Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category
“Make me look good.”
In September 2009, when nearly all the world’s leaders were in New York for a meeting of the United Nations, Platon, a staff photographer for The New Yorker, set up a tiny studio off the floor of the General Assembly, and tried to hustle as many of them in front of his lens as possible.
Visit an interactive portfolio of Platon’s portraits, complete with audio commentary by the photographer himself recalling the anxiety and excitement of each meeting.
Good Amy
Amy Winehouse takes a break during her trial outside Westminster Magistrates Court in London on July 23, 2009 where she faced assault charges after an altercation with a fan. For a day of serious business, photographer Shaun Curry caught Amy at the right time, resting against a polished granite wall.
Exposing Amy’s “good conscience” over her right shoulder, the image cries for an acquittal of the defendant. In reality, I’m pretty sure she’s simply thinking, “get me out of these clothes.”
Did you have to pay that fine that you were dodgin’ all the time?
Are you still dizzy?
Did you have to go to jail?
Put your house out up for sale?
Did you get a good lawyer?
They’ll always have Paris.
Note: Following the death of actress Elizabeth Taylor last month, a friend of mine posted an old photograph of himself on Facebook. I am most entertained when I can get my hands on old photographs of friends and their family, let alone their chance encounters with celebrities. I think it reiterates just how small our little world is. Everyone knows someone who knows someone who met…
“My meeting with Liz Taylor – Paris, 1980. You’ll have to trust me on this, but that’s her on the other side of her then-husband Senator Warner. And that’s me on the other side of my buddy Harry Foley with the groovy mustache.”
- Mark Campbell, friend
Emilio, Molly and Judd
LIFE Magazine. Apr, 1985.
Mercury
The dominant rayed crater in the upper portion of the image is Debussy, according to NASA. The smaller crater, Matabei, with its dark rays, is visible to the west of Debussy. The bottom portion of the full image is near Mercury’s south pole and includes a region of Mercury’s surface not previously seen by spacecraft.
World Trade Center: Opening Day
Faye Dunaway’s post-Oscar breakfast
(guardian.co.uk) — Even in the gloom of March, breakfast is glamorous. It’s something to do with the glassiness of sleep, the decadence of pausing to eat, while in a rush. By the swimming pool of the Beverly Hills Hotel though, in silk and heels, breakfast is sublime. It’s the very early morning after Oscar night, March 1977, and Faye Dunaway is just waking up after winning an Academy Award for her role in Network.
The photographer, Terry O’Neill, had met her on a magazine shoot the week before and they had become friends. He tells her his idea. “I wanted to capture the look of dazed confusion, ” he recalls today, “to capture that state of utter shock that Oscar winners enter, where they go to bed thrilled, then overnight, it dawns on them that they’ve changed, that they’ve just become a star. And not just a star, a millionaire.”
Last year, O’Neill, 71, began overhauling his archives and in the process discovered hundreds of lost prints, including shots of Richard Burton in the bath, Raquel Welch dropping her knickers, David Niven in pants and sock suspenders, and a sleeping Brigitte Bardot. He describes the discovery of these hidden portraits as “a pleasure and a relief”.
In this, one of his best-known photographs, Dunaway is having the Beverly Hills Hotel breakfast, unusual for its inclusion of English tea. The ceramic pot glints in the centre of the frame, right where, in a traditional award-winner’s photo, the Oscar should be. Everything in the picture tells a story – the early morning light, the newspaper headlines, Dunaway’s glazed, faraway look. “She’s reached the top of the tree,” chuckles O’Neill, who would marry Dunaway six years after the picture was taken, and divorce her three years after that.
“She isn’t sure quite who she is any more. I waited for her to look away from the camera, and I got the shot. I look at this picture often, and I’m still so proud of it. It’s still the best Oscar picture ever taken. And modern photographers should take that as a challenge.”
Photo: Terry O’Neill/Getty Images
Wiseman, Eva. “Faye Dunaway’s post-Oscar breakfast: 29 March 1977″. guardian.co.uk. 14 Mar 2010. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/mar/14/faye-dunaway-oscars-breakfast]
Marilyn Monroe: Still Life (2006)
“The camera adored her. She seduced the camera; there were some four-letter words said about the way she worked with a camera. It was incredible. But, she is working in a way that she loves. She’s in control. She’s telling the camera what she wants. She’s letting me do what I want to do. But, in the meantime, I’m really under orders from her.
That’s the way she loved to work, and Laurence Olivier said of her, that she was happiest when she was playing the part of a model.”
- Eve Arnold, photographer
“Despite her wit, she was not overbearingly bright, and if intellectual ability is comparable to weight lifting, she lifted no weight. She had intelligence — an artist’s intelligence. And her taste, by the end of her career, was close to superb. She must have had a profound sense of what was whole in people, and what was false.”
- Norman Mailer, screenwriter and director
“The first time I heard of her, I was at a men’s magazine called Argosy. The managing editor threw a pile of pictures on my desk, and said, ‘This tootsie hasn’t been in a movie yet, but she’s all over the place, posing for anything.’
And so, my job was to write captions for this ubiquitous starlet who would pose for anything… so that, after awhile, she was more of a joke than a serious figure. But, the interesting thing always was if you looked at the pictures, you could see that she was in on the joke.
If you look at all of the movies she made, they don’t add up to the answer of why she still has this appeal, you have to look at the still photographs. The thousands and thousands, you know, that show her essence. People sensed that you were being given access to something you don’t normally see.”
- Robert Stein, editor
“She had a bag and a couple of dresses in it — Marilyn, over the shoulder, this kind of thing came in the door — and the first thing she did was discard her shoes, which I couldn’t believe. So, immediately Cecil and I looked at each other with big eyeballs. We could tell, for some reason, this was going to be a good day. I mean, I kind of adore somebody that throws shoes off and gets right— in other words, she wanted to work.”
- Ed Pfigenmaier, assistant
“The year was 1961. I photographed her in November. November 17th. I wondered if I had oversold myself, if I was going to get out of my league. She seemed to be so sophisticated. I know subsequently that she, too, had her uncertainties, but as I approached her and met her for the first time, I expected this giant superstar. And, she wasn’t that. She was quite the contrary.”
- Douglas Kirkland, photographer
“Fame and happiness, it seems to me, is certainly temporary. Fame will go by. You know: ‘So long, I’ve had you, fame.’ I told you it was fickle. So, at least, it’s something that, let’s say, I’ve experienced. But, this isn’t my aim; this is what I wanted to make clear. In some ways, it has its compensation. It does. But, it also has its drawbacks. And I’ve experienced both.”
- Marilyn Monroe, actress and model
“Marilyn Monroe: Still Life”. Directed by Gail Levin. American Masters. PBS, New York City. 19 Jul 2006.
Featured music:
Monroe, Marilyn. “My Heart Belongs to Daddy”. Let’s Make Love. Los Angeles: Columbia, 1960.
Monroe, Marilyn. “I Wanna Be Loved By You (Mafia Remix)”. Greatest Hits Remixed. Los Angeles: Cleopatra, 2005.
Martin Schoeller
“They inspired me to take a series of pictures, to build a platform that allows you to compare. The pictures in my Close Up series have all been taken from similar angles and with the same equipment, but here I have tried to bring out personality and capture individuality in a search for a flash of vulnerability and integrity.”
- Martin Schoeller, photographer
Smash His Camera (2010)
Charles Weever Cushman
Charles Weever Cushman, amateur photographer and Indiana University alumnus, bequeathed approximately 14,500 Kodachrome color slides to his alma mater. The photographs in this collection bridge a thirty-two year span from 1938 to 1969, during which time he extensively documented the United States as well as other countries.
Indiana University’s Digital Library Program and the Indiana University Archives invite you to explore what Cushman saw. Here you can view his photographs as well as read contextual information about Cushman’s life and work.
Chicago, 1980
All night
The Boss goofs around between songs during a March 1977 performance at Boston Music Hall. Photo: Cliff Breining.
Visual Acoustics (2008)
For the kids
Life, then and now
I’ve always admired the concept of LIFE magazine, and remain heartbroken over its decline as our preferences for digestion of news, entertainment, sports — all things “life” — changed unexptectedly as the 20th century drew to a close.
The publication started out as a general interest magazine in 1883, but it wasn’t until 1936 — when Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine — that it was repackaged in the now-iconic format, becoming a coffee-table standard. These were the heydays of LIFE, and it enjoyed a successful run as a weekly publication with a strong emphasis on photojournalism to reach its audience through 1972.
Dwindling sales brought LIFE down to an intermittent “special” that was published sporadically until 1978. Renewed interest then brought the magazine back to a monthly publication through 2000. It’s final incarnation was seen in the format of a thin, Sunday newspaper supplement published by Time Inc. from 2004 to 2007.
Here, an ironic cover from October 8, 1971 parallels the country today, 38 years later to the date. Seems we have a bit more way to go, though, before we can borrow the feature story’s title.
