Last weekend we finally got around to seeing Coraline. It proved to be a pretty good Halloween pick for young ones, moderately scary but no real blood and gore. About a quarter of the way through I was surprised to see Coraline pick up a Leica (an old M2 or M3?) to whip off some snapshots. You don't see many Leicas in animated films. Someone involved in production must have had a camera fetish. That's great, but the Leica scene (shown above) shows it being used to take a slew of flash photos which doesn't look possible with that camera. Oh well. Good film anyway.
I'm out making photos. B is on hiatus for a while.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Continuity?
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Scorpio
On Thursday B will celebrate its second birthday. What better way to commemorate than with a quiz?
As some may have noticed, in June I began the practice of appropriating the titles of photography books as blog post titles. Sometimes I will tweak the title slightly to help it fit the material. For example, this title refers to Frank's The Lines of My Hand. More often I use a book title without alteration, as in today's or yesterday's post.
Your challenge is to identify the author(s) of the most book titles on B from June 2009 to the present. The quiz only applies to post titles having nothing to do with the book. So, for example, even though American Prospects appears in several titles it is not a candidate because all of those posts relate to that book. To qualify, a title must be appropriated outside its original context.
with help from People Facing Their Birthday Cakes by Julio Grinblatt
The first person to correctly the author(s) wins a very special birthday gift, a mint copy of Julio Grinblatt's book People Facing Their Birthday Cakes, published in 2005 by Blue Sky Gallery.
Good luck!
Monday, November 2, 2009
Sunday, November 1, 2009
What To Do? #47
140. SE 39th and Stark, Portland, 2005
141. SE 39th and Main, Portland, 2008(WTD? is a weekly installment of old unseen b/w photos)
Saturday, October 31, 2009
American Prospects Revisited:
McLean, VA 1978
Halloween seems like an appropriate day to think about Sternfeld's best known image: McLean, Virginia, December 1978. I've spent some time this week, as I do every year, visiting the local pumpkin farm with the kids. After a long search —pumpkins are as individual as snowflakes— we came home with three pumpkins and yesterday spent some time carving elaborate jack-o-lanterns into their sides. Tonight they'll be silhouetted in flames. So when I look at Sternfeld's photo the subject matter seems immediately familiar.
At first glance this is among the most beguiling of Sternfeld's photographs. A fireman buying a pumpkin while the house burns behind him? What's going on here? Shouldn't his attention be on the fire? And who buys pumpkins in December? Wouldn't they have rotted in the fields by then?
As has been pointed out in numerous places (including Nick Turpin recently on B) the fire was no accident. It was a training exercise for the McLean Volunteer Fire Department.
A few weeks ago I called Clyde Clark to get a firsthand account of what happened. Clark was a member of the MVFD back in 1978 (he's since risen through the ranks to become Chief) and was on the scene the day of the exercise.
According to Clark, a developer had bought the property planning to build a subdivision but before he could proceed he needed to raze the existing structure. He offered the house up to the MVFD to burn in a controlled way. The MVFD would get some practical training and the developer would be rid of the structure. A win-win situation.
The exercise began in a very controlled way, room by room. It wasn't until late afternoon, around 3 or 4 pm, that the conflagration became big enough to consume the entire house. Joel Sternfeld (In Clark's words, "Joel Sternberg or whatever his name was...") happened to be driving by. He saw the fire, pulled over, set up his 8 x 10, and made the photo before anyone realized he'd done it. According to Clark, Sternfeld had made no prior arrangements and he knew no one on the fire crew. But chance favors the prepared mind, and Sternfeld found himself in the right place at the right time.
It wasn't until later when Sternfeld sent the MVFD a copy of Life Magazine that the fire crew realized they'd been photographed. Sternfeld's photograph was the magazine's centerpiece. Later Sternfeld sent a signed print to the MVFD which has been dutifully put on display in the firehouse, where it provokes the occasional question about its history. On top of that, Clark says they get a few inquiries a year from students or historians curious about the photograph and occasionally they will lend it out locally.
The house is now long gone, replaced by a large housing development called The Hamptons.
The December date still stumps me. I know Virginia is a temperate climate but could they grow such things that time of year? The photo was taken late in the afternoon. In December it would be nearly dark at 4 pm. All of which tempts me to think the date may be mislabeled. I asked Clark but he was unsure of the exact month of the exercise.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Maps for photographers
The Pencil of Nature
Cyanotype
The Linked Ring
The Photo-Secession
Camera Work
Equivalents
Naked City
The Rule of Thirds
The Zone System
The Family of Mann
Toward a Social Landscape
The New Topographics
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