Sunday, March 27, 2005
From Walker Evans At Work, p222

“Work alone if you can. Girls are particularly distracting, and you want to concentrate; you have to. This is not anti-feminism; it is common sense. Companions you may be with, unless perfectly patient and slavish to your genius, are bored stiff with what you’re doing. This will make itself felt and ruin your concentrated, sustained purpose….

…Concern yourself not with the question whether the medium, photography, is art. The question is dated and absurd to begin with. You are art or not; whatever you produce is or isn’t. And don’t think about that either; just do, act.”

Walker Evans c. 1966, from “Random Notes and Suggestions For Photographers”

Wednesday, March 23, 2005
With all these animal pictures going up, I think today calls for a quote from John Szarkowski’s after-word to Gary Winogrand’s book The Animals:

“…there may be a darker side to the satisfaction we find at the zoo. It may be that we are relieved to find that even the animals, with their much-publicized supposed virtues – sharp of tooth, swift of foot, courageous in protecting their young, good eyes, ect. – that even the animals can be reduced to a state of whimpering psychic paralysis if they are forced to live in circumstances similar to those of the typical modern urban dweller. After all that has been said in the past fifty years concerning man’s deep-rooted inadequacies, it is bracing to go to the zoo and observe that the orangutang, magnificent though he may be in the jungle, is no better than the rest of us when forced to live in a modern city…
As for the pictures themselves, little can be said except to give thanks. As complex and as simple as ancient parables, they cannot be imagined otherwise. Superficially casual, like a good fieldstone wall, they prove with familiarity to be irreducible and ordered. The richness of their observation and the sophistication of their graphic command amounts to virtuosity.”

Tuesday, March 22, 2005
I’ve been reading and looking through Walker Evans At Work. The book talks about Evans’ working method and has examples of many of the different ways he shot a subject as he worked towards a satisfying point of view. It also contains correspondences and excerpts from interviews.
Last night I read a passage that so perfectly expresses many of my concerns and attitudes about photography that I had to share it with you as soon as I could:

“Note: The aim of the following picture selection is to sketch an important, correct, but commonly corrupted use of the camera. A sentence from an essay on Mathew Brady by Mr. Charles Flato may illuminate the attitude behind this choice of photographs: ‘Human beings…are far more important than elucidating factors in history; by themselves they have a greatness aside from the impressive structure of history.’
There are moments and moments in history, and we do not need military battles to provide the images of conflicts, or to reveal the movements and changes, or again, the conflicts which in passing become the body of the history of civilization. But we do need more than the illustrations in the morning papers of our period. Pictorial journalism does in fact turn up records which will become valuable in themselves with time; but the journalism of the present is so corrupt that its products in the field of photography are only sparsely and accidentally of any value whatever; and only in time, when removed from their immediate contexts, will they serve the purpose under discussion…the accidental use to which these images may be put by future students and examiners of the period is far from the minds of the news photographers or of their employers. And then one thinks of the general run of the social mill: these anonymous people who come and go in the cities and who move on the land; it is on what they look like, now; what is in their faces and in the windows and the streets beside and around them; what they are wearing and what they are riding in, and how they are gesturing, that we need to concentrate, consciously, with the camera.”

Author’s Note (unpublished) for original edition of American Photographs

Monday, March 21, 2005
I passed a pleasant day in the black and white darkroom and got a surprising amount done. Some days the prints just make sense. I know how I want to print them, and I don’t have to struggle against the image. Today was one of those days.
It helped that I didn’t have to flash the paper on any of these prints, and it helped that none of them required a particularly finicky balance of tone. But, there was still plenty of burning and dodging and split filtering. And the negatives were all from completely different situations, so they all had unique exposures. Nonetheless, I got seven separate images printed.
Tomorrow I’ll scan them and maybe I’ll post one on the site later this week.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005
The “Bamako Camera” series of photos is up on the main website at last. “Portraits”, “events” and “soccer city” have already been up for about a week. That leaves “Ambassador Mom” to go. Almost there!

On Sunday I went to the Diane Arbus exhibition at the Metropolitan. It’s a really good show. I find myself drawn to Arbus’ work rather against my will. These days it seems as though every photographer out there claims Arbus as a major influence on their work. I hate to be part of the stampede…indeed I hope I’m not. However, the Metropolitan show provides a lot of food for thought, and I’ve been thinking.
Along with the Arbus “greatest hits” the exhibit includes a lot of her pre-1961 work: when she was using a 35mm Nikon, before she had really developed her distinctive style. Something definitely changes for her around 1961/62. Something moves her deliberately towards the style that we now associate with her name. After seeing the show at the Met I’m more inclined to believe the story about her meeting with John Szarkowski. For those who don’t know, it goes like this: Arbus had dropped her portfolio off at the MOMA for John to look at. He looked, but hadn’t been too impressed. When she came to pick it up, he happened to be leaving the office and they started to chat. He gave her his assessment of the work and then showed her some prints by August Sander. This marked a turning point in her work.
The show also includes numerous diary entries, correspondences, and contact sheet. I didn’t read even nearly everything. Of what I did read, I’m not sure I found anything that gave me any particular insight, or "revelation," as the show is named. Rather, I found a lot of little observations that made me laugh and think: I know how that feels!

Tuesday, March 8, 2005
A brief note: If you know the names of any good photographers who you don’t think are on the American radar, send them my way…I mean really established good photographers… Yesterday I came up with a list of about twenty documentary photographers for a photojournalism class. The students were supposed to pick a photographer from the list to research. It was easy to come up with the usual suspects: Brady, Cartier-Bresson, Frank, Evans, Weegee, Winogrand, Friedlander, Capa, Brassai, Kertesz, Parr, Meiselas, Nachtwey, Salgado, Parks, Meyerowitz, Lange, and Owens. I added Robert Magubane and Korda so there were at least two names outside the typical New York photo lineage. I should have had Arbus, Lartigue and Levitt on there. Muybridge, Riis, Hine, Brandt, Vishniac, Model, Eugene Smith, Davidson, and Koudelka probably should be on the list as well, but it was made off the cuff and their names aren’t as high up in my consciousness, though they probably should be. And then there are other photographers, like Raymond Depardon, a Magnum photographer, who remains a mystery to me. I think Depardon would be high on a list made by any French photographer. He has been a working documentary photographer since the 1960s and has published many photo books that sell quite well in Europe, but you don’t here a peep about him on this side of the Atlantic…and quite honestly I’ve never written about him since I’m not particularly drawn to his work. How many other Depardons are there out there? Photographers who are famous in their own country, but whose name just hasn’t penetrated the New York canon?

Saturday, March 5, 2005
On Wednesday I attended the opening for a show of Thomas Demand’s work at the New York MOMA. Demand is a German photographer who constructs elaborate sets out of paper and then photographs them. Most of the sets are of banal, modern interiors, and the photographs are enormous, color, glossy, prints. I enjoyed the work enough. They are beautiful to look at, if not very emotionally moving.

I would write more about Demand, except I have something more personal I want to grip about today. I was at a friend’s party last night; a friend who happens to be a photographer as well, so there must have been at least ten or more photographers running around this party. I was taking pictures with my D100, casually, as I was there primarily to have fun with friends.
At one point in the evening, one of the guests whined at me not to take his picture. I say whine because it was said in a joking manner and he proceeded to mug for tons of photos and borrow my camera to take pictures of the other guests, including me. At the end of the evening he asked to borrow my camera a last time, but (for various reasons) this time I was suspicious he intended to delete the pictures of himself that he didn’t like. I lent him the camera, but I first made him promise not to delete any pictures. And he promised.
So, of course, he takes the camera, takes more pictures, and then deletes all the pictures of him that are on the card. When I get the camera back and see what he has done, it’s pretty clear that I don’t think this is cool. In revenge I proceed to delete all the pictures that he took with my camera, in front of him.
I’m not proud of that. At the time I felt it was justice, but I’m afraid it was “an eye for an eye” sort of justice. But, I was very very angry. I was angry even though I’d known when I lent him the camera that there was a large probability that he would break his promise. I was angry because I fundamentally believe that the person who takes a photograph has rights and ownership over that image. I also believe that deleting a digital file is equivalent to burning or cutting up negatives.
What made me particularly angry about the situation was that the person who deleted those pictures was himself a photographer. I can understand a layman doing it because they haven’t thought much of the matter, and they don’t know the work that goes into being a photographer. Of course I would still be angry at them for breaking their promise…But, a photographer destroying another’s pictures? Even if those pictures were just casual snapshots of no importance?
I do believe a subject has rights, and I try and be sensitive to that. If anyone objects to a picture I publish on my site, I generally – though not always -- take it down. I’m mainly dealing with friends and acquaintances, and I normally see no reason to make them angry, embarrassed or uncomfortable. After all, I’m not exposing war crimes here – yet.
I am sometimes frustrated by my subject’s concerns, but I always try and respect them. I had to remove three photos from my series of event photos because of objections. I agreed with the objection about two of the photos since the images were of minors. One objection, though, was simple vanity. However, I took those photos down. I don't want to anger my clients!!
At the same time, I know I would be willing to fight someone over my right to publish an image. I feel a strong sense of ownership over my work, which is why I was so angry at the photo deleter last night.
All this leads around in circles, I’m afraid. It has made me decide not to lend my camera to anyone, and not to show-off the pictures I’m shooting during an event. I have tried this before and the reason I keep breaking my own rule is twofold: First, I’ve had friends get pissed at me for Not showing them the pictures (i.e. not letting them in on the fun). Secondly, sharing makes things more fun, right? -- until someone breaks your toys.
The last point I want to make is about trust. I hold a fundamental, if archaic belief that people should abide by their word. Unfortunately, in my experience, people break their word much too frequently. Countless times I have seen journalists and photographers renegade on their promises. They promise to send a book to an interviewee in prison and never do (I picked up the slack and the cost on that one even though I hadn’t made the promise). They promise to send a subject copies of photos and they never do…these things make me incredibly angry.
It can sometimes take me months to send out copies of photos I promise people, but I always do. If I owe any of you out there photos, please remind me. If you don’t have them, it just means I’ve forgotten or lost your address. If I never promised you copies, you can always buy a print. After all, I am a professional, and I prefer not to give away my products for free!

Sunday, February 27, 2005
Today’s entry will just involve a couple of announcements: The first is that I’m redesigning the main part of my site now. Piece by piece, new work will be appearing there over the course of the next couple of weeks. As always, comments are welcome.
Secondly, I recommend checking out a new blog called “Over Easy.” It’s about brunching in New York. The full disclosure is that I, of course, am deeply involved in this new online experience, so I think it’s great, of course.