WTF?

Apparently, Sire von Overgaard has now graduated to a Kingship.

Many years ago, while a graduate student at Duke University, I took a seminar  Personology: Method and Personality Assessment and Psychobiography taught by Dr. Irving Alexander, Professor of Psychology at Duke, who has literally written the book on the subject. In short, it’s a method that uses a person’s written output and self-presentation to assess signature like unconscious features of a given person’s personality, fascinating stuff that leaks out of people’s attempts to present a coherent face to the world. Mr. Overgaard is just begging for a Psychobiography, and I may just be the man to do it. Stay tuned.

In any event: 90% Discount! Get whatever it is while it lasts. And, in a spirit of competition, I’m matching his 90% off sale with one of my own. Details here. Use code “IMSTILLGETTING RIPPED OFF” to claim your discount.

Hits: 2005

The Enduring Beauty of Things Made to Last

Above is one of the first SLR cameras I owned as a kid, A Mamiya/Sekor 528TL. I was 12. It was an amateur’s camera, a fixed lens SLR with telephoto and wide angle attachments. I didn’t keep it long. What I wanted was a Nikon F. You could change lenses on the Nikon F. To a 12 year old, that seemed incredibly cool, the ability to change lenses. The Mamiya was decidedly not cool, so I convinced my parents that I needed a better camera and the Mamiya went wherever unused cameras went back in 1970.

A few years ago I ran across one on Ebay and bought it on a whim – it was $10. I figured, why not, I’d put it up on the shelf as a piece of nostalgia, maybe even use it occasionally when feeling in a retro mood. Once I got it in the mail I realized my initial 12 y/o’s assessment of the camera had been pretty much correct. It was a piece of junk, made in Korea, obviously thrown together without much thought to precision or longevity, a 1970’s era throw-away.

Which is unusual. Film cameras back in the day were typically built robustly, made to last, not in thrall to a consumerist ethic that required replacement with “better” technology every 18 months or so. Not that manufacturers wouldn’t have liked us to be buying a new camera every 18 months; it was just that the mechanical technology was static in a way that didn’t lend itself to constant upgrading, so cameras were typically built solidly, with longevity and robustness as a selling point. You’d buy a camera – a Nikon F or a Leica M – with the understanding that you’d keep it for a lifetime. There might be newer models to come along, something a little sexier, but basically the same technology presented in a new package.

Where it all began to change was with the introduction of electronics in cameras – meters, and then auto exposure and auto focus – and the pace of technology dictated that cameras became consumer goods, something with a limited technological shelf life that required upgrading at fixed intervals. As such, the notion of robustness, building something with longevity in mind, became an anachronism. Of course there were exceptions – the M5 and M6 come to mind, as does the Nikon F2 and Canon F1.

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This all came back to me the other day as I was out riding my new (to me) Schwinn Paramount road bike. Growing up, I admired fine road racing bikes the way I admired fine cameras. And back in 1970, at least here in the States, there was nothing more desirable and exclusive than a Paramount. I remember seeing one hanging in the window of the bike shop, a beautiful jewel of a bike, ridiculously expensive and out of reach for most people, certainly for a kid like me. One day, I told myself, I’d have a Schwinn Paramount.

The Paramount has an interesting history. It was first produced by Schwinn, a large American bicycle maker, in 1938, and remained essentially the same bike up through the mid-80’s, when bike technology started a progressive trajectory much like cameras. Schwinn hired an old world master frame maker –  Emil Wastyn – to build frames for Schwinn’s professional six-day racing team. Emil ran a bicycle frame shop not far from the Chicago Schwinn factory. Soon, a select number of Paramount-labeled bikes began to appear for sale to the general public.

During the next twenty years, Wastyn hand-built all Schwinn’s Paramounts at his shop. The earliest Paramounts followed his signature styling (balled-end seat stays, for example) and keyhole-styled lugs. Over the years, Paramounts gradually evolved their own specific style – particularly the famous slant trimmed seat stays which remained in effect for 50 years. Schwinn also produced a variety of machined components to complement the frame – beautifully crafted wide-flange hubs, stems, handlebars and even pedals, each marked with the Schwinn name in script. By the 60’s, Schwinn had brought hand-built production in shop and offered Paramounts with top of the line Italian Campagnolo components, with corresponding prices to match.

Think of the Schwinn Paramount as the Leica of American made racing bikes, the best, most refined version of a steel framed road racing cycle, a no-expense spared hand built machine with functionality as its premier design feature, nothing extraneous or thrown in for fashion. Like Leicas, they’ve become collectors items for guys my age, nostalgic for the things they wanted but couldn’t afford in their youth. Technologically, they’re simple, 22 lb fully mechanical lugged steel framed and shiny chromed artworks. Most collectors hang them on the wall and never ride them, which is a shame, because, as I’ve discovered, they’re still sublime to ride even 50 years old.

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My 1969 Schwinn Paramount P-13

Above is my Paramount, which I’ve owned for all of two weeks. I found it on a whim on Craigslist in Richmond, VA, a 200 mile ride from my home in North Carolina. It was being sold by the original owner, and he had receipts back to his purchase of the bike in 1969. It wasn’t period correct in that he had upgraded the drive train to a 90’s era Campagnolo 8 speed with modern style shifters, but it still had the same beautiful box section wheels with high-flange Campy hubs, and the drive train upgrades were top of the line Campagnolo circa 1992. And it looked in good condition from the pics he posted. And it was cheap. I called him, paypalled him the asking price sight unseen, then rode to Richmond to pick it up. The bike was pristine, obviously cared for, almost new, and mechanically, everything worked perfectly. I drove home marveling at my good fortune.

My intent had been to strip the frame, sell the vintage Campy components and replace them with a modern groupset with modern wheels. As such, I’d have the best of both worlds – a beautiful hand built steel lugged frame mated to modern lightweight components. One ride on the bike changed my mind forever. Its 10 mile shakedown ride turned into a 6 hour, 100 mile ride – without the usual earbuds and ZZ Top blasting away over the creaking of the carbon fiber frame – cruising eastern North Carolina farm roads. Used to riding 17 lb carbon fiber bikes, I assumed my Paramount ride would feel heavy and slow and harsh, probably accompanied by the metallic twang of misaligned gears and loose nuts and bolts. Instead, the Paramount rode perfectly quiet, the 50 year old hubs rolling along with a smooth effortlessness I’d never experienced before, not a rattle anywhere on the bike, everything solid and purposeful. And it felt light. Sprinting out of the saddle or climbing hills was a revelation of what a bike should feel like. In short, the Paramount offered something close to perfection, a sublime experience of a machine perfectly matched to its function.

It made me think of my Leica M4, produced during the same year as my Paramount. From a technical perspective, hopelessly outdated, laughable almost when compared to the M10 or the D800, good only for nostalgia. In reality though, it’s just the opposite, the Paramount and the M4 two examples of machines of profound elegance, perfectly made for their intended purpose, made with an artisanal pride and built to last seemingly forever, unlike today’s “imaging devices” and 15 lb carbon fiber bikes.

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Just Shoot Me If I Ever Become This Guy

I hate nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. Sometimes, old stuff is just shitty old stuff, as my Mamiya 528TL proves. I don’t ever want to become that guy with the M4 and the beret who fancies himself Josef Koudelka with all the period correct lenses etc, or the old guy with the 60’s era wool jersey and the leather helmet out for his Sunday “L’Eroica” retro ride. That attitude doesn’t befit the inherent worth of the M4 or the Paramount, two beautiful hand crafted machines that work perfectly for their intended use, and as such, are not “vintage” and will never be obsolete.

I’ve been riding the hell out of the Paramount since I’ve gotten it. It’s shined up perfectly, cleaned top to bottom, not a scratch on it, but I’m intent on riding it hard, using it for its intended purpose, much like I still use my Leica film cameras. They weren’t made to put on a shelf or hang on a wall. They were made to be used, and the pleasure of their use will prevent them from ever becoming obsolete, which is not something you can say for a camera or a bicycle you can buy new today.

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The Existential Dilemma of an M5 Lover

Readers of the blog are well aware that I’m fond of the M5. As far as metered mechanical M film bodies, I think it’s the best of the bunch, ergonomically superior to the classic M bodied M6. As for the M7, it really isn’t a classic M given the electronic shutter and step-less aperture priority automatic exposure control.

I’ve owned a slew of M5’s over the years, my first purchased in the 70’s. I’ve also owned an early classic (i.e. non-TTL metered) M6, and it’s also a beautiful camera, although the M5 feels to me more solid and refined, and all of the M5’s are TTL metered with an excellent spot meter. As for the ergonomics, I like the M5’s match-needle meter reading, much preferring it to the M6’s annoying red diode meter reading. I also love the M5’s overhanging shutter speed dial combined with the shutter speed shown in the viewfinder, which allows you to keep the camera to your eye while fiddling with the shutter speed. With the M6, you’ve got to take the camera from your eye to see what shutter speed you’re using. The M5 seems to load better too; it’s the only M that seems fool-proof to load. Little things, I know, but better nonetheless. And maybe I’m just imagining things, but the M5 viewfinder seems bigger and brighter than the M6’s.

I even like the aesthetics of the M5. Granted, the classic M profile of the M6 is a thing of beauty, an example of the timelessness of the design. As for the M5, its design met with criticism when introduced and for many it’s still an acquired taste, but I’ve always found it elegant in its own way, designed by Leitz from the ground up for functionality, as evidenced by the original 2 lug design so that the camera would hang vertically on the strap, although Leitz subsequently bowed to traditionalists and added a 3rd lug allowing the camera to hang in a “normal” horizontal position. In any event the M5 is a classic example of form following function, which is the design gold standard. I like the fact that its different, a unique M. While most Leicaphiles have never used one, they’re prone to repeating the same tired criticisms first leveled at the M5 by its initial detractors in the 70’s – ugly, too big, not a “real” M etc etc. Usually, you simply need to pick one up and use it for a bit – and then it makes perfect sense. It’s a superb camera, to my eye simple yet beautiful, and simple and functional in use.

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So….I’ve currently got two of them, a black three lug and a chrome 2 lug. Both work perfectly. The black M5 (#1377140, which puts it at the tail end of black chrome M5 production in late 1973) was CLA’d by Sheri Krauter (to the tune of $450) about 10 years ago and works as nicely as the day it left her hands. Meter works perfectly. The only issue it has is that the mask showing the shutter speeds in the viewfinder has dropped out of place, so you currently can’t see the shutter speeds in the viewfinder. Other than that, it works like new, shutter speeds spot-on down to 1 second, everything – in the words of dentist Leicaphiles everywhere – “buttery smooth.”

The Chrome M5 (#1347010, production date 4/72) is an interesting piece, as I’ve written about here. It’s a 2 lug “Panda” i.e. a chrome bodied camera with black chrome shutter lever, film return lever and and hot-shoe bracket. I’ve never seen another one, and have no idea if other M5 Pandas exist. For all I know, the guys putting them together that day decided to have some fun by mixing and matching. Whatever the explanation, it’s unique. Like the black M5 it’s in great shape, having just been CLA’d by Alan Starkey in the UK. He went over it head-to-toe, and it works perfectly, “buttery smooth.”

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The point of all this is I’m selling one of them and keeping the other. One of them – I’m not going to say which – has been with me since new and I’ve developed a certain affinity for it. I’ve said elsewhere that I would never sell it, as it’s like an old friend. Of course, as readers have no doubt noticed, anything I say is subject to change without notice, which, I explain to my wife, is actually a positive quality, the result of an open mind. However, there are certain things about the other one I really like, non-functional aesthetic things subjective  in nature, and to this point I’ve been incapable of making the choice of which to let go and which to keep, which is where you come in…..

I’m offering both for sale, the black chrome 3 lug for $1100/shipped, and the chrome 2 lug for $1300/shipped, payment by Paypal or Bitcoin. *** (And no, they don’t come with the lens shown in the pictures). Whichever sells first I sell, which ever is left over I keep. Problem solved.

Frankly, if you closed your eyes and picked up both cameras, you couldn’t tell the difference in use. They both work flawlessly and should for many moons. Cosmetically, they’re both in very good condition – no dents, obvious flaws etc, just two M5’s that have been well taken care of. They’re covered by my usual return policy: if you get it and don’t like it, send it back, no harm, no hard feelings.

***Update: Chrome Panda M5 is sold.

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The Photographer as Visual Curator

 

By Andrew Molitor. Molitor is a fellow writer on photography, variously described as iconoclastic, irrelevant, occasionally right. He swears a lot. You can find him at photothunk.blogspot.com

 

Recently, in an article in The New York Review of Books, Janet Malcolm told the story of how she had included – as a joke –  an artless, banal snapshot in her book Diana and Nikon, together with a number of other photographs that had been decreed by the relevant authorities to be Art. It’s the photo above, Untitled, 1970 by G. Botsford.  Interestingly enough, as time passed, Botsford’s photo started turning up here and there as an example of the “snapshot aesthetic”, itself a work of Art.  Malcolm, via her off-hand joke,  had decreed this photograph to be Art, and now people were willing to accept that it is Art in some meaningful sense.

This is the problem when considering photography as Art. Photography is not quite what we imagine it to be. The carefully crafted Fine Print is not, after all, the only pathway to true Art. Sometimes, a photograph can become Art simply because someone – not just anyone of course, but someone with authority within the art community – says it’s Art. 

We’ve seen this before. When Marcel Duchamp exhibited a signed urinal as a sculpture entitled Fountain, he was doing the same thing as Ms. Malcolm, whether tongue in cheek we’re not sure.

What then is Art, with a capital A? Is it whatever some pointy-headed fellow with a title like “curator” or “Professor of Arty Artness” says is Art? That feels a little thin, a bit like a cheat; you intuitively feel that this can’t be right. The opposite end of the spectrum claims that Art requires skill, talent, and labor. Sculptures made out of marble, formed with infinite patience and a deep understanding of the properties of stone, now that’s Art!

The latter sort of thinking belongs to people who look at photography with a lifted brow. As noted in the previous post here, it’s this thinking that drove much of the Pictorialist movement in the Victorian era, and which drives much of the urge to “post-process” digital photographs today. It can’t be any good, the mindset goes, unless it’s had a lot of work put into it.

Duchamp’s Fountain, and Malcolm’s joke, disagree. They say that Art is merely whatever you think is Art.

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In my opinion, neither of these positions is correct, although each has a sort of a piece of it, a single section view. Art is whatever creates an Art-like experience. If you look at it, and it makes you think, makes you feel, enlarges you as a human being, then it’s Art. I would contend that this isn’t purely subjective, because usually if it works for you, it probably works for other people as well, unless you’re a complete weirdo. The appropriate term here is inter-subjective. The two acts – the first declaring, from a position of authority, that something Is Art and the second working very very hard, with great skill, to make something which you hope is Art – are both acts which can imbue an object with Artness.

When confronted with Michelangelo’s David (a product of labor and skill) as well as with Duchamp’s Fountain (a product of a simple declaration) we likely experience that sensation of Art. We feel, we think, we expand a little. The category of things that are Art is a bit fuzzy, the edges are not at all well defined. Are raindrops on a rose petal Art? Perhaps not. Is David? Almost certainly.

An object of Art is perhaps as much a subject for meditation as it is anything else, It’s not wrong to consider such an object as merely a trigger for a process that occurs inside ourselves. Michelangelo’s David or the “willfully bad” snapshot attributed by Malcolm to G. Botsford can serve equally as a focus for meditation, as a trigger for our own internal search.

All this presents something of a problem for the photographer as artist. There’s no getting around it, you can take a random snapshot of your own feet and if you can persuade Larry Gagosian to put it up for sale with an immense price tag, it will indeed be Art. Your blurry foot picture can serve as that trigger for thought, it can create an Art-like experience. In that unlikely scenario you personally had nothing much to do with this, it’s pretty much all  Larry G’s work, his authority makes it Art-like. That doesn’t make it fake, though, it would, in that situation, really be Art with a capital A. Unfortunately for you, you’re probably not going to get Larry on board with your scheme.

The point to hang on to here is that there are many roads to that Art-like experience.

David would probably be pretty intense to look at, even if no art critic had ever mentioned it. The knowledge of stone, the skill with the chisel, the mastery of form were not wasted. The labor was real, and produced real results. The fact that Duchamp could, with a figurative wave of his hand, turn a urinal into a similar experience takes nothing away from Michelangelo. The well, here, does not have finite capacity.

Vast labor and skill, or the mere declaration by authority, both produce Art. By analogy, we can reason that photography’s relative ease takes nothing away from either Michelangelo, nor from the photographer. It is not necessary to labor endlessly, either mashing gum bichromate prints with your hands or fiddling around in Photoshop to make your photograph worthy of the name Art. You certainly may do either, and your labor and skill may produce results.

In its very essence, though, as I see it, photography is simply selection. Not to denigrate selection, it is in its own way every bit as worthy as making. In this case, selecting and making are two different activities, which ought to be viewed on an equal footing, neither being a poor cousin to the other.

This bears repeating: the act of photography, that act of selection should be considered as on the same moral plane as the act of creation that typifies a painting, a sculpture. Think of the photographer as a curator of the visual, selecting and interpreting a slice of the real for other’s consideration.

This is the essential worry photographers have about whether photography is Art. Contrary to the regularly scheduled articles about how it has just now been settled, Photography has been comfortably ensconced as an Art for over 100 years now, in part due to Duchamp and his urinal. We saw then that selecting something could indeed be viewed as co-equal with making something. Photography being, essentially, selecting, but with an optional and open-ended add-on of making, of creating, fits into this framework perfectly comfortably.

Many photographs are not Art. Looking at them generates no Art-like experience. Mostly, they’re not intended to, they’re just a document of someone’s holiday, someone’s lunch, someone’s coffee, someone’s child or dog.

What makes a photograph into Art? As we now know, Janet Malcolm declaring it to be so seems to do it. Ansel Adams demonstrated that putting a lot of work into prints might do it, producing quite a different Art-like experience. Robert Frank’s famous book partakes of a bit of both, being on the one hand a great deal of labor, but on the other hand made up largely of what appear to be snapshots, at least in the sense that they lack the lumbering and meticulous flavor of the Adams pictures.

At the end of the day, in order to be accepted into The Canon, one needs the imprimatur of some authority figure, but let us set that aside for the moment. Suppose we’re making Art for a small enough audience, and audience that will accept at least tentatively our own statement as sufficient authority. How then to produce an Art-like experience?

We’re unlikely to be able to slip that blurry picture of our own feet past this audience, they expect, demand,  more from us generous though they might be. Our authority is not Duchamp’s, even with our friends. We are granted, perhaps, a bit of leeway by our friends. Our friends feel a certain openness and generosity, but are not willing to swallow just any old thing.

I think that we do it by selecting carefully, with genuine feeling, with genuine ideas. Ansel Adams, held up as the mighty technician, literally cannot shut up on this theme. It seems that almost every page of his famously technical trilogy repeats that a picture must be a true reflection of an emotional state. Oddly enough, the Zone System people rarely mention this. His pictures are indeed sublime (although, crush the blacks and see what happens).

If we have a real idea, a real feeling, a real something-to-communicate, and we allow our pictures to reflect that, then sometimes our work might just generate an Art-like experience to someone, somewhere. We might “get through” from time to time, and it’s that communication – the curation of the visible, and the aesthetic response of the viewer –  that creates Art.

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Digital Photography is Making People Crazy

Does This Selfie Make Me Look Fat?

If technology is a drug – and it does feel like a drug – then what, precisely, are the side effects? This area – between delight and discomfort – is where the ‘black mirror’ is – the one you’ll find on every wall, on every desk, in the palm of every hand: the cold, shiny screen of a television, a monitor, a smartphone. 

-Charlie Brooker, creator of Black Mirror***

File this under the heading of “The Law of Unintended Consequences of Our Brave New World:” Snapchat selfies are making a lot of people crazy.

In an article  in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Neelam Vashi, Assistant Professor of Dermatology at Boston University and Assistant Director of the Boston University Cosmetic & Laser Center, describes a digital photography side-effect he’s seeing more of recently – kids and young adults with “body dysmorphia” as a result of using Snapchat filters and editing software when they take pictures of themselves. Vashi says the pervasiveness of these filtered images is screwing with kids’ self esteem and “may even act as a trigger to body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), an excessive preoccupation with a perceived flaw in appearance, classified on the obsessive-compulsive spectrum.”

In an interview posted to the JAMA Network website, Vashi explained: “Photo editing can make one’s face more symmetrical, have more of these features that are considered beautiful like big eyes or a small nose. Now people are bringing in photos of themselves that are filtered, that are edited, and this can often impact them in a negative way because (cosmetic surgery) patients can have unrealistic expectations of what can be achieved through cosmetic procedures and surgery.”

“I try to educate my patients,” says Vashi, “but at the end of the day, what I’ve personally found is they want the look they’re showing you in the photographs, and not the one we’re taking with standard photography.”

Welcome to the dystopian future, brought to you courtesy of digitization.

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On a related note, Wim Wenders thinks that photography is dead.

*** If you’re not familiar with Black Mirror, I heartily recommend you watch an episode or two on Netflix, as it is, to my mind, maybe the best thing ever produced for television. The Season 1, Episode 1, “The National Anthem,” while profoundly disturbing, is IMHO among the greatest 45 minutes of film ever made by anyone, any time, anywhere.

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Parerga and Paralipomena – Chapter 3. Revisiting the Old, Tired Question: Can Photography Be “Art”?

Untitled, 2005, (20×30 Acrylic on Canvas)

Above is a painting I did in 2005. It’s previously been exhibited in an ‘Art Gallery’ in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, which means the gallery owner thought it appropriate to consider as ‘Art.’ Now, irrespective of what you think of the painting and my skills as a painter, chances are you don’t find it unusual that it’s considered ‘Art’ and was offered as a work of ‘Art’ by a gallery that’s in the business of selling such things. Putting aside critical valuation, we agree that a painting is a work of ‘Art.’ I took a blank canvas, took various pigments, and using a brush I made something, a thing, physically created by me from an aesthetic idea I had in my mind. Voila! Art.

Using those same criteria, photography as an ‘Art’ form can be problematic. Photography (still and moving) is a different sort of a creative medium. It has its subjective element – what’s within the frame will always depend on someone’s choice and interpretation – but generally we consider it objective, objective in the sense that it’s a mechanical reproduction of an existing set of visual phenomena. The second characteristic – its status as an objective reproduction, a truthful documentation, the fact that it’s a mechanical means to more or less faithfully record whats “out there”, is seemingly what prevents many otherwise broad-minded people from considering it ‘Art.’

The argument- Is photography ‘Art?’ – is as old as the medium itself. Early photographers naively thought to claim it as ‘Art’ by selectively photographing “scenic” things, thus mimicking the ‘artistic’ treatment of traditional subjects of representational painting – a more exacting form of landscape painting, where the goal was fidelity to the real. Later photographers, like Alfred Steiglitz, founder of the Photo-Secessionist movement, sought to claim it as ‘Art’ by rejecting the larger definition of Art and placing it on equal footing with other forms of expression commonly considered as Art:

“Photography is not an art. Neither is painting, nor sculpture, literature or music. They are only different media for the individual to express his aesthetic feelings… You do not have to be a painter or a sculptor to be an artist. You may be a shoemaker. You may be creative as such. And, if so, you are a greater artist than the majority of the painters whose work is shown in the art galleries of today.”

This doublespeak, of course, is just another way of claiming its status as an art form without using the loaded word itself, to my mind ample evidence that, deep down, even Steiglitz himself felt a wee bit self-conscious about claiming photography to be ‘Art.’ Much has happened since Steiglitz’s era. From an institutional perspective, photography has been presented in American art galleries and art museums since the 1970’s, when “post-modernist” photographers like Friedlander, Winogrand, Arbus and Eggleston, among others, became recognized within the larger ‘Art World.’

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Whatever the official Art World line, from a lay perspective there continues to be a common-sense resistance to claim photography as ‘Art.’ Even I, who’s been involved with photography as a creative medium for most of my life, cringe when a photographer bills him or herself as an “artist”, and I’d like to explore the philosophical underpinnings of that discomfort. I suspect it has something to do with the “handedness” we associate with Art, the requirement of creating some ex nihilo, something unique and new. A precondition of ‘Art’ is that the Artist physically make it, physically impose form on undifferentiated material, whether that material be words or tones or rock or canvas. In photography, you could argue, we’re not doing that; instead we’re recording something already existent, something  whose creation resides elsewhere. I’ve touched on this subject before in a piece entitled Formalism and Photography (Can Photos of Statutes Be Art?).

Untitled, 2016

How about Untitled, 2016 above? Is it ‘Art’? It’s something I did in 2016. Formally, it’s remarkably similar to Untitled, 2005 above. Like the former, it’s “modern” in the sense that it’s not representational but rather its own aesthetic reality, created from the ground up by the artist. I consider it competently drawn, its color scheme consistent and complimentary, its pictorial elements situated in an aesthetically pleasing manner. I like it, and would be pleased to have a piece like it hanging in a conspicuous place in my home or, better yet, in someone else’s home, someone who valued it enough to purchase and exhibit it. Except, its not a painting. Its a photograph, a straight-up close-up of a section of a wall of a building recently torn down in the service of progress. What I did was merely isolate it from its larger context by photographing it and, with some very minor post-processing (contrast, saturation, sharpening etc), created the finished work you see, “created it” in the sense that a series of 1’s and 0’s now resides in a certain pattern on a hard disk on my computer. Its literal creation – how those pigments came to be in the manner they are – is an unintended consequence of  building paint, weather and time.

As mentioned previously, we commonly consider a precondition of Art that the Artist physically make it, physically impose form on undifferentiated material. If this is so, then the work itself – a photograph – is problematic; have I “created” anything by simply recording it? Have I imposed form on something undifferentiated, i.e. incoherent and messy, when I photograph? Haven’t I rather just seen and selected, noted for other’s benefit as it were, something that already had a certain form, essentially simply pointing out something aesthetic that already existed, created naturally or by happenstance? Could it be the fact that I isolated the view itself be the creative act? Is that enough?

Additionally, there’s the issue of uniqueness. There’s only one of any given painting. We can reproduce it photographically, yes, but we don’t consider the reproduction to be a piece of Art. Now think about that in terms of photography. Unlike a painting, I’m able to print out my photograph in any number of sizes on any number of different media, run limited editions etc, and sell each individual print as its own work of Art. Yet, irrespective of the size or the type of medium I print it on, the underlying ‘artwork’ will be the same (or will it?). [ This has become an issue with the endless exact replicability of digital capture, as opposed to old school silver halide prints where each print is a unique individual interpretation of a negative.]

I suppose I could do the same thing with the painting i.e. photograph it and present the photographic reproduction as its own work and offer it for sale in a gallery in different sizes and on various media. Why not? Except there’s something intuitively wrong with that when we’re talking about photographic reproductions of two dimensional paintings, or so I think. What’s intuitively wrong with it are two things: first, the fact that it’s a photograph as opposed to something created ‘by hand,’ and second, that it’s not the unique created thing itself.  These facts seem to change the terms of the debate.

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A Simple Picture I Took Out My Car Window Recently. If I Hung it in a Art Gallery and Titled it Untitled 2018 Would That Make it Art?

Of course, maybe the best response, and probably the closest to the truth, is the ” Institutional” definition of Art, somewhat cynical, that holds that ‘Art’ is whatever gets exhibited in an ‘Art Gallery’. We decide what it is simply by defining it as such. This is what Marcel Duchamp was claiming for Art when he exhibited a toilette bowl as part of an exhibition of his work in a gallery, asking his audience to look at the toilette bowl aesthetically by placing it in a context where we are, by definition, asked to do these things. Duchamp’s definition simply requires that there be an intent on the part of the artist to have what’s presented be seen in a certain way, even if the creative act is simply the presentation itself. What then, of things created without the aesthetic intention, where the intention can be understood as conveying the state of things at any given moment, like a photograph? Can Nick Ut’s My Lai photos be ‘Art’ if they’re viewed in an art gallery? How about the found photographs  that Melissa Cantanese put together in her book Dive Dark Dream Slow that I’ve discussed before?

To my mind, learning to think of photography as an Art Form means first to recognize in a literal sense what a photograph is. It’s a two dimensional piece of paper with “indexical” markings on it. That’s it. That’s the most an Athenian citizen of Socrates’ time (Socrates himself, for that matter) or some primitive man pulled out of the forest in Papua, New Guinea, would be capable of seeing it as, because they’d not have the conceptual (as opposed to he intellectual) ability to do so, that conceptual ability given to us by the social, cultural and technical knowledge which we possess and which is a precondition to understanding it as something more. Without this embedded knowledge – what we take for granted – they literally couldn’t see the representational nature of the photo. They’d simply see the thing itself – the flattened 12×18 2 dimensional thing with a certain form embedded as part of it.

Somewhat paradoxically, I think it’s this two dimensional reality of photographs that opens the way to seeing them as ‘Art.’ Abstract painting only started making sense to me when I started thinking in non-representational terms, when I accepted the notion that paintings don’t need to be a transcription of anything; they can just be what they are, a thing, something with no function other than being its own reality. It’s what art historians term an understanding of the painting’s inherent “flatness.” Photos can be the same way. Forget for a second that Untitled 2016 was produced by a camera and in some sense depends on an existing visual arrangement contained somewhere “out there”; We can choose to see it as we’d see Untitled 2005. Just look at it, try to see what’s literally in front of you. Stop thinking of it as referencing something else. Just let it be itself. Analyse it in those terms. For that matter, there’s nothing keeping us from seeing Untitled 2018 in the same way…or is there?

This is the third in an ongoing series about philosophical issues and what they might have to say about photography. Part One can be found here, Part Two here.

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The Leica KE-7A

The KE-7A is a specialized black chrome M4 made in 1972 by Leitz in their Midland Canada plant and offered in a limited run of 505 pieces  for the U.S. Army. 460 of those units were acquired by the Army. Where the remaining 45 civilian pieces went is unclear.

KE-7As were fitted with modified shutters to operate in temperatures to -20 degrees Fahrenheit, were dust sealed for military field conditions and made to withstand explosive concussion (i.e. bomb blast). The 460 military versions were engraved to indicate that they were standard issue US Army property ( specifically, each with FSN (Federal Stock Number), Cont. (contract designation), and U.S. (United States) markings) and came supplied with a Leitz Midland made 50mm f2 “Elcan”.  The Elcan 50mm f2  (“Elcan” being a contraction of “Ernst Leitz Canada”) was constructed of 4 elements for minimum size for military use. Where the “KE-7A” designation comes from is anyone’s guess.

In 1972, the M4 had been discontinued and replaced by the M5. I can only assume that the Army had placed its order during M4 production and Leitz were committed to provide a camera based on the M4 design. As with all assumptions, this may be wrong.

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The Zagato Leica

Zagato is an independent automobile design company and total design center located northwest of Milan, Italy. Apparently they’ve been hired by Leica to create a limited edition M10, price approximately $26,000.

My question is this: what is the Zagato M10’s purpose? Who is it being made for? To do what with? I’d feel vaguely foolish carrying one about for regular use and I don’t care who designs it, or what its made of –  it’s an M10 with non-functional design cues added to appeal to people who know the Zagato name. I’m not sure what car designers, even the best, can add to a photographic device, and the filmed advertisement for it above never articulates an answer to this obvious question. So, the motive behind the camera appears to be pure, vulgar ostentation. Why, when you could easily do so much better?

In any event, regardless of who it’s designed by, it’s not half as cool as a nice, well-used IIIg with Leicavit, which isn’t merely a beautiful design, but was designed as a working camera by designers who were also photographers, functionality always being the best design principle. That’s what the current people running Leica seem not to understand: the timeless designs of the iconic Leica Film rangefinders were a result of functional decisions. Now, design decisions seem to be about bling.

This is a Beautiful Camera. It was designed by camera guys at Wetzlar

As for collector value, I wouldn’t put money on any digital device having long-term value as a collector’s piece, given it’s not a mechanical device but an electronic computer with all the inherent obsolescense problems associated therewith.

Instead of projects like this – designed by luxury car designers or inspired by rock stars – you’d think someone at Leica would think back to Leica’s history and proudly work from there. Is that too much to ask, Leica?  Instead of these pointless vanity pieces, why not play to your strengths and your history and design a new all mechanical film camera, you know, the kind that made you famous. Yes, there’s still a market for serious film photography, certainly a larger market than that of the Zagato M10, and it seems to me you’re the obvious company to exploit it. How about this: stress minimalism – a 35mm rangefinder w/o meter, simple mechanical shutter, manual focus M-mount with capability to use the full range of Leitz optics. Give it an updated body design, not something radical but an evolution of the LTM and/or M models and their timeless designs. Make sure it has an engraved top plate. Please do not put a red dot on it, or a dot of any color. Hand assemble it, just like the IIIg and M3. Price it fairly for both leicaphiles and Leica AG. Don’t do something stupid like giving every buyer a roll of Tri-X to sweeten the deal. Do not put someone’s name on it. In other words, act like the proud company you once were. I’m pretty sure a sufficient number of people would line up to buy it. Or, if that’s too ambitious, why not make a new run of M3’s, much like Nikon did with the S3 and SP in the early naughts…not a replica, but an actual M3 indistinguisable from the ones you made through 1966? I assume you’ve got the tooling to do it. Make some in black paint. Offer it with a Leicavit. Call it the M3R. Leicaphiles will go nuts.

Whichever of the two options you choose, you’ll be trading on the Leica name in a way that honors your history in a serious way and shows some basic understanding of why the Leica name means so much to so many in spite of your heretofore short-sighted vulgarization of the brand. You’d make a lot of us really proud, you’d make a huge splash in the camera world, you’d bolster your flagging reputation with serious photographers, and you’d probably sell a few cameras. And you wouldn’t have to pay some famous designer to do it.

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Parerga and Paralipomena – Chapter 2

“View From the Window at Le Gras”, History’s First Photograph (J. Nicephore Niepce 1826)

I’ve been reading a lot of philosophical stuff lately, broad subjects that I’m finding myself coming back to as a mature adult. I’ve always been intrigued by the ‘big questions,’ things we often take for granted – beliefs and ideas that form the bedrock of who we are, what matters to us and how we perceive the life we’re living. The beauty of philosophical inquiry is that it can shine a critical light on settled beliefs you’ve never really thought to question, things that you’ve been taught to believe, things that might appear to you as “common sense,” beliefs you take on faith or as a member of a religious orientation or a specific national culture. In my opinion, that’s a good thing, whether we’re discussing really important things like what the good life is or more everyday things like photography – what it is, why we do it, what it means – and how it might fit into a good life.

Photography is the product of the rational secular culture originating in the West but now basically the world’s default culture, a culture whose roots lie in classical Greek thought as it’s been transmitted via the Roman conquest of Europe and Asia with an overlay of Christianity that’s driven it through the Reformation and Renaissance and into the Scientific Revolution. From all of that, everyone who has electricity and an internet connection and is able to read this, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim or secular humanist, and whether you live in the States or China or Portugal or Argentina or Norway or Iran or Nigeria, share, to a great extent, a common heritage, intellectual in nature, that allows us to understand and empathize with each other, whatever the differing idiosyncratic permutations of our local cultures. And it’s that culture that’s brought us the amazing technological advances of the last two centuries, including photography.

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If you think about it, photography is pretty amazing. It would have seemed utterly miraculous to even the profound,sophisticated classical Greek, Roman and Medieval thinkers whose brilliance has formed the foundations of our shared culture. And yet, we accept it without a second thought, as if it’s a normal and natural part of life to be able to record and make permanent accurate visual transcriptions of what we perceive, with a phone we carry about in our pocket no less. Roland Barthes touched just a bit on this in Camera Lucida, the remarkable fact that a part of his mother, dead for years, remained behind as a physical trace on a photographic emulsion, an emulsion that not only allowed him to recreate her features two-dimensionally, but that had been touched by light that had touched her body and impregnated her very form upon it. Wow! Barthes was saying, think about that, my mother dead all these years, her body, her combination of matter and form, moldering in the earth, and yet I have what’s really real about her preserved right here, eternal, something more than just a painted imitation, but a transcription of the real thing itself, stenciled off of nature. Tell me that’s not miraculous.

Barthes doesn’t move his discussion in this direction, but this is all very ‘Aristotelian’ (after the Greek philosopher Aristotle), notions of form and matter and what’s ultimately real. Aristotle broke down everything into two things – form and matter – and taught that only form itself is coherent and real and valuable, matter having no real value except as just the stuff we’re all made of, the clay as it were, something common to everything, while our form is what defines us as beings (i.e. your form is what makes you a human, as opposed to an elephant, while it’s the elephant’s form that makes him an elephant and not a human, even though we’re both made out of the same stuff or matter). So, in thinking of what photography does, Aristotle would say that it transcribes what is ultimately valuable about the subject you’re photographing, whether it be your house or your dog or your lover, the form of the thing. He would say that Barthes, in the act of capturing his mother in a photo, has given what is defining about her at that one instant – her form – a permanence transcending the flow and flux of matter. I’m pretty sure Aristotle would find that absolutely mind-blowing.

We meanwhile, immersed in post-modern reality, don’t think twice about it. We’re blind to photography’s miraculousness in a way Aristotle could never be, just as we’re blind to many other things that should fill us with wonder. We’re blind to it because it’s just one item that constitutes the banal background of our technological reality, one more thing that just seems self-evident and obvious to us, like the fact that we use a certain language, have certain parents, are born at a certain time and place. It just is. Nothing to see here, let’s move along to think of the things that really matter – are my photos good enough to show at the corner coffee-house, does my 4th generation Summicron have good bokeh, should I spend $6000 on a Leica M10 or will fellow photographers think I’m a lightweight because my cat pictures were taken with a D200? Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), who many consider the greatest philosophical mind of the 20th century, would shake his head and say that when we do this we are blind to “being.”

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Heidegger remains a pretty controversial guy in philosophical circles, mainly because he was a Nazi, which is not something that tends to endear you to other people. His ties with the Nazis are disputed – some say, as the Rector of the University of Freiburg in the 1930’s and a recognized intellectual, he had no choice but to passively align himself in the manner he did; others point to writings and statements that seem to indicate certain affinities with Nazi theories – but they remain a hurdle you must get past if you are to engage with his incredibly rich Philosophy of Being. So, let’s put that aside for a second if that’s possible and discuss his ideas.

Heidegger’s entire philosophy is predicated on that sense of wonder I’m certain Aristotle and pre-modern thinkers would have if they’d been confronted with something like photography, but in a larger sense, wonder at the very fact that we are – what philosophers refer to as ‘being’ – which is itself something miraculous and weird and in need of contemplation and explanation. He argues that we’ve forgotten, or better yet, have never really even seen, how weird and miraculous it is that we even are, that anything is. How is it that you are you and I am me and the world is what it is? What’s that all about? He suggests that the real nature of philosophical inquiry is to explore this phenomenon, and criticizes Western philosophy since Socrates as being blind to this miraculousness, having instead pursued practical issues such as how to live and the correct way to think without taking into account the fact that we’re here and capable of doing or thinking or creating anything in the first place.

Gianni Gardin- a Sublime Photograph. My Reality is Better Because it Exists

Unfortunately, I’m not going to recommend you read Heidegger, as his writings are mostly incomprehensible except to those who’ve spent a lifetime studying him. But I think you can take something away from Heidegger and use it when thinking about photography. What I am advocating for is that, as photographers – and I think Heidegger would agree – before we divide ourselves up over trivial issues of practice and/or aesthetic theory, we should step back and think of the remarkable thing that photography is and understand that its miraculousness is the real hook that should keep us engaged and driven forward photographically. We as dedicated practitioners too often take for granted what we do and get caught up in its practical aspects to the exclusion of recognizing the gift it is, a gift we need to honor with our full attention as the doing of it is, in its own way, a spiritual practice. Whether you know it or not, it’s that that keeps you coming back to it and gives it meaning for you, something we all share.

This is the second in an ongoing series about philosophical issues and what they might have to say about photography. Part One can be found here.

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Is There Still Room for Serious Photographers in the Clown Car That is Leica?

Mixed Signals

As of April of this year, SlimStats, a WordPress plug-in that tracks site visits, claims that I’ve topped 1 million visits by unique IP addresses, with a little less than 5 million hits, to the site. Half of that has been in the last year.

I know, in the larger scheme of things, those numbers are small potatoes, a fraction of what established sites like Steve Huff or the other guy’s, whatshisname, but then again, how many people are interested enough in Leica cameras to follow a blog like this? Frankly, I’m amazed and baffled…but also really grateful for my readers and all they’ve contributed. I’ve met wonderful people through the site, and learned a lot from readers far more knowledgeable than me. I’ve been invited places and done things I’d never have gotten to do were it not for good folks who occasionally read me.

A few thank-you’s are probably in order. First, thanks to everyone who has written a blog comment with a compliment or dropped me an encouraging email when I’ve periodically disappeared. These mean a lot to me, simple acts of kindness from one human to another, the sort of thing that seems increasingly scarce in the wired environment. Had it not been for the encouragement, I’ve probably have inactivated the site by now, which would have been a loss, at least for me, because I find the fact that the site remains open and needful of new content occasionally keeps me involved in my photography and intellectually active.

Second, thanks for bearing with the increased abstraction of the subjects; my orientation to photography has always had a philosophical turn and I suppose it’s easy enough for me to go down intellectual rabbit-holes that aren’t of interest to most readers. I’ve tried to leaven the heavier stuff with the more mundane, and will continue to do so given the Leica cult makes ridicule not merely easy but required – Leica-land being a place where great photographers/artists like Frank, HCB, Koudelka et al and those of us who love and use the iconic film rangefinders must share space with the social climbers, stuffed shirts and gas bags currently associated with the iconic brand. Frankly, I tape over my Leica logos not to keep people from stealing my cameras but rather to prevent them associating me with the typical clowns who’ve seemed to have colonized and conquered a once great brand.

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It’s Leica’s radical turn to banality that both miffs and fascinates me, and its manifestations have been an unspoken but obvious focus of the site since its inception. Given my readership stats, it looks as if other people feel the same way. Listen: I get Leica Cameras AG is a capitalist business concern owned by the Blackstone Group, whose primary purpose is to make money. I get that one makes money by giving people what they want to buy, and if that means producing tacky trinkets and overpriced crap, or cynically trading on the inherited goodwill and name recognition of a brand, well, so be it, that’s their right. That doesn’t mean that that’s the honorable way forward, or that I, someone whose allegiance to the brand was created by farsighted business decisions of previous owners using the same brand – decisions that stressed simplicity and excellence of design and timelessness of product – should remain loyal to that ownership group and what they’ve done simply because they’ve bought the name. I suspect that Ernst Leitz is rolling over in his grave seeing the shameful spectacle currently associated with the brand. Is it Leica AG’s fault that it attracts the hucksters and hangers-on that it does? Not necessarily, but it seems to me they’re at least silently complicit with it, what with their glow-in-the-dark designer Leicas and celebrity editions cynically cranked out to maximize their market –  or their at least tacit approval of self-promoting charlatans fleecing naive and unsuspecting consumers – that they at the very least encourage it by corporate bad taste.

Joseph Koudelka – an iconic image with an iconic Leica M….errr Exacta**

How does one square all this nonsense – what I refer to as the ‘Overgaardization’ of the brand, with its remarkable history? What does any of this have to do with Ernst Leitz, the functionally brilliant 35mm Leicas, HCB, Robert Frank, the M3, the incredible history of Leica within photo-journalism, the precise mechanical jewels which built Leica’s reputation – the Leica I,I, III, the M2, M3, M4? It seems to me that we have an obligation to the excellence that’s come before, that’s been created and sustained by the brilliance of the past, to honor and protect it and see that it’s transferred to new generations of photographers. We as traditional photographers – film users – learned in traditional forms of the practice, forms that have been in use for the past 120 years, are tasked with passing that information on to the next generation of image makers, a digital generation largely unfamiliar with photographic history who wouldn’t know of the exceptional tradition embodied by Leica without our input. We are the stewards, the trustees, of that tradition, and it’s our obligation to see that it gets properly transmitted to posterity.

Robert Frank, Self-Portrait, Paris 1999

Likewise, Leica AG are the stewards of Leica’s history. Their decisions, either cynical or far-sited, will have immense significance for the Leica brand going forward. The question is: What do they owe us, traditional Leica lovers and users, the base that got them where they are, today? I’m not sure I can answer that question, except to say that they can do a hell of a lot better than some of the tacky things they’re currently doing or encouraging by default. Certainly, they can do better than this. Frankly, I think that some of them should be ashamed of themselves.

**As noted to me by astute readers, Koudelka’s Gypsy series was not shot with a Leica but rather with an Exacta. He used 2 Exakta cameras with 25 mm Flektogon lenses and ORWO 400 film. Koudelka switched to a Leica after he left Czechoslovakia and became member of Magnum. I assume Leicas were expensive and rare in communist Czechoslovakia. I prefer to leave my mistake up, however, because it’s humbling and should remind you that you shouldn’t believe everything I say without confirming it for yourself, which is good as a general rule of life.

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Portrait of the Artist as an Old Guy

Inverness, Scotland, 2016.  Leica M5. Hot Wife. Skinny Jeans. Firm Abs. Doesn’t Negate the Facts…I’m Old.

All of the sudden, I’ve realized I’m old. ‘Old’ in a bad way, like the 50-something twice-divorced, beer-bellied guy with the comb-over who drives the Porsche, sun-glassed with ball cap backwards thinking all the young women secretly dig him. You know the guy. That’s me…except I’m 10 years older than him.

I’ve been slow to see it coming. Even now, at 60 (Really?), I pride myself on being intellectually curious and physically active, unconventional socially, culturally and creatively – all the things I associate with youth. Amelia, the smart, sophisticated, French speaking 17 y/o next door, considers me “the coolest guy in the universe” (this from her mother), even after spending a month in Europe with me, a week of which we spent on our own, just a 59 y/o guy and a 17 y/o girl sharing trains, buses and cheap hotels. You try to pull that off and maintain even a shred of your dignity. As for physical condition, all the metrics say I’m young. (I recently took an online test where you plug in your health metrics and physical performance abilities and it tells you your “health age;” I’m 18). I’ve still got hair. I wear skinny jeans without looking completely ridiculous (or so I’m told). And I’ve got a hot wife, so I assume I’m doing something right. Yet…

From a photographic perspective, however, I’m trapped in amber, my photographic world frozen circa 2004, which was when I moved from Paris, and a life filled with photography, back to my pedestrian existence in America, sort of like moving from the 30th floor office suite with an unobstructed view of the Eifel to a 6×8 cubicle with a view onto a McDonalds parking lot. In Paris I had been daily immersed in photography via SPEOS Paris and a circle of friends I knew there. I spent hours in museums and galleries and the library at the Maison Europeene de la Photographie, soaking in all I could, and better still, acquainting myself, via photographic monographs, with 20th Century photographers and photography writers of note. Were I in Paris today, there’s a good chance you’d find me in the Maison’s basement library, catching up on the 14 years of photography I’ve missed since my last visit. I can’t think of a better way of educating oneself in the practice of photography than looking at, and reading about, good photography.

By 2004, digital had mostly won the day. In the studio, we used a 4 meg Canon 1D and marveled at the ability to instantly review and address what we’d just done.  But some of us still used the darkroom and prefered film.  For photos that mattered, I used an M4  bought at an obscenely low price from a camera store on rue Beaumarche just north of the Bastille, it being a time when film cameras, even Leicas, were selling cheap. Then I moved home to the States, placed the M4 on the shelf and got on with life, which in my case meant settling in and paying the bills.

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What’s brought on my realization I’m old is that I’ve bought another Nikon D800, just for the hell of it. At the price they’re going these days,  why not? I previously owned a D800E but found it overkill for my needs, its 36 mpx files slowing my computer to a crawl, so, two years ago I sold it. The D800 I’ve just bought has been used less and cost half what I pocketed on the sale of the D800E. (This is one of the upsides of the digital era – you can buy great cameras super cheap as they are updated so frequently and past iterations quickly fall out of favor).

So now, in spite of my recent attempt at de-cluttering, I now own 6 digital cameras (!) – 3 Ricoh GXR’s, a Fuji S5 Pro, a Sigma SD Quattro and a Nikon D800. Ironic for a guy who writes a blog unfailingly critical of digital photography. Actually, I do like digital. More precisely, I love film photography and find it a richer experience than digital for any number of reasons. Film is more tactile, it slows you down and makes you think – but not in a neurotic, obtrusive way digital too often does – and you get a negative – a thing – when you’re done. Plus, mechanical film cameras are cool because they’re timeless, something digital cameras are decidedly not. My Leica IIIg, circa 1958, gives as much pleasure today as it did 60 years ago. It’s like a beautiful suit made by Battistoni, outside the parameters of fashion, timeless and elegant. My Nikon D100, circa 2002, is, in all probability, moldering in a junk heap somewhere in a third world country.

But, back to the point…Buying the D800 has reminded me once again that I’m relatively clueless about the amazing things DSLR’s can do when in competent hands, which might explain some of my antipathy to them. So, this time, in the interests of objectivity, I’m going to learn as much as I can about the camera and its capabilities with an eye to actually using more than just the basics. In short, I’m finally willing to be won over, if won over I can be.

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Paris, 2004. Leica M4, HP5. Scale Focused, Exposure Guessed.

Being old has its upsides. I’ve been around long enough to remember arguments about built-in meters, and then arguments about AF and AE, each successively dismissed by purists when introduced as unnecessary complications useless for real photographers. That was my opinion too, being young and stupid and full of opinions. Now, trapped as I am in amber, I’ve transferred those prejudices to my use of DSLR’s. I use mine much like my film cameras – ISO 400 and keep it there, either manual or aperture priority exposure, spot metering (assuming I pay any attention to the metering at all), and whatever AF mode the dial happens to be on. The rest, all those options nested in menus? Not interested. My shooting style, developed in an era of non-metered film cameras, has always been pretty rudimentary. I’ve never understood why photographers obsessed about exposure and developing, or things like the zone system (with a 35mm? Seriously?) or “metering for the highlights and developing for the shadows” (or is it the other way round?). Those were superfluous issues for techies. I’ve never given much thought to metering. You metered in your head. I’m convinced that learning to calculate proper exposure by eye is preferable to any sophisticated matrix metering system. My matrix metering system is me. I’ll often play a game with myself: guess the exposure. I’ll look at a scene, calculate correct exposure in my head, and then point a meter to see how accurate I am. Invariably I’m spot on, low light, sunlight, shadow. It’s almost automatic, the result of long years of estimating til it’s become second nature.

As such, when I do attempt to use the sophisticated features DSLR’s offer me, my choices have been more a function of my ignorance than a considered decision. I’ll shoot manual, refer to the meter (whatever its set on) occasionally. Focus? Set it to center-spot, point it at something and shoot. Most of the time, it’ll be in focus, just like film, irrespective of the mode it’s set on. In other words, I usually don’t know what I’m doing…and I don’t care, as my idea of photography isn’t about obsessing over procedural aspects or technical virtuosity, which I think is a healthy way to approach what is, and should be, about embodying one individual’s vision of the world around him. For that, the instrument you choose to use should be transparent, your attention on what’s around you. The less your camera gets in your way – requires it be in your way – the more attention you’ll have for what’s in front of you.

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Woo Hoo! Site is Up and Running Normally Again

As many of you know, Leicaphilia has been operating at reduced capacity for a few months. Part of the reduced capacity was me, for reasons I’ve noted elsewhere, the other was some sort of hack that corrupted file links. As of today, all links should be back up and the comments section working.

I should be back to posting on a semi-regular basis in the next few days. In the interim, while you’re breathlessly waiting for my discussion of Martin Heidegger and his concept of “being” and how it relates to photography, take a look at http://blog.insolublepancake.org/, Henry Joy McCracken’s excellent blog where there’s a wealth of good things to read and view. Henry is a loyal Leicaphilia reader and I’ve published some of his thoughts before. He’s also an Astrophysicist in Paris, so he’s smarter than me or you, although meeting him you’d never know he’s so important – just a nice, average guy who loves film Leicas. Lot’s of good stuff there.

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Parerga and Paralipomena – Chapter One

Parerga and Paralipomena is Greek for “Appendices” and “Omissions”. Arthur Schopenhauer, an influential 19th century German philosopher, published a book by that title. Given the title, you’d expect a staggeringly obtuse, unreadable scholastic tome…which it’s not. It’s actually a fascinating book, containing Schopenhauer’s thoughts on any number of things, from his mommy-issues and professional jealousies to the ultimate nature of reality ( which for him is “Will,” that striving urge we all have and which he claims every living and even inanimate thing has). In any event, the work is mostly a series of short thoughts – philosophical odds and ends – thrown together without much connection between subjects.

I always wanted to title a blog post “Parerga and Paralipomena” since it sounds cool and intellectual but really means nothing more than “odds and ends.” So bear with me as I process a few thoughts that have come to me recently, thoughts that arise out of philosophical concerns that have obvious implications for us as photographers. I expect I’ll have a number of chapters – this on Schopenhauer being merely the first of a series – so I’ll label them all the same thing – Parerga and Paralipomena – and you can ignore them if they aren’t of interest to you. Suffice it to say that you’re not going to find this on Ken Rockwell’s site. Whether that’s good or bad is up to you.

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If you’ve never read Schopenhauer I recommend him highly. In addition to being a fascinating guy with all sorts of human foibles, some of them quite entertaining, [e.g he and his mother engaged in a vicious lifetime battle about who was smarter, his mother being an early 19th century German novelist; he taught at the same university as GW Hegel, who at the time was considered the most profound intellectual on the continent – Schopenhauer considered Hegel a complete moron – while everyone considered Schopenhauer a nobody] he has much to teach artists and people with creative aspirations, given he is generally considered to have articulated a pretty impressive theory of Art and the origin and meaning behind the creative impulse.

For Schopenhauer, the reason people paint or sculpt or photograph is because it helps us distance ourselves from desiring – “willing” –  which invariably causes pain and dissatisfaction. This is something that Leicaphiles, if they’re honest with themselves, should recognize. Think of how bad you wanted that Leica M9 or MM, and think about how inevitably disappointed you are once you’d gotten it used it for a bit and then started dreaming of trading up to the M11. That’s the nature of human reality, always willing things, striving for more in an endless search for something we can never reach. For Schopenhauer, it’s that striving that powers reality and the ceaseless change that defines it. Everything from humans down to one-celled organisms exhibit it. It’s also what keeps Nikon and Leica in business, because we are constitutionally incapable of being satisfied with the status quo. Gotta have more, better. That AF on the top of the line camera from 2 years ago is now hopelessly outdated, not sufficient for rank amateurs. The 12 mpx Ricoh you bought ten years ago, junk; your photographic purposes require the 50 mpx full-frame Canon. And so it goes. We’ve all been there whether we admit it to ourselves or not. We’ve all been there because Schopenhauer says that’s the nature of human reality, we can’t avoid it.

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Or maybe we can, at least temporarily. For Schopenhauer, a temporary way to escape the pain brought about by our ceaseless striving is through aesthetic contemplation. Planning and envisioning that photograph, or acting pursuant to that envisioning, or engaging with the finished product hanging on a wall – stops you perceiving the world as separated from you, something we are constantly grasping for; rather in the simple aesthetic act, every time you find yourself lost in the willlessness of the beauty around you “one can thus no longer separate the perceiver from the perception” i.e. you stop being an unhappy, willing being and just are. From this immersion with the world you aren’t an individual who suffers in the world due to one’s individual will but, rather, you’re a “subject of cognition” to a perception that is “pure, will-less, timeless” where the essence of the world is found. You’ve just found the closest thing to nirvana human reality allows.

Think about the consequences of this and what it means for the issues we’ve been discussing on this blog for years – the simple miraculousness of photography, the joy in its doing, in contrast to the stupid and blinkered idea that the pleasure and validation you can find in photography will be found in owning and using certain equipment, or that the artistic impulse is about your tools in any significant sense. For me, my lifetime interest in photography has been about that will-less, timeless enjoyment. It’s my argument that, at base, to be a photographer has no real connection to being a camera fondler, although the enjoyment of fine photographic tools has it own aesthetic character and is legitimate in itself. Just don’t confuse it with photography, and don’t consider yourself a photographer because you’re using a Leica. That’s for shallow meatballs like Mr. Overgaard, lost souls and con men who’ve conflated the worth of the camera they use – or the bag they throw it in – with their worth as photographers. If you learn anything from a great mind like Schopenhauer, it’s don’t fall for the con.

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NEXT UP: Chapter Two – What Martin Heidegger, the Nazi Rector of the University of Freiburg, can teach you about photography

ADDENDUM: Yes I know the site is screwed up. Yes, I know the links are broken. Yes, I know the comments section doesn’t work. Yes, I’m going to fix it. And yes, I’ve really enjoyed all the supportive emails I’ve received since my last post. Keep em coming to [email protected], because its nice to know people actually read this.

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A Long Overdue Update

James Joyce, 1922. My favorite pic of Joyce. Maybe Because Sometimes I feel the Same Way.

It’s been some time since my last post. Since then, a lot of things have happened, and I thought it would be appropriate to update readers, if any still exist, about what’s going on and my plans moving forward.

First, I am aware that there are problems with the site – the links to past posts don’t work, so you’re not able to access the site’s history except by sequentially scrolling back from the main page. I’ve had recurring problems with attacks on the site – why anybody would want to screw with an inconsequential blog about photography escapes me – and just haven’t had the time or energy to deal with it. As well, I realized in hindsight that I needed a break. As such, the tech problems gave me a good excuse to step back and give myself a rest.

I turned 60 yesterday. Sobering, even though I’m content and in good health. I’ve found myself wanting to step back from a lifetime interest in photography and just let it be for awhile. A precipitating reason for doing so has been my realization that traditional ‘photography’ as I know and practice it is dead. My photographic tastes and interests are relics of an outdated mindset, the functional equivalent of the old guy still driving his 66 Mustang. In reality, you can’t go back; technology and aesthetics and practice move on, and reflexively criticizing the current state of things – which in proper measure serves as a necessary counter-balance to some of the obvious problems associated with digitization – can become tiresome.

As for the blog, I intend to continue it for so long as I’ve got something to say. Whether anyone listens is not really my concern. I assume there are a few discriminating people out there – both old and new photographers – who my ideas might resonate with. So, expect the blog to be ongoing, and expect that at some point I’ll have the tech issues resolved and the site will be functioning properly and I’ll be adding content on a semi-regular basis.

For the time being, other interests will be taking much of my time. I am about to embark on a new phase of my life. I’m easing my way into self-imposed semi-retirement in my profession, and will be enrolling in a graduate program at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass this Fall. Why? 30 years ago I quit graduate school to go to work. I was recently married and had bills to pay. In the back of my mind, I told myself I could always go back someday, if for no other reason to finish what I had started. Now’s the time to do it, and the opportunity to do it at Harvard fulfills a lifetime dream. The degree, were I to achieve it, wouldn’t be for anything other than the doing of it itself, but that seems to me to be the best reason to do anything.

Waldo Emerson, the 19th century American writer and philosopher, said that the one maxim he lived by was that one should always do the thing that scares you the most. Good advice, I think, getting out of your comfort zone. I’ve tried to follow that rule in my life, sometimes to better effect than at others, but I see no reason why it’s not still applicable as I’ve gotten older and more settled.

So bear with me. I intend to be here for awhile. Check back here occasionally. And feel free to email me at [email protected] if you’d like to say hi.

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Become a PROFESSIONAL LEICA PHOTOGRAPHER!

A Professional Leica Photographer. Now YOU Can Be One Too!

The Professional Leica Photographers here at Leicaphilia are pleased to announce the Leicaphilia Professional Leica Photographer’s Website.***

Welcome to your future in the exciting world of Professional Leica Photography. We here at Leicaphilia have created a new, exclusive website to help you to learn to be a Professional Leica Photographer! At our exclusive website you’ll find some of the most talented photographers in the world, experts you won’t find even in the most expensive subscription magazines. That’s because they only post on our site; you won’t find this information anywhere else! Some of them, famous enough that they must post under an alias, while others disclose their studio name, it’s up to them. In either case you’ll get to read and discover photography techniques from the Pros, highly prized and vigorously protected Leica trade secrets that will make you an expert at taking pictures with a Leica. We have one goal: to turn you into a Professional Leica Photographer.

Unlike other websites, we don’t try to pitch DSLRs, lenses, and other gear while collecting sales commissions. We don’t sell photography tutorials, books, videos and courses while promising that your photography will improve only if you buy what’s being promoted. We promise that your photography will get better. We promise because we are Professional Leica Photographers. We are professional photographers (or serious amateurs), some with decades of experience, who use Leica cameras and will share with you what we’ve learned – what Leica gear we use, which Leica products really work, which techniques work and which don’t (e.g. how to get great bokeh etc).

It’s all completely unbiased. We simply have no reason to lie to you. We have travelled the world, living out of suitcases, taking photos of beautiful and glamorous people who live in villas and/or own yachts, or we are on the front lines of conflict around the globe, risking our lives for the money shot. Many of us have photographed ‘Royalty.’ The one thing we have in common is this: we use Leicas, and we know everything about them.

You’ll discover this information straight from the source, from famous Professional Leica Photographers, not from grumpy self-appointed “experts” in some amateur magazine or rich rock stars who think they know everything because they use a Leica. It’s what makes us different from other photography websites out there – we’re the real deal. We’re Professional Leica Photographers. 

A Woman Professional Leica Photographer. Yep. Believe it or Not – They Exist (and Most of Them are Hot, too!!)

Discovering what famous Professional Leica Photographers have to share will help you figure out which Leica gear to use and how to use your existing Leica gear to its fullest potential. So it doesn’t matter if you are only thinking of which Leica to buy or if you already have all your Leica equipment — you’ll still find plenty of solid advice for any situation.

We cater to beginners, intermediate, advanced, and professional photographers. As long as you use a Leica or want to use a Leica. It doesn’t matter whether you are just getting into photography or you have decades of experience — you’ll still find plenty on our secret professional website that will interest you because we cover all bases. We make it simple for the newbies, yet interesting for Professional Leica Photographers who’ve shot hundreds of gigs and would gladly be reminded of things they once knew but forgot. So no matter what your expertise level is — keep reading below.

  • We cover both film and digital Leica photography because film photography, along with digital, is a preferred medium for Professional Leica Photographers.
  •  We talk about Professional Leica Cameras. Professionals agree – the best camera is a Leica. You’ll be one of a select group of Professional Leica Photographers like Ansel Adams, Robert Capa, Amelia Earhart, and Lenny Kravitz who’ve all used the famous Leica Camera.
  • You’ll learn the one reason why Leicas take the best photos (hint: It’s because of a device first discovered by mariners to help chart their course – that’s why Amelia Earhart used a Leica!). You’ll learn that, unlike other cameras, every Leica ever made contains this amazing device…and you’ll learn to use it to make amazing photos.
  • It doesn’t matter if you shoot with an M1 or with the new M10. You need to know how to take great pictures with the Leica you have on you right now, while the shot is still there, not later when you get your Leica out, yet the opportunity to take the the picture is long gone.
  • You’ll learn to take photographs as amazing as Carter Bresson, a Frenchman who used a Leica and invented a type of photography called the Decisive Moment. We’ll teach you the Decisive Moment technique used by Bresson, Eric Kim, Thorsten von Overgaard and other legendary greats – which moments are decisive and which are not and how to use your Leica when you’re presented with a Decisive Moment. It’s all there!

Famous Professional Leica Photographer Eric Kim – Ready For the Decisive Moment!

  • We cover all types of Leica photography from portraits to landscapes to weddings and events to action shots to macro photography. (Which one interests you the most? Stop and ask yourself right now. No matter what you shoot, you’ll get better at just that. Just be decisive. Our Professional Leica Photographers will show you how!)
  • We cover all aspects of Leica photography –  from picking Leica gear to composition to working with models to handling strangers asking you about your Leica, and everything in between. If you are lacking in some aspect, you’ll improve. If you are a total newbie, you’ll learn it all. And through all of it, you’ll be sporting a cool Leica camera which will impress your friends…and the ladies. You’ll gain the confidence to become a Professional Leica Photographer.
  • You’ll be receiving new tips and techniques on how to take the kind of pictures that will make your friends, relatives and peers just stare in amazement, speechless, when they see your work. Yep! That’s how good your photography will become when you own a Leica and take our exclusive Professional Leica Photographer course.
  • If you ever have a question or need help, you can always ask, and a Professional Leica Photographer will cover your question in an Email direct to you.

Famous People Like Eric Clapton (guitarist for Vivian Stanshall Sean Head Showband) use a Leica! Find Out Why!

Trust me, I know the feeling. And you’ll know it too. People telling you “oh wow, it’s like in the magazines! And you took it with a Leica!” when seeing your pictures. (Surprisingly, the most common response you’ll hear from people after you’ve taken our course is “it’s like in the magazines”. Not Instagram/Facebook/Snapchat feed or whatever, but quality magazine. That’s the first association that comes to their mind. The mark of a true Professional Leica Photographer, even if you are an amateur – a dentist or a doctor, even if you work in a saw mill! – and do this just for fun. I love it when people say that while looking at my pictures, even when they are looking at my pictures on a screen. Oh, the irony! Just imagine that feeling. Pretty soon, they will be saying that to you.

You’ll be receiving all original content – tips, tricks, reviews and discussions that you won’t see anywhere else. Not at La Vida Leica, or Thorsten von Overgaard’s, or Ken Rockwell’s. You’ll only see this Professional Leica Photographer information on our website, – not the same old and tired copied and re-copied “tutorials” of fake people who claim to be “professionals” who seem to be flooding all the Leica sites out there.

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A lifetime subscription to our Professional Leica Photographer website is only $2399. Yes, that’s right. Only $2399* for a lifetime of professional photography education with continuing online support**. ( Sign up today and we’ll send you, at no extra cost our supplementary course “Bokeh: What It Is and How To Get It“). That’s less than a 50mm Summarit 2.5. Enroll now. Space is very limited and demand has been high. Act today to assure your participation in this once in a lifetime opportunity.

And while you’re at it….help us maintain this free site by contributing $25 to us here at Leicaphilia. It costs money to bring you the professional content we’re known for, and your $25 [monthly] contribution will help us defray those costs. So, if you’ve been enjoying the content of Leicaphilia, please Paypal your $25 [monthly]**** payment to [email protected], the one site you can trust to give you unbiased Leica information.

Seriously: Who do you trust? Professional Leica Photographers….or some guy named Boudewijn Klop?

*Payable by Bitcoin only.

** Email for details.
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Visitor agrees to only communicate that information to the Website, which it wishes to forever allow the Website to use in any manner as it sees fit. “Submissions” is also a provision of the Privacy Policy. NOTICE No additional notice of any kind for any reason is due Visitor and Visitor expressly warrants an understanding that the right to notice is waived as a condition for permission to view or interact with the website. DISPUTES As part of the consideration that the Website requires for viewing, using or interacting with this website, Visitor agrees to use binding arbitration for any claim, dispute, or controversy (“CLAIM”) of any kind (whether in contract, tort or otherwise) arising out of or relating to this purchase, this product, including solicitation issues, privacy issues, and terms of use issues. 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The prevailing party ( only if Leicaphilia wins) shall be reimbursed by the other party for any and all costs associated with the dispute arbitration, including attorney fees, collection fees, investigation fees, travel expenses. JURISDICTION AND VENUE If any matter concerning this purchase shall be brought before a court of law, pre- or post-arbitration, Viewer, visitor, member, subscriber or customer agrees to that the sole and proper jurisdiction to be the state and city declared in the contact information of the web owner unless otherwise here specified: Leicaphilia, PO Box 36, Mango City, Belize. In the event that litigation is in a federal court, the proper court shall be the closest federal court to the Seller’s address. APPLICABLE LAW Viewer, visitor, member, subscriber or customer agrees that the applicable law to be applied shall, in all cases, be that of the state of the Seller.
****Payer agrees that said contribution via Paypal shall constitute a binding agreement between the Payer and Payee (Leicaphilia) wherein Payer agrees that Payee may automatically credit the like amount of said initial payment each thirty (30) days thereafter, based upon valuable, ongoing consideration received by Payer from Payee, said payment to terminate upon mutual agreement of the parties herein, any conflict arising in virtue of said automatic withdrawals to be conducted via the rules of arbitration as set forth above, with the added provision that Payer shall give Payee one (1) year notice of intent to enforce right to seek arbitration, during such time Payer shall continue payment under the terms of said agreement contained herein.

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The Plain Sense of Things

Rungis, Paris, 2004. Sometimes you’ve got to look hard to see what’s in front of you

If I were to describe, as best I’m able, what I’ve spent a lifetime of photography doing, it would be this: I’ve tried to document “the plain sense” of the things that constitute my life. Putting words to something which is intuitive and ineffable, it’s the intellectual equivalent of trying to squeeze an elephant into a mason jar – it doesn’t capture all of the buried motivations, but it gets as close as words allow, so it’ll have to do. I’ve always respected Garry Winogrand’s explanation for why he photographed things, “to see how they look when photographed,” which is as good a no bullshit, anti-Artspeak explanation as I’ve yet heard.

All of this assumes my photography has any purpose. I can’t articulate any overarching explanation for why I photograph or why I photograph what I photograph. Attempts feel like ex post facto justifications for something that can’t put into words, the logic behind it being ineffable. My photography just is; the subject creates itself. I point the camera at things that make sense to me to photograph. Any needed rationalizations come later, at the point of editing, selecting, sequencing, articulating. What I’m left with defines what I’ve seen and how I’ve seen it.

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Portland. I love this Photo. Why? Hard to Say

There’s nothing more pretentious than an artist explaining his work. Invariably, the explanation sounds silly, forced, as if he has no real understanding of what he’s been doing. Some of my most awkward moments have been those times when a gallery visitor has asked me what a painting “means.” Anything you say will sound pretentious and foolish.*** The best response I’ve been able to come up with is “I don’t know, you tell me,” except that’s not really correct either. The honest response would be “I can’t articulate its meaning…but I know what it is. As for you, interpret it as you will.”

Our creative motivations are often opaque to us, but always larger than the restrictions imposed on them by words. Putting words to them often circumscribes rather than illustrates the work and, as such, weakens the work itself, boxing it in with artificial constraints. Dragan Novakovic, the subject of a recent post, described the impetus behind his early 70’s British photos, a coherent body of photographs if there ever was one: “I wish I could tell you that these photos are the fruit of a well-thought-out project and expatiate upon it (projects and concepts seem to be all the rage these days), but the truth is, they are all completely random shots.” I admire him for saying that.  It takes courage to admit your conceptual naivete; in Mr. Novakovic’s defense, his photographs are so good they need no explanation. Whatever ‘naivety’ Novakovic possesses isn’t born of ignorance but rather his intuitive understanding that whatever he’s done – inspirationally and procedurally – can’t be reduced to an explanation. The explanation is the work itself.

One of my favorite recent photo books is Dive Dark Dream Slow by Melissa Catanese. No words, just a sequence of vernacular photos from the photography collection of a guy who collected anonymous 20th century “found” photography, the kind of photographs we paste into albums or stash in boxes stored in the attic along with other detritus of our lives. Ms. Catanese is the curator of the book in the sense larger than simply “editing” it. The work is really her’s, in that through her selection, sequencing and presentation of the photos she’s created something unique to her, something apart from the intentions of the various photographers or of the collector himself. What it “means”? Clearly, it “means” something to Ms. Catanese given the constraints she imposed on the materials. As to what that meaning is, she’s not saying, or, more precisely, she seems to be saying “It means what you make it mean.”  And that’s the fascination of it. We as viewer get to give it a meaning.

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Loch Ness, Scotland 2016. There’s a monster down there somewhere…or so I’m told.

Photography, for me, is an activity in service to an internal, idiosyncratic dynamic. I’ve never made photographs for someone else’s consumption or delectation; I’ve made them to give exterior form to something interior. Hence the doing of it itself has been the payoff, sort of like going to therapy. Certainly there’s a sense of wanting to do it well, but ‘doing it well’ has little to do with what other people think of it, which to me is largely irrelevant. Doing it well means feeling as if what I’ve created expresses some logic internal to me. It’s got to resonate with me. If it does, I consider it done well; if it doesn’t, it isn’t, even if other people like it.

The reason why photography has interested me for so long is because it’s not been ‘about’ anything. I’ve never viewed it as a means to anything, and when I’ve put myself in a position to view it as a means to make a living I’ve quickly, and radically, lost interest.  Whatever it is, it isn’t about that.

So, with all that said….I’ll try to articulate what I’ve been trying to do in a lifetime of photography. If it is anything, its been my attempt to locate my self, to give it contours by locating it in a specific time and place [see how pretentious that sounds?]. It’s been my attempt, to document what was (is) me. At heart I’m a documentarian. Anything said beyond that will just muddy the waters, so don’t ask me to explain.

 

*** My Artist Statement, generated after a few bourbons:

 Ever since I was a student I’ve been fascinated by the ontology of mind. My work – scattered across various media yet forming a coherent whole – explores the relationship between subjective profundities and banal, prolifigate experience. Influences as diverse as Homer, Pynchon, Schopenhauer, van Gogh, Joyce, Aristotle, Coltrane, Pollock, and Pound inform my creative narratives. What started out as naive childish hope is now corroded by the hegemony of time, yet it has been leavened by the rich fund of common experience and memory. My work is the synthesis of these things, a re-imagining of what time sweeps into the past, the flux of phenomena screened through the bounded conceptual schema that is me, leaving the receptive clues to solipsistic meaning, assuming, of course, that we, in radical subjectivity, may ‘share’ a solipsism in any meaningful way.

 

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More Flim-Flam From Thorsten von Overgaard

Thorsten Overgaard and his Elephant Skin Camera Bag with Cashmere Lining. Perfect for your Sultan of Brunei Leica While Photographing Danish Royalty.

Luxury Camera Bags and Luxury Bespoke Suitcases for World Travelers
by Thorsten von Overgaard

You want the ideal product that fulfills all of your needs, made to make you happy every time you touch it, and made to last forever

Thorsten von Overgaard travel [sic] to more than 25 countires a year and live [sic] his life in a suitcase. Every bag is put to maximum use.

Thorsten von Overgaard and Matteo Perin joined forces to design luxury travel bags for people who appreciate the best and demands durability for a lifetime.

Thorsten von Overgaard [he’s added the “von” recently – “von” traditionally denoting aristocracy***] has transitioned into the luxury camera bag business. Apparently, when Goyard in Paris wouldn’t fix Thorsten’s Goyard Aplin backpack, damaged while travelling to his Royal Mongolian yurt, Overgaard decided to make his own bags. To do so, he sought “the best artisans […] using best possible materials, based on many years of experience, resulting in a product that could last for generations.” The end result is him “joining forces” with some fellow Scientologist meatball named Matteo Perin to produce crocodile and elephant skin bags. Who he’s partnered with to shoot the elephants to skin for the bespoke bags is not clear. Perin claims he “makes trunks, blankets and all the luxury items you can think of, for private airplanes, villas, cars and yachts.” Right.

It’s always been obvious to me that “von Overgaard” is a transparent huckster, a confidence man preying on  gullible low-hanging fruit, spinning some bullshit narrative about luxury and beautiful people and world travels and Leica, this just being further proof that a sucker is born every minute and some of those suckers will end up buying a Leica and taking a street shooter’s seminar with  “von Overgaard.”

*** Overgaard, who for some reason started referring to himself as “von Overgaard” a year or so ago, took up photography in 2005. Before that he worked in a lumber mill [true]. He seems to have no real gallery or publishing or photographic industry presence other than self-promoted fluff pieces hyped by a marketing agency and some self-published books. A deep dive into the footnotes of his scantily sourced Wiki is hilarious. Here’s some more interesting info on Mr. Overgaard.
Overgaard is married to fellow Scientologist “Princess Joy Villa.” The Princess was born in Orange, California, to the Rev. Joseph Villa, of Italian descent, and Mildred Angela Pierce Villa, of Afro-American and Native American blood. She attended Lompoc Public High School, no University education noted.  According to her Wikipedia page she is an “actress and producer,” “her acting career mostly consists of minor, un-credited appearances on television. These roles include an umbrella-wielding carny in a “Heroes” Season 4 episode.”  As for her claim to be a “producer,” no production experience is referenced. On October 27, 2017, apparently unfamiliar with the residency requirements for elected office, Villa announced that she was considering running for US Congress as a Republican in either Florida, California, or New York.   Her Wikipedia page contains no further update on her political ambitions since that time, nor any further “minor, un-credited” acting gigs, with or without umbrella.

“Matteo Perin has been doing bespoke luxury for millionaires and celebrities for years.” [Sure he has.] Apparently, in between hobnobbing with all those aristocrats nobody bothered to teach Monsieur Perin to keep his feet off the Florentine ebony table. Obviously “New Money.” 

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Perin, presumably, modelling a croc duffle bag which apparently has no room for the M4. Someone needs to tell this guy to tie his shoes.

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White Skies

 

Waiting for Work, Jharkhand, India, 2014. Prabuddha Ray

If you were to show me the photo above and ask me guess whether it was film or digital, my guess would be film. I’d say film because the sky is white. White skies, with little or no distinction between the sky and clouds, are a fairly reliable signature of traditional silver halide b&w photography. Panchromatic black-and-white film is more sensitive to blue than to other colors (although by how much varies with the emulsion, some being more sensitive to greens and others to reds than others. Orthochromatic b&w film is very sensitive to blue) and thus, film will overexpose blue skies relative to terrestrial subjects, giving you a white sky.

When shooting b&w film, if I want a detailed sky, I’ll use a K2 yellow or #25 “light red” filter. The principle is basic. A filter transmits light of its own color and absorbs its complementary color. It follows that the way to darken sky and make clouds stand out is to use a yellow or red filter, red being blue’s complimentary color. A yellow filter will render the sky more or less “normally” – i.e there’ll be a distinct tonality to the sky, lighter at the horizon and getting darker as you move up, clouds visible. The #25 light red will give you a  darker sky and more dramatically contrasted clouds, more like what you’d expect with digital b&w. To get the full-on dawn-of-the-dead look, I’d use a #29 dark red filter.

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B&W Digital Skies. Nikon D800 (photographer unknown)

Above is an example of how a digital sensor renders sky. Digital sensors don’t have the same color biases as do film stocks. A digital sensor typically has equal Red, Green and Blue sensitivity, the result being photos that represent sky with much more detail than does film.

It’s that, along with its increased sharpness/acutance and less highlight roll off, which differentiates digital b&w from film b&w. While ‘film emulation’ software like Silver Efex helps narrow the aesthetic difference, no amount of running native digital files through emulation software will completely eradicate the differences inherent in the capture, and a trained eye can see the difference.

Of course, arguing the relative merits of either is a matter of taste. Each medium is a transcription and not an objective rendering. The reason I prefer the first photo to the second, apart from other subjective aesthetic issues, is because my photographic tastes were created and shaped during the film era and that look is the standard I use when judging digital b&w. It looks “natural” to me, the digital looking like an affectation. Someone coming of photographic age in the digital era might, and probably does, see things differently. That’s OK.

I do like Mr. Ray’s photo, for reasons over and above its ‘film look.’ Interesting then, that it’s not from a negative but was shot with a Nikon D800, proving that for every generalization there’s a thousand exceptions. What’s notable to me about the photo is that it hasn’t been self-consciously post-processed with all the usual b&w film clues – grain, specific tonal looks etc. It’s just the sky, or the lack of it, that drew my eye to it after googling “Nikon D800 B&W,” it being an outlier in a sea of overdone “zombie apocalypse” skies like the photo below. Something that simple.

 

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