Sam Abell

He thinks about the horizon line and where he is going to place it.The video below on the Cowboy photograph, I would show to my students as an example of a complex photograph and his description of how he made it would often lead to great discussions on how and what a photograph can do. The power of description and the layering of the different elements, would often get student photographers to attempt more complex photographic compositions.

This changed how I thought about my own images. Sam Abell was for a long time a National Geographic photographer, which is one of the places that I wanted to work when I first started with photography, life however took me in different directions, I still like the idea of National Geographic, and I appreciate what these photographers did for the magazine. Sam seems to be very generous with his ideas and is willing to talk about his process of making images and I like this as it shows that a photographer is able to explore their methods and keep adapting as life and interests change.

YouTube videos with and about

What I learnt from Sam Abell

Think about horizon placement, wait for the photograph. use your instincts as to what is a good photograph, don’t give up when making an image, his story about making an image of some fruit in a window is a great example of this, that is featured in The Life of a Photograph.

Links to articles on his work.

Sam Abell’s photography website http://samabell.com

John Paul Caponigro has a article listing 21 Quotes by Photographer Sam Abell that is worth reading for examples of his thinking. Here is one example:

“One of the things that I most believe in is the compose and wait philosophy of photography. It’s a very satisfying, almost spiritual way to photograph. Life isn’t’ knocking you around, life isn’t controlling you. You have picked your place, you’ve picked your scene, you’ve picked your light, you’ve done all the decision making and you are waiting for the moment to come to you….” Sam Abell

Sam Abel Interview on A Photo Editor

Books by/on Sam Abell

Seeing Gardens, by Sam Abell (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

 Sam Abell: The Photographic Life, by Sam Abell (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

Henri Cartier-Bresson.

HCB for short, many, many photographers have admired his work. HCB is a photographers photographer, his book on the decisive moment was highly influential on photographers. He is yet another photographer who extensively used a Leica camera for his work, mostly sticking with a 50mm lens and he felt that was how the world looked and that was what he wanted to photograph. He did not use flash and was interested in the world, managing to be at places when historical events took place. He photographed Gandhi and his funeral, he was at the coronation of the British Queen and in the streets of cites across Europe making images that we now think helped to define the 20th century.

He was influenced by painters and studied with André Lhote who he said was ‘not a good painter but a good teacher’, He was also influenced by the surrealists, he also liked to paint eventually concentrating on his painting. He was lucky as he had some money from his family and did not have to work for his living, freeing him to follow only photography. He was one of the founders of the Photojournalism agency Magnum.

YouTube videos with and about Henri Cartier-Bresson.

What I learnt from Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Be quick, Subtle and think about the geometry of the image.

‘The Decisive Moment’, that fraction of a second between a good image and a failure. it is looking for the peak moment to make an image, it has been highly influential on a huge number of photographers.

Work with other photographers to further the profession and you will learn more and have a group of like minded creative people to connect with.

Links to articles on his work.

Cartier-Bresson’s classic is back – but his Decisive Moment has passed. The Guardian on republishing his book ‘The Decisive Moment‘ a critical article on the books current relevance.

10 Things Henri Cartier-Bresson Can Teach You About Street Photography. by Eric Kim

&

17 Lessons Henri Cartier-Bresson Has Taught Me About Street Photography. by Eric Kim

The Foundation: Henri Cartier-Bresson

The Magnum page for Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson at the Centre Pompidou, Paris by: Francis Hodgson

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For many, Cartier-Bresson was photography, not only its presiding genius, but also its apologist and defender. It suited him to promulgate a few strong lines. He never used flash. He never cropped a frame. He never retouched. He stuck to the same trusty 50mm lens. The myth of the pure photographer, in other words. Chéroux, curating with a light touch, has taken some of this apart. He has found evidence that Cartier-Bresson did own a flash, that he did carry a number of lenses, and so on. The simplified outline that Cartier-Bresson presented to the world was not false but nor did it tell the whole truth.” Francis Hodgson, from the above article, for an Exhibition review from 2014.

Books by/on Henri Cartier-Bresson.

The Decisive Moment. (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Artless Art by Jean-Pierre Montier (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

Henri Cartier-Bresson: The man, the image & the world: A retrospective. by Philippe Arbaïzar , Jean Clair (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

The Mind’s Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers by Henri Cartier-Bresson (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

Henri Cartier-Bresson (Masters of Photography) by Clément Chéroux (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

(Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

If there is one book on this list that I would recommend, it is Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Artless Art by Jean-Pierre Montier, because of its exploration of Henri Cartier-Bressons working methods and ideas. Then Henri Cartier-Bresson’s own The Decisive Moment.

About 15 months ago, I start photographing in the City of London, doing street photography documentary project of city workers. I aimed to be in the City at least twice a week, to spend my time walking the City. So far apart from a few weeks, I have managed to achieve this. It has been really really fascinating and I have learnt a lot about how the City functions, the patterns that exist within the City. I have learnt that certain buildings become hubs, around which specific industries exist. For example: the Lloyd’s of London building with its insurance market, has lots of people constantly coming and going, with their folders. I suspect that it is in part because not all companies have all their offices within the building, they have desks there and offices elsewhere, but to register the contracts they need to go to the building with their paper files. It is interesting that share trading does not work like that, the London Stock Exchange (LSE) does not have that pattern. The workers who visit the LSE are also more informal than the insurance workers, who have to wear their jackets and ties. The codes that exist are interesting, and I am slowly learning them.

I have found there are certain times of the day that are busier and that at times the City can actually feel rather quiet, but the average worker does not experience the City this way, as they are at their desks when it is quieter and all out on the streets, when it is at it busiest. They go home and arrive in rush hour, they have lunch at similar times. It is these patterns that I have learnt than enable me to make the most of my days photographing.  I will next be concentrating on the early morning rush hours, these will be my next priority, as it gets warmer and it it light earlier, enabling me to work earlier in the day. Light is something that I chase as the tall buildings create lots of shadows, this is both good and bad for photography. It creates I have found reflections form windows to give interesting light patterns and certain times of the day the light shines down some streets depending on their direction.

I am still working on this photography project, however my approach is changing slowly and I find that what works one day for me does not work the next, it is partly how I am feeling and partly the particular location. I am looking forward to editing the work into something that makes sense. For now, I am posting images on Instagram as I go, with the intention of getting the work out and seeing where it develops. Once, I feel I am done, I will then edit the images down to something that is far more coherent. This work will then become a book and an exhibition of the work.

Helen Levitt

For me Helen Levitt, is important because of the way she used colour during the 1970’s in New York. I love her way of working and how she photographed children playing on steps in New York, when children still did that sort of thing. This showed what a particular time and place looked like. This for me is one of the strengths of street and documentary photography, to show what a place looks like at a particular time in history. Without this, the future us will not know what things looked like. For example, now we have so many people on smart phones, all the time and this did not happen in the 1970’s that she photographed. Earlier in the 1940’s it was because it was pre-television and air conditioning, so people lived outdoors in New York much more and engaged with their neighbours more, which is partly why her images look as they do, because she photographed her time. She was also not afraid to get close enough to her subjects, to make the images that she wanted to make. She was smart in how she got some of her images, using a Winkelsucher right angle finder, you can do something similar with a flip out screen on a modern digital camera.

Helen Levitt, is often referred to as the photographer’s photographer, someone who was not interested in fame or the other trappings of the art world. But who was highly influential on other photographers. It is great to see this sort of reverence for a woman photographer, as they so often get neglected in the history of photography. Even now, women photographers find they are working in a male dominated space. I myself admit, that there will be more male photographers on this list, which I am developing than there are female photographers.

YouTube videos with and about Helen Levitt.

What I learnt from Helen Levitt.

A 50mm lens draws the world in a certain way that is flatter than the use of a wider angle lens, it compacts the subject onto and into the background. I like her humour and sensibility of how she approaches making work.

There are lots of references to Helen’s use of a right angle finder to make people think she was not taking their photo. I suspect it looked like this so that she was using her camera and looking away from the subject, this is why I am happy to use a flip out screen as it is less intrusive sometimes when making images.

Links to articles on her work

A documentary film on Helen Levitt www.95lives.com

95 Lives: A Feature Documentary Film about Helen Levitt

Obituary in the Independent newspaper

Obituary in the Guardian newspaper

Obituary in the New York Times newspaper

I know it is a bit strange linking to Obituaries, but to be featured in these newspapers for you obituary means that you where highly regarded in photography circles and the wider culture.

NPR interview Helen Levitt’s Indelible Eye

Article showing the Winkelsucher Leica on a Leica III in use. I am not sure what other Leica camera’s this would attach to but I am definitely going to look into it.

Masters of Photography on Helen Levitt http://www.masters-of-photography.com/L/levitt/levitt_articles2.html

A Way of Seeing, (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link).

Crosstown, (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link).

Slide Show: The Color Photographs of Helen Levitt, (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link).

Helen Levitt, (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link).

Here and There: Photographs by Helen Levitt, (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link).

Tony Ray-Jones

For me Tony Ray-Jones with his exploration of the English eccentricities was really influential, he made black and white images mostly. That is what he concentrated on when he came back from America, where he had practiced his street photography with colour. He studied with Alexi Brodovitch and worked the streets of New York with Joel Meyerowitz and Garry Winogrand. So he was a connected photographer, who was hard on himself to make himself a better photographer. He used a Leica camera and a wide angle lens, I’m not exactly sure of the focal length, but because of the depth of field and compression objects within the image, I would guess either a 28mm or 35mm lens, was his choice of lens.

I like how he observed the world and put elements together to make juxtapositions of meaning within the frame.

YouTube videos with and about Tony Ray Jones

Vimeo video on Tony Ray-Jones

In conversation: Joel Meyerowitz and Greg Hobson from Media Space on Vimeo.

What I learnt from Tony Ray-Jones

To wait, get closer, be hard on self and don’t give in to the easy image. Keep working till you get what you want. That dedication to the image is important, to make good work. Don’t be to easy on yourself, then get up and go back again to make more images, till you get what you need.

Links to articles on his work

Lensculture has a nice little gallery of his Back and White work that makes the case for why I view him as  in influence in photography. https://www.lensculture.com/articles/tony-ray-jones-tony-ray-jones-1941-1972

Books by/on Tony Ray Jones

Tony Ray-Jones by Russel Roberts, (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link).

A Day Off: An English Journal by Tony Ray-Jones, (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link), (Abebooks.co.uk).

Tony Ray-Jones American Colour 1962-1965, (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link).

Robert Frank

For me Robert Frank is hugely important, his book The Americans, changed how I viewed photography, as it did for a lot of photographers. It was one of the early books in my photographic book collection and pointed me in a certain direction. I like that the book was printed small, the size of photography books has grown in the past 50 years. I like that when he went on his road trip that became The Americans, he edited the photographs he made to only 83 images from a total of 653 rolls of film. That is approximately 27,600 images to only use 83 is a really tight edit, so don’t be afraid to kill your photographic babies.

Robert Frank was at the centre photo world in New York in the 1950’s, he had support of some of the magazine and gallery elites that helped him in doing this work. I am not goign to say much more for now as so much has already been written about him take a look at the book Looking In if you want in-depth perspective on Robert Franks work and also Eric Kim’s link below.

YouTube videos with and about Robert Frank.

What I learnt from Robert Frank.

To be free with your camera, it is not so important to have everything perfectly sharp, with horizons perfectly level and the thing right in front of your camera does not have to be the thing in focus.

Edit tightly, be selective and make the series of images as strong as possible. Do not keep images you are emotionally attached to.

Embed yourself within the photo scene with people who can help your career.

Links to articles on his work

Robert Frank at 90: the photographer who revealed America won’t look back. by Sean O’Hagan

Robert Frank’s “The Americans”: Timeless Lessons Street Photographers Can Learn by Eric Kim,

who really explores the work of Robert Frank in depth from his reading of ‘Looking In’ (see below)

Books by/on Robert Frank

The Americans, (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link).

Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans, (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link).  The in-depth exploration including a complete copy of The Americans in the centre of this book.

Robert Frank: In America, (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link). other images made about the same time as The Americans.

Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’: The Art of Documentary Photography by Jonathan Day, (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link). a good exploration of the chapter idea with The Americans.

Peru, photographs by Robert Frank, (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link).

Robert Frank Paris, (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link).

Robert Frank Moving Out, (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link).

There are now more books being published of Robert Franks work as Steidl is busy releasing quite a range of new books from old and new work. In his more recent years Robert has been busy having his work published.

For more information on the range of books that Steidl have published on and by Robert Frank, click on the image above.

Joel Meyerowitz

I like Joel’s take on life and I had the pleasure of spending a few minutes with him once and what I got from him was his sense of wonder at the world. He is always looking and ever curious.  There are numerous videos of him talking about his approach to street photography and photography in general on youtube (list at the bottom of this post). He is highly engaged and very happy to explain his process and way of working. He was a early proponent for colour street photography, he felt that colour gave more description in the image and he wanted to have all the information, whereas he feels that Black and White images do not give enough information.

In his development as a photographer he discusses how he decided to further his skills by giving something up. In one video, he talks about that being the incident in the photograph. Because he knew how to make these photographs BY trying to give up the idea of photographing the incident. To try to “make an overall photograph, where everything in the frame was content” looking for multiple incidents happening simultaneously. He is a  photographer who was not afraid to develop his photographic practice in different directions using both Large format and Leica rangefinder cameras doing landscape and street photography and more recently he has been doing still life images with a Leica S medium format camera.

He also made portraits, I like photographers who are not afraid to keep pushing themselves, continually seeking to develop their ways of seeing and working. I think this is important because as artist/photographer/person, we are always evolving .

I like how Joel is restless in his search for images, ever inquisitive. That I think is important as a photographer, to be always looking and engaged with the world.

He has embraced digital and not been afraid to change and develop adopting new working methods and ways of engagement.

I like how he has no problem say who influenced him and that it was a Photo session with Robert Frank that changed the course of his life from being an art director to that of photographer.

In a talk that he gave at the photographers gallery a piece of advice he gave was that photographers should do what ever it takes to make as much money as possible in as short amount of time so that they are free to concentrate on making their own work. I think this is very sound advice. You need to as a photographer make the work that inspires you and not the work that inspires a client because at the end of the day you are the one making images. If your images are good enough you will be making work that solves yours and your clients visual needs.

YouTube videos with and about Joel Meyerowitz.

What I learnt from Joel Meyerowitz.

Be ever curious and inquiring, when making images don’t just stand in one place, move be agile on the streets. Don’t always look for the incident in the photograph, can you include more in the frame before the images falls apart and does not work.

Books by Joel Meyerowitz.

Cape Light (Amazon USA link), (Amazon UK link).

Bystander: A History of Street Photography with a new Afterword on SP since the 1970s (Amazon USA link), (Amazon UK link).

Joel Meyerowitz (55s) (Amazon USA link), (Amazon UK link).

Joel Meyerowitz: Retrospective (Amazon USA link), (Amazon UK link).

Joel Meyerowitz: Taking My Time (Amazon USA link), (Amazon UK link).

Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness in New York City Parks: Photographs by Joel Meyerowitz (Amazon USA link), (Amazon UK link).

And one book I am looking forward to being able to read.

Conversation with Joel Meyerowitz (Amazon USA link)

On Monday, 13th February. That is this coming Monday, I have having an evening to celebrate leaving teaching. For the past 9 years I have been the Lead Photography Lecturer at Idea Store in Tower Hamlets. I have now returned to my first love and that is being a full time photographer. To celebrate the years of teaching and all of the people that I have helped as a lecturer I am having a little evening at The Fox in Shoreditch, where I am going to raffle off the technical photography books, that I accumulated over the years. I want these books to go to good homes and I want to give something back to our society, so I thought I would raffle these books and give the money to charity. I am still trying to work out who the charity should be so suggestions are welcome.

I look forward to seeing as many of you as can make it.

From 6:30pm till late. 

The Fox

28 Paul Street

London 

EC2A 4LB

Come and celebrate, since you studied with me on any of the courses that we completed, from the short 5 week courses to the year long diploma courses, it would be great to hear your stories of what you have all done with your photography.