Some new photobooks

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Although I have a lot of fun sharing photographs on social media, I like to see my photos in print. I could print them, frame them and put them on the walls of my house. But I don’t actually have a lot of wall space for displaying photos so that’s pretty much out. I could just print them (maybe frame them) and then give them to friends e.g. when invited to a party I could print along a framed print instead of a bottle of wine? But I’m pretty sure that they’d appreciate the wine more than the framed photograph. Or I could print them, put them in a folder or a box and then probably forget about them entirely until I discover them ten years from now…if I’m still around.

Instead of any of the above options I’ve decided to do photobooks instead. Over the years I’ve done a number of glossy photobooks, but I’ve discovered that they take me a long time to complete. They’re also quite expensive and I have a knack for getting something wrong e.g. I might find that a typeface I thought looked good on screen didn’t work well in print; or I get the spacing wrong; or while proofreading I catch most of the grammatical/spelling mistake but inevitably miss a few etc. Then I have to go back, and fix these problems and re-order the book. Let’s say I spent $60 on the first photobook. Now I have to spend another $60.

Instead I’ve decided to try ‘zines’. While they’re not as nice looking as photobooks I can produce one fairly quickly and they don’t cost very much (the examples in this post each cost no more than $15). So even if I have to redo them I’m only out $30. Of course if I really like one I can use the ‘zine’ as a proof copy, and quickly transform it into a more flashy photobook.

So far it’s working pretty well. I’ve recently done four ‘zines’ in two series.

I’ve lived in the Lower Hudson valley for the past 23 years. For much of that time I commuted into New York City for work. I was lucky that the commute was a very pleasant one. The New York Metro-North Railroad Hudson Line runs right next to the Hudson River and for much of it’s length offers picturesque views across the Hudson to (among other things) The Palisades; The Hudson Highlands; Storm King Mountain etc. Over the years I’ve visited and photographed many of the towns along the river. I anticipate doing a number of these ‘zines’ – each one focusing on a single town (or part of a town as some of them are quite large). For the same reason I’ve decided to focus on those areas, which are close enough that I can comfortably walk to them from the railroad station. With my customary lack of creativity I’ve decided to call this series “Rivertowns”. So far I’ve done two in this series: “On Albany Post Road in Tarrytown” and “Dobbs Ferry”. This series combines photographs with quite a lot of text describing them.

During COVID it was not possible to travel as much as I had been doing. I therefore confined myself to walks in the immediate vicinity of my house and started a series of photographs, which I decided to call “Around the Neighborhood”. I defined this as meaning anywhere that I could walk back and forth to from my house. So far I’ve done two ‘zines’ in this series. The first, entitled “A Tree” has as its subject a single tree in a nearby woodland. I’d already taken a number of pictures of this but on this occasion I decided on the spur of the moment to attempt an exercise that I’d recently read about. This exercise consisted of taking thirty six photographs of a single subject all at once. Quite easy at first, but after about twenty photographs increasingly more difficult. In fact at that point I almost gave up, but I stuck with it and in the end found it to be quite useful. I’m the kind of person who will walk up to a subject, take a few pictures and then move on. This exercise made me slow down and look more carefully. Indeed, towards the end I was noticing things, which I had already walked past a couple of times. The second, entitled “A Pond” focuses on a sad, lonely looking pond. What makes it interesting is that it’s on the site of the former Briarcliff Lodge, a 1902 vintage luxury resort in the village of Briarcliff Manor, New York where I live. It’s said that this pond was once the Lodge’s swimming pool. Local legend has it that if you were to dive to the bottom you’d find tiles.

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The Making of “Exiles”

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This is the kind of book that makes me want to give up photography. The images are just so far beyond anything I’d ever be able to make.

I subscribe to many photography-related YouTube channels. T. Hopper‘s is one of the more interesting. She recently posted a video on Joseph Koudelka. Other than the famous picture of the arm, the watch and Prague, and that he was a Magnum photographer I didn’t know much about him. Since I don’t need much of an excuse to buy a photobook I immediately went online to buy one. This is what I came up with.

At the moment I’m so blown away by this book that I’m at a loss for words, so I’ll content myself with merely copying what Amazon has to say about it. Later, when I’ve had more time to absorb it I may come back with some thoughts of my own.

“Koudelka’s unsentimental, stark, brooding, intensely human imagery reflects his own spirit, the very essence of an exile who is at home wherever his wandering body finds haven in the night.”–Cornell Capa

In 1988, Josef Koudelka published what was to become one of his most famous and canonical series: Exiles. These gorgeously austere black-and-white images described the travels and everyday life of the peoples he encountered while roaming Europe. Josef Koudelka: The Making of Exiles is an exploration of the genesis and the making of this photographic journey.

Enhanced by numerous photographs that have never been published―in particular the photographer’s self-portraits―and captions by Koudelka, it includes numerous archival documents (such as reproductions of his travel journals), thumbnail reproductions of the book’s layout, an introduction by curator Clément Chéroux and an essay by photo-historian Michel Frizot, who spent hours interviewing Koudelka.

Josef Koudelka was born in Moravia in 1938. Initially an aeronautic engineer, he launched full time into photography in the late sixties. In 1968, he photographed the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, publishing the results under the pseudonym P.P. (Prague Photographer). Koudelka left Czechoslovakia in 1970 and was briefly stateless before obtaining political asylum in England. Shortly afterwards, he joined Magnum Photos. In 1975 he published Gypsies. Koudelka has exhibited at the MoMA and at the International Centre of Photography in New York, at the Hayward Gallery in London, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

Peter Lindbergh on Fashion Photography

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I haven’t shown a lot of interest in Fashion photography. It’s not that I don’t appreciate it – I do, and I have a number of photobooks by/about well known Fashion photographers including Irving Penn, Helmut Newton, Annie Leibovitz and Edward Steichen. I’m also somewhat familiar with the work of others including Cecil Beaton, Richard Avedon, David Bailey, Horst P. Horst, William Klein, David LaChapelle, Lord Snowden, and Mario Testino. It’s just that I don’t think, much as I might like to take pictures of gorgeous women on a beach I don’t think I’ll ever have the opportunity to do so. Moreover, I’m not really comfortable taking pictures of people in general.

However, my interest was piqued when I saw this video on one of my favorite YouTube channels: Alex Kilbee’s: The Photographic Eye – The Photoshoot Which Changed Fashion Photography

I’d heard of Peter Lindbergh, but had not really appreciated how influential he had been. So I immediately ordered “Peter Lindbergh. On Fashion Photography“, Taschen Books, 2020. In his introduction Lindbergh says:

In 1987, I got a call from Alexander Liberman then the creative director of Condé Nast

I’ve got a couple of books by/about him too. I decided that I would get them after being invited over to the house of, as it turned out, someone who used to work for him). But back to the post:

He couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to work for American Vogue. I told him, “I just can’t take the types of photographs of women that are in your magazine.” I simply felt uninspired by the ways women were being photographed”. He said: “OK, show me what you mean, show me what kind of women you’re talking about.” I wanted a change from a formal, particularly styled, supposedly “perfect” woman – too concerned about social integration and acceptance – to a more outspoken and adventurous woman, in control of her own life and emancipated from masculine control. A woman who could speak for herself.

A few months later, following Mr. Liberman’s proposition, I put together a group of young and interesting models and we went to the beach in Santa Monica. I shot very simple images; the models wore hardly any makeup, and I wanted everyone to be dressed the same, in white shirts. This was quite unusual at the time. Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Tatjana Patitz, and Karen Alexander were all there that day.

Back in New York, Vogue’s editor in chief at the time, Grace Mirabella, refused to print the images. But six months later, Anna Wintour became the the magazine’s editor and discovered the proofs somewhere in a drawer. She put one of them in Condé Nast’s big retrospective book “On the Edge: Images from 100 years of Vogue (1992)”, calling it the most important photograph of the decade. The “supermodel” would go on to represent the powerful woman that I had articulated, and their images dominated fashion visuals for the next 15 years.

The book consists of two distinct parts: a short, but very interesting introduction by Lindbergh himself followed by the heart of the book – Over 300 hundred images (that’s what the book’s sleeve says, but the book actually has 505 pages and the introduction – in English, German, and French – takes up only about 30 of them, and itself contains a number of photographs). Such a large number of images requires some kind of organization and in this case it’s alphabetical by client e.g. Azzedine Alaïa, Heider Ackermann, Giorgio Armani etc.

I like this series of Taschen books. Most photobooks are quite expensive, large format, heavy and difficult to hold. This series is more compact (6×9 inches) and fairly inexpensive. I have a number of them. I guess the only problem with them is that the photographs are relatively speaking rather small, but they’re good enough to provide a thorough overview of his work. Taschen also has a larger format series. I have a few of them too (e.g. Sebastião Salgado‘s wonderful “Genesis” (10×14 inches, but still quite inexpensive for a photobook of this quality), but I find them too big and too heavy to comfortably hold and read.

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Doodletown

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I usually post about books on or about photographers and photography. This is not one of those books. It does, however, have some wonderful historic photographs.

Doodletown was an isolated hamlet in the Town of Stony Point, Rockland County, New York, United States. Purchased by the Palisades Interstate Park Commission during the 1960s, it is now part of Bear Mountain State Park and a popular destination for hikers, birdwatchers, botanists, and local historians. It is located north of Jones Point, west of Iona Island, and southeast of Orange County. The former settlement is now a ghost town. Members of the first family to settle in Doodletown during the 18th century, Huguenots whose last name was anglicized to “June”, were also the last to leave it in the 1960s. (Wikipedia)

I’ve been there a couple of times and on one occasion took some pictures:

A Walk to Doodletown – Doodletown Overview
A Walk to Doodletown – The 1776 Trail
A Walk to Doodletown – Reservoir
A Walk to Doodletown – June Cemetery
A Walk to Doodletown – There’s still life in Doddletown

The problem with Doodletown is that there’s actually not a lot to see. Apart from a couple of cemeteries (one of them still active), mostly just the foundations of long gone buildings. At some point an attempt was made to erect information boards describing some of the former buildings, but (at least while I was there) the effects of time, weather and maybe vandalism made it difficult, and in some cases, impossible to read them. I came away wanting to know more about the history of the hamlet and its buildings.

Enter Elizabeth “Perk” Stalter and her wonderful book: “Doodletown. Hiking Through History in a Vanished Hamlet on the Hudson.”

The book is divided into two parts. The first: “Did Doodletown Disappear?” largely covers the history of the hamlet from its earliest days, through the Revolutionary War period, the good times of considerable growth with new roads, new churches, new job opportunities for the inhabitants. This section also describes what it was like to live in Doodletown, describing the community and its social life; schools; shopping; law enforcement; fire protection; banking; medical services; the effects of storms and snake attacks etc. She also describes with some sadness the eventual decline of Doodletown and its assimilation into the Bear Mountain State Park. This section of the book concludes with the following:

I sincerely hope that this book will help to show your mind’s eye what our community looked like – and that it will also help you to conclude that, indeed, Doodle town did not disappear! Welcome to Doodletown!

Interesting though Part 1 was, what really attracted me to the book was Part 2: A Hiking Guide to Doodletown today. The highlight of this section are the descriptions (69 of them accompanied by photographs showing what they looked like) of all of the former buildings. This was what I had been looking for.

The book is lavishly illustrated with maps, drawings and especially photographs.

Ms. Stalter lived in Doodletown from 1950 to 1958 and her love for the community clearly comes through.

A great book. I really enjoyed. Now I’ll have to go back to Doodletown.

The Europeans

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I’m a huge fan of Henri Cartier-Bresson. So it’s somewhat surprising that until recently I had only one, very small, very thin and not very thorough book on or by him.

So when I was compiling my Christmas Amazon wishlist (the best way for my family to buy me gifts that I actually want) I included a couple of books about him. This is the first. It’s called “Europeans” and in his introduction, Jean Clair states:

In 1955 a collection of photographs called Les Européens was published. It was conceived and designed by Tériade, with a jacket by Jen Miró. Henri Cartier-Bresson had worked on it for five years, a short period if one considers that the celebrated photographs in Images à la Sauvette (1952, published in English as The Decisive Moment) were selected from work spanning twenty years. The book offered a closely woven portrait of Europe after the war: accumulated ruins and the marks of hunger and woe on people’s faces still appearing very clearly.

After that it was all downhill for the introduction as far as I was concerned. I didn’t know who Mr. Clair was so I looked him up. He’s described as follows:

Jean Clair is the pen name of Gérard Régnier (born 20 October 1940 in Paris, France). Clair is an essayist, a polemicist, an art historian, an art conservator, and a member of the Académie française since May, 2008. He was, for many years, the director of the Picasso Museum in Paris. Among the milestones of his long and productive career is a comprehensive catalog of the works of Balthus. He was also the director of the Venice Biennale in 1995.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by what followed in the introduction: lots of big, arcane words and tortured sentences. The following is fairly typical:

Now, as a wizard of speed, he needed a certain lightness of touch, something airy, mercurial. Hermes, god of commerce and thieves, could well be the god of photographers. With quicksilver as the escutcheon of his equipment, this disciple of hermetic knowledge, borrowing the the powers of the god with winged hat and shoes, sets out to purloin the the fulgurating moment at the crossroads of appearances and to conserve something of Mercury’s spark.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t relate well to this kind of “criticspeak”. When I was in university many years ago I had to read a book by Messrs. René Wellek and Austin Warren. I can’t remember the title (I’ve probably blotted it out) but it was something to do with principles of literary criticism. Their best know work seems to be Theory of Literature, but that title doesn’t ring any bells. Anyway I read that book from cover to cover and after I finished it I found that I couldn’t remember a single thing. Still, I remember thinking that the book must have been important or why would they have made us read it. So I read it again with the same result. Maybe now I’m older I should read it again. Who knows – third time lucky.

But on to the pictures. They are of course remarkable, for the most part. We’re so used to seeing Cartier-Bresson’s masterpieces that it’s easy to forget that not all of his pictures fall into that class. Of the 200 or so pictures I only really liked about 43.

Unfortunately, it’s not immediately obvious how the photographs are organized. There’s no table of contents and at first I thought that the pictures were randomly organized. However, after a bit of study I realized that they are in fact organized by country, but that the order of the countries is not alphabetical. Rather it goes as follows (with the number of photographs for each country in parentheses): France (36); Portugal (7); Spain (18); Italy (20); Switzerland (5); Yugoslavia (5); Greece (6); Turkey (5); Romania (4); Hungary (3); Austria (3); Germany (16); Belgium (1); Netherlands (3); Poland (6); USSR (17); Sweden (3); Denmark (1); UK (13); Ireland (10).

Still despite the minor criticisms I really enjoyed the book.

Now on to the second book: Henri Cartier-Bresson. The Modern Century , but first I have to figure out how to read it comfortably. It’s longer, bigger and heavier that the above book.