I’ve got a few more rolls to process and transfer to my wife for publication on our family blog before I return to post here. Click on the photo to see what’s been holding me up. (That came out wrong. Click to see all the fun I’ve been having with family! :)

In 1975 Garry Winogrand published “Women are Beautiful,” a collection of 85 photographs he made in the 1960s. The Tampa Museum of Art is exhibiting a group of prints from this collection in its new photography gallery until July 18th. My first exposure to Winogrand was this exhibit on opening day of TMA earlier this year. I was fascinated by the photographer’s ability to capture so authentically women in every day life. After my third or fourth visit to the gallery I walked down the street to the library in search of more of his work. Despite their enormous photography section, only one of his books can be found in the library’s catalog: “The Man in the Crowd: The Uneasy Streets of Garry Winogrand.” It was published after his death by a gallery he was working with near the end of his life. It is a retrospective of his photographs made in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly shot on the streets of New York City. There is some overlap between his “Women are Beautiful” and this book. In fact, there is a short essay by Ben Lifson at the end that specifically addresses Winogrand’s treatment of women that is unique to his other work:

She appears everywhere, in three of her incarnations: nymph, mother, hag. He was faithful to each, and kept them distinct, accepted. And so it is his women, posessed of sympathy, compassion, independence, and delight, who brighten and compose the streets. They give out tenderness and charm; they dress for the eye, go on parade, seem gifted and therefore bountiful, dispensing luxury, beauty, splendor.

What follows are images from “Man in the Crowd” that stood out as exceptionally interesting to me. I included none of his photographs of women, but I recommend you go see the exhibit yourself before July 18th.

The backlight and long crossing shadows had me interested immediately. I then discovered the thin, slumped man in the wheelchair with a change cup between his knees. How old is he? Is he really disabled? At middle frame there are three young women walking by and looking at him, one reaching for the corner of her purse. Is she going for charity or to protect her belongings? And most interesting is the boy on the bench looking back at the wheelchair man, oblivious to the three women approaching. From his point of view he is experiencing the scene alone as his family’s attention is elsewhere. Once I saw the boy, this image became a relationship between him and the wheelchair man. All other characters became supporting actors.

The sign reads “I AM BLIND AND DEAF, Please TAKE A PENCIL, Anything you give will help me, Thanks, And God Bless you, My dog’s name is LADY.” Most passersby ignore the man as a woman drops something into his cup. A woman in the background, looking at either the donor or the camera, contorts her face into a hideous scowl.

My eye was first drawn to the faces of the man and woman. Without looking, the periphery of my vision and past experience told me their arms held children of mixed race with medium complexion and gorgeous curls. When my focus made it to the chimps I was initially shocked and insulted. This turned into deep embarrassment. I forgave myself by way of noticing their human clothing and finally by placing all blame on the photographer for his manipulation of my psyche.

Throughout “Man in the Crowd,” Winogrand shows apparently normal people (and children) gawking at the weirdos, the disabled, and the unfortunates. In this photograph he shows two of the latter gawking at each other. What interested him, the short man on the street or the strangely dressed individual on the curb? I thought of this question and these subjects only until, delighted, I noticed the stray dogs sniffing around the trash can.

This interested me for the juxtaposition between white-collar and blue-collar workers. It seems the suits notice little around them and are unaware of the camera. The man in the foreground, pulling what appears to be an empty appliance box, is looking directly at us. It seems as though, whether by self-absorbed carelessness or sheer determination, the photographer is about to get mowed over.

The glasses, the package, the wind-blown tie. These are the reasons I liked it.

]]> http://thedailyflashkube.com/2010/05/23/book-review-the-man-in-the-crowd-garry-winogrand/feed/ 0 http://thedailyflashkube.com/2010/05/12/st-augustine-day-2/ http://thedailyflashkube.com/2010/05/12/st-augustine-day-2/#comments Thu, 13 May 2010 01:35:48 +0000 flashkube http://thedailyflashkube.com/?p=2256 So, here’s the deal. I’m ready to take this pretend photographer stuff to the next level. I’ve purchased a new domain that will house this blog and a landing page for my imaginary portfolio. And it will all come with a major redesign! Unfortunately, after deciding to make these changes, a severe case of apathy and neglect for the existing site ensued. For example, it has been many days between St. Augustine Day 1 and St. Augustine Day 2. My apologies. What follows is a hastily put together set of photographs from day 2 of our trip.

(Click through for larger version.)

No color was added or changed. This is how the morning looks sometimes from our view. (Shot in December 2009.)

]]> http://thedailyflashkube.com/2010/04/15/channelside-tampa-2/feed/ 0 http://thedailyflashkube.com/2010/04/14/two-views-of-sierra/ http://thedailyflashkube.com/2010/04/14/two-views-of-sierra/#comments Wed, 14 Apr 2010 20:31:16 +0000 flashkube http://thedailyflashkube.com/?p=2240 Still powering through my rolls from 2009. Remaining are mostly casual family shots made better through the digital darkroom. Nothing special, just practice with the tools. On a related topic, I’m getting very excited about the upcoming Adobe Photoshop CS5 release. NAPP has a landing page with videos of all the new features. And I can’t wait until Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 is finally released. That probably won’t happen for a while because they just updated the beta version. What it comes down to for me is the noise reduction in the new Camera Raw engine for both products. The holy grail of noise reduction is an application that can do it as part of the RAW workflow before the export stage and Adobe has finally done it. The only reason I drool over the latest camera is because of the incredible quality at high ISO. The CS5 announcement and demo videos have figuratively dried my drool right up. (Ew, did I just say that?) Anyway, stay tuned for more babbling coupled with mediocre photography! :)

criterium (plural criteriums)

A mass start road cycle race consisting of several laps around a closed circuit, the length of each lap or circuit ranging from about 1/2 mile to about 1 mile. Known colloquially as a crit.

line break

The premise of reGeneration is an interesting one. Seasoned curators of fine art photography from the Musée de l’Elysée in Switzerland set out to identify 50 young photographers having, in their opinion, the potential to become well-known names by 2025. (They began around 2002, 20 years being the time supposedly needed to “solidly establish themselves.”) Museum curators normally preserve what art they feel is important from the past, so the endeavor was quite a departure. While they admit to some bias, for example the use of only students currently enrolled in (or recently graduated from) art schools, their method seems scientific enough. Art schools from around the world were asked to submit the best work from their most promising students. The names of the schools were not visible during the review process so as to avoid undue influence.

The curators of this project in their introduction make several observations about the submitted works as a whole. For one, black-and-white imagery was almost nonexistent. This was surprising and a bit refreshing given the photographers were all art students being force-fed the theory and history of the medium. This seems to mean many schools encourage unique personal expression rather than adherence to past norms. That possibility is further supported by another observation offered by the curators. These young photographers do not begin with the assumption that photography’s main purpose is to convey truth. So-called “straight” photography was barely represented except where reportage was the stated genre. Manipulation, both digital and otherwise, is commonplace and even central to these emerging artists. It is as if the once celebrated “decisive moment” has been abandoned and entirely relegated to travel photography.

It was a delight flipping through this book. The comments that accompany each set of images are well-written and provide a deeper understanding of where these photographers are coming from generationally and artistically. If nothing else it is, as William A. Ewing puts it in the preface, “an homage paid by one generation to another.” Buy or borrow this book for a glimpse into the future of fine art photography.

What follows is a sampling of my favorites. Keep in mind that although my camera phone snapshots are black and white, the book is printed on glossy paper in full color. I have included artist websites where I could find them.

Mauren Brodbeck (http://www.maurenbrodbeck.com) makes ordinary, unnoticed buildings stand out in urban landscapes by overlaying them with color digitally. From her site, I especially enjoyed the series “chocolate” and the series “extracoated.”

Kateřina Držková (http://www.katerinadrzkova.cz) creates square landscapes made from four duplicate triangles of an original image. Note that the series “Landscapes” featured in the book is nowhere to be found on her website. The book’s introduction predicts this sunsetting of student work.

Raphael Hefti’s series “Beauticians” is quite disturbing in its portrayal of department store cosmetics saleswomen. Check out his website for more works of insight. (http://www.raphaelhefti.ch/portfolio)

A series called “every…” by Idris Kahn is fascinating to behold. He combines many hundreds of images of the same subject that results in an almost ghostly representation of the totality of the original. Some of his work is exhibited online. (http://www.galeriethomasschulte.de/work_of_art.php?stat=artrep&aId=91)

Marla Rutherford’s photographs juxtapose fetishisms with scenes of relative normality, sometimes next to children and the elderly. It is quite thought provoking and a little humorous. Her website is dedicated, though, to her commercial photography. (http://www.marlarutherford.com)

Josef Schulz’s photography falls into the “why didn’t I think of that” category. I love the concept and execution. Check out his site. (http://www.josefschulz.de/html/formIndex.html)

Carlin Wing explores the intersection of art and business in his “Culture Inc.” series. He shows what happens to art when used merely as decoration in the corporate world. His titles will make you smile. (It seems he has moved on from this project as I can not find reference to it online.)

Pablo Zuleta Zahr’s camera records anyone who passes his lens during a day. He later combines the subjects based on type and clothing to come up with incredible cultural studies. (http://www.zuletazahr.com)