Greetings from Manhattan. I was struck by your quietly beautiful photo, “Beachfront Sunrise,” (posted recently on Blogfinger), and your statement that you preferred sunrises to sunsets because “beginnings are happier than endings.”
Here is the poem, “Dawn,” from my 2008 collection, Father of Water.
By Paul Goldfinger at the New Jersey Cranberry Festival.
The food stand on the top photo had a sign that said, “Shiksabob.”
We wondered about that dish. Was their word spelling correct for their language, or was this an English misspelling ?
We said it over and over until we figured out that it was a misspelled word: Let’s try “Shiskabob.” No–that’s not a word.
Then we said: “Sishkabob,” but no, that was rejected.
But we finally realized that it was “Shishkabob,” but we tried so many versions that we began speaking gibberish and we seemed to have become fahblunget. Or farblunget. Oh, “farblunget” means hopelessly screwed up in Yiddish.
And, last but not least, the correct word (s) is “shish kabob.” And even though I briefly thought I was having a stroke, we finally became coherent again as we walked to our car.
On the way, there was a row of toilets at the Cranberry Festival with the name “Mr. Bob’s” on each door. A lady came out of one and walked towards me.
I held out my hand and said, “Hi, I’m Mr. Bob, and that will be 50 cents. ” She laughed and breezed by. No more Mr. Bob jokes.
By Paul Goldfinger, photography editor @Blogfinger
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 news photographers 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
Marilyn Monroe, no longer in the dark. Photographer George Barris made Marilyn smile. I always imagined that she was smiling at me.
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger (re-posted from November, 2014)
Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jean Mortenson in Los Angeles on June 1, 1926. She tragically died at the age of 36. She was the pin-up girl for most of the guys from my generation. Marilyn was not only a movie star, but she also was a singer. Remember “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes?
Many years ago I found this photo of MM in a shop on Thompson Street in Greenwich Village where they sold images of Hollywood stars. I loved her smile, her hair, and her towel. The picture was provocative even though it is rated PG. (my initials)
Marilyn has been on the wall of my dark room for many years, so she was always smiling at me, keeping me company, while I was engaged in that solitary activity. Now, as I take down that old technology, the photo of Marilyn will remain, as the dark room takes on new digital form.
There were many photographers who were known for their images of her—tens of thousands of photos of Marilyn exist.
Those who were privileged to photograph her included many great names such as Avedon, Bachrach, Eisenstadt and Newman.
Earlier we wrote a post about the photographers on the movie set of The Misfits, where MM was photographed with Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, Arthur Miller, and Eli Wallach. BF about The Misfits
She was a passionate and vulnerable person who, like a beautiful butterfly, flitted from one to another without landing happily. Here is a quote from Marilyn herself, “I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else. ” –From the Unfinished Biography of Marilyn Monroe
Her singing was wispy and sexy. Recently Barry Manilow decided to make an album of “Dream Duets” using technology to bring him together in song with his departed musical heroes.