photo-breezing

It would not be a gross exaggeration to say that, in the eyes of the young turks, a photograph that was sharp all over, that was fully exposed in the shadows, and that was not visibly grainy was insincere. To add artificial light to the scene was worse, it was simple fraud.

In rational terms this was nonsense, but in artistic terms the question was not so simple. To the new photographers the old pictures seemed planned, designed, conceived, understood in advance: they were little more than illustrations, in fact less, since they claimed to be something else—the exploration of real life.

The new style was also called the available-light revolution, and if one forgives its portentousness the phrase is useful. Photogra­phers had of course always used available light, which during most of the medium's first century was generally daylight. It was not until the twenties that artificial light began to be a standard part of the working photographer's vocabulary, and not until the early thirties that devices were marketed that would synchronize the light of a flashbulb with the operation of a camera's shutter. The possibilities of artificial light had been quickly seized by the picture magazines, whose editors appreciated the new tool not only for its ability to produce pictures where photography would otherwise have been impossible but also for the fact that it could describe a scene with sharply incised detail and a graphic simplicity that made the photograph seem clearer than real life. Artificial light was embraced with special enthusiasm in the United States, particularly by Life magazine, whose example in photojournalistic style was decisive. The more sophisticated users of flash photography quickly developed techniques that utilized several bulbs for a single shot, producing results that were less obviously artificial than those achieved by a single bulb attached to the camera. These pictures approached in their character the immaculately lighted Hollywood movies of the thirties, whose imagery came to be accepted as natural in spite of its uncanny, luxuriant clarity.

European magazines had tended toward a photographic style that favored ambience over clarity of detail—a sense of immediacy over the quantity of information conveyed. After World War II this approach began to gain favor in the United States. In 1946 Life lured the English photographer Leonard McCombe to its staff and stipulated in his contract that he was not to use flashbulbs.4

In 1948 the exhibition French Photography Today, selected by the American photographer Louis Stettner, was shown in New York at the galleries of The Photo League. Although Stettner praised the work, he felt compelled to apologize for its failure to meet American standards of technical finish, but added, 'It must be remembered that most of the photographers in this exhibition consider their work finished when it appears in reproduction form. And they print accordingly.... French photographers have not yet learned what Stieglitz first taught us: that a print can exist as a thing in itself." Beaumont Newhall noted that "admiration for the images was qualified by frequent puzzlement by visitors at the photographic quality of the work. How, they asked, could the League show prints so poor in quality?" But the prints that survive from that time by the photographers included in the show (among them Boubat, Brassaii, Doisneau, and Ronnis) today seem technically unexceptionable. In comparison to what would soon follow they seem in their craft models of conventional virtue.

The spirit of what was to come was presaged by a statement that Doisneau had written on the back of one of his prints in the Photo League show: "The photographer must be absorbent—like a blot­ter, allow himself to be permeated by the poetic moment.... His technique should be like an animal function... he should act auto­matically."7 The new photographers who emerged in the next years followed Doisneau's advice with an abandon that he could not have envisioned.

By 1952 the new purism had been ratified (it seemed) by Henri Cartier-Bresson, who in his introduction to The Decisive Moment proscribed the use of flashbulbs, "out of respect for the actual light—even when there isn't any of it."8 On the basis of his own work, one might guess that Cartier-Bresson meant by this that if there was not adequate light one might go to dinner. The new photographers kept photographing with what to the casual observer might seem to have been no light at all, and on occasion made a coherent picture in terms of nothing but a pattern of glittering highlights—smeary white shapes against a black field. Although the picture might bear little resemblance to what an eyewitness might have remembered, it had about it a quality that one could at the time call honesty, perhaps because it was clearly different from the familiar varieties of artifice.

One of the consequences of the available-light morality was that its adherents were forced to work in graphic rather than tactile terms if the meaning of their pictures was to be clear. One could describe a head with a few broad tones of gray, but one could not with the same technique describe a crowd. The available-light photographer moved in closer and included less in the frame; the best of his pictures came to resemble posters. The new style sacrificed all other virtues to the virtue of simplicity. It was a style nurtured by the magazines, designed to produce pictures that would convey meaning at a glance. Eventually it produced pic­tures whose meaning seemed exhausted at a glance.

szark

i remember clint eastwood saying films were too bright, now, that there was too much information in the image. & i always think of m, which i probably misremember or don't accurately remember, details imagined to match its effective mood, & how a lot of the film is dark night street scenes, awkwardly framed to partially crop peter lorre, whether this is pushing you back into your imagination, more, or to understanding the image by what's not there, like you're hungrier to process it, you are meeting it halfway.

http://www.christies.com/lotfinderimages/d47953/d4795364x.jpg

http://33.media.tumblr.com/895a1ca29692389a55801f830446ea74/tumblr_ncwlnglBaN1tutbito1_1280.png

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RmmdApyflVM/ThmnGBlhkRI/AAAAAAAAGng/20gFz0CyjiQ/s1600/steichen-2_0001.jpg

Dirty photography trying to look honest, is how it seems to me after the wine wore off

I saw a Richard Avedon exhibition and they had some of his early work which is impossible to find online

Think it was impossible to come up in the 60s and not do dirty black and white and Avedon was no exception

http://i.imgur.com/68mqrHR.jpg

h/t to s1ock1

http://riowang.blogspot.ca/2010/06/tarkovskys-polaroids.html

“In 1977, on my wedding ceremony in Moscow Tarkovsky appeared with a Polaroid camera. He had just shortly discovered this instrument and used it with great pleasure among us. He and Antonioni were my wedding witnesses. According to the custom of the period they had to choose the music played during the signing of the wedding documents. They chose the ‘Blue Danube.’

At that time Antonioni also often used a Polaroid camera. I remember that in the course of a field survey in Usbekistan where we wanted to shoot a film – but finally did not do it – he gave to three elderly Muslims the pictures he had taken of them. The eldest one as soon as he took a glance at the photos, immediately returned them with these words: “What is it good for, to stop the time?” This unusual refusal was so unexpected that it took us by surprise and we could not reply anything.

Tarkovsky thought a lot about the ‘flight’ of time and wanted to do only one thing: to stop it – even if only for a moment, on the pictures of the Polaroid camera.”

holy cow, those are amazing. really striking how essentially 'tarkovsky' they are.

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-DZ907_Basqui_OZ_20140807020548.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/bE46pWa.jpg

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/03/magazine/01-brown-sisters-forty-years.html?_r=0

i saw that come up, a couple of weeks back, & wanted to see the new pics, & couldn't even click through it on the website; it's too much all at once, like you need to be turning pages just to pace yourself. so strong.

http://www.lumiere-editions.com/lumiere-editons.com/Gallery/Pages/William_Eggleston_files/Media/e34240%20Printing%20master/e34240%20Printing%20master.jpg

UNTITLED (SOAP ON WINDSHIELD, CAR WASH, MEMPHIS), 2004

also hyped to know eggleston, shore, meyerowitz, winogrand were loose on the set of annie,
http://iheartphotograph.blogspot.com/2007/01/guide-to-long-lost-photo-books-of-80s.html

i don't know if the freshness is transferrable but i saw this & felt like i'd never seen it before-

http://40.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ls3ito0XbT1qz8ramo1_1280.jpg

can't remember if we ever talked about seiichi furuya here
having a nice time looking through the everyday stray digital pictures that populate his blog

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Coys1C2zjP0/VEa0i3cpuTI/AAAAAAAARx4/A04MPYjjOQ8/s1600/P1040117%2Bcopy.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_e_uERAsxbZo/SeDiokQyB2I/AAAAAAAAIic/W1eoY5UdUto/s1600/P1020414+Kopie.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_e_uERAsxbZo/Rz-WMGJxtoI/AAAAAAAABgk/-B5e3LdlveY/s1600/DSCF9540+copy.jpg

& reading about last trip to venice, which i hadn't known the story of-

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H-huuY0Xjc0/UkwrdD5QBdI/AAAAAAAAAIk/kE_NfA3QqdY/s1600/Last+Trip+to+Venice+2_small.jpg

http://americanart.si.edu/images/1988/1988.19.15_1a.jpg

That Robert Frank US 285 pic. It has everything.

Can't recall where I read it but someone said every photographer from that era has their own "vanishing point highway" pic e.g. Dorothea Lange http://i.imgur.com/XLjMMia.jpg

Frank would often put his camera at feet level http://i.imgur.com/IvvQ1Bw.jpg

xp
yeah i remember that too
isn't the article a kind of robert frank truther thing, sorta arguing against him innovating it

& yeah i don't know i have seen that picture a million times, maybe it's just a different print showing it in a new light or something; the grain density of the sky. really wonderful.

You made it a hot line I made it a hot song

ha ha

This is also the method I used to create “the Americans.”

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oowPAHJVsxM/UvYvhqZDJdI/AAAAAAAAZEc/Dm8P--zauXs/s1600/El+fen%C3%B3meno+del+%C3%A9xtasis,+1933.+.jpg

http://www.metalocus.es/content/en/system/files/file-images/ml_surrealismo%20y%20sue%C3%B1o_12_BrassaiExtasis_1200.jpg

http://api.ning.com/files/Jr8oyRhpCfhkQTUJOkC10uP3qM3fyHcbbbFUW4DO2EqyQBqoAwHLV4uzyK9CqIL3K2Iq*hTsDsouttBWq8kSsx-vQ0ey0WN0/L1100065.jpg

http://bremser.tumblr.com/post/104332554872/marc-ferrez-soil-preparation-for-the-construction

http://mashable.com/2014/12/02/80s-shopping-malls/

Follwoing up on gr80

http://www.boredpanda.com/hong-kong-street-photography-memoir-fan-ho/?image_id=street-photography-hong-kong-memoir-fan-ho-39.jpg
http://www.boredpanda.com/hong-kong-street-photography-memoir-fan-ho/?image_id=street-photography-hong-kong-memoir-fan-ho-301.jpg
http://www.boredpanda.com/hong-kong-street-photography-memoir-fan-ho/?image_id=street-photography-hong-kong-memoir-fan-ho-37.jpg

http://www.boredpanda.com/hong-kong-street-photography-memoir-fan-ho/

http://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/street-photography-hong-kong-memoir-fan-ho-39.jpg

damn

fucking amazing stuff in the link which my iPad is struggling to paste here

no they're astonishing; something really unusual in the rendering of light
also the idea that this was intentionally composed in-camera is mind-expanding

http://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/street-photography-hong-kong-memoir-fan-ho-341.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/6sI3y5F.gif

photo-drizzling

http://i.imgur.com/ejsTtO6.jpg

https://placesjournal.org/article/swingsites-for-singles/

http://craigslistimages.tumblr.com/

criagslist mirrors guy starts a more general craigslist images blog

Feel like there was one of these already

Can it fill the void left by internethistory??

fantastic.

http://souleyes.tumblr.com/post/105986667580

Christmas office party from '66

^ Found out that was on LEns orignally (I am very far behind on my blogroll)

http://i.imgur.com/qnVk80o.jpg

I really like the balance and heft of this picture

do these men have really big coats on or is this a couple of men with very small heads or ???

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7517/15942169800_ed9800d88e_c.jpg

the one on the right in particular

Big coats, looks like a wide-angle camera lens (uncorrected too) which exagerrates features closer to the camera like their hands

that makes sense
i follow this romanian photo archive on flickr so i can look at ppl's faces and noticed that these heads are rly small!

http://dig-image.tumblr.com/post/106505312068/yuan-dongping

http://instagram.com/p/q73vLIR2OT/?modal=true

finally catching up on this thread, thanking everybody for the amazing links etc. those hong kong street shots, wow.

fao nyc-
http://amandajas.tumblr.com/post/107431536807/prattphotography-pratt-photography-lectures

also like

http://36.media.tumblr.com/da2a4a10656dfd22b4a860405e029330/tumblr_nhkyd6P91F1qm2tbjo1_1280.jpg

amanda jas

Reaaly keen to get a copy of standing trap http://www.modesvu.com/tagged/standing-trap

hey photo breezers

i think about film & digital all the time, & i take my camera everywhere, taking photos with film. over the last couple years i felt like i got less & less out of the medium-specific qualities of film - its richness & grain, its kinda hypothetical $lide-film primary colour vibrancy - & more & more out of what digital images could be like, either seeing my own blurry cellphone pictures, watching new digital films that understood light in a new way or appreciating the people i knew online who played with digital & made images that felt fresher & newer than mine, pictures which weren't so weighted down by the thing that, i forget, garry winogrand or walker evans talked about, how we know what a picture's meant to look like, which could instead really make images you'd be confronted by, rather than judging the success or mastery of, informed by established guidelines. anyway, because my otherwise adequate & appealingly-shitty cellphone camera is slow, i am kinda interested in buying a digital camera. i don't really know anything about them, & find it difficult to research, because, as a contrarian, the characteristics i want are things that are generally perceived as negatives in the digital-camera-consumer-advice world, to be able to cultivate grain & blur & to work in lo-res & to be quick & not sharp & to be open to digital error. i don't really have a specific question here but i wondered if anyone had any guidance, or had a camera they liked, or had advice about avenues i could look into; cameras that were weird or were discontinued or, by virtue of being where it was at in 2006, would adequately serve my lo-tec needs. i don't think i'm necessarily looking for the kind of perverse holga-ish complement to a more straightforwardly, technically functioning primary machine; just something that's normal & uncomplicated & adequate. film is still interesting to me, & all the time i see pictures that kind of almost just theoretically couldn't exist as digital images, to me - this sarah soquel morhaim picture, say - & i can imagine shooting black & white film & using digital for colour, keepin' the flame burnin'. but i am sort of tired of film i think; it feels narrow & digital feels open. the experience of being alive feels digital, & the amount of time i spend staring at screens seems to have re-weighted the balance of what colour feels like in the world, these very equal plains of unnuanced tone stretched before me all the time. can i play with any camera? can i attach a russian dashboard cam to a bike helmet & just wear it all the time? should i just buy coloured pencils instead? breezer assistance appreciated.