Magnum

"Magnum is a community of thought, a shared human quality, a curiosity about
what is going on in the world, a respect for what is going on and a desire to
transcribe it visually." -Henri Cartier-Bresson

Most important for enabling photographers to pursue their personal work while also working on assignment and issuing control and ownership over their own images. Magnum is a co-op of some of the greatest photographers since it's inception in 1947.

www.magnumphotos.com

Slightly out of focus.

Slightly out of focus is a great website where you can digitally browse through and buy some physical copies of photo essays from the past. Seeing the layouts of the different magazines gives you more of a perspective on the importance of image and text working together to create the story. The site includes work by many photographers we've studied about like:




Henri Cartier Bresson




Dorothea Lange





Margaret Bourke White




Robert Capa, (you should be more than familiar with this photo and the rest of this work by now) one of the founding members of the Magnum photo agency and who the website is named after (After Life magazine messed up Capa's negatives while developing them and then printing captions saying the photos were slightly out of focus due to the excitement of shooting a war scene) "If your pictures aren't good enough then you aren't close enough"



Some later work by Walker Evans.



Some later work which we haven't quiet looked at but you are probably familiar with; the Vietnam War photographs of Larry Burrows.

Erich Salomon & Weegee

2 approaches at photo journalism.

Erich Salomon became known for his gate crashing, 35 mm, available light, secretive shooting style which gave him the label "king of indiscreet."




While sharing similarities to Weegee's love of intrusiveness, they couldn't be further apart in style. Salomon was secretive while Weegee's bold flash and overall approach was very in your face and forced you to confront the subject / image.



Weegee's subject matter wasn't all crime scene / nightlife / tabloid, but whatever the photograph, he shot it with the same directness and honesty.

Meet at classroom. ICP after.

Hello, I am sorry for the lack of updates this week as I have been rather ill. There will be a full update over Thanksgiving week. We will meet for class at our regular time of 1:00 pm and after a short lesson head out to ICP to see the Robert Capa exhibit.

Some work from last class.

By no means everything but some extras to accompany reading.

Paul Outerbridge - An interesting character to say the least.








Strand was a true master of creating visually striking stills from the most mundane of subjects.




Edward Weston, at the forefront of the f/64 group

So many Ansel Adams videos out there:



from ken burns documentary



part 1 from 1981 documentary. click related videos for next parts



part 1 from BBC masters of photography - click related videos for next parts



Eugene Atget



John Heartfield from Ovation tv

Stieglitz and beyond

Alfred Stieglitz was probably the most important figure in the history of photography not just for the work he created but in terms of his ability to influence others.

His influence was felt by not just the photographers at the turn of the 20th century such as Edward Steichen, but also painter Georgia O'Keeffe who he ended up marrying.

Stieglitz exposed America to some of the most interesting photography of the time through his magazine Camera Work, while also bringing in work to his gallery 291 by European artists such as Picasso, Matisse and Rodin.

This is the opening clip from a documentary we watched in Class called Alfred Stieglitz: the Eloquent Eye. (available on netflix or the pratt library in brooklyn)



Here are some more pages with info on Stieglitz.

Met Museum Bio
World History of Photography Bio

After the movie we went to see 2 shows which I thought related rather well to what we had learned about.

David Vestal - Once Upon a Time in New York at Robert Mann Gallery.



Alfred Stieglitz. 5th Avenue. 1892



David Vestal. West 22nd St. 1958.

Though it seems like Vestal was more influenced by photographers such as Robert Frank and possibly Alexander Rodchenko, there is no denying that some of the photos have the hand of Stieglitz in them as well.

Paul Strand was very admired by Stieglitz and therefore had the last 2 issues of Camera Work devoted solely to him. We went to the Aperture gallery where we saw his photographs from the 1920 of his time spent in Mexico.













Please continue reading the book. You should be somewhere in the 170s or 180s by next class.