Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and photography

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Spirit photograph of Arthur Conan Doyle taken by the ‘spirit photographer’ Ada Deane in 1922, the same year in which Conan Doyle’s The Coming of the Fairies was published via The Public Domain Review

In the winter of 1920, readers of the popular British magazine the Strand found a curious headline on the cover of their Christmas issues. “FAIRIES PHOTOGRAPHED,” it said. “AN EPOCH-MAKING EVENT DESCRIBED BY A. CONAN DOYLE.” The Strand’s readership was well acquainted with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; most of his wildly popular Sherlock Holmes stories had appeared for the first time in its pages. The great man’s claim that fairies –real fairies – had been photographed in the north of England by two young girls wa

Source: Sir Arthur and the Fairies | The Public Domain Review

The first fairy photograph, featured in Conan Doyle’s The Coming of the Fairies (1922) Via The Public Domain Review

The fairy pictures seem to me to be obvious fakes, but perhaps when photography was young this was not quite so obvious. Maybe in those days people we more willing to accept the veracity of photographs than they are today when we all know how easy it is to manipulate a photograph. Although he doesn’t seem to have been a very active photographer himself, Doyle had 13 articles on photography published by the British Journal of Photography. He also wrote a book called “The Case for Spirit Photography”.

And now to the real reason for this post. I’m feeling quite pleased with myself at the moment. Of course I’ve seen Sherlock Holmes movies and the various TV series. And I have a vague memory of having to read some Holmes in High School (as I recall I didn’t enjoy it much at the time). I can’t remember ever reading Sherlock Holmes just for the fun of it. So I’ve just worked myself through the complete Sherlock Holmes: 4 novels and 56 short stories. Phew!! For the most part I enjoyed the experience even though some of the stories were fairly ordinary.

On William Eggleston

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© William Eggleston / Steidl. Source: 10 Lessons William Eggleston Has Taught Me About Street Photography

A couple of recent articles related to William Eggleston.

The first is from the New York Times: William Eggleston,the Pioneer of Color Photography

The second is from Eric Kim. I share his initial thinking about Eggleston:

I didn’t “get” the photographs. What was Eggleston photographing a bunch of random stuff for? His photos seemed to be like a bunch of random snapshots, photographed without much thought or conviction. Just the ordinary and banal things of everyday life. I wanted to punch myself in the gut for spending 300 USD for a photographic book collection that I had no interest in.I then sent Charlie a message and asked him why he enjoyed Chromes, and that I was a bit disappointed. I remember him telling me simply, “The colors are just lovely.” He didn’t say much after that. Source: 10 Lessons William Eggleston Has Taught Me About Street Photography

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I’ve not quite come to terms with Eggleston yet. I bought a copy of William Eggleston’s Guide to see if that would help. It did to a certain extent. There’s certainly something about his photographs that makes me want to look at them again, even though I’m not entirely sure why. I’m not yet a fan, but I’m starting to warm to his work.

What an amazing photograph of an incredible athlete.

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Source: “One Lucky, Very Lucky Shot” | THEME. Usain Bolt @ Rio Olympics 100-meter semi-final | Kai Pfaffenbach / Reuters

And no I didn’t take it! Although I’ve been to Rio a few times I wasn’t there for the Olympics. Incredibly the photographer, Kai Pfaffenbach had this to say (in a Reuters video) about his iconic picture:

The German photographer is humble about his work. In this Reuters interview he says he was “just playing around and had a bit of fun.”

See, you dead serious photographers? Start playing around and have some fun!

Let’s loosen up a bit, experiment, as the best things in life are hardly ever planned.

Pfaffenbach went for a 1/50th panning shutter speed, “trying to do some arty shot.” Framing, composition, detail and out-of-focus areas, all just perfect.

“One lucky, very lucky shot,” says Pfaffenbach.

I should be so lucky. I’m sure this photograph will go down as one of the greatest sports photographs of all time.

Grinning Usain Bolt, winning the semi-final to his third 100-meter gold medal at three consecutive Olympics (a first!), and still having ample time to smile back at his drudging, smaller-than-Bolt pursuers, captured by Pfaffenbach — simply iconic

Wonderful photographs of soviet era relics

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Source: Soviet Relics of “Restricted Areas” by Danila Tkachenko · Lomography

Contemporary Russian artist and documentary photographer Danila Tkachenko brings a new landscape of the former Soviet Union through his photographs of unfinished and restricted areas, all once deemed significant by the Union. The places in Tkachenko’s “Restricted Areas”, along with its utopian ideology and endeavors, have become obselete by the end of the 20th century. The multiple award-winning photographic series Restricted Areas by Tkachenko can be currently viewed at the Fotogalerie Friedrichshain in Berlin

Fascinating photographs of Soviet era installations and equipment. Although in color the colors are so muted that at first I thought they were black and white. I particularly liked the shot above – looks like something from “Star Wars”. I was curious about how he’d made the photographs and gained some insights from an interesting National Geographic Article (Remnants of a Failed Utopia in the Former Soviet Union) which Tkachenko states: “I needed a lot of snow falling, This created a special atmosphere in the photographs, a kind of … very diffused light.”

According to Wikipedia:

Danila Tkachenko (born 1989) is a Russian visual artist working in the field of documentary photography.

Tkachenko won a World Press Photo first prize for his series Escape. Another series, Restricted areas, won the European Publishers Award for Photography. His work has been exhibited in Russia, Europe and north America.

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Tkachenko was born in Moscow in 1989. In 2014 he gained a degree in documentary photography from Rodchenko School of Photography and Multimedia.

In 2014 Tkachenko won a World Press Photo first prize in the Staged portraits stories category for his series called Escape, about people who have withdrawn from society to live as hermits in nature.

His series Restricted areas, documenting Russia’s abandoned secret military cities, won the European Publishers Award for Photography in 2015.

Tkachenko’s works are included in Salsali Private Museum permanent collection.

New deal photography

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newdealphotography-1

Not long ago I posted about some depression era kodachromes (Lovely Depression era Kodachromes). I recently came across, and acquired, a copy of a Taschen book (New Deal Photography. USA 1935-1943), which contains many more. It also has even more black and white photographs from the same era – more than 400 in all. An introduction describes the work of the Farm Security Administration and each section of the book covers a single geographical area: the Northeast; the Midwest; the West; The South. An appendix provides capsule summaries of the photographers: Esther Bubley; John Collier; Paul Carter; John Collier Jr.; Marjory Collins; Jack Delano; Walker Evans; Charles Fenno Jacobs; Theodor Jung; Dorothea Lange; Russell Lee; Carl Mydans; Alfred T. Palmer; Gordon Parks; Louise Rosskam; Edwin Rosskam; Arthur Rothstein; Ben Shahn; Roy Emerson Stryker; John Vachon; Marion Post Wolcott;

The text is “peppered” with comments/quotations from the photographers. Here’s an example I particularly liked:

There was one farmer, well he was alright, you could take his photograph all over the place, out in the field, and we’d been inside their house and then around almost all day. Russ had walked away down the field taking pictures of something else and I was talking to the man, and he said “What does he do?” And I said, “He takes pictures”. And he man said “You know, you’d think think a great big man like that, he’d get out and get himself a job”. Jean Lee (wife of Russell Lee).

There’s also a fairly long comment by Dorothea Lange describing how she came to take the famous “Migrant Mother” photograph.

Of course the photographs are rather small compared to the originals, but it’s a great overview of the work of the FSA. Well worth the <$20 I paid for it.