I'm leaving Eastend and the Wallace Stegner House after a delightful and productive two weeks.
Eastend has attracted writers, painters, sculptors and other artists from Canada and many other countries during the last several years. This is a very creative community nestled at the edge of the Cypress Hills. I'll miss Eastend and The Hills: but I'll be back soon.
My thanks to the Eastend Arts Council and all the other people who have made my stay so pleasant.
A fine day, walking across land which hasn't changed significantly for hundreds of years.
My friends Norma and Don Connick and I left Eastend this morning bound for Maple Creek where we enjoyed a great meal at the Star Café & Grill. This café has earned an excellent reputation and certainly deserves a visit if you're within a few hundred kilometres of Maple Creek.
After stocking up at Currah's Bakery we drove to the Cypress Hills Winery which is 20 km southwest of Maple Creek on the paved road to the Fort Walsh National Historic Site.
Yes, a winery in southern Saskatchewan. A winery that opened on June 1, 2007, and has since won an award for the best new business in Saskatchewan. A winery that sold 16,000 bottles of wine last year, their entire production. A winery that grows grapes and other fruits for its wines and uses wild berries as well.
Don and I inspected the vineyard and the garden area. We didn't recall learning about growing grapes in Saskatchewan when we attended the College of Agriculture just a few years ago, but we agreed that innovators like owners Marty and Marie Bohnet, former ranchers who describe their incredible adventure as 'A hobby gone bad' , have created an amazing business in a short time.
The Winery Bistro Bar serves sandwiches, cheese trays, desserts and wine by the glass. We chose to have coffee and saskatoon pie. For those of you who know me that's no surprise. The pie was delicious. Later I sampled a few wild saskatoons from a tree beside the parking lot, but only a few: the saskatoon season is just beginning and those who will visit the winery tomorrow may be eating pie made from the berries on that tree and others nearby.
We sampled the five wines that are currently in stock and bought some for ourselves and some for friends. Several of these wines sold out last year in a short time.
We enjoyed our visit and our chats with Marie Bohnet and the helpful and enthusiastic staff. We'll be back.
Thanks to those of you who responded to the recent Saskatchewan photographs by leaving comments or sending e-mail messages.
Several people have asked about whether my black and white photographs which I am making daily will be included in this blog after I've returned from my residency at the Wallace Stegner House in Eastend. Some of them will, and some will be posted on my photography website.
Those of you who are interested in photography from the Great Plains may wish to go to that site and specifically to the sections on Plains and Plains People. The site also includes a short biography and access to a free download of my e-book Golden Prairie, a photo history of that village with text and some audio.
I'll be in the darkroom later this summer producing new work and I look forward to sharing it with you.
I drove into the hills this evening and stopped briefly to photograph in two locations.
I hope you are enjoying this extended series of photographs from southwestern Saskatchewan. As you can see this province is much more than just oil and gas.
After dinner at Jack's Restaurant I walked two blocks to the south side of Eastend. Evening is my favourite time for photography: the light is wonderful.
I'm now anxious to see the black and white images I made with my film camera.
I'm sitting at a table in the back yard of the Wallace Stegner House in Eastend, Saskatchewan, enjoying a pleasant July morning. The house was built by Stegner's father in 1917. One can see the Cypress Hills from the upstairs study and from the back yard. The Frenchman River runs nearby.
The house is equipped with high speed internet which I use wirelessly so that I can work anywhere in the house or yard. I'm posting these images from the back yard where they were made.
Walk with me across the alley and enjoy this view of the river.
I arrived at the Wallace Stegner House this morning, very excited about spending two weeks writing and photographing in Eastend and staying in this wonderful home which was built by Stegner's father and restored by the Eastend Arts Council.
Ethel and Ken Wills of the Arts Council had just completed installing an air conditioner in the window of the study when I arrived. The weather had been hot and they had an extra unit and just enough time to install it before I arrived. I had heard about how well visiting artists are treated in this town the by the Council and the people of Eastend, and this was more evidence of that care and concern.
Ethel invited me to the Canada Day celebrations at the Eastend Historical Museum – old time music by local musicians for the adults, face painting and games for the children, and a demonstration of anvil art ('Blacksmithed Roses and Iron Work' by the very talented Deb Giverhaug, one of many artists who live in Eastend). I met Ron Eremenko with whom I went to school and University; I didn't know he lived in Eastend and was very pleased to see him.
Ron invited the people who worked at the festivities – and me – to dinner at his home tonight. I spent the evening dining with and sharing stories with gallery owners, artists, and other people from the town and surrounding area. After being in town nine hours, some of which I spent getting settled in my home for the next two weeks, I felt as if I were part of the town. Everyone has been very welcoming and hospitable.
The Frenchman River runs just behind the Stegner House. I had just enough time left this evening to stroll beside it and watch the sun set over the Cypress Hills.
I've driven through a lot of storm clouds over the past several years, most of them in Saskatchewan, between Lloydminster and Saskatoon. I posted prairie storm photographs last year on this blog and am posting more tonight. We arrived in Saskatoon this evening just ahead of the storm.
I spent a short time at a free jazz concert, part of the Sasktel Saskatchewan Jazz Festival and left when the rain started. I was very impressed by The Jack Semple Band. The Festival features excellent local and visiting musicians including Dave Brubeck, John Scofield, Los Lobos, Monty Alexander, Pink Martini, Sonny Rose, and the Neville Brothers. The free stage was situated on the river bank near the Bessborough Hotel, one of the finest locations I've seen for a music festival.
Tomorrow we'll drive to Regina for a weekend of music and relaxation with friends.
I'm installing new batteries in my light meter, buying film, and getting equipment organized for some local photography and for a two week photography and writing retreat later this summer.
As I returned to my desk this afternoon I noticed that Arnheim's title was quite appropriate to the scene.
Those of you who are photographers may recognize the back of a Gossen Lunasix 3 light meter, and those of you with good vision and a sense of history may notice the words Germany (West) just above the serial number. Obviously this is an old meter, but it works well. The batteries which I am now using (Wein Cells) are mercury-free, unlike the original PX625 batteries.
The sun is shining, my meter is now working, and I'm going out in my back yard to make some photographs.
Bravo!, "Canada's Only NewStyleArtsChannel", is showing a month-long series of documentaries about photographers and photography starting tomorrow, May 4. Larry Towell, Arnaud Maggs and Shelby Lee Adams are among the photographers featured in the nine part series.
My wife Merle and I scanned and assembled 173 photographs for a presentation at my mother's funeral last week. The photographs spanned most of her 93 years and included images of her immediate and distant family members as well as some of her own photographs. I recorded a music track for the iPhoto presentation and later created a QuickTime movie of the presentation for family members.
Working with these very special photographs reminded me of how important such images are to families and individuals.
Save, organize and preserve your photographs: they're priceless and irreplaceable.
ABC of Collecting, a series of articles by Richard Pitnick, is essential reading for photographers, photo collectors and anyone else who is interested in photography and its history. The series includes:
- The Emergence of Photography as Collectible Art
- Assembling a Photography Collection
- How to Buy Fine Art Photography
- Evaluating a Black and White Photograph: The Print
- Evaluating a Photograph: Artist, Rarity, Age & Provenance
- The Display and Preservation of Black and White Photographs
B&W Magazine, the original publisher of the articles, gave FiftyCrows permission to post them on their website. Thanks to the author, the magazine and FiftyCrows for creating and distributing one of the best series of articles on photography I've read.
They're free – and they're priceless.
I was delighted to find (and buy) a DVD of the movie Eloquent Nude: The Love and Legacy of Edward Weston & Charis Wilson on a recent trip to Carmel, California. The movie is a documentary which includes re-enactments and interviews with Wilson who is now in her nineties. Weston was one of the most significant photographers in the history of photography and Wilson was his lover, model, wife, and colleague. Wilson has written extensively about the time they spent together. There were other lovers, wives and models, but none as important to Weston and his work as Charis.
Ian McCluskey, the Director, and his crew have made a fine film. They deserve a lot of credit for this significant contribution to photography and photographic history.
The DVD, available from NW Documentary arts & media, includes the Director's 20 minute Making of Eloquent Nude and other features.
A suitcase belonging to the war photographer Robert Capa and containing thousands of negatives has been found, according an article entitled The Capa Cache in the New York Times.
To the small group of photography experts aware of its existence, it was known simply as “the Mexican suitcase.” And in the pantheon of lost modern cultural treasures, it was surrounded by the same mythical aura as Hemingway’s early manuscripts, which vanished from a train station in 1922.
Robert Capa left the negatives in his Paris darkroom when he fled Europe for the United States in 1939. He assumed that they had been destroyed in the Nazi occupation. The story of how they got from Paris to New York via Marseille and Mexico City is almost as exciting as Capa's life.
Capa, one of the most famous war photographers of the last century, was most well-known for this photograph The Falling Soldier made in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. He died in Vietnam in 1954 while on assignment.
Today's war photographers use primarily digital cameras. One wonders how accessible and usable their photographs will be in 69 years.
Perhaps the best way of preserving today's images is to make prints from them and then store those prints carefully. Perhaps we should also make film negatives from those prints. I'll discuss more practical approaches to preserving digital images later.
I first travelled to Carmel, many years ago, largely because it was a centre of photography. Edward Weston had done most of his work there, and Ansel Adams lived and worked nearby.
Adams and Weston are gone, but photography continues to prosper on the coast of northern California. We visited two private photographic galleries in Carmel (The Weston Gallery and Photography West) and one artist-run gallery (The Center for Photographic Art). These galleries have been in Carmel for many years and represent a large number of local and international photographers. I enjoyed viewing the photographs and talking to the curators about photography.
The coastal landscape is irresistible for most photographers. As we walked on the beach on our last evening of this trip I saw photographers using large film cameras, digital cameras and even cell phones.
I had photographed that beach many times but I could not resist exposing a roll of 35mm black and white film as well as many digital images. The landscape changes every time we view it through our cameras. It's a new experience every day, every hour and, at sunset, every minute.
Many years ago my grandfather owned and operated a hotel in a small town in southern Saskatchewan. He used the phrase 'Your home away from home' on his invoices and promotional items. I'm sure that hundreds or thousands of other people had used the phrase before he did, but he was very proud of it.
Carmel has become my home away from home. We've spent the last several days walking the beaches, chatting with local folks we have met on earlier trips and singing at the Mission Ranch piano bar, again with local people we sang with on past trips. We have patronized restaurants and shops which local people patronize: and I have kept in touch with local news during the year by reading the Carmel Pine Cone, the local newspaper, online.
Today we visited the Monterey Aquarium and marvelled at the diversity and complexity of ocean life.
Tomorrow will be our last complete day in Carmel on this trip. We return home on Thursday, January 24. I'm looking forward to being home but I'm already missing Carmel, its creative people, its coastline and its architecture.
I hope you enjoy these photographs from Carmel and the Monterey Aquarium. Please check my photo site for black and white photographs from earlier trips to this wonderful area.
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The North American Great Plains stretch from Edmonton, Alberta to Texas. It's all big sky country, and while winters are sometimes brisk the big sky trumps rain and cloud in my game.
This was the view from my office, at 4:10 PM, January 3, 2007.
Yesterday (December 2, 2007) we travelled from Gull Lake, Saskatchewan to Calgary, Alberta, stopping in and around Maple Creek to photograph. My black and white photographs will take time to process, but, in the meantime, I can enjoy these digital images.
I'm enjoying a weekend at the Delta South hotel in Calgary. While we often have snow at this time of year today is a mild (4 degrees C) day with a brisk wind and no snow.
I didn't bring a film camera with me on this trip, but I took my small digital camera with me on my morning walk. The images I saw near the hotel were ones that I would have normally made with black and white film but I tried them with the digital, then duplicated them in iPhoto and used what iPhoto calls black and white versions of them.
I would appreciate your reactions to which of these parking lot snapshots you prefer – the colour or the black and white versions.
We are fortunate to live just a half a block from a large wooded area which contains steep hills, a creek with beavers and beaver dams, birds, deer, moose and all the Saskatoon berries I can pick each July.
It's a fine area for photography as well.
We drove from Edmonton to Saskatoon yesterday afternoon and could not resist making some more sky photographs using both black and white (film!) and a digital camera.
Saskatchewan license plates say 'Land of Living Skies.' It's the best description I've seen of this landscape.
These interesting skies opened about an hour later to produce one of the most severe thunderstorms I've driven in. We drove the last 90 minutes to Saskatoon in rain which was heavy enough to limit visibility. I tucked in behind a semi-trailer and followed him to the city.
The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix reported this morning that 40-50 mm of rain fell and that the storm generated 1,500 lightning strikes per hour (one of those set fire to a city house).
It was an exciting trip. Living skies, indeed.
The sun has just broken through. It should be a fine day.
It's a warm week here in western Canada. I'm spending some time working, relaxing and photographing in my back yard.
Yesterday I used my digital camera for this shot and my Seagull TLR for other photographs. The two cameras could hardly be more different: the Seagull uses 120 film and produces negatives which are 21/4 inches square. One gets 12 photographs from one film.
And, of course, I'll have to process the film and print photographs from it. The camera is inexpensive and fun to use.
The Seagull does not have a built-in light meter. I use a Lunasix meter which I bought in the early 1970s to use with my view camera.
Manual film cameras used with hand meters allow photographers to make significant creative decisions with regard to exposure and shutter speed, although digital cameras also allow for various automatic and manual settings for particular purposes. Learning photography using manual cameras allows students and photographers to learn about about the effects of focal length, shutter speed and depth of field.
One of the limitations of using any camera in an automatic mode is that we expect that the camera will do exactly what we want it to do. In many cases it does: but we lose a lot of control in the process.
Photography is about seeing and understanding what is around us. It's about understanding ourselves and our world. It's about stopping the world for a fraction of a second, then working with the image we have made. It's an intuitive process.
I spent part of today photographing in my yard, using black and white film as well as digital. Digital works well for blogs, but it's not the format in which I do my personal work. However, it's handy and useful.
Point and shoot cameras – digital or film –
“I'm always mentally photographing everything as practice." Minor White
“A very receptive state of mind...not unlike a sheet of film itself - seemingly inert, yet so sensitive that a fraction of a second's exposure conceives a life in it.
“Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence.”
CBC has named its Seven Wonders of Canada: the canoe, Pier 21 in Halifax, Niagara Falls, those big pointy things in Alberta and BC (the Canadian Rockies), Old Quebec City, the igloo, and prairie skies. Thanks to all of you who voted, especially if you voted for prairie skies and the Cypress Hills.
Prairie skies are free to all those who live or travel in Manitoba, Saskatchewan or Alberta. There are no user fees or access costs. They continue, mile after mile, as one drives, walks, or rides a horse: and one never tires of them.
My first camera was a Brownie Hawkeye. It was a point-and-shoot medium format (620 film) camera with no adjustments. My mother used similar cameras to photograph my sisters and me. We put the sun behind us and let our subjects look into it. But, in spite of our cameras' lack of light meters, zoom lenses, and program modes we created some wonderful images. And photography was easy and intuitive.
Several years ago I bought a new Seagull twin-lens reflex for what I considered a modest price ($200). It's a fun camera, one I use with both black and white and colour film. It's the sort of camera one uses for family photos in the back yard on a Sunday afternoon. It uses 120 film and produces sharp images. As I learned earlier large negatives compensate, a least somewhat, for inexpensive lenses
The Seagull has an adjustable lens and shutter speed, but no light meter. One either guesses at exposure (which is almost unheard of in this technological time but which can be quite effective) or uses a light meter.
While the Seagull is fun to use and inexpensive, another medium format camera – the Holga – has recently created a lot of interest. It's plastic and costs $25. The LensCulture blog today featured an article about the Holga, including an audio interview with Michelle Bates, photographer and author of a new book Plastic Cameras, and Toying With Creativity. She explains why this idiosyncratic camera has become popular with new and experienced photographers. It's fun to use, and the photographs have qualities and characteristics which are unique.
Sometimes photographers feel a need to do something new, to create a new project or to buy a new camera or a new lens. The next time I feel that need I think I'll buy a Holga.
Tomorrow at the Homesteading Revisited symposium I will launch my new e-book Golden Prairie, a photographic history of Golden Prairie, Saskatchewan, with text and audio. It's in PDF and is now available as a free download from Spotted Cow Press.
I'll discuss the book and the response to it tomorrow. I'll also review the key themes from the symposium.
We drove to Calgary yesterday, the first part of our trip to Nebraska where I'll be participating in the Center for Great Plains Studies symposium Homesteading Revisited, May 17-19.
Today we drove from Calgary to Helena, Montana. After driving the very busy Edmonton to Calgary route driving in southern Alberta and Montana was a delight: not much traffic, big skies, sunny weather and roads designed to allow one to drive fast and safely. The Pontiac Grand Prix I rented behaved very well on the winding roads from Great Falls to Helena.
I won't see my black and white images of the trip for several weeks, but I did enjoy making these digital images.
And, finally, if you're looking for a good round baler, you've checked the right blog. Don't wait: phone tonight.
I've been working in my darkroom, printing, dry-mounting contact prints and scanning prints for a book project.
The first photograph shows my working area next to my darkroom. It includes cabinets and drying screens for prints (far right, below the press and trimmer).
The second and third photos show my darkroom and the door opening into the working area.
Most people expect to see darkrooms with black interiors, with photos scattered about. Some photographers who have left film photography for digital work say that they could never go back to the smell of chemicals and darkroom work in general, but I love darkroom work, provided that I am in a darkroom that is well-planned, bright, well-ventilated and well equipped.
Darkrooms must be built carefully so that no light comes in at critical times. Once one accomplishes that one can paint the interior white or any other colour.
These photos were taken – with the only digital camera I own – when the darkroom and working area were in work mode. They are the only photos I've made of this darkroom in the 35 years since it was built. And, yes, digital and film photography each have advantages. Without a digital camera I may never have made these photos or posted them.
Thanks for stopping by.
The temperature is -22C and the sky is a brilliant blue. We've had a lot of snow this year, but not nearly as much as much as some areas in eastern Canada and on the northeastern coast of the USA.
Winter has its own unique beauty. This is the view from our dining room.
According to an article in the photo e-magazine ZoneZero the Getty Conservation Institute (part of the Getty Museum in California) needs our help:
"Scientists at the Getty Conservation Institute need your old photographic papers, film, negatives, and prints to build an archive of knowledge and materials from the era of classical photography. This archive will become a reference collection for future generations of photo conservators and scholars, and will allow them to research and authenticate the treasures of the classical photography era."
Apparently photo companies such as Kodak, Ilford and Agfa did not keep samples of the papers and films that they produced over the past 100 years, and the Getty group is hoping that some of us did – and that we might like to contribute them to their project.
Photo papers and other darkroom products have varied in type and quality over a period of time. The prints that I made 25 years ago were made with Ilford Galerie paper, a wonderful, slightly warm tone paper which went out of production several years after I started to use it. The films which we have used over the years have changed as well.
Photographs thus are different from each other, depending on the type of paper, chemicals and film available at the time they were made – and, of course, how the products were used. The print that I will make from an old negative today will be different from the print I made years ago even if I try to make the new print look like the older one.
If you are interested in helping the Getty Conservation Group in this endeavour check the FAQ section of their site. No other group is doing this work and your contribution could be unique.
Black and white film photography continues, with a little help from its friends.
Photographers continue to use black and white film for creative purposes and art collectors are more interested in black and white photographs than ever before.
Ilford Photo, now employee-owned, has reorganized, brought back some products that had been dropped, and dedicated itself to serving the black and white film community. I use Ilford films, chemicals and paper almost exclusively and am delighted that they are continuing to produce fine products.
The Photographers' Formulary site features an excellent video with Ilford Photo's Steven Brierley in which he discusses the present and future plans for Ilford.
You may wish to watch this short video even if you are not interested in photography. It's a great marketing effort. Brierley is being interviewed outside during a break at a conference. He tells his and Ilford's story plainly, clearly and effectively.
No visual aids, no music, just a story. And it works.
"Now we can all take pictures, with varying degrees of consistency; more than ever before it's about what we do with photography."
Mark Power.
This quotation is from the current Slate page which includes Today's Pictures by Magnum Photos. Check the various series by Magnum photographers, including the interactive essays.
Magnum photographers don't 'take pictures': they create photographs.
I worked in my darkroom today. Real photographic work: mixing chemicals, loading film in the dark, washing film, working with my hands. I use a digital camera to do some assignments, but only when necessary. I love using film and cameras that can function without batteries.
I used the portable speakers I was given at MacWorld – and a laptop – to take iTunes with me to to the darkroom so that I could listen to CBC Ideas podcasts as well as podcasts from the TED Conference. I seldom listen to music in the darkroom because it interferes with my concentration. Words, however, do not.
iPods and computers allow us to access radio broadcasts we would otherwise miss, podcasts on virtually every topic, and even live radio from around the world. We can use them anywhere and at any time to learn and to entertain ourselves.
Tomorrow will be another darkroom day. I'll listen to CBC Radio, and to podcasts on photography by Brooks Jensen, the editor of LensWork (an elegant photographic journal published on paper and on disk). His podcasts cover subjects ranging from the aesthetics of photography to the role of art and literature in society.
There are limits to using technology in the darkroom. I won't be checking my e-mail or sending messages: and I won't be writing blog entries.
I'm listening to the second lecture in a course entitled History of Photography, Photography 1105 taught by Jeff Curto at College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, Illinois as I write this blog entry. I listened to the first lecture last week while travelling by bus from Vermont to Boston, enjoying the fall colours while learning about the early history of photography. I was using an iPod without video capabilities so I missed the images that accompany the lectures (but New England in the fall is a reasonable substitute).
The web page listed for the class contains the images Curto discusses, but these images – and the summary slides he uses – can be viewed not only with a video iPod but also with iTunes on a computer, which is the way I am viewing them today.
The lectures are live. Curto is an excellent lecturer and the audio quality is certainly adequate. Listening to the lecture, and the periodic coughs from students, while watching the slides is similar to sitting in the back row in a lecture theatre. One can't hear all of the questions (which is often the case in large lecture theatres) but Curto's answers incorporate the questions and the overall feeling is that one is part of a live event. A worthwhile event.
I've studied the history of photography for many years on an informal basis: but I'm learning a lot from these lectures. I'm frequently critical of the 'I'll talk for 50 minutes and you better write down everything that I say because most of it will be on the exam' approach, but the lecture system can work effectively if the lecturer is well prepared and is an effective communicator.
Having the lectures online with slides included allows students to review the lectures, to discuss them with others – or to stay in their dorm rooms and listen to the them at their leisure. Attending the lecture allows students to ask questions and participate in class discussion. Lecturers can use more of their lecture time for discussion if they decide to put some material only on the web or in podcasts.
This lecture series is another example of how knowledge is being made available at no direct costs to the public. I am able to learn about the history of photography from Jeff Curto without going to Illinois and enrolling in his course. I can learn at home or on a bus. I can't get academic credit for learning but I don't care about that: I simply want to learn.
You can access this and other podcasts on virtually any subject by going to iTunes and searching for key words.
I bought a copy of the Boston Review yesterday primarily because of an article entitled The Treacherous Medium: Why photography critics hate photographs written by Susie Linfield. It's the most comprehensive and interesting article on this subject that I've seen.
The University of Alberta Bookstore is again sponsoring The Idea of West, a day of literature, art, music and great food, at The Timms Centre for the Arts, University of Alberta, October 11, 2006. Free tickets are available from the Bookstore (492-4215).
The Timms Centre seats only about 300 people so get your tickets early.
We left Edmonton this afternoon later than we expected, driving in rain, bound for Saskatoon, approximately five and a half hours away. That's how prairie folks measure distance – how long it will take you to drive there on a good day.
We stopped briefly at Lloydminster ('Canada's Only Border City'). We had hoped to photograph on the way and, fortunately, the sun appeared about 7:00 PM about an hour out of Lloydminster.
Landscape photographers prefer to work in the early mornings and the late evenings when the light is softer. The light was just right this evening. We stopped near the small town of Ruddell and I used my digital camera as well as my traditional SLR loaded with black and white film to photograph skies and land.
I love film and am very excited about processing the images I made today. However, the digital images are immediate: and I can post them on my blog quickly and easily. I hope you enjoy them.
Saskatchewan skies are magic: but one has to take time to look at them. Some people live here and never notice them: and many people who travel through this province never bother to look up.
I'll be spending the next week photographing and playing music in central and southern Saskatchewan. I'll be posting to this blog most nights so please stop by.
I love to visit bookstores, at home and abroad. I also enjoy visiting libraries to learn about books which are published locally. I'm in Burlington, Vermont, home of several fine bookstores and libraries. Thus far I've visited two Borders stores (one large downtown store and one mall store) and a large Barnes & Noble store. And, yes, I've bought a book or two.
I'm fascinated by the types of books that publishers choose to publish: poetry, fiction, non-fiction, photography, business, current events, biography and natural history. Obviously in the market served by the stores in this city each of those categories has a strong following.
Excellence in publishing includes the choice of books, the quality of editing, design, production and marketing. Publishers in the USA have a large market to serve but they also have a lot of competition. This apparently benefits the consumer since the books produced in this country tend to be high in quality and relatively modest in price.
New England publishers, and American publishers in general, publish high quality photography books, books that deal with famous photographers and regional photographers. Many of these photographers produce or have produced primarily black and white images. I read and collect such books and always buy at least one on most of my trips to the USA.
I bought Harry Callahan: The Photographer At Work several days ago and have been reading it and enjoying the photographs a few pages at a time. The book is published by Yale University Press in conjunction with The Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, Tucson. It's a comprehensive look at an important and fascinating artist. It's also a fine example of the art and craft of bookmaking. The prints in the book are well reproduced, vibrant, full-range black and white images. No short cuts. Nothing lacking. It's a large hardcover book, 192 pages, with 227 tritones and 20 colour illustrations, and it's a bargain at $50 US.
Photography books, like many art books, will continue to be published in paper form, at least in some countries, because there is a significant market for them. Owning a high quality photo book is not quite as enjoyable as owning original photographs by famous photographers, but it comes close, as close as most of us will get.
While paper photo books are or can be wonderful products there is also great interest and logic in using the electronic media to publish photographic material.
Last week the Drumlummon Institute of Helena, Montana, published Drumlummon Views, an extensive, high-quality online publication which includes poetry, fiction, reviews and a portfolio of excellent photographs by David Spear. This PDF journal (276 pages) focuses on Montana and its writers, poets and photographers. The photographs are easy to view since one can change their sizes easily. E-journals and e-books of photographs will allow more photographers (and other creative people) to publish and distribute their work.
If you're interested in photographic books stop by Photo-Eye Gallery and Bookstore in Santa Fe, New Mexico. While I recommend a real visit to Photo-Eye and Santa Fe, a virtual visit will also be interesting. The bookstore stocks virtually all of the new photo books on the market and provides considerable information about them in their newsletter.
Photo books, be they paper or PDF, allow us to learn from photographers, their photographs and the essays which accompany them.
We can revisit these books years later and then pass them on to others, just as we do with our own photographs.
'Show me some pictures, please.'
'Sure, Aidan, I'll be right back.'
My wife and I were chatting with our grandson this afternoon. He loves photographs and is always keen on seeing images of himself and his family. We got the box of photographs with his name on it and showed him about twenty images before our time was up and he had to go to bed.
Aidan, who is four but would really like to be eight since that is his favourite number, lives in Vermont, which is about 2,500 miles from where we live. We visit him in person several times a year, but most of the time – including today – we talk to him in real time video on our computer. As we open the box of photographs with his name on it he gets very excited and gives a running commentary on the photos as we hold them close to the camera.
'That's me and Emily.'
'That's our whole family.'
'That's me at your house.'
Aidan is following a family tradition: he loves photographs. We create small albums for him and for his sister Emily on their birthdays and at Christmas, just as we have done for other members of our family, young and old. I think that his photographs are amongst his favourite possessions, almost as important as his cars and trucks.
I did not have photographs of my own when I was four, but I remember looking at our family albums of black and white photos of my parents, my grandparents, my great grandparents, and me. Looking at the family albums was a privilege, reserved for Sunday afternoons or evenings when friends or relatives came calling.
We lived on a farm in southwestern Saskatchewan. While we did not have a lot of resources we were able buy film for my mother's Brownie 620 camera. She photographed her children, friends and relatives in the farmyard mostly on special occasions. The photos went into black albums and the negatives went into boxes. I now have all of the albums and all of the negatives.
Our photographs of our parents and other family members help us to see and understand them in ways that would not be possible if we relied only on stories and letters. I recently scanned a studio photograph, a rather small image, of my grandparents and my father (at the age of two) made in Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, in 1915. As the large image appeared on my computer screen I noticed that my grandfather was holding my father's small hand gently in his large, weathered hand. I had not seen this detail in the small print. My grandfather died before I was born, but this photo – especially the scanned version – has allowed me to know him in a very special way.
Over the next days and weeks I'll be writing about preserving and understanding our photographic history, which consists of old photographs and negatives as well as contemporary prints and the digital images which are so easy to make but so hard to manage.
In the meantime please visit my photographic site. You'll find some of my photographic history there.
Most photographers in northern climates spend part of their winters in darkrooms (or light rooms if they are working with digital photography) working on prints, books and exhibitions. But we look forward to moving outside as soon as the temperature rises and the snowbanks disappear.
We still have snow in fields, in our yards and on the edge of some roads – but it's melting and the sound of water running down the street was all that I needed to justify exposing a few frames of black and white film this afternoon.
My friends in other parts of the country are enjoying spring flowers, but spring on the prairies is very special. We've missed the warm sun for so long that we feel we deserve the heat and the light. Later in the year we'll take them for granted, but not today.
Prairie photographers will soon start to carry their cameras as they walk in the countryside or in the cities. They may not use them much, but one never knows what's around the corner.
The temperature today: six degrees of inspiration (that's Celsius, of course).
Enough indoor blogging for the day. I think I'll check to see if the tulips are up.
Enjoy the sunshine.
My wife and I hosted a reception last night for friends and colleagues to celebrate my exhibition of Japanese photographs. We had a great response not only in terms of attendance but also in enthusiasm and sales.
Some of the photographs in the exhibition is on my website.
We held the exhibition in the offices and board rooms of a local architectural firm Brinsmead Ziola Kennedy Architecture. They have recently begun to offer their facilities to artists and groups of art students who wish to exhibit their work. The firm gains exposure as does the artist.
The most important part of selling work is that we learn what it is about our work that excites people. We're used to family and friends being enthusiastic about the work we do, but having someone at an exhibition say that they love a particular photograph and want to buy it is what keeps us working and trying harder.
Selling work completes the communication process. Photographing, printing and stacking prints in the darkroom is only part of that process, probably the easiest part.
Feedback is also an important part of the communication process.Those who buy our work and others who view it provide us with responses to our images which are often surprising and gratifying.
If we do worthwhile and appropriate work in the arts or in business there will have an audience and a market for it. Our job is to find that audience and to do work that excites us and them – and to use that mutual enthusiasm to produce better work. It's an exciting process.
Special thanks to Brinsmead Ziola Kennedy Architecture and to all those who joined us last night.
I was planning to buy some film today – Kodak film. Now that I've learned that Kodak may cut up to 25,000 jobs because of the declining film market I may buy several rolls of TMax and Kodachrome.
Many of my friends have been surprised that I, a photographer and a great fan of technology, have not chucked my film cameras and embraced the digital revolution. Indeed, digital photography is very appealing, so appealing that the vast majority of cameras purchased in North America are digital.
Digital cameras give instant results: but will those results be there when you and your grandchildren want to see them? If you ask people what they will take with them if they have to vacate their homes due to fire or floods the first thing they mention is the family photograph album. Photographs and negatives – especially black and white photos and negatives – have lasted for several generations. Some of the first photographs made over 150 years ago can still be viewed in museums and galleries.
We expect that our digital photographs will be around when we want them. We store them on hard drives and on disks: but will our grandchildren be able to access them in the future? How long do disks last?
Not all photographs are archival. Certainly many colour photographs have faded over the years. However, negatives and transparencies can be reprinted and scanned. I scan a lot of my prints and some of my negatives. One can use film and obtain high quality digital images for certain purposes. Film still has characteristics that are different from those of digital photographs. Different, not necessarily better or worse. Films too differ from each other in terms of how they record light.
I have thousands of negatives and Kodachromes which take up a lot of space in my house. However, I'll continue to add to them rather than collect my history and my family's history on my hard drive. If Kodak ceases to manufacture certain types of film there are European companies that will be pleased to serve the market: and there will be a market, although it will be far smaller than it has been.
There will continue to be people who use view cameras, medium format cameras and 35mm rangefinders and SLRs. They won't ignore the potential for digital photography and will probably use it in some circumstances. But they and I will still enjoy the smell of darkroom chemicals and the thrill of seeing an image coming up in the developer.
Film lasts. Let's hope that digital images last too.
I was very fortunate to be able to be in New York early this spring and to attend the Diane Arbus exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This show is organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and was previously exhibited there.
I visited the exhibition on a Saturday along with hundreds of others. While I would usually prefer to avoid galleries during busy times I found that by being so close to other photographers and Arbus fans I was able to share their excitement and hear their comments about the exhibition. New Yorkers understand photography and its significance and the group of New Yorkers (and, I’m sure, a few out-of-town folks) who were there when I was loved this exhibition.
Two men in their sixties looked at one of Arbus’s cameras which was in a glass case: ‘You see that Rolleiflex? You know, if you put Panatomic X in that the quality is just incredible.’
I too lingered near the Rolleiflex. It was the camera that one that one sees in various photos of her. Diane and her twin-lens reflex. The camera had an energy about it just as the photos, the notes and the other memorabilia on display had.
This was the most comprehensive and compelling photographic exhibition I’ve seen. I wish I had been able to visit it several times.
The exhibition will travel to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (Oct. 13, 2005 to January 15, 2006).
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