Photographs and thoughts on photography and camera collecting
I spotted this in a nearby church. I hadn’t seen one of these for a while. In fact I thought they’d disappeared entirely and that when you heard the sound of church bells (which you don’t hear as much in Putnam Valley, NY as you did in Sandbach, UK where I grew up) it was piped. Just press a button and the sound of bells was played through a speaker on the roof. I resisted the temptation to pull it to see what would happen.
My wife asked me to take some pictures of the flowers in our garden before they disappear. Her wish is my command. Above – Blue and white pots on our patio. I liked the dappled light shining through the leaves on the oak tree.
Clematis. I liked the vibrant colors and the lines of the plant as well as the contrast with the rather rough textured tree bark behind.
Intertwined clematis’s growing up one of our oak trees.
Unknown plant (some kind of gaillardia?) in the foreground framed by multiple coreopsis in the background.
Lily.
This was taken in the Sculpture Garden at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. So many beautiful things to look at yet many of the people were just sitting there attending to their cellphones. Although I’m a compulsive internet user myself, I find the way these devices intrude into every aspect of our life to be disturbing. It’s virtually impossible to escape them and unfortunately there’s no going back – the genie is out of the bottle. Maybe I’m just a luddite. When I was a child I knew an older guy who steadfastly maintained that it was impossible for a man to be on the moon – and this even after the first moon landings. Am I like that: refusing to accept that times have changed and unable to adapt?
“Trolly – New Orleans”, 1955. The photo, part of Frank’s groundbreaking volume “The Americans”, was taken our days after an encounter with the police in Arkansas that darkened this artistic viewpoint. From the New York Times, July 5 2015
Sixty years ago, at the height of his powers, Frank left New York in a secondhand Ford and began the epic yearlong road trip that would become ‘‘The Americans,’’ a photographic survey of the inner life of the country that Peter Schjeldahl, art critic at The New Yorker, considers ‘‘one of the basic American masterpieces of any medium.’’ Frank hoped to express the emotional rhythms of the United States, to portray underlying realities and misgivings — how it felt to be wealthy, to be poor, to be in love, to be alone, to be young or old, to be black or white, to live along a country road or to walk a crowded sidewalk, to be overworked or sleeping in parks, to be a swaggering Southern couple or to be young and gay in New York, to be politicking or at prayer.
Interesting and fairly long (12 page) article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine of 5 July 2015. I’ve blogged about Frank before:
Robert Frank Collection Guide.
Robert Frank is 90 years old.
Robert Frank and Bert Hardy.
I find it hard to understand the almost ‘godlike’ status that Frank has. I guess that so much time has elapsed since “The Americans” came out that it’s difficult to see how significant it was at the time. I imagine that most photography of the time presented the US in almost idyllic terms (I’m thinking here of magazines such as ‘Life’) so when Frank came along and presented the “seamier” side of US life and culture it was jarring. Since then however, and particularly in the Vietnam and post Vietnam period) this has now almost been “done to death”. Maybe if Frank had gone on to many more great works…..But he didn’t. His fame seems to rest mostly on “The Americans” and a number of not particularly well-know movies. Just the same they are impressive photographs, which I like very much. I admire Frank for his photography, but as someone documenting US life and culture I much prefer Walker Evans. I guess it’s hard to be a pioneer.
Our friend and her dog. He’s a French Bulldog and every year she has an outdoor birthday party for him – last year with a band. Our previous dog, Jackson didn’t get on with him at all. Jackson was smaller, but extremely aggressive with other dogs (he was part Jack Russell terrier). After being barked at and generally harassed for a while Jackson turned the tables and chased him up onto the back of a sofa. Our present dog, Harley, being more sweet tempered, gets on better.