Allan Arbus

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While researching Hati and Skoll yesterday, I learned of the passing of Allan Arbus (1918-2003) last April.  Most of us know Arbus as the caring and liberal psychiatrist Maj. Sidney Freedman on the hit television series “M*A*S*H.”  “Alan Alda, who played Hawkeye Pierce on the show, paid Arbus the ultimate compliment when he said;

“I was so convinced that he was a psychiatrist I used to sit and talk with him between scenes.  After a couple months of that I noticed he was giving me these strange looks, like ‘How would I know the answer to that?’”

Acting however, was only Mr. Arbus’ second career.  In his first career, he was a photographer.  During World War II, he was a United States Army photographer.  After the war he and his first wife, the well-known photographer Diane Arbus started a photographic advertising business in New York City.  He produced advertising photographs for magazines like: Glamour, Seventeen, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar.  Significantly, one of the photographs in Edward Steichen‘s landmark exhibition “The Family of Man” was credited to the couple.

Diane Arbus quit the business in 1956.  The couple separated in 1959 and were formally divorced in 1969. I suppose that this makes him the model for the fictionalized non-supportive husband in that very bizarre movie loosely about the life of Diane Arbus and starring Nicole Kidman, Robert Downey, Jr., and Ty Burrel, as Allan Arbus, “Fur.” Diane, famous for her images of marginalized people, committed suicide in 1971.

Mr. Arbus continued as a photographer for several more years.  But, of course, he is most famous to us as an actor.  And we shall always fondly remember him as Maj. Freedman, whose caring insight brought some level of sanity to the insane reality of M*A*S*H and the Korean War.

 

In search of Turkish pastries and coffee

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Figure 1 - Interior of the Sofra Bakery, Watertown, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2013.

Figure 1 – Interior of the Sofra Bakery, Watertown, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2013.

Cartier Bresson aside, I am like many photographers shy about pointing my camera in the faces of strangers.  So I have to force myself, if just for the practice, to find nonthreatening situations and snap a few street photographs.  On a recent Sunday my wife and I ventured into Cambridge, really for the glory of the sunshine.  On driving home we found ourselves in search of the perfect Turkish coffee served up with Turkish pastries and if you want other middle eastern specialties such as the most wonderful lamb swarma ever.  The choice here is an obvious one for people in The Hub – Sofra Bakery in Watertown.  This bakery is the creation of two master Boston chefs: Maura Kilpatrick and Ana Sortun.  Honestly, I’m getting kind of hungry just thinking about it.

One of the elements, besides the food, that I love about Sofra’s is the subdued backlit atmosphere on a summer’s afternoon, the unassuming way the menu is listed on free-handed paper signs, and the cozy seating around round metal drum tables.  I have in the two figures here attempted to catch the coffee house atmosphere.  There’s nothing Starbucksian about this – just great food and wonderful deep rich coffee.  It offers a perfect opportunity at a bit of street, or at least coffee house photography.  Everyone is so fixated on all the goodies that they are oblivious to the occasional unobtrusive photograph – no flash of course.

Let’s see – taken with my Canon EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 IS STM lens in aperture priority at f 7.1 with an ISO of 3200.  Figure 1 is 18 mm at 1/125 s.  Figure 2 is 24 mm at 1/250 s.

Figure 2 - Interior of the Sofra Bakery, Watertown, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2013.

Figure 2 – Interior of the Sofra Bakery, Watertown, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2013.

 

Premature accounts of the death of street photography

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I was reading recently, or should I say yet again, about the death of street photography.  This time the culprit is the cell phone, and the suggestion that people have, via their cell phone use, abstracted themselves from the world and instead of offering up interesting activities and gestures provide only a blank disconnected stare.  Hmm!  Well, I think that this is a bit overstated.  I did an informal survey on my way back from lunch and encountered fourteen people on the street of which only two were on the phone.  That’s about 14 % and seems about right.*  So yes, people do abstractly bump into you on the street, and yes, when I was at the Harvard Coop yesterday I did encounter a young woman with earphones, who was seemingly conversing with herself – but it’s hardly an epidemic.  I will have to apply the same survey technique to drivers.  Judging from the number of people who drive into buildings these days, this may be more widespread.

Maybe the problem is that you cannot tell the crazies from the connected.  You used to stay clear of people talking to themselves on public street and subways. But young couples still kiss on the street.  I say with confidence that kissing, and associated activities, will forever be more enjoyable than talking on the cell phone.  Children still dance gleefully in puddles.  And old people still walk hand-in-hand.

There is enough activity on the street to nurture the Cartier-Bresson in all of us.  You need to develop both his mindset and skills.  It’s not fair to evoke the limits of a post-9/11 world as an excuse for your own tenerity. Perhaps the cell phone users are there to present a photographic challenge for us.  And of course, the cell phone increases the probability that something photograph worthy will not go unsnapped.  At the same time it normalizes the act of taking pictures on the street, which should increase not decrease one’s ability to take street photographs.

*Note added in proof – I repeated this informal study this morning during my commute and found only 3 out of 67 people were on the phone.  That’s a mere 4%, and it included a lot of college age and young people.  I could however, have easily done a street photography essay on dog owners and their homemade pooper scooper techniques.

Labor Day 2013

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Figure 1 - Classic stereo image showing the Labor Day Parade on Union Square, in New York, City in 1887, from the Robert N Dennis collection of stereoscopic views in the New York Public Library. Scanned image from the Wikimedia Commons and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – Classic stereo image showing the Labor Day Parade on Union Square, in New York, City in 1887, from the Robert N Dennis collection of stereoscopic views in the New York Public Library. Scanned image from the Wikimedia Commons and in the public domain.

Today is Labor Day 2013; so I thought that I would start this post with a vintage stereo photograph of the 1887 Labor Day rally at Union Square in New York City.  It is important, I think, to remember that Labor Day was not meant to celebrate the end of summer, nor was it meant to be a day to flock the stores in search of bargains.  Labor Day was meant to celebrate Labor, the people who physically built and created what makes nations economically great.

The term “Labor Day” always reminds me of the slaves day off in Cecille B. DeMille’s epic film “The Ten Commandments.”  The origins of a Labor Day In the United States is just a bit obscure.  Some credit a machinist named Mathew Maguire, who first proposed in 1882 the holiday, while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union, or CLU of New York. Others credit Peter J. McGuire of the American Federation of Labor as being the first to suggest it in May 1882 after he saw the annual labor festival held in Toronto, Canada. Oregon was the first state to make it a holiday on February 21, 1887.

By 1894, thirty states celebrated Labor Day, when congress unanimously voted to create a national holiday in response to the deaths of workers at the hands of the US military during the Pullman strike and it was hastily signed into law by President Grover Cleveland.

The Pullman strike was a complex and truly pivotal point in the history of labor.  It must be remembered that the railroads were quintessential in the building of America economically in the nineteenth century.  George Pullman in building the Pullman Company set out to create a model industry and community.  The Great Panic of 1893 caused a large drop in Pullman Company revenues and Pullman unilaterally imposed lower wages but made no adjustments in the rents that he charged workers. The Pullman workers went on strike and were supported by the American Rail Union, under Eugene V. Debs, which refused to pull trains with Pullman Cars.  The Railroad Brotherhoods and the American Federation of Labor supported the General (Railroad) Managers Association and opposed the strike. The federal government secured a federal court injunction against the union, Debs, and the top leaders, based on interference with the transport of the US mail. When the strikers refused to comply. President Cleveland ordered Federal Troops to enforce the injunction.

What  many forget today is how deeply embedded the rail interests were in the US government and the important role played by American unions in creating a viable and vibrant middle class.  There is a pendulum to public perception about labor, and in the twenty-first century the world has become truly global.  I do not mean to politicize Hati and Skoll.  But I would suggest that it is worth thinking about Labor Day and the iconic nineteenth century image shown in Figure 1 in the context of other haunting images that we have spoken about: Lisa Kristine’s photographs of slavery in the modern world, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and of this May’s Garment Factory Collapse in Bangladesh.  Abuse will always occur in the absence of counter balancing power.  At the risk of sounding cliché, I have to echo the words of George Santayana that: “Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it.“

Old and new

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Figure 1 - Barn Door at the James Whittemore House, Lexington, MA, Minueman National Historical Park, (c) DE Wolf, 2013.

Figure 1 – Barn Door at the James Whittemore House, Lexington, MA, Minueman National Historical Park, (c) DE Wolf, 2013.

This past Saturday (August 24) I went up to the Minuteman National Historical Park in Lexington, Massachusetts in search of photographs.  The weather was just spectacular and the light strong with nice beams filtering through the forest.  In my book all was perfect.  So I wanted to share an image that I took of the barn at the Jacob Whittemore house.  I used for this my EF70-200 F/4 L USM lens set at aperture priority at f 7.1  with an exposure of 1/1600 and and ISO of 400.  I hand-held it at 81 mm.  Weathered wood seems to be a speciality of New England and I have to say that I love the tonal depth that it gives the image and the fine detail.  Despite my adjusting the black level into the histogram there is still subtle tones retained in the upper black region of the image.

On a totally different note, I was struck earlier in the day while waiting for my wife at lunch of an advertisement for Sobe Water on a tile floor.  The designed was created to give a deep sense of 3D perspective, and I was intrigued as to whether my IPhone could deal with the extreme angle of shooting and keep everything in sharp focul.  The answer is an unequivocal yes.  Marvelous little cameras, those IPhones are!

Figure 2 - Sobe Water advertisement on tile. (c) DE Wolf 2013.

Figure 2 – Sobe Water advertisement on tile. (c) DE Wolf 2013.

 

Pink katydid on Martha’s Vineyard

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Well it’s the official end to vacationer’s summer.  So I thought that in honor of labor day weekend, and reminiscint of the image that I previously posted of a lavender praying mantis, that I would share with you a photograph from the (Martha’s) Vineyard Gazette showing a rare pink katydid. This was brought to my attention by friend and reader Robin via her Facebook page.

The story goes that a care-taking crew in Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard was pruning trees.  One of the workers went to dust debris off his sneakers when his eye caught what he thought was a pink grasshopper.  The crew’s foreman knew better.  The rose colored bug was actually a one in 500 pink katydid.  Although I have to say that I prefer to think that it was pink from embarrassment because katy-did. Sorry!

Andrea Stone – Reflections

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Figure 1 - Claude Monet, "The Magpie," from the Wikimedia Commons. Original in the MUsee D'Orsay and in the public domain in the United States.

Figure 1 – Claude Monet, “The Magpie,” from the Wikimedia Commons. Original in the MUsee D’Orsay and in the public domain in the United States.

As I said yesterday, time is flying and I am behind on everything.  I have indicated before that my favorite photography magazine is LensWork.  Nothing, in my opinion, beats it at present.  With most photomags you find that the photographer’s website offers better reproductions than the magazine.  In the case of LensWork it can go the other way, and I think that this is a real compliment to the effort and, frankly dedication to image, that they put into it.  I find that I am now an issue behind with LensWork, just like View Camera.  But I digress!

A few weeks ago I found in LensWork the truly glorious and amazing work of photographer Andrea Stone.  I was happy to find that these images could also be seen on “The Stone Photography” website, which Andrea shares with her husband Rob Stone.  As a result I can share them with you.

Ms. Stone relates her transformative moment as being drawn to Claude Monet’s work “The Magpie,” and with that to the realization of what an image can be.  She has made a study of city scapes reflected in distorted patterns in window glasses. But such a description is really way to mechanical, because what she has created is in itself transformation. It bridges photography with impressionist art, creating magical pictures that could just as easily be paintings.  When the building doing the reflecting is by architect Frank Gehry, the end result is simply amazing!  Looking at her work is one of those great wow moments, when you just fall in love with photography all over again.

Ms. Stone loves cities like Portland, OR, where there is a delicate mixture of the antique and classic with the new and modern.  She relates the challenges of photographing buildings in a post 9/11 world, where the photographer is challenged for her interest in a particular building.  And then there is the challenge of light that all photographers face.  The fact that you can return on a second day to the same observing spot, at the same time of day, and under identical weather conditions and the reflection will be altogether different.  It is like a reminder that we move in both space and time and can never truly return to the same spot.

 

Craig Alan Huber – the California Mission Project

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It is nearing the start of school once more, and I am reminded that I have let the summer fly by without taking vacation.  Last weekend I went over to our local Barnes and Nobles and picked up the latest edition of View Camera.  For some reason this is always an issue behind; so May-June, which was reassuring in a way.  Perhaps summer has not passed me by – really no such luck.  I should really purchase a subscription.

In this issue there was a lovely portfolio by Craig Alan Huber entitled “The Spirit within – Las Imágenes de las Misiones de Alta California.”  I have been to a few of the California missions over the years, starting with being taken to Mission San Francisco de Asis by my friends Marilyn and Marshall in 1973.   There is an inner sense of peace when you enter these churches.  There is a silence perhaps broken by the eternal sound of a fountain.  The light is subdued so that you can see more clearly.  These churches elevate you to a mythic and spiritual plane in a very subtle fashion – not gaudy and huge like the great cathedrals, but just as spiritually uplifting.  If you truly focus, you can find your center.  And as is the nature with holy places, it is then time to return to the mundane world, hopefully a bit more at peace with the world and a bit more enlightened.

There are twenty-three  Spanish Missions in California.  They were established as religious and military outposts by the Franciscans between 1769 and 1833, under the leadership of Fray Junípero Serra, and run up the California coast.  Many of these are still functioning churches two centuries later.

Huber photographs with a 5″ x 7″ view camera often with a vintage 1860 Darlot Opticien Petzval lens.  You will often hear large format enthusiasts comment about the dreamy image quality that these Petzval lenses create: sharp centers that fade away at the edges just ever so slightly.  Huber prints in platinum palladium and the effect is wonderful.  It truly captures on paper all of the sensations of inner peace and timelessness that you have when you have the honor of standing in one of these places.  And it has been argued that platinum palladium prints will last a thousand years; so perhaps they like the missions themselves are enduring.

I have many favorites among Huber’s images and, as always recommend a quiet hour or so be spent visiting his website.  I will recommend “Saint Francis de Asis Church, Rancho de Taos” as a closing example.  Craig Alan Huber’s goal is to photograph and document all of the California Missions.  Large format is truly a labor of love – love of place, love of vision, and love of image. His website also contains images from other spiritual places around the world.  Inner peace is the sublime theme that unites his work.

The fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington, August 28, 1963

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Figure 1 - Martin Luther King speaking at the March on Washington, August 28, 2013. Image property of the United States government and in the public domain.

Figure 1 – Martin Luther King speaking at the March on Washington, August 28, 2013. Image from the Wikimedia Commons, property of the United States government and in the public domain.

Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington, August 28, 1963.  The event was defining for a generation of Americans, and all its associated imagery, like Figure 1, proves iconic.  In a very real sense the event ushered in the beginning of the sixties, a tumultuous and often disturbing decade that was a moment of profound change.  Let the image speak for itself.