robert_jones8
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Posts posted by robert_jones8
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Shrill? Darn it, I meant to come off as bombastic, overbearing and ridiculously pompous. But never shrill!
I think the previous reader might be missing the point. Didn't I use a big enough sledgehammer to drive home my shtick? Why else in G-d's name would my cynicism be *over* jaded?
Ahem. There are often *multiple* meanings for words in our Woerterbuecher. Zum Beispiel: "sobriquet." An alternate meaning I found in an reputable dictionary for everyday use, Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, Merriam: Springfield, Mass., 1974, p. 1102: "a fanciful name or epithet." Well, whattaya know?
Perhaps I wasn't giving enough *context.* Could it be that: 1). The writer suggested he lived in the United States, and that; 2). In the United States the word "socialism" is a dirty word, otherwise liberals would call themselves "socialists?" Therefore; 3). The reader can easily infer that when an American uses the word "socialism," he generally means it to be a sobriquet, i.e., epithet (unless he's Noam Chomsky or Bernie Sanders, who are honest enough not to run from the word).
Sorry about my overstated and clumsy comparison. Was meant to be "laughable." The great thing about internet bulletin boards is that one can go around throwing darts at people for whom he has a deep, abiding loathing. It's fun, therapeutic and relieves the tension. Of course, this may also be because I was abused as a child and have a deep-seated inferiority complex. I really don't know. Ask my analyst. But, please, feel free to have a laugh at my expense. After all, it's just life!
Well now, was this review meant for English or German speakers? Actually, both. Did you know that within these United States, there are actually enclaves of people who speak languages other than English? There are even some people here who actually speak English. Outside our borders, most peoples of the world actually speak *other languages.* I didn't spend over $5,000.00 at Berlitz to learn German and then not use it, pal! I need to get every penny's worth! (j/k: I lived in Germany).
I need a copy editor? I might lose readership and credibility with my readers? Again with the context dropping: You may not have noticed, but this is *www.photo.net*, the home of petty tirades, non sequiturs, specious argumentation, ad hominem attacks, faulty logic and outright demagoguery. I *was* considering my audience!
However, it comes as a surprise to me that Mark didn't take me to task for the fact that too often do I write in the passive voice. It is with glaring obviousness that I so write, and picking it up is something I would have thought he might have done.
Then again, my prose easily falls within AP Style Guide standards. The 1837 edition, to be exact.
Thus we are left with "So the typical travelogue typified the era? How surprising."
Well, I have nothing to add, save that Mark is absolutely correct. I am guilty of frightfully bad editing and appallingly obvious redundancy. I beg his forgiveness.
Lastly, though, and in all seriousness: Check out Chargesheimer's photography. He really *is* that great.
-
Boell, Heinrich (essayist) and Chargesheimer (photographer): Im
Ruhrgebiet (In the Ruhr District). Buechergilde Gutenberg, Frankfurt
am Main (Germany), 1958, 28 pages of text, 121 plates.
It is so rare a treat to discover a photographer that has been lost
to us. The homogenization and insularity of the fine arts photography
world (in the United States, at least) has set up a dichotomy of the
Great Old Masters (Adams, Stieglitz, the Westons, Walker Evans,
Cartier-Bresson, etc.) versus the so-called "cutting edge" of such
ephemeral and forgettable charlatans as Anne Geddes, David
Lachapelle, Jock Sturges and the late Herb Ritts.
This false set of alternatives offers little to choose from aside
from those acknowledged and revered giants whose portfolios are
recycled endlessly by Aperture on the one hand, and vapid,
sophomoric, gimmickry faddists on the other.
Thus, when a great photographer somehow cannot be pigeonholed within
either paradigm, those slavish worshippers of dead legends and
fawning adulators of the celebrity haven't the foggiest notion of how
to react, usually because their ignorance precludes them from being
*able* to react.
This criticism I've proffered applies to me: Like many, I do not
actively seek out the forgotten or the innovative. I am quite content
with being quite gemuetlich within my bookshelves' well-traveled
circles of Evans, Robert Frank, Youssef Karsh, Man Ray, James Van Der
Zee and Saint Ansel (and I also flatter myself for having taste
enough to fastidiously avoid the above-mentioned schmaltzmeisters).
Nonetheless, I also flatter myself that I at least have an open
enough mind that when something novel my way comes, that I can be
receptive to its visual import without my over-jaded cynicism
imposing upon my eyes and kup.
It was in this manner that this volume came to me. It was presented
as a gift to me by an older friend from the Netherlands, who
described it as "socialist propaganda, but nevertheless very charming
photography" (she did not mean "socialist" to be a sobriquet, as she
falls on that side of the fence politically).
The photographer Chargesheimer (which is a contraction of his given
name, Karl Heinz Hargesheimer, trading the "K" in Karl for a "C")
forges a deceptively dreary portrait of the industrial zone "zwischen
Dortmund und Duisburg" that lies in the Ruhr Valley. Primarily taken
with a handheld Leica rangefinder, using what must have been the
rather grainy Agfapan Rapid or early Tri-X Pan of the mid-1950s, the
photographer presents a grimy yet enchanting visual document of the
hardscrabble region and its people.
Chargesheimer, who after the Second World War worked as a
photographer for Stern magazine in Germany and as a free-lance
photographer in Paris, had already fashioned a master photographer's
vision by the time he tackled this work. Im Ruhrgebiet presents the
reader with an antidote to the typical European travelogue of pruned
gardens, towering cathedrals and genteel nobility which so typifies
the era in which he worked.
The strongest quality Chargesheimer imparts is that he intuitively
grasps that photography is as much about what is unseen as what is
seen. If the photographer's maxim is "lux et veritas," then
Chargesheimer operates on the premise "Dunkelheit ist Wahrheit."
The f/64 Zone System cultists would have a field day dissecting this
volume, for Chargesheimer's tonal palette falls mostly within the
baritone-to-bass range. Sunlight rarely intrudes upon the fog, smoke,
clouds and shadows of his dim visual universe. Im Ruhrgebiet is the
still-photographer's equivalent of the postwar cinema verite that was
emerging in Italy and France: Gritty and unadorned, stark and
foreboding.
His portraits are his most striking works, and the polar opposite of
the blatant propaganda of the Soviets, and the Nazi Germany of just a
decade before. Here, Chargesheimer does not give us Aryan super men
or proletarian heroes, but simply shows people as they really are.
From the matter-of-fact photograph of blue-collar men walking their
bicycles at a crosswalk while smoking (plate 15) to a bored foreman,
resigned before his task of minding a factory motor (plate 19,
insightfully titled "Automation") to the extreme close-up of a
workman's grimacing face caught during some grueling task (plate 20)
to another soot covered day laborer working a pneumatic drill (plate
50), Im Ruhrgebiet captures these low country Germans at their
industrious best, during the reconstruction period under the Marshall
Plan.
Just as strong are Chargesheimer's photographs of the Ruhr people in
sundry other everyday pursuits. A middle-aged Hausfrau delights in
freshly-cut willows on a spring day (plate 61), another woman sits
quietly nursing her drink, eyes closed (plate 41, aptly
titled "Bored") while another Gasthaus patron sleeps off his drunk
(plate 42); a well-dressed, youthful couple walk along a country lane
on a brightly-lit (rare exception) spring day (plate 72). My favorite
of all is of three bundled children on their way to school on a cold
winter's morning (plate 32): One girl gives the photographer a cold,
withering stare, while the other looks at him askance, wary. The
little boy walking between the two girls is smiling, but it's
ambiguous -- the viewer can't tell whether he is happy or just
smirking at the photographer's folly.
His still-lifes are equally compelling. His landscapes flaunt the
region's industrial schmutz. Brimming over with cobblestones,
girders, smokestacks and railroad yards, Chargesheimer's talent for
finding beauty in the mundane comes to the fore, reminiscent of
Albert Renger- Patzch. Yet, amongst all the soot and ruins, his work
intimates hope, not doom: Under a filthy and graffiti-splattered
concrete viaduct, two boys cheerfully pose with their scooter (plate
33); as nightfall descends upon the row houses and apartments of the
Industrialgebiet, a shimmering strip of sunlight illuminates a line
of tenements in the middle of an otherwise charcoal-grey landscape; a
man stoops animatedly on a wooden bridge that traverses a smoldering
slag heap (plate 64).
Chargesheimer continued to photograph mainly in the Ruhr area,
particularly in Koeln (Cologne), the city of his birth, until his
untimely death at the age of 46 in 1971. To me, his photography
represents the German counterpart to such important mid-century
photographers as Robert Frank and Louis Faurer. His aesthetic is just
as refined and his perspective as distinctly honed. However, his
photography is much less reserved; Chargesheimer does not come off as
some quiet observer the way Frank and Faurer did. (This is not a
criticism of these two masters; being immigrants to America at a
relatively later age, they could never have been part and parcel of
the New York streets the way Chargesheimer took to the factories of
Essen or the beer halls of Gelsenkirchen). In this regard,
Chargesheimer reminds me more of a German version of Weegee: He basks
in the tawdry, the prosaic and pedestrian and elevates it to high
art.
He also had Weegee's eye for satire: Chargesheimer's portraits of the
Ruhr's bourgeoisie strikes easily recognizable parallels to the stogy-
chomping tabloid shutterbug's contemporaneous candid shots of
wealthy dames attending the Metropolitan Opera.
What an amazing find! It is almost criminal that Chargesheimer is
unknown in the United States. I conducted a poll of many photographic
acquaintances over here, and not one has ever heard of him. I asked
three German friends about him, and they were all quite familiar with
his work. In fact, if you do a Google search for "Chargesheimer," not
one page in English will be among the results!
As for the text, Boell writes out of a sense of love for his
homeland. He mixes anecdotes and impressions of these Volk deftly,
lacing his text with prosaic tales of the everyday lives of these
people, told in a gentle, poetic vein.
One such charming story is of a three year-old girl found washing
potatoes. When asked why she is washing them, she replies quite
seriously: "Because they are dirty. I need fresh water to make them
green. They must be green!"
This edition, though hard to find, can be had for about 100 Euros at
www.abebooks.de, as can all Chargesheimer's other books (prices
vary). The printing is first rate: The paper is nice thick stock and
has hardly yellowed at all over time. The printing is gorgeous.
Rather than half-tone screened, it is printed in the little-used
rotogravure process, so that the plates do justice to every grain of
Chargesheimer's dramatic original prints.
A fine website preserving his legacy for posterity is The
Chargesheimer Society (Chargesheimer Gesellschaft) at:
www.chargesheimer.de
Hopefully, fifty years hence, Chargesheimer's genius will be a matter
of common knowledge worldwide. However, given the current climate
with such "clever" and narcissistic works as some guy who's
photographed all the contents in his house like product shots with a
digital camera, I ain't counting on it.
-
RM L:
Yes, have had problems. Apparently, the photo.net software character set recognizes umlauts all through the process up until the moment the writer "confirms" it. My paragraph breaks got lost in the shuffle, too. Sorry about the "word diarrhea."
Nope, not advertisement or PR. Just my own personal review of a long-out-of-print book that, yes, I happen to love. As for terms such as "paradigm," "ephemeral" and "fifty years hence," they are perfectly good and functional words going to waste in unread dictionaries whilst our current generation of youth inserts the dreadful "like" where commas *ought* to be.
I'm not even forty yet, and am already a cranky old man! :-p
Will publish a cleaned-up version with "ae," "oe," and "ue" in place of the umlauted vowels.
Prost!
Robert
-
B�ll, Heinrich (essayist) and Chargesheimer (photographer): Im
Ruhrgebiet (In the Ruhr District). B�chergilde Gutenberg, Frankfurt
am Main (Germany), 1958, 28 pages of text, 121 plates.
It is so rare a treat to discover a photographer that has been lost
to us. The homogenization and insularity of the fine arts photography
world (in the United States, at least) has set up a dichotomy of the
Great Old Masters (Adams, Stieglitz, the Westons, Walker Evans,
Cartier-Bresson, etc.) versus the so-called "cutting edge" of such
ephemeral and forgettable charlatans as Anne Geddes, David
Lachapelle, Jock Sturges and the late Herb Ritts.
This false set of alternatives offers little to choose from aside
from those acknowledged and revered giants whose portfolios are
recycled endlessly by Aperture on the one hand, and vapid,
sophomoric, gimmickry faddists on the other.
Thus, when a great photographer somehow cannot be pigeonholed within
either paradigm, those slavish worshippers of dead legends and
fawning adulators of the celebrity haven't the foggiest notion of how
to react, usually because their ignorance precludes them from being
*able* to react.
This criticism I've proffered applies to me: Like many, I do not
actively seek out the forgotten or the innovative. I am quite content
with being quite gem�tlich within my bookshelves' well-traveled
circles of Evans, Robert Frank, Youssef Karsh, Man Ray, James Van Der
Zee and Saint Ansel (and I also flatter myself for having taste
enough to fastidiously avoid the above-mentioned schmaltzmeisters).
Nonetheless, I also flatter myself that I at least have an open
enough mind that when something novel my way comes, that I can be
receptive to its visual import without my over-jaded cynicism
imposing upon my eyes and kup.
It was in this manner that this volume came to me. It was presented
as a gift to me by an older friend from the Netherlands, who
described it as "socialist propaganda, but nevertheless very charming
photography" (she did not mean "socialist" to be a sobriquet, as she
falls on that side of the fence politically).
The photographer Chargesheimer (which is a contraction of his given
name, Karl Heinz Hargesheimer) forges a deceptively dreary portrait
of the industrial zone "zwischen Dortmund und Duisburg" that lies in
the Ruhr Valley. Primarily taken with a handheld Leica rangefinder,
using what must have been the rather grainy Agfapan Rapid or early
Tri-X Pan of the mid-1950s, the photographer presents a grimy yet
enchanting visual document of the hardscrabble region and its people.
Chargesheimer, who after the Second World War worked as a
photographer for Stern magazine in Germany and as a free-lance
photographer in Paris, had already fashioned a master photographer's
vision by the time he tackled this work. Im Ruhrgebiet presents the
reader with an antidote to the typical European travelogue of pruned
gardens, towering cathedrals and genteel nobility which so typifies
the era in which he worked.
The strongest quality Chargesheimer imparts is that he intuitively
grasps that photography is as much about what is unseen as what is
seen. If the photographer's maxim is "lux et veritas," then
Chargesheimer operates on the premise "Dunkelheit ist Wahrheit."
The f/64 Zone System cultists would have a field day dissecting this
volume, for Chargesheimer's tonal palette falls mostly within the
baritone-to-bass range. Sunlight rarely intrudes upon the fog, smoke,
clouds and shadows of his dim visual universe. Im Ruhrgebiet is the
still-photographer's equivalent of the postwar cinema verite that was
emerging in Italy and France: Gritty and unadorned, stark and
foreboding.
His portraits are his most striking works, and the polar opposite of
the blatant propaganda of the Soviets, and the Nazi Germany of just a
decade before. Here, Chargesheimer does not give us Aryan super men
or proletarian heroes, but simply shows people as they really are.
From the matter-of-fact photograph of blue-collar men walking their
bicycles at a crosswalk while smoking (plate 15) to a bored foreman,
resigned before his task of minding a factory motor (plate 19,
insightfully titled "Automation") to the extreme close-up of a
workman's grimacing face caught during some grueling task (plate 20)
to another soot covered day laborer working a pneumatic drill (plate
50), Im Ruhrgebiet captures these low country Germans at their
industrious best, during the reconstruction period under the Marshall
Plan.
Just as strong are Chargesheimer's photographs of the Ruhr people in
sundry other everyday pursuits. A middle-aged Hausfrau delights in
freshly-cut willows on a spring day (plate 61), another woman sits
quietly nursing her drink, eyes closed (plate 41, aptly
titled "Bored") while another Gasthaus patron sleeps off his drunk
(plate 42); a well-dressed, youthful couple walk along a country lane
on a brightly-lit (rare exception) spring day (plate 72). My favorite
of all is of three bundled children on their way to school on a cold
winter's morning (plate 32): One girl gives the photographer a cold,
withering stare, while the other looks at him askance, wary. The
little boy walking between the two girls is smiling, but it's
ambiguous -- the viewer can't tell whether he is happy or just
smirking at the photographer's folly.
His still-lifes are equally compelling. His landscapes flaunt the
region's industrial grime. Brimming over with cobblestones, girders,
smokestacks and railroad yards, Chargesheimer's talent for finding
beauty in the mundane comes to the fore, reminiscent of Albert Renger-
Patzch. Yet, amongst all the soot and ruins, his work intimates
hope, not doom: Under a filthy and graffiti-splattered concrete
viaduct, two boys cheerfully pose with their scooter (plate 33); as
nightfall descends upon the row houses and apartments of the
Industrialgebiet, a shimmering strip of sunlight illuminates a line
of tenements in the middle of an otherwise charcoal-grey landscape; a
man stoops animatedly on a wooden bridge that traverses a smoldering
slag heap (plate 64).
Chargesheimer continued to photograph mainly in the Ruhr area,
particularly in K�ln (Cologne), the city of his birth, until his
untimely death at the age of 46 in 1971. To me, his photography
represents the German counterpart to such important mid-century
photographers as Robert Frank and Louis Faurer. His aesthetic is just
as refined and his perspective as distinctly honed. However, his
photography is much less reserved; Chargesheimer does not come off as
some quiet observer the way Frank and Faurer did. (This is not a
criticism of these two masters; Being immigrants to America at a
relatively later age, they could never have been part and parcel of
the New York streets the way Chargesheimer took to the factories of
Essen or the beer halls of Gelsenkirchen). In this regard,
Chargesheimer reminds me more of a German version of Weegee: He basks
in the tawdry, the prosaic and pedestrian and elevates it to high art.
He also had Weegee's eye for satire: Chargesheimer's portraits of the
Ruhr's bourgeoisie strikes easily recognizable parallels to the stogy-
chomping tabloid shutterbug's contemporaneous candid shots of
wealthy dames attending the Metropolitan Opera.
What an amazing find! It is almost criminal that Chargesheimer is
unknown in the United States. I conducted a poll of many photographic
acquaintances over here, and not one has ever heard of him. I asked
three German friends about him, and they were all quite familiar with
his work. In fact, if you do a Google search for "Chargesheimer," not
one page in English will be among the results!
As for the text, B�ll writes out of a sense of love for his homeland.
He mixes anecdotes and impressions of the hardscrabble folk deftly,
lacing his text with prosaic tales of the everyday lives of these
people, told in a gentle, poetic vein.
One such charming story is of a three year-old girl found washing
potatoes. When asked why she is washing them, she replies quite
seriously: "Because they are dirty. I need fresh water to make them
green. They must be green!"
This edition, though hard to find, can be had for about 100 Euros at
www.abebooks.de, as can all his other books. The printing is first
rate: The paper is nice thick stock and has hardly yellowed at all
over time. The printing is gorgeous. Rather than half-tone screened,
it is printed in the now-unknown rotogravure process, so that the
plates do justice to every grain of Chargesheimer's dramatic original
prints.
A fine website dedicated to Chargesheimer is The Chargesheimer
Society (Chargesheimer Gesellschaft) at:
www.chargesheimer.de
Hopefully, fifty years hence, Chargesheimer's genius will be a matter
of common knowledge worldwide. However, given the current climate of
such "clever" and narcissistic works as some guy who's photographed
all the contents in his house like product shots, with a digital
camera, I ain't counting on it.
-
B�ll, Heinrich (essayist) and Chargesheimer (photographer): Im
Ruhrgebiet (In the Ruhr District). B�chergilde Gutenberg, Frankfurt
am Main (Germany), 1958, 28 pages of text, 121 plates.
It is so rare a treat to discover a photographer that has been lost
to us. The homogenization and insularity of the fine arts photography
world (in the United States, at least) has set up a dichotomy of the
Great Old Masters (Adams, Stieglitz, the Westons, Walker Evans,
Cartier-Bresson, etc.) versus the so-called "cutting edge" of such
ephemeral and forgettable charlatans as Anne Geddes, David
Lachapelle, Jock Sturges and the late Herb Ritts.
This false set of alternatives offers little to choose from aside
from those acknowledged and revered giants whose portfolios are
recycled endlessly by Aperture on the one hand, and vapid,
sophomoric, gimmickry faddists on the other.
Thus, when a great photographer somehow cannot be pigeonholed within
either paradigm, those slavish worshippers of dead legends and
fawning adulators of the celebrity haven't the foggiest notion of how
to react, usually because their ignorance precludes them from being
*able* to react.
This criticism I've proffered applies to me: Like many, I do not
actively seek out the forgotten or the innovative. I am quite content
with being quite gem�tlich within my bookshelves' well-traveled
circles of Evans, Robert Frank, Youssef Karsh, Man Ray, James Van Der
Zee and Saint Ansel (and I also flatter myself for having taste
enough to fastidiously avoid the above-mentioned schmaltzmeisters).
Nonetheless, I also flatter myself that I at least have an open
enough mind that when something novel my way comes, that I can be
receptive to its visual import without my over-jaded cynicism
imposing upon my eyes and kup.
It was in this manner that this volume came to me. It was presented
as a gift to me by an older friend from the Netherlands, who
described it as "socialist propaganda, but nevertheless very charming
photography" (she did not mean "socialist" to be a sobriquet, as she
falls on that side of the fence politically).
The photographer Chargesheimer (which is a contraction of his given
name, Karl Heinz Hargesheimer) forges a deceptively dreary portrait
of the industrial zone "zwischen Dortmund und Duisburg" that lies in
the Ruhr Valley. Primarily taken with a handheld Leica rangefinder,
using what must have been the rather grainy Agfapan Rapid or early
Tri-X Pan of the mid-1950s, the photographer presents a grimy yet
enchanting visual document of the hardscrabble region and its people.
Chargesheimer, who after the Second World War worked as a
photographer for Stern magazine in Germany and as a free-lance
photographer in Paris, had already fashioned a master photographer's
vision by the time he tackled this work. Im Ruhrgebiet presents the
reader with an antidote to the typical European travelogue of pruned
gardens, towering cathedrals and genteel nobility which so typifies
the era in which he worked.
The strongest quality Chargesheimer imparts is that he intuitively
grasps that photography is as much about what is unseen as what is
seen. If the photographer's maxim is "lux et veritas," then
Chargesheimer operates on the premise "Dunkelheit ist Wahrheit."
The f/64 Zone System cultists would have a field day dissecting this
volume, for Chargesheimer's tonal palette falls mostly within the
baritone-to-bass range. Sunlight rarely intrudes upon the fog, smoke,
clouds and shadows of his dim visual universe. Im Ruhrgebiet is the
still-photographer's equivalent of the postwar cinema verite that was
emerging in Italy and France: Gritty and unadorned, stark and
foreboding.
His portraits are his most striking works, and the polar opposite of
the blatant propaganda of the Soviets, and the Nazi Germany of just a
decade before. Here, Chargesheimer does not give us Aryan super men
or proletarian heroes, but simply shows people as they really are.
From the matter-of-fact photograph of blue-collar men walking their
bicycles at a crosswalk while smoking (plate 15) to a bored foreman,
resigned before his task of minding a factory motor (plate 19,
insightfully titled "Automation") to the extreme close-up of a
workman's grimacing face caught during some grueling task (plate 20)
to another soot covered day laborer working a pneumatic drill (plate
50), Im Ruhrgebiet captures these low country Germans at their
industrious best, during the reconstruction period under the Marshall
Plan.
Just as strong are Chargesheimer's photographs of the Ruhr people in
sundry other everyday pursuits. A middle-aged Hausfrau delights in
freshly-cut willows on a spring day (plate 61), another woman sits
quietly nursing her drink, eyes closed (plate 41, aptly
titled "Bored") while another Gasthaus patron sleeps off his drunk
(plate 42); a well-dressed, youthful couple walk along a country lane
on a brightly-lit (rare exception) spring day (plate 72). My favorite
of all is of three bundled children on their way to school on a cold
winter's morning (plate 32): One girl gives the photographer a cold,
withering stare, while the other looks at him askance, wary. The
little boy walking between the two girls is smiling, but it's
ambiguous -- the viewer can't tell whether he is happy or just
smirking at the photographer's folly.
His still-lifes are equally compelling. His landscapes flaunt the
region's industrial grime. Brimming over with cobblestones, girders,
smokestacks and railroad yards, Chargesheimer's talent for finding
beauty in the mundane comes to the fore, reminiscent of Albert Renger-
Patzch. Yet, amongst all the soot and ruins, his work intimates
hope, not doom: Under a filthy and graffiti-splattered concrete
viaduct, two boys cheerfully pose with their scooter (plate 33); as
nightfall descends upon the row houses and apartments of the
Industrialgebiet, a shimmering strip of sunlight illuminates a line
of tenements in the middle of an otherwise charcoal-grey landscape; a
man stoops animatedly on a wooden bridge that traverses a smoldering
slag heap (plate 64).
Chargesheimer continued to photograph mainly in the Ruhr area,
particularly in K�ln (Cologne), the city of his birth, until his
untimely death at the age of 46 in 1971. To me, his photography
represents the German counterpart to such important mid-century
photographers as Robert Frank and Louis Faurer. His aesthetic is just
as refined and his perspective as distinctly honed. However, his
photography is much less reserved; Chargesheimer does not come off as
some quiet observer the way Frank and Faurer did. (This is not a
criticism of these two masters; Being immigrants to America at a
relatively later age, they could never have been part and parcel of
the New York streets the way Chargesheimer took to the factories of
Essen or the beer halls of Gelsenkirchen). In this regard,
Chargesheimer reminds me more of a German version of Weegee: He basks
in the tawdry, the prosaic and pedestrian and elevates it to high art.
He also had Weegee's eye for satire: Chargesheimer's portraits of the
Ruhr's bourgeoisie strikes easily recognizable parallels to the stogy-
chomping tabloid shutterbug's contemporaneous candid shots of
wealthy dames attending the Metropolitan Opera.
What an amazing find! It is almost criminal that Chargesheimer is
unknown in the United States. I conducted a poll of many photographic
acquaintances over here, and not one has ever heard of him. I asked
three German friends about him, and they were all quite familiar with
his work. In fact, if you do a Google search for "Chargesheimer," not
one page in English will be among the results!
As for the text, B�ll writes out of a sense of love for his homeland.
He mixes anecdotes and impressions of the hardscrabble folk deftly,
lacing his text with prosaic tales of the everyday lives of these
people, told in a gentle, poetic vein.
One such charming story is of a three year-old girl found washing
potatoes. When asked why she is washing them, she replies quite
seriously: "Because they are dirty. I need fresh water to make them
green. They must be green!"
This edition, though hard to find, can be had for about 100 Euros at
www.abebooks.de, as can all his other books. The printing is first
rate: The paper is nice thick stock and has hardly yellowed at all
over time. The printing is gorgeous. Rather than half-tone screened,
it is printed in the now-unknown rotogravure process, so that the
plates do justice to every grain of Chargesheimer's dramatic original
prints.
A fine website dedicated to Chargesheimer is The Chargesheimer
Society (Chargesheimer Gesellschaft) at:
www.chargesheimer.de
Hopefully, fifty years hence, Chargesheimer's genius will be a matter
of common knowledge worldwide. However, given the current climate of
such "clever" and narcissistic works as some guy who's photographed
all the contents in his house like product shots, with a digital
camera, I ain't counting on it.
-
B�ll, Heinrich (essayist) and Chargesheimer (photographer): Im
Ruhrgebiet (In the Ruhr District). B�chergilde Gutenberg, Frankfurt
am Main (Germany), 1958, 28 pages of text, 121 plates.
It is so rare a treat to discover a photographer that has been lost
to us. The homogenization and insularity of the fine arts photography
world (in the United States, at least) has set up a dichotomy of the
Great Old Masters (Adams, Stieglitz, the Westons, Walker Evans,
Cartier-Bresson, etc.) versus the so-called "cutting edge" of such
ephemeral and forgettable charlatans as Anne Geddes, David
Lachapelle, Jock Sturges and the late Herb Ritts.
This false set of alternatives offers little to choose from aside
from those acknowledged and revered giants whose portfolios are
recycled endlessly by Aperture on the one hand, and vapid,
sophomoric, gimmickry faddists on the other.
Thus, when a great photographer somehow cannot be pigeonholed within
either paradigm, those slavish worshippers of dead legends and
fawning adulators of the celebrity haven't the foggiest notion of how
to react, usually because their ignorance precludes them from being
*able* to react.
This criticism I've proffered applies to me: Like many, I do not
actively seek out the forgotten or the innovative. I am quite content
with being quite gem�tlich within my bookshelves' well-traveled
circles of Evans, Robert Frank, Youssef Karsh, Man Ray, James Van Der
Zee and Saint Ansel (and I also flatter myself for having taste
enough to fastidiously avoid the above-mentioned schmaltzmeisters).
Nonetheless, I also flatter myself that I at least have an open
enough mind that when something novel my way comes, that I can be
receptive to its visual import without my over-jaded cynicism
imposing upon my eyes and kup.
It was in this manner that this volume came to me. It was presented
as a gift to me by an older friend from the Netherlands, who
described it as "socialist propaganda, but nevertheless very charming
photography" (she did not mean "socialist" to be a sobriquet, as she
falls on that side of the fence politically).
The photographer Chargesheimer (which is a contraction of his given
name, Karl Heinz Hargesheimer) forges a deceptively dreary portrait
of the industrial zone "zwischen Dortmund und Duisburg" that lies in
the Ruhr Valley. Primarily taken with a handheld Leica rangefinder,
using what must have been the rather grainy Agfapan Rapid or early
Tri-X Pan of the mid-1950s, the photographer presents a grimy yet
enchanting visual document of the hardscrabble region and its people.
Chargesheimer, who after the Second World War worked as a
photographer for Stern magazine in Germany and as a free-lance
photographer in Paris, had already fashioned a master photographer's
vision by the time he tackled this work. Im Ruhrgebiet presents the
reader with an antidote to the typical European travelogue of pruned
gardens, towering cathedrals and genteel nobility which so typifies
the era in which he worked.
The strongest quality Chargesheimer imparts is that he intuitively
grasps that photography is as much about what is unseen as what is
seen. If the photographer's maxim is "lux et veritas," then
Chargesheimer operates on the premise "Dunkelheit ist Wahrheit."
The f/64 Zone System cultists would have a field day dissecting this
volume, for Chargesheimer's tonal palette falls mostly within the
baritone-to-bass range. Sunlight rarely intrudes upon the fog, smoke,
clouds and shadows of his dim visual universe. Im Ruhrgebiet is the
still-photographer's equivalent of the postwar cinema verite that was
emerging in Italy and France: Gritty and unadorned, stark and
foreboding.
His portraits are his most striking works, and the polar opposite of
the blatant propaganda of the Soviets, and the Nazi Germany of just a
decade before. Here, Chargesheimer does not give us Aryan super men
or proletarian heroes, but simply shows people as they really are.
From the matter-of-fact photograph of blue-collar men walking their
bicycles at a crosswalk while smoking (plate 15) to a bored foreman,
resigned before his task of minding a factory motor (plate 19,
insightfully titled "Automation") to the extreme close-up of a
workman's grimacing face caught during some grueling task (plate 20)
to another soot covered day laborer working a pneumatic drill (plate
50), Im Ruhrgebiet captures these low country Germans at their
industrious best, during the reconstruction period under the Marshall
Plan.
Just as strong are Chargesheimer's photographs of the Ruhr people in
sundry other everyday pursuits. A middle-aged Hausfrau delights in
freshly-cut willows on a spring day (plate 61), another woman sits
quietly nursing her drink, eyes closed (plate 41, aptly
titled "Bored") while another Gasthaus patron sleeps off his drunk
(plate 42); a well-dressed, youthful couple walk along a country lane
on a brightly-lit (rare exception) spring day (plate 72). My favorite
of all is of three bundled children on their way to school on a cold
winter's morning (plate 32): One girl gives the photographer a cold,
withering stare, while the other looks at him askance, wary. The
little boy walking between the two girls is smiling, but it's
ambiguous -- the viewer can't tell whether he is happy or just
smirking at the photographer's folly.
His still-lifes are equally compelling. His landscapes flaunt the
region's industrial grime. Brimming over with cobblestones, girders,
smokestacks and railroad yards, Chargesheimer's talent for finding
beauty in the mundane comes to the fore, reminiscent of Albert Renger-
Patzch. Yet, amongst all the soot and ruins, his work intimates
hope, not doom: Under a filthy and graffiti-splattered concrete
viaduct, two boys cheerfully pose with their scooter (plate 33); as
nightfall descends upon the row houses and apartments of the
Industrialgebiet, a shimmering strip of sunlight illuminates a line
of tenements in the middle of an otherwise charcoal-grey landscape; a
man stoops animatedly on a wooden bridge that traverses a smoldering
slag heap (plate 64).
Chargesheimer continued to photograph mainly in the Ruhr area,
particularly in K�ln (Cologne), the city of his birth, until his
untimely death at the age of 46 in 1971. To me, his photography
represents the German counterpart to such important mid-century
photographers as Robert Frank and Louis Faurer. His aesthetic is just
as refined and his perspective as distinctly honed. However, his
photography is much less reserved; Chargesheimer does not come off as
some quiet observer the way Frank and Faurer did. (This is not a
criticism of these two masters; Being immigrants to America at a
relatively later age, they could never have been part and parcel of
the New York streets the way Chargesheimer took to the factories of
Essen or the beer halls of Gelsenkirchen). In this regard,
Chargesheimer reminds me more of a German version of Weegee: He basks
in the tawdry, the prosaic and pedestrian and elevates it to high art.
He also had Weegee's eye for satire: Chargesheimer's portraits of the
Ruhr's bourgeoisie strikes easily recognizable parallels to the stogy-
chomping tabloid shutterbug's contemporaneous candid shots of
wealthy dames attending the Metropolitan Opera.
What an amazing find! It is almost criminal that Chargesheimer is
unknown in the United States. I conducted a poll of many photographic
acquaintances over here, and not one has ever heard of him. I asked
three German friends about him, and they were all quite familiar with
his work. In fact, if you do a Google search for "Chargesheimer," not
one page in English will be among the results!
As for the text, B�ll writes out of a sense of love for his homeland.
He mixes anecdotes and impressions of the hardscrabble folk deftly,
lacing his text with prosaic tales of the everyday lives of these
people, told in a gentle, poetic vein.
One such charming story is of a three year-old girl found washing
potatoes. When asked why she is washing them, she replies quite
seriously: "Because they are dirty. I need fresh water to make them
green. They must be green!"
This edition, though hard to find, can be had for about 100 Euros at
www.abebooks.de, as can all his other books. The printing is first
rate: The paper is nice thick stock and has hardly yellowed at all
over time. The printing is gorgeous. Rather than half-tone screened,
it is printed in the now-unknown rotogravure process, so that the
plates do justice to every grain of Chargesheimer's dramatic original
prints.
A fine website dedicated to Chargesheimer is The Chargesheimer
Society (Chargesheimer Gesellschaft) at:
www.chargesheimer.de
Hopefully, fifty years hence, Chargesheimer's genius will be a matter
of common knowledge worldwide. However, given the current climate of
such "clever" and narcissistic works as some guy who's photographed
all the contents in his house like product shots, with a digital
camera, I ain't counting on it.
-
Ellis: As a right-winger Army veteran and life-long hawk, I nonetheless found myself doubling over in laughter at that one. Touche! (Or should I say "You go, guy", since O'Reilly called for a boycott agaonst the French?)
However, I'm not buying that bit about Sean Hannity. As the total sum extent of his knowledge is derived from talking points released by the Republican Party, I must issue a quarrel with you; the Republican Party hasn't issued any talking points about photography lately, thus how else would Hannity have obtained knowledge on this issue?
You're slipping, Eliis. :)
-
I prefer sending my stuff to Harry Fleenor at Oceanside Camera Repair. I have sent my SL66 equipment (backs, body) to him, and never needed the same item repaired twice. Unfortunately, I can not say the same about Marflex, which is in New Jersey. In fact, everything I've sent to Oceanside was fixed first by Marflex, and their repairs didn't last long. The SL66 is a delicate machine, but it's way sturdier after coming back from Fleenor.
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While there is less of a feel of "depth" with this film than Agfapan APX-25, it is nonetheless sharper. It has a long and subtle tonal range. To get a "punchy" look like APX-25, i recommend using a yellow contrast filter while shooting. Thank you Efke for fighting the good fight for old school photography!
-
After the untimely demise of the timeless Agfapan APX-25, I began a quest to find a replacement. Since I originally got hooked on APX-25 when Kodak killed Panatomic-X in the late 1980s, I am not too worried about replacing it in 35mm; I have many bulk reels of Pan-X in 35mm. However, 120 is a case all its own.
Being a former stripper (color correction, not gentlemens' club type), I use my razor-sharp Paragon loupe on the light table. In Rodinal (1:50), Efke is sharper, however the grain is a bit large, as is to be expected in Rodinal. This is not necessarily a detriment as Rodinal produces beautifully textured grain.
In Edwal FG-7, a developer with higher sodium sulfite content forumlated for use with fine-grained film, I have been able to get quite similar results to Agfapan 25 (1:15, 8 min for Agfa) at 1:15 dilution at 6 min, 15 sec. With FG-7, the resultant image was considerably sharper -- wonderful detail! In this regard, it is perferable to APX-25. For example, I shot tests of a landscape in which a church is about 300 feet in the distance. Shooting at f8, i found that the detail in the individual roofing tiles and bricks was quite pronounced in the Efke, whereas with APX-25 it was not so detailed, even a tad blurry.
However, when it came to dramatic contrasts, it is indeed flatter than APX-25. The tonal range from 1 to 10 is there, but I like a little ummphh in my negatives. At 1:15 in Edwal FG-7, I got "close, but no cigar." APX-25 is the greatest film ever for that look of depth, striking contrasts and extended tonal range. The Efke 25 reminds me more of somewhere between Panatomic-X and Ilford Pan-F 50 when it comes to contrast and the flatter tonal range.
What this all boils down to is this: I will have to run more tests. I believe that with a yellow filter, I will be able to boost the contrast sufficiently to make it similar to APX-25 with no filtration.
I'm also going to run tests on Agfapan APX-100 by pulling it to 50 and developing it in FG-7 as well as Microdol-X. APX-100 has tighter grain these days than it did 20 years ago, and with enough sodium sulfite, I think this film will be quite a suitable replacement for APX-25.
Of course, none of this tedious work would be necessary if the dolts at Bayer who run Agfa GmbH didn't make the idiotic decision to kill the greatest black and white fine-grained film ever devised. APX-25 is to fine-grained film what Tri-X is to fast film. Shame on Bayer!
-
Here goes again, with more typographical clarity:
\
Edward Hopper - Fuji Velvia; Winslow Homer - Kodak Vericolor III 160; Andrew Wyeth - Kodak Ektar 25 w/ neutral density filter; Salvador Dali - Agfa Ultra 50; John Waterhouse - Kodachrome 64 w/ 81A filter; Roy Liechtenstein - Agfa RSX II 50; El Greco - Kodachrome 64 w/ 81C filter; Piet Mondrian - Fuji Astia 100; Thomas Kincaid - Kodak Max 400 in a one-time-use camera hand-retouched by a graduate from the correspondence school of painting on the back of a matchbook cover; Alberto Vargas - Fuji 64 Tungsten; Michelangelo - Kodak Portra NC-160; Karin Kneffel - Agfa Optima II 100; Charles Burchfield - Konica VX-100; Maxfield Parrish - Polaroid 669
-
Great minds think alike, I suppose, Keith. I had once submitted almost the same exact question about a year ago, but some "hero" struck it down. I can always count on you to come up with and run slightly different versions of my own thoughts past the obvious progeny of the Hays Office censors. :)
Yes, color is paramount in how I am influenced by the great painters.
To me......
Edward Hopper - Fuji Velvia
Winslow Homer - Kodak Vericolor III 160
Andrew Wyeth - Kodak Ektar 25 w/ neutral density filter
Salvador Dali - Agfa Ultra 50
John Waterhouse - Kodachrome 64 w/ 81A filter
Roy Liechtenstein - Agfa RSX II - 50
El Greco - Kodachrome 64 w/ 81C filter
Piet Mondrian - Fuji Astia 100
Thomas Kincaid - Kodak Max 400 in a one-time-use camera hand-retouched by a graduate from the correspondence school of painting on the back of a matchbook cover
Alberto Vargas - Fuji 64 Tungsten
Michelangelo - Kodak Portra NC-160
Karin Kneffel - Agfa Optima II 100
Charles Burchfield - Konica VX-100
Maxfield Parrish - Polaroid 669
Great question, Keith! I guess this "Philosophy of Photography" is a new category.
-
Ansel Adams in Color. Harry Callahan, ed. Boston: Little, Brown, 1993,
132 pp.
Many have made quite clear a fact about Ansel Adams regarding his own
colour photography: That he did not want it published, for his own
lack of control over the medium was substandard to the exacting
methods he employed in his black-and-white prints. Without
reservation, agreed.
But what most of Ansel Adams' most fervent admirers won't admit was
that this book of colour prints made from transparencies belie the
legendary artist's alleged "genius" for composition. Many of the
compositions within are colour versions of famous black-and-white
prints, the most famous being Half Dome at Yosemite.
I wish that aspiring photographers' introduction to Ansel Adams be
similar to that of a Japanese photography assistant I once employed.
She had seen little of Adams' work prior to this book. Her words
regarding this book were "he takes pleasant photographs of pretty
subjects in nature." I later introduced her to Adams' black-and-white
"greatest hits" that Little, Brown, also published. Her assessment:
"His compositions are generally conventional, but not novel. But, with
a red filter while shooting and many darkroom methods and formulas, he
uses technique to bring drama to his prints."
Ditto. It was refreshing to hear this opinion of Adams, because my
friend did not have the yoke of artistic correctness hanging about her
neck to remind her to speak of Adams in reverent, hushed, tones as
some great "master" as though he were the photographic equal of
Rembrandt, Vermeer or Rodin.
What Adams' admirers most fear about this book is that it will lay
waste to all the decades of carefully designed PR Adams' publicity
machine and his heirs have promulgated in their hagiographic
transmogrification of a pretty good artist and a peerless technician
into "St. Ansel."
The truth of the matter was that Ansel Adams made pretty pictures of
pretty landscapes. And, that's what you'll get in this book. If you
want the illusion of great art, turn to any of his volumes in
black-and-white.
But, if you want truly great, earth-shattering black and white
photography that inspires both intellect and emotion, then turn to the
true masters: Walker Evans, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Robert Frank and
Weegee.
-
The truly timeless artists are born. These are sui generis.
The latest fads, dilletantes and poseurs who appear on the art scene are made -- at cocktail parties, in the elite galleries, by influential critics, through name-dropping -- until they just as rapidly and blissfully disappear. These are the product of consumer culture.
-
Re: Harvey's comment:
<<I just have a problem with the clods who think that 'Art' is something they can claim to know more about than Joe Public.>>
If 'Joe Public' is the same personage as 'Joe Millionaire,' then my left little toenail knows more about art.
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Leni Riefenstahl: A Memoir. Picador (reprint), 1995, 669 pp.
As the old saying goes, "only the good die young." This doesn't
necessarily follow that the evil always die old, but it's noteworthy that the controversial photographer and movie director Leni Riefenstahl just turned 100 last year.
Reading this book was painful for me: As a Catholic in the 1990s, I worked for a Jewish civil rights organisation, and I am currently a fine-arts photographer who has been deeply influenced by the broad sweep and tightly framed compositions of Riefenstahl. She is doubtless a pioneer in cinema and photography, and those who would lambast her art as without merit are putting their morality and politics ahead of their objective judgment.
In my review of "Olympia," there is nothing but unqualified praise; But this book is not *primarily* concerned with her art as it is justifying her collaboration with the Nazis. Given that context, and having opened that can of worms, she is found morally wanting.
I was stationed in Germany with the Army during the 1980s, and even then, it was the same old story, like a broken record, hearing the older Germans fall all over themselves in explaining away their dubious "noninvolvement" with the Third Reich: "Hitler was a horrible man.....I was never a member of the Nazi party.....We knew nothing of the Holocaust.....The German people really despised the Nazis, but there was nothing we could do," etc.
That's basically what Riefenstahl's account of her years as chief
glorifier of the Third Reich is: A painstakingly dry account of
semi-plausible denial. After all these years, she's yet to categorically apologise. In this book, she also glosses
over her use of gypsies from concentration camps in one of her movies. Also, Riefenstahl should be exonerated because, after all, she "was never a member of the Nazi Party." Please, this tome was published in 1995, but denying one's party membership was already old hat when Mel Brooks put that line into the mouth of neo-Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind, author of "Springtime For Hitler" in "The Producers" in 1968.
So, we are left with this paradox: Was Leni Riefenstahl a genius or a monster?
I regard "Olympia," her film of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, as the
greatest documentary of the past century. It is a cinematic marvel, a rare work of grace and beauty that captures the true essence of the Olympian spirit.
But her 1934 masterpiece of technique, "Triumph of the Will" was equally brilliant and equally pioneering. It reveals a mind of unparalled insight and intelligence. And there's the rub: This makes her culpability even greater, because she was smart enough to know better. Riefenstahl was no babe in the woods, she was a sophisticated, worldly woman (read her accounts of her romances, her theories on cinema and her account of her life after World War II). Still, she expects us to believe she was some naif when it came to the Nazis. Sorry, I'm not buying; She was both a genius and a monster.
One reviewer on amazon.com tries to explain this away: "Artists and creators under censorship find ways to express themselves despite the hostile climate." Some, such as Jonathan Swift and Moliere, wrote satirical adventures to undermine the authoritarian regimes of their lands and times. World War II is rife with examples of artists who fled Europe to find freedom in America: Directors Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang and Ernst Lubitsch all saw the writing on the wall, and got out. Lubitsch even directed a gem of parody on the Nazis with "To Be Or Not to Be." Italian director Goffredo Allesandrini made an epic movie out of Ayn Rand's anti-totalitarian novel, "We the Living" -- which the Fascists wanted as anti-Russian propaganda -- but made it as a thinly veiled allegory against Mussolini's regime, and it was soon pulled out of circulation. Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini left America to return to Italy and refused to play the Fascist anthem, and was jailed for standing up to the Fascisti.
Dear readers, *that* is how artists with *guts* "express themselves, despite the hostile climate." They don't cozy up to the dictators and turn them into the second-coming of Jesus Christ, like Riefenstahl did. Riefenstahl's weak denials come off like conductor Herbert von Karajan's explanations that he "made due" under the Nazis. Truth be told, both Riefenstahl and Karajan were opportunists who *literally* climbed over corpses to the respective tops of their arts, because all their competition had either fled, been imprisoned, or executed.
Personally, I think Leni Riefenstahl should have been imprisoned at Spandau for fifty years. Certainly, I would have given her free artistic rein and run of the prison. She would have made some dark and charming images of the dank prison walls, the gruel for supper and rodents and cockroaches coinhabiting her cell, instead of being let loose in the world to rehabilitate her self-image by filming the Nubians in Africa. Monsters who are yet geniuses are still monsters, and it is society's obligation not to whitewash their sins, but to put them on display in order that civilisation not be mocked.
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Elsa, thanks for your query. They influenced each other, as they often worked for the same publications, were good friends, and Faurer often used Frank's darkroom. They came up in photography together, and shared a similar aesthetic and sense of life.
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William Mortensen: A Revival.
Center for Creative Photography, 1998, 136 pp.
If it weren't for the discussion forums on photo.net, I would have never heard of William Mortensen. So, I must extend my deepest gratitude to those who have kept him alive in spirit on our message boards.
This collection of essays and photographs marks the first (and hopefully not the last) serious attempt at reviving and redeeming the nearly annihilated and forgotten reputation of the late American photographer, William Mortensen (1897-1965).
While it is often true that a great artist never lives to see his ship come in, the opposite was true of Mortensen: In the late 1920s through early 1940s, his star was ascending, seemingly without end. Based in Laguna Beach, California, he was photographer to many of Hollywood's most famous, working with such acclaimed figures as Fay Wray, Cecil B. deMille and Marlene Dietrich. While his "pictorialist" style of photography -- painterly and posh, relying on soft-focus and darkroom knowhow to produce luxuriously toned and finished prints -- was favoured by the stars, clearly Mortensen found himself on the wrong side of history when it came to fine arts photography. The new "purist" movement, which celebrated the "straight," unadorned, print and a more documentarian style, was afoot and found no place for the Gothic-inspired Mortensen.
Except that's not quite the way it happened. For the f/64 group, spearheaded by Ansel Adams and Beaumont and Nancy Newhall (curators with the Museum of Modern Art), it was not enough merely to disagree philosophically with Mortensen. Had they done so, it would have been unlikely that Mortensen would have been forgotten and ignored so during his own lifetime and after his death, for he was something more than just another painterly salon photographer: His compositions were steeped in Gothic and Romantic traditions, his subject matter often whimsical, often bizarre, his style a strange combination of Lorenzo de Bernini, Edgar Allan Poe, Man Ray, Salvador Dali and Maxfield Parrish.
In his essay, "Beyond Recall," photographer A.D. Coleman -- who is quite sympathetic to the Adams aesthetic -- presents a scathing indictment of Adams and the Newhalls, and their active campaign to completely shut out Mortensen from the elite artistic inner circles. Although he never said so, it is evident from reading these essays that Mortensen died a broken man. Even after Mortensen's death, "Saint Ansel" Adams tried to prevent Mortensen's work from being archived at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. Fortunately, for posterity, curator James Enyeart (who, though a friend of Adams) remained objective, and was instrumental in finding a permanent home for Mortensen's artistic legacy.
Sadly, little remains of his artistic output: Most of Mortensen's negaives are missing, whereabouts unknown. He also left few notes or letters. No conclusions can be drawn, but it is strongly suggested that by the time he died Mortensen felt so irrelevant to the history of photography that he never bothered to leave much behind.
However, the authors and editors of this handsome book have constructed a strong foundation on which to rebuild Mortensen's reputation. Michael Dawson's essay "William Mortensen: Gothic Modernist" and "William Mortensen and George Dunham: Photography as Collaboration," by Diane Dillon go a long way in providing a narrative to Mortensen's often quiet and secretive life, and in outlining his artistic method (Dunham's collection of prints, articles and memorabilia filled in many of the gaps in the Mortensen archive). However, Dillon's treatment of the Mortensen/Dunham legacy is written entirely through the lens of the "queer theory" perspective. While I don't discount the possibility of a possible sexual relationship between the two collaborators, I think it's a bit overindulgent of the author to try and psychologically project a secret gay life onto Mortensen on what amounts to inference and inuendo at best. What is at best a parenthetical mention or query, worthy of a few paragraphs for sure, becomes an almost desparate attempt to claim Mortensen for the gay camp, as though the purpose of the reader is to keep score in such matters. That said, however, her theory is not without merit, and she does bring to the table much heretofore unknown information about Mortensen.
The book's only shortcoming is that while it has three excellent essays and a bibliography and chronology that put Mortensen's work in context of the greater photographical history of his time, it is a bit short on photographs. There are only about three dozen plates of his work, which -- while representative -- don't really do full justice to fleshing out his life's work. I would have loved to have seen more of his color portraits and nudes.
That said, don't let this stop you from buying this book. The printing is first rate, and so is the treatment of its sorely neglected subject. Admirers of William Mortensen can only hope for a more exhaustive book of photographs to be released in the near future.
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Recently, I visited the Art Institute of Chicago to catch a two-room show by Robert Frank, which feautures classic images from his seminal work "The Americans," along with more recent fare from the 1970s through the 1990s. Also on the bill was the main showing -- a retrospective of prints by the recently deceased Louis Faurer, of whom I had only passing knowledge -- which was sponsored by Robert Frank's foundation named in honour of his daughter, Andrea. Fortunately for me, I bit the hook baited with the Frank photographs (which were beautiful to see in person for the first time) and finally got acquainted with Faurer's work.
Lou Faurer was a fashion photographer from the late 1940s through the early 1970s for such magazines as Harper's Bazaar and Vogue, but his passion was photographing Times Square in Manhattan at night. What immediately struck me about his photographs was how Faurer took the blaring and glaring crossroads in the city that never sleeps, and extracted from them utter solitude and psychic desolation. An aging woman shields herself with an umbrella from the blinding fury of incandescent lights flickering, despite the dry pavements; A family up from the farmland poses for a portrait which places their quiet dignity in the foreground against the marquees of movie theatres; a man stands along the kerb both awestruck and intimidated, in a shot which must have later been the genesis of Robert deNiro's defining role of Travis Bickle, the loner cabbie who pads up and down Broadway in total anonymity.
There is plenty of fare available to the keen eye of the viewer who wants something off the beaten path, that's yet set on one of the most beaten paths in the world's travelogues.
Faurer was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants and grew up in Philadelphia. It was here that he began his explorations as an amateur street photographer. During World War II, he took a photographic course from the Army, and was a civilian photographer for the War Department. After the Allied victory ended the war, Faurer began working in the fashion industry. It was around this time that his friendship with newly arrived Swiss-Jewish emigre Robert Frank began, as both worked as fashion photogs, while Faurer spent much of his time sweating away in Frank's darkroom. In the 1950s, their career paths diverged, with Frank following in the steps of Walker Evans as a straight documentarian, leaving Faurer to the fashion set. Yet, the two remained friends, despite Faurer's angry demeanour. One friend described friendship with Faurer as "high maintenance."
Faurer was exacting in capturing the exact tonal range and precise contrast needed to convey the feel of New York at night. Most of his early work is printed by himself, and while technically beautiful, it is refreshing to see that Faurer was not a perfectionist -- on many of his prints he left scratches, eyelash hairs and dust spots from negatives unretouched, whereas most other exhibiting photographers would have sweated bullets in spot-toning them out of existence. Strangely, it works, giving the viewer the "you are there" feeling of being present at the creation.
Also introduced for the first time are many of Faurer's Kodachrome reversal transparencies from the same time period (taken with his Leica rangefinder, very patiently handheld at night to render acceptably sharp images at 40 ASA). The resultant C-type prints made from internegatives are very faithful to Kodachrome's trademark warm tonality, and give us an alternative take on 1940s/50s Times Square.
Despite his photography being selected by Edward Steichen for the "Family of Man" compendium, Faurer remained on the fringes of the gallery scene, never fully embraced by the art photography movement until the 1970s. In his own lifetime, Faurer exhibited mostly in group exhibitions, but had only about five solo shows. This current retrospective is a long overdue gathering of most of Faurer's important works, which was first held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, moved to San Diego, and is fittingly due at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in June 2003.
As for the printing of the book itself, it is first rate, and both the tones and the colours are extremely true to the originals. Tucker's introductory essay is an excellent biographical sketch of Faurer the man, and Lisa Hostetler categorises Faurer within the realm of "Film Noir" photographers of his time, though she doesn't give enough background on the New York tabloid crime photographers such as Weegee and Osmund Leviness who defined what would later become the genre.
Nonetheless, this book (and the exhibition from which it was drawn) finally establishes Faurer among the top tier of art photographers where he rightly belongs.
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A Review of Albert Renger-Patzsch: Photographer of Objectivity. Ann and Juergen Wilde and Weski, Thomas, eds. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1998. 176 pp. (113 plates).
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German photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch insisted that his photography was merely a matter of cataloguing of material phenomena, and that it represented a "new objectivity" (Neue Sachlichkeit). He also insisted that he was simply a "recorder" of said objects.
That might strike people as odd, in this age when pretentious "post-modernists" defile Christ in urine, or actually sell cans of their own excrement to the Museum of Modern Art for tens of thousands of dollars, when *anything* and *everything* qualifies to be deemed as art, without any formal -- or toilet -- training necessary. Yet, Renger-Patzsch disdained the moniker of "artist" that his enthusiasts tried to make stick to him. I wonder if he would still have that attitude with all the literal crap that poses as art today.
Renger-Patzsch's photographs weren't merely objective, they were pure idealism, for he always arranged or composed the subjects of his photographs to be seen in their best light. Whether it was simple pictures of common items, such as hand trowels, shoe trees or foliage, his photographs had a sensuous quality to them that makes the viewer want to reach into his photographs to touch them.
He had a gift for making the commonplace beautiful and for creating gorgeous landscapes out of factory works and basalt mines. His industrial prints are contemporaneous with any of Charles Scheeler's or Margaret Bourke-White's, but bear a much subtler imprint; There is a quiet quality to his prints, in which man is either alone and isolated or conspicuously absent (as with his photographs of houses outside of Essen and Dortmund), but the handiwork of man is ever-present.
His photographs are very strong, nonetheless, very masculine. He had a stylised eye that cut extraneous subject matter out of his images the way a butcher slices fat away from a side of bacon. Yet, the beautiful, transparent delicateness of his photographs of glass beakers from the Schott Glassworks in Jena speak with a gentle, feminine voice and his photographs of enamel bowls or a child's Pelikan paintbox have a Japanese feel to them, in their iconic and minimalistic compositions.
It is sad to say that even most American enthusiasts of fine-arts photography have never heard of Albert Renger-Patzsch. This volume, nonetheless, contains the best of his work and makes a strong argument for including him in the pantheon of the twentieth century's greatest photographers.
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A Review of 'Polaroids,' by Walker Evans (Photographer). Jeff L. Rosenheim, ed. Zurich: Scalo, 2002, 184 pages (122 colour plates).
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Superficially, this book of over 120 colour plates of Walker Evans' Polaroids could be categorised as a 'novelty' piece, much like the recent 'Ansel Adams in Color,' (Harry Callaghan, ed). Adams' colour work, however, never represented much more than a curious footnote in the master craftsman's career; Adams' overwhelming importance is in how he brought breathtaking drama to his prints through his use of the zone system, and a refined, exacting, approach to the printing process.
Walker Evans, on the other hand, was almost the opposite of Adams in his approach to the finished photograph: His approach centered more on a refinement of composition, and of excising the non-essential and extraneous from his final prints. Yet, along with Adams, he shared a disdain for colour photography -- both found it to be 'garish,' 'vulgar.'
However, this work -- which represents the final chapter in Evans' artistic life -- is a radical departure from his stated aversion to colour photography. The story is equally intriguing.
As Walker Evans approached 70, divorced and in failing health, it seemed that his creative days were behind him. He had produced some images since the mid 1960s, but it became increasingly difficult for him to have to schlep around his cumbersome view camera and tripod. Quite fortuitously, though, the Polaroid corporation sent Evans its SX-70 auto-focus camera and an unlimited supply of film, hoping that the prestige of Evans' name would have help market its latest camera. Suddenly, Evans found his artistic 'second wind,' and began manically snapping up instant photographs with this simple camera he referred to affectionately as 'the toy.'
In the last two and-a-half years of his life, Evans would eventually take more than 2500 pictures with this camera. The photographs contained within are pure Walker Evans: Sometimes simple, sometimes complex, but always perfect compositions, always ruthlessly cropped within the camera. Evans commented about this camera "that nobody should touch a Polaroid until he's over sixty." Yet, viewing Evans' prints, which combines a colourful joy de vivre within the context of refined taste, it becomes obvious that anyone aspiring to the title of 'artist' or 'serious photographer' should not be permitted to advance to medium format or large format view cameras until he's mastered the art of composition with this seemingly innocuous 'toy.' Keep in mind that the photographs within are in the shape of a perfect square, a much more difficult canvas on which to let the compositional elements coalesce than the easy rectangle offered by 35mm cameras.
Many of the plates in 'Polaroids' were first published in earlier volumes, such as 'Walker Evans: The Hungry Eye' (1993) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art's 2000 retrospective, which along with this volume, was also edited by Jeff Rosenheim. The only drawback to this book, is that the photographs are printed 1:1 to the actual prints (just 3-1/8" sqaure) and are somewhat darker than in the two previous volumes, obscuring some detail. Also, the colours have also faded since the two previous volumes' release, showing just how fragile the Polaroid medium is.
Nonetheless, this volume was worth every penny I paid for it: There is such a serendipitous element of wry humour, even whimsy, that is both intimate and charming, and relate to the viewer Evans' essentially benevolent outlook on life, much of which had been brought back by this 'toy.'
Many of the photographs are purely abstract, but some are also literal in nature: Breaking down lettering in signage and from traffic markings, Evans attempted to collect a series of all the letters of the alphabet in idealised form. There are also some photos of signs that are witty puns (such as the 'IQ' isolated from a 'LIQUOR' sign) or double-entendre, such as the railway placard 'DO NOT HUMP.'
But best of all are his simple compositions of ordinary objects, such as a garden spade, a half-eaten blueberry pie, kitchen utensils, a mailbox, a dress-makers manequin and -- of course -- signs. Evans took deceptively prosaic objects, photographing them in an almost 'objective,' documentary manner, yet endowed them with his intelligent sense of selective observation. In his introduction, Rosenheim noted Evans' 1971 comment in relating Evans' aesthetic method: 'The secret of photography is, the camera takes on the character and the personality of the handler. The mind works on the machine -- through it, rather.'
In his adolesence, Walker Evans dreamed of becoming an author, a literary man of letters. He found out, however, early-on that he was better-suited to photography. But in the twilight of his years, he left the world his final chapter in the story of his life, this collection of Polaroids. These delicate, sardonic and bittersweet images more than fulfill his early aspirations, for all their visual prose and poetry.
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Struan: "Dull middle" in Die Toteninsel? I prefer "reverie," but to each his own. At least you're cultured enough to know what I'm talking about. So, ti salud!
Besides Weston, there was one other photographer who does it for me, and relates nature to me the way Struan describes his own response to Adams' pics, and that's Vittorio Sella, who, incidentally, was one of Adams' inspirations.
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Well, I come late to threads anyways, but here's my 2 pfennig: I agree with Domenico, almost to a T, but disagree strongly with what Witold wrote. Aside from the latter getting into personality issues, and the former writing that Adams' portraits sucked (I found them mediocre, but quite technically competent), it really does come down to a matter of taste. Hate broccoli, hate fish, hate beer, always will; will never acquire taste. Love camembert, love steak, love flan, love Scotch whiskey; never needed to acquire taste, it was love at first bite or first sip.
Same goes for photography. Now, I actually like Adams' works, but it stops there. I admire them technically, and am moved by them in an emotionally detached way, like listening to a Haydn symphony. That's my emotions, and you can't argue with emotions -- they're either there or they're not. Trying to convert someone to be overflowing with emotional empathy for the works he feels nothing for in particular is like the efforts of some naive psychiatrists 50 years ago trying to convert homosexuals to like women. Ain't gonna happen.
However, to reach my emotions, I have found that photography needs to have an element of the intellectual about it. This is why I can respond, in awe, to Edward Weston's work, but not to Adams. There was a great mind at work there, behind the lens. Same goes for my favourites of all time, Weegee, Walker Evans, Leni Riefenstahl, Albert Renger-Patzsch. To me, looking at their works -- to use the music analogy -- is like listening to Sibelius' Seventh Symphony or Rachmaninoff's Die Toteninsel. Blows me away every time.
As for the East Coast/Urban vs. West Coast/Rural debate, I hope this ain't gonna end up with our posses poppin' each otha, and puttin' da smack down on yo ass, bee-yotch, like dat otha East Coast/West Coast feud.
Nonetheless, me and my homeys are just waiting to see what happens if Walka Evans gets dissed next year for his c-note dead presidents anniversary. Word!
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In the 1937 preface to the first edition of this book, Leni Riefenstahl remarked 'it is the timeless document of a great idea -- a
hymn to beauty and competetive endeavour.' Sixty-five years later, the graceful images of athletes competing in the 1936 Berlin
games has more than withstood the test of time and validated Riefenstahl's original estimation of this work's ground-breaking
importance, not only as a document, but as an exercise in the aesthetics of the idealised beauty of the human body in
movement.
Leni Riefenstahl was something of a Renaissance woman: Photographer, motion picture director, editor, dancer, skier, and
all-around athlete, no one could have been a better match for documenting the 1936 Olympics on film, from which stills were
culled to create this volume. True to the spirit of Ancient Greece, it is fitting that it was captured on silver nitrate by this gifted
cinematographer christened Helene (her birth name, for which 'Leni' is a German nickname).
Actually, the term 'stills' does injustice to the photographs contained with -- so alive are they, capturing the essence of
athleticism and motive power.
The beginning of the book is devoted to Ancient Greece, and documenting the ruins which monumentalise her greatness: The
Parthenon, Myron's discus thrower, the gods, such as Apollo and Achilles. Riefenstahl has brought many of the famous statues
of athletes alive, as she photographs naked men and women engaged in the ancient sports, such as the javelin throw, the shot
put, eurythmics, dance and the discus throw. Her athletes epitomise the grace, sensuousness and taut, muscular efficiency of the
male and female bodies.
Another striking sequence is of the young Greek torch bearer, who ignites the torch at Athens and delivers it on his long route
through Thermopaylae, the Grecian shore, Delphi and Corinth. The poise and determination in the runner's body and eyes
convey the Olympic spirit with the same glowing certitude as the eternal flame, which the runner holds aloft like a beacon in the
night.
Once in Berlin, the bulk of this volume is dedicated to the athletes themselves. Leni's cameramen captured all the events, and
some of the images are just astounding for their sense of motion and eloquent simplicity of composition. Among my favourites
are: p. 60, the Flame from Greece, which shows a German youth standing before the crowd of athletes, holding the flame erect
before lighting the stadium torch; p.62, Start of the 80 meter hurdles, as seen from the timekeeper's point-of-view, the lines
demarcating the oval track's lanes sweep into a bird's eye view of the pensive hurdlers as they await the starter's gun; p. 68,
Jesse Owens in the starting blocks, the great athlete is the very embodiment of concentration; pp. 98, 99, German Gisela
Mauermayer, discus thrower, shows the female athlete in motion, and in joyous release on her way to the gold medal; p. 137,
shadows of marathon runners, which convey the fleeting rush of the events; p. 247, finale, which shows the Berlin
Olympicstadion encircled by pillars of searchlights just before the flame is extinguished.
'Olympia' is, to me, the greatest expression of graceful motion ever captured by a photographer. A tone poem for camera,
these images better convey the concept of motion than 99% of the movies today, which are motion pictures in name only.
Substitute for Agfa APX 100 120
in Black & White Practice
Posted