Leica M Monochrom: best pics

Just Lounging

Just Lounging

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50 Summicron v5
 
Thanks David. I have been shooting with the M 10 a lot lately and forgot how much I love the MM. Nice casual portrait BTW David and really dig'n the new work Vince.
 
Thanks David. I have been shooting with the M 10 a lot lately and forgot how much I love the MM. Nice casual portrait BTW David and really dig'n the new work Vince.

Many thanks Allen - I’ve been out here since last Tuesday, staying on a farm just south of Las Cruces. I’ve plowed through three 32gb cards both here and in Dell City, TX, in the searing heat, pouring rain, into the night and early morning. Gonna take me a while to go through it all!
 
The wife and I have been talking about a trip out that way again. Last time I was in Santa Fe and Taos was Dec 2014.

Looking forward to seeing more of your new work, Vince.

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Thanks Allen. The bicycle tire with one mounted in background is nice as well as the sphere! I considered selling some stuff and picking up an M10 but my other cameras are fun and I guess when I get time with my MM it is really rewarding so I am shooting color but my M shooting is all B&W. I imagine at some point I will pick up an M10.

Vince, those last two of the three are particularly nice.

David
 
These are looking great Vince. I can't help pairing the number 1 image from the last two posts (each of those showcasing a single farm-worker- and both shading their eyes), and then the number 2 from previous post and #4 from this last set.....you'll no doubt be up to your ears editing when you get home :)

David
 
These are looking great Vince. I can't help pairing the number 1 image from the last two posts (each of those showcasing a single farm-worker- and both shading their eyes), and then the number 2 from previous post and #4 from this last set.....you'll no doubt be up to your ears editing when you get home :)

David

Thanks again David - yes I’m going to have quite a chore going through all these photos, as well as incorporating some of them into the existing Mapping the West series. I have a show in Baltimore in November-December, as well as another one in Harrisonburg, Virginia in February. Hopefully a bit of this new work will be part of it.

This trip has opened up so many new opportunities that I think I have a lifetime project on my hands :)
 
Well, Vince, it had occurred to me and no doubt to you that a project titled Mapping the West is really asking for your life (or for more geographically discrete titles). Why not go for it, and spend the decades you may have and the considerable empathy, talent and skills you already have?

The alternative might be to limit the scope to New Mexico—at least until you head west into Arizona or North into Utah/Colorado, or further north and west as far as necessary. The West, though, is such a vast and contentious concept, and at some point requires, as an artistic subject, an honest evaluation of whether or how one is going to consider its cities, its urban lives, coastlines—or whether one is going to define one’s territory as much or more by what is left out as what gets in....

E.g., Ansel Adams’ West is even more highly circumscribed than yours, though not nearly as humanized (which is one of your most visible strengths, especially regarding work); Robert Frank (his significance on many photographers’ minds this week) managed to register something like an On the Road version of the West in his drives of American discovery; Edward Curtis devoted his portraiture project to aboriginal people. Maybe others in this thread can suggest better and more recent examples of taking on this vast historical, multicultural, and deeply symbolic place—, but even if they do, this is still your challenge to decide how to expand or how to circumscribe.

The work itself, at ground level, image to image, is superb. And there’s a template in what you’ve done so far, about human endurance, labor, making a living from the earth, the persistence and dignity of life in little towns in an era of urban and and suburban coastal outmigrations, which could be geographically/culturally expanded or radically circumscribed—by which I mean sticking more or less to the west that New Mexico represents (unlike the west that Montana or Idaho or Washington east of the Cascades represents).

I’m enjoying and admiring the work as it comes, and will do so whether you expand or contract its scope. After living in the Pacific NW for 25 years, and traveling east of the Cascades, into the Great Basin, Utah, Colorado, farming communities and Navajo towns and mining towns (mostly before I carried a camera everywhere, alas, but I had the same eyes I have now), I know I saw some significant fractions of the plenitude and emptiness and how humans cope with—but they were just fractions, and the West is much vaster and probably impossible to reconcile in one vision. But that’s your conceptual conundrum, now. It can’t be a west that comfortably fits what sidewalk art shoppers in DC or even Santa Fe or Carmel think the west is; it should be the west you define by writing out your boundaries and covenants and restrictions, so that the existing images don’t have to compare to nonexistent images you could have made if only you had spent time in Burns, Oregon or Rifle, Colorado.

I’ll be interested and appreciative in following this, whichever way you choose to solve it.
 
Well, Vince, it had occurred to me and no doubt to you that a project titled Mapping the West is really asking for your life (or for more geographically discrete titles). Why not go for it, and spend the decades you may have and the considerable empathy, talent and skills you already have?

The alternative might be to limit the scope to New Mexico—at least until you head west into Arizona or North into Utah/Colorado, or further north and west as far as necessary. The West, though, is such a vast and contentious concept, and at some point requires, as an artistic subject, an honest evaluation of whether or how one is going to consider its cities, its urban lives, coastlines—or whether one is going to define one’s territory as much or more by what is left out as what gets in....

E.g., Ansel Adams’ West is even more highly circumscribed than yours, though not nearly as humanized (which is one of your most visible strengths, especially regarding work); Robert Frank (his significance on many photographers’ minds this week) managed to register something like an On the Road version of the West in his drives of American discovery; Edward Curtis devoted his portraiture project to aboriginal people. Maybe others in this thread can suggest better and more recent examples of taking on this vast historical, multicultural, and deeply symbolic place—, but even if they do, this is still your challenge to decide how to expand or how to circumscribe.

The work itself, at ground level, image to image, is superb. And there’s a template in what you’ve done so far, about human endurance, labor, making a living from the earth, the persistence and dignity of life in little towns in an era of urban and and suburban coastal outmigrations, which could be geographically/culturally expanded or radically circumscribed—by which I mean sticking more or less to the west that New Mexico represents (unlike the west that Montana or Idaho or Washington east of the Cascades represents).

I’m enjoying and admiring the work as it comes, and will do so whether you expand or contract its scope. After living in the Pacific NW for 25 years, and traveling east of the Cascades, into the Great Basin, Utah, Colorado, farming communities and Navajo towns and mining towns (mostly before I carried a camera everywhere, alas, but I had the same eyes I have now), I know I saw some significant fractions of the plenitude and emptiness and how humans cope with—but they were just fractions, and the West is much vaster and probably impossible to reconcile in one vision. But that’s your conceptual conundrum, now. It can’t be a west that comfortably fits what sidewalk art shoppers in DC or even Santa Fe or Carmel think the west is; it should be the west you define by writing out your boundaries and covenants and restrictions, so that the existing images don’t have to compare to nonexistent images you could have made if only you had spent time in Burns, Oregon or Rifle, Colorado.

I’ll be interested and appreciative in following this, whichever way you choose to solve it.

Many thanks for your eloquent thoughts Robert -- I'm still trying to figure out what the West means to me. As you suggest and as I've pretty much concluded, it's likely going to be a lifetime project of exploration and questioning.

Some of my influence doesn't necessarily come from Ansel Adams, Timothy O'Sullivan, Edward Curtis (though I'm sure their spirits are perpetually hovering over the West) or even Robert Frank, but sometimes I feel like I'm carrying on the work of the New Topographics from the 1970s, albeit with a lot more photos with people in them. My now-deceased former professor Dave Heath (and interestingly a friend to Robert Frank) has also loomed large in a portion of my photographic life. I'm trying to strike a balance between photographing 'things' and 'situations' that strike me as either ironic, contain elements of metaphor or contrast and providing some kind of narrative, with those photos that involve actual people (and not strictly some evidence of human involvement).

As far as geographically restricting myself, I do seem to be spending much of my time in New Mexico. However I was also spending a fair bit of time in Montana. Plus if I drive out West from Baltimore, I end up passing through a number of other Western states, such as Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. Though I have included a couple of photos from Washington state (the Palouse region), for example, I don’t necessarily think that the photos themselves have to reference a specific state. I rarely even mention where a given photo was taken in its title - I like to think of them more as being emblematic of the West, rather than depictions of specific places in the West, if that makes sense.

This time around I developed and cultivated (excuse the pun) a relationship with a farming family and their employees. They're located south of Las Cruces in New Mexico, as well as Dell City in Texas (east of El Paso). This was quite different for me to be situated in two distinct spots for my entire stay, as I usually travel all around the state when I'm out there. We got on so well that I have an open invitation to return whenever I want and as often as I'd like. I have a show coming up this November-December in Baltimore, and hopefully some of this new work will make its way into it. I’m also hoping to head back to the farm for the pecan harvest in December.

The other thing that recently happened which will hopefully prove to be a real shot in the arm to this project is that I just got accepted into a month-long ‘artist in residence’ program in Carrizozo, NM. It's not until January 2021, but it will enable me to spend a concentrated amount of time out there and really delve into the community and its surroundings. The program will likely culminate with some kind of exhibit there as well as an artist talk. I'm going to see if I can extend my stay in the program to 5 weeks.

Whenever I need real motivation (as well as a creative kick in the pants), I watch this little Jay Maisel video. Pretty well sums up what I need to keep doing: https://vimeo.com/116692462

I have about 2400 shots to go through -- hopefully there might be a few gems hidden in the mix.


Carson5
by Vince Lupo, on Flickr
 
Love these but especially 9am break. The dog even is struck by the spectacle of the elderly worker sitting on the end of the furrows.
 
Love these but especially 9am break. The dog even is struck by the spectacle of the elderly worker sitting on the end of the furrows.

Thanks Richard - very interesting that most if not all of the workers in the field were ‘older’ gentlemen. And they’ve probably been doing this type of work for much of their lives.
 
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