Posts Tagged ‘photography’
“It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter”*…
Jimi Hendrix lighting his guitar on fire at Monterey Pop Festival, in Monterey, California, in 1967
Few photographers have had a life and career as historic as Jim Marshall. His pictures not only capture some of the most influential artists of the 20th century but also established a new level of intimacy in the relationship between entertainers and the photojournalists documenting them.
Some of the most iconic pictures ever made of artists like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan, to name a few, were captured through Marshall’s camera lens. His ability to level these larger-than-life musicians as normal human beings, coupled with his uncanny knack to find himself at the right place at the right time, established him as one of the era’s most sought-after music photographers. Whether it was the legendary Miles Davis or simply the neighborhood children playing stickball in the street, Marshall was able to capture the moment with striking humanity.
Marshall died in 2010 at the age of 74, leaving his entire archive of millions of photographs and negatives to his personal assistant of many years, Amelia Davis. This year, a new documentary about his life and the accompanying book, Jim Marshall: Show Me the Picture, chronicle the photographer’s journey through some of the most influential cultural events of the 20th century…
Johnny Cash “giving one to the warden” at San Quentin State Prison in San Quenton, California, in 1969
The Grateful Dead’s last free concert on Haight Street, in San Francisco, before they moved to Marin County, 1968
An interview with Davis– and more of Marshall’s marvelous work– at “23 Of The Most Influential Pictures From Music History.” Even more of Marshall’s work at Marshall’s official website.
Vaguely related: facing rising San Francisco rent, the world’s largest collection of punk records and Maximum Rocknroll, the anti-establishment music magazine that safeguards it, must find a new home: “Eight tons of punk.”
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As we bask in backstage access, we might recall that it was on this date in 1956 that Bill Haley tied Ruby Murray’s record (set in 1955) when he scored five songs in the UK Top 30: “See You Later, Alligator” (#19), “Razzle Dazzle” (#17), “Rock Around The Clock” (#13), “The Saints Rock ‘n’ Roll” (#11), and “Rockin’ Through The Rye” (#4).
“Life is one big road with lots of signs”*…
(R)D has looked before at the remarkable work of the Farm Security Administration, which was launched in the New Deal to help relieve crippling poverty in rural communities. As small part of that mission, the organization documented life in the the communities in which it worked….
These photos naturally included many road scenes, as the Great Depression had plunged rural America into a great migratory frenzy.
The photographs taken by FSA photographers under the direction of economist Roy Stryker have come to form the basis for the popular image of the Great Depression, among them Dorthea Lange’s Migrant Mother.
But I’m sure you familiar with that photo. What I want to share with you are some of the more striking images of cars and roadside life that also make up part of the collection, which the Library of Congress has digitized and made available on Flickr.
These photos capture a country on the move, attempting to make its way out of the worst financial crisis it had ever seen and into a productive future. This is intentional, of course. The photographs were intended to “introduce America to Americans” and instill pride in the country as it shook itself out of the depression…
More at: These Color Photos From the New Deal Show What Life On The Road Once Was Like.” Visit the Flickr archive here.
* Bob Marley
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As we motor on, we might recall that it was on this date in 1908, at the at the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit, “Model T 001”– the first production Model T– rolled off the line. (On May 26, 1927, Henry Ford watched the 15 millionth Model T Ford roll off the assembly line at his factory in Highland Park, Michigan.)
1908 Ford Model T ad
“Another Roadside Attraction”*…
Big Fish Supper Club, Route 2, Bena, Minnesota; 1980
The culture of the American road has been much celebrated — and much criticized. Lawrence Ferlinghetti saw the rise of the automobile and the construction of the interstate system (which began in the 1950s) as a new form of punishment inflicted on the populace. Driving in their cars, “strung-out citizens” were now
plagued by legionnaires
false windmills and demented roosters…on freeways fifty lanes wide
on a concrete continent
spaced with bland billboards
illustrating imbecile illusions of happinessThe architectural critic and photographer John Margolies (1940–2016), on the other hand, saw there could also be home-made beauty in the buildings and signs locals built on the American roadside. For almost forty years, he documented the most remarkable examples he found, publishing some of his discoveries in books and consigning the rest to an archive, which has now been purchased by the Library of Congress who, in a wonderfully gracious move, have lifted all copyright restrictions on the photographs (though art works shown in some photographs may still be under copyright)…
Billboard, near Dillon, South Carolina; 1986
More at “John Margolies’ Photographs of Roadside America.” Browse the entire collection at the Library of Congress.
* a marvelous novel by Tom Robbins
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As we peer through the car window, we might spare a thought for Thomas Clayton Wolfe; he died (at age 38 of miliary tuberculosis) on this date in 1938. But in his short career he wrote four lengthy novels (including Look Homeward, Angel and You Can’t Go Home Again) as well as many short stories, dramatic works, and novellas– and earned William Faulkner’s praise as the greatest talent of their generation.
Wolfe’s influence extends to the writings of Beat writer Jack Kerouac, and of authors Ray Bradbury, Betty Smith, Philip Roth, Pat Conroy and many, many others.
“Artifacts of our oldest cultures give evidence that the human race has always made things in miniature”*…
1/12th scale model of CBGB, 315 Bowery
Drawn to the often-overlooked beauty of aging structures, [artist Randy] Hage began photographing the cast iron facades in the SoHo area of New York. He has photographed over 450 storefronts over the past 14 years, 60% of which have since closed or been torn down. Hage’s models are not only acts of preservation but a way of calling attention to what has been lost as urban renewal and gentrification displace the storeowners and residents of these communities…
Hage then works from his photos to create exquisitely-detailed miniatures…
See more of Hage’s marvelous work at “NYC Storefronts in Miniature,” and visit his website.
* Dorothy B. Thompson, Miniature Sculpture from the Athenian Agora
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As we get small, we might spare a thought for miniaturist of a different sort, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne; he died on this date in 1592. Best known during his lifetime as a statesman, Montaigne is remembered for popularizing the essay as a literary form. His effortless merger of serious intellectual exercises with casual anecdotes and autobiography– and his massive volume Essais (translated literally as “Attempts” or “Trials”)– contain what are, to this day, some of the most widely-influential essays ever written. Montaigne had a powerful impact on writers ever after, from Descartes, Pascal, and Rousseau, through Hazlitt, Emerson, and Nietzsche, to Zweig, Hoffer, and Asimov. Indeed, he’s believed to have been an influence on the later works of Shakespeare.
“Behind the hieroglyphic streets there would either be a transcendent meaning, or only the earth”*…
A map from 1893 portrays Earth as square and stationary and warns of Biblical interdiction against the notion of a round Earth flying through space
If you are only just waking up to the twenty-first century, you should know that, according to a growing number of people, much of what you’ve been taught about our planet is a lie: Earth really is flat. We know this because dozens, if not hundreds, of YouTube videos describe the coverup. We’ve listened to podcasts—Flat Earth Conspiracy, The Flat Earth Podcast—that parse the minutiae of various flat-Earth models, and the very wonkiness of the discussion indicates that the over-all theory is as sound and valid as any other scientific theory. We know because on a clear, cool day it is sometimes possible, from southwestern Michigan, to see the Chicago skyline, more than fifty miles away—an impossibility were Earth actually curved. We know because, last February, Kyrie Irving, the Boston Celtics point guard, told us so. “The Earth is flat,” he said. “It’s right in front of our faces. I’m telling you, it’s right in front of our faces. They lie to us.” We know because, last November, a year and a day after Donald Trump was elected President, more than five hundred people from across this flat Earth paid as much as two hundred and forty-nine dollars each to attend the first-ever Flat Earth Conference, in a suburb of Raleigh, North Carolina…
The unsettling thing about spending two days at a convention of people who believe that Earth is flat isn’t the possibility that you, too, might come to accept their world view, although I did worry a little about that. Rather, it’s the very real likelihood that, after sitting through hours of presentations on “scientism,” lightning angels, and NASA’s many conspiracies—the moon-landing hoax, the International Fake Station, so-called satellites—and in chatting with I.T. specialists, cops, college students, and fashionably dressed families with young children, all of them unfailingly earnest and lovely, you will come to actually understand why a growing number of people are dead certain that Earth is flat. Because that truth is unnerving…
Alan Burdick explains what the burgeoning movement says about science, solace, and how a theory becomes truth; “Looking for Life on a Flat Earth.”
* Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
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As we contemplate curvature, we might recall that it was on this date in 1850 that Harvard Observatory director William Cranch Bond and Boston photographer John Adams Whipple took a daguerreotype of Vega– the first photograph of a star ever made.
“Today everything exists to end in a photograph”*…
Sadly, just not necessarily a good photograph…
A few samples drawn from the stream of images you’ll find at Uninteresting Photographs.
* Susan Sontag
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As we search for meaning, we might recall that it was on this date in 1870 that John Wesley Hyatt received one of the patents that allowed him to win the $10,000 prize offered for a practical substitute for ivory in the manufacture of billiard balls. The material he used– celluloid– was the first true plastic… and the basis of photographic film until it was replaced by acetate in the 1950s.
In his long career, Hyatt secured several hundred patents, among them: the first injection molding machine, processes for sugarcane milling and fruit/vegetable juice extraction, roller bearings, and a multiple-stitch sewing machine. Hyatt founded the Hyatt Roller Bearing Company in 1892 in Harrison, New Jersey; then, in 1895, hired a young Alfred P. Sloan, son of a major investor in the company, as a draftsman. By 1905, Sloan had become president; in 1916, the company was sold to General Motors… where Sloan went on to become its transformative president, and the architect of the auto industry as we know it.
“Celebrity is the chastisement of merit and the punishment of talent”*…
A People Map of the US, where city names are replaced by their most Wikipedia’ed resident: people born in, lived in, or connected to a place…
From our friends at The Pudding, a chart of our crazes– zoomable to reveal much more detail: “A People Map of the US.”
* Emily Dickinson
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As we obsess on obsession, we might recall that it was on this date in 2009 that Kodak ceded the victory of digital photography and announced that it would discontinue the production and sale of Kodachrome print and slide film, a repository of “precious memories” since 1935.
