Archive of journal entries re "photographers"

Is art fair over?

Colin OBrien

This week is “Art Fair”. There are actually 4, or maybe even 5, separately organized fairs going on around town simultaneously. It’s most clear it’s this week because the weather is so ‘bad’; as in, this is the week the heat and the humidity both peak, at »

Familiar – style or subject?

Colin OBrien

When I look on the computer at a photograph I’ve made, many times I’ll think, wow that’s like …, and though I typically won’t be able to actually say who it reminds me of, but there will be something that seems reminiscent of some famous photographs, or photographers, I’ve »

Influences

Colin OBrien

Whenever I get together with my friend Paul, and even when we talk on the phone, although not so much nowadays, he likes to ask me, who are your influences. My answer has always been, I don’t have any photographic influences (other than the million images I see a day of course); I would instead look to painters, especially the Impressionists, and more recently also Constable, as well as Vermeer. When I got home from this latest visit, I looked once again at the postcard above our fireplace, and thought, yes, that would qualify. It’s “Chez Mondrian” by André Kertész. »

Disappearing Witness

Colin OBrien
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Just finished reading [amazon asin=”0801871670″&text=”Disappearing Witness: Change in Twentieth-Centu​ry American Photography”] by Gretchen Garner, in which she describes how photography (and not just in America) in the first half of the century was defined by what she calls ‘spontaneous witness’ (think Cartier-Bresson and the ‘decisive moment’), outward-looking, documentary, and in the second half became much more personal, inward-looking. It is a very easy read, her ‘story’ never drags and it is always informative. »

Catching up with Cartier-Bresson

Colin OBrien

Of course, I knew the name Cartier-Bresson, and I could recognize (some of) his more famous photographs, but it seemed he was concerned with street photography, and I was not, and so he did not have much relevance, or interest, to me. Some time back I happened upon a link to a video of an interview Charlie Rose did with him in 2000 and last month I got to watch it. What stood out for me was his personality, his approach to life, and photography, and that made his photography so much more interesting.

I managed to work out which book Charlie Rose had been using in the interview, reviewed it at the local library, saw it was a good selection of his (early) work and well-reproduced, and bought myself a (used) copy. The library also had a DVD on Cartier-Bresson, so I took a look at that, and then looked to see what else was available and found [amazon asin=”B002ZTQVMU”&text=”Henri Cartier-Bresson (Two-Disc Collector& rsquo;s Edition)”] and it came today. It really has a lot of material on it. It will take me a while to watch all of this. »