Photographers | >Re-PHOTO

Street Photography, Iran Style

Although I’m rather a fan of Paolo Pellegrin and have previously written about his work several times, perhaps the most interesting thing about his latest set of street portraits ‘The Changing Face of Iran‘ is that it exists at all.

The pictures and accompanying text perhaps say more about the problems of working in the country as a foreigner than anything else: “Accompanied by an official ‘minder’ from the ministry of information and armed with a government permit to take street photos, Pellegrin approached mullahs, shopkeepers, beggars and young hip-hop kids, and most readily agreed to be photographed.”

I don’t find the resulting pictures of much interest, and I hope that Pellegrin found other things to photograph in Iran as well. But it must be difficult to take pictures there. His Magnum colleague Thomas Dworzak, another photographer whose work I admire, visited in November and with a few exceptions his work on this occasion also fails to inspire me.

Today’s election there reminds us that these are interesting times in Iran, but I have a suspicion that the more interesting pictures may not emerge for some years – and will have been taken by Iranian photographers we have never before heard of, rather than visiting firemen.

Agustí Centelles (1909-85)

This morning I listened to the Today programme as I washed up the breakfast things and heard an interview with Sam Lesser, one of the seven remaining Britons who went to Spain with the International Brigade, all of whom have now been made Spanish citizens and given Spanish passports.

Sam Lesser in 2006

But of course as well as those thousands of brave individual who went to Spain to fight for freedom, there were many Spaniards also fighting.

And when we think of the photographs of the Spanish Civil War, probably we immediately think of Robert Capa – and in particular his ‘Falling Soldier‘ picture.

But of course there were also Spanish photographers. Or in the case of Agustí Centelles (1909-85), Catalan photographers. A photojournalist in Barcelona, he became an official photographer for the Republican government, and even managed to continue using his Leica when interned in the Bram refugee camp in France in 1939.

When he fled to France in February 1939 he took several thousand negatives with him. Later, when France was occupied by the Germans, he decided to return in secret to Spain, but left his negatives hidden in a house in France, as his pictures could have incriminated many Spaniards and led to their persecution by Franco. It was only 40 years later, after the fall of Franco that he could return and reclaim his work.

An exhibition of his work from 1936-9, “Agustí Centelles: journal dune guerre et dun exil, EspagneFrance 1936-1939” opened at the Jeu de Paume (Hotel de Sully site) in Paris yesterday and continues until 13 Sept 2009. You can read more about it in French on their site, and also in English on Art Knowledge News. There is also an extensive collection of his work on line at VEGAP – I’ve not yet looked at all 336, but what I have seen is enough to convince me that we should be thinking of him as the major photographer of the Spanish Civil War.

Too often we think of events that happen abroad – particularly in the majority world – only in terms of the photographs made by photographers from the Western agencies who travel there – almost as if photographs that don’t come from Magnum or VII or Getty or Reuters somehow aren’t real. Agencies such as Drik should have changed the way we see the South by now.

Top Taos?

I’ve never been to Taos, New Mexico but the The Church of St. Francis of Assisi is very familiar, having been photographed and painted by many. James Dansiger posted three photographs, by Ansel Adams, Laura Gilpin and Paul Strand – all intrigued by the forms of the rear of the building – the other day in Spirit West and asked readers to pick their favourite – and also to send in their own pictures.

Danziger says you can no longer take a view like Adams et al, as the adobe church is now surrounded by power lines and buildings. In Reader Comments, he includes a number of more recent photographs, which perhaps suggest the situation isn’t as bad as he suggests. His readers don’t manage to come up with any very great pictures – and display their lack of taste by preferring Adams to Strand. But more interesting is the image at the top of that second post, another image of the back of the church, inviting us to guess who took it.

Looking at it, and particularly the tonality and and hooded figure in the foreground my mind immediately jumped to the great Spanish pictorialist and master of the direct carbon process, Jose Ortiz Echague, but a closer look – by clicking on the image – told me I was wrong – perhaps misled by a poor reproduction of an indifferent print. I won’t give the game away, but look carefully at the top edge of that picture and you too may immediately come to the same – correct – conclusion as me.

You need a clue? Page down

Those Leicas were very fiddly to load! But even when he got it wrong he almost never cropped.

Pure Genius – Only 13 Years One Month late

I’m not sure now why the virtually only pictures I took at the ‘Pure Genius’ land occupation in 1996 were made on a swing lens panoramic camera. Perhaps there was something about the open spaces of that site – now occupied by tall luxury riverside flats – that made me want to think panoramic. But I exposed two complete rolls of film in the Horizon – 42 exposures, and just 5 black and white images, I think on a Leica.

The site was a large one, 13 acres, and by the time I took these pictures on May 6 the activists from ‘The Land is Ours‘ had already begun to transform the site, erecting buildings and preparing the land to grow crops.

I was reminded of this 13 years on by the news that a group inspired by this earlier ‘The Land is Ours’ action had occupied a long empty and overgrown site next to Kew Bridge as the Kew Eco-Village. I took a little detour to walk past there and take a look on my way home on Sunday but as nothing much seemed to be happening and I didn’t want to miss my train home (only hourly on Sundays) I didn’t try to make contact. Perhaps I’ll return another time when more is happening.

You can watch a video of the occupation, look at a local blog, Here Be Dragons (I met The Dragon – and Green Dragon Lane is just a few yards away) and follow KewEcoVillage on Twitter and there is a Facebook group too.

I made some quick scans from the 1996 pictures and have put nine of them on My London Diary . They aren’t great scans, as I made them like contact sheets, with the negs still in their filing sheets, so they are a bit dusty and a few of the negs were not quite flat… And using the Epson V750, some of these colour negs are a little too dense to give good scans, correct colour balance is murder, and you get some light leakage around the edges… Considering everything they are not bad at all on screen.

The Wandsworth/Battersea Guinness site remained empty for years after the TLIO occupation was ended forcibly after five and a half months. Eight years later, in June 2004, I returned and took this picture of the new flats that were going up, and work was still going on on the last block on the site last year.

The 1.8 acre site next to Kew Bridge has been empty and awaiting development since it was cleared in 1992. It should be a local scandal given the housing shortages (and high prices) in the area that the local council hasn’t stepped in at some point and taken over the land for social housing. Given the current economic climate, it seems unlikely that the current owners, St George West London Ltd, who bought the site in 2003, will be able to start building in the near future.

Their first planning application was turned down, and their second made last year for a 2 acre site including the next door pub includes a new pub, shops, offices and 170 residential units has not yet been approved. You can read more about the proposed development and its problems on the Strand on the Green site.

The Horizon that I bought cheaply around 1996 produces negatives around 56x24mm and they have a horizontal angle of view of approximately 120 degrees. The rotating lens produces what I think is called a cylindrical perspective. It has a nice clear viewfinder that is not 100% accurate but pretty good for it’s type and very bright. The built-in spirit level appears in the viewfinder making it easy to use this camera hand-held – for many pictures getting the camera level is essential, as otherwise the horizon will be nicely curved. When the camera is used upright, all vertical lines remain straight, but any non-verticals that do not pass through the centre of the image will be curved.

Incidentally you can still buy a very slightly updated version of the Horizon, the Horizon 202 (there are other models too) either under its own name or marketed as a Lomo. The difference is in the price – and possibly the guarantee – and of course you don’t get to call your pictures Lomographs, which may be an advantage.

I bought a replacement Horizon on eBay a couple of years ago for about half the cost of the equivalent Lomo in the bookshop of a well-known London gallery. The first lasted me around ten years of fairly regular use – several hundred films at least, though it had needed some minor repairs that I’d been able to make myself. Not bad value for a panoramic camera costing well under under £200 (now just slight over since the pound has gone down.)

Gaia

Here’s a site I think is worth a look both for the photography on it and the idea behind it.
Gaia Photos mission is to “increase awareness about the challenges we are facing together on this planet and to promote understanding across all borders, physical or otherwise, of this world we share“, and to “promote quality and diversity in documentary photography.”

They are also looking for photographers around the world, and if you are “an active and professional freelance photographer or photojournalist” with “a ‘track record’ of working for publications or other media organisations“and particularly if you live in a country where they don’t yet have photographers (when I looked there was only one for the whole of Africa but already a couple for the UK) this could possibly be a place worth putting your work.

The site certainly has some interesting stories already posted on it, and looking through the names there I find a few I recognise, including Bevis Fusha from Albania who I met in Poland in 2005, and whose recent Facebook post led me to the site.

You can see much more of his work on his own web site.

Don McCullin’s Selection

The National Media Museum has a fine collection of early photography, and Don McCullin, one of the better British photojournalists of the 20th century was invited to pick images of archaeological sites around the Mediterranean taken in the 19th and early 20th century to go on line on Flickr (he has a new book of similar sites taken recently.) They are also available as a slide show, which I found technically disappointing.

Possibly better still, if you can manage to get to the Museum’s Collections & Research Centre – for some reason they call it Insight on Wednesday 3 or10 June at 2pm or Sundays 7 and 14 June at 12pm you, together with all the others who’ve come, can see them for real. It may be in a rather obscure place, but even so I’d be surprised if the numbers are small enough to make this a worthwhile experience.

McCullin’s show at the Museum until Sunday 27 September 2009 in covers his personal vision of England, and is certain to be worth a visit – and the web site also has a number of video clips of the man talking about his life and work. There is also the full 70-minute podcast of Don’s talk with exhibition curator Colin Harding, recorded live on 8 May which you can access from this page.

According to the Flickr page, “Copies of the photographs selected by Don can be obtained through the Museums picture library, the Science and Society Picture Library.” It’s a pity that there isn’t a little more co-operation between the Museum and its picture library. I searched for one of the pictures, “Maxime Du Camp (1822-1894); ‘Haute Égypte, Grand Temple de Denderah, vue genérale’ (Upper Egypt, Great Temple of Dendera, general view), 1852 ; Salt print; 16.2 x 20.8″ and failed to find it. A second search on “Maxime Du Camp” gave 8 results, none of which was by the photographer (for some reason it felt I really wanted Tony Ray Jones or Roger Fenton.)

I’ve previously bought prints from the picture library and found them to be good quality inkjet prints – in some cases better prints than the vintage bromide originals. I rather doubt if those of fine salt prints from calotype negatives would be as satisfactory.

For a rather larger and more informative selection of similar pictures take a look at Voyage en Orient from the BNF (there is an English version, but the French is better if you can.)

Wedding Pictures

No, not a real wedding, just in case anyone is thinking I’ve flipped. Exactly two years ago, US forces attacked a wedding party in Haji Nabu, Afghanistan, killing 47 people. It was one of a number of similar incidents which have contributed to thousands of Afghan civilians being killed by US/NATO forces.

Protesters from Voices in the Wilderness UK, Justice Not Vengeance and London and Oxford Catholic Workers organised a Die-In on the second anniversary of this massacre in wedding dress, with brides and grooms and wedding guests.

This was a non-violent protest against the war in Afghanistan and in sympathy with the victims of NATO aggression there, and they marched on The Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood, Middlesex from which our wars, including that in Afghanistan, are run. Police allowed the marchers to approach the area, but stopped them outside the camp around 200 metres before the main gate.

Here around half of the 40 or so protesters staged a die-in, lying on the road and blocking it for around 45 minutes before police eventually removed them. Six people who insisted on continuing their protest by going back onto the road after being removed were led away by police. They were held for several hours before being charged and released to appear in court at a later date.

You can see more pictures and more about the protest on My London Diary.

Wet Weather

Wednesday morning was cold and wet. The rain wasn’t particularly heavy but it was persistent. We can probably all agree there’s only room for one Martin Parr in photography, and while his ‘Bad Weather‘ was one of his most interesting books, the odd effects caused by water droplets on the lens and other hazards are generally things to be avoided rather than emulated. Photographing in the rain was, frankly, a pain (and lying on that cold road, even on bin bags must have been pretty uncomfortable.)

Both the Nikon D300 and D700 I was using stand up pretty well to rain and the real problems I have are with lenses. Mainly I was shooting with a 20mm f2.8 on the D700, and as always with a UV filter on the front. I worked with a microfibre cloth in my left hand, keeping the front of the lens covered except while actually taking pictures, and wiping the filter obsessively, but still there were plenty of shots spoiled by raindrops on the filter. I don’t own a lens hood for this lens – with a 20mm lens hoods offer little protection either from sun or rain. A carefully placed hand is considerably more effective against the sun (and yes I do often have to crop the odd finger out of pictures) but doesn’t work for rain.

On the D300 I was using my Nikon 18-200, but this is truly a fair weather lens. Even a hint of damp in the air tends to deposit on inner lens surfaces, having got dragged in by the pump action of the zoom. Mostly this stayed under my coat, and the longer lens hood (it’s a 27mm equivalent at its widest) although a pathetic piece of design that falls off regularly, does help a little to keep the rain out during use.

A Day Off?

What do photographers do on their days off? Usually take pictures, at least while sober, and sometimes when not. For most of us, photography isn’t just a skill or a job (or even a profession) but an obsession.

Last Monday was a Bank holiday, and rather than go an photograph London taking its Bank Holiday in different ways I went with my wife and two sons (both in their 30s) for a walk in the country. Fortunately I didn’t take the full kit, just the Nikon D300 with a couple of lenses, because it turned out to be about twice as far as I’d expected, around 18 miles.

Fortunately it was mainly along canals, and so pretty flat. And quite pretty and mainly very quiet – not quite my sort of thing at all! Probably there are far too many pictures taken along canals and as there was a canal festival going on there were lots of prettified canal boats (and for a short stretch some excruciating country music – the wrong country – over a noisy loudspeaker system.)

I was reminded of something I wrote a few years ago, about Eric de Maré, though largely because I’d then omitted to mention his great interest in canals. What I mainly wrote about was his Penguin “Photography” written in the 1950s on which a whole generation cut its photographic teeth, and a better introduction to the subject than many – here’s an edited version of what I wrote then:

A historical introduction, was followed by a chapter on photography as a creative medium, then one on composition and then five pages of quotations about photography. Only after that did it get down to a basic and readable coverage of the technical side of black and white photography.

A strong point was its use of many fine examples of the medium in its two picture sections, which included well-known works by great figures of the medium, including Werner Bischof, Bill Brandt, Julia Margaret Cameron, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Peter H Emerson, Bert Hardy, Hill & Adamson, Man Ray, Edward Weston, Clarence White and many more. The few nudes included (the only images of naked bodies allowed in our house apart from a few anthropological images in ancient back-copies of National Geographic) undoubtedly were a major part of the book’s attraction for me as a young teenager.

There is a nice short feature on de Maré on the English Heritage site, although the only canal image included is more an image of a structure than a typical canal picture.

Incidentally if you are thinking about buying his canal book, the 1987 paperback edition is readily available second-hand at under a fiver, despite some vendors describing it as “hard to find” and offering it at around 20 times the price. His “Photography” can be found for less than a quid, and most of his other books are also available cheaply, not because they are bad, but because they were popular. Some are illustrated by his generally excellent drawings rather than photographs.

You can see some of my photographs from Monday’s route march on My London Diary. A couple appear in a roughly 2: 1 panoramic format, and were taken with this in mind using the Sigma 10-20mm (15-30mm equivalent on the D300.) I find 10mm is often too extreme using the full image rectangle, but gives a decent panoramic.

The D700 (and D3) can record RAW images either for the full sensor or for the ‘FX’ cut down frame area – and with Nikon lenses at least you can get the camera to automatically switch between these as appropriate for the lens in use – or choose manually.

I actually rather like shooting with the FX format 18-200mm on this body, when you get a brightline frame in the centre of the viewfinder image, making taking pictures much more like using a rangefinder – so much better for cropping and also for action where being able to see what is just outside the image in the viewfinder is a real plus. At around 6Mp, the cut down frames are a little short of pixels, but it’s still plenty for most purposes.

But for me it would be useful for Nikon to add a panoramic option too, that could be switched on to show in the viewfinder (and of course crop the RAW image too.) Nikon’s 14-24mm and Sigma’s 12-24mm would be ideal candidates to use with this. Of course there is some advantage to not cropping at the point of taking – but rather just thinking panoramic – in that the normal format image gives considerable scope for the equivalent of a rising or falling front when cropping to a panoramic format.

NY Times Photo Blog

I have a certain regard for the NY Times – and after all it paid my bills for a few years recently when I worked for one of the companies it owned. It’s certainly one of the papers I look to as a paper of record and have often linked to, example when I wanted to know more out about Boris’s Turkish great-grandad. They obviously have an excellent photo-editor, and some of the features they’ve commissioned about photography and photographers have certainly been of interest.

So it’s not surprising that their photojournalism blog, LENS, introduced on May 15, has some decent work on show. Just a shame that the unusual design makes it so difficult to find it. Blogs – and browsers – are just not made to scroll sideways.

Of course you can – as many do for this blog – rely on a RSS feed to let you know what is there, but LENS is a fairly active place, and the feed only displays the last ten posts – three or four days.

LENS isn’t perhaps a very good choice of name either. Too generic, this site doesn’t at the moment get on the top page of ten when I google it. >Re:PHOTO or Re-Photo brings this site up as No 1 as it should be!

And perhaps too many of us will be wondering who Len was anyway or if it’s a site for wearers of small glass discs on the eye or that town in France or… But I am pleased to see that Lens Culture still came above it in my Google search.

One post worth a look (there are others) is by Ozier Muhammad, “58, a staff photographer for The Times, has been photographing Harlem since he moved to New York in 1980.” Its perhaps unfortunate that this work is only present as a slide show, making it difficult to pick out individual images and meaning that those who haven’t got 3 minutes 40 second may miss some of the better work. It’s a nice slide show, but I’d like also to be able to the thumbnails and jump to the work I want to see, or at least to click through the pictures at my own pace.

Incidentally should anyone be wondering why this site is called >Re:PHOTO you can read a little more about it and me on the About >Re:PHOTO page

Hugh Van Es (1942-2009)

Dutch photojournalist Hugh Van Es, best known for his picture of South Vietnamese civilians clambering up a ladder into a US helicopter on the roof of a CIA building as Saigon fell to North Vietnamese troops died last Friday in Hong Kong where he had lived for over 35 years. When the North Vietnamese arrived he greeted them wearing a camouflage hat with “Dutch Press” written on it in Vietnamese.

Later he was one of very few photojournalists to get into Kabul when the Soviets invaded, making an escape from the airport where those who had tried to get into the country were being put on a flight out.

In 2005 he was among 60 people who returned for a 30th anniversary media reunion in Saigon.

As well as obituaries in leading newspapers (and here) there is a small gallery of his pictures on the BBC site.