David Vestal: 1924 - 2013

 David Vestal, 2009, by Ellen Wallenstein

David Vestal, longtime photographer, educator, and writer, passed away on December 5, 2013 at his home in Bethlehem, Connecticut. For many years, Vestal wrote a column for PhotoTechniques magazine and I always tried to read those when I could. They were illuminating and pithy and often tried to push their way through the veils of pretense that hides much of the art of photography. He had a way of breaking things down and explaining them in understandable, commonsense terms. In many ways, he was a role model for me and my writing about photography. I never had the chance to meet him, but he was a powerful influence on my life and my photography.

New York City, 1958, by David Vestal

David Vestal wrote two photography books, The Craft of Photography and The Art of Black-and-White Enlarging. The latter book became the book I turned to in learning how to print and in how to be a photographer. When I learned photography in the late 1970s, I gravitated towards Ansel Adams’ Zone System for the exposure and development of black-and-white film. I used a 4x5 camera with a spot meter and tried to decipher how to use it all. Adams’ three book series at the time seemed kind of intimidating, so I picked up and read Minor White’s book on the Zone System. It may have been a small book, but the prose was dense and impenetrable, and practically impossible to apply in a useful way. It was more poetic allegory than technical instruction. So I bought Fred Picker’s Zone Workshop book. It was easier to understand, but turned out to be more of a sales tool for his business than anything else, however it did serve as a basic primer for the Zone System. Finally, I broke down and picked up Ansel Adams’ series of books and set about reading and learning his way of working. At the time I had access to a densitometer, which Adams required to determine correct exposure and development, and off I went. After a few years of working on this and getting the hang of it, I attended the Ansel Adams workshop in Carmel, California, only to have John Sexton, one of the last great Zone System photographers, say something like, “Well, I can see that you are doing everything by the book, but you need to expose more and cut back the contrast.” So that’s when I learned that following what Adams wrote down only gets you in the ballpark and really isn’t necessarily made for real life situations. 

Gallup, New Mexico, 1966, by David Vestal

And that was when I discovered David Vestal and his book, The Art of Black-and-White Enlarging. In his book, Vestal laid out a way of testing film exposure and development that was practical and sensible. I tried it, and after a few tweaks to accommodate my own working methods, it became how I tested every new film and developer combination, and it was responsible for a vast increase in the quality of my negatives, which became easier to print and produced better looking prints. Indeed, this book was filled with commonsense approaches to the practice of photography that made my life easier and my photography better, and David Vestal was the person who made that possible. His book was the mentor that I turned to when I needed to learn something and he made all the difference in the world to me. I kept his book close at hand and referred to it all the time. It became my standard reference work. Like I’ve already said, I never had the chance to meet him in person, but he was indeed my teacher and mentor, and I will never forget what he did for me. Thanks, David Vestal, and rest in peace.

New York City, 1959, by David Vestal

Humans of New York vs. Creative Art

 photo by Brandon Stanton

I recently heard a news story/interview on The Humans of New York, which started out as a blog and has now become a New York Times bestselling book. The person behind the work, Brandon Stanton, takes portraits of people he encounters while walking around the city. He asks if he can photograph them and then interviews them and includes a bit of the interview with the photograph, which provides a bit of context to the portraits. Stanton makes a lot of these portraits. In the interview I heard, Stanton came across as humble and even a bit overwhelmed by the attention his work is gathering. He was charming enough that I was predisposed to like this work even before I saw it. You can see the work here.

Nick Vossbrink, a photographer working out of San Francisco, wrote an essay called "I'm Tired of 'White Guy' Photography Projects" that is marginally about the Humans of New York project and categorized the work as colonial photography which examines other cultures alien to the photographer’s point of view in an attempt to explain that culture to outsiders in a condescending manner. You can read his essay here. National Geographic is the primary example of this approach to photography, though they are far from the first to use this model of working. August Sanders seminal work of documenting the German people is another or Jacob Riis, whose work serve served to expose the dangers and destitution of New York ghettos of the late 1800s, are other earlier examples.

In fact, using photography to examine and understand other cultures and people and ways of life is as old as photography itself. It’s part of what photography is; a way of looking at the world and figuring out how everything works. But Vossbrink has an interesting point to make concerning photography.

Vossbrink said in his essay:

“To see the same approach taken towards non-white or non-mainstream cultures now feels old and stale. And with almost everyone having the tools to document and represent themselves now, it starts treading into self-serving, patronizing, white-guilt behavior too.

The colonial view doesn’t work for me anymore. At its best, I find it boring. At its worst, I find it racist. In almost all cases I’m tired of it.”

So does his point have merit? Perhaps. I do think we have moved past the idea of photographing indigenous peoples in far-away, exotic locales and have it be anything but insulting and patronizing to the people depicted. But is the idea finished completely as a mode of seeing? I find that hard to believe.

And that’s the thing with creative endeavors. It is up to the artists to come up with something new. If we rely on the tried and true, what has been done before, we face the prospects of creating art that is tired and stale. That is why certain kinds of photography really are kind of boring, when it comes right down to it. And photographs can be boring and beautiful at the same time, if the image has nothing new to say. Things like landscape photography and nudes are mostly just retreading old ground and repeating images styles that border on being tropes. New takes on these subjects are rare. And that’s what Vossbrink is reacting to in his essay. All too often Stanton gives us the same “Oh, look at the weirdo in the big city” kind of image that we’ve seen time and time again, from people like Diane Arbus and Weegee. For urbanites, these images are comforting and familiar. For rural folks, they are the evidence supporting all their preconceptions about the people in big cities.

So is Humans of New York patronizing and boring? Not really, though the skills of the photographer aren’t particularly strong. Stanton’s images are sometimes mediocre, bordering on student work, if I have to be honest, but it is the quotes and the stories that go along with the images that elevate them out of mediocrity. This work is about more than the images, which is usually the case with successful art; the meaning of a piece of art extends past the surface image of the artwork. It is the context of the art and its subject and its maker's intent that makes for good art. Is this great photography? No, but it is good photography that is worth looking at and that is something far from boring. And I suspect that Stanton is a photographer to watch and pay attention to.

International Street Photographers Day

 Photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Tomorrow, which is Thursday the 22nd of August, is International Street Photographers Day, so go out and do some street photography! It's also Henri Cartier-Bresson's birthday, so think of him while you are doing it!

Miroslav Tichy: Outsider Photographer

 Photo by Miroslav Tichy.

Almost from the beginning of photography, at least after the advent of Kodak cameras that put photography into to hands of the common person, photography has had something of an unsavory reputation. Photographers would lurk around the swimming holes of yesteryear hoping to spy upon and capture the images of naked or nearly naked young women. It actually became something of a public nuisance for a while. Currently, our distrust of photographers working in the public spaces is more related to issues of terrorism, but that is another story.

Miroslav Tichy and one of his cameras.

Anyway, the folks at Messy Nessy Chic have done an excellent story on a photographer that captures that quaint, old-fashioned air of "perv-i-ness" and also manages to serve as an example of the outsider (or folk or naive) artist that happens to use a "camera." Outsider photographers are kind of rare. His name was Miroslav Tichy and he lived and worked in the small town of Kyjov in the Czech Republic. One of the things that set him apart was that he built his own cameras out of spare parts and trash, including grinding and building his own lenses. His photographs are an interesting combination of crudeness and elegance and the article is worth checking out here. Thanks to Wayne Kraft for pointing this story out to me.

New Cameras from Lomography

 Lomography has announced an interesting camera, the Belair X 6-12. As you can see, it's a folding camera with some cool features. It uses medium format 120 film and can shoot in 3 different formats: 6x6 cm, 6x9 cm, and 6x12 cm. It has interchangeable lenses with 2 initial offerings, a 90mm normal lens and a 58mm wide-angle lens. They are say they are developing more lenses for this camera. It also uses aperture priority automatic exposure with ISO settings from 50 to 1600.

It will have zone focusing and combined with the f-stops of the lenses, your images should be sharp. For instance, the both lenses have maximum apertures of f/8 and then will stop down to f/16. When you choose the distance of your subject from these 4 choices: 1 meter, 1.5 meters, 3 meters, and infinity; you should have adequate depth of field.

There are 3 models to choose from, the Globetrotter, the Jetsetter, and the Cityslicker. Pictured above is the Globetrotter, which will run around $400 with both lenses. That's a pretty good deal, but they are only making 300 of this particular camera model with the "brown snake-style" leather trim. And if you order from Lomography now, you can get a 30% discount on this special model. I'd like to take a closer look at these cameras. You can read more about them here.

Color Pioneer Charles Cushman

"Hobos" by Charles Cushman

National Public Radio has done a story on early color photographer Charles Cushman, who began documenting his life and the world around him with slide film in 1938 and then continued for 30 more years. His story is an interesting one that captures the rise of color photography for the amateur photographer. NPR created a multimedia presentation on Cushman that you can see and hear here. Check it out. It's worth your time.