http://vivianmaier.blogspot.com/ is all over the Interweb today; why not here as well? There’s a lovely story to introduce the pictures, not a clinker in the bunch, and more to come as well. (Thanks, Steph.)
Impossible Project says “Dust off your bookends!”
Polaroid film is back, baby: http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?articleid=1204504&srvc=rss
Frankencamera!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113692571
…and this’ll be better, because…?
Cecil Taylor is right: artists are workers.
In the words of Aaron Siskind: “Talent or no, it’s the need to work that matters.”
Or the want to work. Ken Josephson wrote long ago that he dealt with photography every day, even if only by reading or through paperwork. It occurred to me that even though the process is episodic by nature, it’s possible (and beneficial) to create a continuum of sorts, just as one does in athletics or in music.
Cecil: “I was watching some writer, and he said, “Yes, I write five hours every day.” And I said to myself, “My, that’s really disciplined,” though I don’t think there’s any one way of going about it. You may not write, but you may read. But you are always thinking about the object of what you’re thinking about.”
Twyla Tharp: Some people might say that simply stumbling out of bed and getting into a taxicab hardly rates the honorific “ritual.” It glorifies a mundane act that anyone can perform. I disagree. First steps are hard; it’s no one’s idea of fun to wake up in the dark every day and haul one’s tired body to the gym… the quasi-religious power I attach to this ritual keeps me from rolling over and going back to sleep… Turning something into a ritual eliminates the question, Why am I doing this?… The ritual erases the question of whether or not I like it. It’s also a friendly reminder that I’m doing the right thing. (I’ve done it before. It was good. I’ll do it again.)
My goofy irregular system for darkroom work probably doesn’t work for anyone else. I’ll fall asleep around 8:30; wake up (with the last mouthful of dinner partially chewed) at 11:30 to drink a “doppio;” print from roughly midnight to two, or two-thirty; leave the prints on minimum flow wash, then finish the night’s rest with no apparent ill affects. But don’t emulate me, find your own ritual.
Dig into (and/or float along with) Bill Dane
Bill Dane had the brilliant idea to send his hand-made postcards to John Szarkowski, who included them (dogears, postmark ink and all) in exhibits at MoMA in New York.
Fifteen years ago I acquired the little book “History of the Universe;” many people to whom I show it have no visible reaction, but it still slays me whenever I go through it.
Nobody has clicked on the link on this page to Bill Dane’s site, so let’s all do it today.
Here’s a bit of text from “Bill Dane Photographs Outside Inside:”
WHAT ARE YOU UP TO DOWN THERE
WHAT ARE YOU DOWN FOR UP THERE
The politics of existence – chaos-order-
loss-grief-anger-anxiety-sadness-
sex-love-pleasure-hope-health-death-
histories-circumstances-perspectives
It’s about the timely encounter with pieces:
Brecht-Tebaldi-Chomsky-Van Gogh-Warhol-
Godard-Boll-King-Dylan-the Blues-Frank-
Arbus-Friedlander-Winogrand-Evans-Atget
It’s about Context
Framing
Light
Tension between forces-ingredients-opposers
It’s about JS’s ”The Photographers’s Eye” and
”Looking At Photographs”
Treasure hunting our ‘Mirrors and Windows’
Outside Inside
Focus
Intuition
Diffused vision
Walking and Looking and Finding ‘It’
Seeing what ‘It’ looks like photographed
Editing
Me and the Image and You
It’s about Truckin’
W. o’ W. from John Frohnmayer
“We are fast becoming an illiterate nation.
“Seldom do our children receive systematic instruction in what their cultures have, over the centuries, deemed important enough to preserve: the tribal dance, the symphonic idiom, Asian poetry, folk tales. These, along with our built monuments, enduring literature, music, and visual arts, define the cultures from which we come.
“Cicero warned that not to know what happened before we were born condemns us always to remain children, and in an aesthetic sense, that is the punishment to which we have condemned our own children.
“It is a mystery to me why our study of history revolves around wars rather than artistic accomplishments, around the writings of politicians rather than those of poets and essayists. To be locked out of sights and sounds, rhythm and meter, is as numbing and dehumanizing as to lack the ability to read.”
-from “Leaving Town Alive”
Creative Camerawork 