The Sherman & Avedon Murals: Large Photographic Portraits
Avedon, Allen Ginsberg’s family - view large
While the style, content and technique are very different, there are two exhibits in Chelsea featuring large portraits, Cindy Sherman at Metro Pictures and Richard Avedon at Gagosian. Avedon’s work is black and white documentary portraiture of real people, selected by Avedon and his editors as culturally or politically relevant. Sherman’s portraits are fictional characters wearing Chanel outfits, each played by Sherman. Her work is contemporary, produced with digital cameras, green-screen technique and modern printers. Avedon’s work was made in the early 1970’s; it’s still challenging to produce photographic prints at three meters high.
Cindy Sherman
unknown, Audrey Tautou and her caricature in Paris
Since I can’t locate the name of the photographer, even with a Google image search (author-less popularity on Tumblr increases the difficulty), I’m posting this as a negative of how I found it.
Deborah Parkin, from Stillness in Time
Parkin creates wet plate collodium photographs. This one has been printed on glossy paper, which emphasizes the liquid nature of the process.
These are part of the exhibit “This is your world” at Gallery Carte Blanche (Valencia Street, San Francisco). The show features four female photographers from Europe (Aela Labbe, Julie Cerise, Saya Chontang, Deborah Parkin). The photographers explore the dream-like quality of different photographic processes (wet plate, Polaroid, etc). Gwen has done great job of curating this show and the hanging is intelligent. It’s dense - there are many photographs on one very long wall, but your mind follows the work and as you transition from one photographer to the next, it makes sense. At every size the prints look fantastic, you can buy them on the Carte Blanche website.
Eddy Pula, man on Harrison Ave., 2008
Click-thru to get a brief introduction on LPV to the world of Eddy Pula. I have contacted Eddy to make him aware of this posting. His work is so good that I have the 1980’s song “Rock Me Amadeus” stuck in my head, but with the lyrics “Eddy Pula, Eddy Pula, Rock Me Eddy Pula.”
Tif Hunter, Emma, from On Maltby Street, London
Here’s a shot of Tif making a portrait from this series (which he is shooting with 4x5 - Polaroid). He’s posting them to a tumblr for the project.
This was a photo essay in Life Magazine, published in two parts in 1953. It’s now considered an important moment in the use of color photography. Steidl published an excellent book last year that features some of the same photos (but many more from later in Haas’ career).
Above is a comparison of the recent book (left) with the magazine (view larger). The Steidl scans and reproductions are stunning, denser, darker colors with more detail. Considering the paper being used, the printing technology and that 60 years have passed (and yellowed the paper), the original looks pretty good. Life’s photo editing emphasized Haas’ use of color for abstraction and this widely-seen work must have been a revelation to many photographers.
Color palette of Rinko Kawauchi compared to Juergen Teller (very large)
Eleanor Callahan, wife of Harry Callahan has died at 95. She was the subject of one of the most significant portrait series in photography, which is perfect because Eleanor was anonymous to most people. There are probably more great portraits of Eleanor Callahan than of Marilyn Monroe.
The Callahan marriage was not the type of artist-muse relationship that they make movies about. It seems she made no effort to be a compelling model. She is never trying to create persona or convey personality, yet she is always present. So many famous portraits that result from the male-female artist-muse relationship are portraits of a dancing bear. In the Eleanor portraits a woman doesn’t need to be poked and prodded, twisted and overacting to be fascinating.
The MOMA’s web site has a fairly good selection of the photographs. The recent Steidl book on the series is wonderful. What’s incredible is how many genres there are in the series. Completely natural (in bed, naked with child), stark minimalist line drawings, a day out on the town, abstract expressionist deconstruction of the human form, bucolic summer poems, even some that feel like the New Topographics.
above: Harry Callahan, Eleanor, Chicago, 1949
Richard Avedon: Three Singers
After the death of Whitney Houston this weekend, several people posted an isolated vocal version of “How Will I Know.” Here you can finally listen to this woman’s voice without the 80’s arrangements. People also posted two photographs for the cover of 1986/1987’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” credited to Richard Avedon.
The first thing you notice is Avedon is shooting color, which must be at the request of the record label. Houston’s hand is making this wave gesture while slightly pulling up her t-shirt, it exists in both frames; it’s likely Avedon either directed this or got her to hold it once she did it.
The day Apple buys Kodak
Carrying a film camera around in the 21st century, the most common question people ask me is: Can you still buy film for that?
Kodak’s recent announcement of bankruptcy is a sad moment in American corporate history. The company will not receive the kind of support the automotive industry was given, but along with companies like Levis, Coca-Cola and Ford, Kodak has been an ambassador for the United States for over 100 years.
From the beginning, Kodak’s innovation was to make photography easier. The famed Brownie was the first camera aimed at anyone. Later, they pioneered various film formats that made loading the camera simple - the Disc, the Instamatic.
Market Street, San Francisco, 1997 - taken with a Kodak DC40
