pixnoir : : girlwiz

At an auction organized by Vienna's WestLicht gallery, a 1923 Leica 0-Series camera sold for $1.89 million which shattered pre-sale estimates. Before the auction, it had been valued at about one quarter of what it eventually sold for.

It was sold to a private, anonymous collector from Asia.

The camera was one of about 25 prototypes made in 1923, two years before the celebrated German brand went into commercial production.

The previous world record was set last year when a collector paid 732,000 euros for a daguerreotype, the world's first commercially produced camera, which bore the rare signature of its French inventor.

Posted by at 6:05 AM | Permalink

From the website of the British Journal of Photography:

Following the releases of the CFV-16 and the CFV-39 digital backs, Hasselblad is now offering another option for photographers looking to transition from film to digital. The new back offers a maximum resolution of 50 megapixels – which is twice the size of the best 35mm full-frame DSLRs on the market today, claims Hasselblad.

Speaking at a press conference at Photokina, Peter Stig-Nielsen of Hasselblad says that the launch of the CFV-50 was sparked by the huge success of its 39 megapixels predecessor. “It took us by surprise when we received tons of positive response from customers around the world,” he explains. “This success was not just because it was a new digital back, but also because it offered compatibility with the Carl Zeiss lenses, which took the platform to another level.”

The CFV-50 has been custom built to match the design and functionality of the V-cameras, says the firm. It is compatible with most V-Cameras such as the 202FA, 203FE, 205FCC, and all members of the 500 and 900 series.

It also offers Hasselblad’s DAC lens correction technology for the majority of V-System Carl Zeiss lenses. The technology corrects for distortion, lateral chromatic aberration and vignetting in the same way as it does for the H-System lenses, claims Hasselblad.

The CFV-50 has a sensitivity range of ISO 50 to ISO 800, has an exposure time of up to 64s and offers both normal capture at full resolution or classic square capture at 38 megapixels. It also features a 2.5-inch LCD screen and take CF memory cards.

The CFV-50 is available now retailing at €11,990.

Posted by at 6:07 AM | Permalink

March 9 - May 8

The Amador Gallery exhibit "Kobe," is a series of black and white photographs by Ryuji Miyamoto which display the architectural devastation wrought by the Great Hanshin earthquake upon the city of Kobe, Japan in 1995.

Over the years, Ryuji Miyamoto has kept a watchful eye on Japan's cities as they underwent vertiginous changes. His intention has been to photodocument the demolitions and reconstructions of whole quarters of the cities. Although he tries to photograph the architectural qualities of the cities, he often focuses on the aspect of destruction: the pictures of Kobe after the 1995 earthquake are his most renowned series.

Amador Gallery
41 E. 57 Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10022

Posted by at 12:38 AM | Permalink

Black-And-White Black America

National Public Radio features the work of Roy DeCarava, who died recently at the age of 89, with Black-And-White America, an online gallery plus an interview and audio about the man and his work.

Posted by at 6:03 AM | Permalink

LENS, The New York Times blog, features Showcase: The Roma in Rome, the black-and-white work of photographer Marco Baroncini on the poverty-stricken gypsies of Rome.

Posted by at 6:00 AM | Permalink

Franke & Heidecke Going Out of Business

From the online British Journal of Photography:
The German manufacturer responsible for 6x6 format camera bodies for both Leaf and Sinar is to close. The firm broke the news to its 131 employees earlier this week. The closure could dramatically affect the medium format camera market, days after Phase One announced it would buy Leaf's assets

Posted by at 12:10 AM | Permalink

From The British Journal of Photography website:
American photographer Robert Adams has won this year's prestigious Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography

Adams wins approximately £40,000 for his work spanning more than four decades. 'Adams is one of the most important and influential photographers of the last 40 years,' says the Foundation. 'During that time he has worked almost exclusively in the American West, and, as photography has altered and fragmented, he has refined and reaffirmed its inherent language, adapting the legacies of nineteenth century and modernist photography to his own very singular purpose.

'Precise and undramatic, Adams' accumulative vision of the West now stands as a formidable document, reflecting broader, global concerns about the environment, while consistently recognising signs of human aspiration and elements of hope across a particular changing landscape.'

His prize, along with a gold medal, will be presented at a ceremony at the Hasselblad Centre in Gothenburg in November, where an exhibition of his life's work will go on show.

Posted by at 6:07 AM | Permalink

From the Fox News Website:

NEW YORK — A very early photograph of New York City in the 1840s has sold for $62,500.

The photo depicting Manhattan's Upper West Side as open countryside was sold Monday at Sotheby's auction house.

The photo is a daguerreotype, an early form of photography that was used mainly for portraits. It is believed to date from 1848 and shows a white house with shutters, a grassy hillside and a horse-drawn carriage.

Sotheby's said the photo was recently discovered in New England. Neither the buyer nor the seller was identified.

The auction house estimated the pre-sale value of the daguerrotype at $50,000 to $70,000.

Posted by at 6:25 AM | Permalink

August 31, 1913 - March 29, 2009

Helen Levitt, US photography legend has died.

From the British Journal of Photography website:
Levitt was considered one of the world's greatest street photographers, and the last living link with America's golden age of photography in the 1930s. Throughout her life, she worked in the streets of New York taking pictures of everyday things such as her most famous image, which depicts three children preparing to go trick-or-treating on Halloween in 1939.

Born in 1913 in New York City, Levitt left school to work for a commercial photographer and, by 1938, had started her seminal book, In the Street: chalk drawings and messages, New York City 1938-1948.

Levitt met Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1935 and even followed him when he photographed on the Brooklyn waterfront. She studied with Walker Evans, and in 1943, had Edward Steichen curate her first solo show at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1959 and 1960, she received two Guggenheim Foundation grants to take colour photographs in New York.

Levitt published her first major book, A Way of Seeing, in 1965, but in other respects photobooks were a later development for her. In the Street wasn't published until 1987, and her magnum opus, Crosstown, didn't hit the shelves until 2001. Slide Show, the Colour Photographs of Helen Levitt, which collected together her little-known colour work, was published in 2005.

Last year, Brooklyn-based Powerhouse Books published her last monograph, which saw Levitt handpick her eclectic mix of iconic and previously unpublished images, making this book her 'greatest hits' collection of personal bests.

Levitt died in her sleep in New York on Sunday.

Visit powerhousebooks.com for more details on her last monograph.

Posted by at 6:21 AM | Permalink

The Nikon F Mount Turns 50 This Year

From the Nikon site:
Longest history among lens mounts for 35mm-format SLR interchangeable cameras

TOKYO – Nikon Corporation is pleased to announce the 50th anniversary of its legendary F-mount lens-mounting system, employed on the company’s lens-interchangeable SLR cameras and NIKKOR lenses. Apart from Nikon, no other maker has been able to sustain its original lens mount for such an extraordinary period.* (Revised on March 11, 2009)

*Among lens mounts for 35mm-format SLR interchangeable cameras

The Nikon F-mount was first employed on Nikon’s earliest lens-interchangeable SLR camera, the Nikon F, released in June 1959. Nikon has consistently utilized the same mount without changing its basic structure, even as other SLR camera manufacturers found it necessary to alter their lens mounts in response to changing technologies, such as autofocus compatibility and digitalization.

One of the biggest advantages of lens-interchangeable SLR cameras is that users are able to choose from a larger selection of lenses. Maintaining the same basic structure of lens mount for a longer period means a broader, constantly growing array of compatible lenses. For this reason, the lens mount is an extremely important and symbolic element for both photography enthusiasts and professionals, who are able to benefit from ongoing use of their carefully selected collection of lenses. The Nikon F-mount, employed for even the latest, most advanced digital SLRs, has received and continues to garner the highest evaluations as a reliable, long-serving lens mount.

Evolution of the Nikon F-mount

* Introduced on Nikon’s first lens-interchangeable SLR, the Nikon F (1959)
* Auto aperture indexing enables automatic setting of maximum aperture (1977)
* Program auto exposure mode compatibility (1981)
* Aperture information exchange with the camera body through CPU communication (1983)
* Autofocus compatibility (1983)
* Digital SLR cameras compatibility (1995)

Posted by at 6:32 AM | Permalink

Wednesday, January 14, 2009 08:13am EST

This is the first time that an official presidential portrait was taken with a digital camera. A new official portrait was released today of Barack Obama. It was taken by Pete Souza, the new official White House photographer.

View it, and if you like, download a copy here.

For the curious digerati, the EXIF data are:

Canon EOS 5D Mark II
January 13th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
no flash
105mm lens
f/10
1/125
ISO of 100

Posted by at 8:44 PM | Permalink

Currently, potential users of orphan works can be held liable for up to $150K in statutory damages.

When the House of Representatives reconvenes next week, November 17, it could pass the controversial Orphan Works Bill which would require only a 'fair' compensation to be paid to the copyright owner. However, it is unclear whether this lame-duck Congress will have time to pass any the bill before going into recess for the end-of-year holidays.On January 3rd, the newly-elected congress will convene picking up bills drafted and approved in 2008 which doesn't leave much time to coordinate efforts in defeating the orphan works bill.

Posted by at 6:55 AM | Permalink

Only crooks and liars will benefit from this bill.

Excerpt from the British Journal of Photography website:

The US Senate has passed an amended version of the controversial Orphan Works Bill, which has been widely criticised for tearing up international accords on artists' copyright.

Bill S.2913 provides a limitation on judicial remedies in copyright infringement cases involving orphan works, allowing pictures editors and art buyers to use images with unknown or incomplete copyright information, as long as they have made sufficient attempts to track down the owner. It was introduced by Democratic senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont on 24 April this year.

For the entire article please visit The British Journal of Photography website.

Posted by at 6:07 AM | Permalink

Cornell Capa died Friday May 22, 2008 at his home in Manhattan.

Excerpt from the International Center of Photography website:

The entire International Center of Photography community mourns the death of the man whose vision continues to guide us today. As a renowned photographer and humanitarian, as the founder of the International Fund for Concerned Photography, and the founder of ICP in 1974, Cornell was a singular force in the world of photography, opening our eyes to the power of the photographic image as an agent of change. At ICP he ventured far beyond photojournalism and brought the full range of photography to the public's attention through an institution that was born, whole-cloth, as a true center—both Museum and School. There Cornell was available to the many photographers from around the world who came to him for advice and encouragement. ICP and photographers everywhere are his lasting legacy.

Posted by at 7:18 AM | Permalink

Philip Jones Griffiths, Photographer, Dies at 72

From Wikipedia:

Philip Jones Griffiths (February 18, 1936 – March 18, 2008) was a Welsh photojournalist known for his coverage of the Vietnam war.

“ The first picture of his I ever saw was during a lecture at the Rhyl camera club. I was 16 and the speaker was Emrys Jones. He projected the picture upside down. Deliberately, to disregard the subject matter to reveal the composition. It's a lesson I've never forgotten. "

—Griffiths on his idol, and later coworker, Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Griffiths was born in Rhuddlan. He studied pharmacy in Liverpool and worked in London as the night manager at Boots The Chemist in Piccadilly while also working as a part-time photographer for the Manchester Guardian. He started working as a full time freelance photographer in 1961 for the Observer, traveling to Algeria in 1962. He arrived in Vietnam in 1965, working for the Magnum agency.

Magnum found his images difficult to sell to American magazines, as they concentrated on the suffering of the Vietnamese people and reflected Griffiths's view of the war as an episode in the continuing decolonisation of former European possessions. He was able to get a scoop that the American outlets liked, photographs of Jackie Kennedy vacationing with a male friend in Cambodia. The proceeds of these photos enabled him to continue his coverage of Vietnam and to publish Vietnam Inc. in 1971. The book had a major influence on American perceptions of the war, and became a classic of photojournalism.

In 1973 Griffiths covered the Yom Kippur War. He then worked in Cambodia from 1973 to 1975.

In 1980 Griffiths became the president of Magnum, a position he then held for five years.

In 2001 Vietnam Inc. was reprinted with a foreword by Noam Chomsky.

Subsequent books have included Dark Odyssey, a collection of Griffiths's best pictures, and Agent Orange, dealing with the impact of the US defoliant Agent Orange on postwar generations in Vietnam.

Aged 72, Griffiths succumbed to cancer on March 18, 2008.

Posted by at 6:18 AM | Permalink

In March, the Sundance Channel (PDF link download) salutes photography with a series called "Lives In Focus" which is a 5-night documentary series spotlighting well-known 20th century photography iconoclasts such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Helmut Newton, Tina Modotti and William Eggleston.

This series premieres Monday, March 3rd through Friday March 7th beginning at 7:00 pm e/p:

• Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Impassioned Eye, an illuminating look at the life and work of the legendary “photographer’s photographer.”

• Black, White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe, an acclaimed exploration of the complex and fertile relationship between a curator, patron and photography collector, and his protégé and lover.

• Tina Barney: Social Studies, a profile of one of America’s leading photographers, known for her revealing color photos of the East Coast elite.

• Peter Beard: Scrapbooks from Africa & Beyond, a visit with a true artistadventurer, whose passions range from Africa’s wonders to living the good life.

Posted by at 6:53 AM | Permalink

Penn's "Small Trades" Photographs

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles announced that it had acquired the entire series of "Small Trades" photographs which consists of 252 silver-gelatin and platinum prints of full-length portraits of workers — waiters, bakers, butchers, rag-and-bone men. It has been called Mr. Penn’s most extensive body of work.

He began taking them in Paris in the summer of 1950 on assignment for Vogue and he continued it for another year after the assignment, seeking out workers in London and then in New York, where he lived, asking them to come to his studio in their work clothes and carrying the tools of their trade.

August Sander took naturalistic, anthropological portraits of German tradespeople and professionals usually in the settings where they worked. Mr. Penn’s portraits on the other hand, are formal. He always tried to use natural northern light and posed each subject against a neutral background.

Posted by at 7:30 AM | Permalink

As if we need more proof that film photography is dying. According to an article today in the Boston Globe, Polaroid announced that they are shutting two Massachusetts facilities and laying off 150 workers. "The Norwood plant is shutting down, and we will soon be winding down activities at the Waltham facility as well," said Kyle MacDonald, senior vice president of Polaroid's instant photography business segment.The Norwood and Waltham plants make large-format films used by professional photographers and artists. These plants are slated for closure later this year and plans to make only enough film to last into next year.

Posted by at 7:03 AM | Permalink

Three cardboard suitcases were found containing thousands of negatives of pictures that Robert Capa took during the Spanish Civil War in 1939, before he fled Europe for America leaving behind the contents of his Paris darkroom. The suitcases are currently at the International Center of Photography in Midtown Manhattan.

From the article The Capa Cache published in the New York Times by Randy Kennedy (January 27, 2008):

“This really is the holy grail of Capa work,” said Brian Wallis, the center’s chief curator, who added that besides the Capa negatives, the cracked, dust-covered boxes had also been found to contain Spanish Civil War images by Gerda Taro, Robert Capa’s partner professionally and at one time personally, and by David Seymour, known as Chim, who went on to found the influential Magnum photo agency with Capa.

The discovery has sent shock waves through the photography world, not least because it is hoped that the negatives could settle once and for all a question that has dogged Capa’s legacy: whether what may be his most famous picture — and one of the most famous war photographs of all time — was staged. Known as “The Falling Soldier,” it shows a Spanish Republican militiaman reeling backward at what appears to be the instant a bullet strikes his chest or head on a hillside near Córdoba in 1936. When the picture was first published in the French magazine Vu, it created a sensation and helped crystallize support for the Republican cause.

If you're interested in reading the entire article: The Capa Cache

Posted by at 8:31 AM | Permalink

New US DOT Hazmat Safety Rule to Place Lithium Battery Limits in Carry-on Baggage on Passenger Aircraft Effective January 1, 2008.

If you travel with your photographic equipment (including laptop(s)), you should be aware of the new US DOT Hazmat Safety Rules which apply limits to the inclusion of lithium batteries in carry-on luggage on airplanes.

For more information:

http://www.dot.gov/affairs/phmsa1107.htm

http://safetravel.dot.gov/index_batteries.html

Posted by at 6:45 AM | Permalink

Photographer Diane Arbus' Archive Given to NY's Met

By REUTERS
Published: December 18, 2007

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The entire archive of New York photographer Diane Arbus -- known for her images of dwarfs, nudists and carnival performers -- has found a home at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The estate of Arbus, who committed suicide in 1971, is giving her archives to the museum, which will turn it into a resource for scholars and the public, the Met said on Tuesday.

The museum has also purchased 20 of Arbus' photos from the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco for an undisclosed price.

Her archive includes negatives and contact prints of 7,500 rolls of film, along with hundreds of her early photos, personal papers, correspondence, her photo library and other books, photos by other artists and glassine print sleeves she personally annotated.

"It is rare in any field that one of its greatest practitioners should leave behind her entire output," Jeff Rosenheim, the museum's photo curator, said in a statement.

The Met said the archive was similar to that of photographer Walker Evans, which has been at the Met since 1994. "The Metropolitan will now have the opportunity to map the creativity of two great artists in the most complete way," Rosenheim said.

The Arbus photos bought by the Met include "Russian midget friends in a living room on 100th Street, N.Y.C." (1963) and "Woman with a veil on Fifth Avenue, N.Y.C." (1968).

A traveling exhibition of Arbus' work was presented at the Met in 2005. Nicole Kidman starred as Arbus in the 2006 movie "Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus," which centers on a relationship between Arbus and a fictional character.

(Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf, editing by Michelle Nichols and Todd Eastham)

Posted by at 6:38 AM | Permalink

Picture New York Without Pictures of New York

Thousands of New Yorkers who love both their city and their cameras may face exactly that if the cumbersome, costly and unconstitutional regulations from the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater, and Broadcasting go into effect this August as scheduled.

Picture New York is an ad hoc coalition of working artists, filmmakers, and photographers who’ve joined together to fight the proposed rules. These rules can be seen not only as a blow against New York as a place that welcomes and inspires art-making and documentation, but are part of a broader continuum of attacks against civil liberties and free expression.

Text from:

pictureny.org

Please visit the site and sign the petition.

Posted by at 7:49 AM | Permalink

Bernd Becher, who spent his life meticulously documenting post-industrial landscapes in in Germany and other areas in Europe and the United States with wife Hilla, has died on 22 June 2007 in Rostock, Germany.

They were fascinated by the similar shapes in which certain buildings were designed. In addition, they were intrigued by the fact that so many of these industrial buildings seemed to have been built with a great deal of attention toward design. Together, the Bechers went out with a large format camera and photographed these buildings from a number of different angles, but always with a straightforward "objective" point of view. The images of structures with similar functions were then displayed side by side to invite viewers to compare their forms and designs. These structures included barns, water towers, storage silos, and warehouses.

Books

Anonymous Sculptures: A Typology of Technical Construction, 1970.
Water Towers, 1988.
Blast Furnaces, 1990.
Gas Tanks, 1993.
Industrial Facades, 1995.
Mineheads, 1997.
Framework Houses, 2001.
Industrial Landscapes, 2002.
Basic Forms of Industrial Buildings, 2004. ISBN 3-8296-0150-6.
Typologies, 2004. ISBN 0-262-02565-5.
Cooling Towers, 2006.
Grain Elevators, 2006.

Biography

Susanne, Lange (2006). Bernd and Hilla Becher: Life and Work. The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-12286-3.

Posted by at 7:58 AM | Permalink

VIENNA (AFP) - An 1839 daguerreotype camera, ancestor of modern photography, was sold at auction in Vienna Saturday for nearly 600,000 euros making it the world's oldest and most expensive commercial photographic apparatus.

An anonymous buyer paid 588,613 euros (792,000 dollars), bidding by Internet, said the Galerie Westlicht auction house here.

The opening price was 100,000 euros for the wooden box structure, which is in its original state and had been lying forgotten in a loft in Munich since the year 1940 until the present owner of the premises accidentally came across it.

Bids came from as far afield as South Korea, Japan, the United States and France, the auction house said.

Michel Auer, a Swiss photographer and photographic historian, carried out an expertise on the device and concluded that it was the only remaining known example made by a French firm, the Susse Brothers.

Before it resurfaced, the oldest known and most expensive daguerreotype apparatus in the world had been one also dating from 1839 but made by Alphonse Giroux, brother-in-law of the inventor Daguerre.

Only 12 remaining original Giroux daguerreotype cameras are known to be preserved in various collections around the world.

The daguerreotype, named after the French artist and chemist Louis Daguerre, is an early type of photograph in which the image is exposed directly onto a mirror-polished surface of silver bearing a coating of silver halide particles deposited by iodine vapour.

It was not the first-ever photographic process. But previous attempts had required such lengthy exposure that the daguerreotype became the first commercially viable photographic process.

Posted by at 6:51 AM | Permalink

Scaling the Lizard King
The Doors: Large format photographs
from the archives of Joel Brodsky

Snap Galleries
April 21 - July 3, 2007

Joel Brodsky, the photographer who captured one of the most iconic pictures of rock legend Jim Morrison, has died at the age of 67 on the eve of his first-ever exhibition in the UK.

His work has appeared on the covers of hundreds of albums — most memorably “The Best of the Doors,” with its provocative Christlike image of Jim Morrison in black and white.

Posted by at 6:53 AM | Permalink

What is thought to be the world's oldest commercially manufactured camera is to be sold at the private Westlicht gallery and auction house in Vienna on May 26. Dating back to 1839, the Daguerreotype, encased in a sliding wooden box frame, was made by Susse Freres of Paris. Westlicht said that the camera has never been restored.

The camera belongs to a US-based scholar and was inherited from his father, a technical photography professor at Munich University. The starting bid is $132,000, but the final price for the 168-year-old gadget is expected to go beyond the one million dollar mark.

Daguerrotype photography, which lasted only about a decade, produced a direct image onto a polished silver surface, which meant that no copies could be made, as there were no negatives.

Posted by at 6:01 AM | Permalink

William Klein has been honored with the 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award by the New York-based International Center for Photography.

Now in their 23rd year, the ICP's Infinity Awards are widely recognized as Americas premier recognition for excellence in photography.

Klein, is credited with influencing visual imagery in Europe as well as the US for more than half a century.

In the 1950s and 1960s he introduced a different perspective on street photography, eschewing careful focusing and framing for grainy, distorted wide-angle shots captured on fast film.

His important photography work, best exemplified by his book Life Is Good and Good for You in New York: Trance Witness Revels was supplemented by groundbreaking work in film.

The awards will be presented in May in New York City.

Posted by at 6:39 AM | Permalink

Many visitors to this site are Henri Cartier-Bresson (HCB) devotees, I have therefore decided to post a link to an interview that Cartier-Bresson gave to Charlie Rose in July 2000.

Charlie Rose asked many dumb questions and made a few glaring mistakes about photography. Oft times he cut him off before he could finish his sentence and in some cases he finished his sentences. HCB never seems at ease during the interview and looks increasingly relieved as the interview draws to a close.

The interview and interviewer have many flaws, but it is afterall HCB and therefore worth the watch.

Google Video Link: Interview with HCB

Posted by at 8:19 AM | Permalink

Ruth Bernhard, whose classical black-and-white photographs of the female nude and inanimate objects earned her a place of distinction among 20th-century photographers, died on Monday at her home in San Francisco. She was 101.

In the 1940s Ms. Bernhard became part of Group f/64, joining Modernist West Coast photographers like Weston, Ansel Adams, Minor White, Imogen Cunningham, Wynn Bullock and Dorothea Lange. All took a purist approach to their subjects. Their work is characterized by photographic clarity and detailed precision.

Weston’s influence, in particular, on Ms. Bernhard’s work is evident from the compositional simplicity of his own nude studies and still lifes of organic objects like shells and peppers.

Ms. Bernhard photographed almost exclusively in the studio. She was known to take a single picture from one specific angle after setting up a composition meticulously, sometimes over days.

“If I have chosen the female form in particular, it is because beauty has been debased and exploited in our sensual 20th century,” she told Margaretta K. Mitchell, author of “Ruth Bernhard: Between Art and Life” (2000). “Woman has been the subject of much that is sordid and cheap, especially in photography. To raise, to elevate, to endorse with timeless reverence the image of woman has been my mission.”

Excerpts from:
The New York Times
By Philip Gefter
Published: December 21, 2006

Posted by at 8:19 AM | Permalink

Magnum photographer and documentary photojournalist Leonard Freed died November 29th at the age of 77. He is survived by his wife, Brigette, and daughter, Susanna. Magnum Photos is presenting a tribute to Freed that includes 90 of his photos.

Posted by at 7:29 AM | Permalink

Thank you for visiting the newly redesigned girlwiz site! Girlwiz is now an integral part of pixnoir.

Posted by at 7:25 AM | Permalink

Philip-Lorca took a random series of photographs of strangers passing in the street in Times Square for a period of two years and culminated in an exhibition of photographs called ''Heads'' at Pace MacGill Gallery. Erno Nussenzweig, an Orthodox Jew saw his picture in the exhibition catalog and sued Mr. diCorcia and Pace for exhibiting and publishing the portrait without permission and profiting from it financially. Mr. Nussenzweig argued that use of the photograph interfered with his constitutional right to practice his religion, which prohibits the use of graven images. The suit sought an injunction to halt sales and publication of the photograph, as well as $500,000 in compensatory damages and $1.5 million in punitive damages.

The suit was dismissed by a New York State Supreme Court judge who said that the photographer's right to artistic expression trumped the subject's privacy rights. New York state right-to-privacy laws prohibit the unauthorized use of a person's likeness for commercial purposes, that is, for advertising or purposes of trade. But they do not apply if the likeness is considered art.

The practice of street photography has a long tradition in the United States, with documentary and artistic strains, in big cities and small towns. Photographers usually must obtain permission to photograph on private property -- including restaurants and hotel lobbies -- but the freedom to photograph in public has long been taken for granted. And it has had a profound impact on the history of the medium. Without it, Lee Friedlander would not have roamed the streets of New York photographing strangers, and Walker Evans would never have produced his series of subway portraits in the 1940's.

From the New York Times Article
ART; The Theater of the Street, The Subject of the Photograph by Philip Gefter, published March 19, 2006

Posted by at 8:18 PM | Permalink

Gordon Parks (November 30, 1912 – March 7, 2006) was a groundbreaking African-American photographer, musician, poet, novelist, journalist, activist and film director. He is best remembered for his photo essays for Life magazine and as the director of the 1971 film Shaft.

In 1938, Parks was struck by photographs of migrant workers in a magazine and bought his first camera, a Voightlander Brilliant, for $7.50 at a pawnshop. The photo clerks who developed Parks' first roll of film, applauded his work and prompted him to get a fashion assignment at Frank Murphy’s women’s clothing store in St. Paul. Parks' double exposed every frame except one, but that shot caught the eye of Marva Louis, boxer Joe Louis' elegant wife. She encouraged Parks to move to Chicago, where he begain a portrait business for society women.

Over the next few years, Parks moved from job to job, developing a freelance portrait and fashion photographer sideline. He began to chronicle the city's South Side black ghetto and in 1941 an exhibition of those photographs won Parks a photography fellowship with the Farm Security Administration. Working as a trainee under Roy Stryker, Parks created one of his best known photographs, American Gothic. The photo shows the black woman who worked on the cleaning crew for the FSA building, standing stiffly in front of an American flag, mop in one hand and broom in the other.

After the FSA disbanded, Parks remained in Washington as a correspondent with the Office of War Information, but became disgusted with the prejudice he encountered and resigned in 1944. Moving to Harlem, Parks became a freelance fashion photographer for Vogue. He later followed Stryker to the Standard Oil (New Jersey) Photography Project, which assigned photographers to take pictures of small towns and industrial centers. Parks' most striking of the period included Dinner Time at Mr. Hercules Brown's Home, Somerville, Maine (1944); Grease Plant Worker, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1946); Car Loaded with Furniture on Highway (1945); and Ferry Commuters, Staten Island, N.Y. (1946).

Parks renewed his search for photography jobs in the fashion world. Despite racist attitudes of the day, Vogue editor Alexander Liberman hired him to shoot a collection of evening gowns. Parks photographed fashion for Vogue for the next few years. During this time, he published his first two books, Flash Photography (1947) and Camera Portraits: Techniques and Principles of Documentary Portraiture (1948).

A 1948 photo essay on a young Harlem gang leader won Parks a staff job as a photographer and writer with Life magazine. For 20 years, Parks produced photos on subject including fashion, sports, Broadway, poverty, racial segregation, and portraits of Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali, and Barbra Streisand. His 1961 photo essay on a poor Brazilian boy named Flavio da Silva, who was dying from bronchial pneumonia and malnutrition, brought donations that saved the boy's life and paid for a new home for his family.

Posted by at 7:38 PM | Permalink

Last month the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., acquired the complete Hallmark Photographic Collection, considered the broadest and most important private holding of American photography. It consists of 6,500 images by 900 artists, and has an estimated market value of $65 million. Hallmark Cards made a significant portion of the collection a gift to the museum, which then purchased the balance with a donation from the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation.

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According to the Sotheby's catalog, Stieglitz's gallery sold the Edward Steichen print, "The Pond-Moonlight" for $75 in 1906, the equivalent of about $1,500 today. This week, Sotheby's announced that "the Pond-Moonlight" a platinum print by Edward Steichen owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, had sold for almost $3 million to an anonymous buyer.

Photography experts pointed out that several complex factors went into generating this sale. The rarity of the Steichen print: only two others are known to exist,one at the Museum of Modern Ar and the other at the Met. Last year, when the Met acquired the Gilman Paper Company collection, considered the most important private photography collection in the world, it contained another print of the photograph. That is the print that sold this week.

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Slate's daily feature called "Today's Pictures" is a joint product of Slate and Magnum Photos.

Magnum, founded after WW II by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger, and David "Chim" Seymour, has become synonymous with the term photojournalism.

A new gallery of Magnum images (from yesteryear) will be posted every weekday morning.

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The Metropolitan Museum has acquired the Gilman Paper Company Collection of photographs which is considered to be the most important photography collection in the world.

Photos from the collection will be on exhibit for a year starting April 17, 2006.

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