Luis Jimenez’ (Jr. and Senor) Bronco, Alameda Street, El Paso, Texas, 1987 by ©Bruce Berman
BRONCO STREET
FRANZ MARC, INGE MORATH AND THE BLUE HORSE
The power of unintended consequences. Inge Morath, an early chosen photographer at Magnum, first became interested in Art at the Nazi’ exhibition Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) in Munich in July 1937. The exhibit was meant to be a disparagement of “modern art,” and was championed and attended by Hitler and other Nazi Party luminaries.
For some the consequence was the oppoosite of their intentions. One of those was the young Inge Morath, a fourteen year old Austrian girl. It was her first encounter with a art and as opposed to being opposed to the art she encountered, she loved and in particular the art of German artist Franz Marc‘s Blue Horse.
INFO on Franz Marc:
https://www.thehistoryofart.org/franz-marc/blue-horse/
Mask Series, Los Angeles by Inge Morath, no date
GYPSY ROSE
1941 publicity photo for Gypsy Rose Lee’s
first novel, The G-String Murders.
Article by Bruce Berman
Gypsy Rose Lee was the most famous “stripper” ever. She started out in Burlesque at seven years of age in 1921, transitioned from Vaudeville to Burlesque and was the premier act in the legendary Minsky’s Burlesque. She appeared in sixteen motion pictures, numerous TV shows and authored the book Gypsy in 1957. The book led to the all time great Broadway play Gypsy and she was a ubiquitous personality in multiple media for over five decades.
Very early in World War II, Gypsy Lee was active in promoting patriotism and supporting the troops. In magazine articles she praised American servicemen and even offered to send an autographed pin-up portrait to any GI who asked for one. She encouraged women to take jobs in the war industry and participated in a benefit to raise money for an organization that provided child care. Gypsy performed at dozens of USO shows in a 1943 tour that visited forty Army and Navy posts across the country.
Lee died in 1970. The play “Gypsy” is still played in major and minor productions and still draws audiences worldwide. There haven’t been many like her -if any- since.
One of her best-known quotes is, ” If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing slowly… very slowly.”
PRE ART LANDSCAPE
The Pre Art Landscape is one in which there are images only attractive to some’s intellect that titillates the intellect of others who are over educated, over intellectualized, clean from lack of experience with the world that they choose to not touch and where, through their lack of desire to know a world around them other than the one aforementioned, allows them to revere and praise that which is without interest to anyone but them and their ilk.
So here is an image from my Guggenheim Fellowship submission. I created this less than fifteen minutes ago by walking out the back door of my slum loft (yes there are still some around that the yuppies and Julias haven’t occupied and, therefore, chased out those who were living there, not for some feeble concept of what is cool, but because, previously, they could afford the rent if they were willing to put up with the inconveniences and degradations of everything that the word “slum” implies).
If I hadn’t written this piece I very well may have earned a Guggenheim.
I coulda been a contenda…instead of -let’s face it- a bum…which is a what I am…*
I couldn’t resist the rant.
I suspect that’s what has saved my heart’s soul from an early death.
*Thank you Budd Schullberg (http://bit.ly/1KetpPl)
We Are Not In Kansas Anymore: 3D
We’re not in Kansas anymore that’s for sure. How far away from iRobot is this and how long will it be before I can get someone to clean my loft for me (hope they don’t get the crazy eyes)?
Seriously, the 3D printer is a revolution of the first order. See how Lexus designed a night prowler:
http://youtu.be/gwGxSgpR60k
Senegal and the Afro Beat
LISTEN TO BILLY BILLY:
Wiliam Klein Still Rocks
Watch this lovely video. Be inspired. A true original.
Was he the finest wine of the great era?
Possibly.
Why was he not mentioned in the same breath as Avedon and Penn? Could it be he was too original, too pure, too soulful?
Me thinks.
Phonera
Images from NIGHT TREK series. I take strolls. I shot whatever I see. Like the old days before I was supposed to “be relevant.” The phonier is dumb, There’s always fingerprints (which one forgets to wipe off) because it’s in my pocket with change, keys, debris. I’m not caring because the point isn’t to be a photographer but to stroll. I think Cartier-Bresson said something about a photographer needs to be a good “stroller.”
I’m a good stroller anyway.
All these were shot on the mobile phone camera three days ago, Monday, May 21, in the Segundo barrio, the place that I stroll often and for years.
The quality of the “tech” is marginal.
Admittedly.
BUT, the liberation of just being another idiot with a cell phone, priceless!
The mobile phone returns one (especially one who no longer looks like a Spring Chicken) to the roots, invisibility, just another vato in the ‘hood. I hate bad technique, but, I love being FOW again (fly on the wall).
What do you think? Lower technique but higher involvement? Or go for higher technique and be the outsider jamming that thing into people’s lives?
Are Phonera’s a democratizing Good Thing?
The Killer Of Film
Bermaloid of the film shelf, May 2012
Commentary by Professor B KIller
Is it really over? Film? Well, actually that’s impossible. Film is any medium that can hold an image (my translation).
But is it that film that has silver on it on an “acetate” base is over with?
Pretty much.
I teach at a university. I’ve been there for four years. When I got there I was shocked to find out that they still had darkrooms. For one reason or another we kept them. I couldn’t arrive on the job, announce “The Darkrooms Are Dead” and be the killer!
And, as we went on, the students kept saying, “We love this.”
Well, some did. Soime hated it. Some loved and hated it. Many went on to be excellent photographers (in digital).
The point was that they were still learning some good lessons -as I and my generation did- in that dim room, swathed in yellow-red light, interacting with each other as they struggled with the old wet process of film and enlarged prints.
Cool but archaic.
So, here we are, at the end of another year, and as I look forward I struggle, once again, with the idea of being the Killer.
Anyone out there have any comments on this? Opinions? Experience with being the Killer Of The Darkroom or having fought off the axe of extinction?
Register on the blog and let me know.
The Morgue (The Good One!)
You got to love paper. And aging. And photos. And writing.
Yes, it’s all in the “database” there, at the end of the keyboard, through Google. But is it?
Even if it is it has no texture, no odor, no reality.
Take this trip to The New York Times Morgue. A perfectly wonderful place to spend a lifetime.
Ami Vitale; Beauty, Power, Life
Hungary Baths by Amy Vitale©2011
From Ami Vitale’s website (http://www.amivitale.com):
Ami Vitale’s journey as a photojournalist has taken her to more than 75 countries. She has witnessed civil unrest, poverty, destruction of life, and unspeakable violence. But she has also experienced surreal beauty and the enduring power of the human spirit, and she is committed to highlighting the surprising and subtle similarities between cultures. Her photographs have been
exhibited around the world in museums and galleries and published in international magazines including National Geographic, Adventure, Geo, Newsweek, Time, Smithsonian. Her work has garnered multiple awards from prestigious organizations including World Press Photos, the Lowell Thomas Award for Travel Journalism, Lucie awards, the Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding Reporting, and the Magazine Photographer of the Year award, among many others.
Now based in Montana, Vitale is a contract photographer with National Geographic magazine and frequently gives workshops throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. She is also making a documentary film on migration in Bangladesh and writing a book about the stories behind the images.
JR Is Outside In
Outside In by JR
Editor’s Note: This is an amazing project. In the era when people worry about the demise and/or future of journalism, when academics question the effectiveness of journalism in a 24/7 news cycle world, there is JR, who is producing and promoting another form of photojournalism and not only bringing his subjects into the communication process, he is bringing the work done on the subjects back to their environments. Check it out:
INSIDE OUT is a large-?scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work. Everyone is challenged to use black and white photographic portraits to discover, reveal and share the untold stories and images of people around the world.
SEE VIDEO