Bill Eppridge, 1938-2013

I must admit that I had never heard of Bill Eppridge until I read his obituary in the New York Times two weeks ago, nor had I ever seen his most famous photograph, taken immediately after Robert Kennedy was shot in 1968.

It is an amazingly successful photograph. There are strong echoes of Caravaggio and tenebrismo painting in the way the light falls with a single direction. They suggest a religious meaning, which the victim's posture, arms outstretched, reinforces. There is a mysterious hand reaching down from above, in the same direction as the light. And there is the young busboy, who looks straight at the viewer; because of this gesture, he is very human, whereas the rest of the drama seems to happen on a higher, mythical plane.

Of course, all of this was composed in a split second. It is a great example of what it means to capture the decisive moment. There was no time to think "oh, maybe I will do this in the style of Caravaggio". Eppridge must have had a fantastic talent and visual education, and was able to do something great on the spot, when there was no room for error From this point of view, the achievement is even more amazing than Cartier-Bresson's most famous photographs. After all, if Cartier-Bresson had failed to capture the best composition in one of his shots of the crowd at George V's coronation, or of the street urchins in Spain, it is quite possible that another equally good opportunity would have come up later the same day; but there was no second chance to take this photograph.

It is humbling that such great work exists, and one does not even know about it.

Just a Thought

I am shy about calling myself an artist. This is just what I do in my free time (although I consider it much more important than what I do for pay). Still, here is a thought about art:

The nature of artistic endeavors is open-ended. After Matisse painted a painting, he painted another one. When Beethoven was done composing a piece of music, he started on another one.

Most free time project are just projects: you plant your flower beds. You build a storage shed. When you are done, you are not likely to start on another one next to it.

Just a thought.

Chrysanthemum

November 2009

Digital

Portraits

Mark Miller remarked in a recent conversation that most informal portrait photos are terribly composed, with the head of the subject in the dead center of the (mostly empty) frame. For him, they are hopeless to turn into paintings. High up on the wall of his studio, he pointed to a large canvas based on one such photograph. It seemed not to have gone anywhere for a long time.
 
I thought of that comment as I was browsing through a catalog of an old exhibition of paintings from the Hermitage. I find many Old Master portraits dead boring; the worst are the ones of high-status sitters, who probably came in with strong opinions about what a portrait is supposed to look like:

Gerard Ter Borch

Portrait of Catarina van Leunink (between 1654-81)

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia

On the other hand, I was stunned by this Ter Bruggen - it is a jumble of faces, hands, and objects, obviously placed for compositional interest.

Hendrik Ter Bruggen

Concert, 1626

State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia

 

 

I was also reminded of this Ribera in the Art Institute of Chicago:

 

Jusepe de Ribera

Penitent Saint Peter, 1628-32

Art Institue of Chicago

 

 

Nominally, the Ter Bruggen and the Ribera are not portraits, but genre scenes and religious paintings respectively. However, all three pictures here are "paintings of faces". You can argue in favor of the first that it conveys a lot of psychological depth and other like things that people say about portraits, but compositionally it is pretty dull.

Camera Case Repair

Last weekend I spent a few hours re-stitching a case I had bought for my 1953 Zeiss Contessa. The Contessa is a beautiful little camera, and it takes good, contrasty pictures. Mine came with a dead light meter, which I repaired. There is a crack in the corner of the rangefinder glass, but it does not interfere with focusing; I find that it adds a little bit of wabi sabi to the camera. After all, it is ridiculous to expect a 60 year old camera to look new. "Operational" is already a high bar, and I am in awe of the solidity of Zeiss engineering.

To repair the case, I followed the instructions given here, and I am very grateful for them - I would have made a mess without them. Here are some pictures of the work in progress, and additional notes in case you want to try this are at the bottom of the page:

After stitching the first half of the bottom.

The larger hole on the right normally holds a special knob that for winding the film.

The smaller hole in the center is for viewing the frame counter.

Stitching completed. It is not perfectly regular as the original was.

After I took this picture, I darkened the thread with brown shoe polish.

 The camera in its repaired case.

Some additional suggestions if you want to do a similar job.

• Read the instructions at the link above first :-)
• After you thread the needles through the first two holes, make sure both ends of the thread are the same length, otherwise you will not be able to finish the project!
• Using thread that is too thick will make the job really hard, and potentially break the leather. For me, the right thickness turned out to be 1/3 of the thread I had originally picked; I separated one of the three strands that made up the thread.
• Most of the time, the needle should find its way through the existing holes very easily. If you have to push hard to get it through, it is not aimed correctly. However, it can still be hard to pull all the way through. I had a pair of small pliers on hand, and they really helped sometimes.

Les neiges d'antan

Maybe I was a bit harsh on Ms. Maier yesterday.

Here is a try at a more balanced judgement: what we have here is a collective work of art, like jazz or theater. Ms. Maier played the Rolleiflex; some unknown professional played the enlarger (and man, is he good with it); and John Maloof told the story, and he has a hell of a talent at marketing it.

Vivian Maier was not really an artist, I think, but it is hard not to respond to her personal story. She tried to live according to her own rules when young, and was lonely in her old age, like we all are likely to be in this modern world of ours. And what was the deal with her photo-snapping obsession? I hear that she recorded conversations, later made 8mm movies, and kept mountains of old newspapers. One can only make up his own interpretation. To me, it sounds as though she feared impermanence, and tryed to stop the passing of time.

It is not an uncommon sentiment. Japanese culture seems to be more aware of it than most: there is an entire cycle of seasonal occupations, that deal with the enjoyment of transitory beauty, cherry blossoms being the most famous. With the cherry blossoms, I hear that the most beautiful moment is the consider the one in which the petals come off the trees like a snowfall. It takes a lot of control at that point not to give in to the sadness for the end of the flowers (which, of course, foreshadows our own demise). Maybe Vivian felt this form of mono no aware acutely, and tried to cure it with her camera.
It did not work for the people she pictured, who have become anonymous, like characters in a morality play: the Old Lady, the Policeman, the Couple on the Beach, the Bum. They, too, by now, must be sleeping the Big Sleep, as gone as Villon's last year's snow.

Found Photos

Disclaimer: I am a grumpy old man, and intolerant of attention devoted to people other than myself. Among other things, this makes me impatient with the adoration showered on athletes. I have been that way since I was a child, and I have no intention of changing now.

With that out of the way, last Sunday I went by the Photo Center NW to see what was on display (I recommend it, I always find it interesting). They had a show of photographs by a person called Vivian Maier. The pictures are very professionally printed and mounted, and are offered for $1,800 a piece (!). Most left me cool, but a few are very good:

Then there is the back story. In short, we are told Ms. Maier took some 100,000 photographs, left most of them undeveloped, got old, and died. At this point, according to Wikipedia, a guy by the name of John Maloof comes into the story. He is described as the curator of Ms. Maier collection. All of a sudden, there are NPR stories, and publications, and exibitions. He is not mentioned at PCNW at all, and his relation ot Ms. Maier is unknown.

Maybe I am just a grumpy old man, but my guess is that he came by the negatives in a yard sale and saw an opportunity to make a buck by telling a story people like to hear: ignored artist recognized as genius. A few thoughts:

• This happens all of the time: see Charles Jones, whose life is here, and a few photos can be seen here. There seems to be a cottage industry of people scouring yard sales and flea market in search of the next ignored genius.
• One hundred thousand pictures! Of course there were a few good ones! We are in Infinite Monkeys territory here (if you have enough monkeys hitting typewriters long enough, eventually one will produce the works of Shakespeare). I have taken nowhere near 100,000 pictures, have the photographic talent of a gerbil, and I sure enough already have a few good ones stashed away!
• Ms. Maier, I am afraid, was not an artist. By my personal definition of art, there has to be a process of doing, looking at the result, and either improving on it or keeping what is already good. The good pictures we see in the show are the combination of a lucky accident, plus a good darkroom printer, and a smart impresario to suggest a story that did not really take place.

Lomography

For some reason, I have always found the idea of using cameras with serious technical limitations a little bit silly. Why would one buy a Holga with a plastic lens and some light leaks when you can have a vintage Canon or Nikon for the same price, with none of the defects?

At the same time, and with some guilt, I have been playing with an Lomography app on my phone. The app is called Lomogram, and is one of several that let you apply “old photo” effects to pictures taken with the phone (or other pictures, if you get them on to your phone). I am not sure where the guilt comes from; maybe from the fact that I am creating fakes? Maybe from the fact that the fakes are sentimental and nostalgic? Is the cheesy film markings that one can use as borders? I am sure much could be learned from analyzing this feeling.

Either way, there is no denying that I really like the output. I have even become a regular Facebook user so that I can share my pictures. The reason I like them is that they are surprisingly good, and that is not because I make them, but because the app uses sound composition devices. You can apply rounded corners and vignetting, which help to keep the viewer inside the picture frame. You can apply simple white or black frames, which also help to do the same. And you can alter the colors. Not every color effect works on every picture, but some make the picture nearly monochromatic, which lends it unity.

I have posted an album of these altered phone pictures here. Tell me what you think

Graflex View Camera

Phone Photo

August 2012