! After creating a hugely successful Summer Olympics portfolio in 2004, they've just produced a brand new Winter Olympics portfolio on the theme of "Highfliers".

I won't steal the magazine's thunder by nabbing their pictures so here's a link. And by the way, in my opinion, this kind of collaboration, with no absolute guarantee of success, is one of the few things that can keep that business vital and alive. Be smart. Be creative. Take risks!

Gender Bender

In a recent study by Richard Russell of Harvard University, the two faces above were perceived as male and female. However, both faces are actually versions of the same androgynous face. One face was created by increasing the contrast of the face, while the other face was created by decreasing the contrast. The face with more contrast is perceived as female, while the face with less contrast is perceived as male.

I'm not sure that this proves much more than that pale skin and darker lips are usually interpreted as more feminine, but perhaps it also provides a useful printing (or make-up) tip, and a reminder that our visual perception is extraordinarily subtle.

24/7

A while ago I was looking to see what cool iPhone apps there were for the phone’s camera when I landed on the site TechCrunch and a story on Japan’s 32 best iPhone apps. Most of the apps were games (which are of no particular interest to me), but one app appealed to me because of its blend of photography and what seemed a perfect instance of form following function in the most populist (pandering) way. This is Bijin-Tokei - a clock app which shows 1,440 different pictures of girls (one for every minute of the day) each holding a blackboard showing the current time. (Bijin Tokei means Hot Girl Clock.) To be exact, you often get the same girl displaying several different minutes. Apparently finding 1,440 willing models was too tough for v.1..

This seemed like such a simple formula for any kind of photography – I imagine if you’re a birder or a train spotter the thought of a different picture every minute of the day would cause equal excitement - I immediately recommended the idea to the photographer Stephen Schuster who has been working on a spring break project. We'll see if he takes my advice and gets rich!

As of yet there doesn’t seem to be an American version, but according to Asiajin: The Next Generation Internet Trends in Japan and Asia, there is now Binan Tokei – beautiful boys clock, Gal Tokei, Pit Babe version, a Korean version, and a planned French version.

Not surprisingly the latest Tokei, AV-Tokei, features slightly different girls, i.e. pornstars. (“AV” is an abbreviation of “Adaruto Bideo/Adult Video).

Lady and Gentleman photographers of all stripes: start your engines!

Friends

William Eggleston and Charlotte Rampling for Marc Jacobs. Photo Juergen Teller

It's always fun to hear what one photographer thinks about another, and rare when the affection is as palpable as that between Juergen Teller and William Eggleston. From the current British VOGUE, Teller writes amusingly and articulately about their friendship:

I first encountered William Eggleston’s photographs in my early twenties. I was very intrigued, and I liked them immediately, but I wasn’t quite sure what they were all about. Still, they sucked me in and stayed with me. Then, six years ago, an American magazine asked me if I wanted to photograph him. I didn’t think twice about saying yes, because, by then, he’d become a real master to me. I sent my books to him before heading to Memphis (where he lives), so he could see I wasn’t just another idiot coming to shoot him.

William’s son Winston picked me up from my hotel and drove me to the Eggleston Artistic Trust building. But William was nowhere to be seen. We were in the archive room for ages before I asked him, “Where’s your dad?” I went outside for a cigarette and William was sitting on the steps up to the archive room, a glass of water by his side, chain-smoking. We greeted each other and sat there smoking for about an hour. Then, nervously, I said, “This is perfect. Let’s do the picture here. Don’t move.” He nodded and I began. I think he liked me from the start, and he invited me to his house that evening. William’s a keen musician and he played Bach on the piano until 4am.

I was due to fly out the next day, but William didn’t want me to leave. He even came in the taxi with me to the airport. “Juergen,” he said, “do you want to go on a road trip in Bavaria?” What could I say? “Of course!” I didn’t think it was going to happen; we were so drunk.

Three weeks later, I flew to Bavaria to meet him. It was three days of total madness. We brought our cameras, but neither of us took a single photograph. We found a hotel where, again, there was a piano, and we stayed up until 3am every morning, playing music, talking, doing nothing really. William is good at just being; that’s something I learnt from him.

Not long after that, I was talking to Marc Jacobs about who we were going to use as a model for his menswear campaign that year. I suggested William. It’s well known he’s a very stylish man, and I knew Marc loved his photography. Still, it took me two days to build up the courage to ask William. “Juergen,” he replied, “I’d do anything for you. When are we going to do it?”

William had been photographing Paris intermittently over the past three years, and he had seen Louis XV (the book I’d worked on with Charlotte Rampling, shot in the Hôtel de Crillon). We shot the Marc Jacobs campaign in the same hotel room. It took hours to get William dressed; it was 10.30pm before he was ready. Suddenly, he said, “I want to meet Charlotte Rampling. Maybe we could do Louis XVI?” I sighed, but called her anyway. “Do you recall me telling you about William Eggleston? He wants you to come over and have a drink.” She replied, “Give me half an hour.”

When Charlotte arrived, William became shy, like a little mouse in the corner. I wanted them both in the pictures, so they ended up – dressed – in bed together. They got on so well, I started to feel a bit jealous – that’s William’s power. He’s unbelievably charismatic and can charm people to do whatever he wants.

The following day, we were sitting on a bench under the Eiffel Tower. We had the same model of camera, with the same lens, slung around our necks. I glanced behind me and saw an orange recycling bag with a red Coca-Cola can in the bottom. “Look,” I said, “that’s an Eggleston picture.” “Sure is,” said William, and we both turned to take the picture. He took one snap, I took five shots – all the time thinking, “I’m going to have an Eggleston picture!” Of course, mine didn’t work, but William’s ended up on the wall of his show at the Fondation Cartier.

He has a different way of seeing, of looking – it’s completely unforced. And he never gives a damn whether a picture comes out or not. I’ve never met a freer man; the sense of freedom he has in his every thought, decision and movement is extraordinary. His images give me hope; they capture the comedy and tragedy of life. He could never do what I do, I could never do what he does, but we respect each other’s work. As he once said to me, “Juergen, we have some things in common: smoking, drinking, and women. Photography just gets us out of the house.”

Juergen Teller and his son Ed.

Feet First!

There's a strange serendipity to the way pictures pop up. I was having a conversation with Beth Rudin DeWoody - art collector, curator, board member extraordinaire - about pictures of feet and two hours later this popped up in my inbox! It's an image illustrating the announcement for a play that Carole Anderson, a Parisian friend of mine is directing. The photographer is Aurélie Fernando. I don't know much more than that, but I do like the photograph!