Can we take a second to admire the perfection of Stephen Shore’sUncommon Places? Shore’s journey across the lesser seen parts of the United States is an example of Americana at its finest.
Aren’t these ocean wave photos incredible? Photographer David Orias writes about his work:
I do this by using long shutter speeds and camera motion to achieve this goal. I am often asked where the colors on my waves come from. I shoot mostly at dawn and the geography of the location allows higher ambient light levels before the full illumination by the sun.
San Francisco based illustrator Lisa Congdon has designed a new journal filled with inspiring quotes from the masters of photography. Inside are 128 lined pages dotted with typeset quotations and loads of artwork.
You can pick up a copy of the journal over at Compendium.
Let’s be honest, everybody has their own stereotype of one another. This also applies to the photography world where analogue enthusiasts have this certain impression towards digital lovers, and vice versa.
Ivan Vartanian, director of Goliga and co-author of Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and 70s, adds: “Beginning with his reportage of the 1960s, Tomatsu was able to present a vision of Japan that was deeply personal as it was complicated and vexed, creating many images that have become iconic in status,” he tells BJP.
You know that feeling you get when you lie down at night after a day of swimming in the ocean? The best kind of tired — from your body’s photosynthesis and the focus it takes to stay afloat. Somehow, you can still feel the push and pull of the tide washing over you.
It was a similar sensation after a day of wet plate photography. This process demands incredible concentration. Anything can go wrong at any given point, and if it does, even just slightly, you start all over.
The most nerve-wracking step is the first one after cleaning the plates: Pouring the collodion. It’s a delicate balancing act to hold the plate by its edges in one hand, and pour the collodion with the other. The collodion, which allows the light-sensitive silver nitrate to stick to the plate, must cover the plate perfectly evenly, cannot streak or puddle, and must not spill. It’s wonderfully meditative, though, and as I was falling asleep that night, I was filled with the sensation of the pour.
Teacher Todd pretty much has all the hobbies I want: Antique photo processes and astronomy. He has his an entire basement for a darkroom, and an observatory in his backyard, of which I am exceedingly jealous. He says I’m welcome back any time, but I dont think he knows how notorious I am for taking people up on offers.
The two interests go hand-in-hand. Ancient alchemists once associated silver with the moon; and at one point, silver nitrate was called “lunar caustic.” This really is alchemy. And it really is magical to see the image emerge on a negative you’ve prepared by hand. It’s tedious, and frustrating and complicated. But I think we’re a little bit worse off without it — even if it does leave silver scars.
What’s being called the world’s first 3D printing photo booth is set to open for a limited time at the exhibition space EYE OF GYRE in Harajuku. From November 24 to January 14, 2013, people with reservations can go and have their portraits taken. Except, instead of a photograph, you’ll receive miniature replicas of yourselves.
October 10, 2012 – January 20 2013 - Tate Modern, Level 3
William Klein + Daido Moriyama will be the first exhibition to examine the relationship between the work of William Klein (b.1928), one of the twentieth century’s most important photographers and film-makers, and that of Daido Moriyama (b.1938), the most celebrated photographer to emerge from the Japanese Provoke movement. Taking as its central theme the cities of New York and Tokyo, William Klein + Daido Moriyama will explore both artists’ celebrated depictions of modern urban life.
The exhibition will present approximately 300 works from the 1950s to the present day, including vintage prints, contact sheets, film stills, photographic installations and archival material. The influence of Klein’s seminal 1956 publication Life is Good & Good for You in New York, Trance Witness Revels, as well as his later books Tokyo 1964 and Rome: The City and Its People 1959, will be traced through Moriyama’s radical depictions of post-war Tokyo in Sayonara Photography and The Hunter 1972. The juxtaposition of these artists will not only demonstrate the visual affinity between their urgent, blurred and grainy style of photography, but also their shared desire to convey street life and political protest, from anti-war demonstrations and gay pride marches to the effects of globalisation and urban deprivation.
The World Is Not My Home: Photographs by Danny Lyon
September 29-January 27, de Young Museum
This exhibition of more than 60 photographs and photographic montages from 1962 to the present traces the fascinating and wide-ranging career of Danny Lyon. A leading and explosive figure in the American street photography movement of the 1960s, Lyon distinguished himself from his peers through his direct engagement with his subjects and his concern for those on the margins of society.
His goal, he says, was “to destroy Life magazine” by presenting powerful alternatives to the bland pictures and stories that permeated American mass media in the late 1950s, when he came of age. In the process, he created numerous photographs of striking psychological, political, and aesthetic power.
