Photo History | >Re-PHOTO

Jon Lewis & the Farmworker Movement

Last week the New York Times Lens Blog published a post A Civil Rights Photographer, and a Struggle, Are Remembered about the work by Jon Lewis with Cesar Chavez and his Farmworker movement in California in the mid 1960s. The text is by writer, professor and curator, Maurice Berger, who has also contributed a number of other posts related the the US Civil Rights movement.

The post comes as the book ‘Jon Lewis: Photographs of the California Grape Strike‘ by Richard Steven Street (ISBN 978-0-8032-3048-4) is published by the University of Nebraska press.

In January 1966, Lewis, a 28 year old former marine with a degree in journalism and photographer from California State University in San Jose, visited Delano in California, the centre of the grape workers strike led by César Chávez of the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), intending to stay for a week before starting graduate school at California State University in San Francisco.

In the event he stayed for eight months, and also returned later in the summer, sleeping on the floor of the union HQ and living on the $5 a week striker’s wages. He managed to borrow $150 to set up and equip a laundry room as a darkroom with second hand equipment, photographing by day and processing at night, especially as the windowless darkroom got steamy with chemicals in the daytime during the summer, taking over 250 rolls of film. He photographed the picket lines, the confrontations, boycotts and the living conditions and in particular the historic 250 mile march of farm workers from Delano to the State Capitol in Sacramento to meet with the governor. This began with fewer than 75 marchers and a police attempt to stop it, but by the time it reached the capital there were thousands of marchers and supporters. The march brought the farm workers’ struggle on to the national headlines and led to a successful farmworker grape boycott.

Lewis was one of a small team of freelancers who documented the strike, all of whom became dedicated to the cause, and gave much of their work to the union to use for posters and publicity without charge. Unlike the photographers from the newspapers and magazines who came for a few days, they stuck at the job, and produced almost all of the best pictures – and Lewis was probably the best among them. Taking pictures was often dangerous, with police and company thugs often targeting them, but working from the inside they had the opportunity to create a unique record.

Lewis also recognised the input of Jim Holland, the man who made the circular red and black picket signs, as he wrote: ‘As props and framing devices they turned many an ordinary photograph into a stronger image.’ Many of us who photographed the ‘Stop the War’ protests in the UK have a similar reason to be grateful to David Gentleman.

As a part of the campaign, a secret ballot administered by the American Arbitration Association was held among the workers for the major corporation opposed to an agreement with the workers, giving them the choice of the newly united union led by Chavez, the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee AFL-CIO (UFWOC), the Teamsters Union or no union at all. This was won by the UFWOC, with only 12 of the 873 workers voting for no union representation, contradicting the employers claim that the workers did not want a union.

You can read more about the strike and see more of Lewis’s pictures in the Jon Lewis Photo Exhibit “1966: Cesar Chavez and his NFWA” by LeRoy Chatfield, part of a site which is a literary memorial to Don Edwards who was also active in the 1960s civil rights movement.

After taking these pictures and returning to college on the GI Bill, Lewis failed to get employment as a college teacher of photography and graphics and found work for 38 years in the printing industry. After retirement he had time to print some of those old negatives again and he gave many of the pictures to Chatfield (another who worked with the Farmworkers) to use on an extensive archive documenting the Farmworker Movement.

Lewis died in December 2009 and a year later, Chatfield, published his portrait and eight of his photographs in a tribute in his journal Syndic.

On the Farmworker site there is a statement by Lewis about his work (and an oral history interview), which ends with the sentence: It was a great privilege to have been able to photograph strong men and women standing. I’m proud to have stood with them.

Darkroom Nostalgia

Whether you are someone who has never made a print in a darkroom or one of us who paid our dues in that respect, you will almost certainly find the post Magnum and the Dying Art of Darkroom Printing by Sarah Coleman on her The Literate Lens blog of interest, in showing a little of how a master printer – in this case Pablo Inirio of Magnum in New York – thinks and works. And my thanks to Petapixel for commenting on and linking to her post.

What I find a little disturbing is not the post itself, but some of the comments that it has provoked, although Coleman did perhaps set them up when she wrote:

“Over the last fifteen years, almost every photographer I’ve interviewed has waxed poetic about that “magical” experience of seeing an image develop in chemicals for the first time. You have to wonder whether today’s young photographers will rhapsodize as much about the first time they color-calibrated their monitors.”

Digital has of course removed some of the mystique. No longer do we have the quasi-masonic initiation into the dark arts that used to be necessary, and digital comes without those smells (for which I say thank goodness, as taking some of that toxic chemistry out of our lives must be a good thing.) But I still feel there is something magical about pressing a button and then seeing a miniature image on the back of the camera, and even more being able to show it and zoom into it on a large screen on the computer. But colour-calibrating your monitor is perhaps equally exciting as measuring out 10ml of Rodinal or learning to keep the developer temperature constant at 20 degrees.

Coleman’s is an entirely false comparison. What was important in photography was the image; what still is important is the image, though now it appears in fractions of a second in an automatic way without all the fuss we used to have.

Digital printers still have to do all the kind of things that we did in the dark to get good prints, just that these are much simpler (and can be reversible) on the computer. In the darkroom Gene Smith used to get through a box of paper and a bottle of Scotch to make the final print, we can do it by viewing on those calibrated screens and save the Scotch for later. Though personally I’d prefer a decent glass of wine – or two.

While we still need to make all the kind of adjustments that Inirio records on his annotated images, in Lightroom the computer remembers them for us, saving us the need to draw the diagrams. We can also do them with ease more precisely than the best master darkroom printers, and once you have made the ‘perfect’ print (or the best you can make) then can repeat it at the click of a mouse.

That doesn’t mean you or I can be a good a printer as Initio. Printing has always been a matter of vision, of being able to see the potential in a negative. Without that you can dodge, burn and use all the other techniques in darkroom or digital and never produce a great print. Many great photographers have never managed to, and have collaborated with others to print their work better than they ever could (and despite what it asserts in the ‘Media Space’ show, Tony Ray-Jones was one of them – see here and here.) Perhaps a true problem of digital is that is has more or less dispensed with the talents of specialist printers – such as Inirio – because everyone thinks they can do it as well as the best.

Of course once you have the vision, it isn’t always easy to transmit that to the material. You have to learn (and make tests, tests, tests) to see how the materials react. In the digital world this is also much simpler, with much of the necessary information being stored in print profiles and curves etc.

The same is true of digital images. Our raw files (or even camera produced jpegs) are only starting points – if you like Ansel Adams’s musical analogy – the scores, and the digital files we send to clients or use on the web or to make prints are performances, some better than others.

Adams is the man I first learnt to print properly from, not in the flesh but in the revised 1968 version of his Basic Photo series, Volume 3 The Print (more recent versions perhaps somewhat dumbed down) and it was a good starting point on which to build. In my darkroom in the old days there were always two developer trays (later vertical ‘trays’ to save space, keep temperature constant and reduce developer oxidation) containing low and high contrast developers and prints were usually transferred from one to the other at an appropriate time for the contrast required – at least until I changed to using Multigrade papers. I had a few little tricks and nudges that I’d learnt talking to other printers or thought of myself, and I enjoyed making good prints, but I don’t regret that I never use the darkroom now. Because I know I can do better on the computer and making inkjet prints on baryta papers, though I could also get a lab to print the digital files on genuine silver halide paper. I’ll not go back to the ferri, the flashing, the Blu-tak, cut masks and all the rest of the wands that were a part of the magic – when needed.

I certainly have some regrets over cameras and lenses that I no longer use because they take images on film. The panoramic cameras, the Minolta CLE and Leica, the Konica Hexars and the Olympus OM4s were all better tools for what they did than anything digital yet produced. You can do more with the Nikon DSLRs, take pictures in much lower light and more, but they don’t have the same ease of use or responsiveness, though things are improving (and they will probably get there in a few years, just in time for cameras disappear for good.) But on the very few occasions I take film now, it doesn’t go into an enlarger, but into a scanner. It just wouldn’t occur to me to make darkroom prints.

Back in the days when I taught photography, I used to find the best way to get students to see the possibilities of making good black and white prints in the darkroom was to get them to use Photoshop. They could then quickly (and at zero cost) learn about getting the contrast and exposure correct, and go on to see the effect of dodging and burning. Years earlier, before we had computers in art departments, I’d taught lighting with the aid of video cameras, because you didn’t have to develop film to see the results.

But the idea that printing in black and white is a good way to learn about how to make good images in the digital age which some in education suggest is nonsense. It is at best a slow and inconvenient method to learn about making images. Digital is a far better medium for both teaching and learning about photography. Using film and darkrooms is essential for teaching about working with film and darkroom printing – full stop.

I’m not against craft skills, but think it is only generally worth teaching those that are relevant now. I think it’s great that a few people like to learn how to use the wet plate process, but despite arguably representing the pinnacle of photographic practice, I certainly wouldn’t want it to be an integral part of normal photographic courses. It’s time to let go of darkroom printing in education, just as we (I hope) no longer teach other outmoded processes. Except as history, and there is nothing wrong with that. We just need to be clear it is history, or that it’s a bit of fun, rather than something that all photographers could benefit from.

But you can see another view on (again a link from Petapixel) Long Live Film, which has a trailer from a film of that name, made by mail-order processor Indie Film Lab and Kodak both with a certain vested interest.

Nostalgia junkies who hanker after those colour and tonal distortions that were a signature of different film stocks will find that there are plenty of ways to reproduce these from your digital images. I’ve not tried any of the products from ‘Totally Rad’, not being a believer that clicking on a pre-set can give your pictures an ‘individual’ look, but they claim to have carried out an impressive amount of research to develop “the most faithful film emulation available” in their Replichrome. Personally I’ll save the $99 and concentrate on trying to get something individual in the viewfinder.

Capa 100

It probably hasn’t escaped your attention that Robert Capa, or rather Endre Friedmann was born 100 years ago on October 22, 1913, as there have been a number of newspaper articles about him and this anniversary.

Apparently while at school in Budapest he gained the nickname cápa – Hungarian for ‘shark’, and he used this in a scam when having problems making a living in Paris in the mid-1930s. To charge more for his pictures he invented an entirely mythical ‘famous American photographer’ giving him de-accented form Capa as a surname because of its similarity to the name of US film director Frank Capra, whose 1934 film It Happened One Night had won five Oscars. Friedmann chose the first name ‘Robert’ because he thought it typically American (and he didn’t at the time know that ‘Bob’ was a shortened form of the same name.) He, by now calling himself André Friedmann, posed as the famous photographer’s ‘darkroom boy’, while his partner, photographer and picture editor Gerda Taro (born Gerta Pohorylle), became Robert Capa‘s agent, insisting on double the normal fees for the work of this famous photographer.

Friedmann was soon caught out, as Gerda tried to sell one of the editors who had been paying over the odds for Capa’s work some pictures that he had seen Friedmann taking. But Lucien Vogel of Vue was I think amused by the ingenuity as well as impressed by the quality of the images, and sent the two photographers to cover the Spanish Civil War, with Friedmann now adopting Capa as his own name.

I’ve just spent a fruitless half hour searching for my copy of a book on Capa produced long ago by the ICP (International Center of Photography) in New York, a body founded in 1974 by Robert Capa’s brother Cornell Capa to keep the work of his brother and other ‘concerned’ humanitarian documentary photographers alive, which has a number of Capa’s own stories in it, as well as probably the best selection of his pictures.

I’ve also been listening to a broadcast recently discovered and available on the ICP site that Capa made on a morning talk show ‘Hi! Jinx.’ in October 1947. It is the only known recording of his voice, for although Capa was known as a great story-teller, this was apparently his only appearance on radio and he was never interviewed for television. He came on radio to promote his autobiographical novel’ Slightly Out of Focus but much of his talk is about the trip he had just made to Russia for the forthcoming A Russian Journal, with his pictures and a text by his travelling companion John Steinbeck. Both books are available dirt cheap second-hand, presumably meaning they sold very well.

Autobiographical novel is a good description of ‘Slightly Out of Focus’, as Capa seems seldom to have let sticking the absolute facts spoil a good story and many grew considerably with the telling. The recording contradicts the description of his mode of speech by some friends as incomprehensible ‘Capanese’. In the interview, Capa, a considerable linguist who spoke Hungarian, German, French, Spanish, and English, shows himself to be clear and highly articulate in what ‘became his dominant written and spoken language’ by 1941, English.

It’s certainly interesting to hear Capa talk about his work, and in particular how he made the picture that made him famous, the 1936 ‘Falling Soldier’ . He says he had no idea what he had taken, holding his camera above his head and pressing the shutter, and only knew he had taken a great picture later. The ICP comments, ‘He says, “The prize picture is born in the imagination of the editors and the public who sees them.” It is the only public comment we have directly from him about this famous image.’

Those who are in Korea, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Mexico, France and of course New York can visit shows that are a part of the centenary celebrations, and earlier this year the Atlas Gallery in London put on a show of Capa’s work. Probably the best place to see his work on-line is at Magnum Photos.

American Modern

Talking on Skype with a friend today, he told me about a great show he saw recently in New York, American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe at MoMA until January 26, 2014.

Apart from having two of my favourite American painters in the title, the works in the show include photographs by some of my favourite American photographers, including Stieglitz and Evans and much else.

As it says on the MoMA page:

American Modern takes a fresh look at the Museum’s holdings of American art made between 1915 and 1950, and considers the cultural preoccupations of a rapidly changing American society in the first half of the 20th century. Including paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and sculptures, American Modern brings together some of the Museum’s most celebrated masterworks, contextualizing them across mediums and amid lesser-seen but revelatory works by artists who expressed compelling emotional and visual tendencies of the time.

The selection of works depicts subjects as diverse as urban and rural landscapes, scenes of industry, still-life compositions, and portraiture, and is organized thematically, with visual connections trumping strict chronology. Artists represented include George Bellows, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, Alfred Stieglitz, and Andrew Wyeth, among many others.

Well, personally I could well have done without Wyeth’s contribution; Christina’s World to me is retch-making kitsch, but my friend actually likes it. Had we been on Facebook I might have felt bound to unfriend him, but in the real world I’m a little more tolerant of the aesthetically misguided. But the web site that accompanies the show is also commendable, with images of 118 of the exhibits. You can also see them in several orders, of which I recommend by date, and you can scroll through the images in order with details and comments which you may chose to read or ignore.

Although there were many familiar images – that white fence, those peppers and more – there were also some that were new to me, and some even by artists I’d not heard of.

You can also download a generous sample PDF of the related publication American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe by Esther Adler and Kathy Curry, which includes the introduction as well as including some images not on the web site. It looks a very attractive volume, and one which gives due weight to photography, and finding it available at my favourite online book site for under £19 including p/p completely undermined my resolution that we just haven’t space at home for any more books.

Only in England

Only in England: Photographs bv Tony Ray-Jones & Martin Parr
Media Space, Science Museum, London 21 Sept 2013 -16 March 2014
National Media Museum, Bradford, 22 March 2014-29 June 2014

Admission £8, Concessions £5

It’s taken me a while to get around to writing this review since I went to see the show a week ago, mainly because I’ve been away from home, and although I had a notebook as well as a real notebook with the ten sides of notes I took at the Science Museum, I didn’t have with me the three books and various magazines containing work by Tony Ray-Jones (TRJ) for reference.

First let me say that anyone with the slightest interest in photography who is going to be near London in the next 5 months should visit this show at least once – and give yourself a couple of hours to do so. It really is one of the most significant shows of photography here in the UK for some years. If you don’t already know the work of TRJ (see my Tony Ray-Jones Discovered Yet Again), then you are obviously very new to photography, and it will be a revelation, and if you do know his work, you probably will not need my urging to make you want to see a large number of vintage prints again, though I think you may probably learn little new about him. But for all who were not around in photography in the 1970s, the black and white work by Martin Parr may come as something of a surprise, and it was certainly good to see his pictures from ‘The Nonconformists‘ again.

Although the two photographers both concerned themselves with ‘the English’ their approaches were very different. TRJ’s view was essentially ironic and surreal, witty and superbly framed, very much about the image rather than the subject, while Parr’s was documentary, concerned and often reverential, even loving. Their very different visions overlap in a few of the pictures in this show, but it was only perhaps in other projects and his colour work in the early 1980s that Parr really developed a kind of amused detachment towards the subject that perhaps derived from TRJ. TRJ was perhaps more interested in general themes, rather as his friend, photographer John Benton-Harris, styles himself, a visual sociologist, while Parr concentrates on the individuals and there eccentricities, a very English obsession.

The wall text states that all of the images in the first section of the show – the work that TRJ himself selected for exhibition and publication – was actually printed by the photographer. I rather doubt this to be the case, having listened to some of those who knew him – and at least one who printed his work both before and after his tragically young demise. There are stories – some in the show – which suggest that he was a skilled printer, but this hardly fits some of what I’ve been told. His time in the USA will have introduced him to the rather different attitudes to photographic printing there compared to the generally unsophisticated methods taught in the UK at that time. For many of us, texts like the Ansel Adams Basic Photo series ‘The Print’ came as something of a revelation.

What I think is true is that TRJ had a very good idea of what he wanted his prints to look like, and probably suffered a great deal of frustration in trying to get them so. Although I’d defer to those closer to the photographer, my guess on looking at the Media Space show would be that around half were made by him. Those we can certainly be sure of are the five images from his 1969 ICA show from Martin Parr’s collection. It’s perhaps a pity that an effort was not made to locate more of the images from this show for the current exhibition – I would certainly have been willing to lend the one I own. I don’t know how closely the selection for the Media Space show follows the photographer’s own selections, either for that show or his book dummies, but clearly all those in this first section of the exhibition were images that the photographer himself had selected as successfully representing his intentions.

Comparing the five ICA show prints with both the other prints in the show from the same negative and with the printing of other photographs does indicate some subtle differences, but clearly most but not quite all have been made with similar intentions, if not by the photographer himself by others responsive to his requirements. But I think TRJ would have been even more pleased with the prints made for ‘The English‘ at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television at Bradford in 2004, and the reproductions in the accompanying book by Russell Roberts, ‘Tony Ray-Jones’ (Chris Boot Ltd, 2004) which I think are the best published versions of most of his work. Unfortunately if you haven’t already got a copy this is now advertised on Amazon at over $5,000! Though diligent searching may find a rather cheaper copy.

The remaining prints in the show, both by Parr and those selected from TRJ’s contact prints by Parr, were larger pigment inkjet prints (or as the labels rather confusingly call them, pigment prints.) Parr’s own work may come as a surprise to those who missed the Camerawork show in 1981 or the various publications in magazines at that time about his work. I’ve always regarded The Nonconformists – along with other black and white projects including his ‘Beauty Spots‘, shown at the Photographers’ Gallery in London in the mid-70s, as some of his more interesting work. It is perhaps a little surprising to see The Non-Conformists chosen in preference to Beauty Spots for this show, as the latter work shows very much more clearly the influence on the younger photographer of the work of TRJ. Perhaps it was felt to be too clear and the comparison not always flattering!

But Parr’s work in The Non-Conformists, if perhaps closer to the traditional British social documentary tradition is still an impressive body of work, and well worth showing, with some fine portraiture as well as some of the better-known images such as the storm hitting the tables of a Leeds street party of the figures sitting on the terrace of Halifax Rugby League ground, covered with grass or the plate filling at the Mayor of Todmorden’s inaugural banquet. There is a strength of feeling, a humanity, about most of these images which seems absent in much of Parr’s later work.

There are pictures that I imagine TRJ would have appreciated – for example of a cow watching and being watched as the Congregation make their way to Crimsworth Dean Chapel Anniversary. And the buffet lunch at Steep Lane Baptist did remind me a little of TRJ’s very different Blackpool picnickers from 1967 surrounded by their paraphernalia but keeping very much apart on the front under an image of an idyllic couple entwined in a rural tableaux.

The inkjet printing and the relatively large scale of the prints I think enhances the work, bringing out more detail than I remember. Good injket prints like these can often allow greater subtlety than was possible in the darkroom days. And of course the pigment inks are generally far more stable than silver. Making silver gelatine prints has perhaps become more of an affectation than an aesthetic choice now.

For me the least satisfying and most problematic aspect of the show were the 50 ‘new’ pictures selected by Parr from the 2700 contact sheets in the TRJ archive (around 90,000 images.) As the wall text says “Parr did not attempt to reproduce Ray-Jones’s selection process but instead reconsidered the work with the benefit of over 40 years’ experience as a photographer, collector and curator.”

There are photographers and collections of work for which such a process is necessary or even possibly desirable, but I remain unconvinced that the relatively small opus of TRJ, which was very intensively studied by the photographer himself is one. What we can be sure of is that every image in this part of the show is one that the photographer himself considered and rejected. His standards were exacting – and these images did not live up to them. I felt there were perhaps half a dozen that perhaps added something to his reputation, but the majority told us what we already know and his contact sheets on display in the exhibition show. Like many photographers, he worked hard to get his pictures exactly as he wanted them – and that like the rest of us, even the best of photographers mainly fail. We should celebrate his many successes rather than dwell on the others.

As a further text tells us “The prints are larger than those made by Ray-Jones, reflecting Parr’s aesthetic preferences, while retaining the tonal range and detail that Ray-Jones sought in his own printing.” To give some figures, the TRJ prints are generally between around 8×6″ and 12×8″ and those made by Parr either 16×11 or 20″x13″ (though I didn’t have a ruler with me.) In terms of tonality, the new prints seemed very different to me from those by TRJ, much lighter and more open, and the attempt to match them seems to have been a fairly total failure.

The vintage prints in the show are small and intense, images that work well on a relatively intimate scale. Most of the ‘new’ work seems to me less interesting both because of its content – it lacks the incisiveness of the best images by TRJ – and also because of its presentation. This is an exercise that I feel reflects badly on him and also on what 40 years have taught Parr.

Even if what we are seeing is not the photographer’s best work, and perhaps rather poorly presented it still retains some interest if just as a larger version of a few frames of his contacts, though I did rather wonder if TRJ might at least be shifting uneasily in his grave. Like his earlier colour work which is also being published in a book, and the contact prints it may provide some insight into how he worked, but is not the work by which he felt he should be remembered.

So while this is a show not to be missed, with fine work by both Ray-Jones and Parr, it is not without its defects – and there are a few small clangers such as the reference to the photographer ‘Robert Kappa‘ and ‘the seasons‘ rather than ‘the season‘ (i.e. the ‘London ‘ season rather than the time of year) but it is great to see some of the fine collection of the National Media Museum on display in London as the first show in the Media Space. This aims to “showcase the National Photography Collection from the National Media Museum through a series of major exhibitions” and I look forward to seeing more. Though it would be better to have rather shorter shows and more of them than the almost six months of this show. For Londoners, Bradford was very much a move too far – it’s cheaper and quicker to get to Paris.

Marville’s Paris

I imagine that the US the National Gallery of Art in Washington is currently closed (I’m writing this on 1 Oct 2013) courtesy of the US Republican Tea Party’s opposition to heath care. I can’t at all understand their opposition to what appears to be a very sensible if rather limited measure on public healthcare, any more than I can understand the current UK government’s push to privatise our NHS here – now well under way through various back doors. As a great supporter of our NHS I was sorry not to be at the march on Sunday when over 50,000 people went to Manchester to show their support. Or as one presenter on our BBC radio – once another great British institution but now sadly compromised in its coverage of UK events – put it ‘some people say as many as ten thousand‘. If the police estimate was 50,000, you can be sure it was rather more.

Assuming at some point before January 5, 2014 US Republicans come to their senses and allow US Museums to reopen, those within travelling distance of Washington should make for the exhibition Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris which opened there on 29 September, the first major US showing of his work with a hundred photographs. The NGA page also has a link to a good set of 18 photographs, Paris in Transition, including work by Marville and others. It says the show is in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and a search on their site reveals around 20 works by Marville with images on line.

Back to public radio, NPR (it does photograph much better than the BBC) has a good report on the show by Susan Stamberg talking with curator Sarah Kennel, who has also produced what appears to be a very fine book, Charles Marville, Photographer of Paris, published by the University of Chicago Press (available in the UK in a couple of weeks.) The web site has a dozen large images from the book.

There is a good article about the book and the show by Luc Sante on The New York Review of Books, again with a gallery of images, and there are more pictures by Marville at MoMA and on Luminous Lint. Commercially many of his images are available in digital format through the Roger Viollet gallery, but I could only manage to see these as small thumbnails.

Also on line is a map of Paris with pins on it locating the sites where around 150 of his pictures were made, clicking on which gives a small version of both his image and a modern view from a similar position. There is also a PDF by Martin H. Krieger of the University of Southern California which explains the how and why this map was made.

[There may be collections of Marville’s work available on line from the large holdings of some Paris museums, but the French cultural establishment’s peculiar relationship with the Internet leads them to set up impenetrable web sites, perhaps stemming from their view of it as an ‘Anglo-Saxon’ institution and a devotion to a peculiar logic which requires a French education to understand – and certainly defeats Google. Should anyone manage to find any, please post links in a comment below.]

Marville who became the official ‘Photographer of the City of Paris‘ is deservedly well-known for his roughly 500 images commissioned by the Commission Municipale des Travaux Historiques of Paris before and after the great programme of works before and after the ‘improvements’ made by Haussman. The great boulevards were pierced through the city, designed to allow free movement of troops to put down the frequent insurrections by the people of Paris. The narrow streets which they replaced were far too easily barricaded.

For many, including myself, this work has an added interest because of the work of a later photographer of Paris, Eugène Atget, for whom, despite my comments above, the BnF has a good web site, and even available in an English (US) version (and in French only, Regards sur la ville.). Many of Marville’s better images are indeed hard to distinguish from the work of Atget, although as the latter site comments, while Atget shows only the ruins and destruction of a gutted city, Marville has an interest in its reconstruction.

Apart from some of those images of Paris, much of Marville’s work leaves me unmoved. The simple records of church doorways and statues fail to go beyond that, technically proficient but unless you have a particular interest in the thing photographed, rather boring. I want more from photographs.

Fire in the East

A nice post on American Suburb X has Fire in the East: A Portrait of Robert Frank, a 1986 film for the Museum of Fine Harts, Houston and KUHT Public Television, written, directed and edited by Amy and Philip Brookma, who aslo narrates the film, and produced by by Anne Wilkes Tucker and Paul Yeager.

It has some nice footage of Frank himself talking, as well as the views of a number of photographers, including Louis Faurer, whose darkroom Frank shared when he first went to New York in the late 1940s, as well as Sid Kaplan, Elliot Erwitt, Duane Michals and others who knew him then or when he returned to America after travels around the world in 1953, shortly after to embark on the Guggenheim-funded road trip that resulted in a book that many see as something of a watershed in photography. John Szarkowski has a few words too. And many of Frank’s finest images appear, if sometimes rather in the background.

It was in some way a visual counterpart to Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’, the bible for a new generation. I put down my guitar, stopped singing Buddy Holly badly and entered a new world at least in my mind. If I’d heard that Kerouac had written the introduction to a book of photographs I’d probably have bought it, but it was only around 15 years later that I first saw a copy of ‘The Americans’, thanks to the guys at Creative Camera.

Fire in the East deals with his whole career up to 1986, and the second half of it I found a little less interesting than the first. At about the time I discovered Kerouac, Frank abandoned still photography and moved into film with the 1959 ‘Pull My Daisy‘ with improvised performances by poets Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso and opthers playing themselves to a script by Jack Kerouac, along with other artist friends and Frank’s young son Pablo.

Grove Press (the first US publisher of ‘The Americans’) also brought out ‘Pull My Daisy’ as a book, and this was republished a few years ago by Steidl. There is an interesting article about it by John Cohen, who photographed the entire production in photo-eye magazine. A few of his pictures were used, along with stills from the 16mm black and white film.

All photographers will of course already own a copy of ‘The Americans’, but if not, various editions are available second-hand at prices from around £20 to £9,000. Should you not have it you could put it on your Christmas list and cross your fingers as to which to get, though if you are buying it yourself I’d recommend the 1978 Aperture edition which you can probably find at a reasonable price. I think my copy of ‘On the Road’ cost me 1/6d, and you can pick it up for less than a quid if you are lucky at a second-hand book shop, which allowing for inflation is rather cheaper. For free you can see some great drawings by Paul Rogers in his ‘On The Road, Illustrated’ , an image for every single page in the book, though not all on line yet.

Tony Ray-Jones Discovered Yet Again

Good though it is to see the attention currently being given to the work of Tony Ray-Jones with the show at the new at Media Space in London, it is perhaps surprising to see a video about him and the show that fails to mention Alexey Brodovitch, whose classes Ray-Jones attended and which were a key turning point in his development as a photographer. Wikipedia lists among the photographers who attended Brodovitch’s classes Diane Arbus, Eve Arnold, Richard Avedon, Lisette Model, and Garry Winogrand – and there were quite a few other well-known names.

Among the ‘Brodovitch boys’ (and most were male) peculiarly relevant to us in Britain, two names stand out: Tony Ray-Jones and John Benton-Harris, both of whom came to the UK in the mid to late 1960s soon after their studies with Brodovitch, Ray Jones in New Haven and Benton-Harris in his native New York.

The two only met up after both came to the UK in the mid 1960s, Ray-Jones probably returning home because of visa problems, and Benton-Harris staying on after meeting his future wife at a party when he came here from Italy on his military discharge to photograph Churchill’s funeral. They found they had similar and strongly felt views on photography, and both became involved in bringing the ideas and photographic work they had got to know in the USA to this country.

The best place to find out more about Ray-Jones is on Weeping Ash, a photography web site run by Roy Hammans, which has a whole section about him, including the introduction from ‘A Day Off: an English Journal’, the book published in the year following his death, which reinforced his reputation among photographers. Also there are some other essays worth reading, and one by me, from a lecture delivered in Poland in 2005, where I found his work was previously almost completely unknown. Here is one paragraph from that lecture which I think captures something of his personality:

Ray-Jones did more than take photographs in England, he gave the whole of British photographic culture a much-needed boot up the backside. He brought back from New York a brashness and an enthusiasm for the photography that was unknown in England. In 1968, having completed much of the English project, he introduced himself to the editor of Britain’s only really serious photographic magazine by announcing “Your magazine’s shit, but I can see you are trying. You just don’t know enough, so I am here to help you.” But it was his photographs rather than what he said that convinced Bill Jay that he was worth listening to, and Creative Camera published them.

His enterprise, both behind the camera and in cultural terms, was shared by Benton-Harris, who printed many of Ray-Jones’s pictures both while he was alive and afterwards. Contrary to what has been written, Benton-Harris says he was not fond of the darkroom and never a a great printer, and he suggests few of the ‘vintage prints’ were actually made by the photographer. The one print I own that was unequivocally by him is adequate but not expired. Unfortunately the prints for ‘A Day Off‘, the posthumous publication that established his reputation more widely, were made from the negatives by a commercial darkroom, who produced images in a then fashionable heavy style: too contrasty with empty highlights and blocked shadows, giving a distorted view of how the photographer would have wanted and printed his work.

Bill Jay comments in an interview in Russell Roberts’ encyclopaedic book ‘Tony Ray-Jones’, published on the previous occasion when the photographer was re-discovered for the major show at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television at Bradford in 2004, that the 120 pictures in ‘A Day Off‘ “had lots of photographs from the same shoot, and Tony would not have tolerated that...”, but it does contain those pictures which the photographer himself thought were his best work and were included in earlier book dummies he produced. Jay’s criticism has some validity, but perhaps only for half a dozen or so of the 120 images.

It was a book that reflected the style in photographic publishing at the time, with rather heavy and contrasty images, which perhaps helped it make the impact it did on many young photographers, myself included. But it was never a look that I liked much, though it suited a few of the pictures well. But the print I have on my wall of the Bacup Coconut Dancers in 1968, made by Ray-Jones himself for his 1969 ICA show is far more subtle. Sadly it was omitted from the Roberts book, perhaps under the influence of Jay’s comments, for this was one day that the photographer made two fine images of the same group – and is perhaps the better of the two.

The printing for the NMPFT show (and the book) was I think state of the art, squeezing everything possible out of some often very difficult negatives and generally impeccable. Excellent inkjet prints, often rather superior to the original vintage prints, were also made available at very reasonable prices (I bought several), and every photographer could afford to have a Tony Ray-Jones on their wall.

Ray-Jones was, as Jay commented “a very, very, careful editor.” He looked very carefully at all of his images. I’m not yet convinced that having another photographer – Martin Parr – going through his contact sheets and apparently picking out another 55 images for the current show is a good idea. For better or worse, these previously unseen images (assuming they are so – and not as in some other shows just hyped as such) are ones that the photographer rejected. I’ve yet to see the show, but those I’ve seen so far look to me more like near misses than more of his very best. The show at the Media Space also includes work by Parr, black and white images made in the 1970s when he was very much influenced by Ray-Jones, and which for many photographers remains his best work.

There is also a new book published of colour work by Tony Ray-Jones, American Colour 1962–1965 . Again I’ve only seen what is available on the web, but on the basis of this, I think it does nothing to enhance his reputation. There is perhaps a reason why after he came back to England he used only black and white for his personal work, although commissioned work was often in colour.

Benton-Harris sometimes went out working with Ray-Jones, and they shared a similar point of view. He printed much of the photographers work both before and after his death, and wrote the obituary which appeared in Creative Camera. His work too appeared in Creative Camera, with a fine portfolio in the final Creative Camera Annual (which also contained three of my pictures in a rather different style.) Later he was the main organiser behind American Images: Photography (1945-80) at the Barbican in 1985, a show which introduced many in the UK to a whole new world and also curated other shows.

His web site includes some of his better images, and includes work from recent years as well as his Looking at the English and St Patrick’s People. He is currently working on a book containing some of his work on the English, Mad Hatters – a diary of a secret people.

Solomon-Godeau on Maier

Thanks to (Notes on) Politics, Theory & Photography for the post Abigail Solomon-Godeau on Vivian Maier which links to “Inventing Vivian Maier” by Abigail Solomon-Godeau on the Jeu du Paume ‘le magazine’ web site (also available in French.)

It is, as one would expect, a penetrating analysis of the Maier phenomenon, and reflects on the whole ‘fabrication’ of an art-historical model of photographic history. It contains a number of insights both into the industry around her work since its ‘discovery’ and into her motivations and practice, some of which I think are truly novel and others which although obvious have been deliberately obscured, for example the clear influences on her images of photographic work by many others, including contemporary imagery.

There are also some interesting comments about what she calls “the dubious generic category of “street photography,” a category so capacious as to be effectively meaningless” which I look forward to reading more about in her forthcoming book. I’ve long thought that it was a term that could only be rescued by some much tighter and less inclusive re-definition – and a concept that has led to much vacuous and shallow photography.

In her final section, Solomon-Godeau brings up the question that has recently emerged about the ownership of the copyright of Maier’s work. Since she died intestate, and without any known living relatives, the state of Illinois might have claims on the sale of her prints and reprints of her photographs. The intellectual property of copyright in her images, the largest aspect of her estate was at the time unknown to the state and is not mentioned in the probate paperwork. But neither was it purchased by those people who bought her effects from the storage company before her death. It could be an interesting question for the lawyers, though it seems most likely to this layman that Illinois could make a valid claim for the copyright as the existence of this property was not known at the time of probate.

Julio Etchart’s Chile

Julio Etchart was born in Uruguay but settled in England and studied documentary photography in Newport where David Hurn had arrived in 1973 to found a course that became renowned around the world. It was a course based around working hard on photographic projects and the intensive criticism of students work, an approach that has produced many fine documentary photographers. In 1973 it was a breath of reality into photographic education, at least in the UK, and has since provided a model for many courses elsewhere.

Etchart spent time in the 1980s documenting life under the Pinochet regime and the opposition to his regime, both in Chile and in the UK, for the international press, and in 1988 Amnesty International commissioned a show of his work for their campaign on human rights violations in Chile.

You can see some of Etchart’s work from Chile on his web site (along with other photography) and for the next few days an updated version of the 1988 exhibition is showing at the Amnesty International UK Human Rights Action Centre, 17-25 New Inn Yard, London, EC2A 3EA (weekdays 9-5 until 20 Sept 2013.) It is a powerful record of the opposition by the people – particularly women – to the repressive regime.

The show is timed to mark the 40th anniversary of Chile’s 9/11, when on 11th September 1972 a US-backed military junta overthrew and killed the democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende. One of its leaders was Augusto Pinochet, who later became President, stepping down in 1990. More than 40,000 people were arrested during the coup and held in the National Stadium, and many were tortured and killed. Others disappeared without trace. Wikipedia reports “1,200–3,200 people were killed, up to 80,000 were interned, and up to 30,000 were tortured by his government including women and children.” Human rights abuses including deaths and disappearances continued throughout his Presidency, and at his death “about 300 criminal charges were still pending against him in Chile for numerous human rights violations, tax evasion, and embezzlement“.

Among the other interesting sets of work on his web site is one inspired by George Orwell’s Burmese Days, produced for the 75th anniversary of its publication. Based on Orwell’s own experiences as a police officer in the Indian Imperial Police force, the book is, in Etchart’s words “one of the greatest denunciations of imperialism ever written, and a powerful critique of the colonial mindset that underpinned the system.” The photographs are best seen in the full preview of Etchart’s book Katha: In the footsteps of George Orwell in Burma (change to full page view to see it best) on Blurb. There is also a YouTube video with a spoken commentary, but to me this lacks the urgency of Etchart’s pictures and voice.

Last month I mentioned some of Etchart’s more recent work in Street Isn’t Documentary.