Just finished reading Disappearing Witness: Change in Twentieth-Century American Photography by Gretchen Garner, in which she describes how photography (and not just in America) in the first half of the century was defined by what she calls ‘spontaneous witness’ (think Cartier-Bresson and the ‘decisive moment’), outward-looking, documentary, and in the second half became much more personal, inward-looking. It is a very easy read, her ‘story’ never drags and it is always informative. »
Archive of journal entries re "Observations"
Of course, I knew the name Cartier-Bresson, and I could recognize (some of) his more famous photographs, but it seemed he was concerned with street photography, and I was not, and so he did not have much relevance, or interest, to me. Some time back I happened upon a link to a video of an interview Charlie Rose did with him in 2000 and last month I got to watch it. What stood out for me was his personality, his approach to life, and photography, and that made his photography so much more interesting.
I managed to work out which book Charlie Rose had been using in the interview, reviewed it at the local library, saw it was a good selection of his (early) work and well-reproduced, and bought myself a (used) copy. The library also had a DVD on Cartier-Bresson, so I took a look at that, and then looked to see what else was available and found Henri Cartier-Bresson (Two-Disc Collector and it came today. It really has a lot of material on it. It will take me a while to watch all of this. »
We’re in Palo Alto for the holidays, staying with Jill’s folks. On the big day, with everyone gathered for the exchanging of gifts, I thought I would get my camera out. At that moment, I could visualize my battery in the charger back home. Unfortunately I couldn’t visualize where »
As we were driving along I-94 from Lake Michigan today, I looked at a stand of trees, no idea if they were aspens, but they had that exposed, bright lower trunks look, and I thought how cool they looked, and I wondered if there is something built into us to appreciate that sight, or whether it’s because Ansel brought them to our attention.
I did this completely independent of the fact that an hour later we stopped at the Ella Sharp Museum, just S of Jackson, MI to look at a special exhibition of Ansel Adams prints, including 2 different aspen studies. »
I’ve continued to practice with my new camera, taking photos as I walk in and out of town, and in the garden. I’ve come to the conclusion that making interesting photos of (our) garden is really difficult. Have to really think through the whole process, including considering what is »
I’m currently reading a couple of books (one by, one about) Eliot Porter. Color landscape and nature photography (interesting to read his interactions with Steglitz and Adams). They had one of his photos at UMMA, but it was odd-looking as if someone had over photoshopped it – but my »
