Five: Films with Photographers

Blow-Up (1966)

Take the consummate swingin' 1960's photographer with his womanizing too-cool-for-you lifestyle and put him right in the middle of a murder mystery. Then give it the kind of symbolic ending that makes a great majority of people hate European films.

The best scenes in Blow-Up find the photographer endlessly enlarging negatives to better see the evidence of a crime that may or may not have happened.


City Of God (2002)

A young man chooses between a life as a gang member in a violence-plagued slum in Rio De Janeiro or something more. He is drawn to a camera, ultimate choosing to document the tragedies around him as a means to rise above the poverty and hopelessness of his situation.

City Of God is a powerful statement of perseverance and one of the best movies that many have never seen.


One Hour Photo (2002)

A lonely and psychotic man works in the photo lab at a big box retailer. His obsession with one of his customers gets out of hand, causing him to lose his job and embark on what he sees as a noble mission to punish a husband for his infidelities.

Robin Williams plays as convincing of a psychopath as you'll ever see. He's remarkably creepy and unsettling, but somehow we feel compelled to empathize with him.


Pecker (1998)

A wide-eyed kid from Baltimore takes some photographs of the people in his neighborhood. A snooty New York art dealer discovers his work at the local deli and turns him to a star in the art world. And John Waters directs, so there's a good dose of filthy humor and outright bizarre characters.

Pecker is a love-hate sort of film. Either you laugh and eat it up or you sit and think about how much you despise everything about it for two hours. I think it's brilliant.


Rear Window (1954)

What's a photographer to do when he is confined to a bed in his apartment? Spy on the neighbors across the courtyard with a telephoto lens, find one of the neighbors attempting to cover up a crime, and end up face to face with the murderer himself after he knows he has been discovered.

I'm a huge Hitchcock fan, and Rear Window is one of his best. It's brilliant how the entire film is shot within one apartment and its view across a courtyard.

Iowa: Day Four

With nothing but rain in sight, I headed home from Burlington. I'm looking forward to getting back to central Iowa to continue working on the family project. Most of the ride home was spent trying to figure out just how to approach it. It's daunting to try to work in a different way, but I think it'll make for a stronger series in the end.

The photograph above is from downtown Burlington. There were four bikes hanging on wires above an intersection.

Iowa: Day Three

I've made it down to Burlington, in the south-eastern corner of the state. It's an old river town on the bluffs of the Mississippi.

The photograph is a detail of one of the buildings downtown.

Also visited: Gulfport and Hamilton, Illinois; Fort Madison, Montrose and Keokuk.

Iowa: Day Two

Today was spent meandering all over the countryside in Iowa and Poweshiek counties with my grandparents. We covered a lot of ground and family history, many places that are almost non-existent today. I had forgotten how beautiful it is out here, rolling hills and valleys with green as far as the eye can see.

Pictured is what remains of the country school that my grandmother first taught in after getting her teaching degree. It's very nearly gone forever.

Also visited: Brooklyn, Carnforth, Victor, Ladora, Millersburg, Hartwick, Deep River, Montezuma and Malcom

Iowa: Day One

Today was a wonderfully cool June day, very different than the sticky hot weather we usually get around here this time of year. I spent the day traveling a little more than halfway across the state of Iowa to Grinnell. I'll be attempting to get started on the Iowa portion of my yet-to-be-titled family project over the next couple days.

The above photograph is from the side of a building in the main street area of Persia, Iowa. Not family related, but one of the few photographs I took today.

Also visited: Portsmouth, Newton, Kellogg and Lynnville

On the road again...

I've been stir crazy of late, constantly wishing I was out and about now that I've got most of my health issues under control. Work is work, and offers very little of any sort of outlet for creativity. I've been spending a lot of time with Walker Evans' work and planning to get out and photograph during the summer months.

Today was a test run to the loess hills region north of Council Bluffs, Iowa. The picture above is something I've wanted to photograph for the long time, a (now abandoned) restaurant all by its lonesome at the Honey Creek exit on Interstate 29. The giant letters that mark the roof have been been burned into my memory for as long as I can remember, most likely going back to childhood trips to Nebraska to visit my grandparents.

Also visited: Loveland, Missouri Valley, Logan, and Beebeetown.

Reissued...

I was pleased to discover that William Eggleston's 2 1/4 is once again available for purchase. Twin Palms published the fourth edition of the book earlier this year and it's limited to just 3000 copies worldwide.

My first (and only) experience with this book was through the interlibrary loan system at school. The copy I borrowed had seen better days, but still stands out in my mind as what I like best about Eggleston. While it's really not all that different than his later work, 2 1/4 shows what direction he was heading in and the use of a square sets this work apart from projects like Los Alamos.

2 1/4 is wonderfully printed with large images on every page. Just a fantastic book overall, especially for fans of Eggleston. Get it before it's gone again and only available at inflated prices on the secondary market.

Books On Books

The first four releases of errata editions' Books on Books series are in stores now. Each title features a reproduction of a classic photography book with added insight and commentary on the work.

Walker Evans' American Photographs is the second book in the series and the first I have purchased. The idea behind the series is brilliantly simple. Take the original book, scan the pages, and publish them in a new format. Some of the images are published on a single page, others are placed four to a single page spread. After the reproduction of the full book, some essays about the photographer and the work follow.

Errata did just about everything right with the entire presentation. The half dust jacket looks great and the entire reproduction looks excellent, better than I had expected. Some of the images end up a bit small due to the layout, but that's about the only complaint I've got. Definitely an interesting way to discover books that may be unavailable at the current time.

Other titles in the series include: Eugene Atget's Photographe de Paris, Sophie Ristelheuber's Fait and Chris Killip's En Flagrante.

Five: Photo books from 2008...

I didn't buy enough photo books this year to author a 'best of' list, but here are five books that I really enjoyed this past year.

Ray K. Metzker
Light Lines

This is a beautifully printed book, a collection of much of Metzker's work. He excels at creating abstract black and white photographs out of everyday life, reducing landscapes and people into lines and shapes.



William Christenberry
Working From Memory
For fans of Christenberry, such as myself, Working From Memory is a much appreciated look at the stories behind his work. Each chapter gives a background story for a photograph, all the little details behind what makes them special to the photographer.


Bill Wood's Business
Bill Wood was a commercial photographer from Fort Worth, Texas. Diane Keaton purchased his vault of negatives after his death and eventually put together this exhibition of his work. The collection documents both the serious and odd side of a very straight-forward photographer without pretense.


Zoe Strauss
America
Strauss' America is vivid and recalls Stephen Shore's American Surfaces project, albeit a bit more focused. There's a lot to see, with a lot of photographs, both delightfully mundane in nature and some that may be a little too contrived for my tastes.


Michael Eastman
Vanishing America
Vanishing America is chock full of images. Some layouts are simple, other have a half dozen or more images on a spread of pages. Eastman's work is a massive collection of broken down main streets and all the other small town necessities that are slowly falling apart.

A somewhat puzzling obession

For one reason or another, I am drawn to photographing vehicles that I find interesting. This led to a situation during my ninety-three project where I found myself struggling to keep myself from taking even more pictures of vehicles, especially American pick-up trucks from the 70's and 80's. This post is a direct result of that obsessive behavior.

Enjoy.

Image: Untitled (August 2005)

Sometimes a person goes back to older photographs and finds something that they never really appreciated before. This image was taken while trapped in a car at Lake Cunningham with two friends during one of Nebraska's patented sudden biblical-caliber thunderstorms. It's one of those happy accidents that help define why photography holds so much promise to me.

Day 5: Duluth to Omaha

A drive to Marquette, Michigan was aborted for the same reason I stayed in Duluth an extra day, so my travels came to an end. I made it as far as Port Wing, Wisconsin before being forced to turn around. That part of the state is exactly what I was looking for when I started out on this trip, small lakeshore towns without all the touristy activity.

There's always next time.