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Another USSR. Unofficial Modern Photography of the Soviet Union.

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 14:28:59 PDT

Another USSR. Unofficial Modern Photography of the Soviet Union. Modern Art Museum, Oxford, England, 1987.

N. C. Wyeth: "If you paint a man leaning over, your own back must ache."

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 22:21:46 PST

Newell Convers Wyeth was born on October 22, 1882, in Needham, Massachusetts. Growing up on a farm, he developed a deep love of nature. His mother, the daughter of Swiss immigrants, encouraged his early artistic inclinations in the face of opposition from his father, a descendant of the first Wyeth to arrive in the New World in the mid-17th century. His father encouraged a more practical use of his talents, and young Convers attended Mechanic Arts High School in Boston through May 1899, concentrating on drafting. With his mother's support he transferred to Massachusetts Normal Art School and there instructor Richard Andrew urged him toward illustration. He studied with Eric Pape and Charles W. Reed and then painted with George L. Noyes in Annisquam, Massachusetts, during the summer of 1901.

On the advice of two friends, artists Clifford Ashley and Henry Peck, Wyeth decided to travel to Wilmington, Delaware, in October 1902, to join the Howard Pyle School of Art. Howard Pyle, one of the country's most renowned illustrators, left a teaching position at Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry in Philadelphia to open his own school of illustration in Wilmington. Pyle was an inspired teacher and Wyeth an attentive pupil. The master emphasized the use of dramatic effects in painting and the importance of sound, personal knowledge of one's subject, teachings Wyeth quickly assimilated and employed throughout his career. The astute young man recognized the value of Pyle's instruction, writing to his mother just after his arrival, "the composition lecture...opened my eyes more than any talk I ever heard." (BJW, p. 21) In less than five months, Wyeth successfully submitted a cover illustration to the Saturday Evening Post.
www.ncwyeth.org/ncbio.htm

Imogen Cunningham: "Get it out of your historic head"

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 11:04:41 PST

Imogen Cunningham

I don't think there's any such thing as teaching people photography, other than influencing them a little. People have to be their own learners. They have to have a certain talent.
www.imogencunningham.com

www.brainyquote.com

The Chinese Century..

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 19:33:29 PST

John Thomson’s Street Life in London.

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 10:25:48 PST

John Thomson, self portrait with Honan Soldiers, 1871

John Thomson (14 June 1837 – 29 September 1921) was a pioneering Scottish photographer, geographer and traveller. He was one of the first photographers to travel to the Far East, documenting the people, landscapes and artifacts of eastern cultures. Upon returning home, his work among the street people of London cemented his reputation, and is regarded as a classic instance of social documentary which laid the foundations for photojournalism. He went on to become a portrait photographer of High Society in Mayfair, gaining the Royal Warrant in 1881.

The son of William Thomson, a tobacco spinner and retail trader, and his wife Isabella, Thomson was born the eighth of nine children in Edinburgh in the year of Queen Victoria's accession. After his schooling in the early 1850s, he was apprenticed to a local optical and scientific instrument manufacturer, thought to be James Mackay Bryson. During this time, Thomson learned the principles of photography and completed his apprenticeship around 1858.
During this time he also undertook two years of evening classes at the Watt Institution and School of Arts (formerly the Edinburgh School of Arts, later to become Heriot-Watt University). He received the "Attestation of Proficiency" in Natural Philosophy in 1857 and in Junior Mathematics and Chemistry in 1858. In 1861 he became a member of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, but by 1862 he had decided to travel to Singapore to join his older brother William, a watchmaker and photographer.
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Marc Lagrange

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:59:41 PST

Harry Callahan. New Color..

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 12:35:59 PST

Harry Callahan Self portrait

Harry Callahan: "Experience is the best teacher of all. And for that, there are no guarantees that one will become an artist. Only the journey matters.

Harry Callahan: "I wish more people felt that photography was an adventure the same as life itself and felt that their individual feelings were worth expressing. To me, that makes photography more exciting."

Harry Morey Callahan (October 22, 1912 – March 15, 1999) was an influential twentieth century American photographer. Born in Detroit, Michigan, he began teaching himself photography in 1938. He formed a friendship with Todd Webb who was also destined to become a photographer. A talk given by Ansel Adams in 1941 inspired him to take his work seriously. In 1941, Callahan and Webb visited Rocky Mountain State Park but didn't return with any photographs. In 1946 he was invited to teach photography at the Institute of Design in Chicago by László Moholy-Nagy. He moved to Rhode Island in 1961 to establish a photography program at the Rhode Island School of Design, teaching there until his retirement in 1977.

Callahan left almost no written records—no diaries, letters, scrapbooks or teaching notes. His technical photographic method was to go out almost every morning, walk the city he lived in and take numerous pictures. He then spent almost every afternoon making proof prints of that day's best negatives. Yet, for all his photographic activity, Callahan, at his own estimation, produced no more than half a dozen final images a year.
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Clarence Sinclair Bull. The head of MGM's stills department.

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:49:34 PST

Clarence Sinclair Bull at work

Clarence Sinclair Bull, the head of MGM's stills department for nearly forty years, Clarence Sinclair Bull, along with Hurrell, virtually invented celebrity portraiture as we know it today, capturing with rare artistry a breathtaking roster of stars in brilliant and often surprising ways. His magical and dream-like photographs - in particular his collaboration with Greta Garbo, whom he photographed almost exclusively from 1929 until 1941 became the classic images of Hollywood portrait photography, instrumental in fixing the essential look of a star and in setting standards of beauty male and female - to this day.
Bull's days at MGM included 200 of his enduring portraits of such legendary film stars as Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn, Hedy Lamarr, Gary Cooper, Elizabeth Taylor, Vivian Leigh, Spencer Tracy, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, and, of course, Greta Garbo.

Winner of four Academy still photography exhibition awards, Clarence Sinclair Bull was born in Sun River, Montana in 1896 and studied with the great Western painter Charles Marion Russell.

His early interest in photography took him to Hollywood in 1918 where he was hired as an assistant cameraman at Metro Pictures. He shot stills of the stars during the production breaks, and when Goldwyn merged with Metro in 1924, he became head of the MGM stills department, and remained at MGM for the rest of his career.

Though Bull was experienced in every branch of his department, from lighting to printing and retouching, he is best-known for his remarkable portraits of Hollywood stars, especially of Greta Garbo. Clarence Sinclair Bull died in 1979.
via www.hurrellphotos.com

James Jacques Joseph Tissot (1836-1902)

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:45:50 PST

Jacques Joseph Tissot was born in Nantes, to a middle class family. He initially studied art at Beaux-Arts in Paris. Tissot’s early paintings are mainly historical, & heavily influenced by the Dutch School. He came into contact with the Impressionists as a young man, and was leading a fairly unadventurous life. This was changed totally by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Following the crushing French defeat in this war, and the subsequent fall of the Paris Commune, Tissot decided to move to London, which he did in 1871. This move must have caused considerable problems in his life, and the painter needed to earn some money quickly. Tissot started, therefore, to paint accomplished highly finished pictures of London society ,and social events, including the famous ‘Too Early’ These pictures were virtually an instant success with the art viewing and buying public, but not with the critics.

Tissot’s succcess in London aroused considerable jealousy amongst his Impressionist colleagues in France, where he was regarded as a very minor figure. The critical hostility Tissot’s pictures met with, is not easy for us to understand today. The main criticisms were that the pictures were really only painted photographs, and they were vulgar. There is some truth in the first case, though the paintings show dazzling technique, and a dash of Gallic wit and sophistication, home grown English artists were quite unable to match. In the second case the basis of the adverse comment, was the class-consciousness of British society at that time. The pictures were held to show shallow nouveau-riche society at it’s worst.

Amazing United States Photos in the XX Century (part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 08:13:59 PST

The History Of The 20th Century - BBC Archive (part 11)

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 18:18:28 PST

Gustave Courbet. Realism..

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:03:39 PST

The Cellist, Self Portrait

Best known as an innovator in Realism (and credited with coining the term), Courbet was a painter of figurative compositions, landscapes and seascapes. He also worked with social issues, and addressed peasantry and the grave working conditions of the poor. His work belonged neither to the predominant Romantic nor Neoclassical schools. Rather, Courbet believed the Realist artist's mission was the pursuit of truth, which would help erase social contradictions and imbalances.

For Courbet realism dealt not with the perfection of line and form, but entailed spontaneous and rough handling of paint, suggesting direct observation by the artist while portraying the irregularities in nature. He depicted the harshness in life, and in so doing, challenged contemporary academic ideas of art, which brought the criticism that he deliberately adopted a cult of ugliness.

His work, along with the works of Honore Daumier and Jean-François Millet, became known as Realism.
read more www.gustavecourbet.org

Garry Winogrand: "I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed."

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:50:30 PST

Garry Winogrand was born in 1928 in New York. There he studied painting at City College of New York, photography at Columbia University, and photojournalism with Alexey Brodovitch at The New School for Social Research. He photographed while in the Air Force, and did magazine work throughout the 1950s and 60s for publications like Life and Sports Illustrated. Winogrand has become known for a street-style of photography characterized by a wide-angle lens and 35mm camera, available light and unposed subjects, and countless exposures. Winogrand’s photographs have been widely exhibited, including a major retrospective organized in 1988 by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, which traveled to the Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, University of Texas, Austin; Art Institute of Chicago; Carnegie Mellon University Art Gallery, Pittsburgh; Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Winogrand died in 1984.

read and see more Museum of Contemporary Photography

Amedeo Modigliani: "Happiness is an angel with a serious face"

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:37:49 PST

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani, one of the most popular artists of the 20th century, was born on July 12, 1884 into the family of Flaminio and Eugenia Modigliani, in Livorno (Leghorn), Tuscany. He was the forth and the youngest child in the family, which belonged to the secularized Jewish bourgeoisie. By the time Amedeo was born, the family business was in down, to go bankrupt some years later. Eugenia Modigliani, Amedeo’s mother, came from France. To contribute to the family income she gave private lessons and made translations. It was she who liked to create myths around the family and encouraged this trait in her younger son.
The attack of typhoid in 1898 was a turning point in Modigliani’s life. After recovering he was allowed to drop school and start to take lessons in drawing and painting at the Art Academy in Livorno. By 1900, his health condition aggravated, he contracted tuberculosis and spent the winter of 1900/01 in Naples, on Capri and in Rome. In 1902, Modigliani enrolled in the Scuola libera di Nudo (Free School of Nude Studies) in Florence. He visited Florence’s museums and churches and studied the art of the Renaissance, which he learned to admire. A year later Modigliani moved to Venice, where he enrolled in the Instituto di Belle Arti di Venezia and continued the self-study of old masters. It is in Venice that he first tried hashish. Two years later Modigliani went to Paris. He took life-drawing classes at the Académie Colarossi and befriended many colleagues from all over the world. Despite his poor health, he participated in the debauched life of the artists on Montmartre. The German painter Ludwig Meidner described him in the following way, “Our Modigliani, or ‘Modi’ as he was called – was a characteristic and, at the same time, highly talented representative of Bohemian Montmartre; he was probably even its last true Bohemian”.

National Geographic's Greatest Places (part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 20:43:28 PST

National Geographic's Greatest Places (part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 20:34:02 PST

Eve Arnold, ( April 21, 1912 – January 4, 2012) was an American photojournalist

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 07:43:08 PST

Eve Arnold dies aged 99

Eve Arnold, one of the most distinctive and admired photographers of the 20th century, equally renowned for portraits, fashion and photojournalism, and her long working relationship with Marilyn Monroe, has died aged 99, just short of her 100th birthday in April.

Her agency Magnum – where she became the first woman member in 1957 – announced her death "with great sadness", adding that she "passed away peacefully" on Wednesday.

Magnum's co-founder, the late Robert Capa, once described her work as falling "between Marlene Dietrich's legs and the bitter lives of potato pickers".

Arnold was born in Philadelphia in 1912 but had made London her home since the early 1960s, living for decades in a fourth floor apartment in Mayfair. In later years, she moved to a nursing home and, although too weak to hold a camera any longer, she worked on books of her photographs and exhibitions of her work right up to last year when some previously unpublished images of Monroe were released.

Tributes poured in from her peers, academics, and curators of her work. Jane Bown, another renowned photographer, called her "truly great, far greater than me – and much braver. She went into some really wild places, and often went back many years later, whereas I never really wanted to work more than 10 minutes from London."

"When I went to her flat, I told her I loathed photographing other photographers – but she could not have been kinder or made it easier for me."

In a statement Magnum said: "She will perhaps be best remembered for her exceptional photographs of people; the famous, politicians, musicians, artists and the unknown. Her intimate, sensitive and compassionate 10-year collaboration with Marilyn Monroe has cemented her as one of the most iconic portrait photographers of our time, but it is the long term reportage stories that drove Arnold's curiosity and passion."

Fred Herzog: Philosophy of photography

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 18:44:33 PST

self portrait

Fred Herzog

"Photographic finesse has its place, but it can also get in the way. I was trying to show vitality. The pictures are about content, and more content. And if there is no content, take no picture. "It’s exactly the other way around now. 'Okay I’m going to take my clothes off, and I’m going to stand there in the nude, and I’m going to try and look lonely or profound.'

"Content cannot be manufactured, in my opinion. That which I can find is better than that which you can make. That which we find, the work and the use of the people out there, it’s natural, that’s what ordinary people do, that interests me."

"I take pride in saying these are all how we looked, not how we wanted to look, or staged. You cannot stage pictures. That is something I have many many times defended. People say ‘Well you can stage that.’ I say ‘No you cannot, and I can prove it to you.’ Many times over I’ve taken a second shot after [some] kids have seen me, and nothing. It’s a different picture."
read more www.canada.com

CPR Pier & Marine Building, 1953.
A photograph taken from Herzog's first roll of color film

The History Of The 20th Century - BBC Archive (part 10)

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 16:31:17 PST

Vivian Maier. Street Photographer.

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 14:13:17 PST

A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

Piecing together Vivian Maier’s life can easily evoke Churchill’s famous quote about the vast land of Tsars and commissars that lay to the east. A person who fit the stereotypical European sensibilities of an independent liberated woman, accent and all, yet born in New York City. Someone who was intensely guarded and private, Vivian could be counted on to feistily preach her own very liberal worldview to anyone who cared to listen, or didn’t. Decidedly unmaterialistic, Vivian would come to amass a group of storage lockers stuffed to the brim with found items, art books, newspaper clippings, home films, as well as political tchotchkes and knick-knacks.

The story of this nanny who has now wowed the world with her photography, and who incidentally recorded some of the most interesting marvels and peculiarities of Urban America in the second half of the twentieth century is seemingly beyond belief.

An American of French and Austro-Hungarian extraction, Vivian bounced between Europe and the United States before coming back to New York City in 1951. Having picked up photography just two years earlier, she would comb the streets of the Big Apple refining her artistic craft. By 1956 Vivian left the East Coast for Chicago, where she’d spend most of the rest of her life working as a caregiver. In her leisure Vivian would shoot photos that she zealously hid from the eyes of others. Taking snapshots into the late 1990′s, Maier would leave behind a body of work comprising over 100,000 negatives. Additionally Vivian’s passion for documenting extended to a series of homemade documentary films and audio recordings. Interesting bits of Americana, the demolition of historic landmarks for new development, the unseen lives of ethnics and the destitute, as well as some of Chicago’s most cherished sites were all meticulously catalogued by Vivian Maier.

A free spirit but also a proud soul, Vivian became poor and was ultimately saved by three of the children she had nannied earlier in her life. Fondly remembering Maier as a second mother, they pooled together to pay for an apartment and took the best of care for her. Unbeknownst to them, one of Vivian’s storage lockers was auctioned off due to delinquent payments. In those storage lockers lay the massive hoard of negatives Maier secretly stashed throughout her lifetime.

Maier’s massive body of work would come to light when in 2007 her work was discovered at a local thrift auction house on Chicago’s Northwest Side. From there, it would eventually impact the world over and change the life of the man who championed her work and brought it to the public eye, John Maloof.

Currently, Vivian Maier’s body of work is being archived and cataloged for the enjoyment of others and for future generations. John Maloof is at the core of this project after reconstructing most of the archive, having been previously dispersed to the various buyers attending that auction. Now, with roughly 90% of her archive reconstructed, Vivian’s work is part of a renaissance in interest in the art of Street Photography.

www.vivianmaier.com

Lynn Geesaman. Hazy Lights and Shadows.

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 05:08:28 PST

Since the invention of the camera, photographers have been drawn to European cities, capturing the surrounding landscape. Whether focusing on the sculpted bushes in Versailles, the perfectly aligned trees in Damme, Belgium or the luscious vegetation of Giverny, artists continue to travel to Europe, capturing the details and grandness of parks and gardens that have been preserved for centuries.

American photographer Lynn Geesaman first started traveling to France and Belgium in 1987, when she realized the gardens she most sought were outside the United States. Based in Minneapolis, Geesaman learned photography when she was 33 years old in an effort to take pictures of her children. Working as a math teacher in middle school, Geesaman's hobby quickly became a full time career, as she developed her own way of seeing and style of printing. A pivotal photographic assignment led her to photograph in a public garden, which she used to find intimidating. Although she found Minneapolis stimulating, she realized her favorite gardens/parks were from another century -- places that remained untouched by human decadence or industrial intrusion.

Lynn Geesaman quickly gained national recognition for her striking black and white photographs. Void of people, her images reveal the solitude and refinement found in nature. Her pictures vibrate with a glistening light, inviting viewers to meander through the poplars in France, the canals in Belgium and the cypress trees in Italy. These are quiet places where the only disturbance is the occasional rustle of the leaves or the sounds of our own thoughts. Geesaman photographs during daylight hours, when the sun catches the tip of the leaves and the wind barely makes a sound. Her shimmering images continue to invite the viewer into a dream world where the imagination runs free.

New to Geesaman's work is her use of brilliant color. Through meticulous darkroom printing, we are confronted with glowing yellow trees, glistening orange foliage and soft green waters that challenge our perception of natures' colors. These are fabricated colors in familiar places -- places Geesaman has shown us before, yet places we long to re-experience. Whether working in color or black and white, Geesaman photographs places of solitude that invite the viewer to walk around, without any distractions or reservations. (via)

Kazimir Malevich: "Painting is the aesthetic side of the object but it has never been original, has never been its own goal"

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:13:13 PST

Painters were also attorneys, happy storytellers of anecdote, psychologists, botanists, zoologists, archaeologists, engineers, but there were no creative painters. Kazimir Malevich

Masters of Deception. Optical Illusion Art

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:02:55 PST

Miroslav Tichý: "Photography is painting with light!.."

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 14:27:31 PST

Miroslav Tichý: "Photography is painting with light! The blurs, the spots, those are errors! But the errors are part of it, they give it poetry and turn it into painting. And for that you need as bad a camera as possible! If you want to be famous, you have to do whatever you're doing worse than anyone else in the whole world."

This last master of the 20th century photography was only discovered some 6 years ago and left a radical and unorthodox body of photography focussed on the female figure. After studying at the Academy of Arts in Prague, Miroslav Tichý withdrew to a life in isolation in his hometown of Kyjov, Moravia, Czech Republic. In the late 1950s he quitted painting and became a distinctive Diogenes-like figure. From the end of the 1960s he began to take photographs mainly of local women, in part with cameras he made by hand. He later mounted them on hand-made frames, added finishing touches with pencil, and thus moved them from photography in the direction of drawing. The result are works of strikingly unusual formal qualities, which disregard the rules of conventional photography. They constitute a large oeuvre of poetic, dreamlike views of feminine beauty in a small town under the Czechoslovak Communist régime.

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Ernst Haas "All I wanted was to connect my moods with those of Paris. Beauty paints and when it painted most, I shot"

noreply@blogger.com (Eugene Eugene) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:38:02 PST

A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it?

Ernst Haas

All I wanted was to connect my moods with those of Paris. Beauty paints and when it painted most, I shot.
Ernst Haas

I am not interested in shooting new things - I am interested to see things new.
Ernst Haas

There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.
Ernst Haas

With photography a new language has been created. Now for the first time it is possible to express reality by reality. We can look at an impression as long as we wish, we can delve into it and, so to speak, renew past experiences at will.
Ernst Haas

via www.brainyquote.com