Sally Mann

Sally Mann's "Immediate Family" had a big impact on me when I discovered it twelve years ago, and much of my interest in photography, particularly American women photographers like Dorothea Lange and Berenice Abbott, can be traced back to those haunting portraits of childhood.

"Immediate Family" remains somewhat controversal, and the exhibition I attended in Copenhagen this weekend had photos which will be removed when the exhibition travels outside Scandinavia. It's too bad that nakedness, which is such an important element of classic art and art that strives to be timeless, remains so controversal in the real world. Oh well.

Mann's other projects were quite interesting too. I particularly liked her southern landscapes, which were captured with old cameras and old techniques, inducing a mood of southern 18th century gothic.

This small online collection includes a few pics that weren't included in the Immediate Family book. My inner goth has a particular soft spot for "Fun Picture". :D

Joel-Peter Witkin

I think I'll work my way through a few more photographers with a vaguely gothic sensibility. Here's Joel-Peter Witkin.

• Online exhibition

Jan Saudek

More semi-gothic photography: The Jan Saudek homepage has a nice selection of images, including iconic images that were used for record covers for Soul Asylum and Daniel Lanois. The huge Taschen art book collection of his images is highly recommended.

• The Jan Saudek homepage

Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson is a contemporary photographer specializing in haunting images of suburbia. He is very much influenced by motion pictures - some of his work has been inspired by the imagery of Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". Edward Hopper is another obvious influence.

• Visit an online exhibition of his work here.

Loretta Lux

I should hopefully be going to the Sally Mann exhibition in Copenhagen next week. In the meantime I'm already in a 'spooky childhood' kind of mood. Here are a few images from the Loretta Lux homepage. These haunting pictures certainly captures.... well... something about childhood. At least Childhood as I remember it. No, I was not a happy kid.

• Visit the Loretta Lux Homepage

1930s-1940s in color

"These vivid color photos from the Great Depression and World War II capture an era generally seen only in black-and-white. Photographers working for the United States Farm Security Administration (FSA) and later the Office of War Information (OWI) created the images between 1939 and 1944.

The FSA/OWI pictures depict life in the United States, including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, with a focus on rural areas and farm labor, as well as aspects of World War II mobilization, including factories, railroads, aviation training, and women working.

The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division preserves
the original photographs and offers the digital copies to ensure their wide availability."

link

Dorothea Lange - greatest humanist photographer ever?

"SHORPY - The-100-year Old Photo Blog" has a great collection of old photos in fairly high quality, including some of Dorothea Lange's classics.

Their Lange-collection can be found here, including Lange's own captions. Be sure to check them out, they're in higher quality than those I've posted here.

Dust bowl/depression slideshows

There's a series of slide shows of classic photos available on youtube "America Comes of Age". The image resolution is not ideal for those kinds of photos, but the music's great.





..guess I'll simply have to hunt for the photos in better quality.

(part one and four is about the 20s and about Korea.)

New York in the 1930s - the photographs of Berenice Abbott

(Note: this text is adapted from the Wikipedia article. I'll do that occasionally when a post is about simply getting a few facts down fast, and not about me trying to do great journalism. I'll edit the bits that aren't relevant to this blog, and link to the original text, and sometimes link to texts from more reliable sources. But really, this blog is supposed to be about the visual feel of the 1930s, not about double checked facts.)

Berenice Abbott (July 17, 1898 – December 9, 1991), born Bernice Abbott and urban design of the, was an Americanphotographer best known for her black-and-white photography of New York City architecture in the 1930s.

Abbott went to Europe in 1921, spending two years studying sculpture in Paris and Berlin. She first became involved with photography in 1923, when Man Ray, looking for somebody who knew nothing about photography and thus would do as he said, hired her as a darkroom assistant at his portrait studio. Later she would write: "I took to photography like a duck to water. I never wanted to do anything else." Man Ray was impressed by her darkroom work and allowed her to use his studio to take her own photographs. In 1926, she had her first solo exhibition.

Abbott's subjects were people in the artistic and literary worlds, including French nationals (Jean Cocteau), expatriates (James Joyce), and others just passing through the city. According to Sylvia Beach, "To be 'done' by Man Ray or Berenice Abbott meant you rated as somebody"

The famous portrait of Joyce, by Abbott:

In 1925, Man Ray introduced her to Eugène Atget's great photographs of Paris between 1900 and 1925. She became a great admirer of Atget's work, and managed to persuade him to sit for a portrait in 1927. He died shortly thereafter. While the government acquired much of Atget's archive, Abbott was able to buy the remainder in June 1928, and quickly started work on its promotion.

In early 1929, Abbott visited New York City to find an American publisher for Atget's photographs. Upon seeing the city again, however, Abbott immediately saw the photographic potential. She went back to Paris, closed up her studio, and returned to New York in September. Using this large format camera, Abbott photographed New York City with the diligence and attention to detail she had so admired in Eugène Atget. Her work has provided a historical chronicle of many now-destroyed buildings and neighborhoods of Manhattan.

Abbott worked on her New York project independently for six years, unable to get financial support. In 1935, however, Abbott was hired by the Federal Art Project (FAP) as a project supervisor for her "Changing New York" project. She continued to take the photographs of the city, but she had assistants to help her both in the field and in the office. This arrangement allowed Abbott to devote all her time to producing, printing, and exhibiting her photographs. By the time she resigned from the FAP in 1939, she had produced 305 photographs which were then deposited at the Museum of the City of New York.

Abott's vision of New York City has probably inspired filmmakers in later decades. Below - NYC - by Abbott, and by Sergio Leone ("Once Upon a Time in America") and by Woody Allen ("Manhattan"):

A few years ago photographer Douglas Levere did a recreation of the classic photographic setups of Abbott, to show how New York had changed since the 1930s. This youtube clip shows a comparison:

There's more photographs, and some texts about Abbott at the Masters of Photography site.