let us now catalogue famous people

also if you're looking for more substantive stuff than blogs there are some people I think are worth reading. it's really really really hard to write intelligently about photography and there are only a few people who I think do it well, with that caveat:

john szarkowski, pretty much singlehandedly shaped the stream of american photography in the last 50 years - anything he writes is gold.
susan sontag - on photography (think that's the name) - I know, a bit wankerish, but there are 5 hard-fought insights on every single page, really
robert adams - eng. ph.d turned photographer, not sure if he writes much stuff outside of his monographs to his books but again, really excellent
gerry badger - really only has one 'trick' when discussing photographs but his stuff is reasonably interesting

I've been meaning to read camera lucida for ages, think I'm gonna do it this year (finally)

philip gefter, a former nyt photo critic also has a book out on aperture that has pretty good criticism, and is at least a good introduction to a lot of contemporary photographers (book is called photography after frank I think)

Re: Szarkowski, I absolutely love him, and you can in fact find quite a bit of his writing at the americansuburbx.com. I picked up his "Photography Until Now" a little while back (along with a nice Winogrand book!) and it's a pretty great history. Also regarding wankerish essays, I kind of love Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida. It's fun partly because of how much I often disagree with his opinions that he offers as certain fact.

totally into more substantive stuff, just figured bløggers would be a good place to start

just read a szarkowski interview about ansel adams and this sorta blew my mind? i mean, not ~really~, but i love trivia like that

Unlike the landscape photographers who had come before him, Adams was interested in the natural world not as a solid, immutable thing but rather as an event. He was always concerned with the ephemeral. In that sense, he was as much a photographer of his time as was Cartier-Bresson and the rest of them--photographers who had been born on the line between the 19th and 20th centuries, and who were concerned with the ephemeral partly because the technical vocabulary came to allow it. For example, when Ansel started his career, he used plates. Then he switched to film, and with film, you can make many more exposures. You can afford mistakes; you can take a chance because you've got another sheet of film instantly available. Then there was the introduction of panchromatic film, which allows filtering. If you were to look at all the mountain photographs made in the 19th century and compare them with all the mountain photographs of the 20th century, you'd find the 20th-century photographs have a lower horizon. Why? Because given the color sensitivity of 19th-century photographic plates, the skies always came out white or a streaky gray, so intelligent photographers pushed the horizon up and used the sky as some kind of a shape. When panchromatic film was introduced, and blue need no longer be rendered as white; you could deal with the sky as a space. These are merely specific instances of the general proposition that the difference between Adams's photography and earlier landscape photography lies in his concern with the ephemeral. His landscapes aren't about geology; they're about weather.

Lots of insights like that in "Photography Until Now!" I think it's pretty easy to find secondhand too.

"looking at photographs" and "the photographer's eye" are really great too

see also these threads

Books on photography. s&d

26 books every photographer must own

Here, this is good: http://www.americansuburbx.com/2010/11/theory-eyes-wide-open-interview-with.html

you guys are the best

essays by Robert Adams:
http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Adams-Beauty-Photography/dp/0893813680

kinda interesting book by Stephen Shore:
http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Photographs-Primer-Stephen-Shore/dp/0714859044/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1317049850&sr=8-2

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=354868915

^^^ looks v. interesting, but I don't know when I'll have time to watch them

I would like to revisit that stephen shore book - supposed to be a modern day 'update' of szarkowskis' photographer's eye. shore is not as elegant a writer tho imo

Thirty years after he had written on Atget, Evans wrote, briefly but perfectly, on Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander and Diane Arbus, and died with a perfect critical average.

oh man don't think I've seen this - anybody know what szarkowski is talking about here?

haha I love szarkowski so much

It is, of course, true that an enormously larger number of photographs have been made by dumb amateurs, commercial drudges, half-sober news photographers, celebrity merchants, real-estate salesmen, etc., than by photographers with clear and clean artistic intentions; which suggests that the former groups have likely made a great many pictures that might appeal to those of us interested in what photographs can look like, and in how they may contain and convey meaning.

god when he's on, he's on

Winogrand certainly did expose a great deal of film, and until his very last years he had an astonishing percentage of successes, even by his own high standards. The proof sheet containing the famous picture of the crippled beggar at the American Legion Convention includes three or four other pictures never printed by Winogrand that most photographers would count among their prizes.

you can't just say this and leave it at that :|

yeah that interview was g-d delightful.

Szarkowski makes me eager to take pictures, look at pictures, *and* read about pictures. Is there anyone doing similar writing today?

yeah I'm really excited to shoot.

haven't caught up on that interview yet, though excited to, so feel bad about changing the subject for a minute, but since this out of control freight train is as busy as ILP has been in a while i thought it would be okay to just turn it into a live blog of photo-related-activities:

i was in a library yesterday & ended up sitting on the floor with walker evans at work, a pretty broad survey of a lot of his i guess earlier work, a lot of portfolio submissions he'd sent to magazines, with scans of usually two or three or four negatives for each shot - maybe some where he'd tried it on a 35" first before changing to MF, of dustbowl folks & penn station & the subway portraits & skyscrapers &c&c&c. & god he was just the best. i'm trying to find some he shot for a 'william faulkner's mississippi' spread for harper's or something that are extraordinary - really narrative pictures, both nailing the landscape & the people but also capturing that you're very consciously looking 'at' them (there's this great shot framed through the window of the car it's taken from, of workers in the field, the diffused outline of the car barely a distraction but such a part of what you're looking at). but the whole book, seeing the guy shoot is just crazy. his lighting is extraordinary, given that a lot of the time he's on the street or walking around with a camera in a busy, probably socially unusual environment like a food camp or something.

(gonna read that essay anyway, am emboldened by szarkowski's shout out to the dumb amateurs of the world)

http://www.americansuburbx.com/2010/02/theory-introduction-to-william.html

this essay is like whoah

It could be said – it doubtless has been said – that such pictures often bear a clear resemblance to the Kodachrome slides of the ubiquitous amateur next door. It seems to me that this is true, in the same sense that the belles-lettres of a time generally relate in the texture, reference, and rhythm of their language to the prevailing educated vernacular of that time. In broad outline, Jane Austen’s sentences are presumably similar to those of her seven siblings. Similarly, it should not be surprising if the best photography of today is related in iconography and technique to the contemporary standard of vernacular camera work, which is in fact often rich and surprising. The difference between the two is a matter of intelligence, imagination, intensity, precision, and coherence.

kinda want to just print this on business cards and hand it to ppl when they start trashing jackson pollock paintings or w/e

I think the first photo is my favorite eggleston photo of all time

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/world/asia/in-south-korea-where-digital-tattling-is-a-growth-industry.html?pagewanted=all

I should take my creepin' skills to south korea

this dude

http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/cushman/highlights/slideShow.jsp?page=1

similarly

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/rediscovering-the-urban-palette/

mostly for this shot

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/09/28/blogs/20110928-NYColor-slide-AXH8/20110928-NYColor-slide-AXH8-custom1.jpg

wow
yeah the guy i linked was also in a lot of ways 'instances of alluringly coloured photography' as much as 'check this dude', on account of i guess his kodachrome smarts

http://www.chinasmack.com/2011/pictures/adrian-fisk-what-are-young-chinese-thinking-about.html

I'm not a fan of portraiture in general but this series ~speaks to me~

http://img.chinasmack.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/adrian-fisk-ispeak-china-what-are-chinese-youth-thinking-29.jpg

http://img.chinasmack.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/adrian-fisk-ispeak-china-what-are-chinese-youth-thinking-15.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/k4rOQ.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/KkajI.jpg

http://img.chinasmack.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/adrian-fisk-ispeak-china-what-are-chinese-youth-thinking-13.jpg

potentially valuable ilx poster

goddammit
http://img.chinasmack.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/adrian-fisk-ispeak-china-what-are-chinese-youth-thinking-13.jpg

into these btw

I'm not a fan of portraiture in general

?
just less so than you are of kind of 'live' photography, or?

it's just really hard to get right for the right effect, imo

I'll probably grant the environmental portraiture > studio portraiture

http://i.imgur.com/kikPf.jpg

to suburbs thread

http://img.chinasmack.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/adrian-fisk-ispeak-china-what-are-chinese-youth-thinking-27.jpg

^^ the right effect in five different ways

sure, yeah. i don't really, off the top of my head, have a portrait photographer i'm dying to throw at you to argue it, anyhow. i don't think i really make a big division between people who are taking 'environmental portraits' & just photographers, really - like i could sit walker evans in either because it's sorta both, where as studio isn't.

now that I've had 5 more seconds to think about it, I think it's because of the formalistic nature of the genre that it's really easy to fall into cliche. not that it isn't easy to fall into cliche with all the other genres of photography out there. but you really need to think about how to jazz up the same, head-on shot that has been done so many times before.

i don't have any strong feelings about portraiture, but i guess that when a portrait evokes any kind of response from me, it's almost exclusively a reaction to the subject, and not the photo itself. like, a momentary ignorance of artifice, just str8 lookin at a dude, wondering what he's thinkin baout. which is also why portraiture can be sorta boring---it's static pictures of people just sitting there, being people.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/tyler-hicks-a-decade-in-afghanistan/

worth it as much for the accompanying text as for the pictures

when a portrait evokes any kind of response from me, it's almost exclusively a reaction to the subject, and not the photo itself. like, a momentary ignorance of artifice, just str8 lookin at a dude, wondering what he's thinkin baout. which is also why portraiture can be sorta boring---it's static pictures of people just sitting there, being people.

this is interesting - i'm still not really arguing either way, like vehemently in favour of portraiture or anything, bc i haven't thought about it much since the above was posted, but i wonder if there's a big dividing line, here, between photography you like & photography you take - because i think if you take a portrait of a friend or some family or whatever and you really nail someone, totally get what they're like, encompass their essence/tendency towards gazing into the distance/whatever, then that's a huge achievement & can feel as successful as any photography (obviously, you can achieve the same in non-portraiture, capturing a gesture or even better a kinda significant moment between people or whatever). but then if you're dealing with portrait photography you've seen, of people you don't know, then you have a different standard - like 'wow that totally nails beckett, what a grizzly old intense dude' etc. i don't know. i say all this because, i think i have said this on here before, i have got way more into trying to capture things about people i know when taking photos than be part of a bigger effort focusing on like 'humans' or 'society' or w/e. maybe plax's stuff is the same?, idk, like it isn't that it is or isn't portraiture, but that it's dedicated to getting that str8-lookin-at-a-dude thing, which is especially powerful when you know them.

love the bike in this:

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/10/09/international/09cnd-afghan.2.large.jpg

oh there's no doubt that a personal connection to the subject of a portrait outside the picture itself strengthens and colors the way you look at that portrait.

portrait portrait portrait

sure, & it feels obvious to even say so. but just i wonder whether, if the chief thing you're trying to elicit with portraiture is that sense of understanding or curiosity or capture, maybe it's a harder thing to either objectively judge or feel the appropriate connection to as with non-portrait photography, & so it's something that's going to be most successful 'locally'. not really - bc i guess the great portrait photographers of famous dudes (inc HCB, right) are also capturing a thing, albeit perhaps based on what's known of them publicly - but kinda.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/25/arts/design/25hipsters.html

the writing here seems a little savage, but it's sorta interesting to me, esp in light of

There is a paradox in Levinstein’s approach that is shared by legions of greater and lesser street photographers: he was hunting for the poetry of real life, but what he shot was generally the sort of thing that street photographers generally shoot. Not the types of people or situations that you barely notice because they are so ordinary, but people who seem strange, marginal or ridiculous.

it's the kind of criticism that has me scurrying to my collection, acutely self-conscious. i think i'm doubly sensitive because lately i have been thinking unkind things about some of my IRL bros photo sensibilities and i'm like "check yrself dude"

Not the types of people or situations that you barely notice

tbf this is becoming pretty common in online street photography circles as well.

xp that's the diane arbus critique, isn't it? that since her, why even bother? I too am pretty self-conscious about that... it's a tough call for a line-judge, you're trying to decide if there's something more beyond the inherent 'weirdness' that is worth photographing, committing to the medium...

I guess personally like compositional "interestingness" as well as ordinary/offbeat subject matter