ok, time to lighten up a bit after probably going too far down the dark road of betrayal…although actually mostly positve energy came back with the comments from the "fake" post…as a matter of fact, all of it was positive…thank you all…
but, now saddle up for a little quiz…and prize (yes yes , one of my old camera bags and since it is the holiday season also a signed copy of "Living Proof")….and surely there will be an interesting discussion following…
i am going to list eight well known photographers…who happen to be friends and so i know their habits….four of these photographers only carry a camera with them when they are on assignment or working…i have never seen these four ever shoot a picture….the other four always have a camera with them and often shoot their daily life or us hanging at the bar…
to win the prizes, you must pick which four "do", which four "don’t", carry a camera always…the first person to get all eight identified camera-wise correctly is our grand prize winner…
it should be obvious that whether or not these photographers "do" or "don’t" has nothing at all to do with the power of their respective works….
so, which four have camera?? which four , no camera:
elliott erwitt
philip blenkensop
james nachtwey
bruce davidson
lauren greenfield
joseph koudelka
steve mccurry
cristina garcia rodero
Dear Running Bob
terrific works! thanks
running Martin
Jacob, that’s a major reason that artists make art. Of course!
There are two statements that probably mean the same thing but sound like they are at opposite ends of the shallow/profound spectrum:
1. I make photographs (art) to see.
2. I photograph something to see what it looks like as a photograph. (Gary Winogrand)
The last one is actually my favorite.
Ciao,
Michael
Bob,
First off, I love that you can express yourself in the beautiful way you do but still think “Fuck, if I’d only had my camera…”
I find that sometimes I’m the opposite. I only see images when I’ve got my camera there. I can see moments without the camera but I don’t see pictures. Something switches in my brain when the camera is out of its bag and suddenly my brain is framing moments and looking for subjects, foregrounds and backgrounds. I can frame without the camera to my eye but the intention of holding it sharpens my vision. Maybe in time I won’t need the camera to do this.
Some days I feel the need to make images like an itch only my sensor can scatch. I play with the camera idly while working on other things. Perhaps I’m more cyborg than most people when photographing. Or I’m just crazy! My friends are now used to the camera appearing at the slightest provocation and grow comfortable with this.
How much reflection, rumination that affects photography is on the surface and how much sits in the subconcious?
Does this depend on/determine your style?
Neil
Yes, jakob, beards and brownies. Rutherford B. Hayes was one of the Republican beards who ruled this country from 1868 to 1896. From 1868 to 1896 the United States was governed, for the most part, by bearded Republicans. You could, I suppose, make an exception for Chester Arthur, who had muttonchop sideburns and a mustache, but not a full beard, but then he only became President because his predecessor James A. Garfield was shot by a crazed jobseeker named Charles Guiteau, who also had a beard, and then Garfield was killed by his doctors with unclean surgical instruments, a crime for which Guiteau was hanged by the neck until he was dead and the doctors went forward confidently to a profitable future killing their other less well-known patients. I dont know if the doctors had beards or not, but I suspect they did, beards being very in at the time. You would definitely have to make an exception for Grover Cleveland, the only Democrat and professional hangman to be President between Andrew Johnson, who was cleanshaven but not a hangman, and Woodrow Wilson, who was also cleanshaven and a college president as well; Cleveland had a walrus style mustache a la Georges Clemenceau and married a much younger woman while he was President. The Republican beards ended with Benjamin Harrison in 1892, who never had anyone hanged, as far as I know. His successor was his predecessor, the above mentioned President Cleveland, who was the 22nd and 24th President, as they are counted nowadays. Cleveland’s successor, William McKinley, was as Republican as Harrison, and was even the last Civil War veteran to serve as President, but McKinley was cleanshaven. In fact, McKinley could boast a rare talent: he could completely shave his face with a straight razor with two swipes across his face, which is easier said than done without losing a piece of your nose.
It’s funny–I only “see” pictures when I have a camera. When I don’t have a camera, I often see a subject or situation and think it might be good to shoot. But the actual vision thing only comes when there’s a camera available.
Blenkinsop – Yes.
Nachtwey – No.
Greenfield – Only in Hollywood.
McCurry – Only in Afghanistan.
Davidson – Sometimes.
Koudelka – Only on family trips to the Jersey Shore.
Rodero – Yes, but without the use of light.
Elliot – Only in color and always, always very serious.
Akaky, amazing how much you learned about the Presidents in 1st grade! :)
(can’t forget that comment of yours)
Bob, I actually love that you saw a “moment jump to her death”…moments are jumping to their deaths all around me as I write…but I have a feeling it was a woman you saw??? :)
David, I did resend that message. Hope you got it.
Bob,
I’m wondering how you knew the moment was a female?
“moment jumped to HER death”
The moments fly by so quickly around me I can’t tell if they’re male or female. :)
Actually I’m truly sorry to be making light of this very sad event that you witnessed. I am well aware that there is no humor in it whatsoever but I do like the concept of the “death of a moment.” Hopefully the pain of what you saw is no longer sharp.
WHO had the problem with the M4 shutter? I just got an answer that will get closer to the truth. M4′s, only, do not have glue reinforcing the cloth curtain to the metal lead of the shutter. Within the last 10 years, the M4′s curtains have been ripping away from the crimped over leads.
It is not anybody’s fault. If the guy involved has any questions, have him call Mr. Goldberg at DAG Camera Repair. He’s probably one of the foremost authorities on Leica repair.
Ciao,
Michael
elliott erwitt, yes
philip blenkensop, yes.
james nachtwey, no.
bruce davidson, yes.
lauren greenfield, yes
joseph koudelka,no
steve mccurry, no
cristina garcia rodero, no
YES
philip blenkinsop
joseph koudelka
elliott erwitt
bruce davidson
NO
james nachtwey
lauren greenfield
steve mccurry
cristina garcia rodero
@Cathy: remember, I went to Catholic school, where I could learn all this neat stuff in the 1st grade, and I did so at a time when nuns were not averse to pounding the knowledge into your head, if subtler methods were ineffective. I still have a concussion and some ringing in the ears from those days ;-)
@Cathy:
No worries Cathy and I don’t take offense. Yes, it was a women, who lept from the 17th floor of the building where i teach and to this day, though diminished, her death (as she fell past my window and later running out of the building to see if help were possible) still has a profound effect on me, more than 13 months later…i think of her often, almost everyday when i walk in the front door or look out the class window (where my student’s and i had thought she was not real)…but, sorry for the sad side-note…
and i too wish i had “thought” of the line when “the moment jumped to her death” instead of it coming from my horrid typing skills…but, i imagine, like life, however things fall into us, matter, not the why, …
“moment” instead of “women” a weird Freudian typo….horribly, im afraid, i shall hold onto that, the stupid desires of a writer, something about my own desire to trap moments with words….and still, embarrassingly i write, that typo is all the truth in the world….
dont worry….we all cradle our own bits of grief right…
i try not to loose humour, that’s what gets us through the not-always agile day…
cheers,
bob
p.s. Akaky: reading David Markson’s book at the moment “the last novel”: ur encyclopedic freakin’ knowledge of everything minute detail in life is humbling…u sure you’re not Alex B. Keaton grown up at last, all that talk of good old Rutherford B. ????…;)))
DO
Bruce Davidson
Steve McCurry
joseph koudelka
elliott erwitt
DO NOT
philip blenkensop
james nachtwey
lauren greenfield
cristina garcia rodero
David, do you carry a camera wherever you go too ?
Akaky,
Thanks for your short history of US Presidents’ beards, it made my day!! :D :) and it was time since I’m now going to bed!
Bob- even your typos are poetic!
If we could actually see “a moment jumping to her death” we would be SEERS, not see-ers.
Good goal to shoot for as we “practice” seeing.
DO:
elliott erwitt
james nachtwey
bruce davidson
lauren greenfield
wild guess.
Darn.. i’m late!! Anyway..
Camera: elliott erwitt, joseph koudelka, lauren greenfield, bruce davidson
No camera: james nachtwey, steve mccurry, cristina garcia rodero , philip blenkensop
In reference to David’s question about Michael Schumacher wanting to drive his kids to the beach, I think Schumi answered that question by sitting the Taxi driver’s seat to get his family to airport….
http://www.autosport.com/news/grapevine.php/id/64351
My 2 cents:
Camera: Erwitt, Koudelka, Davidson, Blenkinsop, [Harvey too]
No Camera: Nacthwey, McCurry, Garcia Rodero, Greenfield
Tom
Lovely Loquacious Bob said: “…and that’s why i put my camera down and away for long periods of time (1 month, 2 months: once 6 months…”
Also: “…and now i often think: well, i may never put away the camera, for it is now just, like brushing my teeth…”
Uh dude…I hope you don’t go 6 months without brushing your teeth! Heh-heh.
Finding the balance between simply enjoying the moment and enjoying capturing the moment really is the deal isn’t it? We all have our limits. I suspect there’s little difference between people who have their cameras “all the time” and those who use it “only” on assignment. Or it is a matter of degrees. Of course there are times when after a long weekend of shooting like mad I think I don’t want to see that thing again! Of course. But I eventually (usually within a couple hours! Heh!) get back to it.
It is like breathing. And just can’t hold my breath that long!
I’m thinking about using statistics and probability to figure this out. I can’t believe nobody has guessed it yet… Hmm, this could take a while. Too bad I can’t have more guesses!
Diana, there are 70 possibilities.
There are as many possibilities as there are ways of choosing a subset of 4 photographers. Eight possibilities for the first, 7 for the second, 6 for the third, 5 for the fourth. We get 7*6*5*4=1680. Now, if we count like this we have quadruplets differing only by the order of photographers but with the same photographers in them e.g.
Nachtwey+McCurry+Greenfield+Blenkinsop
and Blenkinsop+Greenfield+McCurry+Nachtwey
so, to eliminate redundant sets, we must divide by the number of 4-element set permutations i.e. 4*3*2=24 (since there are 24 quadruplets with the same photogs).
Final result is therefore 1680/24=70.
“the other four always have a camera with them and often shoot their daily life or us hanging at the bar”
it should be five! I ALWAYS have my m6 with me even if I wondering in park, or doing shoping. so every answer will be wrong without me!!!
think about that :))))
peace my friends
Martin (life is good… sometimes…)
David,
Thanks for the probabilities refresher. ;-)
Diana
Derek
I’ve seen your website… it is piece of great portrait photography!!! i hope I will see more in future!!!
Best
Martin (in madness of work)
David…
I have little question… many times I’ve visited John Vink’s website… he have so many pictures there… very sensitive… very organic… i wondering… who he is as a person?… you know him…
who john vink is?
Martin
ALL…
sorry to have disappeared…had to rush down to washington because i am trying to sell my apartment that i bought so many years ago…anyway, i got caught up in all kinds of real estate biz stuff….
on top of that i have i lot of your work to see….i am two days away from making a decision on the portfolios for the grant…
so give me a little time to go over all of the answers here and i will announce that winner by tomorrow…
as usual my friends, i am asking for a bit of patience please!!!
many thanks,
david
Hi David, all -
Really enjoying this thread, and of course, love this blog!
Really late to reply to this, and at the very bottom, it seems, but just wanted to say how close to home this thread hits. Being an amateur through and through, it is something I think about often. Practically speaking, due to work and family constraints, having the camera w/ me is often the ONLY way I can actually get any photography done! But on a deeper level I am very taken w/ the idea of the mediation of daily life, poetic moments, documentary moments, through the camera. And, finally, as a real newbie, i’ve always been drawn to the romantic notion of early proponents of the 35mm format, such as HCB, having their camera w/ them always – didn’t a friend of HCB’s jokingly ask him if he brought his Leica into the bathroom with him?
My own picks for carrying the camera:
Erwitt
Koudelka
Davidson
Rodero
And, like so many others, I’d also like to know what you do, David; though I suspect you do a bit of both, carring a camera around a lot, using it on assignment, then perhaps leaving it at home.
Thanks for a great thread and a great blog.
Oh, and finally, Bob Black, such proflific posting, but your post on December 12, 2007 at 08:21 AM (“last edition”) really struck me – quite profound, I think.
Best from Brooklyn!
-Mark Brennan
MARK…AND ALL
i always have a camera…often stays in the bag, often comes out to “play”…
as a matter of fact, it runs even deeper…i always have my whole “kit” with me…passport, credit cards,med kit (anti-biotic, aspirin,lomotil, eye drops, extra toothbrush)..and enough cards and batteries to last awhile…all in a small light bag…mostly it is because i am “out” shooting so much have mentally locked into never never separating from my “stuff”…so i feel naked without my camera, bag etc….and every once in awhile i actually make a nice random photograph…but, mostly just i am shooting just snapshots of my friends at dinner, family pics or whatever…
cheers, david
So are these photographs that have been posted, are they open for general viewing on the internet, or are you just going to showcase a select few?
WILL…
i am not sure which photographs you mean..my random photographs or the ones from the readers here???
BOB…
interesting…..and clarification…i always have my camera with me…but, i do not always photograph everything around me all the time…like you, there are no pictures for me unless i am ready to make them…i need to be in the mood….or moved…and no matter what i do or how hard i try, i cannot “capture life”…i wish i could…but it slips by anyway…frustrating….the camera does not help…but sometimes i like to think that it will..that “recording” will somehow preserve the moment…stop this freight train or slow it down…a futile attempt …what it does do however, is allow me to savor a situation just a bit more than i would have otherwise…because when i am shooting, no matter how casually, i do “enter” the scene on a deeper level than if i am just standing there with my hands in my pockets..i notice more, feel more, become more…the resulting picture may only be a reference… but as i sometimes go through the countless cardboard boxes i have stacked around of un-catalogued pictures, what a joy it is to discover some random snapshots of some random event that does bring a smile to my face and simply brings back a memory that i might otherwise have forgotten…and if an old song from “yesterday” happens to kick on at the same moment as when i am doing my archival rummaging, then i feel “the power” of remembering and living as in no other way…
AKAKY…
you must, just must, go see the new johnny depp musical…you will never look at a straight razor in quite the same way again!!
MARTIN…
john vink and i were nominated into Magnum on the same day in 1993…we went through the whole tortuous process of becoming part of Magnum together….there were actually three of us nominated and only john and i made it the whole route…so, yes, i know john quite well considering that i live in new york and he lives in Cambodia with his beautiful Cambodian wife and child (or maybe even two by now). …john is a very special man….righteous to a fault…cares…really cares….a truly lovely man who will totally cringe if he hears me say that about him because he likes to put out sometimes a cynical critical edge, but , in fact, he is a lovely man…
cheers, david
JONATHAN…
yes, we should meet soonest…and, yes, you might have seen me riding my bike…probably early january is now our best bet…i am running off to paris for two days and then enjoying my mom’s cooking for two weeks in colorado…please call me the first week in january and i will have you over…
cheers, david
@asher..love gibson’s work; truly finds beauty in the everyday: just taught an introduction to the philosophy of aesthetics, and combining Robert Adam’s statement on the need for FORM as affirmation of life with some of Gibson’s images, Kant & Schopenhauer’s ideas on beauty makes for some wonderful discussion..
@michael…to me its both:equal-combined:joined
@cathy: i’d also like to be a SEER
@akaky: amen: i know now more ’bout American presidential history than i ever needed too and will probably remember it also(bloody hell!!): -[
lately i've been working on discovering the essential nature of the photographic medium as it relates to art, starting with the following as basic premise:
a PHOTOGRAPH is a CARTESIAN DUALISTIC monocular TRANSCRIPTION of SPACE in TIME...
from this one then attempts to argue the role of expression of PERCEPTION as artistic phenomena and relate it to the lifeworld of the individual's experience of the everyday..
and the dog chases his tail:-]] but in thinking ’bout this one attempts to answer the question of the value of photographic practise, or why take pictures at all: like Asher mentioned, having the camera with him sharpens his perception to POSSIBILITIES…
of course my post had to after DAH: how the hell do you follow this:
“like you, there are no pictures for me unless i am ready to make them…
and no matter what i do or how hard i try, i cannot “capture life”…i wish i could…but it slips by anyway…frustrating….the camera does not help…but sometimes i like to think that it will..that “recording” will somehow preserve the moment…”
a great answer to the question…thanx David for readin’ my mind…
AMY…
i have never seen jim with a camera in the 30 years that i have known him..including at the workshop….but, obviously i am not with him when he is working..all of us are motivated to make photographs for different reasons and at different times…it is interesting to note who “does” and who “does not”, but it does not matter at all with regard to final work produced…
cheers, david
David :)))))….
u can take my pic anytime ;))))))
by the way, i too never judge someone (with or without camera), ’cause in truth all photographers are WITH camera at ALL TIME, only in different ways ;))))))
hugs
running
b