the thing itself

Sorting through pictures of a life well lived

2010-10-31T19:01:00.000-07:00

"Sorting Mommy's Pictures," October 2010, Oakland.

My mother-in-law passed away last Sunday; she was 90 years old. Hers was a life well-lived: as a school teacher, as a military colonel's wife, as a mother to a military general and seven other children, as grandmother and nurturer to 22 grandchildren and six great grandchildren, as a widow who came into her own fierce independence during the last 25 years.

She was a giver through the very last. In her senile stage she would awake in the middle of the night to cook for absent loved ones who peopled her new reality. She will be interred next week, but her true resting place will be in the hearts of those among us who were edified by her goodness. Her goodness will endure, and as my wife and her siblings went through the process of collecting her things, so will her pictures, a cache of them. Images that spanned decades of people she cared for, places she saw. Her husband dancing the tango, her son in his military finery looking fierce during his academy years, countless images of loved ones dining and drinking (Filipinos love to eat), pictures of babies who have grown up to become men and women, and pictures of their own babies.

Memories stored in boxes, old Kodak envelopes, and yellowing photo albums dog-eared and crinkled by repeated viewings. We will cling to these time-worn images to remind ourselves of who we were, and how we used to be when we were graced by the presence of this lovely, generous woman. Godspeed, mommy, we miss you already.

Lawn game near Gaudi's Cathedral

2010-05-15T14:34:00.000-07:00

Untitled, Barcelona, April 2010.

If you break away from the tourist trail that surrounds La Sagrada Familia, Antoní Gaudi's unfinished cathedral in Barcelona, you will find a little park where locals come to play. As modest as the cathedral is grand, I found the park remarkable for one thing: the virtual absence of women. Here elderly men gather under the shade to play chess or on plots of sand to watch or compete in lawn games -- with nary a female in sight.

This set of pictures shows a tournament in progress, complete with gold cups for prizes. I don't know the name of this lawn game. It seems like a variation of boule or bocce, but the players use discs instead of balls. Any ideas?

To market, to market!

2010-05-11T19:42:00.001-07:00

Mercat de San Josep de la Boqueria, Barcelona, April 2010.

Jamones y Chorizos, Barcelona, April 2010.

Señorita de las Frutas, Barcelona, April 2010.

Fish Stand, Montparnasse, Paris, April 2010.

Artisanal Marzipan, Florence, April 2010.

Seagull and Oysters, Paris, April 2010.

Farmer's Market, Montparnasse, Paris, April 2010.

Marisc, Barcelona, April 2010.

Turrónes, Barcelona, April 2010.

Street mimes of Barcelona

2010-05-09T22:18:00.001-07:00

Mimes, Ramblas, Barcelona, April 2010.

Las Ramblas is a tree-lined promenade that is the beating heart of Barcelona. Stretching 1.2 kilometers long across several districts of the city, Las Ramblas at any given time is an ocean of people, both tourists and locals, that amble merrily in a space that is part market, part sidewalk cafe, and part carnival.

The carnival spirit of the Ramblas comes courtesy of its street mimes, human statues of fantasy and whimsy that transform the promenade into a demented person's idea of a sculpture garden. The mimes hold their stillness with unblinking precision but come to life at the drop of a coin in carefully choreographed routines. A pair of demons that could have ascended from the world of H.R. Giger unfold their metallic wings and snarl at the crowd. A golden Chinese emperor coils a snake around his glittering torso. An angel hands out heavenly favors. San Francisco has its share of street mimes in its tourist hubs, but few are as witty or as elaborately garbed as these Barcelona mimes. My favorite is the bronze cowboy, whose charisma and camera-ready poses would have easily made him a star in a John Ford movie.

At Park Güell, a mime dressed as one of Gaudi's mosaic tile dragons echoes the serpent that guards Gaudi's playful water fountain at the entrance to the park. Inside the park's sandy square, an invisible man charms the crowd with the antics of a decapitated Chaplin while a two-headed man in a white burka double-duties as a ventriloquist.

The southermost end of Las Ramblas will lead you to the monument of Christopher Columbus at Placa de la Porta de Pau. Atop the 197 foot monument, Columbus stands frozen with one arm outstretched pointing to the sea. After spending an afternoon with the street mimes of Barcelona, one is tempted to drop a coin at the foot of the monument, and wait for Columbus to do The Hustle.

Theaters of rue de la Gaîté

2010-04-29T22:40:00.001-07:00

Marquee, rue de la Gaîté, Paris, April 2010.

Theatre Rive Gauche, rue de la Gaîté, Paris, April 2010.

In Montparnasse, off rue de Maine, you will find a narrow alley lined with theaters that date back to the cabarets and music halls of 19th century Paris. The place is called rue de la Gaîté, the street of gaiety.

I found this street by chance during an early morning stroll after having breakfast at the public market. I knew nothing of its history, but was captivated by the marquees and the fire engine red facade of Comédie-Italienne, the last remaining theater in France that stages plays written exclusively by Italians.

While I took pictures of the marquee painting by Clayette above the Theatre Rive Gauche, an old lady watched me with amusement and explained its history to me -- in French -- saying it was a copy, but a good one (if I understood her correctly).

I realized later on, with the aid of Google, that I’d been walking along the street that was the heart of bohemian Paris, the Paris of Henry Miller and Ernest Hemingway, Doisneau and Brassai, the Paris I've romanticized in my mind for so long. On rue de la Gaîté, in its cafes and music hall stages, the likes of Josephine Baker, Kiki (Man Ray's muse), Edith Piaf, Juliette Greco and Jacques Brel entertained writers, artists and intellectuals who came to Paris from around the world to live la vie bohème.

That evening, I returned to rue de la Gaîté to toast my sister's birthday. We sat outdoors at a cafe with multicolored seats, talked about our loved ones, and soaked ourselves in a most perfect April evening.

Europeans

2010-04-28T13:32:00.000-07:00

Pause near Ponte Vecchio, Florence, April 2010.

Montparnasse, Paris, April 2010.

Florence, Italy, April 2010.

No photos, please!

2010-04-25T16:17:00.000-07:00

(A bit of) David, Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence, Italy, April 2010.

For someone who is compelled to photograph everything, nothing frustrates more than the words, "no photos please!" Faced with magnificence like Michelangelo's David, the words become maddening. So there I am at the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence; as the statue of David looms larger as I approach it, the finger on my Leica shutter itches and twitches as I spot the location of every docent that roams the hall with fascistic vigilance.

As I circle the statue, I resolve to shoot this naked fellow, Italian polizia be damned. I settle in a corner, rest the Leica on my lap, aim high, and take three blind shots with no flash. "No fotos, per favore!" shouts a bat-eared docent as she gives me the evil eye. So much for Leica's quiet shutter. Here are the unfortunate results of my stealth photography. Like my daughter loves to say: "Fail."

As luck would have it, a copy of the statue stands in the public, docent-less square of Piazza della Signoria in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. Ironically there was absolutely no thrill in shooting the statue here so I took one obligatory shot. Anyway, here's David, in his entire naked glory, in what to me is a far less interesting picture.

An unexpected visit to Fondation HCB

2010-04-24T18:44:00.000-07:00

HCB's Leica, Paris, April 2010.

Getting stranded in Paris during last week's volcanic ash air space crisis had one grace note for me: I was able to visit Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, the modest gallery established in 2003 by Cartier-Bresson's wife, Martine Franck, and their daughter, Mélanie, to preserve the legacy of the master photographer's work. The foundation is tucked away in an alley off rue Lebouis in Montaparnasse, housed in a four-story artist's atelier that was built in 1912.

Two floors of the building house exhibition galleries that sponsor three shows a year. I was able to catch the last day of an exhibition of Robert Doisneau's Paris photographs, Du métier à l'oeurve. Doisneau's charm and sense of humor are on full display in this collection of 100 pictures of everyday suburban life in post-war Paris. The catalog of the show has been published in a new book by Steidl Press, entitled From Craft to Art.

Up a spiral staircase on the third floor, in an airy room framed by a large atrium window and outfitted with Corbusier chairs, a few pictures by Cartier-Bresson are on permanent display. Here, films and multimedia presentations about the photographer are screened daily. It is a room to relax in, and for this ardent admirer of HCB, a room to ponder the serendipitous way that he has found himself in it.

Cartier-Bresson at the MOMA

2010-04-09T14:32:00.000-07:00

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brussels, 1932.

Sixty unseen photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson are included in The Modern Century: Henri Cartier-Bresson, a retrospective of his work that opens on Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art.

Alfred Stieglitz: The Eloquent Eye

2010-02-13T17:19:00.000-08:00

Alfred Stieglitz: The Eloquent Eye is a 90-minute look into the life and legacy of the father of modern American photography, part of the American Masters series for PBS. All the famous pictures are here as well as rare and early ones, the O'Keefe pictures, portraits of artist friends and fellow photographers, and the work of contemporaries like Edward Steichen, Clarence White, Frank Eugene, and John Marin. As a special treat, Georgia O'Keefe reminisces about her life with Stieglitz as his wife and muse in a rare interview.

I have divided the film into four bite-size parts. Higher quality versions can be downloaded here:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Nokton and the yellow raincoat

2010-02-05T19:32:00.000-08:00

Yellow raincoat, Boca Raton, Florida, February 2010.

Florida in February did not offer respite from San Francisco's relentless rain. But the gloomy weather in Boca Raton had a bright side: the beach was deserted and my wife was compelled to wear a sunshiny yellow raincoat. When God gives you clouds, you make pictures.

The blue-gray Florida weekend turned out to be the perfect occasion to test my new lens, Voigtlander's Nokton 50mm f/1.1, the poor man's Noctilux. I already know that this extremely fast lens can record things in the dark that the human eye cannot see. I've tested it in surroundings that are practically pitch-black, where it succeeded in capturing images in the faintest of light.

What about daylight I wondered? Wide open at f/1.1? Here are the results: At 1/2000th of a second, it recorded my wife and her yellow raincoat against a diaphanous backdrop of utmost delicacy, rendering sky and sea like gauze, and objects like they were peering through mist. I love it; it's a perfect portrait lens.

New York Times Lens Blog: Families, One and All

2009-12-24T17:41:00.001-08:00

The New York Times Lens Blog called for reader submissions on the subject of family, the spirit of family, not blood relations. Like the landmark exhibition The Family of Man, 282 readers pictures portrayed the ties that bind each of us in ways that are, for lack of a better word, familial. I submitted a favorite picture of my wife and daughter (left), asleep and snuggled closely like they always do, on a chilly December day last year, two days before Christmas. The photo is on page 3, row 2, picture number 5 from the left. Two people I love in my favorite newspaper, on Christmas Eve: happy holidays, indeed!

Christmas presents

2009-12-14T08:39:00.001-08:00

KC and Wesley, Oakland, December 2009.

Being a photographer comes in handy during the holiday gift-giving season. When one has 23 nephews and nieces on his wife's side alone, many of whom are having babies of their own, it's a lifesaver. No shopping, no Gap sweaters, no mad rush. Line them up against a canvas drop, take 200 shots apiece, print, frame, and voila! Christmas presents!

Scheduling the shoot is a challenge. The ideal way to do it is to take the pictures on Thanksgiving when the family is gathered together in one place. I missed that chance because of a trip to New York so my sessions have been spread over two weekends; I'm one-third done.

For picture frames, nothing beats Ikea. The Ribba line, available in black, white and silver, comes in many sizes and styles. The Ribba frames are well crafted, modern looking, and, above all, inexpensive.

For this holiday season, try giving the gift of pictures. It's a great way to have a good laugh with your loved ones while they channel their inner supermodel. Make a big pot of ragu while you're at it. Modeling makes them hungry.

Children and sky

2009-12-01T07:28:00.000-08:00

Holiday in New York

2009-11-29T21:17:00.001-08:00

Solomon Guggenheim Museum, NYC, November 2009.

Rockefeller Center, NYC, November 2009.

On the taxi ride to JFK Airport for our flight home to San Francisco, our Chinese driver was listening to Luis Migue l sing Bésame Mucho as we drove through Harlem, and at that moment, I started to miss New York before I even left it.

Spending Thanksgiving week in New York was my daughter's idea. She wanted to see the steps of the Met (the Gossip Girl hangout) and the many landmarks she has seen only in movies. As for me, I wanted to be a tourist in the city that was my home for five years.

Soak it up like tourists we did: the illuminated red steps of Times Square; the giant balloons of Macy's Thanksgiving parade; Jude Law, riveting in Hamlet; the prodigious dancer David Alvarez in Billy Elliot; a West Side Story restaged for a politically correct generation; Robert Frank's The Americans at the Met; autumn foliage in Central Park; bargain shopping on Canal Street.

In Central Park Zoo, the eerie green glow of a tropical rain forest pavilion served as the perfect backdrop for portrait-taking. It reminded me of the mismatched dreamscape of the Mona Lisa, but in the actual portraits appeared more akin to the Sleepy Hollow of Tim Burton, whose work was being exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (which we sadly missed).

Above all, the trip was about spending an entire week in a city I love with the people I love most. I can't wait to return next year in time for Christmas, under the Star of 57th Street!

Actors

2009-11-16T00:50:00.000-08:00

Aubine, San Francisco, November 2009.

During the last few weeks, I've had the greatest pleasure photographing actors at work on a new production of Jonathan Larsen's musical Rent, which will open in San Francisco in January 2010.

The experience has been fun so far. The actors are as photogenic as they are talented. But it has also been very frustrating for someone like me who is accustomed to working with natural light to take pictures under the glare of fluorescent bulbs. The actors' schedules preclude rehearsing during the day; photographs are taken at night inside a dance studio. Which is all well and good for a studio photographer, which I am sadly not.

This shortcoming had me reaching for my Nikon SB-600 Flash, a perplexing instrument, and making panicked visits to strobist.com. To my technically-addled brain, strobe lighting is akin to rocket science: it is beyond my ken.

These rehearsal pictures and portraits were all taken with the aperture wide open, without a flash, at night. The ratio of blurry throwaway to usable image was naturally very high. But the ones that did work, I loved. Not for any technical merit, of which there is none, but for the actors themselves.

Reportorial photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Antonin Kratochvil were not fond of photographing actors, but were compelled to do so on assignment. Kratochvil hated the trappings and entourage of actors; Cartier-Bresson felt they were incapable of honest gestures. I love actors. I love the way they use their bodies and faces as instruments for performance. Time and again, I have said on this blog that the street is a stage awaiting actors to appear. Now that I'm finally working with real actors, the pressure to do good work unnerves me. And as much as my mind resists the inscrutable science of strobe lighting, I am determined to conquer it before this assignment is done.

Consider Aubine Wise, a Bay Area actress and singer. She has the demeanor of a true performer: mercurial, chameleon-like, as changeable as her many hair styles. She plays Joanna in Rent, a stuck-up, primly suited lesbian, who is as different a character as one can get from this vivacious vixen of an actress. She is a photographer's dream subject.

I am keeping a photo diary for this assignment. It's the kind of blog used for marketing, but I've tried to slip in a few honest observations about the process of creating something good out of limited resources. Fortunately, the show has gifted actors and singers in abundance. The pleasure of working with these actors outweighs the frustration of not being able to make images the way I know best. If I could only set these talents loose on the street, in real light, it would get my juices flowing. In the meantime, I am stuck with ugly fluorescent light and strobes, if I can figure out how to use them in time, to capture the fine hewn faces of these wonderfully gifted actors.

People crossing

2009-11-11T18:07:00.000-08:00

From series Crossing, San Francisco, August 2007.

Can anything be more painfully mundane than crossing the street? It's not even an event or a moment worth recalling (unless you get hit by a bus). Still I find myself crouched in corners of pavements maniacally snapping picture after picture of people crossing the street. They eyeball me with baffled curiosity - what is he doing? - and I take their picture in mid-step.

I like to photograph my pedestrians right before twilight, when the late afternoon light is harsh. The light blinds their eyes like a spotlight and illuminates their faces like actors on an asphalt stage. I like the split second between waiting and crossing, right after the green light signals them to move. Inertia and action. At rest, their faces look to the sun; the signal turns green, and they all bow to watch their step.

Sometimes I squeeze myself into a passing crowd to take pictures upclose. I cross the street back and forth with the camera against my chest, and press the shutter blind. Seldom do I foresee the result; usually I get throwaways. But once in a while serendipity smiles and out comes a picture I like, a group portrait of city dwellers in a rush. The subjects' brows are furrowed, their hands are clutched securely around their purses. They are harried, annoyed, their hair swept up by speed. They look real.

Back at the curb, a solitary man waits for the light to change. Another person joins him, then another, then yet another. Soon there is a row of people on the curb, a chorus line, a group shot. Stitched together in a series, a pedestrian Christmas tree. Photographs take the ordinariness out of the mundane for a very simple reason: people are interesting.

Frozen: A cemetery in Colma

2009-11-07T13:58:00.000-08:00

Tombstone medallions, Colma, August 2007.

The city of Colma is the only city in the Bay Area that has more dead people than alive. So goes the joke. In an overcast day in August, we find ourselves alone in this city of the dead, save for a large flock of pigeons that circle us with military precision. Immediately I am reminded of Graciela Iturbide's birds (left); in Iturbide's world, the companions of mortality. All around us, the winged, crowned and dolorous icons of Catholicism keep vigil over the stillness, forever frozen in mournful repose.

This is where it all ends, I say to myself, not with regret or irony. Everywhere, signs of life. More precisely, signs of lives lived. As mother, father, husband, wife, lover, sibling, child. On the grass, a wayward tombstone reads "Mother". Whose mother, it does not say; perhaps mothers everywhere, mother eternal.

A magnificently winged Archangel Michael stands on high like a decorated general, one finger pointing at the heavens. Has he come to chastise the dead or shepherd his minions for one last battle for the ages? On one headstone we stage a tableau of the left-behind, a portrait of a lover's grief, disbelief and recrimination.

Everywhere, portraits from many lifetimes ago frozen in shiny medallions. For the most part, Italian faces of all ages, rendered beautifully in studio duotones that have outlived their sitters. The repeated gazing at portrait after portrait unnerves me. These staring eyes from centuries past, now dead eyes, recall the hair-raising scene from Alejandro Amenábar's movie, The Others, when the housekeeper reveals the truth to Nicole Kidman about a sheaf of photographs of people who are ostensibly asleep: "They're all dead, mum."

Graciela Iturbide, The Bird Man, Nayarit, Mexico, 1984.

"nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands"

2009-11-04T20:45:00.000-08:00

Untitled, Oakland, March 2008.

My wife's laughter is as abundant as her hydrangeas. She laughs to my camera (and at my high jinks) without reservation. Her eyes are shaped like Simone Signoret's eyes. They are a smokey shade of hazel that become iridescent in the light. But every time she laughs, those wonderful eyes turn to slits like a child's drawing of Asian eyes, and I have picture after picture of my wife, laughing, with slits for eyes.

In the e.e. cummings poem that is the title of this post, he wrote: "your slightest look easily will unclose me / though i have closed myself as fingers." The journey with my wife has unclosed many rooms within me that were once shut tightly, the most formidable of which was the capacity to give and to enjoy affection. Her ebullience unwinds me, her lightness of spirit tempers my ponderousness, she is as patient with me as she is with her wisterias which, to my compulsive mind, take forever to bloom. I am relaxed in her presence. Ours is an easygoing friendship that has evolved into an easygoing marriage. She indulges my many neuroses, including this blog, and the camera that is always attached to my face.

When we first lived together in New York, we heard this song by Jerome Kern and decreed that it will be our song. Twenty years into our marriage, with one child grown into manhood, what we then fancied in jest upon listening to the song has taken on the spirit of a place that is suddenly within arm's reach. And I be damned if I don't take her there.

Someday we'll build a home on a hilltop high
You and I, shiny and new
Cottage that two can fill
And we'll be pleased to be called
The folks who live on the hill

Our verandah will command a view of meadows green
The sort of view that seems to want to be seen
And when our kids grow up and leave us
We sit and look at that same old view
Just we two, Darby and Joan
Who used to be Jack and Jill
The folks who like to be called
What they have always been called
The folks who live on the hill

We interrupt this blog . . .

2009-11-04T19:03:00.000-08:00

... to bring you Billy Bell.

Is that a Leica in my trivet?

2009-11-04T12:46:00.000-08:00

OBJECTS OF DESIRE

I stumbled upon these awesome ceramic thingies in Dwell Magazine and found myself compulsively calling Portland, Oregon, to order trivets. (What are trivets?) Whatever it is, it has a vintage Leica on its shiny face and shall occupy a place of honor on my computer desk. These wonderfully witty ceramic wares come from Elsa+Sam, a dishware boutique in Portland. If you call them, you may likely talk to Elsa herself, who is extremely friendly and helpful.

The designs can be customized, mixed and matched. I had the Leica image superimposed on the orange background of the scooter trivet. And Elsa said that I can have the camera printed on almost anything. What a grand idea! I also liked the trivet with the Bialetti Moka espresso teapot, one of the world's best inventions, and ordered that too. And the typewriter trivet, of course, which reminded me of David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch poster.

Portrait from open train door

2009-11-01T12:56:00.001-08:00

Portraits from open train doors, Civic Center BART, October 2009.

Taken today

2009-10-21T01:02:00.000-07:00

Untitled, Embarcadero BART Station, San Francisco, October 2009.

Voyeur: getting close from a distance

2009-10-14T22:14:00.001-07:00

Untitled, San Francisco, September 2007.

I admit: I'm a voyeur; not by design but by happenstance. Any person who spends time like I do to observe humanity on the street is bound to become privy to intimacies displayed on the street. These publicly displayed intimacies are compelling subjects for me (what can be more human than affection?); and for a few seconds my camera and I become arm's-length participants in a private moment between non-complicit subjects, a third wheel, an intruder. In short, a voyeur.

A delectable book on peeping-tommery, entitled, what else, Voyeur, traces photography's long history and inevitable relationship with voyeurism in its many forms. From photography's earliest days, circa 1910, heads turn (the photographer's included) when a woman accidentally exposes a leg as she boards the tram, and her skirt gathers tightly to shape a most un-Victorian bum. Lartigue's sunbathers may or may not be aware of his camera, and that is the point. As critic Luc Sante wrote in his afterword to the book, "our very speculation on the matter itself [is] an additional voyeuristic seasoning." As cameras became smaller, the watchful eye entered the most private sanctums to capture the most private of acts, as in Henri Cartier-Bresson's shaky picture (blame a quivering mattress I suppose) of a Mexican couple entwined in bed. Bruce Davison's picture says more about the leering patrons than the stripper herself, a wry comment on the ludicrousness of voyeurism itself.

Luc Sante noted wonderfully that blackmailers and private detectives assigned to divorce cases -- the rogues of pulp fiction novels -- practiced the purest form of voyeuristic photography. Nowadays we have the paparazzi, who wreak havoc on the lives of celebrities with their telephoto lenses in order to titillate the masses. The picture of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in an adulterous clinch in Italy spawned a scandal, two divorces, threats of excommunication from the Vatican, and happily for Liz, two weddings to Dick. Jackie Onassis' bikini photo taken in Skorpios Island was the precursor to her infamous topless sunbathing pictures, which caused legions to cry foul and Hustler publisher Larry Flynt to laugh all the way to the bank.

Behind every voyeuristic image is an anxious photographer in cloak-and-dagger mode, wracked by anxiety, the thrill of the kill, even ethical conflict. The high pressure (and oftentimes illicit) moment can result in blurry and unusually framed pictures. Behind Velio Cioni's image of a Roman brothel is a photographer shooting from the hip as he lurks in the shadows, fearful of being caught.

One can almost imagine the photographer shushing the dog as he snaps a picture of its mistress' resplendent rump. Larry Clark, in his book Tulsa, chronicled the intimate lives of his teenage subjects as they spiraled through angst, sex, drugs and guns. His subjects were totally complicit and allowed Clark to take his revealing and often graphic images of them. But in the picture on the right, Clark keeps his distance, an unusual choice for him, and lends the image a decidedly voyeuristic and illicit quality.

Perhaps no other body of work deals more squarely with the subject of voyeurism than Japanese photographer Kohei Yoshiyuki's The Park. In the 1970s, Yoshiyuki prowled Tokyo's public parks with his camera, flash and infrared film to capture the nocturnal and clandestine sex, both gay and straight, that took place on the park grounds. The controversial series, which was exhibited at the time underground and at one point almost destroyed by the photographer, gained renewed interest more than 20 years later after being championed by critics and other photographers.

A curious aspect of the park phenomenon are the spectators who lurk like predators behind bushes to spy on the couples, and sometimes force themselves into the action. Yoshiyuki takes as much interest in this act of voyeurism as the actual sex that is taking place, a photographic voyeur stalking sexual voyeurs.

Finally, a post about voyeurism will not be complete without an image of a woman getting dressed while she is spied upon from the proverbial keyhole.

Unknown, Untitled, circa 1910.
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Couple entwined on a bed, Mexico, 1934.
Jacques Henri Lartigue, On deck of Dahu II, Bibi and Denis Grey, July 1926.
Bruce Davison, Stripper, California, 1965.
Marcello Geppetti, Liz Taylor and Ricard Burton, Ischia, Italy, 1963.
Settimo Garritano, Jackie Onassis, Greece, 1970.
Velio Cioni, Brothel in Via Mario de'Fiori, Rome, 1958.
Roswitha Hecke, Airport, Zurich, 1979.
Larry Clark, Untitled, 1972.
Kohei Yoshiyuki, From The Park, circa 1970.
Unknown, Untitled, circa 1951

Leica M9

2009-10-11T15:02:00.000-07:00

The Leica M9 is here and it's a beauty. The camera's full-frame sensor, the first of its kind among digital cameras, renders the full 35mm format (24x36mm) in high resolution. It has the look of the classic M, and offers a few welcome changes to its predecessor, the M8. Most notable are the handy ISO button, several shutter sound modes, and the ability to eliminate infrared light contamination without the use of an external filter. The video below gives a tour of the M9's new features. You can also read more about it in the special Leica website featurette.

Shadows and light

2009-10-10T14:48:00.000-07:00

Lunch Outside Safeway, Oakland, California, September 2007.

"Every picture has its shadows / And it has some source of light / Blindness, blindness and sight." Joni Mitchell wrote this in her 1980 album Shadows and Light. Joni knows about shadows and light. She is, by her own admission, a painter first and a musician second, "a painter derailed by circumstance," a lonely painter who lives in a box of paint.

Or consider the shadows and light of photographer Saul Leiter, a painter like Mitchell, who used 1950s New York City as a canvas for his silhouettes and splashes of color. Leiter's experiments in color photography have been spectacularly reissued by Steidl in the book Early Color. His elegiac photographs of mid-century New York is a world of acutely observed fragments seen through oblique angles and reflecting surfaces.

Leiter's New York has none of Weegee's morbidity, Meyerowitz's frenzy, or Bruce Blanchard's grotesques. His street photography is imbued with an unlikely serenity, as if the urban madness has temporarily been put on hold so we can savor the cracks on the wall or the "T" on the glass pane. Even a densely packed image like Reflection (1958) has a feeling of repose.

The gossamer lightness of Leiter's painterly images has been compared to the impressionist works of Bonnard or Vuillard, colorists whom Leiter admired very much. Through Boards (1957), however, with its lively street scene peeking through the flat planes of red and black, is reminiscent of Mark Rothko's No. 14 which was painted three years later.

Saul Leiter is without doubt the most underappreciated photographer of his generation. His poetic street photography is unlike anyone else's who worked the genre. Photographs are not reality, he says. "... they are little fragments of souvenirs of that unfinished world."

Joni Mitchell, Four Paintings.
Saul Leiter, Taxi, 1957.
Saul Leiter, Phone Call, 1957.
Saul Leiter, T, 1950.
Saul Leiter, Harlem, 1960.
Saul Leiter, Reflection, 1958.
Saul Leiter, Near the Tanager, 1954.
Saul Leiter, Pizza, Patterson, 1952.
Saul Leiter, Cracks, 1957.
Saul Leiter, Man Reading, 1957.
Saul Leiter, Through Boards, 1960.
Mark Rothko, No. 14, 1960.

Farewell, Irving Penn

2009-10-08T12:00:00.001-07:00

Irving Penn, 1917-2009.

Irving Penn, one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century, died on October 6th at the age of 92. Andy Grundberg recalls his life and celebrated career in this obituary for The New York Times. In his fashion photography for Vogue or the iconic portraits seen here of Jean Cocteau, Collette and Pablo Picasso, Irving Penn brought elegance of line, stillness of expression, and dramatic simplicity that have become unmistakable signatures of his style. He remains peerless and shall be missed.

We interrupt this blog ...

2009-10-01T20:18:00.000-07:00

. . . to post a song-and-dance number from "Glee," the happiest show on TV today.

Neighborhood people (and dogs)

2009-09-29T12:51:00.000-07:00

Untitled, Oakland, July 2007.

This is my hood: my piece of sky and suburbia, 20 minutes away by rapid train from downtown San Francisco. It's a quiet neighborhood at the foot of Oakland Hills, lined with old trees and even older Arts & Crafts bungalows from the 1900s. Mine was built in 1908 and it creaks and groans like it's 100 years old. Behind us is a gorgeous Dominican seminary that is situated on manicured grounds. The week I moved into my house, Don Johnson and Cheech Marin were there filming Nash Bridges.

I enjoy taking pictures at the nearby train station because of the light, the rust-stained concrete walls, and the daily parade of commuters. Buskers perform here regularly for coins; some of them are better than others. Two Scottish bagpipers make music that is absolutely transporting, but a sax player who fancies himself avant-garde could use a lot more skill and a little less attitude. I was able to convince a very adept juggler to perform for my camera. I wanted to give him a copy of the print, but we kept missing each other.

College Avenue ("college" refers to University of California at Berkeley) is a vibrant strip of neighborhood stores, coffee shops, bookstores, and restaurants. Three of the best patisseries in the Bay Area are on this strip, and at least four Michelin-starred restaurants, including "Trattoria La Siciliana," a family favorite run by two generations of regional chefs from Palermo. One of its chefs, Angelo, is also a camera enthusiast and our shared hobby has earned me bigger servings of ravioli with porcini mushrooms.

My neighborhood has a youthful bounce to it, courtesy of Berkeley students, newly married couples, and an inexplicably large number of gay women, even for the Bay Area. On weekends the sidewalks are gridlocked by baby strollers, bikes, same-sex couples hand-holding, and dogs, lots of them. The dogs are headed to Redhound, where one is welcomed by Hazel, a magnificent Rhodesian Ridgeback. On Halloween, dog owners dress up their dogs in costumes for Redhound's annual competition.

The San Francisco Chronicle published some of the pictures in this set two years ago, including the photo of the woman in the barber shop above and the Irish pub waitress on the left. The Chronicle called the set "Everyday Folks," a perfect way to describe these people that I see everyday.

Numbah one son

2009-09-26T19:55:00.000-07:00

Vinyl Freak, Oakland, June 2009.

My son is Zoolander. To photograph him is to be subjected to an array of gestures and facial expressions, each one more inauthentic than the next. We have tried to work around this minor inconvenience: he makes his faces, and I go nope ... nope ... nope ... maybe ... nope. Then I say "we're done," his face returns to neutral, then I take my shot.

I have photographed my son, Miguel, throughout the many stages and ever-changing hairstyles of his young life. One of my favorite photos of all time was taken at his high school graduation (left), an important milestone for him, but meaningful to me for having captured him as a young adult among the company of friends who have remained close to him through the years.

They say boys are easy, girls are hard. Maybe, maybe not. Miguel has an easygoing charm about him that he uses like a "Get Out of Jail Free" card to get himself out of trouble. He may annoy or frustrate, but one can't stay angry with him for long. Underneath his cultivated sophistication and fancy jargon, he is a naif with a good heart; distracted, yes; all over the place, yes. A work-in-progress, most definitely. But I'm convinced that in time he will attack life like the creatures in his beloved Monster Hunter, and triumph.

Th e picture on the left was taken in Greece in the island of Spetses. The villa on the hill is reputed to be the Villa Bourani in John Fowles' novel, The Magus. This picture was taken during a quest, aided by cryptic clues, to find the villa; it is a proof document of their successful search. In Fowles' novel, the villa is inhabited by an eccentric recluse who opens up a world of mysticism and mystery to the protagonist, and transforms his life forever.

The road to adulthood for Miguel is akin to finding Villa Bourani and discovering what it has in store for him. Like Spetses, it will be hot as hell, prickly, and may require body rolls on the dunes. But finding the villa can be a sweet moment, indeed. Now all he needs to do is get back on the boat and begin his new adventure.

Parallel tracks

2009-09-25T11:36:00.001-07:00

From Pictures from a moving van, Mendocino, September 2007.

I just finished reading a tender eulogy for Philippine environmentalist and cultural activist Odette Alcantara that was written by my friend, Anton Juan. Anton wrote his tribute to Odette while aboard a train, looking for signs of rain in the shapes of reeds and the ears of corn that he spied from his window.

"And even from this fast train," he wrote of Odette, "the shapes and colors of the field are vivid, just as how vividly the pictures of you run in parallel tracks in the distance."

Images taken from moving vehicles run on tracks that are parallel to the lens. They are akin to the cinema of motion, but are still and ghostly, vivid yet untrustworthy like memory itself. A man in a cap is frozen against a canvas of swirls that could have been painted by a delirious impressionist. The specter of a dog haunts the woods. Landscapes emerge mournful and unnatural.

These random images are meant to pass into ephemera. That they are captured and stilled give them weight they would not possess otherwise. Memory is a camera: it latches on to a moment from an infinite number of moments and preserves it like a picture.

Doppelganger

2009-09-25T11:03:00.001-07:00

Doppelganger, San Francisco, August 2007.

Mid-Century Modern

2009-09-25T00:08:00.000-07:00

Eames Rocking Chair, 1946, April 2007.

Watching Mad Men made me recall the time I developed a fetish for mid-century chairs. Once, we couldn't get a fiberglass Eero Aarnio ball chair into my son's room so we had to cut a hole in the wall, reseal and reset the window pane. The chair is forever ensconced in the room, at least until we knock the walls down.

Like many chairs from the period, the ball chair is a relaxation machine, a cocoon for spacing out with the iPod and both feet over one's head. So are the rocker designed by Charles and Ray Eames from 1946 (main photo), made of molded fiberglass and maple runners, and the Barcelona daybed (right), designed in 1930 by German-American architect Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe.

My favorite designer from the period is French architect Jean Prouvé, whose simple wood and steel furniture reveal the grace of their lines only upon close contemplation. His economical and functional work outfitted hospitals, schools, government buildings, and prisons. Long out of production and coveted by collectors, a few of his chairs and tables were recently reproduced by Vitra, where I was able to get the Standard chairs (pictured on the left) which he developed in 1936.

Lighting fixtures from the period reflect the same sparseness and functionality. My all-time favorites are the works of Danish designer Poul Henningsen, whose glare-free PH-5 pendant (left) cuts such an enduringly modern form that it's almost impossible to date it by sight (it was designed in 1958). Henningsen's work continues to be produced by Louis Poulson, but vintage ones can still be obtained from Danish sellers.

The spirit of the Bauhaus Movement, whose 90th anniversary is currently being celebrated in Berlin, informed modernism and continues to inspire today. On the right is a table lamp whose lines are typical of the Bauhaus aesthetic; beside it, my daughter sita on a sofa that was originally designed by Le Corbusier.

Terrible beauty

2009-09-19T17:31:00.000-07:00

Untitiled, San Francisco, May 2007.

Many photographers show the levity of daily life, but there are those who do not shy away from documenting the weight of its horrors. In San Francisco, a photographer is confronted everyday by human suffering and the misfortune of others. I refrain from taking pictures of the many homeless people who find sustenance in the street; as subjects, they are simply too vulnerable and exposed. But sometimes a picture can hold a light to illuminate their condition, and become instructive: Like when the backs of humanity scurrying past them punctuate their invisibility to the world. Or when a storefront sign that reads "HOUSE" is insult to the injury of their homelessness.

On Market Street, a traffic sign and an advertising copy for running shoes put on unintended irony when they are seen against the sprawled and huddled figures of men who have been "chewed out" by the city, the same men who have become part of the refuse that is periodically removed from the street.

A picture puts a face on the statistic, and sometimes that is reason enough to photograph the unseemly side of this postcard city. An ad for Austrian beer looms large behind a woman who is too inebriated at 5 pm to get up from the pavement. Smoke comes out of a hooded man's face while he rants and raves at pedestrians, his half-seen eyes obscuring the madness in them.

Perhaps no other person has documented human suffering on a more epic scale than Brazilian photographer and activist Sebastião Salgado. Salgado's photographs of workers around the world, famine in Africa, and the dislocated refugees across the globe are monumental calls to action that are as breathtaking for their scope as for their lyrical beauty. Salgado's subjects have been described as "figures of tragic grandeur," which has compelled his critics and detractors to ask: Can suffering be too beautiful? It is a valid debate that will not be resolved anytime soon. But this much is true of Salgado's work. As critic Eduardo Galeano said in the preface to An Uncertain Grace: "... it would be difficult to look at these figures and remain unaffected. I cannot imagine anyone shrugging his shoulder, turning away unseeing, and sauntering off, whistling."

Last three photographs:
Sebastião Salgado, from Workers and from Migrations.

My daughter's face

2009-09-13T23:56:00.000-07:00

Zoe, San Francisco, April 2008.

I've been photographing my daughter, Zoe, since she was three or four. She has become accustomed to the intrusion of my camera when she awakes, walks, eats. She obliges me with her camera face and she has learned how to catch her light. In my company, she knows that a barren wall or a luminous shaft of light would mean having to stand against it, be blinded by the light, or appear silly to passers by; but she indulges me.

In the process of being model and muse, she has picked up the camera herself, learning to shoot with it manually before discovering that she didn't have to. She also learned about Iturbide and Balthus, Björk and Almodovar, the people we have made homages to; exposure, aperture priority, rule of thirds, diagonals. She likes her pictures dark and is a killer at Photoshop. When she photographs, as she did for her school yearbook, she is fearless and demanding.

I love my daughter's face. Her downward gaze telegraphs sadness unknowable for her age. Her grace and poise preceded her dance training: calm and stillness before the lens inhabit her naturally; hers is a face that changes its essence with the slightest movement of the eyes or the angle of the chin. She has maturity beyond her years that she projects for my benefit. As easily as she puts on "the look," she would remove it, like a mask, the moment I say "all done," and she is a child again.

She is fast approaching her teens, and as I contemplate the gift that she has given my work and the beauty she has lent to images that I shall treasure always, I give her my own: from William Butler Yeats' "A Prayer for My Daughter." I know she will read this and hope that she fathoms its meaning. It is my own wish for this beautiful child of mine.

"May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend."

Portrait from open train door

2009-09-07T01:41:00.000-07:00

Portraits from Open Train Doors, San Francisco, August 2009.

Nacho Libre is nacho macho anymore

2009-09-01T00:34:00.000-07:00

Untitled, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, June 2007.

Hotel people or I ♥ Mexico

2009-08-31T22:18:00.001-07:00

Hotel People, Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico, June 2007.

The week-long obsession with taco trucks made me hungry and nostalgic for Mexico. I love Mexico. I love eating ceviche on the beach while it rains. I love the family-owned distellerias and the sweet-smoky smell of burning agave leaves. I love how they let you sample almond flavored tequila even though you're only ten years old. I love that I can smoke in Mexican airports. I love that I can practice speaking in Spanish, but only in the present tense; the way I would struggle to order a meal in Spanish only to hear the counterboy answer, "do you want cheese with that?" I love Mexican Coke which is superior to American Coke. I love photographing in Mexico as much as I love Mexican photographers. I love Don Manuel Alvarez Bravo and his wife Lola, Graciela Iturbide, Nacho Lopez, Flora Garduño, and Tina Modotti, although she's really Italian. I love that Mexicans are not scared of color but also look great in black and white. I even love how they call me Chino even though I'm not really Chinese.

Nostalgia for all things Mexican had me clicking on my picture archives, where I found this old set of portraits that I took of hotel workers in Jalisco. A relentlessly friendly bunch, they make the phrase "hospitality industry" actually mean something. It's no different outside the hotels. People are pretty much all smiles and carefree everywhere in spite of the hard life and the hard work. Like they say in Mexico, good face to bad times. "Al mal tiempo, buena cara."

Two lads, boards, and a dog

2009-08-29T16:49:00.000-07:00

Untitled, San Francisco, May 2007.

To chase a picture means to run. You spot someone and that someone has "the thing" -- a look of ages, a stoop that carries the entire burden of humanity itself, an innocence that restores hope, beauty or horror, a hat -- and you chase it. Instinct compels it. And in the fast-paced traffic of urban life, you have to run, bump shoulders with other people without apologies, and catch "that thing" before it recedes into your ever-growing stockpile of missed opportunities.

When that someone is on wheels, as it was here, you wish you put that extra hour on the treadmill. At first I heard wheels grinding on pavement, then the sound of kids whooping, and a dog barking. The howling trio swooshed past me, and I gave chase before I could think. An old lady recoiled in terror at being flattened by the onrushing boys and beast and man with a camera. I snapped away as the dog growled and pulled away at the boy's t-shirt. One of the kids gave me a peace sign. And for a few seconds, I was part of someone else's fun and games, out of breath, but happy.

Photo of the week

2009-08-28T00:20:00.001-07:00

BART, Orinda, August 2009.

This picture was selected Photo of the Week by The Lilliputians, a Flickr group thats takes its inspiration from Gulliver's Travels and the power of images to transport us into our own Swiftian adventures. Perhaps it is fitting that they chose this image of a commuter who is equally lost in the world of imagination, forged by words and not pictures, a fellow traveler aboard a different vessel. Thanks to the moderators of the group, Rinaldo and tabacstar, for the recognition. Very cool, indeed.

Breaking the line

2009-08-27T00:14:00.000-07:00

Hip 2 B Square, San Francisco, August 2009.

I was standing in front of this office driveway with my Leica when a woman asked me what I was taking pictures of. I answered, "lines," and took a quick shot to show her (left). It looks like an abstract painting, she said.

She must have been thinking of Mondrian, who tried to distill the geometry of urban life into obsessively composed paintings of lines and squares and rectangles. To live in a city is to find lines and planes everywhere; the grids of a well-ordered existence. I am drawn to them and the shadows they create, but they are not enough. In much the same way I feel about Mondrian's paintings, I find the symmetry and order of geometry impressive but antiseptic; they leave me cold. People, on the other hand, are unpredictable, messy and disorderly. Their presence in a picture is exactly what I need to break the line.

A fellow Leica enthusiast from Norway said this about the lead picture in this blog post: "it is hip to be square." It's the perfect title for it. Thanks, Roger!

Taken today

2009-08-26T00:16:00.000-07:00

Portraits from Open Train Doors, San Francisco, August 2009.

Summer, in my winter coat

2009-08-24T20:49:00.000-07:00

Untitled, Powell Street, August 2009.

It was warm in San Francisco today, as it should be, but this man was wearing a fur-lined winter coat and a woolen cap while he hawked Street News, the newspaper that donates its proceeds to homeless people. I told him he was overdressed. And he said, "I know, but I look fabulous." Billy Crystal's SNL character, Fernando Lamas, who said, "It is better to look good than to feel good," would have been very proud of him.

Taken today

2009-08-20T20:48:00.000-07:00

BART, Orinda, California, August 2009.

Taco trucks of Oakland

2009-08-16T18:42:00.001-07:00

Tacos Guadalajara, Oakland, August 2009.

After a week of hand-wringing, I shot the taco truck project yesterday. The entire family joined me for support and the chance to gorge themselves with freshly-made carnitas. The pictures, like Mexico itself, are remarkable for the mad melange of colors, but disappointing for the lack of activity in them. I was expecting to find humanity feasting around the trucks; instead I found a smattering of weekend patrons standing on empty parking lots, a bad day for action photography.

I decided to make portraits of the taco workers. In naming the pictures, I took a cue from Philip-Lorca diCorsia's Hollywood Hustler series, and listed the following information in the titles: the subject's name, name of taco truck, city or state where subject originally came from, and the average number of tacos sold daily.

I learned two things from the project: (1) that I'm a bolder photographer than I thought I was; and (2) that I've been a fool for ignoring the taco trucks right in my own backyard. At $1.25 a pop, they're a steal and certainly the tastiest morsels I ever had outside of Mexico itself.

I'm meeting with the exhibition organizers tomorrow. I don't know if any of these images will make the final cut, but I will let you know. Pass or fail, I now know where the best taco trucks are, and that's good enough for me.

Osvaldo, Mi Grullense, Jalisco, 300-400 tacos a day

Fernando, Tacos Guadalajara, Jalisco, 250 tacos a day

Vicky, Tacos El Gordo, Vera Cruz, 200 tacos a day

Primos Jesus y Miguel, Tacos Los Michoacanos, Michoaca, 200 tacos a day

EZ, taco fan, Tacos El Novillo

Taken today

2009-08-14T21:47:00.001-07:00

Untitled, Chinatown, San Francisco, August 2009.

How do you photograph a taco truck?

2009-08-13T21:35:00.000-07:00

Untitled, Vallejo, California, April 2008.

Press the shutter. Yeah, I know. Perhaps the better question would be how do you make an interesting picture of a taco truck? I've been obsessing with this question all week. Four days ago, I received an email invitation to join a group show that would mark the opening of a new local art gallery. It's my first photo assignment ever: to document Oakland's taco trucks as part of a series on local kitchens. I was thrilled at the mere idea of an assignment that I said yes immediately in spite of the fact that I've never seen a taco truck in Oakland. Actually I've never seen a taco truck anywhere, not even in Mexico; save once, when my brother-in-law rented one for his son's birthday party (pictured above, unremarkably).

Perhaps I'm just oblivious to taco trucks. Thank goodness for Google, I learned that taco trucks are indeed all over the Fruitvale district of East Oakland, and as I mapped out their locations for the shoot, my anxiety deepened. So I did what any 21st century man would do: I posted the question on Facebook. A sampling of the answers I got:

Take it from the POV of the taco.

Park it on a RR crossing and wait for the magic moment.

Wait 'til they sell chow mein.

I take it you wish to capture the essence of the taco truck, transcend ego separation and achieve oneness with the thing itself. To do that, you must be prepared to spend years in quiet contemplation of taco trucks. Sorry, there are no shortcuts. This is why there are no famous pictures of taco trucks.

I'm shooting on Saturday and thinking why can't I shoot Vespas instead? An old friend from New York said, "If you hang around one long enough you might get lucky." Sound advice which I will heed. I'll hang around, eat a taco or two, maybe even sample the beef tongue, wait and see what presents itself. In the meantime, I pray to the taco gods.

All my children

2009-08-06T00:10:00.000-07:00

Miguel and Zoe, Oakland, August 2009.

The Genius of Photography 6: Snap Judgements

2009-08-04T23:20:00.000-07:00

Andreas Gursky, 99 cent, 1999.

In the final episode of the series, photography today: the art and business of making and selling pictures; Gregory Crewdson and the staged, manipulated photograph; the battle for Seydou Keita's archives; Li Zhenseng, Wang Qingsong and new Chinese photography; Paolo Ventura's war stories; Alex Soth; Jeff Wall; Philip Jones Griffiths versus Martin Parr at Magnum; Andreas Gursky, $3.3 million dollar man. At left is Edward Steichen's The Pond-Moonlight (1904), sold at auction for $2.9 million.

Epside Six, Part One

Episode Six, Part Two

Episode Six, Part Three

Download Episode 6 in high-definition from Rapidshare here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

The Genius of Photography 5: We Are Family

2009-08-03T15:09:00.000-07:00

Sally Mann, Jessie Bites, 1985.

Episode 5 looks at what happens when photographers turn their cameras on themselves and their loved ones, translating personal relationships into photographic ones. In this episode, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Nobuyoshi Araki, Richard Billingham, Sally Mann, Larry Sultan, Cindy Sherman, and Philip-Lorca diCorsia.

Episode Five, Part One

Episode Five, Part Two

Episode Five, Part Three

Download Episode 5 in high-definition from Rapidshare here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

The Genius of Photography 4: Paper Movies

2009-08-01T18:19:00.000-07:00

Weegee the Famous, Their First Murder.

Episode 4 continues with a lively look at the golden age of street photography from the 1950s and beyond, the age of the photographic roadtrip. In this episode: the seminal work of Robert Frank in The Americans, William Klein's New York boogie-woogie, the unblinking reportage of Weegee the Famous, Joel Meyerowitz stalking Fifth Avenue with his Leica, the enduring wit of Garry Winogrand, British photographer Tony Ray Jones' everyday people on the beach, Edward Ruscha's gas stations, Martin Parr in Memphis, William Eggleston and the ascendance of color photography, Stephen Shore, Joel Sternfeld.

Episode Four, Part One

Episode Four, Part Two

Episode 4, Part 3

Download Episode 4 in high-definition from Rapidshare here (you need to download all four files and join them using WinRAR):
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

The Genius of Photography 3: Right Place, Right Time

2009-08-01T13:50:00.000-07:00

Robert Capa, Omaha Beach, Normandy coast, France, June 6, 1944.

Episode 3 begins with delightful footage of Henri Cartier-Bresson "pouncing" at the streets of Paris in the 1940s. The decisive moment, how it changed the way we photograph, and how it collided with the historical moment when the world went to war. In this episode: war photographers Robert Capa and Tony Vaccaro, a Jewish ghetto in Poland, post-war reconstruction in Europe, Japanese photographer Shomei Tomatsu's documents of Nagasaki, The Family of Man exhibition, Magnum Photo Agency, and, finally, W. Eugene Smith's colossal Pittsburgh Project.

Episode Three, Part One

Episode 3, Part Two

Episode 3, Part 3

Download Episode 3 in high-definition from Rapidshare here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

The Genius of Photography 2: Documents for Artists

2009-07-31T23:01:00.000-07:00

August Sander, from Man of the 20th Century, 1929.

The Genius of Photography continues with photography during the 1920s and 1930s. In Episode 2, photography as document: the Machine Age, Alexander Rodchenko and Soviet Utopianism, August Sander and human classification in the Weimer Republic, Man Ray and surrealism, Eugène Atget, Walker Evans and the Farm Security Administration.

Episode Two, Part One

Episode Two, Part Two

Episode 2, Part 3

Download Episode 2 in high-definition from Rapidshare here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

The Genius of Photography 1: Fixing the Shadows

2009-07-31T19:19:00.000-07:00

André Kertész, Meudon, 1928.

BBC-Four's The G en ius of Photograp hy is a comprehensive -- and immensely enjoyable -- documentary of the history and art of photography from the earliest daguerreotypes to photography in the digital age. The six-part series takes us on an illuminating ride across the entire landscape of the medium, stopping at important milestones, guided by some of the most influential photographers, critics and curators working today. From the documentary's very first image of André Kertész's 1928 photograph of Meudon, and how this image came to be, you are assured to be mesmerized.

In Episode 1, broken up into three parts below, the origins of photography: camera obscura, Talbot, Louis Dagguer, Eadweard Muybridge, Nadar, George Eastman, Kodak, Lartigue, André Kertész, New York forensic photography, industrial age, Edward Steichen, Chuck Close, Luc Sante, David Byrne.

Episode One, Part One

Episode One, Part Two

Episode One, Part Three

Download Episode 1 in high-definition from Rapidshare here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

A new book by Brigitte Lacombe

2009-07-29T23:58:00.000-07:00

While on assignment at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival for Elle, Brigitte Lacombe, then a fledgling photographer, met Dustin Hoffmann and Donald Sutherland who invited her to the sets of All the President's Men and Fellini's Casanova. The meeting started Lacombe's remarkable career photographing what she calls "a cinema of exception." Exceptional too are Lacombe's spare but emotionally probing portraits of film and stage personalities in cinema/theater, published in 2001, a compilation of her magazine work and her seven-year stint as staff photographer of The Lincoln Center.

Lacombe has a new book from Steidl, anima/persona, a collection of favorite portraits of actors, artists, directors, politicians, writers, and musicians. Charlie Rose talks with Lacombe about the book and her process in the video below. Towards the end of the interview, a special treat: Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Charlie Rose interviews Brigitte Lacombe

We interrupt this blog . . .

2009-07-29T18:59:00.000-07:00

. . . to play the happiest video on earth.

Sigur Ros, Hoppipolla.

Faces at a music festival

2009-07-28T15:33:00.001-07:00

Loving Stern Grove, San Francisco, July 2009.

What can be better than spending a Sunday afternoon in the woods, listening to live music for free, surrounded by happy people? When you can do it all over again the next Sunday.

For ten consecutive Sundays this summer, San Franciscans can dance, groove and chill at the Stern Grove Festival, the city's annual outdoor music festival that is now on its 72nd season. The eucalyptus-lined grove was a gift to the city by Mrs. Rosalie Stern as a venue for admission-free summer concerts. The first concert at the grove was held in 1932 with the San Francisco Symphony, and the festival series started in 1938.

Traditionally a venue for symphonic music and jazz, the festival repertory has opened up to pop music and world beats. Last Sunday, the festival had its first all-hiphop program. Still to come this season: Bollywood music, Colombian cumbia, Brazilian maracatu, an all-Balanchine dance program, and Italian arias.

The festival holds a special treat for people like me who find pleasure in photographing happy faces. Here happiness abounds even before the first musical note is played. The setting has a lot to do with it: one feels nestled by the towering trees that circle the grove and the air is unseasonably crisp and scented with pine. People of every age sit on the ground or picnic tables, giddy with anticipation. Wine flows freely, lunch is alfresco, and someone being naughty somewhere perfumes the woods with cannabis. When the beats finally come, the crowd rises to its feet, roars as one when the band screams "Howyadoin', San Francisco!," hips groove, hands sway in the air, lovers embrace, and for the next four hours, everything is just fine in the city.

Responding to Anonymous

2009-07-25T13:18:00.000-07:00

Duane Michals, Shopping with Mother.

In my post San Francisco Faces, Anonymous commented on one of the portraits (left), comparing him to a defeated Estragon waiting for a "black Godot," perhaps an allusion to promises of stimulation that will never come, made to a nation that has become an inert waiting room.

The comment of Anonymous made me think of photographer Duane Michals. I've been wanting to write about Duane Michals for some time now. He is a poet whose gift for storytelling was too expansive to be contained by the conventions of still photography. In a medium that proclaimed the image superior to the written word, Michals found the single image inadequate to convey his ideas. At first, he started layering his pictures; then he shot them in a series like frames in a silent movie. When that wasn't enough, he started to scribble stories and poems on the pictures, misspellings and all. In the end, he got rid of the image altogether and simply wrote on photographic paper.

"Shopping with Mother" is one of those imageless pictures, and was the picture that Anonymous made me think about after I read his/her post.

Shopping with Mother

When I was a little boy, my mother often took me shopping with her, and our last stop was always Cox's dress shop. She would set me down in a chair surrounded by our purchases and say, "Sit there. I'll be right back." And off she would vanish into the dress racks. For the first five minutes it was a relief just to be seated, but a terrible anxiety began to grow within me that she would never return. I had been abandoned! In 1932 God dropped me off on this planet and said, "Sit there, I'll be right back." Well I have [been] sitting here now for forty six years, and the bastard hasn't returned. For all I know he's off in Andromeda trying on dresses and has forgotten all about me. And I know he is never coming back.

Curator Marco Livingstone said that in Duane Michal's work, God is a sorrowful absence, "the source of profound disappointment and his sense of existential aloneness . . . an unseen force or character who never arrives, like Beckett's Godot, but whose rumoured existence still scratches at his consciousness."

eman59, Waiting for Godot, Oakland, March 2008.

Red wall

2009-07-24T14:48:00.000-07:00

Untitled, San Francisco, May 2007.

Every city needs a hideaway to mute the hurlyburly of living in it. It can be as grand as Central Park or as modest as a rock (shade would be nice, ocean view optional). What matters is getting a chance to zone out and tune in.

I have such a hideaway in San Francisco that is as modest as hideaways come: benches made of concrete with a grove of bamboo trees beside them. Behind the benches is a wall of fieriest red that blazes even hotter during certain points of the day. The bamboo leaves would cast shadows on it like Chinese brush paintings that move with the wind. The traffic signs would make patterns on it that remind me of Paul Klee's balloons. The shadows on the wall mesmerize like passing clouds that you watch while lying barefoot on a knoll. It's my hideaway, and I won't tell you where it is.

Paul Klee, Red Balloon, 1922.

San Francisco Faces

2009-07-23T18:20:00.000-07:00

San Franciscans, California Street, April 2007.

From "Faces" by Walt Whitman

Sauntering the pavement, or riding the country by-road -- lo! such faces!
Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality;
The spiritual, prescient face -- the always welcome, common, benevolent face,
The face of the singing of music -- the grand faces of natural lawyers and judges, broad at the back-top;
The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows -- the shaved blanch'd faces of orthodox citizens;
The pure, extravagant, yearning, questioning artist's face;
The ugly face of some beautiful Soul, the handsome detested or despised face;
The sacred faces of infants, the illuminated face of the mother of many children;
The face of an amour, the face of veneration;
The face as of a dream, the face of an immobile rock;
The face withdrawn of its good and bad, a castrated face;
A wild hawk, his wings clipp'd by the clipper;
A stallion that yielded at last to the thongs and knife of the gelder.

Sauntering the pavement, thus, or crossing the ceaseless ferry,
faces, and faces, and faces:
I see them, and complain not, and am content with all.

Dancing in the woods

2009-07-18T17:01:00.000-07:00

Dancing in the woods on a Sunday afternoon, Stern Grove, August 2008.

One of the best things about summer in San Francisco is the Stern Grove Music Festival, a free outdoor concert series set in a beautifully wooded amphitheater, where you can picnic on the grass, dance and sing-along with performers from around the world in an intimate, natural setting.

Last summer, we watched Bajofondo, the remarkable electronic tango band from Uruguay fronted by Gustavo Santaolalla, composer of the music from Brokeback Mountain, Babel, 21 Grams, and Motorcycle Diaries.

This summer's festival has already seen the likes of Roberta Flack, Joan Baez, and Les Nubians on stage. Tomorrow we are watching Sergent Garcia, the reggae/hiphop phenomenon from Brazil whose beats are as politically charged as they are danceable. My friends, Barry and Deborah, are on the Festival Board of Directors so we get to watch the concerts in style: on an elevated picnic table with front view seats of the amphitheater stage. Still to come for the 2009 season: Bollywood superstar Kailash Kher, Columbian cantadora Totó Momposina, the SF Ballet, and tenor Marco Berti with the SF Opera.

Bajofondo, Pa Bailar

Sergent Garcia, Amor Pa Mi

Ogling Chanel, she became befuddled

2009-07-16T11:56:00.001-07:00

Ogling Chanel, she become befuddled, San Francisco, July 2009.

Taken Today

2009-07-13T23:58:00.000-07:00

Rest, wherever you find it, San Francisco, July 2009.

At the end of the day

2009-07-12T16:01:00.000-07:00

Group Center, San Francisco, April 2008.

I'm an end-of-the-day photographer. On my way home I take pictures of people on their way home. Five o'clock light is a harsh and blinding spotlight that makes huddled pedestrians look like bas relief. Backlit, the same light portrays them as the urban warriors they truly are, the shadows as long as the day that is about to end. An hour later, the light softens to cast a golden glow on everything -- magic hour it is called -- magic to the photographer and magic to everyone else because it conjures the promise of rest.

But before rest comes the commute; I photograph that too. Light pierces the descent underground and transforms a man's head into a ghostly apparition. The same head is multiplied three times in reflections and shadow, a hydra retreating to its cave.

The train ride home brings close encounters in closed quarters. If the morning commute is lively with chatter and the rustle of newspapers, the late afternoon commute is marked by pensiveness and hunched shoulders. For those who are seated, it is a time to recharge. For those who stand body-to-body on the aisle, the commute is long and the temper is short; let no man be a jackass and let this train keep running or else. Taking pictures inside the train is a stealth operation (I will not be that jackass). I am careful even though everyone is too exhausted to care. Most of the time I don't even bother to take out my Leica. I just want to get home, say hello to my wife in the garden, make coffee, have my second cigarette of the day, and read The Huffington Post online.

Lunch hour

2009-07-11T14:18:00.000-07:00

Grey Gardens, San Francisco, March 2007.

I'm a lunch hour photographer. I skip the sandwich and the midday office gossip. If I'm lucky I get to take a bite out of something else: an elegant lady against an elegant frame, young love, stillness amid the hubbub of the city.

In his poem "Stay Away from Here," Frank O'Hara writes about his own lunch hour experience in New York City. It is akin to mine in many ways; San Francisco, after all, is New York's more graceful sister:

It’s my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches
and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets
on. They protect them from falling
bricks, I guess. Then onto the
avenue where skirts are flipping
above heels and blow up over
grates. The sun is hot, but the
cabs stir up the air. I look
at bargains in wristwatches. There
are cats playing in sawdust.

My lunch hour is never taken at high noon because the light has no shadows; it's flat and uninteresting. Two o'clock is good; three o'clock is even better. A harried worker rushes to her gym to decompress. The gymnasium is aptly Athenian with its imposing white columns. A man goes through vertigo-inducing heights to find privacy or a signal from his telephone. The first warm day in April unexpectedly arrives and the city becomes a tanning bed for its urban warriors, to be alone with their thoughts or the afternoon paper.

The geometry of the city is inescapable. Mondrian lines bisect and crisscross the frame with angles that are relentless in their sharpness. To find softness, I must flee the city.

Frank O'Hara ends his lunch hour this way:

A glass of papaya juice
and back to work. My heart is in my
pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.

I end mine with a cup of strawberry yogurt. My heart is in my pocket, it is a Leica.

Taken Today: Dancing

2009-07-10T00:13:00.000-07:00

After Ballet Class, Berkeley, July 2009.

My daughter is on her sixth or seventh year of taking ballet classes. She's getting stronger, more limber, and beginning to distinguish her Fosses from her Balanchines. But her real idols are the modern dance choreographers of her generation: Mia Michaels, Wade Robson, Sonya Tayeh, Shane Sparks, Tice DiOrio, Adam Shankman, Mandy Moore; in short, the choreographers of the inspiring reality TV show, So You Think You Can Dance. Better known to its fans as SYTYCD, the show has taken dance out of its elitist and airless space and into the living rooms of the public-at-large, alive, kicking, and a joy to behold. SYTYCD has shown everyone what dance enthusiasts have known all along -- that dance is hard work and, when done well, is an exuberant celebration of what the human body can do.

Here's a sample of the boundless ingenuity of its choreographers, a Latin-hiphop hybrid set in a Cuban bordello, danced to the music of Cuban-American rapper Pitbull, choreographed by Tabitha & Napoleon and Dmitry Chaplin. (For Jorge, who missed this number when it was first braodcast.)

So You Think You Can Dance - Calle Ocho

(Don't) strike a pose

2009-07-03T10:57:00.000-07:00

Untitled, San Francisco, July 2007.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, shown here in a 1992 photograph by his wife Martine Franck, didn't like posed portraiture; he detested them. He said he would infinitely prefer to look at ID pictures displayed outside passport photo studios than look at a contrived portrait. "At least there is on these faces something that raises a question, a simple factual testimony."

Cartier-Bresson retired from doing reportage in 1970, but continued to take portraits of people he admired. He shot his portraits the same way he shot pictures on the street: quickly, discreetly, unobserved, without artifice. He avoided posing his subjects as much as possible, even the ones that he shot for magazine assignments. When asked to photograph Frederic and Irène Joliot-Curie in 1944, he shot their picture as soon as they opened the door. "It wasn't very polite," Cartier-Bresson said, but the piercing gazes of the Curies with their hands clasped naturally against their bodies could not have been captured any other way.

Cartier-Bresson described his shooting style as a "quick bite of a mosquito." But for Truman Capote, whom he photographed in 1947, he was a dragonfly, "a frantic dragonfly ... Leica glued to his eye ... doing his clickety-clicks with a joyous intensity and religious fervor that filled his whole being."

His frenetic approach usually meant getting the business of shooting done as quickly as possible: "A portrait is like a courtesy visit of fifteen or twenty minutes. You can't disturb people longer than that..." He preferred to spend the rest of the time enjoying the company of his subjects. Or their silences. Of his visit to Matisse in 1944, he said: "I sat in a corner and didn't move; we didn't speak to each other. It was as if we didn't exist." His 1971 meeting with Ezra Pound in Venice was equally wordless, a long silence "that seemed to last for hours."

Cartier-Bresson had an aversion to photographing actors because their professional instinct is to pose for the camera. These portraits of Marilyn Monroe (1960) and French actress Isabelle Huppert (1994) are notable exceptions. Monroe was photographed on the set of the 1961 film The Misfits. Huppert, on the other hand, was a favorite of Cartier-Bresson's: "I was aware that he saw something in me that I didn't reconize," she said. "He seizes a moment that is captured by a movement; that's why he's right to do things quickly."

In the age of elaborately manufactured image-making, Cartier-Bresson's portraits may appear unremarkable for their lack of high-concept artistry. His portraits of Jean-Paul Sartre (1946) and Simone de Beauvoir (1947), lovers and twin pillars of French existential philosophy, are mere snapshots; Albert Camus' 1945 portrait is slightly out of focus.

Cartier-Bresson will not dispute this; he does not care for image-making or deliberateness. "Above all, I look for inner silence," he said. "I seek to translate the personality and not the expression."

Drawing, not photography, was the first love of Cartier-Bresson. In the course of his career, he photographed the greatest painters and sculptors of his time, artists whom he admired. Comparing photography and drawing, he said that "If in making a portrait, you hope to capture the inner silence of a willing victim ... with a pencil portrait, it is the draughtsman who must possess an inner silence."

Francis Bacon (1971)

Pierre Bonnard (1943)

Marcel Duchamp (1968)

Marc Chagall (1952), Georges Rouault (1944)

Joan Miró (1953), Alberto Giacometti (1961)

Georges Braque (1958)

Coco Chanel (1964), Colette and her housekeeper (1952)

William Faulkner (1947), Carson McCullers (1946)

Pablo Neruda (1971), Carl Gustav Jung (1959)

Martine Franck (1975)

Luchino Visconti (1961), Roberto Rossellini (1960)

Edith Piaf (1946)

Taken Today

2009-06-28T20:47:00.000-07:00

Portraits from Open Train Doors, San Francisco, June 2009.

Poem by Wislawa Szymborska

2009-06-27T01:16:00.000-07:00

Lisa, Colma, California, August 2007.

Parting with a View

I don't begrudge the spring
for coming back again.
I can't blame it
for doing its duty
the same as every year.

I realize my sorrow
won't halt the greenery.
If a blade wavers,
it's only from the wind.

It doesn't cause me pain,
that clumps of alder above the waters
have something to rustle with again.

I accept
that—as though you were still alive—
the shore of a certain lake
has remained as beautiful as it was.

I don't hold a grudge
against a view for a view
onto a bay dazzled by the sun.

I can even imagine,
that some-not-us
are sitting now
on a toppled birch stump.

I respect their right
to whispers, laughter,
and happy silence.

I even assume
they're bound by love
and that he puts a living arm around her.

Something recently birdly
rustles in the bulrushes.
I sincerely hope
they hear it.

Let them be as they were,
those waves lapping on the shore,
sometimes swift, sometimes lazy,
and obedient not to me.

I ask nothing
of the deep waters below the woods,
emerald,
sapphire,
black.

To one thing I won't agree.
To my return.
The privilege of presence—
that I'll give up.

I've survived you just enough
but only enough,
to reflect from afar.

(Translated by Joanna Trzeciak)