The Art of Empty Space by Martin Agius

       How Negative Space Shapes Your Photos

In photography, Negative Space refers to the empty or unoccupied areas that surround the main subject within a composition.  While it may seem like “nothingness,” Negative Space plays a crucial role in shaping the overall balance, mood, and visual impact of an image.  It’s the area that allows the subject — known as Positive Space — to stand out clearly and command attention.

Think of Negative Space as the breathing room in a photograph.  It gives the viewer’s eye a place to rest and helps emphasize the main subject without distractions.  Far from being just a background, it becomes a compositional tool that gives structure and purpose to the image.

The Power of Simplicity - “Less is More”

Negative Space often aligns with the minimalist philosophy that less is more.  By simplifying a scene, photographers can highlight what truly matters and eliminate visual clutter.  A photograph doesn’t always need to be filled with detail to be powerful.  In fact, sometimes, it’s the emptiness — the sky, a blank wall, a stretch of sea — that provides emotional depth.

When used effectively, Negative Space can convey a variety of feelings:

●      Calmness and Serenity - by using soft tones and balanced composition

●      Solitude or Isolation - through large empty areas and small subjects

●      Tension or Drama - when the empty space creates a sense of imbalance or anticipation

These emotional tones depend on the relationship between the subject and the surrounding space — a delicate balance that can transform a simple photo into a visually striking image.

How Negative Space Works in Composition

Every photograph is a combination of positive space (the subject) and negative space (the surrounding emptiness).  The two must complement one another for the composition to work effectively.

Negative Space helps to:

●      Draw attention to the subject by isolating it from distractions.

●      Create balance within the frame, making the image easier to look at.

●      Enhance depth and perspective especially when combined with light, colour or texture.

●      Define mood and tone to give the photograph its emotional resonance.

When used thoughtfully, Negative Space can turn an ordinary subject into a visually strong image.  For example, a lone figure walking across an empty beach may appear small — yet the vastness around the person tells a deeper story of freedom, isolation, or peace.

Applying Negative Space Across Different Genres

Negative Space is not limited to one style, it’s a universal visual tool that works across many types of photography.

●      Street Photography - In busy urban environments, Negative Space helps separate the subject from chaotic backgrounds.  A clean wall or a patch of light can become a stage for your subject to stand out in.

●      Portraiture - Using empty backgrounds, like a plain studio wall or open landscape, can place full attention on the person’s expression and posture.

●      Landscape Photography - Wide skies, open fields, and water scenarios may be used as Negative Space to create a sense of scale and vastness.

●      Fine Art Photography - Here, Negative Space becomes symbolic — representing silence, stillness, and even introspection.

Each genre allows for experimentation with the same underlying idea, which resonate the same identical message - space is part of the story.

Practical Tips for Using Negative Space

1. Simplify the Frame - Before pressing the shutter, look out for distractions Move your position or change your framing to isolate the subject.

2. Use the Rule of Thirds - Place your subject off-centre and allow empty areas to occupy a significant part of the composition.

3. Control Depth of Field - A shallow depth of field can turn backgrounds into soft, minimal areas that act as Negative Space.

4. Play with Light and Contrast - Bright areas or shadows can serve as Negative Space when they complement the subject.

5. Experiment with Cropping - In post-processing, leave extra space around the subject to create openness or tension.

The Emotional Impact of Space

Negative Space is not just visual, it’s emotional.  The use of emptiness can completely change how a photograph feels.  A small subject surrounded by a vast sky may feel lonely or contemplative.  On the other hand, the same emptiness can create a sense of peace and calm, inviting the viewer to pause and reflect.

In many ways, Negative Space gives photographs a voice through silence.  It’s what you don’t show that often speaks the loudest.

Conclusion

Mastering the use of Negative Space takes practice and awareness.  It challenges photographers to think not only about what to include but also about what to exclude.  By using emptiness as an intentional design element, photographers can create images that are visually balanced, emotionally powerful, and deeply engaging.

Negative Space reminds us that photography isn’t just about subjects, it’s about how space, silence, and simplicity work together to tell a story.  Once you learn to see the power of emptiness, your compositions will become cleaner, stronger, and far more expressive.

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João Freire and Batsceba Hardy share their insights on theatre photography.

My name is João Freire and I am a Portuguese photographer.

I live in the countryside of Portugal, in the Alentejo, in Santiago do Cacém.

The first time I photographed a theatre, I asked permission from the promoter of all theatre plays in my region and from the Director of the Portuguese Theatre company “A Barraca”. The famous actress Maria do Céu Guerra was very apprehensive because she didn’t know me. They liked my work a lot, and after this play, the promoter invited me to photograph all the theatre plays, workshops and rehearsals promoted by his company.

During this time, I photograph national and international theatre companies.

This is the story of how I started photographing Theater.

I have to say big thanks to Theatre Promoter Mário Primo and to Association Ajagato for believing in me and in my work.

BH - How did you develop this interest in photographing other people's performances?

JF - I love documentary and street photography and I love to photograph emotions. The theatre is dramatic and full of emotion at its peak.

BH - What difficulties did you encounter and how did you overcome them?

JF - Before all theatre plays, I phoned the promoter to give me access to all, even the actors' warm-up.

BH - How do you photograph in darkness?

JF - In theatre photography, it’s not permitted to use flash.

My cameras handle high ISOs very well, and the light is sufficient to photograph without any problems. I normally use a 24-70 F4 Lens and on some occasions a 70-200 F2.8 Lens.

BH - And how do you do it when people are in motion?

JF - I tend to use a minimum shutter speed of 1/125 seconds but sometimes also love to use slow shutter speeds.

BH - How do you feel about having to become invisible so as not to disturb?

JF - My usual approach is not very standard for a photographer. My deal with the companies is to stay seated in the first row, in front of the stage, and not move on that occasion. I only play with the objectives and the focal distances.

BH - Do you believe that, with your shot, you can add something to the performance by giving your own interpretation, or do you think it's just mere documentation?

JF - I love to photograph from the first row of chairs, especially low-angle shots, because it gives more drama.

Sometimes there are three people photographing, and each of us has different photos of the same play.

I think all of us add something to the performance because each of us has a unique vision and interpretation. 

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In loving memory of Frans Kemper

I believe he chose me. At the beginning of the adventure, he became my knight, defending me against all attacks on Facebook. 

It wasn't easy to build everything I have, and I managed it thanks to his invisible help as well. He believed in my project. Our project. 

One day, we argued: one of those absurd arguments that can happen via email. We made peace. I don't remember either the reason for the argument or how it was resolved; I only know that he became my right-hand man. If I needed anything, he was always there, ready with a message on WhatsApp. 

He talked to me about his pains and the infinite joy he was destined for in recent years. And then he flew away.

Leaving a void in all of us.

BH

Here are the photos. To me, these are very special as they are the last photos that he took, some just a day before his unfortunate accident. And they really show his passion and talent for street photography, in a city where he ended his life in a very happy state. There is even one where you can see him in the car mirror, which must be the last photograph of him.

This is the final paragraph in a eulogy I wrote for him:

"In recent months, I have spent some time poring over photos of him for the purposes of making a slideshow of his life, but I have also been looking at his own work. I spent some time editing his most recent photos, some of which you can see in the slideshow, including some from the day before he was critically injured, wandering the streets of Havana. While my father dabbled in different styles over the decades, I think the thing he loved most was street photography. He loved immersing himself in the chaos of a busy city and documenting the fleeting moments of beauty. He had a great talent for photographing people – not only in a candid state, but also by making them smile and laugh on purpose, and capturing their radiance. I like to think that this passion of his reflects an overall love for humanity that he carried with him everywhere he went, in particular in his final years. I think this is also reflected in the sincere, heartfelt outpouring of love and sympathy from several of his communities of friends and fellow photographers when they learned of his passing. And as time passes, this is also how I will remember my father. And I will honour his life by sharing his stories and memories with my son, who carries papa’s name as one of his middle names, together with the name of his other late grandfather."

Rudo Kemper

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This is the book I wanted to find in an Amsterdam bookshop the first time I went there. And all subsequent times.

Read it carefully, don't just look at the pictures.

Batsceba Hardy

In this artistic series Frans Kemper wanted to highlight the state of perennial loneliness that every human being feels. No one can enter another's head ... We can only know what’s in our own, but even then, not very well. The series is symbolist, using the number seven as the number of days of the week, the seven heavens of Judaism and the number seven as a magic number. A disturbing interpretation that struck all the judges.

Batsceba Hardy

ProgresFestival, Milano Ottobre 2022

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It is rare to meet people like Frans Kemper. Kindness in the hand, a caring heart, kindness, benevolence, at all times. A sense of humor. So many qualities. It is an immense loss. All my love goes to his family, close and far, his family of heart. I still keep your smile Franz during our photographic walk in Cuba and sincerely the best moment. I will always miss you, but your smile and your joy make the greatest

Myriam Aadli

November 2024

Martin Parr by Batsceba Hardy

I am what I photograph. We are all photographers now!

© Instagram

Martin Parr is probably the most famous British photographer and photojournalist. His shots, characterised by a very contrasty, bright use of colour, tell the story of (bad) taste and behaviour among the English middle class in the '80s. With irony and subtle humour, Parr focuses ruthlessly on clichés and behaviours that ultimately are part of Western culture.

He was born in England in May of 1952 and died on 7th December 2025.

In the early 1970s, he studied photography at Manchester Polytechnic.

The Non-Conformists features Martin Parr’s first significant body of work from the mid-1970s, published here for the first time in book form.

In 1980, he married Susan Mitchell. Ellen, their only child, was born in 1986. He lived in Bristol from 1987 until his death.

He began his professional photography work in the mid-1970s. He first became recognised for his interesting black-and-white photographs of Bad Weather (1982) and A Fair Day (1984), both in northern England.

In 1984, he switched to colour photography.

His The Last Resort photos of New Brighton were published in 1986.

Signs of the Times: A Portrait of the Nation’s Tastes in 1992

In 1994, Parr joined Magnum Photos.

Parr has published many books. Books by Martin Parr

He has been featured in about 100 exhibitions around the world: Exhibitions

In 2007, Martin Parr's retrospective was the main event at Singapore's Month of Photography Asia (MOPA), highlighting his saturated-colour style and commentary on consumerism. He also published Fashion Newspaper, examining street fashion in Asia and beyond. In 2008, Parr received the Royal Photographic Society’s Centenary Medal, an Honorary Fellowship, and an Honorary Doctor of Arts from Manchester Metropolitan University for his contributions to photography and the university’s School of Art.

“In the 70s, in Britain, if you were going to do serious photography, you were obliged to work in black-and-white,” master photographer Martin Parr tells TIME. “Colour was the palette of commercial photography and snapshot photography.”

"I did do some colour within the Home Sweet Home project in the early 70’s, but it wasn’t until 1982 when I moved back from Ireland that I seriously took to colour. This was sparked off by seeing the colour work emerge from the US from photographers such as Joel Meyerowitz, William Eggleston and Stephen Shore. I had also encountered the postcards of John Hinde when I worked at Butlin’s in the early 70s, and the bright saturated colour of these had a big impact on me."

“Black-and-white is certainly more nostalgic, by nature,” he says. “My black-and-white work is more of a celebration, and the colour work became more of a critique of society.”

"The fundamental thing I'm exploring constantly is the difference between the mythology of the place and the reality of it."

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A discussion with Martin Parr:

http://www.boring.ch/waapn/incoming/podcasts/martin_parr.mp3

I avoid Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and if I need to communicate with someone, I email directly.

Photography is, by its nature, exploitative.

It's whether you use this process with a sense of responsibility or not.

I feel that I do so. My conscience is clear.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

www.martinparr.com/faq/

How did you achieve these bright colours? I used amateur film, most recently Fuji 400 Superior for the 6/7 cm camera and Agfa Ultra or Fuji 100 ASA film for the ring flash and macro lens. This, combined with flash, gives very high colour saturation; no Photoshop was used.

Now that you use digital, do you pump up the colours using Photoshop? No, not at all. I just let the colour look as natural as possible, but, of course, flash does help with saturation.

"I use amateur film, currently Fuji 400 Superior for the 6/7 camera and Agfa Ultra or Fuji 100 ASA for the ring flash and macro lens.

This, combined with flash, gives very high colour saturation; no Photoshop was used."

Quotes:

Fashion pictures show people looking glamorous. Travel pictures show a place looking at its best, nothing to do with reality. In the cookery pages, the food always looks fantastic, right? Most of the pictures we consume are propaganda.

Unless it hurts, unless there’s some vulnerability there, I don’t think you’re going to get good photographs.

Part of the role of photography is to exaggerate, and that is an aspect that I have to puncture. I do that by showing the world as I really find it.

Criticism is hypocrisy; society is hypocrisy. I'm a tourist. I'm a consumer. I do the things that I photograph and can be criticised for.

Modern technology has taken the angst out of achieving the perfect shot. For me, the only thing that counts is the idea behind the image: what you want to see and what you're trying to say. The idea is crucial. You have to think of something you want to say and expand upon it.

For those aspiring to make a living from travel photography, it's a sad fact that the boring shots are the shots that are going to make you money.

I photograph people as I find them. But people have issues about how they look.

We live in a homogenised world, where it's hard to get excited when everything is slick and professional. The interesting things are the dull things.

I like to keep in touch with younger photographers.

It's important that a younger generation comes up and questions the assumptions made by old farts like me.

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Bibliography

www.popphoto.com/photos/2008

theexposureproject.blogspot.it

www.undo.net/it/mostra/55952

The Non-Conformists: Martin Parr’s Early Work in Black-and-White

The foibles of the world/Telegraph

Oct 5, 2015 https://www.deviantart.com/batsceba/journal/COLOR-STREET-PHOTOGRAPHY-8-MARTIN-PARR-561647388

Gianni Berengo Gardin by Batsceba Hardy and Alberto M. Melis

Gianni Berengo Gardin, who sadly passed away this August, was an important figure in photography and is known as one of Italy's best photographers. He was born in Santa Margherita Ligure in 1930, but considered Venice his true hometown, as he often said he was born in Liguria because his parents were on vacation there. His journey in photography began in the early 1950s. Since then, he has built a large collection of photographs that show the changes in Italy's landscape and society from the post-war period to today. His work covers many themes, such as social issues, everyday life, labour, architecture, and landscapes. Berengo Gardin's diverse approach gained him international fame. Many compared him to Henri Cartier-Bresson because of the beauty of his photos. However, he humbly turned down this comparison, saying he admired Cartier-Bresson but felt closer to the style of  Willy Ronis.

We're trying to intrigue you here so that you can discover more about his work. It's really strange how many of his images are covered by copy, but there is no website dedicated to him in an organised way. It's the true and rare example of a photographer who thinks. He is also one of the last photographers. Today, photography is something else. And I'm not sure if I like it.

Batsceba Hardy

Gianni Berengo Gardin died at the age of 94, another of the great photographers of the 20th century, whose work propelled him into the early decades of the new millennium. To attest to the greatness of Gianni Berengo Gardin, the numbers that accompanied his work would suffice. Over 60 years of activity as a documentary photographer — “I am not an artist,” he used to say, “I document”; two million shots, almost all taken with his inseparable Leica; 220 published books; thousands of reports for major international newspapers; an enormous number of small and large photographic exhibitions across different continents.

The great photographer, “not an artist,” was actually endowed with a strong eclecticism that allowed him to explore multiple fields. From landscape photography to architecture. From street photography to portraiture and social reportage, where the ever-present light of his commitment to ordinary people, workers, and the poor was most evident.

Among the photos exhibited in major European and non-European galleries, those taken in Italian mental asylums in the 1960s still cut like knives. Where the mentally ill, men and women, were confined in conditions of genuine segregation. Thanks also to Gianni Berengo Gardin’s photographs, Italian mental asylums were eventually closed for good.

Gianni Berengo Gardin, like other great photographers, refused to switch to digital and stubbornly continued to shoot with film. He insisted that every photo taken on film was a “true photo.”

Alberto M. Melis

In 1968, Franco Basaglia commissioned photographer Carla Cerati to document Italian asylums for a magazine. Uncomfortable with the task, Cerati requested Berengo Gardin to accompany her, agreeing that he could also take photographs.

They worked in four hospitals: Gorizia, Colorno, Florence, and Ferrara. Their level of access varied, with Gorizia being more open, while their visit to Florence was limited and met with resistance from the management.

Berengo Gardin captured many images, including meetings between patients, but photos featuring Basaglia were excluded to avoid the impression of paternalism.

Foot points out that the photographs from Gorizia focused more on the oppressive past rather than the unusually free conditions at the time. Before the book's release, an exhibition titled "Institutionalised Violence," supported by politician Mario Tommasini, showcased many images that would appear in *Morire di classe*.

Published by Einaudi in 1969, the book critically examines the conditions of Italian psychiatric hospitals through powerful imagery. It combines elements of photography and sociology, encouraging viewers to engage with its content. Featuring black-and-white photographs by Cerati and Gardin, the book intersperses images of walls, bodies, and straitjackets with texts by Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault, and others.

Advocating for the recovery of marginalised individuals raises ethical questions about the balance between revelation and exploitation when portraying mental illness.

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In the 90s, he created the reportage *The life, despite: multiple sclerosis, diary in images*, a pivotal social communication monograph. It depicted Marigia, a 51-year-old teacher in a wheelchair due to multiple sclerosis, highlighting her daily life with visual and emotional impact. The photographer followed her in Sardinia, capturing her gestures amid fatigue and resilience. He also documented an AISM clinical centre and accessible paths on the Asiago Plateau, using his poetic gaze to show the disease's complexity and the strength of those facing it.

Image created by Berengo Gardin per Associazione Italiana Sclerosi Multipla

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Synopsis In this film, beginning with Venice, BERENGO GARDIN recall past experiences as well as his many reports, such a those on the psychiatric institutes, the 1968 movement,the gypsies. All of this, always with deep respect and considering the eye, heart and mind equally important... Director: Giampiero D'Angeli Screenwriter: Alice Maxia Year: 2009 Lenght: 52 minutes Country : Italy Language: Italian; Subtitles:italiano,francais,english, espagnol Production: Luca Molducci, Giart - Visioni d’arte (Bologna, Italy) In collaboration with Cineteca di Bologna

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Venezia, aprile 2013. L’usurpante passaggio della mastodontica nave da crociera MSC Divina davanti a Piazza San Marco © Gianni Berengo Gardin

Venezia, aprile 2013. I giganteschi mostri di ferro e vetro irrompono nella laguna, imponendosi minacciosamente all’orizzonte © Gianni Berengo Gardin

Venezia, agosto 2013. La MSC Fantasia, vero grattacielo sull’acqua, s’insinua tra gli edifici secolari del centro storico © Gianni Berengo Gardin

Venezia e le grandi Navi

The reportage started two years ago as a gesture of love for Venice, a city I've long felt connected to. 

I began photographing Venice in 1954, first as an amateur and then professionally from 1962. Due to my bond with the city, I couldn't ignore the threat from massive cruise ships crossing the Giudecca Canal daily. Seeing them for the first time, I was shocked, not just by their size. My amazement turned into indignation.

These ships, twice as long as St. Mark's Square and as high as the Doge's Palace, jeopardise Venice's health. They cause pollution, create waves that erode foundations, and risk accidents like the one in Genoa in 2013. If they hit historic buildings, the damage could be irreversible.

For two weeks, I woke at five to photograph the ships passing by, sometimes waiting hours, often in cold and rain. Sometimes, no ships appeared.

I knew these photos would matter. Though protests against large ships existed, I'd seen no images showing the havoc they cause.

My photos are honest, without Photoshop- if possible, I'd ban it. Sometimes I used an 80 mm telephoto lens, sometimes a 50 mm. Anyone in Venice can experience this firsthand. The ships' surreal size and black-and-white contrast draw viewers' attention.

This is a straightforward denunciation, made without commission, to expose the danger and madness of this spectacle. Photography has powerful communication, as shown by Libération, which once published a blank issue to highlight photography’s emotional impact.

My photos aim to document and provoke reflection on the reckless pursuit of profit, risking Venice's extraordinary heritage.

Venice has changed, increasingly for tourists rather than locals, but I still love it, especially from midnight to eight in the morning.

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For reportage photographers, the work is over; there is no more work for them. There is work for fashion, advertising, and architecture photographers. These days, everyone makes reportage, even with a mobile phone, and therefore there's an inflation of photographs, often good ones, but the majority are very poor photos.
The ingredients for a good photograph are the content that tells something (and today's photos tell little), content that is ideally connected, even if not always necessary, with a formal value.
Culture has always been important and remains so today. With photography, you can create culture, or have fun, show things superficially, but some people use it to explore themes more deeply.
I would advise young people not to shoot randomly, as is often done today with digital cameras, but to start with a clearly defined project, aiming to convey a message and think before pressing the shutter. Nowadays, people shoot randomly; instead, they should think first and then, if appropriate, take photos—it's not always necessary to shoot. If the subject and the theme warrant it, then take the shot; otherwise, don’t shoot. In Milan, a major company that produces digital cameras ran a big advertisement saying: “Don’t think, shoot”. I tell my students the exact opposite.
Yes, I still shoot with film because I believe it is much superior to digital. Digital photography has only two advantages: immediacy (you can take a photo and send it to Delhi or Moscow in two minutes) and the ability to adjust the sensitivity (if taken in a bright place, you can lower the ISO, and vice versa).
The analogue is superior to the digital.
Especially in archives, digital archives will no longer exist. However, archives are essential, as demonstrated by this exhibition, which includes photographs from sixty years ago. A negative can always be printed even after two or three hundred years. For digital, however, you can never be sure.

Interview on the occasion of Dialoghi sull'uomo, il festival dell'antropologia del contemporaneo 2017 – Pistoia

Gianni Berengo Gardin, «Gubbio, Festa dei Ceri, 1976» © Gianni Berengo Gardin. Courtesy Fondazione Forma per la Fotografia.

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Joel Meyerowitz by Batsceba Hardy

Joel Meyerowitz

«It’s (photography) me asking myself: ‘How interesting is this medium?

And how interesting can I make it for me? And, by the way, who the fuck am »

«No, not yet [smiling], and time is running out. But I’m getting»

Joel Meyerowitz is a renowned figure in colour street photography and an award-winning photographer whose work has been featured in over 350 exhibitions in museums and galleries worldwide. I saw some of his work in Berlin at Galerie Springer on August 28, 2014.

Born in New York in 1938, Joel Meyerowitz began his photography career in 1962 as a street photographer, inspired by the traditions of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank. He primarily worked with two 35mm Leica for a long time, using black and white and colour film. As he became increasingly attracted to colour photography, he decided to experiment with different formats. Noticing that traditional methods were relatively slow, he contemplated, "Why not go all the way to 8x10 large format and take things really slow?"

Meyerowitz was among the early advocates for colour photography in the mid-1960s, playing a significant role in transforming the perception of colour photography from scepticism to widespread acceptance.

His first book, ‘Cape Light’, is considered a classic in colour photography and has sold over 150,000 copies over its 30-year lifespan. He has authored many other books, including ‘Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness in New York City Parks’ (Aperture). In 2013, his 50-year retrospective book, ‘Taking My Time’, was published by Phaidon Press.

Click on the image

Click on the image

Click on the image

His work exhibits a distinct vitality—vibrant, attentive, and generous. There is a sense that he is fully engaged and aware in his photography. His images reveal that the everyday world is filled with wonder when viewed from the right perspective. Meyerowitz expands on the ability of colour film to capture a broader sense of experiences in “real life.”

Joel Meyerowitz has shot alongside other legends such as Garry Winogrand and Tony Ray-Jones, and he even had a chance encounter with Henri Cartier-Bresson on the streets.

I would have liked to have been able to interview him for Progressive Street, and instead of creating yet another critical analysis, I preferred to explore his many interviews and statements to interpret his work. I find his words to be thorough and revealing.

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“I was overwhelmed. The streets, the intense flow of people, the light changing, the camera that I couldn’t quite get to work quickly enough. It just paralysed me. I had to learn to identify what it was exactly I was responding to, and if my response was any good. The only way to do that is to take pictures, print them, look hard at them and discuss them with other people.“

“One of the very first things I learned working on the street is when the moment arrives—you need to take a picture of the moment and often the frame itself isn’t a perfect frame. It isn’t a Cartier-Bresson classically organized frame. It has a different kind of energy in it—it is clumsier, bolder, it is more about the first strength of the connection of whatever is going on and your strength as an artist.”

“The thought for us [street photographers] was always: “How much could we absorb and embrace of a moment of existence that would disappear in an instant?” And, “Could we really make it live as art?” There was an almost moral dimension.”

“I believe that street photography is central to the issue of photography—that it is purely photographic, whereas the other genres, such as landscape and portrait photography, are a little more applied, more mixed in the with the history of painting and other art forms.”

“Why is it that the best poetry comes out of the most ordinary circumstances? You don’t have to have extreme beauty to write beautifully. You don’t have to have grand subject matter. I don’t need the Parthenon. This little dinky bungalow is my Parthenon. It has scale; it has color; it has presence; it is real: I’m not trying to work with grandeur. I’m trying to work with ordinariness. I’m trying to find what spirits me away. Ordinary things. – What did I say when I drove by those bungalows—something about the lives lived in them?”

“[The small camera] taught me energy and decisiveness and immediacy … The large camera taught me reverence, patience, and meditation. … It transforms your way of looking at the world. First of all it is upside down, which is a whole other way of relating to things. And a wonderful way too because it sort of takes the content out of the context so now you are looking at it for something about the weights and the feelings. It’s not composition; it’s about how you know the push/pull of it.  …  Whereas with the Leica on the street the immediacy, the sense that something is actually happening and you are in the moment with it so that when you reach out with the camera, you are part of it and it disappears instantly. It’s the only instrument that stops things from disappearing. You can save them in that way. I learned, I think everything I know about being an artist, using a Leica on the streets. It taught me to understand human nature and to predict even the kinds of little things that might be happening. It has engaged my curiosity with the world and the meaning that comes out of the world. It’s really been an instrument of my education and development as an artist. That’s a mighty tool.”

“The 8 x 10 taught me reverence, patience, and meditation. It added another dimension to the scene, and the pictures are a product of two conditions, awareness and time. I had to modify my early discipline. Every artist’s growing process involves giving up something to get something else. You’re giving up your prejudices and preconceptions, and if you refuse to give those up then you don’t grow. You stay where you are.”

“I think [shooting with the 8×10] has changed me, for the better. I’ve noticed over the years (I’ve been shooting the view camera now for thirty-one years) and I’ve had many people say to me, in response to the view camera work, how Buddhist it is, how meditative it is, and often, if I’ve given a public lecture, someone will come to me afterwards and say, “are you a practicing Buddhist?” and I realize, in some ways, whatever has happened to me through using that camera, and its slowness, and the studied, reflective quality of it, has quieted me down.”

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Foreword from Cape Light, conversational interviews with Bruce MacDonald, dean of the Museum School, July 22-26, 1977:

Bruce MacDonald: Why are you using color?

Meyerowitz: Because it describes more things.

Bruce MacDonald: What do you mean by description?

Meyerowitz: When I say description, I don’t only mean mere fact and the cold accounting of things in the frame. I really mean the sensation I get from things—their surface and color—my memory of them in other conditions as well as their connotative qualities. Color plays itself out along a richer band of feelings—more wavelengths, more radiance, more sensation. I wanted to se more and experience more feelings from a photograph, and I wanted bigger images that would describe things more fully, more cohesively. Slow-speed color film provided that.

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“The fact is that color film appears to be responsive to the full spectrum of visible light while black and white reduces the spectrum to a very narrow wavelength. This stimulates in the user of each material a different set of responses. A color photograph gives you a chance to study and remember how things look and feel in color. It enables you to have feelings along the full wavelength of the spectrum, to retrieve emotions that were perhaps bred in you from infancy—from the warmth and pinkness of your mother’s breast, the loving brown of you puppy’s face, and the friendly yellow of your pudding. Color is always part of experience. Grass is green, not gray; flesh is color, not gray. Black and white is a very cultivated response.”

“What is the art experience about? Really, I’m not interested in making “Art” at all. I never, ever, think about it. To say the word “Art”, it’s almost like a curse on art. I do know that I want to try to get closer to myself. The older I get, the more indications I have about what it is to get closer to yourself. You try less hard. I just want to be.” –

“I think about photographs as being full, or empty. You picture something in a frame and it’s got lots of accounting going on in it–stones and buildings and trees and air – but that’s not what fills up a frame. You fill up the frame with feelings, energy, discovery, and risk, and leave room enough for someone else to get in there.”

“Photography is a response that has to do with the momentary recognition of things. Suddenly you’re alive. A minute later there was nothing there. I just watched it evaporate. You look one moment and there’s everything, next moment it’s gone. Photography is very philosophical.”

“’Tough’ meant it was an uncompromising image, something that came from your gut, out of instinct, raw, of the moment, something that couldn’t be described in any other way. So it was tough. Tough to like, tough to see, tough to make, tough to understand. The tougher they were the more beautiful they became.”

“What are we all trying to get to in the making of anything? We’re trying to get to ourselves. What I want is more of my feelings and less of my thoughts. I want to be clear. I see the photograph as a chip of experience itself. It exists in the world. It is not a comment on the world. In a photograph you don’t look for, you look at! It’s close to the thing itself. It’s like an excitation. I want the experience that I am sensitive to to pass back into the world, fixed by chemistry and light to be reexamined. That’s what all photographs are about—looking at things hard. I want to find an instrument with the fidelity of its own technology to carry my feelings in a true, clear, and simple way. That’s how I want to think about less is more.”

All photos in this article are copyrighted by Joel Meyerowitz.

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FROM THE CAR

          Joel Meyerowitz- Icon with a Leica

• Joel Meyerowitz: ‘brilliant mistakes … amazing accidents’ [The Guardian]

• 12 Lessons Joel Meyerowitz Has Taught Me About Street Photography Eric Kim

• Half A Century Of Making Photographs: A Conversation With Joel Meyerowitz

Francis Meadow (Frank) Sutcliffe by Batsceba Hardy

"The essence of art is to conceal art."

Francis Meadow (Frank) Sutcliffe (6 October 1853 – 31 May 1941) stands as a remarkable figure in the history of photography, celebrated for his insightful documentation of life in Whitby, a picturesque seaside town in England. His work vividly captures the essence of the late Victorian and early 20th centuries and has earned him the “Pictorial Boswell of Whitby.”

Francis Sutcliffe was born in Headingley, Leeds, to painter Thomas Sutcliffe and Sarah Lorentia Button. He was the eldest of eight children and often found inspiration in his father's studio. Francis received his early education at a dame school, which laid the foundation for his future artistic endeavors. In 1870, his family moved to Whitby in search of new opportunities. However, after his father's passing just a year later, Francis took on the responsibility as the head of the household at the young age of 18.

Despite aspiring to become a painter like his father, who disdained photography as an art form, Francis switched to photography after his father’s death. He initially opened a studio in Tunbridge Wells but returned to his hometown of Whitby in 1876. There, he operated a commercial portrait studio and spent his spare time photographing the town and its surrounding countryside. These photographs helped establish his artistic reputation.

On 1 January 1875, Sutcliffe married Eliza Weatherill Duck, the daughter of a local bootmaker. The couple had a son and four daughters and found their home in High Stakesby Cottages in the Ruswarp parish of Whitby. Sutcliffe lived a rich life dedicated to his craft until his passing at 87 at Hvid(e)t Huus on Carr Lane in Briggswath, Sleights; he is interred in Aislaby churchyard.

Sutcliffe’s professional journey began as a portrait photographer in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, before settling in Whitby. Influenced by artistic luminaries such as John Ruskin, whom his father had introduced him to, he cultivated a unique style. While he initially found it challenging to balance commercial work with his artistic aspirations—often photographing holidaymakers—he discovered his true calling by capturing the lives of the ordinary people around him. His studio on Skinner Street in a repurposed jet grinding workshop became a vital part of the community and a window into late Victorian life.

Among his significant works is "Water Rats," taken in 1886, which sparked conversation due to its portrayal of naked children playing in a boat. Rather than being deemed erotic, Sutcliffe used the conventions of the academic nude to elevate photography to the level of fine art. Despite criticism from local clergy who believed the image would undermine public morals, it found recognition when Edward VII (then the Prince of Wales) purchased a copy, highlighting its artistic value.

Beyond photography, Sutcliffe contributed significantly to the discourse on the art form as a prolific writer, regularly submitting articles to various periodicals and penning a column for the Yorkshire Weekly Post. His works are thoughtfully preserved in the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society collections and other esteemed institutions.

As a founding member of the Linked Ring Brotherhood, Sutcliffe played a crucial role in promoting photography as an art form. He was honoured to be an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 1941. At the age of 70, he took on the role of curator at the Whitby Gallery and Museum, a position

Sutcliffe possessed an unwavering passion for landscape photography that, despite not yielding immediate financial gain, was instrumental in establishing his reputation within the photographic community. This burgeoning acclaim drew the attention of numerous tourists who were enthusiastic about having their portraits taken by him, transforming his art into a means of connection with visitors eager to capture their experiences.

In his pursuit of capturing life in a late Victorian town, Sutcliffe focused on familiar faces engaged in their everyday routines. His extensive collection of photographs provides a vivid tableau of the town’s inhabitants and their lively interactions, showcasing a snapshot of societal dynamics during that era.

Equipped with a mahogany whole plate camera mounted securely on a sturdy tripod, Sutcliffe initially worked with slow exposure wet-plates. The meticulous process required a portable darkroom, a cumbersome setup that challenged his efficiency. However, the introduction of dry plates revolutionized his workflow, allowing him to venture forth without the burden of immediate developing materials. With this advancement, he could now carry around a manageable number of approximately twelve exposures at any given time—a stark contrast to the virtually limitless photographic potential we enjoy today with modern equipment.

Sutcliffe's portraiture style was distinctly innovative; he preferred that his subjects avoid directly meeting the camera's lens, which lent a candid authenticity to his photographs. Although this approach posed significant challenges due to the prolonged exposure times, compelling his subjects to maintain stillness, Sutcliffe adeptly navigated these constraints.

He possessed an extraordinary talent for arranging individuals in natural, engaging compositions that conveyed genuine moments. His keen ability to foster rapport and creatively guide his subjects was likely pivotal in helping them feel at ease, allowing them to embrace the spontaneity of the moment amidst their bustling lives. This unique blend of technical skill and interpersonal finesse set Sutcliffe apart in the realm of portrait photography.

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Girl on the shore, 1889

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Portrait of Polly Swallow, 1889

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Fisher girl, 1890

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Three happy boys, 1889

Sunshine and Shadow 1890s

The Haven under the Hill

Pier Road, Whitby

"The Dock End", Whitby in 1880

Whitby Fishermen c. 1885

1890 circa "Stern Realities"

Fisher people, c. 1898

Waterrats, (Sea Urchins), 1886

in puris naturalibus in a state of nature

Girls Skaning Mussels

Barry’s Square, The Cragg, Whitby

Farmers Whitby / Dinner Time, c. 1889-91

Robert Frank and The Americans by Cameron Scott

Saturday the 9th November 2024 marks the centenary of the birth of Robert Frank, arguably one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century.

Search for any list of recommended books on the subject of Street Photography and it is almost certain to contain Frank’s most celebrated work - The Americans. And yet, for me, it is a book that sits very uneasily in any of these lists, usually beside other worthy tomes such as Street Photography Now, Magnum Streetwise, The Decisive Moment etc. Anyone who is relatively new to the genre, still going through the steep learning curve (that never ends) and absorbing everything that social and printed media have to offer might be slightly bemused, possibly even disappointed on their first flick through of The Americans. In today’s self-perpetuating online world of Instagram inspired images shared on Instagram, there is nothing to prepare the first-time viewer for the sheer difference in style that Frank’s unique vision realised, although it does lay the foundations. But I think such a comparison is unfair, because Frank’s images in this collection are not intended to be viewed as single standalones. That alone separates it from the vast majority of street photography. Hold the Americans in your hand and you are holding a wonderfully complex, multi layered and beautifully woven commentary on how Frank saw America and presented it to us as a combination of documentary and art.

I won’t go into the background of The Americans too much, that is very well documented elsewhere. Frank was a Swiss immigrant who, funded by a Guggenheim grant, took himself and his family on a series of road trips across America over a period of two years. This resulted in a book and exhibition, which at the time was not particularly well received. It shows an America at unease with itself, and the photography was bold. We are presented with non-formal compositions, blown highlights, wonky lines and other horrors that would see a student chastised. But you can’t just look at these pictures, you have to see. Really see.

Frank was influenced by his friend Walker Evans. Indeed, Evan’s book American Photographs, published twenty years prior to The Americans, is laid out in a similar fashion – one picture per page fold with the opposite side left blank. Evans sat on the committee that approved Frank’s Guggenheim application. He is also reported as having helped Frank with his application, and also suggested locations for Frank to visit in search of subject matter and this can be seen in both books. Frank had also worked on Edward Steichen’s Family of Man exhibition and for some commentators The Americans is Frank’s reaction to, possibly even rejection of the representation of humanity contained within that exhibition. In essence a rejection of Pictorialism.

When I first flicked through my own copy, I felt that I understood some of what was laid before me, but most was way beyond my understanding at that time. What was going on here? Was this a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes or was it me? Was there some personal failing that meant this body of work was beyond my comprehension? My experience as a jazz musician in my youth dictated that I go with the latter scenario. My ability to see needed to evolve, just as my ability to hear had to do so all those years ago.

Repeated viewings meant that The Americans became a companion book over the years. It was always kept separate from my main photobook collection, and while those other books are regularly studied but always well looked after, The Americans ended up grubby and packed with sticky notes as I scribbled down visual connections gleaned during moments of evolving understanding and clarity that occurred with frustrating irregularity.

One aspect of the collection that particularly intrigued me was the image sequencing. Frank had reputedly taken around twenty-eight thousand images, reduced that to eighty-three over a year and then taken four months just to sequence that final selection. As my understanding of photographic art and my ability to see evolved, the layers of Frank’s work were peeled back and the sequencing began to reveal itself, which I will briefly look next. However, I must emphasise here that this is my own interpretation, to a degree shaped by study and research, but I could well be off the mark in some respects. But that is the beauty of this work, we can only take from it what we are able to see at any point in our visual evolution and understanding.

The book is divided into four sections, each featuring the Stars and Stripes flag as an opener. The first image in the book, Parade - Hoboken, New Jersey, kicks off the first section with that American flag, and is the first in a linked sequence, that link being hands and mouths. However, within that sequence we have Funeral – St Helena, South Carolina, which introduces the automobile and its role in the human life cycle, in this case death. Fast forward through the book to an image near the end, Public Park – Ann Arbor, Michigan, and again we see the automobile. This time it provides shelter and privacy for romantic teenagers engaged in what could be considered a mating ritual, the precursor to the creation of life. That image is also thematically linked by romance and the continuity of humanity through ritual to the immediate next in sequence, a newlywed couple in City Hall -Reno, Nevada.

Return to the first section, skip a few  and we see the automobile and its place in the human life cycle again in Motorama – Los Angeles. This time youth is the stage in human life cycle and this image is also thematically linked by youth to the those immediately adjacent. There is obviously much more in this image, but for the purposes of this article I’m keeping the individual interpretations pretty simple. Death features again in Car Accident US 66 Between Winslow And Flagstaff Arizona. Covered Car Long Beach California shows just that, bookended by two palm trees to resemble an altar which has significance in both life and death. Additionally, the car appears to be valued by its owner more highly than the run-down house behind it, another commentary on society and our values.  

This type of multilevel sequencing occurs throughout the book and is not reserved to the automobile, other emblems of Americana get similar treatment. The juke box takes on an almost religious significance in Bar New York City where the blown highlights demand attention, and we see it as a surrogate parent in Café Beaufort South Carolina, overwatching a child at play. Luncheonette Butte Montana and Santa Fe New Mexico both have difference subjects, but their layout is not unlike the stone circles and henges left behind by our predecessors. Petrol pumps and standing stones have a ritualistic significance in each era. In the accompanying collection of images I’ve included my favourite, Elevator Miami Beach. There are no words for this one, just look at it and find your own.

I’ll leave the image interpretations there. I now view the collection as being laid out more like a family tree than just a simple linear sequence of images, it’s a story with sentences, paragraphs and punctuation, where pictures replace words – visual poetry.

After the release of the Americans Frank went on to become an accomplished film maker and also produced many more photographic collections. He passed on 9th September 2019, but his legacy lives on in a lot of work that we see today. Like many Europeans who settled in that great continent, he was a pioneer and possibly the most profound influencer, to borrow an overused word from today’s popular vocabulary.

There have been various editions of The American’s published over the years. The latest is by Aperture and has just been released to coincide with the centenary of his birth, but I’ll stick with my grubby version.

The example images accompanying this essay are the copyright of The June Leaf and Robert Frank Foundation

Ray Francis

Ray Francis

self portrait ‘70

Kamoinge Workshop was a pioneering collective of African American photographers established in New York City in 1963. The founders selected the name Kamoinge, which means "a group of people acting and working together" in the Gikuyu language of Kenya, to symbolize their shared commitment to community, collective action, and a global perspective.

During the Civil Rights era and the Black Arts Movement, Kamoinge members met to share their work and discuss their artistic goals as a group. This included mentoring youth and creating exhibition spaces and publication platforms for Black photographers. They produced a diverse range of artistically excellent and innovative imagery dealing with human relationships, political life, the cultural scene, and the notion of global Black experience. They sought mentorship from elders like the photographer Roy DeCarava and paved the way for the next generation of Black artists.

The Kamoinge Workshop has been active to this day and has expanded its membership. During the Workshop's formative decades in the 1960s and 1970s, fourteen artists played a significant role in shaping Kamoinge and continue to be central to its ongoing dialogue. Nine of these artists are still living and working today. They include Anthony Barboza, Adger Cowans, C. Daniel Dawson, Louis Draper, Albert R. Fennar, Ray Francis, Herman Howard, James Mannas Jr., Herbert Randall, Herb Robinson, Beuford Smith, Ming Smith, Shawn Walker, and Calvin Wilson.

Ray Francis

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Ray Francis 〰️

Today, we will present Ray Francis, born in 1937.

A photographer and educator, Francis edited The Black Photographer’s Annual and, along with Louis Draper, was responsible for the early formation of The Kamoinge Workshop.

An early president of the Kamoinge hosted meetings at his home where members discussed photography, shared meals, and listened to music. In the summer of 1968, he and Draper taught a class for Pratt Institute’s “Campaign Culture” program in Brooklyn. Additionally, from 1967 to 1969, Francis taught a photography class at the Bedford-Stuyvesant Neighborhood Youth Corps and served as a Director of the Harlem School District, inspiring a new generation of young artists. Worked as a photographer for Intermediate School (I.S.) 201 under the NYC Board of Education. He served as the program director from 1970 to 1974.

Ray Francis dedicated most of his time to arts education. Due to the lack of non-commercial interest in photographs by black artists, he produced very few photographs. The artist passed away in 2006.

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Ray Francis challenges the traditional canon of Western Art History, emphasizing the diverse nature of the black artistic experience. Influenced by Johannes Vermeer, his work reflects the style of Dutch Golden Age genre painting, characterized by a subtle interplay of light and shadow. Francis creates a sense of intimacy and narrative ambiguity in his photographs.

In 1952, Ray Francis received a twin-lens reflex camera for his fifteenth birthday, which sparked his interest in photography. He went on to form Group 35 with other black photographers in New York City, including Louis Draper, Herman Howard, and Earl James. Around the same time, Draper was also part of the Kamoinge group. In 1963, Francis suggested merging the two collectives to create The Kamoinge Workshop, a community of Black photographers focused on providing support and fostering artistic development during a time of social and political change. Before the mid-20th century Civil Rights Movement and racial integration, the U.S. was plagued by institutionalized racism, widespread racial inequality, and harmful stereotypes of African Americans perpetuated by the media. Within The Kamoinge Workshop, these photographers were able to learn from each other and capture images that portrayed their own experiences. Their work created counter-narratives that challenged white perceptions of blackness and established visual histories for future generations.

Francis viewed the camera and photography as powerful tools for social activism, but his personal photographs offer a more intimate perspective. He focused on creating aesthetic portraits and experimented with composition and light. His photographs reflect his passion for art history and his meticulous attention to detail. The images are filled with ambiguity, often inviting viewer interpretation. We think of the photo "Genie, 1971", which shows a woman sitting at a round table, lost in thought and avoiding the photographer's gaze. The composition suggests the viewer is positioned across from her, looking down at her from above.

The work of Ray Francis is remarkable for several reasons, which have become even more appreciated over time. His work today showcases several noteworthy aspects: contrast of shadow and light—in–camera experimental methods—motion blur—silhouettes. Photography like this may seem common today, but it originated from innovators like Ray Francis, influencing photographers who came after him and continues to inspire photographers today.

Ray Francis’ work is featured in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Schomburg Collection in New York, and The J. Paul Getty Museum in California. The Bruce Silverstein Gallery in NYC hosted the first-ever exhibition of his works in February 2024. He has also been featured in articles for The New York Times, The Art Newspaper, and Aperture. His most recent feature is the article "Ray Francis, Celebrating Blackness," published in ArtDaily in February 2024.

Louis Mendes by Don Scott

Louis Mendes is an American photographer who was born in Queens, New York in 1940. He got started in photography as a child when his sister gave him a camera. He used this to take photos of family and friends.

As an adult, he worked in retail at Macy's for many years. Then, in 1959, he bought a Graflex Speed Graphics camera that was manufactured in 1940. He shot weddings at New York City Hall and then began shooting families at parades and Coney Island. Louis has also photographed well-known people such as Denzel Washington, Count Bassie, Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, and Spike Lee.

Louis still uses that Speed Graphic camera today. It produces Polaroid-type prints that he gives to people for a fee after taking their portrait. He is well known in New York City as a portrait photographer. Louis can often be found at Coney Island and Union Square in New York City. When he travels to New Orleans, he stations himself on Bourbon and Canal Street.

I met Louis in Grand Central station on March 17, 2024. He was very friendly and allowed me to take his photo. He told me he was 83 years old.

In this video, Louis gives advice to other photographers on how to use cameras similar to his to take portrait photos .

The precise moment Photos by Cristóbal Carretero Cassinello and text by Josep Fábrega Agea

Circus

A multitude of photographers around the world have wondered how the precise moment of shooting is chosen in the act of photographing. For Cartier-Bresson it was when the geometric composition matched the strong lines, especially the golden ratio and this in turn with the action that takes place. For Capa it was when feelings surface on the face and especially in the look and gesture. For Webb when the scene as a whole reflects a harmonic chaos within a range of colors and shadows. For Leiter or Hopper when the urban loneliness of the individual was accentuated. And we could continue like this in a long list of authors.

"Nothing is true or false, everything is according to the color of the glass through which it is seen." Said the Spanish writer Ramón de Campoamor more than a century ago. And each author has his crystal and his color. If we shoot at 1/500 we have photographed a certain hundredth of that scene, if we choose one objective or another we are going to give one narrative or another to the snapshot. Thousands of 360o circles make up an infinite sphere in which a single circle and with a certain number of degrees is chosen as the point of view at a single instant. Of all the hours of the day, we will probably select the one that contains the most appropriate light. , of all the possible characters that are in that scene we will choose only the ones that we consider most appropriate, and even so, we will do it at that exact moment. Finally we will determine the right moment of the frame, where characters, diagonals, textures or colors will help to solve the final composition.

The photographic act requires a precise and multifactorial moment that gives the photograph the narrative chosen by the photographer. There is no more secret. Cassinello rarely uses wide angles, this is an easy resource in street photography. Extraordinarily dramatic. Why did Cassinello give it up? Because he uses plane compression, the mother technique of superimposition and juxtaposition. The different layers merge, increasing the contrast between everyday objects and characters fused into a narrative where objects, people and backgrounds overlap in total complicity.

From this point of view, the precise moment occurs when the overlapping of layers and understanding reinforce the surrealism of his gaze, turning small everyday stories into authentic and personal narratives that stand out from normal life even though they are perfectly real scenes. On the other hand, it uses the Mediterranean light that determines a special color and definition and that gives different qualities, from the creaminess of winter, to the strong contrasts of summer or the ethereal blurring of spring and autumn.

In summary, Cristóbal squares the precise moment in the general framework of the Mediterranean light, from a rather closed angle, compressing the layers of the image in a juxtaposed manner and at the moment in which the scene confers a surreal aspect or an alternative look and free to the everyday events and places that we pass by every day without paying more attention, but for Cassinello they are the visual material to build his beautiful parallel worlds.

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Dandy

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Parr

Eternal Youth

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Fallen angel

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Superpam

Ronald

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Beyond the mirror

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The Thirdman

Valkiria

The Oracle

Cristóbal Carretero Cassinello has lived in Almería (Spain) for more than 25 years, professor of economics, photographer and graphic designer. Graduated in Business Sciences from the UAL and Graduated in Business Administration and Management (ADE) from the UMH. Self-taught photographer since 2017.

His work has been exhibited in different countries around the world, including international photography centers such as the Los Angeles Center of Photography, New York Art Center, and the Portuguese Center of Photography. Cristóbal has won numerous photography competitions, including the Lensculture Home 21 Awards 2021, Creative Photo Awards 2021 | Siena Awards, and Moscow International Photography Awards MY FA. 2021, among others. His work has also been published in online editions of magazines such as Vogue, National Geographic, Musee Magazine, and Street Photography Magazine.

Tish Murtha

Tish Murtha was a talented photographer with a unique ability to capture the essence of people's lives through her lens. She genuinely cared about the people she documented, as they were her family, friends, and neighbours. Her camera was the only way she could help them.

Today, her legacy lives on thanks to her daughter, Ella Murtha. Ella is determined to ensure that Tish's photos and message are not forgotten.

It would be wonderful if we could all have the opportunity to watch and share the documentary film "Tish" by filmmaker Paul Sng. The film is presented in a very compassionate and heartfelt manner, conveyed by Murtha's daughter, Ella, who resembles her late mother. Ella effectively communicates the film's emotional message by speaking to Tish Murtha's relatives, friends, and teachers at the School of Documentary Photography in Newport. Sng and Ella Murtha narrate the fascinating story of a talented photographer who captured the essence of the people she was a part of.

Tish Murtha, a photographer from Tyneside, documented the lives of people living in working-class communities in the north east during the 1970s and 1980s. She also captured the lives of Soho sex workers in London. Despite facing difficult circumstances, Murtha's subjects displayed humor, optimism, and a refusal to be intimidated. Her poignant photographs of children captured their resilience and determination. Her work earned her the nickname "Demon Snapper" in the papers. Murtha's photographs portrayed the harsh reality of poverty and deprivation in these communities, where unemployment was rampant due to the neglect of the political class in Westminster. She strongly disapproved of the way middle-class media people glorified poverty. This caused a rift between her and the Side Gallery in Newcastle, where her work was being showcased, due to their "poverty is beautiful, maaan" attitude. Unfortunately, Tish Murtha became a statistic herself and was marginalized and misunderstood by the arts establishment.

After the 2008 financial crisis, austerity policies were introduced, resulting in Tish Murtha's decline into poverty during her final years. She lived in constant fear of being sanctioned by the Department of Work and Pensions. Tish Murtha, along with her brothers and their friends, would roam the empty streets and abandoned houses of their hometown. It was during these wanderings that she discovered a camera and found her passion for photography. Having a camera also helped her to deter the child abusers and kerb crawlers who would follow them. She purchased a new camera from Dixons on hire purchase and, with the help of a grant, obtained a college placement. Her talent shone through her images, and her eloquent commentary added depth to her work. The Side Gallery provided support for her work, and London's Photographers' Gallery commissioned her to work on the Soho study.

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Elswick Kids (1978) by Tish Murtha © Ella Murtha, All rights reserved.

Elswick Kids (1978) by Tish Murtha © Ella Murtha, All rights reserved.

Elswick Kids (1978) by Tish Murtha © Ella Murtha, All rights reserved.

Elswick Kids (1978) by Tish Murtha © Ella Murtha, All rights reserved.

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Elswick Kids (1978) by Tish Murtha © Ella Murtha, All rights reserved.

Karen on overturned chair, 1980. From "Youth Unemployment" by Tish Murtha © Ella Murtha, All rights reserved

Youth Unemployment (1981) by Tish Murtha © Ella Murtha, All rights reserved.

Youth Unemployment (1981) by Tish Murtha © Ella Murtha, All rights reserved.

Youth Unemployment (1981) by Tish Murtha © Ella Murtha, All rights reserved.

Youth Unemployment (1981) by Tish Murtha © Ella Murtha, All rights reserved.

by Tish Murtha © Ella Murtha, All rights reserved.

by Tish Murtha © Ella Murtha, All rights reserved.

by Tish Murtha © Ella Murtha, All rights reserved.

by Tish Murtha © Ella Murtha, All rights reserved.

by Tish Murtha © Ella Murtha, All rights reserved.

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Patricia Anne (Tish) Murtha was born on March 14, 1956, in South Shields, North East England. She grew up in a council house in Elswick, Newcastle, as one of ten children of Irish descent.

In 1976, at the age of 20, she left home and went to study at The University of Wales, Newport, where she took a course in documentary photography at the School of Documentary Photography, which was established by David Hurn, a member of Magnum Photos.

After completing her studies in 1978, she went back to Newcastle and started documenting the lives of "marginalized communities from the inside." Unlike other photographers who photographed social poverty in the region at that time, Murtha grew up in it herself. She documented the lives of her friends, family, and community while working on a job program for the unemployed.

In 1979, Tish Murtha's controversial exhibitions titled Juvenile Jazz Bands and Youth Unemployment sparked debates in the House of Commons.

She was also commissioned to document the Save Scotswood Works campaign and provided photographs for THAC publications that highlighted social poverty in Tyneside.

In 1982, Murtha moved to London and worked on a group exhibition called London By Night, which documented Soho and the commercial sex industry. She lived in London for five years, working on commissions for Edward Arnold Publishers, and took photographs of emerging celebrities such as Julian Clary and Philip Herbert.

Declan Donnelly

Upon her return to the north-east in 1987, she took the first headshots of a young Declan Donnelly (25 September 1975), the British TV host, producer, former singer, rapper, comedian, and actor from Newcastle upon Tyne, England.

Between 2008 and 2012, Murtha's work was selected for three Arts Council/British Council Collection exhibitions.

Her work was also included in group exhibitions such as True/Grit - A Celebration of Northern Realism (2013), For Ever Amber (2015), and Childhoods - 1977 to 2016 (2016).

In 2011, the group exhibition Paul Graham, Tish Murtha and Markéta Luskačová was a part of Look 11, the Liverpool International Photography Festival.

On March 13, 2013, Tish Murtha passed away from a sudden brain aneurysm, the day before her 57th birthday.

Her daughter Ella made sure that her mother's social work was preserved for future generations.

The Tish Murtha archive, which contains many never-before-seen pictures, was digitized by Paul Reas and Lulu Preece at the University of South Wales.

In November 2017, Ella published the book "Youth Unemployment" through Bluecoat Press, which was funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign.

A documentary film about Tish Murtha's life, directed by Paul Sng and titled "Tish," premiered at Sheffield DocFest on June 14, 2023.

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Unveiling Humanity: The Photographic Odissey of João Coelho

In the expansive landscape of modern-day photography, few artists embark on a journey as deeply resonant and far-reaching as João Coelho. Born in Angola, his photographic lens weaves intricate and compelling tales of resilience, survival, and societal injustices, capturing the unadorned essence of human narratives through visual storytelling.

João's artistic evolution mirrors a profound odyssey navigating between two distinct worlds—Angola and Portugal—a transformative shift from capturing scenic landscapes to embracing the profound nuances of human stories. His artistic journey commenced at 18, wielding his first camera to explore the subtleties of nature and landscape photography. Although the demands of his professional life briefly veiled his passion, a resurgence six years ago redirected his lens towards the raw and humanistic realm of documentary photography.

Self-taught in an era devoid of digital resources, João's learning curve steeped in experimentation was fueled by wisdom gleaned from books and specialized magazines. The nostalgic echoes of film photography, devoid of immediate previews, paint a portrait of a young artist capturing moments with a yearning for delayed gratification.It was João's poignant return to Angola that laid the foundation for his profound journey into documentary photography. Confronting the daily struggles of individuals teetering on the brink of survival, enduring societal neglect and overwhelming challenges, João's lens emerged as a potent tool to shed light on the unseen, compelling deep societal introspection.

His extensive portfolio pulsates with the heartbeat of social change and humanistic storytelling. Series such as "Resilient Mothers" depict the strength of women facing extreme adversities while nurturing their children amid harsh conditions. "The End of the Line" plumbs the depths of human endurance, starkly illustrating the realities of survival in the 21st century.

João's work transcends mere visual storytelling; it embodies the convergence of artistry and activism. Each project encapsulates a structured narrative complemented by poignant text, conveying raw emotions and truths within the frames. His admiration for photographers like Josef Koudelka and Sebastião Salgado resonates through his compassionate approach, documenting lives on the margins, their struggles, and their unyielding resilience.

In projects like "The Prayer Meadow," João's meticulous yet unobtrusive methodology unfolds, allowing him to immerse in intimate moments of spiritual surrender without disturbing the sanctity of believers.

"The Forgotten" holds a cherished place in João's heart. Documenting a community living in a dump on the outskirts of Angola's city, this transformative project triggered a profound emotional connection, inspiring a holistic effort not just to document but to initiate projects aimed at improving the lives of the forgotten through exhibitions, books, and community development.

Looking ahead, João envisions an evolution in his artistic pursuit, anchored in his unwavering commitment to Angola's societal and humanistic issues. While he continues to explore the resonance of documentary photography, he contemplates a venture into monochrome photography, exploring new realms of portraiture and conceptual artistry.

João Coelho's photography transcends frames; it echoes a call for social change, urging viewers to engage, empathize, and act. His lens isn't just a visual storyteller; it's a catalyst for a world attuned to the unseen and unheard voices.

The thematic essence of João's work is rooted in the human condition—a subject that has perpetually fascinated him. His photography serves a profound purpose beyond aesthetics; it seeks to evoke feelings, convey messages, and tell stories that depict the spectrum of human experiences. From suffering to joy, despair to mutual aid, strength to disappointment, or resilience in adversity—his lens captures the intricate tapestry of human existence.

In essence, João Coelho's photography encapsulates the soul of experiences, echoing silent yet potent emotions that define our shared human journey. His lens is a clarion call for social justice, a mirror reflecting the raw, unspoken truths of our world.

The photographs captured by João Coelho possess an innate ability to resonate with the soul, transcending beyond mere images to paint stories that profoundly connect with the human experience. Each frame stands as a testament to unparalleled talent, forming symphonies of emotions etched into timeless masterpieces.

For me, João's stories became a gateway to an uncharted world. His photographic legacy stands tall, portraying Angola’s cultural tapestry at the twilight of the twentieth century. The raw emotions he captured with his handheld camera, the vibrant contrasts of black and white photography, and his unwavering commitment to showcasing Africa's diverse milieu gifted the world a treasure trove of breathtaking images. Each picture told a story, vividly illustrating a nation teeming with tradition, diversity, and modernity.Through João's narratives, a transformation unfolded—a journey from whom I was before encountering his work to who I became afterward. His lyrical photographs offered glimpses into the whole world, sometimes stark, occasionally bold, and often poetic—a remarkable expedition through our world.

Reflecting on personal growth, I acknowledge indebtedness to João Coelho. His photographs continue to inspire, serving as a reminder that photography transcends beyond capturing mere images; it embodies storytelling, culture, and the profound beauty woven into everyday life.

His work traverses time and place, imprinting an indelible mark on the realm of photography and, most significantly, in my heart. João's work has become an everyday source of enlightenment and inspiration for me. It stands as a testament to the power of art in uplifting, healing, and transforming lives. His photographs have certainly transformed mine, teaching me to view the world through a different lens, to cherish the beauty found in the ordinary, and to find solace amid the chaos.

Photography transcends the mere act of capturing a moment; it embodies storytelling, harnessing emotions, and unveiling unseen narratives. João Coelho's lens doesn't just frame scenes; it plunges into the raw essence of human experiences, navigating the convergence of art and advocacy.

Defying categorization, João's photography stands as an epitome of intuition, honesty, and audacity. His focus on people rather than symmetry is evident, as he captures the essence of action, often tucked away in the periphery. The ability to seize spontaneity amid focused observation delineates his work, allowing the narrative to unfold organically. In the midst of chaos, João finds silence. Unlike artists aiming to evoke, his art restores tranquility. His photography mirrors the nuances of social justice, capturing moments that echo the cries for equality and compassion.João Coelho's work leaves an indelible mark on the soul, evoking a spectrum of emotions and revealing the inherent beauty scattered across every corner of the world.

This article is a testament to João Coelho's visionary artistry, encompassing the intricate tapestry of human existence and redefining the power of visual storytelling.

Why street photography? by Pia Parolin

As street photographers, we often hear questions like, "Is it weird to photograph people without asking?" or "Are you allowed to do that?"

That WHY stuck.

I asked myself, well, why do I have such a passion for photographing strangers? What is so exciting about capturing people in pictures?

I guess the answer is simple: Because life is so incredibly exciting, diverse and beautiful.

Cities, streets only come to life through people. Normal everyday life, when examined more closely, is always somehow interesting. What do we humans do in this city? And how does that possibly change over the decades?

In fact, there are many reasons why street photography can quickly develop into a great passion.

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What's so exciting about photographing strangers? Often it is simply an aesthetic reason, but it can also represent a kind of documentation of a certain time.

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Fun!

The most important reason is: it's fun to go hunting with the camera. The process itself, the experience of taking photos, is a lot of fun. And in street photography it usually requires very little effort. Just take your camera and get out. On any occasion, at any time of the day.

A long running stitch is certainly not fun for the woman, but for us street photographers it is a good reason to take a photo, especially with all the other lines in the picture.

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Contemporary witness

A historically important reason for street photography is that it is a contemporary witness. Many street photographers see their goal in documenting life. And it's great that many people around the world are documenting their here and now.

It is important to photograph and document how life is today. Whether in humanism, documentary photography or reportage: street photography captures conditions here and now that will make you think, will make you smile tomorrow or will soon seem completely out of time. Everything that is so normal to us today can look very bizarre tomorrow.

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How people make phone calls… will we still have cell phones in 20 years? We no longer hold them to our ears, as we did in the early days, but often hold them to our mouths.

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Will we continue to use masks in our everyday lives? Just ten years ago, in Europe we looked at Asian tourists who were wearing masks out of caution and respect. Then followed several years in which we were obliged to wear masks. The whole culture changed and today masks still are seen in the daily normal European life. Who would have said…

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Right here, right now

The low threshold for simply taking a quick photo is certainly an important factor for its popularity.

It's true that really good pictures don't come easy and you need a quiet window of time for yourself so that you can immerse yourself in a mental flow and be completely focused on the matter.

But you usually don't have to travel far or spend a lot of money for material, so you can just do it.

Taking photos on your own doorstep can sometimes be a challenge because finding something interesting may sound impossible at first. But by playing with patterns, reflections and silhouettes you can easily create something new and creative even in a street that you take every day.

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Never bored

The good thing about street photography is that you never get bored, no matter where, no matter what time of day, what weather, what country and what city. Wherever there are people or human elements in urban areas, you can do street photography and take creative photos.

Street photographers observe the world around them. Even if the place seems so boring, there is always something to discover photographically and convert creatively. So look forward to the next delayed train or a never-ending queue. As long as you have your camera with you, you can't really get bored.

A boring gray station court, here in Hanover. A place that you usually leave quickly, where you stay only because your train is delayed. But look at the huge potential for cool street photos here!

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We find things

Where we don't expect anything, exciting things suddenly happen before our eyes. We just find them.

I like to refer to one of my favourite characters, Pippi Longstocking. She says: “ I am a Thing-Finder… Somebody who hunts for things, naturally… The whole world is full of things, and somebody has to look for them… The best things are almost always found where people live.”

And that's exactly what we all do in street photography: we look for things, for situations, for our cool photo - where there are people. We always find something and we do it having fun, being relaxed and happy, just like Pippi!

Shop windows are good playgrounds where you can practice. Of course, someone designed the window display, so it's not your creative credit. However, you can still create something new from existing elements. You can play with details and use reflections to create an interesting new image. This is also a good way to train yourself to photograph people without actually approaching people.

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Surprising diversity

Street photography thrives on the diversity of people, cities, the way they dress and behave. The fascinating, limitless diversity is exciting and so complex that it is difficult to reach its limits. Therefore, in street photography, we are constantly surprised. Nowhere does this work as well as on the street.

I photograph people because I like to watch them and enjoy the variety with genuine interest. Through my camera I learned to see and perceive people better. I learned to like people more, and today I can go directly to talk to complete strangers, which was something I never did until a few years ago. The camera, street photography, took away my fear and shyness of strangers

People are diverse and that makes them special and exciting.

People are diverse not only depending on the country or city, but also within a city. In Cologne, Germany, you meet different people on the Domplatte than in Ehrenfeld or Lindenthal. In Hamburg we take completely different photos at the fish market, at the main train station or at Jungfernstieg, not to mention the Elbe suburbs. In Rome, Paris, New York and Tokyo it is the same: depending on the district, you will meet people dressed very elegantly or casually, observe great loneliness or happy people.

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Like every big city, Cologne has a variety of neighborhoods, and each one creates certain images and moods.

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Repetition

You can repeat the game with your camera as often as you like, it will never be the same. The same person in the same clothes doing the same movements or interactions is as unlikely as being picked up by a starship from another planet. So, something new will always happen and you are there to discover new situations and increase the quality of your photos through repetition.

Many award-winning images were created through perseverance. You'll soon know the top spots in your city. You can visit them again and again and at some point it'll just fit: the perfect person in the perfect place at the perfect moment. Just like Henri Cartier-Bresson's “instant décisif”.

Banal place, banal scene but somehow a cool photo because it plays with the lines. Simply photographed from above down into a passage.

The same corner on the train station court in Hanover, where different levels, reflections and surfaces create the picture.

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We can tell our stories

We observe social and cultural circumstances and impulses and document them through our photography. But we are – contrary to documentation and reportage photography – not committed to the truth. We are not journalists so we don't have to show what's real. We can show what we like. We can artistically recombine things that don't belong together. This is wonderful because it gives us much more freedom to create a world the way we like it, in our pictures. But obviously, using photography and not mere fantasy pictures created with Artificial Intelligence.

This photo is a contemporary document as it reports on the loads of packages sent following the pandemic. People began to stop going shopping and instead started ordering everything by mail.

In street photography we try to design our pictures as an honest depiction of the street, i.e. not to pose them, if possible not to address people beforehand, and certainly not to create anything with artificial intelligence. These are the unwritten ethical foundations of the discipline. In this respect, we are committed to the truth in some way.

But since we are not journalists and our primary job is not to tell others what is happening here and now, we have total freedom and are able to carefree play around. We are free to decide to what extent we commit to the truth and to reportage, or when we want to play freely and paint with light, like painters, with a free interpretation of what we see. And our personal perspective creates a filter. We explore life in urban areas and observe people, and we are allowed to convey our own attitudes or moods in our pictures. Basically it's a big game and, lived as such, it's a lot of fun.

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The section you select in your photo may distort the information. The striking ASS letters look funny to a tourist, but the photo only tells half the truth, because in reality it is an excerpt from the city name GRASSE. This way, a completely different meaning was created by a photo which does not show the whole name.

A picture that is not staged, but taken from life. Someone had a banana party on this square in Hanover and then unfortunately forgot about the trash. A classic street photo, but at the same time a documentation of human behavior in the city.

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The same place in Hanover as with the banana peels, but with completely different contents. Where does your attention fall, what do you want to show and say?

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Community

An important reason for street photography is the sense of community. Street photographers are somewhat special characters who like to wander the streets alone for hours with their camera. But most are highly social creatures and enjoy both concentrated single work and partying in the community.

The advantage of being integrated in a community means sharing the fun to be together with like-minded people and exchange ideas. You can learn from others, show and discuss your photos, solve specific technical questions and learn about new trends. The network may lead to joint exhibitions and other things that alone you would not be able to do.

If you're traveling for work to a foreign city, you can use social media to ask if anyone is there and has time for a photo walk together. You can often find someone who will show you their city and with whom you can build a new, enriching photography friendship. Experiencing a city, a foreign country, a new community under the guidance of local people is wonderful, and is also a little adventure that enriches you. And you may bring up new ideas because you look at their city from a different perspective. So it's a give and take that enriches everyone.

Guidance

There are many more “WHYs” in street photography. It teaches us to see, to perceive, to consciously filter things. We recognize beauty, tension, humor in everyday life, on the way to the office, going shopping.

We talk about why we use this camera and not that one, why we prefer to go out in a collective or alone, why we prefer to take photos in colour or monochrome.

The most important thing is that you enjoy street photography and want to spend time in the city with your camera.

If you take the time, it can be very enriching to play creatively without much effort and also come into contact with new people.

The cell phone is always with you and allows you to take photos anytime, anywhere.

Asking yourself WHY can give you direction. Why do you want to take photographs, to relax and enjoy colors and light effects, or rather to document a status quo in society? This question alone will show you how your style can develop further – whether you take playful or meaningful photos. The transitions are fluid and you can also take meaningful, playful pictures.

In any case, dealing with this helps in the development of your photographic personality.

We hope you enjoy to develop your skills and find, define and specifically pursue your own WHY.

Joel Sternfeld by Batsceba Hardy

Which is Better? Black and White or Colour?

“One very important difference between color and monochromatic photography is this: in black and white you suggest; in color you state. Much can be implied by suggestion, but statement demands certainty... absolute certainty.” Paul Outerbridge

"I have done no color of consequence for thirty years! I have a problem with color—I cannot adjust to the limited controls of values and colors. With black-and-white I feel free and confident of results". Ansel Adams

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[6] Joel Sternfeld

Joel Sternfeld, a celebrated fine-art color photographer, was born on June 30, 1944. He is best known for his large-format documentary pictures that capture the utopian and dystopian aspects of the American experience. During the early 1970s, he mastered the art of using color photography as a form of artistic expression, a time when color was primarily associated with advertising. His contribution helped establish him as a pioneer in the field of color photography.

I believe that much of Joel Sternfeld's photography can be categorized as "street photography", even his "urban landscapes". In my opinion, the presence of a person in a photograph is not a requirement for it to be considered "street photography". Too many of street photographers shoot only people ...

Majoring in art at Dartmouth, Sternfeld had a fascination with color and the role it played in photography. “I was enthralled by Eggleston, as everybody was. But I knew if I was ever to make a mark, I’d have to go to places he hadn’t headed. He owned the poetic snapshot, but I’d always had this leaning towards narrative, and so I began to lean a little harder.”

He has been awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships and was granted a Rome Prize to spend a year in Italy.

He is a faculty member at Sarah Lawrence College and currently holds the Noble Foundation Chair in Art and Cultural History. His works are prominently featured in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and several other institutions mentioned in the "Collections" section.

In 1969, Joel Sternfeld began capturing pictures using a 35mm camera and Kodachrome slide film. This was the start of his journey in documenting the American condition. In his first works created between 1971 and 1980, which had never been exhibited or published before the exhibition at the Luhring Augustine Gallery, in 2012 – Sternfeld developed his unique conceptual and formal strategies. These strategies included narrative, humor, irony, and a politically charged perspective of America. These pictures reflect the evolution of Sternfeld's color arrangements, which eventually resulted in a new language for color photography, notably seen in American Prospects. Along with other colorists like William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, Sternfeld was a crucial pioneer in the medium. His collection of work was first published in 2012 by the Steidl publishing house.

Joel Sternfeld. Page, Arizona, 1983

Since the release of his work American Prospects in 1987, Joel Sternfeld's photography has been groundbreaking. His most popular book was last published in 2012. The book explores the complexity of human-altered landscapes in the United States. It has retained both conceptual and political aspects while being deeply rooted in history, art history, landscape theory and attention to seasonal passage. His work offers a melancholic, spectacular, funny, and profound portrait of America. Kevin Moore, the curator, believes that Sternfeld's work is an amalgamation of different photographic styles of the 1970s, blending the humor and social perspicacity of street photography with the detached restraint of New Topographics photographs and the pronounced formalism of works by many late-decade colorists (Kevin Moore, Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970-1980).  Sternfeld started working on the book in 1978, when color photography was still a new medium.

He used a large-format camera to capture photographs that are reminiscent of 19th-century photography traditions. However, he applied them to everyday scenes such as a Wet n' Wild waterpark or a suburban street in the South. His photographs depict the faltering "prospects" (both views and opportunities) of the time. Sternfeld's early street work earned him a Guggenheim Fellowship, which funded his initial tour of the United States. The American Prospects photos depict people, buildings, and mostly landscapes that Sternfeld captured during his many trips between 1978 and 1984

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New York City, 1973

Nags Head, North Carolina, (#1), June-August 1975

New York City, (#1), 1976

AMERICAN PROSPECTS

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The Space Shuttle Columbia Lands at Kelly Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas, March 1979

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Man behind the screen door

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Alaska Limo

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Sauvies Island,Oregon, June 1979

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Tepees

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Frost

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The color theories of the Bauhaus had a significant impact on his early career. Joel Sternfeld began experimenting with the Bauhaus-based idea of creating a work of art using two or three dominant hues of relatively equal density. Although color is absolute, how we experience it depends on its surroundings, the lighting, and its relationship with other colors. These ideas played a significant role in Sternfeld's style as he continuously looked for natural ways of combining colors in his environment. Regardless of the subject matter or medium, Sternfeld's photographs always revolve around the use of color. He is one of a handful of photographers who has the ability to turn a seemingly insignificant snapshot into a masterpiece, primarily by using a well-thought-out color palette.

Sternfeld says about color:

“Black and white is abstract; color is not. Looking at a black and white photograph, you are already looking at a strange world,”

“Color is the real world. The job of the color photographer is to provide some level of abstraction that can take the image out of the daily.”

"We’re at a tipping point. The digital print is becoming the look of our time, and it makes the C-print start to look like a tintype."

Sternfeld recognizes the manipulative power of pictures:

"Some of the people who are now manipulating photos, such as Andreas Gursky, make the argument—rightly—that the “straight” photographs of the 1940s and 50s were no such thing. Ansel Adams would slap a red filter on his lens, then spend three days burning and dodging in the dark room, making his prints. That’s a manipulation. Even the photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson, with all due respect to him, are notoriously burned and dodged."

"Photography has always been capable of manipulation. Even more subtle and more invidious is the fact that any time you put a frame to the world, it’s an interpretation. I could get my camera and point it at two people and not point it at the homeless third person to the right of the frame, or not include the murder that’s going on to the left of the frame. You take 35 degrees out of 360 degrees and call it a photo. There’s an infinite number of ways you can do this: photographs have always been authored."

For him, the philosophy of shooting is:

“No individual photo explains anything. That’s what makes photography such a wonderful and problematic medium. It is the photographer’s job to get this medium to say what you need it to say. Because photography has a certain verisimilitude, it has gained a currency as truthful – but photographs have always been convincing lies.”

“You take 35 degrees out of 360 degrees and call it a photo,” he told the Guardian in a 2004 interview. “No individual photo explains anything. That’s what makes photography such a wonderful and problematic medium.”

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Campagna Romana: The Countryside of Ancient Rome is a book that was first published in 1992 by Knopf publishing house. The book documents the interaction between the grand romantic ruins of ancient Rome and the invasion of modernity, through a series of extensive photographs of the countryside around Rome. Joel Sternfeld was awarded the Rome Prize fellowship, which allowed him to capture the sweeping vistas of the countryside in panoramic images that sometimes stretch over several images. This technique sets up contrasts between the images within each piece, presenting the beauty of the countryside alongside the contrasting modernity. (One of the works in the book features a crumbling fragment of an ancient wall surrounded by the scaffolding-clad buildings of a new apartment complex. The image is part of a four-panel piece that showcases the stark contrast between the ancient and modern elements of the city.)

On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam, was first published with Steidl in 1996. It's a collection of pictures taken at famous crime sites in America. The locations, which appear eerily normal, are the remains left behind after tragedies. The hidden stories behind these sites are disturbingly invisible. Next to each photograph is a text that describes the events that took place at that location. Through his work, Sternfeld examines violence in America and raises significant epistemological questions about photographs as objects of knowledge.

Joel Sternfeld worked with Melinda Hunt between 1991 and 1994 to document New York City's public cemetery on Hart Island. This collaboration resulted in the book Hart Island which was published in 1998.

Stranger Passing is a series of portraits initially published by Bulfinch in 2001 and then by Steidl in 2012. The project has its roots in Sternfeld's initial project "American Prospects". Over fifteen years, he traveled across America and captured portrait photographs that represent an "intelligent, unscientific, interpretive sampling of what Americans looked like at the century’s end," according to Douglas R. Nickel. Unlike historical portraits that depict significant people in staged surroundings, Sternfeld's subjects are surprisingly ordinary. They include a banker having an evening meal, a teenager collecting shopping carts in a parking lot, and a homeless man holding his bedding.

Sternfeld is known for his distinctive style of combining still photography with a written narrative, which he uses to explore new possibilities in storytelling. His books and collections are interconnected and offer a collective interpretation of his work. Sternfeld's art aims to blend time and place, while conveying important messages of enlightenment, honor, and warning. His images are particularly urgent, given that their histories are preserved only through photography, making them an archive for future generations.

In the last decades, Sternfeld has concentrated his efforts on a four-book project:

Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America (2006), offers a refreshing break from the traumatic history depicted in On This Site. The book provides a survey of alternative ways of living and hopeful being in American human society.

When It Changed “Future generations are going to wonder about us, the inhabitants of the Earth when the climate began to change. If seas are rising and at the same time drinking water is scarce, they are going to want to know what scientific evidence was before us and what we did in response to it. It is difficult to imagine a time in the past without an image, so I went to Montreal in 2005 to photograph the participants in the eleventh United Nations conference on climate change.” Joel Sternfeld

Oxbow Archi Joel Sternfeld visited the mile-square field that Thomas Cole painted in "The Oxbow" almost two hundred years ago. In 1978, Sternfeld photographed the same field as part of his "American Prospects" project. When he returned in 2006, he discovered that an interstate highway had been constructed across the Oxbow in the river, and the detrimental effects of progress that Cole had foreseen were becoming increasingly evident globally due to climate change.

iDubai. IJoel Sternfeld uses his iPhone camera to capture the human side of the Emirate, beyond the mass media portrayal as a version of Disney World on the Persian Gulf.

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QUOTES:

“With a photograph, you are left with the same modes of interpretation as you are with a book. You ask: 'What do we know about the author and their background? What do I know about the subject?'“

“I’ve worked primarily with the American landscape– my approach has to be look at the landscape to find a kind of beauty as it truly exists. Looking at landscape about what it reveals about the human moment, past, and the present human moment. I mean this is the surface of the earth, and what we do with it tells us an awful lot about ourselves.“

“One project has grown into another, and into a long chain of work that has kept me engaged for 30 years.”

“All of my work has been about ideas of utopia and dystopia. I think that's what gives America interest. It's many things all at once. It's such a complicated society.”

“I grew up in Belle Harbor, which is in New York City, but it has the most powerful sense of nature and seasons. It wasn't even the beach and the water. I just dreamt about everything that had to do with nature. I read about Thoreau”

“No one can say how long the process of human extinction might take, but as it proceeds, the same global order will prevail that always prevails: rich nations will find ways to protect themselves and make themselves comfortable, while the poor nations and the poor people of the planet will suffer.”

Fred Herzog by Batsceba Hardy

Which is Better? Black and White or Colour?

“One very important difference between color and monochromatic photography is this: in black and white you suggest; in color you state. Much can be implied by suggestion, but statement demands certainty... absolute certainty.” Paul Outerbridge

"I have done no color of consequence for thirty years! I have a problem with color—I cannot adjust to the limited controls of values and colors. With black-and-white I feel free and confident of results". Ansel Adams

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[5] Fred Herzog

Self portrait 1961

Fred Herzog, (September 21, 1930 – September 9, 2019) (Ulrich Herzog, the name Fred came later, in Canada) brought his first camera in 1950 (20 years old) and began shooting black-and-white pictures in his native Germany.

“One of the most surprising and devastating things to me was meeting after the war was over with my schoolmates and not one of them would talk about their war experiences,” he said. “They only wanted to talk about soccer. That was devastating to me. I just could not believe that this war had already been forgotten by them.” The collision: Fred Herzog, the Holocaust and me.

In 1952, he migrated to Canada and initially resided in Toronto and Montreal before settling in Vancouver in 1953.

Fred Herzog took his first roll of color film many years before William Eggleston established color photography as a legitimate technique for artistic photography. Despite the limitations of the Kodachrome ISO10 film he used, Herzog was unafraid to take risks, often taking handheld shots even at night, as he believed it was a form of journalism. For more than half a century, the Canadian photographer preferred to use Kodachrome slide film almost exclusively. However, it was only in the past decade that technological advancements allowed him to create archival pigment prints that match the vivid colors and intensity of the Kodachrome slide. In this sense, his photographs can be considered as a precursor to the New Color photographers of the 1970s.

During the day, he worked as a medical photographer for local hospitals and the University of British Columbia. In his spare time, he would walk around the city of Vancouver with his camera and capture photographs of people, buildings, and any other scenes that caught his attention.

Fred Herzog's most significant breakthrough came later in life, in 2007, when The Vancouver Art Gallery hosted his first major retrospective. The exhibition, titled "Fred Herzog Vancouver Photographs" was curated by Grant Arnold and showcased his life's work. At that time, Herzog was 76 years old. Following the successful exhibition at the VAG, Herzog's career took off. A New York gallery began selling his work, and he has since had numerous exhibitions throughout Europe.

Herzog was an artist who could find beauty in almost everything around him. He could see the art in a family enjoying their time outside on a summer's day, a Volkswagen Beetle making a turn in the rain, or even a wall of pictures showing men's hairstyles in a local barbershop. He captured images of billboards, second-hand stores, store window displays, neon signs, the working waterfront, and people. Herzog's photos were not produced from a preconceived studio concept. Rather, they were the result of his walking process. They are born out of the intuitive and deductive reasoning of where to be and how to take a picture when you're in that particular location. He was heavily influenced by two photographers: Walker Evans, who documented the effects of the Great Depression in the U.S., and Robert Frank, a photographer whose work was published in the influential book The Americans.

“I have to work fast and on impulse as I walk around the city with my hand-held 35-mm Leica camera. If you don’t trust your instincts, if you don’t trust your first vision, then you lose it. So when there’s action I start shooting right away. I don’t look long.”

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FRED HERZOG Hastings 1956

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FRED HERZOG FRED HERZOG Hastings 1956

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FRED HERZOG Soda Shop 1958

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FRED HERZOG Carrall St. 1972

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FRED HERZOG Three Men Sleeping 1957

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FRED HERZOG PNE c. 1960

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FRED HERZOG New Life Joke Shop 1957

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FRED HERZOG Man in Doorway 1958

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"I take pride in saying these are all how we looked, not how we wanted to look, or staged. You cannot stage pictures. That is something I have many many times defended. People say ‘Well you can stage that.’ I say ‘No you cannot, and I can prove it to you.’ Many times over I’ve taken a second shot after [some] kids have seen me, and nothing. It’s a different picture." ~ Herzog

1961

1961

1963

1968

"The signs are a very very important pictorial part of the American city. I won’t even say pictorial, an important cultural part of the American city. If you take the Coca-Cola and other signs away from America downtown, you have nothing. Maybe some interesting architecture, but not very much."

An Interview with Fred Herzog – ‘In His Own Words’ (excerpts) (click on)

“I was aware I was taking art. That’s the conceit of young people. I knew that what I am doing is not only unique, but that someday I’m going to unpack that and shock people with it.”

“I have 80,000 slides. I don’t have them all anymore. Furthermore many of these slides don’t play in this kind of thing. They were done for very different reasons. I’ve got lots of pictures of motorcycle races and of butterflies and God knows what else. I’ve made 28,000 negatives. I counted them, I figured it out, per page of 36 exposures.“

“After about a year of shooting I increasingly felt, ‘somebody has to do this.’ Because otherwise people in the future would only be able to go to People magazine or Look or Time or Life or any of those to see how people looked at the time.”

“First of all when you do black and white all have is the basic resource, a negative. That needs a lot of dancing around the darkroom and time and patience and energy. You should ideally be a man of leisure, an English gentleman. And a lot of English gentlemen did serious and beautiful photography."

“But I didn’t have time for that. That’s one reason [I did colour slides]. I’d get 36 slides back, beautiful, finish.”

On digital technology

“Timing in photography is almost everything. You have to pay attention to where the light comes from, you have to pay attention to your background. If your background is too loud, or makes too much of itself... that’s the problem of the photographic process. It records everything that’s in the viewfinder, whether it’s important or not.”

“All the good pictures that didn’t turn out good, it’s because of the background or because the light comes from one side or some other technical glitch. That’s the grace of these modern digital cameras. First of all everything that can go wrong is taken care of automatically. A person who’s completely ignorant of the photographic process [can take [photos].”

“And I say that respectfully. You don’t have to know anything, you press the button and you get a beautiful picture. That’s how it works out now.This is enormous progress. Because of that you’ll see now a flood of good pictures which we never dreamed we would see.
I already get them in the e-mail.”

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Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Hatje Cantz (February 28, 2017)
Language: English
Size: 11 x 1 x 11 inches
Weight: 4.2 pounds
ISBN-13: 978-3775741811

Gordon Parks

Gordon Parks, Self-Portrait, 1941, gelatin silver print, 50.8 × 40.64 cm (20 × 16 in.), Private Collection. Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation

“A photographer can be a storyteller. Images of experience captured on film, when put together like words, can weave tales of feeling and emotion as bold as literature.… [Photographers] bring together fact and fiction, experience, imagination, and feelings in a visual dialogue that has enormous impact on how we observe and relate to the external world and our internal selves.” —Philip Brookman, “Unlocked Doors: Gordon Parks at the Crossroads,” Gordon Parks: Half Past Autumn, 1997

In an interview with photographer David Hoffman, he says, “I felt the need to expose something that I thought was being hidden. It’s not courage, it’s a need to get people aware of how people suffer.”

Gordon Parks (1912–2006) was a multi-talented individual who excelled in various fields. He had a successful career as a photographer, filmmaker, writer, musician/composer, and painter. His extraordinary work took him from Hollywood to the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement. 

Parks grew up in Fort Scott, Kansas, and later moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he taught himself photography and landed his first professional job shooting fashion for a department store. In 1940, he moved to Chicago and had a portrait studio at the South Side Community Art Center which was documenting the nation’s social conditions under the New Deal. Two years later, he began working for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), which was documenting the nation’s social conditions under the New Deal. At the same time, he started his career as a freelancer for Glamour and Ebony magazines. In 1948, he broke the barrier by becoming the first Black staff photographer at Life magazine. He developed and captured fashion spreads for Vogue and made history as the first African American to direct a major motion picture with his 1969 film, The Learning Tree. This movie was adapted from his own novel and he co-composed its musical score. His next film, the 1971 thriller Shaft, featuring Richard Roundtree, was a huge success that spawned the popular "blaxploitation" genre. Additionally, it produced an equally famous theme song by Isaac Hayes. However, there is more to it than just that: Parks is best known for creating some of the most impactful photographs of the 20th century. 

Parks was a renowned photographer who excelled in capturing subjects from the worlds of sports, politics, entertainment, and everyday life during his assignments. However, his passion for social justice was his most prominent trait. He used his camera as a weapon to fight against poverty and racism.

American Gothic. Portrait of government cleaning woman Ella Watson.

Washington, D.C. Mrs. Ella Watson, a government charwoman, with three grandchildren and her adopted daughter

In 1941, Parks received a fellowship from the Julius Rosenwald Foundation. The foundation’s president, Dr. Edwin Rogers Embree, was writing a book on exceptional African Americans and gave Parks a list of 13 distinguished Black Americans to photograph. Embree's book, 13 Against the Odds, was published in 1944. One of the individuals on the list was Richard Wright, who was known for his novels and short stories about the plight of African Americans in the mid-twentieth century. In 1943, Parks met Wright in Harlem, bringing with him a copy of 12 Million Black Voices, a book that combined images by Farm Security Administration photographers such as Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans with Wright's work. The author inscribed the book for Parks, citing one of the photographer's favorite passages: "To one who moves with the new tide."

Richard Wright Photograph by Gordon Parks

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Gordon Parks, Charles White in front of his mural “Chaos of the American Negro,” 1941,

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Gordon Parks, Langston Hughes, Chicago, December 1941

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Gordon Parks, Marva Trotter Louis, Chicago, Illinois, 1941,

During the months bridging 1943 and 1944, Parks took an array of photographs in Harlem. He often approached his subjects from below, using the buildings that framed their lives as backgrounds and attempting to catch people looking askance in ways that suggest resilience. Along with a striking portrait of Wright, Parks captured several other notable images.

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Woman and Dog in Window, Harlem, New York, 1943

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Untitled, Harlem, New York, 1943

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Harlem Street Scene, New York, New York, 1943

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Harlem Newsboy, Harlem, New York, 1943

In New York state, America had several camps such as Camp Christmas Seals in Haverstraw, Ellen Marvin and Gaylord White Camp in Arden, Camp Nathan Hale in Southfields, and Camp Brooklyn in Tusten. These camps were remarkable for the era as they were racially integrated and espoused egalitarian ideals. Parks’s photographs beautifully showcase the children of different races playing, praying, eating, and raising the American flag together, which was a bold social experiment in action.

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Gordon Parks, Ferry boat from Staten Island to Manhattan, carrying early morning commuters, New York City, November 1946,

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Gordon Parks, Untitled, Harlem, New York, 1947,

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Gordon Parks, Washington (southwest section), D.C. Two Negro boys shooting marbles in front of their home. November 1942,

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Gordon Parks, Anacostia, D.C. Frederick Douglass Housing Project. A family says grace before the evening meal. June 1942,

Gordon Parks, Washington, D.C. Three children waiting in the kitchen while their mother prepares the evening meal. June 1942, made while working for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), a government agency.

Football, Bethune-Cookman College, Daytona Beach, Florida, 1943 

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Untitled, Harlem, New York, 1948

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Gordon Parks, Trapped in abandoned building by a rival gang on street, Red Jackson ponders his next move, 1948,

Duke Ellington in Concert, New York, 1960

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Ralph Ellison, New York, New York, 1947

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Peter Mennin, New York, New York, 1956

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Alexander Calder in His Workshop, Roxbury, Connecticut, 1952

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Leonard Bernstein, New York, New York, 1956

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Untitled, White Plains, New York, 1956

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Alberto Giacometti and His Sculptures, Paris, France, 1951

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Sidney Poitier in “A Raisin in the Sun,” New York, 1959

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Countess Jean Yves de la Cour, France, 1951

Untitled, Chicago, 1957

A remarkable essay by Parks titled "The Atmosphere of Crime" was published by Steidl in 1957.

Along with reporter Robert Wallace, Parks traveled across the US for six weeks, following the police during their operations, visiting incarceration centers and even a death chamber to portray criminality. Parks rejected the dominating crime narrative and used his camera to advocate for the socially and politically ostracized. This book beautifully prints Park's photographs as plates and includes the original Life article (including text and advertising) as well as long essays by curators and a public interest lawyer, providing thorough context. Given the current wave of protest calling for racial justice, the book allows us to gain perspective on Parks' nuanced documentation and how his images were used in 1950s America.

Parks' photographs aimed to counter the stereotypical representation of violence that portrayed black people as members of gangs and drug users being condemned by good-willed white police officers.

Raiding Detectives, Chicago, Illinois, 1957 © Courtesy The Gordon Parks Foundation

New York, NY, 1957 © Courtesy The Gordon Parks Foundation

In 1968, Life published "A Harlem Family" by Parks. The article featured photos and commentary on the Fontenelle family's living conditions in a crumbling apartment on 127th street, New York.

Parks' reportage revealed the bleakness of their situation, with the family's modest hopes, the potential for only one child to succeed, and even violence between spouses due to built-up hatred. However, Parks also showed the family's full range of emotions and their struggle to keep faith in such a life.

This provided an intimate view of a neighborhood and a nation amidst the turbulent civil unrest of the United States at the time. The empathy that Parks' photos provoked was so sincere that readers donated money for the Fontanelle family to move into a modest house in Queens.

This exhibition delves into the story behind a groundbreaking photo essay by Gordon Parks, and the extraordinary chain of events that ensued. The essay “Freedom’s Fearful Foe: Poverty,” was published in Life magazine in June 1961. It profiled the da Silva family, who lived in a hillside favela near a wealthy Rio de Janeiro, Brazil enclave. The essay focused on Flávio, the eldest son and a resourceful twelve-year-old with crippling asthma. The story struck a chord with readers, eliciting thousands of letters and nearly USD 30,000 in donations (equivalent to over $250,000 today). In response, Life magazine launched an ambitious “rescue” effort, which involved relocating the family to a new home, moving Flávio to a hospital in the United States, and administering funds to support the rehabilitation of the favela. Meanwhile, in Brazil, the photo essay sparked a great controversy in the press. "The Flávio Story" provides an in-depth look at Parks' most acclaimed photo essay within the context of Cold War politics in the United States and Brazil and at the inner workings and cultural impact of Life magazine.

Gordon Parks: The Flávio Story was on view at the Ryerson Image Centre from September 12 – December 9, 2018. Paul Roth and Amanda Maddox curated the exhibition.

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Written By: Ben Cosgrove

Gordon Parks was a master of contradictions. His fashion photography captured the beauty and opulence of the 1940s and ’50s elite with carefully orchestrated framing and composition. But Parks was also renowned for his stirring images of poverty and racial discrimination.

All images © The Gordon Parks Foundation

Ralph Ellison: Photographer

Ralph Waldo Ellison

Ralph Ellison was one of the most influential writers of his time, known for his groundbreaking novel "Invisible Man" which established him as a literary icon. 

Ellison's novel is considered a milestone in American literature because it takes the reader on a journey from the mundane to a surreal world of African American life. This world is depicted as the author experienced it.

However, his lifelong engagement with photography is often overlooked. This lesser-known aspect of his career takes center stage in the collection "Photographer". 

Spanning several decades, this collection showcases Ellison's multifaceted artistic vision through his captivating photographs. 

Ellison began exploring photography while studying at Tuskegee Institute, an all-black, prestigious school in Alabama. According to Raz-Russo, he studied music but was also interested in sculpture and briefly talked about photographing his sculptures. But began his photographic journey after moving to New York City in 1936. 

His passion for photography grew when he moved to Harlem in the 1940s, where he turned it into a serious hobby and a source of income. Alongside installing and repairing HiFi audio equipment, he also took author headshots. With his camera in tow, he explored the city as an outsider. 

The title of the book, "Ralph Ellison: Photographer," pays homage to the phrase he used on his invoice letterhead. For Ellison, photography was more than just a hobby or a source of income. It was an art form, a note-taking tool, and a creative outlet. He used it to express his identity as an individual and an American, always looking for innovative forms of expression. 

The book features two sections, each telling a visual story. The first section showcases Ellison's photographs from the 1940s and 50s, including portraits of his wife, Fanny, and his partnership with Parks. Many readers scour Ellison's images for clues to the origins of his novels' characters and plots. Raz-Russo noted that much of his early writing contains descriptive passages that could have been drawn from his photographs of everyday life in Harlem. These photos served as essential field notes for his writing and a means of supplementing his income. 

“Untitled” (New York City), 1940s, a photograph by Ralph Ellison of a young man transmits the power of his prose. It recalls the charismatic Tod Clifton in “Invisible Man.”Credit...The Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust

Shot on medium and large format cameras, as well as the more wieldy 35mm, the photographs showcase his artistic versatility. They depict intimate moments with friends and family members, as well as everyday life on the city streets. 

Ellison's photographic compositions reflect the essence of his iconic writing. His fictional works maintained a deep-rooted connection to reality, and his photographs explore the intricacies of black identity, reflecting the themes that made his debut novel so compelling. Through his lens, viewers are invited to contemplate and reflect on a portrait of America during the period, which rejected the mythical idea of a melting pot that authorities were attempting to push as a means of 'asserting order'. 

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Ralph Ellison, “Untitled” (New York City), circa 1948.Credit...The Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust

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Ralph Ellison’s “Untitled” (New York City), 1940s, captures fun, or is it terror?Credit...The Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust

“Untitled” (New York City), a photograph of men on a Harlem street corner in the 1940s by Ralph Ellison, the author of the 1952 landmark novel, “Invisible Man.”Credit...The Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust

1940s, a woman is being taken into custody by policemen. They raise the unsettling question that reverberates through “Invisible Man.” In this crazy world, how can we tell what is going on?

Ellison's photographs are a valuable addition to the record. However, "Invisible Man" dives much deeper and offers a scathing examination of how the poison of racism has infiltrated American culture. This work of art is both hilarious and horrifying, effectively capturing the tragicomedy of not being recognized for one's true self due to the color of their skin. While some of Ellison's photographs are powerful and striking, they do not match the depth and brilliance of his book, which is considered one of the greatest American novels of the 20th century. If there were a photographic version of "Invisible Man," it would most likely need to be staged, hovering between naturalism and surrealism, by an artist with the same sublime gift for creating images that Ellison possessed for words.

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The second section shows a more introspective Ellison, with photographs taken in the 1970s through the 90s, as he grappled with completing his second novel, Juneteenth, published after his death.
The book’s latter section features color polaroids taken in the latter decades of Ellison's life as he worked on his second novel. These images depict small details, flowers, fruit, and small ornaments, revealing Ellison’s quieter, more reflective side. It is as if he was looking inward for inspiration rather than to the streets around him that previously gave him such. 

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“Untitled” (Fanny McConnell Ellison), 1944/1950, a portrait of his wife Fanny, by Ralph Ellison.Credit...The Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust

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Fanny McConnell Ellison

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Fanny McConnell Ellison

From 730 Riverside Drive in Hamilton Heights, located in the northwest corner of Harlem, he mostly took Polaroids from inside his apartment. He shared the apartment with his wife, Fanny, until he passed away in 1994. One of the photographs features a potted orchid on a windowsill, which overlooks a blurry view of the Hudson. This image strongly suggests a retreat from the turbulence of everyday life.

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Ralph Ellison, “Untitled,” a Polaroid image of an orchid, taken from his Riverside Drive apartment window, 1972/1994.Credit...The Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust

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Fanny McConnell Ellison took this untitled portrait of her husband, Ralph Ellison, at St. Nicholas Park, New York City, 1940s.

Credit...The Ralph and Fanny Ellison Charitable Trust

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It's not commonly known that Gordon Parks, a successful photographer by the mid-1940s, and Ralph Ellison, who was working on his celebrated novel "Invisible Man" (1952), were actually friends.

The two men had a shared vision of racial injustice, which inspired them to collaborate on two important projects in 1948 and 1952. Their first joint project was an essay titled "Harlem Is Nowhere," which they created for '48: The Magazine of the Year. This illustrated essay was conceived while Ellison was working on "Invisible Man" and was focused on the Lafargue Mental Hygiene Clinic - the first non-segregated psychiatric clinic in New York City. The clinic served as a case study for the social and economic conditions of the neighborhood.Parks was chosen to create the accompanying photographs, and during the winter months of 1948, the two roamed the streets of Harlem.

In 1952, they collaborated again on "A Man Becomes Invisible" for the August 25 issue of Life magazine, which promoted Ellison's newly released novel. Unfortunately, one of the two projects was lost, while the other was published only in reduced form. This book is the first publication on Parks' and Ellison's collaboration on these two projects, and it provides an in-depth look at the artists' shared vision of Black life in America, with Harlem as its nerve center.

The book was published to coincide with an exhibition of the same name that originated at The Art Institute of Chicago from May 21 to August 28, 2016.

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“A Man Becomes Invisible” was the culmination of their work together, and remains an important tribute to and interpretation of Ellison’s seminal novel. Invisible Man was described in Life as a story of “the loneliness, the horror and the disillusionment of a man who has lost faith in himself and his world”; more pointedly, it is also a stark account of America’s racial divisions, and of an unnamed Black protagonist’s awakening to his condition of invisibility within the surrounding cultures of white and Black alike. The novel quickly became one of the most acclaimed—and debated—books of the twentieth century and established Ellison as a major figure in American literature. Gordon Parks, meanwhile, was among Life’s most celebrated staff photographers, best known for his poignant and humanizing photo essays. He was also the first African American hired by the magazine. The two men held in common a desire to make visible the Black experience in postwar America, and each was able to make his work accessible to the widest possible audience, both Black and white—accomplishments that brought both praise and criticism throughout their careers. Less well known, however, is that their vision of racial injustices, coupled with a shared belief in the communicative power of photography, inspired collabo- ration on two important projects, in 1948 and 1952.

By the mid-1940s, Parks had cemented his reputation as a successful photojournalist and magazine photographer, and Ellison was working on his first major novel. They were likely introduced by members of the thriving literary and artistic circles in Harlem, who sought new ways of representing Black life in America in their words and images— depictions that would dig deeper than the sociologically and economically driven views that had filled mainstream publications in the 1930s, and would instead reveal the everyday experiences of Black individuals. Ellison had a serious interest in photography. This had drawn him to Parks, who had distinguished himself professionally while working for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and Condé Nast, publisher of Vogue and Glamour magazines. Capitalizing on the growing popularity of the picture press, the two joined forces first in 1948, on the essay “Harlem Is Nowhere,” for ’48: The Magazine of the Year, and again in 1952 on “A Man Becomes Invisible” for Life. Neither project was published as originally intended; parts of the first were lost, while the second came out only as a fragment that merely hinted at the authors’ shared vision of Black life in America, with Harlem as its nerve center.

Michal Raz-Russo
Excerpt from “Visible Men,” Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem

Ralph Ellison, New York, New York, 1947

W. Eugene Smith - The Imperfect Perfectionist by Cameron Scott

W. Eugene Smith

“Available light is any damn light that is available!”

My introduction to photography took place at high school, where my development took parallel paths. In addition to spending time with the camera and in the school darkroom, I also spent a considerable amount of time in both the school and local libraries looking at the few photojournalistic picture books that were available, particularly a collection published by Time Life featuring the works of the great photographers who had graced the pages of those magazines. One of those photographers was W. Eugene Smith, and although I wouldn’t be aware at the time, his work was to have a major influence on me in later life.

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W. Eugene Smith was born in Wichita, Kansas, on December 30, 1918. By the age of fifteen he already had sports photographs published in the Wichita Press, and after graduating from high school he attended the University of Notre Dame on a photography scholarship which he quit before completion. By the age of twenty he had moved to New York and was working for Newsweek magazine. However, this relationship didn’t last long, a theme that was to recur regularly throughout Smith’s troubled life.

“I didn’t write the rules. Why would I follow them?”

A perfectionist who had a reputation for being difficult to work with, he had been fired from Newsweek for refusing to work with larger format cameras in preference to 35mm. This opportunity led him to a role with Life magazine, a recently established publication which aimed to educate and entertain its audience through the use of high-quality photography in the form of photo-essays, a format in which Smith would eventually become an acknowledged master.

“I would that my photographs might be, not the coverage of a news event, but an indictment of war - the brutal corrupting viciousness of its doing to the minds and bodies of men; and, that my photographs might be a powerful emotional catalyst to the reasoning which would help this vile and criminal stupidity from beginning again”

By the time America entered WW2 Smith was considered to be one of the leading photojournalists of the day, while still only 23 years of age. He chose to leave Life magazine for a position at Parade, and on successful application to the Department Of Defence for an overseas position he found himself on the aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill where he flew with combat missions aboard the Navy’s bombers, producing some of the most powerful and iconic documentary records of the US Navy’s ariel capabilities, the most famous of which shows Avenger bombers moving to attack Japanese positions on the island of Saipan.

US Fighter Bombers At The Battle Of Saipan

Smith eventually left Parade and the USS Bunker Hill in favour of a position back at the Life stable, where he immediately went into combat with the US Marines, once again producing iconic images from the Pacific theatre. One particularly iconic image that features regularly in appreciations of Smith’s work comes from the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945 and depicts a group of marines sheltering amongst burnt tree stalks while munitions explode directly in front of them. This is often interpreted as showing shell fire, indeed in one book it is even entitled Sticks and Stones and Flying Bones. However, on the Magnum website it is described as depicting a US Marine demolition team destroying a cave.

Smith’s war ended after being hit by a shell and it took over a year for him to recover from his injuries.

The Battle Of Iwo Jima US Marine Demolition Team

“What use is having a great depth of field, if there is not an adequate depth of feeling?”

After the war he continued to work for Life magazine, where amongst what he considered mundane assignments, he produced some of his most celebrated photo essays which set a framework for modern photojournalism. These included The Country Doctor, a documentary following the life and work of one Dr Ernest Ceriani who had a practise in the small rural town of Kremling, Colorado. For this Smith adopted a fly on the wall approach, where he blended into the wallpaper as it were. In this essay he brought us many beautiful images that show the balance between Dr Ceriani’s life and work, and his responsibilities to the community that he served. This photo essay contains another Smith classic, where the doctor is shown in a kitchen, dressed in scrubs, holding a coffee while smoking a cigarette. His gaze is vacant, he looks empty. He has just lost a mother and her baby during childbirth.

Other Smith classic photo-essays from this period include Nurse Midwife, Spanish Village, and an essay on Albert Schweitzer

Dr Ceriani Makes A House Call

Dr Ceriani

Albert Schweitzer

Albert Schweitzer By Light

Spanish Rural Police

Spanish Village Wake

“Never have I found the limits of the photographic potential.

Every horizon, upon being reached, reveals another beckoning in the distance. Always, I am on the threshold.”

Smith’s constant drive for perfection and his demands for editorial control over his work led to many clashes with the Life hierarchy and he eventually left due to a disagreement over the layout of his Albert Schweitzer essay, turning his back on a highly lucrative salary that in today’s terms would be a six-figure sum. In 1955 he joined the renowned Magnum agency, and his first assignment took him to Pittsburgh where he had been commissioned to produce one hundred images in a three-week period for a feature on the city’s upcoming Bicentennial.  For this assignment he was provided with furnished accommodation which included a fully equipped darkroom, accommodation which would also house the twenty odd pieces of luggage and hundreds of LP records and books that he had brought with him. Clearly Smith had other plans. He had decided that this project would be his magnum opus, he equated it to Beethoven’s Ninth and other major classics. It would be four weeks before the camera even made an appearance, and another year before he had finished shooting, a year in which he produced seventeen thousand negatives. He eventually pared this down to a final selection of two thousand images but had difficulty in realising the project in terms of publication. His refusal to relinquish editorial control once again led to the loss of several highly paid offers. He eventually got his wish when Popular Photography agreed to his demands by publishing eighty-eight images from the project but paid only a small fraction of what he had been previously offered, and although he had full editorial control, he was still bitterly disappointed with the final result.

Pittsburgh Coke Ovens

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“I’ve never made any picture, good or bad, without paying for it in emotional turmoil.”

The combination of self-induced pressures in trying to realise the Pittsburgh project, the financial instability he had imposed on his family and also the death of his mother drove Smith to the brink of destruction. In 1957 he left the family home and moved into a near derelict loft in the wholesale flower district of Manhattan, at 821 Sixth Avenue. He shared this loft space with various jazz musicians, and many others would visit in the early hours of the morning for jam sessions, straight from performing gigs at many of New Yorks’ most well-known venues. Some of the biggest names in jazz are featured in this body of work, including Thelonious Monk, Sonny Clark, Miles Davis, Chick Corea and the composer and arranger Hall Overton. This was eventually to lead to the body of work known as The Jazz Loft Project where Smith not only documented the sessions photographically but also wired the rooms for sound and recorded over four thousand hours of chatter and music on various reel to reel recorders. The historical significance of this has only recently been realised thanks to the research by the author Sam Stevenson. In addition to photographing the ongoings inside the loft, Smith also pointed his lens through a crack in the window to document life outside. Smith’s original plan was to use his time at the loft to finish the Pittsburgh project, but it never really happened. By now Smith was a heavy user of alcohol and amphetamines and is documented as having spent days on end in his darkroom going without sleep, all in the strive for that elusive perfection. On a purely personal note, for me this body of work is Smith’s finest. Earlier this year I purchased Stevenson’s latest edition of the book the Jazz Loft Project, which features pictures and transcriptions from the tapes that Smith recorded.  On first thumb through the pictures were classic Smith, beautiful black and white images with that classic Smith humanity. The transcriptions I wasn’t so sure about, however once further study got underway it was a book I simply couldn’t put down. It’s a remarkable piece of work. There are many stunning images in it, probably the most well-known being a close crop side shot of Thelonius Monk in full flight with cigarette in mouth. However, my own particular favourite is a close crop of British jazz bassist Peter Ind, an image that I hadn’t seen before. It’s a close up shot, we don’t see the background, the other musicians or even the full instrument. It’s grainy and soft, Ind’s eyes are focused, a wisp of greased hair has fallen over his forehead, and his fingering shows that of a trained bass player rather than the death grip favoured by those from a less formal background. I’ve been there, I was a jazz bassist, so maybe that’s why this deceptively simple image appeals so much, a moment where two artists at the absolute peak of their creativity are momentarily connected by a lens. 

Smith’s time at the loft ended in 1965, by which time had a made roughly forty thousand pictures in addition to the already mentioned four thousand hours of audio recordings.

Thelonious Monk Rehearsing

Jazz Bassist Peter Ind

“I try to take what voice I have and I give it to those who don’t have one at all”

Having spent time in Japan during WW2 and again in the following years, he made his final trip in 1971 accompanied by his partner Aileen Mioko. This was at the invitation of a friend who wanted him to visit the fishing village of Minamata and document a scandal involving the Chisso chemical company that had been discharging mercury into the sea. This mercury then found its way into the food chain, resulting in birth defects and neurological disorders that collectively became known as Minamata Disease. Smith’s work here lasted three years, and again he was seriously injured during a protest at the Chisso factory where he received a beating from employees of the company. The work that Smith produced during this period is breathtaking and includes another of his most celebrated images - Tomoko and Mother In Bath. This story is also told in the film of the same name starring Johhny Depp in the role of Smith.

Minimata Fishing Boats

Tomoko Uemera In Bath

Smith returned from Minamata in 1974, where, after a stay in New York he moved to Tucson Arizona to join the teaching faculty at the University of Arizona. By now his health had deteriorated markedly, and after a series of strokes he passed away on October 15th, 1978, leaving an archive that weighed twenty-two tones and had to be transported in two eighteen-wheeler trucks.

“Passion is in all great searches and is necessary to all creative endeavours.”

This simple appreciation by me can in no way quantify the impact that W. Eugene Smith had and continues to have on photojournalism and indeed the wider arena of photographic art. He is the photographer whose work I have studied most, from all those who continue to inspire me. The beautiful monochrome tonality of his images, not to mention the humanity contained within resonates with me. I find his life story sad and yet inspirational in equal measures, the archetypal troubled genius, the Mozart of photography.

As I write this last paragraph near the forty-fifth anniversary of Gene’s passing, I reflect on the impact that his photography has had on my own journey. Whilst the portrayal of an event in monochromatic tones is a purely individual taste in terms of greyscale tones used and their distribution throughout the final frame, there’s no doubt that the early exposure to his work has shaped what I now consider to be my own ideal monochromatic presentation. The gold standard if you will. The W Eugene Smith standard.

W. Eugene Smith Magnum

Images copyright Magnum Photos

Weegee or Arthur Fellig by Batsceba Hardy

Arthur 'Weegee' Fellig (June 12, 1899 – December 26, 1968) was a street photographer with a fascination for murders and misfits, who occupied a unique place between burlesque and film noir. He remains arguably the most renowned photographer of the 1940s and 50s, having achieved legendary status. His work is immediately recognizable and stands alone in the history of photography.

"I am a natural-born photographer, with hypo in my blood."

Arthur 'Weegee' Fellig was born on June 12, 1899 in Lemberg, Galicia, Austria-Hungary, which is now known as Zolochiv, Ukraine. His birth name was Usher Fellig, but it was changed to Arthur when he and his family immigrated to New York in 1909. He began his career as a photographer at the age of fourteen.

He was self-taught and only gained regular employment at a photography studio in 1918.

In 1935, while still a teenager, he began working as a freelance news photographer and adopted the name "Weegee". Perhaps indicative of his self-promotion, he created a catchy pseudonym and later proclaimed himself 'Weegee the Famous'.*

In 1938, he was granted permission to install a police radio in his car, which allowed him to capture sensational photographs of news events and offer them for sale to publications like the Herald-Tribune, Daily News, Post, the Sun, and PM Weekly, among others.

From 1935 -1946, he had a near monopoly on images of the violent aftermath of New York City's Prohibition era.

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Weegee, known for his gritty black and white photos, is one of the most notorious photographers in street photography's history, even though he never referred to himself as a street photographer. His use of a 4×5 Speed Graphic large-format press camera and flash added a layer of drama to his already dramatic shots.

He typically used a camera preset with f/16 aperture, 1/200 second shutter speed, and flashbulbs. He would set the focus distance at ten feet, but was never sure what his photos would look like until he processed them. His style of shooting with flash in the streets has significantly influenced other photographers such as Diane Arbus, William Klein, and Bruce Gilden.

* [Weegee sounding like OUIJA board and people thought he arrived at a murder scene before it happened.]

[Cab driver with Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade clown, New York], c.1942 © Weegee Archive/International Center of Photography

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[Charles Sodokoff and Arthur Webber using their top hats to hide their faces, New York], January 26, 1942 © Weegee Archive/International Center of Photography

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In spite of being known for his crime and death photographs, some of his works were quite delicate, like "Boy Meets Girl - From Mars" (1955) which is known as one of the most romantic, poetic and surreal photos of its time.

Boy meets girl - from Mars, c.1955 © Weegee Archive/International Center of Photography

All of his photos were full of life and captured the essence of the moment. One of his most famous photographs was captured on a particularly hot summer day, in 1941, while he was perched atop a lifeguard's station in Coney Island, Brooklyn. He captured a massive crowd of bathers that were all looking up to him, and he had to scream to get their attention.

In the mid-1940s, he used infrared film to photograph moviegoers in New York cinemas. He produced a series of mesmerized kids, exhilarated teens and embracing couples, which surprisingly turned out to be moving.

[Afternoon crowd at Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York], July 21, 1940 © Weegee Archive/International Center of Photography

Lovers at the Palace Theater, c.1945 © Weegee Archive/International Center of Photography

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Weegee was famous for his portraits of cabaret singers and their lively audiences at Sammy's Bowery Follies, also known as Sammy's on the Bowery. This popular venue in the Lower East Side was a meeting place for people from all walks of life - from the rich and famous to the forgotten and homeless. Weegee's unique eye for capturing the essence of his subjects is reflected in the works of many other photographers, such as Lisette Model and Diane Arbus. Weegee's own self-portraits are also a testament to his wit and character.

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[Ethel, queen of the Bowery, and man, Sammy's on the Bowery, New York], c.1943 © Weegee Archive/International Center of Photography

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Weegee became renowned for capturing the essence of New York in his edgy, black and white photographs taken with a flash. His unique style quickly gained recognition and popularity. While his crime photographs were widely published in the tabloids during the 1940s, his work was also showcased in prestigious institutions such as the New York Photo League in 1941 and The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1943.

Lisa Hostetler, the George Eastman House curator, highlights Weegee's photography's uniqueness. It was successful in popular media and respected by the fine-art community during his lifetime. Weegee's talent of capturing the most significant and telling moments of the events he photographed and forging a strong emotional connection between the viewer and the characters in his pictures allowed his photographs to navigate between these two realms.

Three of Weegee's books, Naked City (1945), Weegee's People (1946), and Naked Hollywood (1953), have achieved cult classic status.

Magnum Photos was established in 1947, just two years after the publication of Weegee's Naked City. Bruce Gilden, like many other Magnum photographers, was an admirer and collector of Weegee's work. When asked about his favorite Weegee pieces, he singled out "Their First Murder" (1941) as one of his all-time favorites. Gilden also greatly admired “The Critic”.

The photograph was published in PM Daily on October 9, 1941, with Weegee’s text (written on his famed typewriter).

he Critic, November 22, 1943 © Weegee Archive/International Center of Photography

TIME selected it as one of the 100 most iconic photos ever. The editors explained: “In 1943, Weegee turned his Speed Graphic camera’s blinding flash on the social and economic inequalities that lingered after the Great Depression. Not averse to orchestrating a shot, he dispatched his assistant, Louie Liotta, to a Bowery dive in search of an inebriated woman. He found a willing subject and took her to the Metropolitan Opera House for its Diamond Jubilee celebration. Then Liotta set her up near the entrance while Weegee watched for the arrival of Mrs. George Washington Kavanaugh and Lady Decies, two wealthy women who regularly graced society columns. When the tiara- and fur-bedecked socialites arrived for the opera, Weegee gave Liotta the signal to spring the drunk woman. With that flash, Weegee captured the stark juxtaposition of fabulous wealth and dire poverty, in a gotcha style that anticipated the commercial appeal of paparazzi decades later.”

Weegee's work is beautiful and enduring because, although he appeared to be detached, he was actually highly aware and critical of what the Situationist philosopher Guy Debord later referred to as "The Society of the Spectacle" in his 1967 book.

[After the opera, Sammy's on the Bowery, New York], 1943-45© Weegee Archive/International Center of Photography

In 1945, the renowned photographer moved to Los Angeles, where he captured glamorous portraits of celebrities. He also began his experimental Distortions series, featuring famous figures like Marilyn Monroe and Richard Nixon. During this time, he also started working with 16-millimeter film and produced several short, eccentric motion pictures in both the U.S. and Europe. In 1953, he returned to New York to teach and write about photography. In 1961, he was famously photographed mid-air by his friend Philippe Halsman, joining the ranks of other luminaries like Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Steichen, Audrey Hepburn, Salvador Dalí, Marilyn Monroe, John Steinbeck, and Aldous Huxley, all of whom had also been captured in similar shots by the Magnum photographer.

Halsman, Philippe (1906-1979) - 1961 Weegee

“People are so wonderful that a photographer has only to wait for that breathless moment to capture what he wants on film.”

A. Fellig (Weegee)

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References
1. Weegee's People, Arthur Fellig, 1900-1968, DA CAPO PRESS, New York, 1975
2. Naked City, Arthur Fellig- Essential Books, 1945
3. Weegee, Aperture History of Photography Series Aperture, Inc. 1978
4. Weegee, Louis Stettner, Alfred A. Knopf, Publisher, New York, 1977
5. Weegee, Andre Laude Pantheon Books, New York, 1986
6. Weegee by Weegee, An Autobiography, Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, New York, 1961