Eisenstaedt on View From the latest edition of Photograph Magazine: “Known for his many photographs for LIFE magazine, which helped to define American photojournalism, Alfred Eisenstaedt was one of the four original photographers hired by LIFE. Alfred Eisenstaedt: Classics and Seldom-Seen Photographs, a selection of photographs by the prolific German-American photographer, goes on view at Monroe Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe beginning April 29, with a reception from 5 to 7 pm.”
Eisenstaedt was German born and escaped the Nazis by emigrating to NYC. Over his career, he photographed 90 covers and 2,500 photo essays for LIFE In the 1930’s he popularized the use of the small 35 mm Leica camera. Perhaps his most famous image was on VJ Day when he photographed a sailor in Times Square kissing a nurse.
Alfred Eisenstaedt. Times Square. 8/27/45
THE GRAND ORCHESTRA OF VIENNA “The Skaters’ Waltz”
LANG LANG playing a piece by Franz Liszt: “Romance in E Minor.”
By Paul Goldfinger, Photography Editor at Blogfinger.net
Susan Richman is a photographer whose work is currently being shown at a New York City downtown gallery called Umbrella Arts, 317 E. 9th St. The exhibit will be shown from October 4, 2017 to October 28, 2017.
About her work, Ms. Richman says, “I am an interpreter of what surrounds me and the camera is my instrument of choice. It affords me a different way of seeing and a way to uncover what is unobserved.” (quote from her web site.)
I like this image, “Elusory,” because of the mysterious abstract portrayal of some red berries, perhaps from a holly tree. But they seem to be suspended in mid-air, and the colors help make the image successful. The bright light in the center adds energy to the photograph, suggesting some sort of abyss and adding motion to the berry branch.
As she says, it is a “different way of seeing.”
And, by the way, “elusory” is not a pretentious word here; it means evasive.
By Paul Goldfinger, Photography Editor at BLOGFINGER.net. Re-post from 2016.
The new ICP (International Center for Photography) at 250 Bowery will open the inaugural show on June 23. 50 artists will be exhibited for a show called “Public, Private, Secret.” It is about “privacy in today’s social media driven culture.”
Cindy Sherman was born in 1964 in Glen Ridge, NJ. She has had a very successful and innovative career and is best known for her images where she dresses up and roll plays, photographing herself, as in the photograph above where she is polishing her toe nails. Other themes include her series on black and white movie stills and on exploitation of women.
TONY BENNETT. “Have You Met Miss Jones” from the Complete Improv Recordings
Truro Beach by Rachel Hulin, NY Times. August 26, 2015. The article is called “The Quiet of Outer Cape Cod” Click to enlarge. .
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger.net
This photograph illustrates the overlap of photojournalism and fine art photography. The lighting and the composition are beautiful, and the image tells a story that goes with the article.
The NY Times has a marvelous photography staff, and their photo section is best viewed on their e-edition, preferably with a retina-vision Apple screen. You can also buy signed photographs by their staff.
KELSEY GRAMMER and DOUGLAS HODGE “Song On the Sand” from the show (revival 2010) La Cage Aux Folles.
By Paul Goldfinger, Photo Editor, Blogfinger.net. Ocean Grove, NJ
“Buggy, Farmhouse and Windmill” from the cover of George Tice’s 1973 book Fields of Peace–A Pennsylvania German Album.” I have a copy of that soft-bound book signed by Tice. It contains text by the writer Millen Brand. Click to enlarge.
Popular Photography reviewed the book and said, “Tice’s quiet, sensitive images of the Pennsylvania Germans, their homes, and their land are so unlike the usual images on this theme—–so unsentimental, so unprettified, so anti-‘picturesque’ , so non-postcard–that they breathe new life into a subject that has so far received only the most hackneyed, superficial treatment.”
The Liberty Journal said, “Here is peace, serenity, and love….”
The NY Times said, “The reader will come away with increased respect for this society and for the ideals of ‘love, nonviolence, goodness and simplicity.'”
George Tice is a New Jersey photographer who is famous all over the world. He was born and raised in Newark. Most of his images were obtained in New Jersey.
His family dates back to the 17th century in NJ. Have you heard of Tice’s Lane in East Brunswick?
He has published many photo books including his great work “Paterson.”
George Tice pioneered the resurrection of platinum printing. I have one of his original platinum prints from the book Stone Walls, Grey Skies. I obtained it from the artist while attending his darkroom printing course at the Maine Photographic Workshops.
If any of you want to see it, email me at Blogfinger@verizon.net
Here is a link to our post about George Tice at the Newark Museum in 2013.
George Tice has had shows in many galleries as well as museums.
“It takes the passage of time before an image of a commonplace subject can be assessed. The great difficulty of what I attempt is seeing beyond the moment; the everydayness of life gets in the way of the eternal.” – George Tice
George Tice. White Castle, Rahway, NJ. One of his best known images. Joseph Bellows Gallery in California.
This is his last book; and his best. He is most proud of it, and I just ordered it; signed.
George Tice from his famous book Paterson.
KEN PEPLOWSKI AND THE INTERNATIONAL ALL STARS “All the Things You Are.” This is a tribute album to clarinetist Benny Goodman.
Addendum: George Tice died a few days ago. 1/17/25. He was my teacher and a great inspiration for photography. Click below and view the video. It is very well done by the Asbury Park Press.
Apple by Paul Caponigro is one of the fine prints to be shown in Sante Fe. From Photograph Magazine.
By Paul Goldfinger, Photography Editor at Blogfinger.net.
On January 10, 2020, an exhibit will open in Sante Fe, New Mexico at the Obscura Gallery. It is a solo exhibit dedicated to the work of one of America’s master photographers Paul Caponigro, spanning sixty years (1958-2012).
Paul has been photographing since childhood. He studied classical piano before turning to the camera. He also is a poet. Caponigro is best known for his landscapes and still lifes. I met him at the Maine Photographic Workshops. His studio was nearby. Here is a link about a visit to his studio and darkroom
He is best known for his lifetime body of work often shot at ancient sites in England, Ireland and Scotland. Stonehenge is one of his best known subjects.
Caponigro is also known for his impeccable black and white prints.
We have one of his Stoonehenge prints. Let us know if you want to see it.
We will be pursuing a series of posts about photography, particularly of female photographers. This photograph, taken in the summer of 1951, at the Piazza del Rebublica in Florence, became Ruth Orkin’s iconic masterpiece. The image has a story:
Orkin, a 29 year old aspiring photojournalist, was traveling alone in Europe that summer. In Florence she met 23 year old “Jinx” Allen Craig who had quit her job in New York City to go by herself on a grand tour of Europe. While checking out a cheap hostel on the River Arno, she met Orkin. The two of them decided to become a team and investigate what it was like for a woman to travel alone on the continent. They set up photographs in a variety of situations such as sitting in a cafe, shopping in a market , etc.
In this photo, Orkin asked Craig to walk through the crowd of leering men. Orkin took only two frames, but for this shot, she asked the men not to look at the camera when Craig walked past a second time. This image became famous. Early on, the crotch grabbing was airbrushed out. Some critics discounted the photograph because they said it was set up and not spontaneous.
Others said that it showed harrassment of a woman on the streets of Florence, but “Jinx” Craig thought otherwise. She said, “It’s not a symbol of harassment. It’s a symbol of a woman having an absolutely wonderful time! I clutched my shawl to me because that sheaths the body. It was my protection, my shield. I was walking through a sea of men. I was enjoying every minute of it. They were Italian and I love Italians.”
Orkin became famous, and Craig eventually married an Italian man.
Inishmore, Aran Islands. Ireland. 1992. By Timothy Whelan.
By Paul Goldfinger, Photo Editor at Blogfinger.net. 4/11/24
We wrote about Tim Whelan before on Blogfinger when we presented another image from his Portfolio #1. We promised to show some more of his work.
The portfolio contains images which Tim obtained and personally printed in the darkroom with great skill and sensitivity. Subsequently we will share some of what the great American photographer Paul Caponigro had to say about Tim’s work.
As noted before, I met Tim at the Maine Photographic Workshops in 1995. The class which we took was a master printer’s workshop with one of America’s most famous printers and photographers George Tice.
This photograph by Tim is reminiscent of George Tice’s book Stone Walls, Gray Skies.
Here is a link to the Blogfinger article about Tim Whelan:
Photograph by Tony Vaccaro on the set of Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita c. 1960. Filmed near Rome.
Paul Goldfinger, MD. Editor Blogfinger.net Re-post from 2020.
Tony Vaccaro is celebrating his 98th birthday with the opening of his latest fine art photography show at the Monroe Gallery in Sante Fe, New Mexico.
His photography career dates back to the D-Day landings in Normandy and carries forward to now. He still teaches and photographs.
Photograph magazine posted some of the prints from the Santa Fe show , and the Fellini image is one of them.
Nino Rota is the prolific Italian composer who wrote the music for La Dolce Vita (1960) and for the Godfather I and II, for which he won an Oscar. During his long career, he composed music for over 140 movies.
ORIGINAL MUSIC FROM LA DOLCE VITA SOUNDTRACK. Composed by Nino Rota.
Grandmother, Brooklyn, NY 1993. By Eugene Richards. Click to enlarge
By Paul Goldfinger, photography editor at Blogfinger.net. 2017.
Eugene Richards is one of America’s finest photojournalists. He is now 73 years old and is having this retrospective at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, the second oldest photographic museum in the country. The exhibit is called “The Run-On of Time.”
From the Eastman Museum: “Artistic Vision Meets the Documentary Tradition” is this major museum retrospective, Eugene Richards: The Run-On of Time, which explores the photographer’s unflinching work going back to 1968. Richards has made extended photo essays focusing on drug addiction, aging, the erosion of rural America, racism, and poverty, among other tough subjects.” The show opens at the George Eastman Museum June 10.
From the International Center of Photography in NYC: “Richards, one of the best-known photojournalists in this country, for more than twenty-five years has been recording aspects of urban lives and painful human experiences that many people never witness. Emergency room panic, the desperation of junkies shooting heroin, housing project squalor: through Richards’s compassionate photography we are faced with moments so brutal, personal and painful that they can only be real. As Cornell Capa* has said, Richards “is a concerned photographer, and his concern is honest without a doubt.”
Eugene Richards was born in Boston and he studied photography at MIT under Minor White. He has been called a “documentary photographer.” His photo essays focus on social issues such as rural poverty in the South and climate change. The image above looks at a community in Brooklyn.
The photograph above accurately captures a particular subculture in Brooklyn—-it is characteristically lower income, ethnic, family oriented, and with a value system that has roots in places like Italy, Ireland, and Jewish parts of eastern Europe. The hydrant is open, and this grandmother has created a resort for her family. She maintains her dignity despite the overall atmosphere of that place.
When we moved to Randolph, NJ, an upscale leafy suburb in Morris County, we had come from NYC and Washington, DC. As a child my parents took us to Coney Island often, and in later years we visited the lower East Side, Brighton Beach, Little Italy, and even Seaside Heights.
Our neighbor in Randolph was from Brooklyn. His home had a rear deck and a lovely backyard. But they loved to set up folding chairs in their driveway near their garage—a paved place to kibitz (chat), eat, drink and enjoy the kids. So we can relate to the scene above, and it is so much more than merely an image of a family at play.
*Cornell Capa was a photojournalist who was one of the founders of ICP. His brother is Robert Capa, the famed war photographer who went in with the first wave at D-Day.
SUSAN BOYLE: “Memory” is from the Lloyd Weber show Cats which opened in London in 1981 and had a record-breaking long run in NYC. It is now back on Broadway. (This is a repost)
Cats closed Dec 2017 in NYC but is now on tour.
If you can, take your kids and read them the TS Eliot “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” before you go. Broadway is expensive, but they will remember this show for the rest of their lives. Consider it an investment.
By James Hill, New York Times. Reposted from 2014 BF
By Paul Goldfinger, photography editor Blogfinger.net
Photojournalism used to be considered a separate discipline from photography in general. For example, fine art photography is all about imagery, so anything goes. But photojournalism has been traditionally about facts. That is why newspaper and magazine editors are fussy about issues such as distorting the meaning of a moment by manipulating the image, for example by cropping. Or else, a news photographer cannot pose a scene. It needs to be recorded just as it happened.
But, thanks to the work of great photojournalists such as Robert Capa who went in on D-Day with the first wave, photographers are given more leeway to have one foot in the news and the other in fine-arts. The best examples not only tell a story but can be objects of feelings and beauty.
The image above is from a New York Times article about a resurgence of figure skating in Russia. James Hill is the photographer and he shot the image in Moscow—November, 2013. The photo is impressionistic and quite beautiful apart from its use to illustrate a sports article.
ALEXANDER MARKOV. “Thais #5 Meditation.” by Jules Massenet
Portrait of Julia Jackson, 1862. She was Julia Cameron’s niece and her favorite subject. Julia Jackson was also the mother of writer Virginia Woolf. From Photograph magazine. Dec. 2016.
By Paul Goldfinger, Photography Editor @Blogfinger.
The Met in New York had this to say about our guest photographer : “One of the greatest portraitists in the history of photography, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879) blended an unorthodox technique, a deeply spiritual sensibility, and a Pre- Raphaelite–inflected aesthetic to create a gallery of vivid portraits and a mirror of the Victorian soul…”
I wish I had written that sentence.
Julia Margaret Cameron was British, but she spent much of her life in India and Ceylon. She worked with a technically difficult technique that involved harsh chemicals: albumin printing from wet collodion negatives. Some artists today enjoy using vintage methods like this, but they must be really dedicated.
In her time, Cameron was criticized by other photographers because of her artsy soft-focus results, but painters were more likely to appreciate her work. I am a big fan of those 19th- early 20th century impressionistic photographers.
MARIAN McPARTLAND, jazz pianist. “Our Love is Here to Stay,” by George and Ira Gershwin. Speaking of pioneering (British) women, Marian McPartland (1918-2013) was a “trailblazing” jazz star at a time when there were few women in jazz.
She was a composer and the founder of a record label. From 1978-2011, she was known for her famous radio show “Piano Jazz” on NPR. I used to listen to her play improvised duets with and interview musicians.
Marian performed all over the world, and she was still composing as she approached age 90.
