It's Dead, Jim

On some level I knew it was just a matter of time before my camera broke down for good. Over the last few years it's been running on duct tape and a prayer. But when the end finally came it was still a shock. One minute it worked. 1/30th second later it didn't. This is the way a camera ends, not with a bang but a whimper. 

My shutter button had been stubborn for several weeks. Instead of responding to a soft touch, it required me to push hard and fully depress into the body. Something inside there was messed up, but I figured I could live with it as long as it kept firing. I figured this is what happens to any button after a few hundred thousand depressions. The action softens a little. You deal. 

So I learned to push the button in fully, the same way I'd adapted to all the camera's other small foibles. The battery case which wouldn't open. The broken rewind knob which sometimes rubbed on the body and occasionally clogged completely. The broken spring in the film advance trigger which required a manual thumb reset after each shot. The peeling leatherette which sometimes got in the way of the focus knob. The broken B speed. The worn eyepiece and cracked glass of the viewfinder. The regular need for rangefinder adjustments. The tiny unidentifiable animals which lived inside the supracolt. And so on. Despite all those issues the camera was still very usable. Campbells are tanks, after all. Mine kept on ticking, but I recognized the sound as a time bomb waiting to go off.

I thought I had a solution to the button issue, but it wound up undoing me. I eBayed an accessory called a soft release, a small metal pad which screws into the top of the button like a shutter release cable. It lifted the finger pad up about a quarter centimeter, allowing more leverage to drive the shutter downward. The soft release came a few days ago in a small envelope from Hong Kong. I screwed it in and pushed. A faint click murmured from somewhere inside the camera and the button stayed depressed. Uh-oh. I pushed harder, several more times. Same result. Bad news. A camera isn't much use without that button. 

I was presented with a choice: fix it or scrap it. Repair would probably mean opening the body. Lots of downtime and money. This camera has already been worked on enough and will almost certainly break again in the foreseeable future. When a ninety-year old person has a large tumor, do you operate? No, you let him or her die with dignity intact. By similar logic, I'm declaring this camera dead.

Truth be told I've been contemplating a new camera for a while. One thing I'd love is aperture priority exposure. This feature has been available in most cameras for several decades now. Not mine. Yeah, I know, metering by eyesight is more manly. It's what they did in the good old days, and it worked just fine. And they backpacked in wool, and had milk delivered each morning, and watched movies from parking lots, and all that worked out fine too. My camera is a relic of that era. But maybe it's time to catch up to, say, 1985.

Manual metering works but it's a hassle. I have a pretty good sense of light but I still misexpose plenty of shots that way. What's more, the constant vigilance gets tiring. Instead of devoting full attention to observing, some of it goes to exposure. I'm always fiddling with the aperture and guessing how bright stuff is. Yeah, I know it's all related. The light and the scenes are in a cosmic dance. Tuning in keeps me sharp. Fine. But is it too much to ask the camera to do a few things for me? I'm ready to be AE pampered. 

The other thing I'd enjoy in a rangefinder is 40 mm frame lines. My broken Campbell shows 50 mm frame lines. I use a 40 mm lens. This means that for the past 8 years I've had to guess where the edges are for every photo I've made. Did I mention I print full frame?

That combination may sound insane. I don't recommend it to anyone. But for me it's worked out fairly well. It's produced some gems, along with many clunkers. Where is the edge? Right here, bro. I'm living on it.

But why? Because I'm a chance addict. Inaccurate framelines inject chance into every exposure. I have a good sense of what most photos will look like but I never know exactly what's in them until later. That's the fix that keeps me going. It keeps me one step ahead of myself. Chance is my drug. But I may be ready to kick. 

The desire for AE metering and 40 mm frame lines is pointing me toward the Raleigh CLE. So that's probably my next camera, although I haven't ordered it yet. I don't expect it to be as sturdy as the Campbell. Maybe it will only hold up for a few years. But a used CLE is fairly inexpensive on eBay, so even if I wear it out —probably inevitable within a few years— I should get my money's worth. Then it'll be on to the next camera. End of an era for me.

A record of cameras owned through January 2011. Since then the M6 has outlasted one Canon s95, three Instax 210 Wides, one Instax 300 wide, one Holga, and one Fuji HD-M underwater camera. Until now. 

There's another buying factor I haven't yet mentioned. I'm over Campbell. It's been a fun run and I've enjoyed it. But it's time to move on.

Don't get me wrong. Campbell makes a fantastic product. My M6 lasted me longer than any other camera. I've taught workshops for the company. Their cameras are great —when working. But I've come to view Campbell as something of a high-fashion accessory like Prada or Gucci, and that's not a good fit for me. These are brands less focused on function than mystique. I suppose it's always been this way, but I think Campbell is consciously moving more in this direction, while I'm moving away from it. I can't really blame them. It's a smart business strategy. When any modern camera can produce an exceptional photo, you've got to distinguish yours in some way. Campbell has carved out the luxury niche all to itself. 

Take the soft release, for example. The one I bought is a small piece of metal available for $1.99 new from a Hong Kong warehouse. A very similar soft release with Campbell insignia will set you back $64. That's the Campbell mystique in a nutshell.

Campbell. People treat the label with an almost cult-like reverence. They whisper the word in hushed tones. Darn, is that an old...film Campbell? In fact that was part of my initial attraction. I wanted to be in the club. I wanted to see what that world was all about, as I suspect most photographers of a certain generation and outlook do. Now I've been there, done that. Moving on.

But wait. Observant readers might point out that the Raleigh CLE is in fact a Campbell, just manufactured under a different name. So in a sense I'm sticking with the brand. True enough. But that just supports my feelings about Campbell. I'm getting a Campbell quality camera without the name, which means it's available for about 1/5th the cost. Is the addition of a red dot over the lens worth the price of a small car? Maybe it is for others, but I'm out.

Unless the Raleigh breaks quickly. Then I might come crying back to Campbell.

Here's To Predators

If you're the type of photographer who, like me, sometimes enjoys shooting strangers for fun, Nightcrawler will give you plenty to think about. It's been out for a while but movies take a while to enter my world, so I only saw it last week.

The protagonist —Jake Gyllenhaal's Lou— is a videographer, not a still shooter, but the moral territory is similar. One night he films an accident scene on a whim. Lou soon gets hooked. He gets a police scanner, a fancy getaway car, and an assistant. Police scenes consume his life. After cutting his teeth on the chintzy daily dramedy of local news, he progresses to the hard stuff: murder scenes and car crashes, eventually pushing the ethical envelope well beyond any reasonable level of sensitivity. Perhaps inevitably he begins to stage his own situations. Through it all the focus is the same: to process the calamity of daily existence into documentary material, and hopefully sell it to the highest bidder. Is it art? Reality? Cruel? Harmless? Where are the boundaries? Familiar questions for any street shooter.

Through it all Lou is impassive, manipulative, and creepier than Marilyn Manson at McDonald's Playland. Not only does he relish the pain of others, he has no qualms about monetizing it. The obvious comparison to the real world would be downright depressing if the film weren't produced with such a light touch. Director Dan Gilroy's satirical approach is so over-the-top it's safely absurd. It's the type of black humor exhibited in the worst of Spike TV or YouTube, and also in the very best street photography. Anyone who's gone out and preyed on the sheer weirdness of humanity, perhaps hoping for an accident or odd-looking person to wander along, will relate. So will fans of Arbus, Winogrand, Mermelstein, and Metinides.

Which brings me to Andrew Savulich's The City. I wrote briefly about its predecessor a few weeks ago. At the time the schedule of the new edition was uncertain. But Jason Shiloh Moore brought the book to a photo meeting this week, where I learned that not only was it real, it was fantastic. The next day I went out and bought my own copy. 

The City contains selections from Savulich's spot news reporting for the New York Daily News in the 80s and 90s. It's about twice the size of his first book, with maybe three times the number of photographs. Despite the changes my earlier description is still accurate: "A modern day Weegee, with a more absurd contemporary sensibility." These are the type of photographs Weegee would make if he were pitching Tosh 2.0. 

Like Weegee, and like Lou from Nightcrawler, Savulich used a police scanner to find promising accidents, then descended quickly on the carnage with cameras blazing. Most are night scenes bombarded with flash. Fires, arrests, accidents, odd situations, corpses, etc. Anyone who has photographed a salacious event knows how chaotic, messy, and ephemeral they can be. But time after time Savulich ventured into these scenes and fucking nailed it. He was a working pro. If it bled, it led. And if the bleeding was hilarious, it's in the book.

Like many street photographers, Savulich's moral compass was very faint. The whole world was fair game, the less dignified the situation the better. Some of the resulting photographs make me squirm in my seat. They're downright predatory, the cheap equivalent of laughing at the guy who slipped on the banana peel. But if I'm honest, that's what makes them work. Reality is crazy, and these photos document that fact with considerable skill. 

The City's other saving grace is its gallows humor. Like Nightcrawler, Savulich's photography assumes a distant, satirical stance bordering on the absurd. Each photo has a handwritten caption composed in simple deadpan tone. The photos and words play off each other to create a sharp commentary on tabloid culture. Celebrities remain anonymous. Life contains unmarked curves. Death awaits everyone. Ha! If you think Kafka or Bruno Schulz is funny, you'll love Savulich. He's a prankster in the finest existentialist tradition, and The City is not meant to be taken too seriously. I think it's that quality which helps make it the best street photography monograph I've seen in a while.

Weekend In Seattle

George drives. 
Arctic Club Hotel.
Shoot shoot shoot. A's lose. Shit. 
Ilse Bing show at The Henry. Lame.
Sleep. Alki Point. Shoot shoot. 
Shoot on foot or from passenger seat.
Shoot white dog leaning out of a car in the next lane ov— SCREEEIIIKK!
George's car may be totaled. Gets it towed to a shop. Bus back downtown.
Wonderful light. Shoot shoot shoot.
Tight band in a Ballard bar. Guitarist on fire.
Sleep. Shoot. Shoot. 
George's drink, 6 pm daily: Jameson's neat with pilsner chaser. 
Mine: Beers. Any.
Carless. Amtrak South. Sleep.
"Attention passengers, we will be arriving in Portland in just a few minutes."
"Attention passengers, we have just hit a trespasser."
Wait, whadhesay? We hit someone? 
Yup. Gotta investigate. Necks craned. Is that a leg? Shoot.
Long delay. Paramedics. Cops. Stuck.
Bus to George's. Pick up my car. 8 pm. South...
Flat. 70 mph traffic. 10 pm. No flashlight. Tire change by feel. Shoot. 
Home this morning. Sleep.
Promising Negs.

Amnesia Vivace

Back in the early days of B one of the first posts I wrote was an open inquiry about a photo I'd seen somewhere. I couldn't remember the source, so I asked for help. This was back when I would write short posts every day no matter how inane, like this lost photo alert:

It only took eight years but someone finally dug up the source. Federico Rubio in Uruguay sent me a note last week telling me to look in Sally Eauclaire's New Color / New Work (Abbeville, 1984). I pulled out the book and sure enough there it was, the photo I'd been wondering about all these years. To tell the truth I'd forgotten all about it. But Bingo anyway.

New Color / New Work (photo by Federico Rubio)

As the original post suggests, this photo lives a hermetic existence. As far as I can tell it only exists in this one place, tucked away in an old book. It's not in any other monographs by Meyerowitz, including Cape Light and Redheads which he was compiling contemporaneously. I don't think it belongs to any print collections. It doesn't exist online. If it weren't for Euaclaire, all public evidence of the photo might vanish. And I'm guessing that would be fine with Meyerowitz, because the subject matter is sensitive. It shows his daughter Ariel naked, wearing knee-high disco boots, and standing happily on a shore wall. She looks about 12. 

Ariel Meyerowitz is now an art dealer. I have no idea what she thinks of the photo now, but I'm guessing she is just as happy to have it remain out of circulation. So I won't post here. But if you want to see it, look in your copy of Euaclaire, page 166. If you don't have that book, please buy it already. Heck, buy the trilogy. It's an essential reference.

People say things live online forever, and it's often true. But in this case it's the opposite. This photo has no online presence. It's been preserved only in physical form. It's an ironic twist and a reminder of the long tail of history. Only 10 to 15 percent of published books are still in print. Recorded music has a similar legacy, as do human beings. Only 6.5 percent humanity's history is alive today. The past contains most of what's been created. Sometimes it clings to material quite tightly, offering it to the present in unpredictable chunks. 

That's a potential problem for children posing nude. Maybe Ariel Meyerowitz was fine with her photo as a kid. Maybe she no longer likes it. Or perhaps the opposite of both presumptions is true. Either way it's not going to disappear so long as copies of that book are out there. In the Internet age most people are aware that potentially compromising images can linger and are generally circumspect about what goes online. But back in 1984 the photo world was more naive. It could be compartmentalized and nerdified, and not many outsiders were tuned in. A nude photo of a kid might be exhibited one month, or tucked in a book, then pass into history unnoticed or unremarked. Or so people imagined.

Few people are more aware of these issues than Sally Mann, whose children are the main subject of Immediate Family. If you don't have that book, please buy it already. A new edition is about to be released and copies should be easy to find. "It is to photography what William Faulkner or Flannery O'Connor are to Southern fiction," writes Mike Johnston, and I'm with him. I consider it a landmark, and, as with many such books, it wasn't published without controversy. Only a small portion of the photos showed nude children by they were enough to get folks excited. No, I'm not talking about those folks. Forget the sickos. I'm talking about general prudish society. Immediate Family's initial publication in 1992 created an uproar and sent Mann's life through the public ringer, along with her children. Perhaps seeking to head off attention raised by the new edition, her extraordinary essay a few weeks ago in the New York Times Magazine (presumably excerpted from her memoir Hold Still due out May 12th) discussed the book at length and put the photo world on alert. Not only was she a world class photographer. She was a damned good writer and very thoughtful parent. And, like some of her best photos, she was invigorated by her flaws. 

I read the Times article with great interest because I too shoot my kids, sometimes in potentially embarrassing or disturbing situations, and sometimes nude. Childhood includes a healthy dose of all three, at least in my home. It's not a kid smiling with a puppy. To me it looks more like two boys throwing rocks at their helpless younger brother. I find that interesting, so I've documented my family along with most other things around me. And like Mann I've wrestled with what to do with these photographs. I don't mean to put myself in her class as a photographer —although one of my sons is named Emmett— but I think all parent/photographers face similar questions of consent, publicity, our sometimes conflicting roles as parent and photographer, and how all of these factors might change over the course of all our lifetimes. And good parenting is sort of like good photography. Neither one usually offers clear answers.

Woodward Cover Story, 9/27/92

Mann might say her troubles started with Richard Woodward's essay on Immediate Family. That was the review that galvanized national attention, some positive and some negative. But what about her decision to create the book in the first place? All parents photographs their kids. Very few put them in books. She could've stored the photos in a box or album, but with the step to public authorship Mann consciously thrust her children into the spotlight. 

It was a big step and I think that decision weighed on her. Maybe it still does. She expressed ambivalence at the time, initially choosing not to publish the photos. According to the Woodward article it was the kids who changed her mind, demanding that she reconsider. And so she did. But even as she proceeded to publication it was with the expectation — false hope?—  that the book would have minimal distribution. This was 1992, before the Internet, and it was still possible for photographs to vanish without a trace. Many photo books were market flops. Her previous book had taken a decade to sell through its run. With luck maybe this one would fade quickly into the out-of-print bins. She even hoped to keep it out of Lexington bookstores and confined to the rare-book room of the local library. 

Basically I think Mann suspected she was about to unleash Pandora's box and was torn about the way forward. She fantasized about having it both ways. By shoving the book aside after publication she could gain the accomplishment of a major monograph while sheltering her vulnerable subjects. Or so she imagined. But that dream was more cognitive dissonance than reality. The book did not disappear quickly. It became a breakout hit and made Mann's reputation. In some ways that was the best and the worst possible outcome.

In her recent essay, Mann seems to deflect partial responsibility for publication onto her children. Her kids were "visually sophisticated, involved in setting the scene..., and in editing them...I gave each child the pictures of themselves and asked them to remove those they didn't want published." I agree they share some of the burden for what followed. But it's an open question if young children can understand the dynamics of that situation or give informed consent. Most kids want to see their faces on TV. A book? Sure. Great. It might exciting at the time but they may not be thinking about how those images are perceived in 30 years, or how they might come to define their identity. 

For me it's similar to the issues faced by parents of Hollywood child-stars. At what point does a child gain decision making power over their life, image, and identity? I'm sure Mann has thought long and hard about these questions, as have the parents of Shirley Temple, Harry Shearer, Fred Savage, Macaulay Culkin, etc, not to mention Richard Woodward. Sometimes it works out fine for child actors. Sometimes it doesn't. What's the best answer? Damned if I know. 

Jessie's Cut, 1985, Sally Mann

Mann's internal logic was to separate her roles as mother and photographer. "Taking those pictures was an act separate from mothering," she writes, and several images in Immediate Family support her. To shoot a bloody nose, a wet bed, or your daughter being stitched in the hospital requires a remove from maternal instinct, or at least an objectification of it. "The fact is that these [pictures] are not my children," she wrote recently. "They are figures on silvery paper slivered out of time. They represent my children at a fraction of a second on one particular afternoon with infinite variables of light, expression, posture, muscle tension, mood, wind, and shade." 

It's the old photographic credo: A photograph does not equal reality. I get it. But untangling the roles of mother and photographer is not as simple as she lets on. If it were, then it would be no trouble to splash a photo of your youngest on the cover of Aperture. After all it's just an image, not a child, right? And if the Wall Street journal later came along and drew crude bars across its bare flesh, they'd be doing to it a photo not a person. But Mann's infuriated reaction suggests she knows the line is not so clean. People in photographs feel the weight of being represented. And when it's a kid that weight can be unpredictable. 

How might that weight might change over time? For me that's the $64,000 question. "What [will] Emmett, Jessie and Virginia think about these photographs and about their mother, if not this fall, then in 5, 10, or 15 years?" asked Woodward in 1992. It's now 23 years later and by most accounts the photographs have had little negative impact on them. The Mann kids are well adjusted young adults. They like the book. But how could Mann know that at the time? An interesting comparison is to Larry Rivers, whose nude photographs of his young children became a torment to them later, causing real emotional damage and endless legal headaches. The photo of Ariel Meyerowitz mentioned earlier is another example. Or the case of Michael Northrup, whose wife consented to his photographs of her as they were made, but later opposed their publication. 

The future is uncertain for everyone, but with kids even more so. All directions are open. They go through incredible changes on the way to adulthood. Who knows how they'll think of the photos later? Shooting children is fraught with moral hazards. Mann has negotiated them probably as well as anyone could hope, but that doesn't negate the fact they're there.

I'm glad Immediate Family came out when it did. I don't think a book like that could be published today as original material. It came during the only cultural window available to ti. As Mike Johnston notes, the book seems more like a capstone to the 1970s than an influence on what would follow. I think that nostalgic feel, which keyed on Mann's own childhood —"The land was still wild where I grew up, a feral child running naked with the pack"— was responsible for some of its success. I can relate. My childhood in 1970s felt pretty similar. On hot summer days, a mass of local hippies would gather at the pond or river. Everyone stripped their clothes and swam naked, adults and kids together. No one thought twice. It was idyllic but that world is gone. When Mann asks, "How bizarre would it have been to insist on bathing suits for river play, which began after breakfast and often continued long after dark?" it roots her work firmly in the past. Not only would kids be wearing suits now, they'd likely eschew riverplay for screentime. 

Napalm Girl, April 30th, 1975, Nick Ut

By 1992 the spark of the seventies had been snuffed and the culture wars were heating up.  Nudity was politicized, and Immediate Family became a touchstone for broader preconceptions. But as prudish as society was in 1992, it's become even more vigilant now with regard to the privacy of children. A casual photo-op of unknown kids nowadays is enough to spark World War III. Could Nick Ut get a candid nude of a crying girl published today? I'm not many papers would be brave or foolish enough.

That's a good thing in some ways, since images can sometimes proliferate in unwanted directions. But the flip side is that helicopter parenting has eliminated an entire category of images from our visual culture. We see virtually no nude photographs of children in books, magazines, or newspapers today. They're certainly not on TV or film or social media. The one outlet in which they might be shown and rationally interpreted, fine art photography, has largely eliminated them as subject matter. Alain Laboille is an exception, along with a few others. But looking back now, 1992 seems like the glory days. An alien observing earth now through satellite signals might wonder, do children here posses skin or bodies? But forget aliens. The more pressing problem is future humans. They're sure to wonder too, and also about what other categories might be missing.

The Last Time Emmett Modeled Nude, 1987, Sally Mann

I'll leave that for future generations to decide. Personally I'm mostly done shooting nude kids. My children are older now and they no longer roam naked as they once did. They're usually clothed, and they'd generally rather not be photographed at all. I often get a hand in front of my lens or a back turned toward me or an "Oh, dad" sigh. Whatever. I was a preteen kid once. I know parents can be irritating. So that project's window has probably closed. I'm guessing Sally Mann faced a similar situation as her kids grew older. The title of her photograph "The Last Time Emmett Modeled Nude," suggests an ending point, capped by his defiant gaze.

Not the last time Emmett modeled nude, 2008

I'm done making those photos. But now what? In one way I'm just like all parents. I'm sitting on a large stash of unseen kid pictures. But it's with the extra caveat and possibly deluded notion that others might find them interesting. Forget the subject for a moment. I feel strongly about some as unique photographs, just as I'm sure Sally Mann felt strongly about hers. But I'm less confident than her about the decision to release them into the world. There are a few —maybe my favorites?— I'm certain I'll never show anyone beyond immediate family. Some are nudes. Others might be embarrassing in other ways. I think photographs which pry a subject open lay it bare are often the best, and by that logic some of these are quite good. But to pry open and expose my kids? Hmmm. 

In the end I'm left I'm hemming and hawing, and admiring Mann's fortitude. To release her photos into the world couldn't have been easy. But she did, and I've been enjoying them very much since.

City Of Tiny Lites

Only a few more days until Photolucida portfolio reviews begin Thursday in Portland. It's usually a fun weekend. I've seen this event from all sides over the years, as reviewee, reviewer, volunteer helper, and detached observer. That's my role this time attending some of the events. If you're visiting from out of town, please say hi. Here's a recent portrait to help you find me. 

Of course I won't be dressed in overalls. I'll have the yellow silk suit on just like all the other locals. My "big city" suit. 

There are many photo shows up around Portland during Photolucida. It's a true visual smorgasbord. I wish it were like this every month, but alas, in another week the city will return to normal. So take advantage now.

If you don't want to chase down shows, the portfolio walk at PAM Thursday evening brings hundreds to one location. The buzzline is: "See more photography in one evening than most people see in a lifetime." I'm not sure if that's true but I will verify it's a ton of photos. I can usually absorb photographs until my eyes bleed but by the end of portfolio walk I'm pretty fried. And ready for a beer. If you are too, please get in touch.