lundi 14 novembre 2011

Radical Camera : New York's Photo League, 1936-1951





The Wishing Tree, 1937
© Aaron Siskind

In 1936 a group of young, idealistic photographers, most of them Jewish, first-generation Americans, formed an organization in Manhattan called the Photo League. Their solidarity centered on a belief in the expressive power of the documentary photograph and on a progressive alliance in the 1930s of socialist ideas and art. The Radical Camera presents the contested path of the documentary photograph during a tumultuous period that spanned the New Deal reforms of the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War.
Lire la suite dans Lens, le blog du New York Times.
L'exposition The Radical Camera est présentée jusqu'au 25 mars 2012 au Musée Juif de New York (1109 5th Ave at 92nd St. New York NY 10128).

lundi 7 novembre 2011

Jamie Beck e Kevin Burg







"There's something magical about a still photograph - a captured moment in time - that can simultaneously exist outside the fraction of a second the shutter capture."
Jamie Beck
 Voir d'autres cinemagraphs ici

lundi 31 octobre 2011

dimanche 30 octobre 2011

Bernard Plossu


Mexique, 1981.

"Un lit défait. Un corps de femme qui tourne le dos, dans l'abdication paisible du sommeil. La courbe douce de ses hanches sous le drap. La courbe lisse de son corps dans le froissement des draps. Le contact de la chair à l'étoffe. Les cheveux noirs profond tâchent la blancheur du lit.
Imprégnée d'elle-même, elle repose. Nue et pourtant couverte, découverte et pourtant inaccessible.
Douceur indicible de l'image, de cette femme hors de portée, hors d'atteinte, de la lumière qui ruisselle. Rien ne vient briser le repos de la femme seule, étrangère au monde dans la quiétude, la torpeur, l'inertie du sommeil. Image enveloppante, qui ne semble pas être une prise de vue, un acte de prédation au monde, juste un regard à peine posé.
Le bruissement, le murmure de la respiration d'une femme endormie."
Caroline Milic Les yeux avides

mardi 25 octobre 2011

Edward Steichen






















Gary Cooper by Edward Steichen. Printed by George Tice.

Si vous êtes à New York, ne manquez pas les expositions "Edward Steichen: The Last Printing" et "George Tice: Seldom Seen", jusqu'au 29 octobre.
Danziger Gallery
 527 West 23rd Street
 New York, NY 10011

samedi 15 octobre 2011

Rodney Smith




"To be a photographer implies a calling, a dedication, an ability to expose oneself in a way very few people have the capacity or courage to do. If one ever becomes a photographer, it is as if one has won the Nobel Prize." Rodney Smith. Lire la suite sur The End Starts Here

dimanche 3 juillet 2011

Juliane Koepcke


On Christmas Eve 1971, in the skies above the desolate, remote jungles of Peru, LANSA Flight 508 got its ass rocked like a hurricane by a ginormous bolt of lightning that blew the entire fuselage apart like a humongoid human-filled flying pipe bomb with wings.  Juliane Koepcke, a quiet seventeen year-old high school senior on her way to visit her father, fell two miles out of the sky, without a parachute, crunching into the dirt floor of the Amazon Rain Forest with enough velocity to fracture the skull of Bahamut the World Fish.  When she somehow miraculously awoke and came to her senses (a feat which few of her fellow passengers managed to accomplish), she was still strapped in to her seat.  She had a broken collarbone, a severe concussion, deep cuts in her arms and legs, and one of her eyes had been swollen shut like Stallone the end of Rocky II.  You know, the sort of injuries you'd expect from someone who just plummeted through a few thousand feet of freefall and splashed down in a goddamned rainforest.

Juliane unbuckled her apparently-indestructible airline seat belt (she was obviously paying attention when the flight attendant was going through that whole "here's how you properly fasten your safety belt" portion of the spiel) and briefly surveyed the wreckage.  All she saw were corpses and empty seats. She was alone in the Amazon, with the thick canopy jungle above her preventing her from signaling for help, and effectively crotch-stomping any hope for a successful or timely rescue.  Juliane Koepcke had no food, no tools, no gear, no powerbars, no means to make fire, no maps, and no compass.  Shit, she only had one shoe, having lost the other one during that whole "careening through the atmosphere" thing, which I guess is understandable.  It was just her and the wilderness, mano-e-womano.

La suite ici

mercredi 8 juin 2011

The Heart is a Sleeping Beauty


© Wim Wenders. 
Once upon a time there was an enchanted hotel...
... built many, many years ago,
at the beginning of the last century
on the corner of 5th Street and Main,
in the heart of downtown Los Angeles.
For a while it was the tallest and most splendid building
in the city.
And it carried the euphemistic name
The Rosslyn Million Dollar Hotel.

La suite sur son site ici

mercredi 18 mai 2011

Rodney Smith





"For as long as I can remember, I have a penchant to drift slowly into a distant reverie. If I happen by chance to be by some paper, whether it be a napkin, a tissue or a legitimate piece of fine writing paper, I find myself (as I dream of the world around me) doodling. This doodle has remained basically constant and steadfast since I was a little a boy. It seems quite pathetic that one doesn’t mature in one’s doodle, but mine has remained the same for many years. I am not sure if this is an infirmity on my part or something I should cherish. This doodle is always an arrow pointing directly to the right, unrestrained, straight, and powerful."
La suite sur The End Starts Here, l'excellent blog de Rodney Smith. 

vendredi 1 avril 2011

Brigitte Bermann-Fischer






















Brigitte Bermann Fischer (1905-1991) était la fille
d'un célèbre éditeur berlinois. Lire son autobiographie ici.
Photo trouvée au Musée juif de Berlin

samedi 12 mars 2011