willie_901
Veteran
GW photographed a boxer named Nick Biondi at length for Sports Illustrated in the mid 1950s.
This link contains a lengthy contemporary interview with Bondi.
http://blog.sfmoma.org/2013/05/the-boxer/
I think this piece gives an interesting perspective on GW as a person and on his skills as a documentary photographer early in his career.
One take home message for me was that technical skill and the ability to work well and fast is important for documentary photography. The other is that large, loud cameras with large lenses would be a severe handicap to achieve what GW did during this project.
Here is one quote from Bondi.
"Biondi: One of the things that still amazes me about the encounter was that neither I nor any of the other participants in the photographs were even remotely self-conscious. Normally when there’s a guy with a camera focusing his attention on you, a person might become self-conscious. Self-consciousness didn’t exist for me then, and looking at the photographs it doesn’t show itself in the pictures. I wasn’t aware of Garry the Photographer’s presence. He was like a ghost, and we simply went about our daily tasks. It helped enormously that he didn’t use flash, but it also made us wonder if he actually had film in the camera! In my opinion this ghostliness was a major component of his talent."
This link contains a lengthy contemporary interview with Bondi.
http://blog.sfmoma.org/2013/05/the-boxer/
I think this piece gives an interesting perspective on GW as a person and on his skills as a documentary photographer early in his career.
One take home message for me was that technical skill and the ability to work well and fast is important for documentary photography. The other is that large, loud cameras with large lenses would be a severe handicap to achieve what GW did during this project.
Here is one quote from Bondi.
"Biondi: One of the things that still amazes me about the encounter was that neither I nor any of the other participants in the photographs were even remotely self-conscious. Normally when there’s a guy with a camera focusing his attention on you, a person might become self-conscious. Self-consciousness didn’t exist for me then, and looking at the photographs it doesn’t show itself in the pictures. I wasn’t aware of Garry the Photographer’s presence. He was like a ghost, and we simply went about our daily tasks. It helped enormously that he didn’t use flash, but it also made us wonder if he actually had film in the camera! In my opinion this ghostliness was a major component of his talent."
