Four Icons in one Image. Amazing!

I think this project is going to be a great success. I've been very careful to make this authentic and real and ethical in a basic human way.  It's called Iconic Beach Portraits and I think it's a winner!

The trouble is the editing is a killer. Just after I shot this picture, a man ran into the frame on the horizon. I like the one above for it's understated quality, but maybe the one below is the ONE. I'm not sure! I simply don't know.

I've got lots of these images from solid, hard work on the beaches of the world. Sometimes the images are great but the light's just not quite right as in the image below. I suppose I could do something with it in post-production, but that's not really the way I roll!

I know I'm the first to do this, but I'm sure people will copy my great idea. If any of my readers are working on similar projects, I'd love to see them, share them on Facebook or somewhere, though I'm sure they won't be as good as mine!

Ban the burkini, the bikini, jeans, anything...

Now then, an overspill from the summer and the harassment of muslim women on French beaches and towns banning the burkini because it's extremist - what was that all about? Because the burkini is a way for women to get out of the house and go to the beach - and actually engage more in the society and world in which they live in.

So it's not about liberating women from the evil strictures of men who are stopping them from being free.

So what is it all about? 

Beyonce's Camera

What camera do you own and what does it say about your personality? I share a camera with Beyonce, a Fuji x-100, but then I share that camera with everybody who wants a cool-looking camera. And I'm not sure that's a good thing.

But we get a cool looking camera and get to share it with Beyonce and Jay-Z, so that ain't bad; I used to have a little Ricoh and so Terry Richardson! Sharing with Bey is way better than sharing with Tel.

But then I've still got a Hasselblad and Neil Armstrong had (no getting picky here) a Hasselblad on the moon. And you don't get cooler than that?

Unless you're talking Robert Capa. There's no-one cooler than Capa and Capa used Contaxes and I used Contaxes too. What a Dreamboat! 

You get weirder than Capa though. I used to have a whole bunch of electric Rolleis. I liked the electric Rolleis (until they broke) and so did Roger Ballen? 

Which makes me an amalgam of Beyonce, Ballen, Armstrong, Capa and Tel. Which, with a few misgivings along the way isn't bad. 

Suite Francaise and Colloboration

Following on from the amazing Auschwitz and After by Charlotte Delbo, I read Suite Francaise by  Irène Némirovsky . Némirovsky was a Jew who then wrote about the German invasion and the responses of different people to the occupation.

It's a compelling book in which one's sympathies are allied to those who preserve their humanity through their daily relationships with both the Germans and their French compatriots. It's deeply critical of bourgeoise France, of those who seek to preserve their privilege and power, culture and wealth using the rhetoric of patriotism and class.

Instead, the real dignity lies with those who live, love, and resist - with the occupying forces and against them. The astonishing thing is the manuscript  was written at the time of the German occupation. And that Nemirovsky was deported to Auschwitz where she died in 1942. As such, the book (which was unfinished with only two out of an intended five volumes completed) is incredibly human and stands in some ways against the post-war rhetoric of collaboration and in particular the scapegoating of women who slept with German soldiers. Maybe that would have changed in the later volumes but you get the feeling that Nemirovsky had priveleged insights into the institutional workings of wartime France (or any other country for that matter).

In Suite Francaise, the people who stay human are the novel's equivalents of the women who had their heads shaved in the picture above  by  Capa. And the ones who are guilty are those who spout the cultural and class rhetoric of the Republic and engage in deep collaboration with the Germans; these themes were to have been developed in further volumes which were outlined but never written.

But then isn't that the point of Capa's picture in the end - that the only people who have any dignity are those who stand in the foreground of the pictures, that however much ideology you spout, to be human you have to be human. And in the picture above, with her love for her child, the shaven-headed woman is the only human being human.

Sarah Charlesworth or Leica?

 

The pictures above are from Sarah Charlesworth Modern History series. She died earlier this week; here is her obituary, with a snippet below explaining the above images.

 Ms. Charlesworth is perhaps best known for her “Modern History” series, which she made from 1977 to 1979 by producing photographs of the front pages of various newspapers, typically excising all the content except the nameplate and photographs. In some pieces she followed one newspaper for a number of days, showing how its contents changed over time. In others, she sampled numerous papers on the same day, looking at how different outlets selected and presented images for the day’s news. For one of her most iconic pieces from that series, April 21, 1978 (1978), she printed 45 newspaper covers that featured versions of a photograph of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro after being kidnapped by the Red Bridge.

Here's another view of history from Leica - a kind of love story between Robert Capa and his Leica III. Truly awful, the reason why people moan about the glamourisation of photography, war and the heroic photojournalist.