On The Street

 I periodically encounter conversations online about street photography.  Such exchanges are characterized mainly by listings of the reasons people do not do street photography.  Photographers fear confrontations with subjects who object to having their pictures made in such a fashion.  Occasionally people report actual such interactions which have made them forever forego further attempts at snapping candid shots in public places. I have some sympathy up to a point with those attitudes. I am neither particularly sociable or courageous. Nevertheless, I have done street photography over a period of many years, most intensively in the late 1960s when I was first getting serious about photography.

El Paso - Kiev IIa

A couple factors combined to push me beyond my initial anxieties about the undertaking.  An important one was the flowering in those days of street photography as practiced by some extraordinary photographers such as Gary Winogrand and Diane Arbus.  Those two deployed very different techniques in practice.  Arbus worked mostly with a cumbersome twin lens reflex camera usually equipped with a flash, and she tended to engage directly with her subjects.  Winogrand shot with a compact 35mm, moved very fast down the street and shot yards of film on every outing.

NYC - Nikon S

 

 The other big thing that got me started in street work was the opportunity presented by time and place.  I was living then In New York and attending a commercial photo school in the financial district at the south end of Manhattan. . The school taught a commercial style of photography, mostly practiced in studios; it held little real interest for me.  I did learn some important photographic basics in the course, but what really motivated me was capturing images on the fly by day and by night in Chinatown which was just a short distance from the school's location. I spent weeks walking the streets and making candid shots of the area's residents as they went about their lives.

 

Chinatown - NY - Nikon S

My photo technique resembled Winogrand's more than that of Arbus.  I moved fast, shot a lot and tried to capture expressions, postures and interactions without arousing the attention of my subjects. I shot Tri-X, a fast, wide-latitude film.  The focus of my Nikon S camera was usually pre-set to around ten feet; with the aperture at f-16 that gave me optimal depth of field, and a high shutter speed avoided camera shake even when I was in motion. 

 

Chinatown - NYC - Nikon S

 I typically had the camera on a strap and hanging at waist level.  With a little practice it is possible to accurately frame the subject and trip the shutter with a thumb without raising the camera to eye level.  That hip-shot technique probably accounted for half the pictures I made. Often, of course, when a subject's attention was away from me it was perfectly feasible to shoot by raising the camera to the normal shooting position, and having the exposure and focus pre-set enabled a very quick capture of the scene.

Rhodes, Greece - Voigtländer Vito II

I don't recall a single instance of anyone objecting to my street work in making that long series of pictures in Chinatown.  Shooting technique aside, I think the fact that the community was very accustomed to seeing large numbers of tourists with cameras in their midst was also helpful to avoiding any critical confrontations. Beyond that, I think my own frame of mind played an important role. My objective was not just avoiding objections; I really was trying to create a visual narrative about the essential character of the community without interfering with the natural flow of life on the street. I have never intentionally tried to candidly capture subjects in situations that would be embarrassing or demeaning and I would certainly not use a picture of that type if it were accidentally recorded.

Las Cruces, NM - Zeiss Ikon Ikonta 35

It will be argued that times have changed and that the mood of the street has shifted toward paranoia and combativeness.  I don't disagree with that thought, but I think it can be overstated.  Regardless, there are still techniques available for making street photography possible.

UNM - Albuquerque - Ansco Panda

Film shooters have something of an advantage these days because the old cameras attract interest and are nice excuses to start conversations. My twin lens reflex cameras always elicit comments, and in use they don't arouse suspicion because looking down into the viewfinder does not produce the appearance of a fixed forward stare which can be interpreted as an aggressive posture.

From a recent stroll in Tiguex Park - Mamiya C330 tlr

The need for stealth in street work can be lessened by the choice of venues.  At places like amusement parks, street fairs and holiday celebrations there is an expectation of photography taking place, and often holiday events include people who are in costume and looking for attention. In Albuquerque the Day of the Dead celebrations offer many such opportunities in which subjects will become collaborators.

Day of the Dead - Ansco Panda

So, the street is still a viable venue for photography.  Some good examples of current work on the street can be found in ongoing conversations at the Rangefinder Forum:

• Our Street Photography . . . Post yours!
•  W/NW The Streets of Yokohama! 
• Recent Street Photos 

Update:

I was reminded in coming across a review in the New York Times by Arthur Lubow about an interesting, if enigmatic, practitioner of street photography, Vivian Maier.  She preceded the era of Arbus and Winograd, but had no influence on them or anyone else of that time because her work remained totally unknown to the world until 2007.  Lubow thinks Maier's best work is to be found in her self-portraits, and he calls her a talented photographer, but not a great artist.  What Lubow did not do was to identify or even speculate on any influence Maier may be having on the practice of street photography since 2007.  Her work has certainly had significant impact on the art appreciating public and critics.  I have seen a lot of comments by photographers who have expressed admiration for her work.  Whether that has translated to actual stylistic influence is hard to know.

More About Still Life

Still life art (Google)

A work of art that depicts inanimate objects, such as fruit, flowers, or dead game. Still life art can be a celebration of material pleasures, or a reminder of the brevity of human life. The term originated in the Middle Ages and Ancient Greco-Roman art, and became a distinct genre in the late 16th century.

I am mostly happy with the conservative definition offered by Google, and that describes what I am looking for when I search for still life examples.  In practice, though, I take a looser approach beyond the traditional strictures, often looking to express a feeling of stillness.  I have also often here presented pictures of found arrangements which I have identified as belonging to the genre.

Still, I try to stray not too far from the historical approach which implies a composition with a  purposeful arrangement of objects.  The plural is important, I think, as a delineator to establish a difference between still life and macros, close-ups and product shots.  To represent an arrangement, it seems that at least two elements are required. Online photo sharing sites tend to feature offerings which mostly depict isolated items including flowers or other natural or manufactured objects.

Recently, while looking for sources of inspiration I came across a conversation about still life at Rangefinderforum.com which started sixteen years ago and has continued intermittently since then.  The images and words of participants show that nearly all struggle to define the character of their efforts as well as to master the relevant photographic techniques.

Most of my own efforts to create still life compositions have found their way to my Still Life Album at Flickr.

Bottles

My still life compositions tend toward the minimalistic.  Partly, that is because I don't have anything approaching a studio setting; my setups are done on the fly.  Also, I rely on window light, which changes through the day.

My photography over the years has mostly been a product of discovery during long walks.  With diminished mobility still life seems increasingly appropriate if I want to continue with photography.  So I'm going to try to be somewhat more thoughtful in preparations and execution.

Getting Out

 We have had some marvelous blue sky days which have encouraged me to get out with the cameras.  On Monday I took the dog along on a short hike in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains east of town.  It was really nice to get away from city streets and into the natural setting, so full of forms, shadows and textures.

I decided to try a red filter which is not something I have done before.  The auto-exposure of the Pentax ME handled the challenge ok, but the dark filter made it nearly impossible to see what I was aiming for.

When I got up to the base of the hill I was delighted to see a small group of mule deer peering down at me.

They were aware of the dog nosing around in the brush below, but they seemed more curious than fearful.

 If the weather holds I'll try to get back to the same place with a longer lens.

A week earlier:

I had heard and seen a lot of Sandhill Cranes in the sky, so I went out to the Los Poblanos Open Space just east of the river where they can often be seen this time of year.  In past years the birds have shown up there in the hundreds, but they are not attracted to the area in such numbers now since there has been no corn planting.  On this occasion I saw only about a dozen on the ground  and a few more in the air.

 I'll get out soon to some likely spots on the river to look for the cranes.

Paul Caponigro

 He died on the 10th of November, just short of reaching the age of 92.  I have written here a couple times about his work and how he showed what photography is capable of producing, particularly in black and white.  His son, John Paul, posted a brief appreciation of one of his father's great pictures. (I only learned today that he lived in southern New Mexico for twenty years.)

Death Has Its Day

 

Remembering and Forgetting

I don't recall now why I originally placed this post about John Collier Jr. in my Everything Else blog nine years ago.  This great American photographer certainly deserves a place here in my blog about film photography.

* * *

October 24, 2015

John Collier Jr.

I went to a lecture recently which was sponsored by the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology.  The announcements had indicated the presentation would be about the museums photo archives.  As it turned out, the presenter used some photos from the archives, but mostly as illustrations for discussing theories of photography advanced by European philosophers.  At the end of the talk I asked about the museum's holdings related to the work of John Collier Jr.  The lecturer, currently a curator at the museum, replied that the Maxwell had a very large collection of works by Collier, but that no one had worked with the material.  She said she did not know if anyone in the Anthropology or Education departments at UNM was familar with Collier's work or making use of his techniques in regard to photo analysis and education.

The lecturer's answers to my questions left me discouraged about the state of knowledge about one of Twentieth Century America's photo greats.  John Collier Jr. made a lot of great pictures in the early 1940s while working under Roy Stryker at the Farm Security Administration.  Collier continued making photographs in a similar vein for many more years all over the western hemisphere.  At the same time he also began to develop the concepts of Visual Anthropology and applied those concepts to analyzing teaching and learning processes.  Collier taught photography classes as a full professor for many years at San Francisco State.  His accomplishments as a photographer, researcher and teacher seem all the more extraordinary when you consider that he had very limited formal schooling, due in a large part to injuries sustained as a child which left him with physical impairments, dyslexia, hearing loss and impaired speech.

As it turns out, academic engagement with Collier's work was not as dismally scant as the lecturer had averred.  While browsing the web for information about Collier I stumbled on an interactive presentation about Collier's war-time work with the FSA.  The web pages were the product of a grant project conducted under the auspices of the Maxwell Museum and The College of Education's Technology & Education Center (TEC) at UNM in 2006.  The project's director was Catherine Baudoin, who at the time was the Maxwell's Photographic Collections Curator.  The on line presentation was organized as an interactive lesson plan enabling exercises in interpretation of war-time photo uses by the U.S. government using posters, photo archives and video resources.  To support the lesson plan activities, Baudoin uploaded about 400 of Collier's FSA images to the Flickr photo sharing site where they are still available for viewing.

Unfortunately, Baudoin's web pages had become detached from the Maxwell web site over the years; there is no link there now to the Collier work; the Photo Curator position seems to have evaporated, and Baudoin's name is nowhere to be found.  My guess would be that the skimpy and rather disorganized Maxwell web site is symptomatic of budgetary deficiencies which have focused the institution's efforts more on conservation of holdings rather than on sustaining a coherent educational mission incorporating up-to-date technological communications resources.

Luckily, modern search engine technology compensates for a lot of academic entropy.  Here are some useful  links to information I have come across on the web and elsewhere:

Far from Main Street:Three Photographers in Depression-Era New Mexico (link to Amazon)
A very fine collection of photos along with essays about the FSA/OWI work of  Russell Lee, John Collier Jr. and Jack Delano.  The cover photo is by Collier.  "All photographs are selected from the Pinewood Collection of New Mexico FSA Photographs, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico ... Prints were made from original negatives generously loaned by the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division."



Oral History Interview with John Collier, 1965 January 18 Conducted by Richard K. Doud
Amazing insights into the personalities and operations of the FSA/OWI under Stryker.  The first part of the interview is accessible as an on line audio clip, and it gives a good idea of the expressive challenge which Collier over-came and even turned to an advantage during his long career as a photographer, researcher and educator.

John Collier, Jr.: Anthropology, Education and the Quest for Diversity
by Ray Barnhardt, Center for Cross-Cultural Studies, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
An authoritative, first-person appreciation of Collier's work with Eskimo and Navajo students and teachers as well as with a diverse urban school system in San Francisco.

Photographing Navajos: John Collier Jr. on the Reservation, 1948-1953
by C. Stewart Doty, Dale Sperry Mudge, and Herbert John Benally Photographs by John Collier Jr.
(link to Amazon)

The authors tracked down photo archives of Collier's Navajo work in Pennsylvania and Nova Scotia and then interviewed family members of the people depicted by Collier in the Four Corners area.  The photos in the book illustrate the techniques developed by Collier to elicit social and cultural information by showing photographs to informants depicting their own social and physical environments.  The text and illustrations provide a nice followup to the study of the Navajo conducted by Clyde Kluckhohn and Dorothea Leighton in the 1930s and 1940s.  Right after the publication of Photographing Navajos the Collier family made the decision to donate their collection of Collier's work to the Maxwell Museum.  The book's introduction notes that "The collection includes fifty years of photographs, film and video, field notes, daybooks, and correspondence."

* * *

John Collier Jr., Bureau with Portraits and Mementos
(and self portrait), Picuris Pueblo, NM, ca. 1945

Want a Leica?

 I got an email this morning advertising another big OstLicht Auction with 164 listings for Leicas, etc.  The prices seem astounding, particularly as many of the models are pretty recent.  There are also 92 photographs to be auctioned, mostly images of celebrities by well-known photographers.

Start price: € 14,000

Baila Baila

 The folk dance group, Baila Baila, puts on an elaborate show each year in Old Town during the Balloon Fiesta with children in traditional Mexican costumes and a lot of makeup.  The large number of participants offers many opportunities for photographers.

I am still not getting the tonal qualities I would like from the expired Acros 400.  The balance of shadows and highlights presents a difficult challenge for scanning and only approach acceptability with considerable photoshopping.  I tried semi-stand development in hc110 with this roll, so will probably go to dilution B or E for the next.

Spanish Broom 2

As I have said many times before, what I enjoy the most about Albuquerque's annual Balloon Fiesta is the afternoon musical performances which take place in Old Town.  On Saturday we had the opportunity to enjoy a second encounter with the Spanish Broom Flamenco group. 

 

What this experience revealed to me was the importance of the performance venue to  Flamenco style.  We watched, along with a large audience, the group this time dancing on the stage of the gazebo in the Plaza Vieja.  The strong voice of the cantaora along with the guitar, the cajón and dancers' footwork produced the expected irresistible rhythm.

The Spanish Broom group delivered a very polished performance as was true of the first time we saw them.  However, the effect was much less impactful on the stage than it had been in the small plaza where we had first encountered the group.  Flamenco is a musical style that is really best suited to intimate settings.  On a stage surrounded by a large audience the nuances of tapping feet, cajón and hand clapping become hard to perceive.

  In the intimate setting of a small cafe or a little plaza the performers can better show off their individual styles and techniques, and the audience can fully appreciate the gestures and expressions which are an essential part of the performance.

In the Neighborhood

 Unsettled Fall weather has often been a problem for Albuquerque's annual Balloon Fiesta.  This year, though, it looks like good flying weather for all nine days of the event.

 I thought I might not see any balloons up close this year, but on Monday morning a gentle wind from the north brought quite  few over our neighborhood.  Close to the ground there was just a very slight current of air which allowed several balloons to easily land on nearby streets.

I followed the descending craft as best I could on foot, but was not quick enough to catch any actually touching down.

 The balloons got me out on the streets of the neighborhood early in the day while the sun was low in the sky and the coolness of the night still lingered in the shadows

Spanish Broom

 We enjoyed a flamenco performance in Old Town's Plaza Don Luis by the Spanish Broom group on Saturday.  The dancers, singers and guitarists all performed at a high level of skill.  They will do another performance at the Casa Rondeña Winery on October 6th and will be  back in Plaza Don Luis on the 10th.  The informal setting of the little plaza combined with the excellent skills on display lent a note of authenticity to the event.

 

Photographing the action was quite a challenge due to the group's highly kinetic style; they are seldom still for even a moment.

I shot the pictures with both the normal and telephoto lenses for my Olympus Pen FT half-frame camera.  The film was some slightly outdated Acros 400 shared with me by fellow film enthusiast, Jim Grey.  His work with the film looked quite a bit better than mine, possibly because of the choice of developers.  I used the same PMK Pyro I normally use with Kentmere, and at the same time and temperature.  I think I'll try some HC110 for the next roll.

Update:

Margaret recorded a short video of the Old Town performance of Spanish Broom.

My Story

 Film photographer, Chip Greenberg, has done a marvelous job of hosting monthly Zoom meetings of our New Mexico Film Photographers group. For our September meeting he asked me to do a presentation about my history in photography. 

My Story

 (A recording of the first 30 minutes of the September meeting of the New Mexico Film Photographers.)

Photography at Museums

 I have made a lot of photographs in and around museums. That was brought home to me not long ago when I started following and contributing to the Analog Museums group on Flickr. To start that I did a search on the term "museum" in Flickr and was surprised to find I was approaching a hundred images on the subject at that photo sharing site. I made a selection of what I considered the best of those and put them in an album on the Flickr site.

Albuquerque Art Museum

My interest in museums developed early; the first book I can remember reading was one by Roy Chapman Andrews about his explorations in Mongolia and his work as a exhibit designer, curator, and ultimately the director of the Museum of Natural History in New York. My own practical awareness of museums became a reality when I lived for a time in New York.  I had an apartment just across the street from the Brooklyn Museum and visited it often.  Photographing the children of some friends earned me a membership with the Museum of Modern Art and I thereafter visited the MOMA almost weekly.

Albuquerque Art Museum

Albuquerque, where we now live, has a good number of well designed and well run museums for a city of its small size and economic resources. There are three museums within walking distance of our home.  Of those, I visit the Albuquerque Art Museum nearly every Sunday.  The Art Museum and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History offer free entry several times monthly and the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at UNM is always free to visitors. UNM has had an impressive place in the history of photography in America and it has an extensive archive of photographic works.  In recent years however the UNM Art Museum has done very little of note with the available resources.

New Mexico Hispanic Cultural Center

Restrictions on photography in museums was common in the past, but most now permit visitors to make photos with the only prohibitions being on the use of flash and tripods. In my own museum photo efforts I tend to focus mostly on making pictures which incorporate a portrayal of the museum experience by visitors.

New Mexico Museum of Natural History

 In regard to photographic techniques I have found that a wide-angle lens is often very useful when exhibits are confined to tight spaces, as well as in capturing the subjects in their over-all context.  Museum lighting is often kept at a low level in an effort to minimize light damage to objects on display, so fast films and wide apertures are helpful.

Albuquerque Art Museum

Photography as a subject of museum displays has become of increased importance in most museums over the years.  I always hope for a bit more, but our local museums have actually brought some impressive shows to town.  One of the best in recent memory was the big retrospective of Danny Lyon's work at the Art Museum which provided an opportunity to appreciate the uniquely immersive style of this long-time New Mexico resident.

PIMA Air and Space Museum, Tucson

 All of the museums in town include photo exhibits among their  offerings, and both the Natural History Museum and the Nuclear Museum  conduct yearly contests open to the participation of  local photographers.

One of my pinhole images on display at the Nuclear Museum