Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
What To Do? 2004 - 2009
101. Sewallcrest Park, Portland, 2005
102. Broadway and Burnside, Portland, 2009(WTD? is a weekly installment of old unseen b/w photos)
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Answers 0627 - 2009
The answers to Tuesday's drawing quiz:
1.
Parade, Hoboken, 1955, Robert Frank
2.
Varnisher, 1932, August Sander
3.
Lodgers in a Crowded Bayard St. Tenement - 5 Cents a Spot, 1889
Jacob Riis
4.
Self Portrait as a Drowned Man, 1840, Hippolyte Bayard
5.
Topless Dancer in Her Dressing Room, 1968, Diane Arbus
6.
Boulevard du Temple, Paris, 1838, Louis Jacque Mande Daguerre
7.
Art Institute of Chicago, 1990, Thomas Struth
8.
Wet 'n' Wild Aquatic Theme Park, 1980, Joel Sternfeld
9.
Execution of Lincoln Assassination Conspirators, 1865
Alexander Gardner
10.
Normandy, 1944, Robert Capa
11.
John Calhoun, daguerrotype, c. 1855, Mathew Brady
12.
Untitled Film Still #48, 1979, Cindy Sherman
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Jacob Riis
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Alexander Gardner
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Friday, June 26, 2009
Iran 1979 - 2009
As the disputed Iranian election begins to recede to the back pages it's still hard to judge the long term fallout. One aspect of the protests that separates it from past Iranian uprisings is the citizen technology used to cover events. Cellphone cameras, email, and blogs in Iran have been used to circulate information outside official channels.
Iran, 1979, Marc Riboud
Iran, 2009, Mohammad Kheirkhah/UPI
But the breakthrough technology seems to be Twitter. In what may be the first constructive application of Tweets, Iranian protesters have used Twitter to communicate between each other and with the outside world. It's instant. It's underground. It's decentralized. For authorities trying to control information, it's a nightmare.
During the 1979 hostage crisis there was no Twitter. In order for Gilles Peress to communicate from inside Iran with Magnum in Paris, he used low-tech telexes. As Mason Resnick and others have commented, the style and syntax of Peress' Telexes are remarkably similar to Tweets: Short and to the point with condensed words and proto-emoticons. For example:
Peress' telexes were eventually published with his photos in Telex Iran. This landmark book contains a slew of impossible shots, one after the other. A master of angles and shadows, Peress is one of those rare shooters who somehow intuits exactly how to divide the frame but also knows when not to. Telex Iran depicts a nation in crisis but it goes well beyond that. Many of the photos are of everyday life: Taxi cabs, markets, street crossings, etc. The end result lands somewhere between Klein, Nachtwey, and Twitter.
Unfortunately the last printing was more than a decade ago and now Telex Iran has been allowed once again to become a precious collector's item. Maybe recent events will spur a reprinting? Doubt it. Anyway, if you have a copy now might be the time to pull it from the shelf and re-familiarize yourself. If you don't have the book, web versions of all the photos can be found on Magnum's site.
Sample spread, pgs. 22-23 from Telex Iran
Demonstration in favor of the leading opposition figure Ayatollah Kazem Shariatmadari, Tabriz, Iran, 1980, Gilles Peress
Ghost ride at an amusement park, Tehran, Iran, 1979, Gilles Peress
Bazaar, seen from a taxi, Tabriz, Iran, 1979. Gilles Peress
A sign in front of the US Embassy, Tehran, Iran, 1979. Gilles Peress
But the breakthrough technology seems to be Twitter. In what may be the first constructive application of Tweets, Iranian protesters have used Twitter to communicate between each other and with the outside world. It's instant. It's underground. It's decentralized. For authorities trying to control information, it's a nightmare.
During the 1979 hostage crisis there was no Twitter. In order for Gilles Peress to communicate from inside Iran with Magnum in Paris, he used low-tech telexes. As Mason Resnick and others have commented, the style and syntax of Peress' Telexes are remarkably similar to Tweets: Short and to the point with condensed words and proto-emoticons. For example:
MAGNUM PARIS OU EST GILLESS?????? MINUTE####### DON'T KNOW+++++ OK BIBI
PRO DOMINIQUE
NOTHING HAPPENING. AM TIRED. OUT OF MONEY. TWO CAMERAS WENT DEAD IN BEHESHIEZARA CEMETERY. WILL PROBABLY RETURN MONDAY PLANE PLS ADVISE IF ANY PROBLEMS LOVE GILLES
PRO GILLES PERESS
***************URGENT
IMPOSSIBLE YOU LEAVE. RUMOR HOSTAGE WILL BE FREED NEXT THURSDAY ALSO LIFE INTERESTED...PLS STICK IT OUT
BISES DOMINIQUE
Peress' telexes were eventually published with his photos in Telex Iran. This landmark book contains a slew of impossible shots, one after the other. A master of angles and shadows, Peress is one of those rare shooters who somehow intuits exactly how to divide the frame but also knows when not to. Telex Iran depicts a nation in crisis but it goes well beyond that. Many of the photos are of everyday life: Taxi cabs, markets, street crossings, etc. The end result lands somewhere between Klein, Nachtwey, and Twitter.Unfortunately the last printing was more than a decade ago and now Telex Iran has been allowed once again to become a precious collector's item. Maybe recent events will spur a reprinting? Doubt it. Anyway, if you have a copy now might be the time to pull it from the shelf and re-familiarize yourself. If you don't have the book, web versions of all the photos can be found on Magnum's site.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Farrah Fawcett 1947 - 2009
For better or for worse, this is the photograph of Farrah Fawcett that will always be burned into my mind:
I first saw this image in Tony's room in Saturday Night Fever. It must've been 1979 or 1980. I was 11 or 12. For me that poster was like pollen to a bee. I got the poster, put it up in my room and I buzzed around it. I got to know it better than any other photograph I'd ever seen. I knew it better than any family portrait or presidential visage or even my own face.
Whoever had made the thing had known exactly what they were doing. They'd designed a heat-seeking marketing meme that would lodge forever in the head of any pre-pubescent boy who saw it. Thirty years later it's still lodged in there. It's the first thing I thought of when I learned today of her death.
I'm sorry. I know it's kind of a twisted image, not exactly a high point for feminism. I know there was much more to Fawcett's life and accomplishments than this snapshot. I sort of wish I'd never seen it. But I did, and for about two solid years that was the most important photograph in my life.
I first saw this image in Tony's room in Saturday Night Fever. It must've been 1979 or 1980. I was 11 or 12. For me that poster was like pollen to a bee. I got the poster, put it up in my room and I buzzed around it. I got to know it better than any other photograph I'd ever seen. I knew it better than any family portrait or presidential visage or even my own face.
Whoever had made the thing had known exactly what they were doing. They'd designed a heat-seeking marketing meme that would lodge forever in the head of any pre-pubescent boy who saw it. Thirty years later it's still lodged in there. It's the first thing I thought of when I learned today of her death.
I'm sorry. I know it's kind of a twisted image, not exactly a high point for feminism. I know there was much more to Fawcett's life and accomplishments than this snapshot. I sort of wish I'd never seen it. But I did, and for about two solid years that was the most important photograph in my life.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
The Drawing Quiz, Round Two
It's time for Round Two of the The Drawing Quiz.
Below are twelve drawings from Charles Woodard's book The History of Photography in Pen and Ink, each of which interprets a well known photograph. Your task is to identify the original photographs.
The quiz will be scored progressively. Each correct answer in succession gets an increasing value from 1 to 12. The first correct answer gets 1 point, the next gets 2 points, on up to the last (and presumably the most difficult) which gets 12 points. Points will be tallied after all photographs have been identified or after one week, whichever comes first.
The person with the most points wins a new copy of Hiroshe Watanabe's 2007 monograph Findings.
Please do NOT enter the contest if you have access to the Woodard book. Good luck!
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Below are twelve drawings from Charles Woodard's book The History of Photography in Pen and Ink, each of which interprets a well known photograph. Your task is to identify the original photographs.
The quiz will be scored progressively. Each correct answer in succession gets an increasing value from 1 to 12. The first correct answer gets 1 point, the next gets 2 points, on up to the last (and presumably the most difficult) which gets 12 points. Points will be tallied after all photographs have been identified or after one week, whichever comes first.
The person with the most points wins a new copy of Hiroshe Watanabe's 2007 monograph Findings.
Please do NOT enter the contest if you have access to the Woodard book. Good luck!
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Monday, June 22, 2009
Nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described
Tab and I took the kids camping this past weekend at Beverly Beach just north of Newport. On the drive home we decided to go the long way. We followed 101 south along the rugged Oregon coast. Beautiful! The road was steep and windy until Florence where it flattened and came inland along the wide beach. From there it was an hour drive east to Eugene.
When we got home I sat down to have a look at our local Sunday paper. In the Commentary section was an article about an incident that happened just over 30 years ago, June 16, 1979, in Florence where I'd just been. Forty one whales came out of the ocean and died on the sand.
Sunday's Register-Guard article
with 1979 photograph by Lori Borgman
If this story sounds familiar, it's probably because you've seen this photograph:
Approximately 17 of 41 Sperm Whales That Beached and Subsequently Died, Florence, Oregon, June 1979, Joel Sternfeld
Like many of Sternfeld's photographs, this one (along with the very descriptive caption) begs many questions. What made the whales beach? What's going to happen to their bodies? How did Sternfeld stumble on this scene? Why 17? Why not 19 or 8? What was Sternfeld thinking? Why is he so far from the whales? What's the context of the photograph?
As someone who'd always wondered about the image I looked forward to reading the essay. It's not very often I get to dig up old dirt on a famous photo. Maybe the article could provide some background.
But sadly it didn't offer much (although learning the actual date was nice). The author explored possible explanations and talked about the general tragedy of whaling but couldn't offer any concrete answers because none have been established. The cause of the beaching is still a mystery.
Thirty years later Sternfeld's strange photograph of approximately 17 of 41 sperm whales that beached and subsequently died remains probably the best description of what happened that we'll ever have.
When we got home I sat down to have a look at our local Sunday paper. In the Commentary section was an article about an incident that happened just over 30 years ago, June 16, 1979, in Florence where I'd just been. Forty one whales came out of the ocean and died on the sand.
with 1979 photograph by Lori Borgman
If this story sounds familiar, it's probably because you've seen this photograph:
Like many of Sternfeld's photographs, this one (along with the very descriptive caption) begs many questions. What made the whales beach? What's going to happen to their bodies? How did Sternfeld stumble on this scene? Why 17? Why not 19 or 8? What was Sternfeld thinking? Why is he so far from the whales? What's the context of the photograph?
As someone who'd always wondered about the image I looked forward to reading the essay. It's not very often I get to dig up old dirt on a famous photo. Maybe the article could provide some background.
But sadly it didn't offer much (although learning the actual date was nice). The author explored possible explanations and talked about the general tragedy of whaling but couldn't offer any concrete answers because none have been established. The cause of the beaching is still a mystery.
Thirty years later Sternfeld's strange photograph of approximately 17 of 41 sperm whales that beached and subsequently died remains probably the best description of what happened that we'll ever have.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
What To Do #33
98. Mt. Tabor, Portland, 2005
99. Belgrade Lakes, Maine, 2008(WTD? is a weekly installment of old unseen b/w photos)