Sofie Dittmann's Photography Blog

One automatically asks oneself who the people behind the amazing photographs in the National Geographic and elsewhere are. We don’t get very many people of this stature here in Ohio, as this place is typically not important enough to attract them. Nevertheless, today we went to a book signing by a man if not larger than life, then pretty close to it.

Steve McCurry turned out to be a regular guy, and a very nice one to boot. Charming and somewhat introverted, somebody I would have liked to just have had time to chat over a beer or a glass of wine with. He’s likely happier in Asia than among all the star-struck people here, but what an inspiration this was.

A snapshot my son took of him signing one of the posters we bought is below.

It was amazing to for once be able to see and, if only briefly, experience a person whose work I have admired for as long as I can think. The Joseph Saxton Gallery didn’t have a lot of his photographs on display, but enough to re-encounter some old friends, like the sheep herder with the henna beard, and of course Sharbat Gula, the photograph he’s most associated with and most famous for. I bought a book, and two posters featuring that portrait for the youngens, the sale of which benefited ImagineAsia.

I couldn’t find any more information, but Steve is at least on their Board and a major contributor, but it almost appeared to me as if he co-founded the organization. Their website is only marginal, with little to no useful information and heinous navigation. A little more can be found on Steve’s own website, a link to which I have posted above.

Unfortunately we had to forgo the talk at Malone University this evening, which I would have liked to have gone to. I’ll just add this to my list of things I would have liked to turn out differently in my life.

When I am reborn, I’ll work for the National Geographic. Or something.

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We visited the Lee Friedlander exhibition at the Akron Museum of Art today. For those of you who don’t know this, the Museum sponsored a series of photos by Friedlander, depicting factory valleys, factories, and life around them in the late 1970s/early 1980s. The pictures we saw were all taken around 1979/1980.

In his typical fashion, while carefully composed, to the naked eye they look like snapshots. Sometimes bad snapshots. I made the rounds twice or so, until it finally hit me what makes them remarkable (yes, I AM slow sometimes). They just look like (sometimes badly composed) snapshots, but they are not. They look like photos “everyday” folks would take, and subconsciously those everyday folks might hit the subject the same way. Yet, Friedlander not only offers a lot of irony in some of them, he turns the normalcy and seeming flaws of those everyday snapshots on their head.

One photograph especially stood out to me. It shows a young man in work clothes welding. He’s got all the trimmings, down to the goggles. Yet, he leans on that table with the torch as if it were a cigarette, in the other hand he could have a beer, sweet talking to a woman at the bar. In short, the pose doesn’t fit what he’s doing, which I think was exactly Friedlander’s point.

Gotta love it. I’m still not sure what to make of the warbled branch photos in the Cleveland exhibit (see my related older post), but at least I’ve gotten this far. I think part of me is probably too pictoral. Oh well, if that’s my only fault…

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Today we at last made it to the Lee Friedlander exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The works featured were from the MOMA collection (NYC). All were beautifully framed (I’m partial to good matting) in simple, but stylish brushed metal frames. I’m scouting for books on the man as we speak. What an eye. What vision. Truly spectacular.

The exhibition was organized in order of trade books/series Friedlander has published over the course of an amazing career that has spanned several decades. Portraits, landscapes, nudes. A fascinating mix of photographs ranging from fascinating to downright funny. The man sure has a sense of humor.

One photograph that caught my eye was a picture depicting a television, couch/living room and bathroom with a toilet bowl in the same frame. He achieved this shot with a mirror affixed on a door. What a perfect depiction of (American) life. Friedlander is famous for this kind of shot, a technique that includes a new version/vision of the same motif in a shot that otherwise would have just depicted the ordinary. He puts a new twist on just that ordinary version of reality and you can’t help but grin at some of the stuff the man comes up with. As I said, he sure has a sense of humor. This sense of humor, paired with a keen eye, made it an extremely worthwhile show for me.

The other characteristic that makes Lee Friedlander unique is how he takes what would be commonly considered a photographic error – poles in the middle of the picture obstructing faces, his own shadow included in a shot etc. – and turns it around and into a compositional feature. A feature that not only reveals his excellent eye, but also gives the photographs said twist I found so tremendously entertaining. I had to revisit his “self portrait” series several times to take it all in, which is photographed exactly in this fashion. A good example is his silhouette on the back of a woman walking in front of him. Or a multiple reflection in a restaurant or car window (not included in the self-portrait series).

A “who-am-I-to-judge” moment, however, were his nudes and some of his landscapes. Frankly, I don’t think I get quite a few of the landscapes. Very wiry and busy for the most part, and a sharp contrast to the compositions in his portraits and street scenes. Too complex for me. My brain isn’t wired that way, and let’s leave it at that. There was a striking one that featured the reflection of Japanese cherry blossoms in a pond with a fish as the central element, that I found rather intriguing. But as for the ones that are a beautifully depicted, but rather busy (think a lot of trees and branches and leaves etc.), I can’t process them as well.

The nudes I didn’t care for much, to tell you the truth. The same way I don’t care for many of Imogen Cunningham’s nudes, who otherwise is a much admired photographer. Very brutally lit, honest (and that would be his style I so admired in the portraits, right), but somehow they didn’t strike me the same way as the portraits. Maybe it’s because they have such a peep-show feel to them. Maybe it’s the way they were posed. I’ve made a promise to myself to revisit these, for the sole reason I like well-photographed nudes, so we’ll see.

Bottom line: if you have an opportunity to see either this exhibition or the one at NYC MOMA, I would encourage you to do so. As I said, I’m looking for more materials on him as we speak. And since I’m trying not to violate copyright, if you Google Lee Friedlander, you’ll find plenty of links to his work, such as http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/friedlander_lee.php or http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A2002.

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http://www.akronartmuseum.org/

Another regional exhibition to put on your calendar: Edward Weston at the Akron Art Museum in Akron/OH.

From the museum’s website on the exhibition: “Edward Weston: Life Work, on view at the Akron Art Museum January 31 – April 26, 2009, surveys the five-decade career of this American master through an outstanding grouping of over 100 vintage photographs. Astonishingly, all the works are from the collection of one couple, New York photography collectors Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg. Weston, who was one of the greatest photographic printers of the 20th century, often reserved his choicest prints for family and close friends. Mattis and Hochberg managed to acquire many works – in fact, most of the prints in this exhibition – directly from members of the Weston family.”

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http://cma.org/exhibitions/Friedlander.aspx

I’ve got this one on my calendar!

From CMA’s (Cleveland Museum of Art) website:

“While Lee Friedlander’s name may not be a household word, his photographs are widely familiar as iconic representations of common American experience. Born in 1934, he gained fame in the early 1960s with off-balance street photographs that evoke the complexity the modern world. Explore Friedlander’s witty and unblinking view of everyday American life in this expansive exhibition that gathers some 375 photographs plus special edition books and portfolios to trace a five-decade career.

Always working in series, Friedlander mines what he calls “the American social landscape,” beginning with a layered view of city streets—shop fronts, ads, televisions, and cars. This central theme is supplemented by subjects including portraits, self-portraits, landscapes, still lifes, nudes, and studies of people at work. This body of work stands as one of the major achievements in 20th-century art, combining astute observation and graphic verve to present a compelling vision of contemporary America.

This exhibition is organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Made possible by Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell, Agnes Gund, Toby Devan Lewis, and Mark Schwartz and Bettina Katz. The Cleveland Museum of Art is generously funded by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. The Ohio Arts Council helped fund this exhibition with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence, and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans.”

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