leicapixie
Well-known
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138203
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138203
http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=138203
Robert Frank's Nikkor
- Thread starter thompsonks
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thompsonks
Well-known
Perhaps the folks who've been concerned about sprocket holes showing on his negatives have forgotten that these old guys (the cameras, not Robert Frank – he was young then) were bottom-loaders. You didn't have the convenience of checking the film alignment as you do on an M, with its back door.
Anyway I began the thread because of interest in Frank's Nikkor. I'd always wondered hows he got that gorgeous glow around his juke boxes. And now I wonder what other lenses he used for The Americans?
Anyway I began the thread because of interest in Frank's Nikkor. I'd always wondered hows he got that gorgeous glow around his juke boxes. And now I wonder what other lenses he used for The Americans?
gilgsn
Established
Sure you can, you put the speed dial on "T" and press the shutter. I do it on my IIIc all the time..
Only thing is, you need to take the lens off.
Gil.
Pioneer
Veteran
I do enjoy working with my LTM Nikkor 50/2,
but it is certainly a heavy little bugger.
but it is certainly a heavy little bugger.
Rangefinderfreak
Well-known
maybe he was using IXMOO`s in III body, they are shorter and cause film to be wrongly aligned...
sparrow6224
Well-known
It is quite true that Frank utterly lacked the meticulousness and care of Ansel Adams in relation to his gear and to the taking of the photograph. And this shows in his work: he's often a frustratingly sloppy photographer, in my view. He was quite vitriolic in recent years about Henri Cartier-Bresson, who, he claimed, cared only about the formal beauty of the image and not the people in it, which I find absurd.
robert blu
quiet photographer
telenous
Well-known
And yet, its hard not to sympathize with Frank. For one thing, the kind of criticism he hinted at, is not unusual at all. See for example the relevant excerpts from Sontag's On Photography, which often reads as a sustained criticism against the type of photographer Cartier-Bresson himself was. Or the following article touching precisely on this subject: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/artworld/2010/04/19/100419craw_artworld_schjeldahl
Remember also the critical reception of The Americans. There was outrage at the way it defied received/established norms. Think for a moment what would have happened if Cartier-Bresson had a hand in editing Frank's book. Had he insisted in his absolutes, there wouldn't be much left to see. And I guess it was not just Cartier-Bresson, absolutes give rise to cults and sophomorisms galore about the way things ought and oughn't be done. Maybe Frank had to deal with stuff like that a bit too often. If so, an outburst was really small recompense.
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telenous
Well-known
Thanks for the link, good find. I always thought (because I read as much) he used a Zeiss Sonnar 50/1.5 and a Biogon 35/2.8 LTM at the time. The Sonnar design seems to have been right. I'm still curious about the wide-angle lens.
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airfrogusmc
Veteran
sparrow6224
Well-known
Alkis -- There is nothing better for an artist than outrage, it turns out, at least in those cultures that tend to refrain from killing you. I will re-read the Schjeldahl piece; I read him about the HCB show at the time and as I recall disagreed with him, though I knew him a long time ago and always admire his work (even when disagreeing which is rare). Perhaps it's not even the same piece but I suspect it is. I am clueless -- as a long time student of Cartier-Bresson -- where people get the idea of his rigidity or of some notion that he wouldn't tolerate one thing or another. He didn't edit his own work much -- he left it to others -- there's little reason to imagine him somehow editing Frank's. Frank's complaint, as it appears at length in the catalog to the HCB show, clearly is a complaint about class. He cannot believe that an aristocrat and Modernist (with classical and surrealist tendencies) could be "with" the people in the ways that Frank believed he himself had been and that he believed a great photo journalist/ photo documentarian must be.
There is no evidence of this that I know of. Meanwhile the humanity of the photographs (the ones about humans, I should say) is nearly palpable.
I ahve been avoiding the Sontag for a LONG time. Perhaps I'll stop soon. Meanwhile, have you read this? It circulated here on RFF a year or two ago. http://www.ishupatel.com/bresson.html
robert blu
quiet photographer
I find it always interesting know something more about a photographer I love. Thanks for the link.
robert
airfrogusmc
Veteran
You're welcome. The Americans is one of my all time favorite photography books.
robert blu
quiet photographer
Another good book (just my opinion) I have and I suggest you is "story lines" by steidl. More recent work from Frank is included. I like this book.
robert
airfrogusmc
Veteran
I'll have to pick it up thanks...
aoresteen
Well-known
I think he shot 20,000 images making the book. I wonder what images we didn't get to see. Surely there's a Vol 2 and Vol 3 in his files.
semi-ambivalent
Little to say
I guess one could use the word sloppy to describe a lot of Frank's work. The question is does it hinder his message? This is important for the Formalist because (I thought) they had no message other than the 'perfect' arrangements of objects in their images. Also, being 'sloppy' runs counter to the core advertising driving photographic equipment sales for decades.
There are a couple Franks I'd like to buy if I ever came up with the money. I can think of no Bresson for which I could commit similar resources except possibly for the one of the man on the bicycle.
airfrogusmc
Veteran
Editing, what you choose to show and maybe even more important what you choose not to show is as important, maybe more, than what you choose to photograph.
airfrogusmc
Veteran
"Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." - Henri Cartier-Bresson
As in both Frank and Bresson does the so called sloppiness supports what they are trying to say visually? I would say in Bresson's and Frank's case yes. So then if it is intended and supports the overall message of the photogrpah then is it sloppiness or just using all the visual tools at hand to help communicate an idea?
And yes we are living in a pixel peeping over obsessed world of sharpness.
As in both Frank and Bresson does the so called sloppiness supports what they are trying to say visually? I would say in Bresson's and Frank's case yes. So then if it is intended and supports the overall message of the photogrpah then is it sloppiness or just using all the visual tools at hand to help communicate an idea?
And yes we are living in a pixel peeping over obsessed world of sharpness.
telenous
Well-known
Vince, you are right in your characterization of Cartier-Bresson. The quote provided in the HCB exhibition catalogue makes it clear that Frank took issue with the way Cartier-Bresson photographed, but I don't think it had anything to do with Cartier-Bresson's class. Here's the quote (for the benefit of those without access to the catalogue):
...Cartier-Bresson - compared to his early work - the work in the past twenty years, well, I would rather he hadn't done it. That may be too harsh, but I've always thought it was terribly important to have a point of view, and I was always sort of disappointed in him that it was never in his pictures. He traveled all over the goddamned world, and you never felt that he was moved by something that was happening other than the beauty of it, or just the composition... (R.Frank, interview in Life magazine, 1975)
Frank exasparates at the 'equanimity of regard', the 'disinterested observation' (quotes by P. Galassi in the catalogue), the priority of formalism, and ultimately the apolitical perspective, the opposites of which were very important to Frank, personally. I think there's indisputable evidence of that in Cartier-Bresson's output, what with human figures receding in importance --sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively-- for his compositions to look just right. Like Peter Schjeldahl notes, Cartier-Bresson's 'distance', as well as his photographic formidableness, speak for themselves. That said, the first sentence from the quote by Frank does read harsh, Cartier-Bresson's slide from the greatness of the 30s was nowhere near as steep or severe as Frank implied. It also supports the view that Frank and Cartier-Bresson worked somewhat at crosspurposes. It wouldn't be possible for Frank to do what he did with Cartier-Bresson's aesthetics and vc.vs. Are they both great, sure, for different reasons and with different weaknesses.
There are many anecdotal stories. Off the cuff, check Eggleston's story about the time they met and what was the only thing HCB told him, and most importantly the manner it was said. (link here, scroll to the very end for the HCB-Eggleston encounter: http://patriksandberg.com/2011/09/23/william-eggleston-by-drew-barrymore/ ) Also indicative: shuffling through 'The Mind's Eye' you come across numerous ought's and ought-not's, and a general tone of moral conviction and disregard for alternative practice usually not to be encountered outside the confines of religious sects. Perhaps I am exaggerating a bit -- but only just a bit. 🙂
OK, but I didn't propose this as a genuine possibility (Frank would be crazy to ask HCB do the edit), but rather as an invitation to a silly thought-experiment, just to illustrate what would have happened, if Cartier-Bresson applied his photographic convictions to the work of others.
I understand what you are saying about Sontag. For a long time I also avoided 'On Photography' for fear of having to wade through a lot of claptrap. The book was and wasn't like that, there is a definite tendency for verbosity but also a good few intuitions and a strong criticism of the kind of photographer who uses his camera as a "passport" to visit the lives of others without further responsibility or concern. Incidentally that's a kind of criticism that can be directed at both Frank and Cartier-Bresson, although, obviously I think, it is more pertinent in the case of the latter. (And, famously, most pertinent of all to Arbus, who was Sontag's bête noire.) Other critics have taken the basic thrust of Sontag's polemic to apply it to some other photographers who have an affinity with Cartier-Bresson. (There was a thread with a link to an essay on Salgado, criticising him on these terms, but I can't find it now.) One of the interesting aspects of this debate is to think how one could defend photographers like them against Sontag's criticism and her critical heirs.
Thank you for the link. I read the story at the time and I remembered vaguely Cartier-Bresson being kind but not particularly friendly. I am re-reading now, and Mr Patel has definitely a warm recollection of the events and a lot of gratitude but I still get this queasy feeling reading it. Call me a cynic or blame it in having read 'Tin-Tin in Congo' at a tender age. I could be wrong of course.
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