black and white: then to now Streets of San Francisco (Like You Never Saw On TV)

This photo raises more questions than it answers, despite the firm

assertion by many that photos should be self-explanatory within their

four corners. Please post your suggestions about what it means and

how it came into being in the comments section. An explanation will

be published after a companion photo is rated. Your comments and

critiques/comments are most welcome. (Please submit a helpful and

constructive critique if you rate harshly or negatively/please share

your superior knowledge to help me improve my photography). RATERS:

Please remember that aesthetics does not just mean "pretty" although

it means that also, and that it encompasses the

words "striking" "shocking" and other, similar words, and also

encompasses the area of composition -- whether a photo is well-

composed or not. Thank you for adhering to Photo.net rating

guidlines in your and not expressing your personal morality in your

ratings as this is not a morality/philosophy site. Thanks and

Enjoy! John ;~))

Interesting to say the least. I like your title for the shot. ;)

Well, it's against my better judgement but I am going to wade in here. Actually, I rated this shot pretty high and would have done so even without the lesson of ratings according to John. As for the busy work of trying to figure out the "WHY" of this shot, you gotta be kidding. YOUR title alone tells me that the reasoning is probably shallow and self serving. Some of us, didn't leave our hearts in San Franciso, but still, nice street photography.

There's something condescending in the tone of your comment about "shallow and self-serving." Wait to find the real story. Yes, something was "shallow and self-serving" but you may want to remove your comment later. J

Jim, it isn't "ratings according to John". I actually took the trouble to click on the key to the ratings and read the discussion there a long time ago and digested them. Although my brief reminder about aesthetics isn't verbatim, I think you'll find it follows very closely with the ratings guidelines explained for Photonetters in depth -- and if it doesn't please e-mail me and I'll be glad to self-correct. I have no fear of correcting errors. J

If you found this image in a book entitled "The Decisive Moment" or "Strange Images" and the photographer was one H.C.-Bresson, do you who know the name think the ratings would be the same? (I know his work, and don't tell me he wouldn't have taken this photo this way, if he came upon it. I worked with one of his former colleagues, have his books and have attended his exhibitions, studied his work -- but not until after this photo was taken). (See, also, comments on my other B&W photos by others making comparisons, which I didn't invite. When I saw the similarity to some of his work, I almost threw away my camera -- he had a museum full of wonderful images, and I had maybe 20 or so.) J.

This is not my best photo ever (it's in my B&W portfolio) (or my worst), and I have many others that I'd rate higher, but the number of ratings already is at a record high for a photo of mine. Why? Ratings are average+, but heavily weighted toward the down side. Could it be that unless the nude is extraordinarily pretty (Peri style with Peri following) that there is an element of prudery that gets touched. Let's face it, this woman and what she portrays is a sort of grotesquery, but that's what the photo captures. And is that "unoriginal", as raters also have rated it with slightly more than mediocre "originality"? Why did so many feel, then, compelled to rate it, compared to my other, worthier, photos?

Trust me, it was no more condescending than,

 

"please share your superior knowledge"

 

 

I actually do learn much from those who genuinely do share their superior knowledge. Some of the most helpful comments have influenced the way I take photographs and especially edit and post them. You might try glancing through my portfolio and folders at some of the comments and see how helpful some have been -- they aren't snide or condescending. One poster's comments are short, sweet, to the point, invariably right on, and I have thanked him profusely over time and in many ways. Others are in the process of helping me with various images in my temporary portfolio which will be taken down soon. I actually like honest and good criticism, without snideness. J

John it probably IS me. I mean after all, you have already explained to us what a wonderful peaceful nice guy you are in your portfolio intros. I certainly didn't intend this to go off on a rant, gosh, I liked this shot and rated it fairly high.

And I am now quite sure that you saw that this photo was about grotesquery, not about beauty at all, but about the exploitation of beauty and male sexuality, which is at the heart of it, plus the composition, of which I am quite happy, and wouldn't change. J.

Absurdity. This photo ultimately is about life's big and little absurdities and incongruities. (I had inadvertently spelled it incongruitities -- Freudian slip?). If you glance through my portfolio and folios, you ultimately will find many glances at life's incongruities and absurdities -- like two men running from a fake jaguar/leopard in my single photo portfolio or so many others in my Black and White portfolio, or just sheer dejection, as in the little girl with no shoes pushing a bare tire uphill in the garbage dump of the Tijuana River, but being happy doing so because that's all she knew at the time, and ignorant that her progeny and parents probably would die there because the river was inadequately flood protected and they were living in the middle of a flash flood zone in tin shanties. (Who knew? -- probably the Mexican government, that's probably who knew, but maybe manana. . . . ). Or my most recent posting of a briskly stepping white woman walking past steps in the government zone of Manhattan while another, black, poorer, woman huddles at the other end of those steps. (Food for thought, I think, which I try to give.)

 

J.

This reminds me of a funny thing from 20 - 30 years ago, some kind of manual for women to keep the attention of "their men" when they return from work at the end of the day (the women of course, were home cooking and cleaning and making sure they never received any social security benefits except - a mixed blessing! - widow's benefits) (but I digress). ANYWAY, in this manual one of the "tricks" was to greet hubby at the door dressed in nothing but SARAN WRAP. I am absolutely NOT kidding!

 

Now this is probably not why your young lady is dressed this way - although the men's reactions are probably timeless! - but that was my first take on it!

That was an excellent reminder. There were dozens of such "tricks", propounded by the "wife should stay in HER PLACE AT HOME crowd". And that may be some small part of why she is dressed in Saran Wrap -- or plastic film if we are not right about the brand. There's a much larger point about this photo which will be revealed toward the end of posting of my B&W Portfolio II. Thanks for the reminder of long ago. J ;~))

I think you've done an excellent analysis of your own photo so I needn't re-hash the things you've already discussed. Suffice it to say, though, that these pictures from the 60s are OUTSTANDING. To me, they are in the best vein of good street photography. Each one is a real gem that I hope you will treasure and keep safe for a long time. In addition, I think you have a duty to find a wider audience outside the Photo.net fishbowl for these pics.

 

Absurdity is one of those things that most people don't process when looking at street photos on here, hence the often low ratings on pics such as these. I guess its often due to the fact that they themselves are so overwhelmed by the day-to-day absurdity, they have no idea that they are looking at the absurd and, with it, the great humor in it all. Yet absurdity is a keynote of some of the greatest street work of the last 40 years: Winogrand, Erwitt, Levitt...they all had a keen sense of the absurd and it shines through in their brilliant photography, as it shines through in yours.

 

I should practice what I preach (hell, I pulled all my images because of horseshit annoyance of Photo.net ratings sheep), but don't sweat the ratings. You have great work here and I think you know it. As will many who can see it. Thanks for sharing it. Its a great honor to see it.

I see that you've removed your portfolio, but for me Photo.net was a savior -- a way to get the creative juice flowing again after decades of neglect.

 

Your comment "shines through" and I am more than greatly heartened by it; I am elated.

 

You see, somehow I never aspired to Photo of the Week. Mate Raters or others and Photoshop.netters can have that. I like what it is I do and have done. And the photography here on this site truly is outstanding -- don't lose sight of that.

 

However, I am truly interested in what other avenues you feel I should be pursuing, and if you have any suggestions, as I'm only beginning to get feeling for the power of my B&W older images.

 

I had long hoped for a book, but maybe that's just old paradigm and probably I have too few saved older images. I was NOT prolific.

 

I opted for Photo.net for its wide audience, and still am amazed by it. As for ratings, so what?

 

I know the intrinisic worth of what I produce, and I don't shoot for an art director or some such.

 

I do like the exposure AND the ratings for they help me overcome my own myopia towards my own images--sometimes. My e-mail accounty presently is overloaded and disabled as a result of traveling, but I encourage you to communicate with me about this more. J. (By the way, looking at the ratings distribution from 3/3 to 7/6 (or 7/6), it's interesting that people really don't know what to think about this and similar photos. They just "can't process it", you're right.

 

I can, and always could. From the moment I arrived at school (Columbia College, Manhattan) I saw that from Wall Street, world capital of money, you could peer over the Statue of Liberty, and the statue was about the same color as our paper currency. (Coincidence? No socialist or Communist, I. But I always was aware of such contrasts and comparisons even before acquiring a camera, and I was a 'privileged but impecunious' student living on the very edge of Harlem, then Spanish Harlem, and couldn't escape the idea my giant University (25,000 graduate students, 4,000 undergrads) was 1st or 2nd largest landowner in NYC (after the Catholic Church), owned Rockefeller Center land, (original campus), AND as a "buffer" quasi-secretly owned many of the buildings of Harlem that surrounded Columbia University, almost certainly as a means of control.

 

(I was mostly apolitical, but not without feelings and thoughts).

 

By the way, I think H C-B has been given short shrift as a philosopher, for that's what he was, and a humorist as well as all else.

 

Finally, you've placed my name with some mighty lofty photographers' names -- Winogrand, Erwitt, Levitt, just as a highly-skilled compatriot I've never met, Doug Hawks, who is chronicaling Long Beach has with others -- Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau, etc., and I am quite blushing at such sudden (and most welcome but frankly undeserved) attention.

 

What I do miss about the "community" of Photo.net and I can't get from an ordinary camera club is collegial work such as going over the images I discard looking for treasures (and those of others).

 

I passed over for the longest time my highest rated and viewed image -- the soldier with fixed bayonet and the students protesting. I miss a local compatriot who can sit down and do photographic and image things together, who can think like a photographer and an intellectual.

 

(Pardon the musing response)

 

Respectfully John

(Maybe there's hope yet for you -- at least I'd love to learn about your images and what you've done and how it's turned out.

J

Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you ad infinitum. John

I've thought about it. I have a solution for a case of the upsets over low ratings, etc.

 

Buy a ticket to Cabo.

 

Get scuba certified if not already.

 

Do NOT take a camera.

 

Dive where the Pacific meets the Sea of Cortez.

 

You won't give a good G. .d G*d D**n about what anybody thinks about photos or anything else except your elation and your wish to share the feeling.

 

(Or choose your dive site -- Maldives - Red Sea -- Great Barrier Reef, etc.)

 

Did you know I'm a doctor (not medical, however), but you can tell your boss Dr. John says you HAVE to go?

 

John

This was the time of the moon shot. There were topless nightclubs in San Francisco. The topless nightclubs of North Beach had a common public relations man, D. Rosenthal, who pulled outrageous publicity 'stunts' and I happened upon this one.

 

He took a woman, probably a stripper, put antenna on her head, wrapped her in Saran Wrap and loosed her on the "Streets of San Francisco" as "Moon Woman". Gads! This image was never shown to anyone, and no photographer who was there legitimately ever showed it to his editor "in an official capacity". ;-) Nobody ever said topless clubs or their 'flack' had good taste. John

These unwitting guys were mere bystanders to Mr. D. Rosenthals 'evil genius' for 'topless' publicity -- this time for the 'moon landing' and his 'moon woman' - shown here. Their bemused looks, however, are genuine.

 

John