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Vernacular Architecture

Don Lashier said:
One of Partridge's Daly City photographs
and another of my favorites - "New Chevy" which I suppose qualifies as vernacular also.

- DL

I just noticed the little "next" button above the picture in your link to one of the Rondal Partridge pictures, and went through the whole cycle of 50 or so pictures, from the 1930s in the fields with Lange to the present day. They are great! He shoots in a variety of styles, but he seems to be sustained by a love of the things that he sees and a continuing fascination with how they look when photographed. There are several of Dorothea Lange and I think I found a seriously twisted picture of Imogen Cunningham. Like Lee Friedlander, he seems to let the pictures speak for themselves and not put himself in front.

Very vernacular.

scott
 

Don Lashier

New member
scott kirkpatrick said:
Very vernacular.
Exactly. I don't think Rondal will ever be more than a footnote in the history of photography, and his work certainly pales in comparision to his mother's (Imogen Cunningham), but it seemed particularly relevant to this thread. Not only is his subject matter often vernacular, but in a sense, his style seems vernacular - if that makes any sense.

- DL
 

Don Lashier

New member
scott kirkpatrick said:
Like Lee Friedlander, he seems to let the pictures speak for themselves and not put himself in front.

Except for Self Portrait with the Bride - very odd. Wonder what "bride" thinks about this? Maybe she wrote the sign?

I do like Judy Dater - rather inventive, sort of like the photographer borged by the camera. Talk about the camera intimidating.

If there is one word that would characterize his work, it might be "playful".

ps: Malvina Reynolds was a Berkeleyite also. Damn! "Little Boxes" has been running through my head all weekend.

- DL
 
Don Lashier said:
If there is one word that would characterize his work, it might be "playful".

- DL

Being "playful" and taking pictures every day and, finally, having children to write your bio, film your documentary, run your website, and keep your pictures in the public eye sounds like a pretty sensible plan for arriving at the age of 90 in top spirits. A model for us all.

scott
 
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Mary Bull

New member
Originally Posted by Don Lashier
One of Partridge's Daly City photographs
and another of my favorites - "New Chevy"
and, Scott's comment in reply
I just noticed the little "next" button above the picture in your link to one of the Rondal Partridge pictures, and went through the whole cycle of 50 or so pictures,
So, I've done that, too. Among my favorite's: "Joan's Bluejay, 1958"

Joan's%20Blue%20Jay,%201958_jpg.jpg


I felt present with Joan. Very much in her everyday (vernacular) life.
 
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Another wave of the vernacular

For different and very seriously-intended images of ordinary life, look at the work of Humphrey Spender, taken in the 1930s:

http://www.boltonmuseums.org.uk/HTML/spender/history_humphrey_spender.html

Spender, whose photographs appeared in the British picture press under the pseudonym of "Lensman," usually used a concealed camera, and gave up photography for painting and textile design after the war, in reaction to the deception in involved in this approach. Spender's photographs of working class England are interesting in their details, and seem like the starting point for Robert Frank, 15 years later, in his book London/Wales.

The intellectual framework for this extensive photographic fact-gathering was provided by the Mass Observation Movement, recently profiled in the New Yorker.
Nothing "playful" about these folks (George Orwell was one of them) although they were willing to spend a lot of time in pubs and drink a lot of beer to bring back the inside dope on the strange ways of the working classes. Speaking of strange ends to lives, one of the MO founders died falling off a cliff on a Greek Island, while another lived out his last 20 or so years quite happily among headhunters in Borneo.

scott
 

Don Lashier

New member
scott kirkpatrick said:
Nothing "playful" about these folks (George Orwell was one of them) although they were willing to spend a lot of time in pubs and drink a lot of beer to bring back the inside dope on the strange ways of the working classes.
Now that's my kind of photography - hang out at pubs (in Oregon we call them Taverns) and shoot folks. I'm not much of a drinker myself but years ago I traveled with a couple friends whose habit was to drop into the local bar/pub/tavern to get to know the local culture. It was fascinating but it never occurred to me to take the camera in.
... to bring back the inside dope on the strange ways of the working classes.
My way was to immerse my self in the blue collar world - which led to my earlier observation about lack of correlation between letters after the name and intelligence. After tiring of being an ARPA computer researcher I paid $150 for a "learn to drive a truck" course and was a truck driver for nearly 10 years, always with my camera of course. I just wish I had taken more pics of the people as opposed to the trucks/mills/factories etc.
Speaking of strange ends to lives, one of the MO founders died falling off a cliff on a Greek Island, while another lived out his last 20 or so years quite happily among headhunters in Borneo.
I've got to check out the MO movement, but I've always felt that I'm an alien observer just visiting this world. AFA going native, I've read a couple of fascinating books by folks that went native in the Amazon. One was a Catholic priest (and of course it was a natural for him since the amazonians are bi) and the other an anthropologist (who took pictures). I'll dig up the references for Mary ;)

But to bring this back to photography, I think documenting ordinary life, particularly in an artistic way, would be the most important and long-lasting record that a photographer could create.

- DL
 

Mary Bull

New member
Scott said:
For different and very seriously-intended images of ordinary life, look at the work of Humphrey Spender, taken in the 1930s:

http://www.boltonmuseums.org.uk/HTML...y_spender.htm
Indeed different.
The intellectual framework for this extensive photographic fact-gathering was provided by the Mass Observation Movement, recently profiled in the New Yorker.
I read the entire article, on-line at your link, late (for me) last night. My copy of the Sept. 11 issue had arrived yesterday afternoon, but I was too busy shooting with the newly charged G2 to even glance at it. Then after I saw your post, reading on-line was more convenient.

Although it's long, the article is well-written and fascinating. How kooky some otherwise good minds can be! I think of George Bernard Shaw and Conan Doyle's embracing of spiritualism.

And then there's the whole Bloomsbury movement, Roger Fry and all that--to get back slightly to art, artists, and the vernacular.
 

Mary Bull

New member
Motorcycles as vernacular art

Scott Kirkpatrick said, a few days ago:
Motorcycles are a good case to look at. ... Danny Lyon's "Bikeriders" from the 1960s ...
*The Bike Riders* by Danny Lyon is here with the afternoon snail mail. Very, very fine b&w pictures, plus the 14 color photos. These truly make me feel as if I were there, in that counter-culture crowd, with the calendar rolled back.

Some great b&w portraits. Another b&w with an avenue of bikers on their bikes, in files. And still another great perspective, a line of telephone poles--so familiar to me. Composition reminded me of Hobbema's painting, "Avenue of Trees." *

Haven't even begun reading the text yet. Too lost in the images.

Mary

*Well, like a good journalist I checked my memory on this. Wikipedia says the name of the painting is "The Avenue at Middelharnis, 1689." And the National Gallery shop in London is selling a poster of it:
http://www.nationalgallery.co.uk/sh...p?mscssid= &SiteLanguage=ENG&ProductID=100004

Price: 12 euro; there's a small picture of it on the site. I'm tempted. <greedy smile>
 
Mary Bull said:
*The Bikeriders* by Danny Lyon is here with the afternoon snail mail.

Glad you like it. It's really about the people, although you learn things about the bikes as well. I like the way he captures the image that a self-respecting Outlaw or Hell's Angel wants to project, singly or as a group, and then shows them in ways that contrast with that image, like "Jack, Chicago" or the pictures with wives and kids around. You notice that the racers (and Lyons) ride light, fast European bikes while the Outlaws prefer mean-looking heavier, slower Harleys. Things have changed. One of the reader reviewers on the Amazon website commented about this book "how great to see again choppers built by the guys who ride them!"

scott
 
Maybe not everything has changed. Sean Reid seems to see a good sampling of biker cultures and expresses his observations as photographs. One of his businesses is leading summer bike tours in the Northeast, at a level of elegance and price that probably leaves the Outlaws behind. Yet his pictures from places like Daytona Beach, FL and Laconia, NH show that some of the same people continue to ride. There's a nice shot on his home page, http://www.reidreviews.com, taken in a controlled setting with a concealed camera, and lots more, shot in standard street mode, inside (behind a subscription barrier) or perhaps still available in his Luminous Landscape articles.

scott
 

Mary Bull

New member
Scott Kirkpatrick said:
Maybe not everything has changed. Sean Reid seems to see a good sampling of biker cultures and expresses his observations as photographs.
That's a really excellent photo that you sent the link for. I like it a lot, a very telling and layered (no pun intended) observation.

A little later I'll try to see if I can find the articles you mention at The Luminous Landscape.

Mary
 

Mary Bull

New member
Vernacular Photography Picture Books

Originally Posted by Mary Bull
[*The Bikeriders* by Danny Lyon is here with the afternoon snail mail.
Originally Posted by Scott Kirkpatrick
Glad you like it. It's really about the people, although you learn things about the bikes as well. I like the way he captures the image that a self-respecting Outlaw or Hell's Angel wants to project, singly or as a group, and then shows them in ways that contrast with that image, like "Jack, Chicago" or the pictures with wives and kids around.
So now, UPS has brought me the MOMA catalogue for the Gursky exhibit, and *Technologies* by Bernd and Hilla Becher. I had ordered both as used copies, on your PM recommendation, from Alibris.

I am so thrilled to have them in hand. The reproductions in both books, though smaller of course than the originals, are extremely intriguing and appealing to me.

Off to turn the pages a bit more.

Mary
 
Mary Bull said:
Scott Kirkpatrick said:

That's a really excellent photo that you sent the link for. I like it a lot, a very telling and layered (no pun intended) observation.

A little later I'll try to see if I can find the articles you mention at The Luminous Landscape.

Mary

Sean has been shooting during the Daytona Bike week in 2001, 2004, and 2006, as I recall. There was an article by him which used the 2004 pictures and appeared on LL, but I can't find it now. It's possible that he only had it there for a limited time. There are several other articles in which he reviews cameras that suit his style (documentary, digital rangefinder...) and his work (photojournalistic wedding coverage and architectural), and these are illustrated with quite a few examples.

For less than any of the photo books you have been acquiring ($26.50/year by credit card or PayPal) you can subscribe to his site, and get acquainted. For starters you will find his 2006 Daytona pictures there and a fair amount of discussion of his approaches to the subject and the degree to which different cameras work well for this. There's 9 months of material on the site now, interrupted by the summer, in which he leads bike and sportscar tours. New stuff should be appearing soon, assuming he made it through the summer OK.

scott
 

Mary Bull

New member
scott kirkpatrick said:
Sean has been shooting during the Daytona Bike week in 2001, 2004, and 2006, as I recall. There was an article by him which used the 2004 pictures and appeared on LL, but I can't find it now. It's possible that he only had it there for a limited time. There are several other articles in which he reviews cameras that suit his style (documentary, digital rangefinder...) and his work (photojournalistic wedding coverage and architectural), and these are illustrated with quite a few examples.

I did a search on "Sean Reid" at LL and found mostly equipment reviews.

From Google, I found a couple of sites that seem to be his. Is the one you are talking about "ReidReviews"? (That's the way it's spelled, the two words run together.) That one has also mostly camera equipment reviews at present. It *is* $26.50 a year, just as you said. I've bookmarked the site and will get back to it after a bit.
For less than any of the photo books you have been acquiring ($26.50/year by credit card or PayPal) you can subscribe to his site, and get acquainted. For starters you will find his 2006 Daytona pictures there and a fair amount of discussion of his approaches to the subject and the degree to which different cameras work well for this.
I found only one Daytona Beach photo. Maybe I just wasn't looking in the right place--or maybe I have to be subscribed to see the list of all the articles on the site?
A lot of camera equipment reviews are listed.

The other site, for which there's also a link at "ReidReviews" is
http://www.still-photo.net/wedding/home.htm

There are a lot of galleries there, but I couldn't find one about Daytona Beach.
There's 9 months of material on the site now, interrupted by the summer, in which he leads bike and sportscar tours. New stuff should be appearing soon, assuming he made it through the summer OK.
Let us hope he did!

Thanks a mil for all the information and guidance, Scott!

Mary


scott[/QUOTE]
 
The full range of biker pictures require that you subscribe to his site. They illustrate many of his articles. Also the articles are not really "gear reviews" but studies of some of the more subtle differences that a particular class of lenses may contribute to pictures.

scott
 

Mary Bull

New member
Thanks for clarifying. I'm off to subscribe.

Snail mail report: my used paperback of *Imogen Cunningham Photographs 1910-1973* was in my mailbox this p.m. Just now fetched it in.

Mary
 
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