Category: The Online Photographer

[TOP's APES (all-purpose editorial slave), i.e. moi, is notorious for wandering off topic and writing about whatever random topic strikes his fancy. So, amidst all the vintage photo posts, I thought I'd insert one to stand for all the many off-topic posts I've indulged in over the years. This is from 2010, and documents one of my brushes with automotive greatness—when I chanced into the opportunity of driving a few laps on an autocross course with the Head Instructor of the Porsche Driving School. I didn't brag as much as I should have in this post—actually my lap

Continue reading “Off-Topic Interlude: Porsches In My Way”

[Note: Writer and editor Mike J. is doing well, making a slow recovery from a cornea transplant. For your amusement and edification in the meantime, brief discussions of ten remarkable photographs, counting down from number 10.]

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The Hubble Ultra Deep Field Photograph

"This picture is the reason the Hubble Space Telescope was built. It has been compared in significance to the Dead Sea Scrolls and the discovery of the structure of DNA. It is the deepest and farthest back in time that humans have ever been able to see, almost back to the beginning of time.

Continue reading “Ten Iconic Photographs: No. 1”

[Note: Writer and editor Mike J. is doing well, making a slow recovery from a cornea transplant. For your amusement and edification in the meantime, brief discussions of ten remarkable photographs, counting down from number 10.]

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W. Eugene Smith, Tomoko Uemura in her Bath, Minamata, 1972

The Concerned Photographer

If Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" is photography's madonna, then the last of the many great photographs of Gene Smith, Tomoko Uemura in her Bath, is our medium's pietà.

That's a properly exalted way of looking at these pictures, but it's a little too pat, too, because

Continue reading “Ten Iconic Photographs: No. 2”

[Note: Writer and editor Mike J. is doing well, making a slow recovery from a cornea transplant. For your amusement and edification in the meantime, brief discussions of ten remarkable photographs, counting down from number 10.]

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Alexander Gardner, Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 8, 1863
(gravure reproduction)

The Portrait

Given the thousands upon thousands of superb portraits that exist—and the hundreds or thousands that are arguably no worse than this one—it may seem "U.S.A.-centric" of me to choose Alexander Gardner's portrait of Abraham Lincoln to stand for all portraits. Yet there are good reasons

Continue reading “Ten Iconic Photographs: No. 3”

[Note: Writer and editor Mike J. is doing well, making a slow recovery from a cornea transplant. For your amusement and edification in the meantime, brief discussions of ten remarkable photographs, counting down from number 10.]

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Ansel Adams, Tenaya Lake

The Land

When I was young and new to photography, I worshipped Ansel Adams and revered his work. Now that I'm older and jaded, I seldom return to it for pleasure. Thus, Adams has taught me one of the most important lessons to learn about art: tastes change.

Art is volatile. Its meaning changes with context,

Continue reading “Ten Iconic Photographs: No. 5”

[Note: Writer and editor Mike J. is doing well, making a slow recovery from a cornea transplant. For your amusement and edification in the meantime, brief discussions of ten remarkable photographs, counting down from number 10.]

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Art Kane, Harlem 1958

Significance

This, for you, might be a stand-in, because I can't guess what might have similar significance for you. It depends what you care about and what has resonance for you. Jazz does it for me. Your mileage may vary, as the saying goes.

And on the surface, this doesn't seem like such a remarkable photograph:

Continue reading “Ten Iconic Photographs: No. 6”

[Note: Writer and editor Mike J. is doing well, making a slow recovery from a cornea transplant. For your amusement and edification in the meantime, brief discussions of ten remarkable photographs, counting down from number 10.]

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Stuart Franklin, © Magnum Photos

Witness

Fortunately, it is not very natural for one human being to kill another. Normal people don't like it. Some normal people who become killers do so for greed or self-interest or simply for status, but organized sprees of killing are usually led or instigated by a few sociopaths and sadists, who also statistically do

Continue reading “Ten Iconic Photographs: No. 7”

Diane Arbus, Identical Twins, Roselle, NJ, 1967

Self and Other

This might seem an esoteric selection for a top ten list, but one of the many interesting things about it is that it's not: Diane Arbus has always been popular. Her magazine work, done for money, did well; her Aperture monograph is among a tiny, select handful of "evergreen" photo books that just keep on selling, year after year; seven million people saw the posthumous traveling retrospective of her work; and though she might seem the last person who could ever make money doing high-society portraits for pay, she did.

Continue reading “Ten Iconic Photographs: No. 8”

[Note: Writer and editor Mike J. is doing well, making a slow recovery from a cornea transplant. For your amusement and edification in the meantime, a rerun of ten popular posts from the early 2000s—brief discussions of ten great photographs, counting down from number 10.]

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Andy Warhol [from Gene Korman], Marilyn, 1967

The Image of Woman

This is not, properly speaking, "just" a photograph. It only started out as one.

When Eugene Kornman, a.k.a. Gene Korman, took his photograph of Marilyn Monroe in 1953 as a publicity still for the film Niagara (left),

Continue reading “Ten Iconic Photographs: No. 9”

[Note: Writer and editor Mike J. is doing well, making a slow recovery from a cornea transplant. For your amusement and edification in the meantime, today we inaugurate a rerun of ten popular posts from the early 2000s—brief discussions of ten great photographs, counting down from number 10. Posted at 7 ET every morning. Enjoy!]

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Edward Weston, Pepper No. 30

The Equivalent

The idea was Alfred Stieglitz’s. Although Steiglitz suffered from logorrhea—compulsive soliloquizing, in his case—he gave the concept he derived from Symbolist art an elegant, simple name: an equivalent. In 1922, he claimed that his

Continue reading “Ten Iconic Photographs: No. 10”