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Diane Arbus (PDF), from the introduction to Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph
From the website: I do feel I have some slight corner on something about the quality of things. I mean it's very subtle and a little embarrassing to me, but I really believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them.
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From the website: I enjoy giving a Tupperware party in my home. It gives me a chance to talk to my friends. But really, Tupperware is a homemaker's dream, you save time and money because your food keeps longer.
Owens created a classic book, Suburbia, then he retired to start a brewery.
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John Szarkowski |
The Photographer's Eye (Introduction) - John Szarkowski (PDF)
From the website: This book is an investigation of what photographs look like, and of why they look that way. It is concerned with photographic style and with photographic tradition: with the sense of possibilities that a photographer today takes to his work.
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Simons often uses multi-colored flashes.
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Lady Elizabeth Eastlake Hill & Adamson |
In 1857, Eastlake wrote a seminal essay on the new art and science of photography.
Photography - Lady Elizabeth Eastlake (PDF)
From the website: Photography has become a household word and a household want; is used alike by art and science, by love, business, and justice; is found in the most sumptuous saloon, and in the dingiest attic--in the solitude of the Highland cottage, and in the glare of the London gin-palace in the pocket of the detective, in the cell of the convict, in the folio of the painter and architect, among the papers and patterns of the millowner and manufacturer, and on the cold brave breast on the battle-field.
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Winter, Fifth Avenue Alfred Steiglitz |
Stieglitz wrote about how the new Kodak camera changed photography.
The Hand Camera–Its Present Importance - Alfred Stieglitz (PDF)
From the website: In order to obtain pictures by means of the hand camera it is well to choose your subject, regardless of figures, and carefully study the lines and lighting. After having determined upon these watch the passing figures and await the moment in which everything is in balance; that is, satisfies your eye. This often means hours of patient waiting. My picture, "Fifth Avenue, Winter," is the result of a three hours' stand during a fierce snow-storm on February 22nd, 1893, awaiting the proper moment. My patience was duly rewarded.
More Stieglitz
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From the website: last sunday c., s. and I unknowingly trespassed this man's land (which we thought was abandoned) looking for photo opportunities. so he not only took the air out of 3 tires of c.s' car, he took the valves out as well. so we had to wait in the freezing cold for more than 4 hours for help to arrive. (thank god for the PSP and GTA!) and I agree we deserved it. sorry old man, we didn't know.
Should I ask the farmer's permission before taking pictures on his field?
More about photography and the law
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From the website: Your own backyard can serve as a personal studio in which you can be in control of your subjects and obtain beautiful photos. This is one of the very few situations where eye-catching, close-up bird photography is possible without extravagant photo equipment. The following is a how-to guide to photographing birds in your backyard and these tips will help you achieve bird photos that you have always wanted to get, but never knew how.
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Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players
This is us arriving in Manhattan : Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players at P.S. 122
From the website: It turns out there's a downside to collecting random slides from the '60s and '70s, writing songs about them, performing those songs with your 41-year-old wife and 12-year-old daughter and touring the country in a van.
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From the website: Building a light box is easy. In fact, I could just post the photos with no explanation and 95% of people would be able to sort it out with no problem. But for the other 5% and for the sake of being thorough, I'll post a few words of instruction.
More about light tents
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Adobe Photoshop Restoration & Retouching (3rd Edition) by Katrin Eismann
From the website: Whether you're a professional photographer or the family shutterbug, you can't afford to miss the third edition of the now classic Photoshop Restoration & Retouching. Katrin Eismann and co-author Wayne Palmer have reviewed, updated, and revised every single technique to address the most important features in Adobe Photoshop CS2. Clear step-by-step instructions using professional examples highlight the tools and techniques photographers, designers, restoration studios, and beauty retouchers use to restore valuable antique images, retouch portraits, and enhance glamour photography.
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Interview and slideshow: Mara Bodis-Wollner - The All Girls School
From the website: These photographs stem from my preoccupation with the experience of disappointment amidst celebration. In this series, I focus on issues of trust, intimacy and betrayal in the friendships of women and girls; specifically how deception, unspoken exclusions, and discomfort are manifested in women’s body language and gestures.
Exhibit at Jen Bekman
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Traveling county by county, Paul Buchanan recorded lives through his photographs
From the website: She held the filthy glass up to the light in the fireplace, nearly dropping it. It was the image of a little boy, standing on the bumper of the family truck. Everything, - the composition, the contrast, the turn of the boy's hand - was perfect. "Oh man," she thought. "This is something."
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Making a living at what you love: Artists find that business strategies can help them succeed
From the website: "I want to do this full time, and I am willing to work my a -- off to do it," he said. "At least I am not working at the Gap or Starbucks."
From the website: The work of Seamus Brandon Kiel fully embodies the passion and detail of being an artist. His large format photographic studies capture the magnificence of nature at its most exquisite in lush, sensual color.
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From the website: Reflex: A Vik Muniz Primer is a privileged, guided tour of the contents of Muniz's pyrotechnic imagination, walking us through each of his major series. From "Equivalents," his fluffy, sculpted cotton "clouds," to his latest color work, "Magazines," Muniz accompanies each series with in-depth writing that tickles our minds with amusing anecdotes detailing his inspiration for each; fascinates by revealing his methodology and working process; and enlightens by unveiling the thinking and historical influences behind each image.
Village Voice review:
From the website: The most Borgesian of contemporary artists turns out to be a splendidly Borgesian writer himself, and Reflex, his generous, Cheshire cat of a primer, is as profound as it is playful. Injured randomly by a bullet in his native Brazil, he took up the gunman's offer of money and bought a ticket to the U.S., where he developed the "light interrogatory technique" of his art. His wizardly cover versions of famous images use everything from thread to diamonds to chocolate syrup, and Reflex is similarly omnivorous, bursting with double-take reproductions, beard-tugging axioms ("The accidental discovery of anything implies a predisposed need for that thing"), and at least seven if not seventeen types of ambiguity.
More Muniz
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Memories of Striving and Struggle
From the website: Something bothersome also lurks below the surface concerning the show's assumptions about the nature and purpose of vernacular photography. In the wall text introducing the exhibition, Mr. Wallis takes a democratic view, finding in vernacular photography an honesty, transparency and authenticity lacking in more sophisticated - i.e., "pretentious" - high-art kinds of photography. Vernacular photographs, he writes, "belie no apparent aesthetic ambition other than to record what passes in front of the camera with reasonable fidelity."
From the website: But this just is not true. Most vernacular photographs, and most of those in this show, are conventional and clichéd, and not much real life leaks into them. Vernacular photographs are more likely to mask and distort reality than to reveal it. Most of the images in this show are fairly mute, if not impenetrably opaque.
Exhibit at the International Center of Photography
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Old Images of Prostitutes in India are Newly Wrenching
From the website: Ms. Mark had a tough time starting the project. The Falkland Road prostitutes greeted this American with a camera and unknown intentions with voluble distrust, pelting her with garbage and insults. But she kept coming back, and persistence was persuasive. Eventually, one of the madams befriended her, and everything followed from that.
Exhibits at Marianne Boesky and Yancey Richardson
More Mary Ellen Mark
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You can put Polarizing filters on your lens, and on the lighting fixtures, to control reflections.
The technique is called cross Polarization.
From the website: The use of polarizing filters on the lens and in front of the light sources greatly reduces the surface reflections from many specimens, including shiny leaves.
From the website: Aligning the polarizing angle of the filter on the camera lens to the same polarizing angle of the filter on the flash eliminates the light vibrating in different planes. This almost eliminates all glare from the subject and also allows colors to become more saturated.
Polarizing filter sheets are made by Rosco.
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He told me that if I ever took another picture of his child, he would have my head
From the website: "It's been a real challenge," says the 35-year-old photographer, who grew up in the Mississippi town of McComb, and has described his Klan project as an inquiry into his own roots. After four months of negotiations, Ricky Draper, leader of the Invisible Empire of America, a major Klan faction, offered him total access, in return for a guarantee of objectivity. "I promised them, from the beginning, to document their beliefs and actions accurately and truthfully, and to do that despite my feelings."
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From the website: Acclaimed Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado spent over six years documenting the travails of people -- many of them children -- fleeing from war, famine and natural disasters. His work is currently on view in "Exodus," an exhibit at the Leonardo Gallery in Salt Lake City, Utah.
From the website: According to Salgado, the purpose of this project is to "show this phenomenon, its dimensions and diversity and origins… To speak out for the displaced persons and for the ones who know and can receive them, also to show the dignity in their willingness to integrate, to show their courage and entrepreneurial spirit and, not least, to demonstrate how they enrich us with their difference. Above all, by using migration as an example, to show that a true human family can only be built on foundations of solidarity and sharing."
More Salgado
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From the website: The pages below show prints I made from processing film I found in old cameras. You are seeing them for the first time as they were lost by the photographers that took these images.
More found photographs
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From the website: ... are digitally manipulated photographs equal in quality/stature to "pure" photography in the fine art context?
More about the great themes in photography, including purity
From the website: We believe that labels are important, but mostly for bottles of wine.
From the website: - Christo and Jeanne-Claude
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Chris Faust - Suburban Documentation Project
From the website: This project was developed between 1990-1996, with writer/architect Frank Martin. It documents suburban growth in six states, in both small and large urban centers. Most of the work is residential, however, there are some shopping malls, industrial and office parks. The architect and I are returning to this subject with renewed interest in mega schools and churches.
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National Wildlife Federation Photography Contest 2005 Winners
From the website: "I took this picture right before I ducked," says Steininger. On a bird-watching trip in Ontario, Canada, last winter, the network administrator noticed that one of the great gray owls she was photographing was staring back at her. "I didn’t think anything of it until it started flying at me," she says. Before getting out of the way, Steininger captured this digital photo with a 500mm telephoto lens.
More contests
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