andrewlamb Posted July 4, 2006 Share Posted July 4, 2006 I know that the exhibition 'Early color' was mentioned in an earlier thread but I've just bought a copy of the book and I just want to give it a plug. It's published, at least in the UK, by Steidl (who also published the brilliant 'Evelyn Hofer') and is very nicely printed publication that I think must go some way justice to doing justice to the photos. The pictures themselves are exquisite. I know a lot of people rightly sing the praises of Eggleston and his colour photography but Leiter's work was done, considerably, earlier in the '50s and I think his praises should be sung too. End of rant. Highly recommneded. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stuart_richardson Posted July 4, 2006 Share Posted July 4, 2006 I have seen some of his work in person -- it is superb. Very interesting to see the world of the fifties in color as well. It's funny how those of us who did not live it associate the world of that era as being in black and white. For me, everything from the 1860s to the 1960s seems black and white, but everything before and after seems in color...Don't get me wrong though, Leiter's work is interesting for many reasons beyond the fact that it is in color... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewlamb Posted July 4, 2006 Author Share Posted July 4, 2006 The introduction to the book is interesting. It state that, to achieve the look he was after, Leiter would experiment with out of date emulsions and some of the more obscure colour films then available. However he created it, it's a wonderful use of colour. Sadly, the exhibition prints are, for me at least, prohibitively expensive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Troll Posted July 4, 2006 Share Posted July 4, 2006 Ernst Haas, not Eggleston, is generally considered the first great color photographer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robert x Posted July 4, 2006 Share Posted July 4, 2006 i was in paris a couple of years back and finally got round to going up the arc de triomphe. In the large rom at the top of the arc was an exhibition of colour photographs from the first world war - pretty amazing stuff really - lots of bombed out cathedrals and troops at rest and troops going in to battle. I had never really registered that colour film existed that far back. Afraid I have no recollection of who took the pictures, but fairly sure he was some french officer type. Robert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewlamb Posted July 4, 2006 Author Share Posted July 4, 2006 Bill, Nobody said that Eggleston was the first great colour photographer. I simply that he gets a lot of praise for his use of colour. Haas is fine but I personally think there's something very special about Leiter's colour work from the '50s. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
al_kaplan1 Posted July 4, 2006 Share Posted July 4, 2006 I have a 1960 "The German Photographic Annual" (in English) and a 1960 "U.S. Camera Annual". Both have a very small section of color photos. My collection of Popular Photography Magazine's annuals from the 1960's have very little color either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anthony_brookes5 Posted July 4, 2006 Share Posted July 4, 2006 Some of Paul Wollff's earliest colour pictures taken with a Leica are remarkable. They were taken before the second world war - 1938 I think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevin_smith19 Posted July 4, 2006 Share Posted July 4, 2006 also check out the leica work of Keld Helmer-Petersen who published a book in 1948 titled "122 Colour Photographs." some <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/05/in_pictures_everyday_colour/html/1.stm"> examples</a> of his work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charles_stobbs3 Posted July 4, 2006 Share Posted July 4, 2006 If you google "Bound for Glory" there are color photographs from the Library of Congress collection from the late 30's and early 40's. Also I think the National Geographic may have ben publishing some color photos in that era. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boris c hann Posted July 4, 2006 Share Posted July 4, 2006 Andrew, I really like Saul Leiter's work, but I also understand the emphasis put on the significance of Eggleston. He's one of the few people that the critics have got right - lazy received wisdom (as exemplified by the pointless comment on Haas) on the last hundred years of photo history is ripe for revisionism. If you reflect on Eggleston's Guide 30 years on you see how he influenced (thinking) photographers in pretty much every genre imaginable - reportage, fashion, landscape, portraiture.....Obviously, there are other great photographers (many predating him), but I don't think any other has had such a profound and lasting impact. Everything changed - for the better - after Eggleston. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtk Posted July 4, 2006 Share Posted July 4, 2006 IMO the best color photographers have always been commercial illustrative photographers...certainly today, but going waaaay back. Ernst Haas is an example, as was Irving Penn. Ektachrome E3 was the big breakthrough in the 50s...lovely stuff, far better than anything before it, save Kodachrome, almost as good as the best E4 (there were many good E3 labs, hardly any good E4 labs). Most of the images in Arizona Highways Magazine were, for decades, E3. I was priviliged to inspect a number of these by the pioneer color landscape photographer Josef Muench (father of David Muench, as great as his father) in 4x5 in the 80s...these chromes had generally shifted heavily magenta, but were easy to correct in duplication for color separation. http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/1aa/1aa621.htm I'm sure we've all seen the color photos of Hitler et al http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,339540,00.html My mother Lilian, a farm girl born 1916, shot and home-developed photos of the 1939 World's Fair (Treasure Island, San Francisco Bay). Tripod night-shots of colorfully lit buildings, fireworks etc. These slides still look good..but due to the subject matter it's impossible to say if the color has shifted ! I think it's Agfachrome (which had to become "Anscochrome" due to the war...prehaps someone correct me on that history). Anscochrome was very easy to develop (like E3), had punchy, crude colors, and managed to survive into the 70s, when I ran one of the last small audiovisual labs that used it (Palo Alto CA). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewlamb Posted July 4, 2006 Author Share Posted July 4, 2006 Boris, Doris and Maurice, agreed: Eggleston's influence cannot be overestimated. However, as I was leafing through some of the style bibles in RD Franks yesterday, it did occur to he is also inadvertently responsible for a lot of very lazy photography out there. It's not his fault I know but, there are way too many shots of rubbish bins, appartment blocks with washing lines, discarded tricycles, etc filling out these mags. I've also seen a lot of this at some recent graduate shows. Mind you, this could be me being in a grump 'cause I've now got to go and photograph some architects at a fairground and it's currently belting with rain in Londonium. BTW, Leiter's work intrigues me in many ways and one minor interest is that it would be extremely tricky to plagarise. PS: you know about these things, what's a good flash for the 5D? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewlamb Posted July 4, 2006 Author Share Posted July 4, 2006 ....and who was that Danish photographer, whose colour work from the '40s, Martin Parr has been championing? I think a book of his was re-published last year. Amazing stuff and incredibly advanced. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
al_kaplan1 Posted July 4, 2006 Share Posted July 4, 2006 Anscochrome and Agfachrome were based on the same tecchnology. I think Agfa owned a controlling interest in Ansco before WW-II. Neither film had really long term stable color, and the Agfachrome had very sharp edged grain, like B&W film developed in Agfa Rodinol.The Anscochrome was very easy to process yourself. They sold little one pint kits. The biggest pain was mounting the slides. E3 Ektachrome had better color than E2 but required refridgerated storage and didn't have a really long shelf life. E4 was a big improvement over E2, and E6 pretty much killed off E3 for most uses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtk Posted July 4, 2006 Share Posted July 4, 2006 Eggleston came to the party very late...he simply replicated (in large format) what a lot of others had done for years (mostly in 35mm). Nothing new, good publicity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtk Posted July 4, 2006 Share Posted July 4, 2006 Thanks Al...your recollection about small Ansco kits does seem to fit my mother's story. I shoot mostly B&W now, but I've got color reversal in my blood (and an allergy to hydroquinone). In the Seventies I ran Media Generalists in San Francisco.. Smithsonian said it was the best E4 lab in the country. I left it to convert an Anscochrome lab to E4. Both labs served audio visual producers. All the while I processed E3 at home in a bathtub setup :-) Commercial photographers often found E3, processed by themselves, better than typical custom lab E4. E6 was FABULOUS right out of the chute, a strong, EQUAL rival to Kodachrome. More color accurate, as sharp as any lens, more subtle. Naysayers simply have not dealt with good E6 labs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtk Posted July 4, 2006 Share Posted July 4, 2006 Pete Turner is closely in line after Edward Weston, and at least equal to Ansel: http://www.peteturner.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewlamb Posted July 4, 2006 Author Share Posted July 4, 2006 John, Eggleston shot large format? Don't think. Isn't he Leica or Fuji 6x9 man? As for saying that others had already done what he did, maybe or maybe not. But if it was already very familiar why did it cause such a critical fuss when it was first exhibited in the '70s? Personally, I don't think there were many photographers doing what Eggleston was doing. Having said that, I don't know a huge amount about the fine art scene in photography and I prefer Saul Leiter anyway :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terry_rory Posted July 4, 2006 Share Posted July 4, 2006 Stephen Shore photographed in large format. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robert x Posted July 4, 2006 Share Posted July 4, 2006 In "William Eggleston in the Real World" he is seen using an old Mamiya Universal and a couple of 35mm cameras. I was under the impression that his first show was based on 35mm slide film. As I understand it the reason that he is seen as such a landmark figure is that he was one of the first colour photographers to have a solo exhibition at a large art museum. I hadn't heard of Saul Leiter before but google brought up a couple of images and they are lovely. I have seen a couple of beautiful colour photographs by Lartigue dating from (I think) the 1920s. Also a quick look at wiki brought up this photo from a Russian chap who invented a colour process - Sergei Mikhailovich Porkudin-Gorskii - which dates from 1905, which even predates the french WWI autochromes I mentioned above. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Prokudin-Gorskii-08.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewlamb Posted July 4, 2006 Author Share Posted July 4, 2006 "I hadn't heard of Saul Leiter before but google brought up a couple of images and they are lovely." Robert, check out the book. It's a gem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewlamb Posted July 4, 2006 Author Share Posted July 4, 2006 "....and who was that Danish photographer, whose colour work from the '40s, Martin Parr has been championing? I think a book of his was re-published last year. Amazing stuff and incredibly advanced." Keld Helmer Peterson. Duh! Apologies to Kevin Smith for not noticing his mentioning this earlier. Anyway, another interesting fine art photographer working in colour. Still seems modern. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terry_rory Posted July 4, 2006 Share Posted July 4, 2006 This conversation led me to look at some of Helen Levitt's colour stuff from New York. Looks interesting as well. But thanks for this Saul Leiter post Andrew. I think I will get a copy of Early Colour. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terry_rory Posted July 4, 2006 Share Posted July 4, 2006 Got one for 23 quid from amazon just now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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