Any of y'all into photography? (2 Viewers)

I like to look at pictures. And I have also just finished putting together a 'photojournal' on my web page: http://www.mo-oeuvre.com/photo-journal.html

Quite a few images on there. Might need a minute to load. What's that? You love my font selection? Thanks. It is called 'lilly.' I chose it because it is the name of my best friends oldest daughter.

Look forward to seeing other peoples' pictures if any of you all have them on the web somewhere!
 
ahh. so that is how you roll ...

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I love photography. Particularly the pre-digital age. That's not really because I have anything against digital photography (it's the medium I use anyway) it's more that it seems capable of throwing up hidden gems like Vivian Maier.
 
I think the photos showing the man made disaster of the Dust Bowl in the grasslands and prairies of the US and Canada are compelling, with the terrible displacement of tens of thousands of people during the great depression:

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And this iconic one from Dorothea Lange of the Migrant Mother:

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Cool thread, g b. Can you show a picture from you for me?
Ponder, I'm not sure if you were drunk, sarcastic, or both. Just can't figure out what this post is asking ..
I love photography. Particularly the pre-digital age. That's not really because I have anything against digital photography (it's the medium I use anyway) it's more that it seems capable of throwing up hidden gems like Vivian Maier.
There is certainly a lot to be said for pre-digital stuff in terms of the qualities of the finished product. My attitude I guess is digital is what we got nowadays.

Sounds like you take some shots then? Any of them up in albums on the web?

I never had heard of Maier. Love old photography in general though. Helps me feel less cut off from the past somehow. On facebook I follow a page of historians who post pictures and stories related to native americans and the 'indian wars' through the great plains of north america. I also have a couple cool old photo books of people at work. Pictures taken by a sociologist named Lewis W. Hine. How bout the good old days of child labor!

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I was trying to figure out what was so remarkable and incredible about those pictures (as every other caption enthused), then I saw that they were on a U.K. web site, so I get it. If all I had were bogs and Stonhenge I'd probably be impressed by pictures of the American West too.

Anyway, I have a bunch of old Viewmaster reels that are better than those. They're color and they're stereo! It's like you're really there. Which you could be, but that's not the point.
 
I was trying to figure out what was so remarkable and incredible about those pictures (as every other caption enthused), then I saw that they were on a U.K. web site, so I get it. If all I had were bogs and Stonhenge I'd probably be impressed by pictures of the American West too.
That's a bit unfair. We have some quite large hills as well.
 
There's a great little photo gallery in my home town called The Side Gallery (http://www.amber-online.com/sections/side-gallery). Anyway, they own a large collection of Weegee prints. I think back in the 70s/80s they were the first place to show his work in the UK. Anyway, a few years ago they had an exhibition of the prints to commemorate this. There was also a talk by Sid Kaplan who produced a lot of the original prints. The exhibition was great, for example:

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Simply add boiling water :)
 
Big Ellen Rogers fan.
Austrian melancholic pop group Pungent Stench used his photography for album covers a longer time ago.
Those are creepy!
Weegee prints...
Those are more my speed. "Fire at the Weenie Factory" is an awesome image.

Ted Orland was the first guy that got me in terms of 'art photography.' Happened on his book "Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity" in a used book shop a half dozen or so of years ago. Pretty insightful style, plenty of beauty, too, plus some historical writings about the photography scene he came of age in around heavy early hitters Imogen Cunningham and Ansel Adams. This image below I always think about when I read that classic buk quote "humanity you never had it" ...

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a large collection of Weegee prints.
A lot of old photography is interesting just because it's old and it gets to you on a historical level rather than a wow, what a great artist this photographer is level. To me, Weegee is firmly in that camp. It's newspaper photography.

What he did differently was go out and night and photograph things most other photographers of his day would have ignored or dismissed. That makes him an interesting photographer, and a pioneer of sorts, but not a great artist. The vast majority of his work is, in fact, utterly artless (see above: See fire. Aim camera. Press button. Go ape crazy.). Maybe artlessness his art. But really, anyone can photograph a burning building or a crime scene. Try it yourself. You'll see.

Arbus and those who followed in her vein like Mary Ellen Mark and (early) Sally Mann did much more with "documentary" photography of people. They were artists. The best of their work goes straight for your gut. You feel it. That Weegee stuff has always been cold as ice.

Joel-Peter Witkin and all the oh-so-serious industrial goth mouth breathers he spawned (like Ellen Rogers) are junior high school shock jock turds on the face of art. "Look at how disaffected we are. Look at this naked girl with medical devices strapped to her face! It's a comment on something! Look at how I use a Photoshop filter to make it look like I scratched a film negative! Look!" It's funny, but it's not cool or good.

Okay, that's not fair. Maybe 30 years ago when Witkin was the only one doing it, it had the ability to surprise you. You'd look at his pictures and say, what the hell? But not now. It isn't enduring, his shtick, and his legacy is a blight on all of photography and much of 90s/00s graphic design.
 
I don't really disagree with too much that except Weegee made it his business to go and photograph events like mob hits (it's rumoured he was close to both the police / ambulance drivers and the mobsters so I'm not sure anyone could've taken some of the photos he took as that insider knowledge was probably needed). I take your point about it being 'cold' though, his photos are taken from almost a pure analytical viewpoint I suppose. In a way that's what I like about them though, i.e. he's an observer more than an artist. I am into his work as an interesting historical document of the time. I kind of think his work transcends the vernacular and becomes almost pure art because he was so good at what he did. You then get into debates about 'what is art?' though.
 
I like to view old photos, they can tell a lot of things. New York, Los Angeles, Moscow, Beijing, it doesn't matter.
The last L.A. 1964 picture reminds me of a Bukowski poem: Beach Trip.
 
Was looking into authors using typewriters early on (the internet takes you to strange and wonderful places) Mark Twain, an early adopter of technology (and a close friend of Nikola Tesla) is credited with being the first to do a book manuscript on one - Life On The Mississipi memoir 1883 (although he may have used a typist to do it, if you want to quibble).These popped up when I was looking:
Twain in the lab with Tesla having a shot of electricity:

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Early film Twain and family


Early film of Jack London

 
Great photography, such as no.5, people sitting on chairs watching the fire as if they were watching a movie, the entire front of the house on the left crashed down onto the street, you can see a piano in one of the rooms.
No.27 is pretty funny, a kind of natural response to a scholar isn't it, maybe the toppled statue could have stayed that way.
 

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