A photographically interesting couple of hours in Pleasantville, NY

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A few days before Christmas my wife was going to lunch with a friend in Pleasantville, NY. I needed to get out of the house so I decided to go along with her. I knew that there was a small bookstore in Pleasantville and I thought that I would “check it out” and then grab a bite to eat.

I set off walking in the direction of the bookstore when I spotted this photo store: Photoworks. I’d noticed it before, but it always seemed to be closed when I went by. Assuming that it was largely devoted to photofinishing, scanning etc. I was about to walk by when, looking through the window, I noticed a glass case inside – full of vintage cameras. I went in and asked the women if the cameras were for sale or just for display. She called her husband, George who emerged from the back somewhere and we had a long conversation about vintage cameras. Inside the case were two Nikon Fs (see above). I’d wanted one of these for a while, the price was right and the prospect of actually having a human being I could bring the camera back to in case of problems was appealing. I told him I would consult with my wife and return later.

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I continued on to the bookstore: The Village Bookstore, a very pleasant establishment, small but well stocked and with a nice atmosphere. Among the shelves I came across (and purchased) this recently published biography of Robert Frank: American Witness. The Art and Life of Robert Frank.

Time to start looking for somewhere to eat. Then I spotted this building. On the front it said “The Gordon Parks Foundation“, so I went inside to take a look. I didn’t even realize that such an institution existed in Pleasantville. Inside they had a small selection of books by/on Gordon Parks but the bulk of the space was taken up by an exhibition: Element: Gordon Parks and Kendric Lamar. According to the Foundation’s website:

The Gordon Parks Foundation announced the opening of ELEMENT – a new exhibition on view at the Foundation’s exhibition space from December 1—February 10 showcasing Gordon Parks photographs that inspired rapper Kendrick Lamar’s music video ELEMENT from his album, DAMN. Lamar, known for using powerful images in his music videos, directly references and revives a number of Parks’ images that explore the lives of Black Americans, including the 1963 photo Boy With Junebug, Untitled, the 1956 photo from Parks’ “Segregation Stories” series, Ethel Sharrieff, a 1963 photo from his “The White Man’s Day Is Almost Over” photo essay about Black Muslims, as well as photos form Parks’ 1948 “Harlem Gang Leader” series.

“Gordon Parks’ work is continuing to have a great impact on young people – and particularly on artists like Kendrick who, use the power of imagery to examine issues related to social justice and race in our country,” said Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., Executive Director of The Gordon Parks Foundation. “With ELEMENT the music video, Kendrick has helped to call attention to one of the most important artists of our time.”

Long-time friend and supporter of The Gordon Parks Foundation, Kasseem Dean (aka, Swizz Beatz) noted, “I’m so inspired that my friend Kendrick Lamar chose the iconic imagery of the legendary Gordon Parks in his video for ELEMENT. It’s a prime example of how contemporary change makers – artists, musicians, filmmakers, designers – can borrow from the greats of the past who were also working towards social change.”

At the foundation of ELEMENT. are Parks’ photo essays exploring issues related to poverty and social justice which established him as one of the most significant story tellers of American society. “Harlem Gang Leader,” the photo essay published in LIFE magazine, is credited with introducing Parks to America. The photos explored the world of Leonard “Red” Jackson, the leader of a gang in Harlem. Soon after, Parks was offered a position as staff photographer for the magazine, making him the first, and for a long time the only, African American photographer at the magazine. Also published in LIFE, Parks documented the daily life of an extended African American family living under Jim Crow segregation in the rural South entitled “The Restraints: Open and Hidden.”

The Guardian has also published an interesting article on this exhibition: The story behind Kendrick Lamar’s Gordon Parks exhibition

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After that I decided that I didn’t have enough time to eat before meeting my wife so I adjourned to a nearby bar
Foley’s Club Lounge for a couple of beers.

According to Mount Pleasant by George Waterbury, Claudine Waterbury, Bert Ruiz:

Harry Foley was a Pleasantville High School Basketball legend. He was also a Niagara University Hall of Fame and Westchester County Hall of Fame athlete. He bought Gorman’s Club Lounge on Bedford Road in 1950 and maintained the establishment until the 1970s. Foley’s Club Lounge has been a traditional watering hole for generations of Pace University students for nearly a half century.

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When my wife finished her lunch we met up and I asked her if she’d like to buy me a Christmas present. She said yes so it was off back to the photo store to pick up the Nikon F with Photomic Ftn finder.

All in all a photographically speaking an interesting day, if rather unexpected.

Revisiting Ansel Adams

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Jeffrey Pine. Source: Ansel Adams Galleries

Jeffrey Pine, Sentinel Dome. Source: Ansel Adams Galleries

I got the idea for this post from a video that I came across on the internet. I was well worth seeing so I thought I would post a link to it. However, as I started to do so it occurred to me that I might have posted about this video before. I checked and indeed I had (see Ansel Adams: A Documentary Film 2002).

So instead this post revisits my love/hate relationship with Ansel Adams. Actually ‘hate’ is the wrong word. Even when I’m ‘down’ on Adams I don’t ‘hate’ his work. It’s just that once upon a time I thought he was THE great photographer. This was in the late 1970s-early 1980s. My wife had recently bought me my first serious camera (a Minolta Hi-Matic 7sII) and I was new to photography. At that time Adams was (and continues to be) immensely poplar. A print of “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico” sold at auction in 1981, for a then record price for a photograph – $71,500 (doesn’t seem much now when Rhein II by Andreas Gursky is fetching in excess of $4 million!). This was the kind of photographer I wanted to be. I wanted to make (Adams himself preferred the verb to ‘make’ a photograph rather than to ‘take’ one) landscape photographs like these.

Over the years I learned more about photography and famous photographers and discovered that even though to this day I continue to photograph landscapes, my passion for landscape photography pales in comparison to Adam’s. Other genres started to interest me. Other photographers began to interest me and I started to turn away from Ansel Adams. I began to think of him as more of a superb technician than a great creative photographer.

Then in the late 1990s-late 2000s I almost entirely lost interest in photography, ‘making’ pictures only when required to document travel and family events. Starting around 2010 my interest was re-kindled and since then I’ve been taking pictures, collecting cameras and reading about famous photographers like there’s no tomorrow.

So where do I stand on Adams now. My collection of photography books includes Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs (a great book). I’d also read Looking at Ansel Adams: The Photographs and the Man and I have a copy of Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs. In preparation for this post I read his autobiography: Ansel Adams: An Autobiography.

I also did quick and totally unscientific test. I looked at all of the photographs in “Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs” one evening. The next day I repeated this exercise noting down those that if felt, from a quick perusal, had moved me. Only 24 had.

Of course there’s much more to Ansel Adams than just his photographs. He was an accomplished pianist (headed for a career as a concert pianist before photography became his passion). Judging from his autobiography he was no slouch at writing either. He was a tireless advocate for the environment, a founder member of the West Coast circle of photographers Group f64 that also included (among others) Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham, a founder of ‘Aperture‘ magazine. He was also an educator and a prolific writer. Adams, along with Alfred Stieglitz, probably had the most impact on the evolution of photography in the United States.

His best photographs are superb! However, I feel that the totality of his work falls behind other great American photographers like Paul Strand and Edward Weston. Neither of these photographers had the same overall impact on photography as a whole though.

Regrettably the tree in the picture above has now gone. According to the Ansel Adams Gallery:

Though Adams’ photograph made the Jeffrey Pine famous, it was long an icon for photographers visiting Yosemite ; Carleton Watkins photographed it in 1867. the easy hike to reach Sentinel Dome from the Glacier Point road, the tree became a popular destination; over the years, thousands of visitors carved their initials into it. Despite the efforts of park rangers who carried buckets of water to it, the tree perished in the drought of 1976-77 and fell in August 2003.

Online portal at George Eastman House

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According to a November 6, 2016 Shutterbug article:

The famous George Eastman Museum has created a new, public portal where you can view over 250,000 images and other objects from their vast collections. The database is searchable by artist, collection, classification and date, and includes a wealth of photography, cinema, and technology related to imaging.

…

The 250,000 objects currently on the site are but a mere fraction of the museum’s collections of several million objects, but additional holdings are being added to the portal weekly.

It’s certainly an impressive undertaking. I briefly browsed through it and there’s a lot to see. Unfortunately they seem have started off with the image metadata, to which they are gradually adding images. I imagine it’s faster to add the metadata than it is to scan all the images. So the end result is that many of the entries indicate that the image is “not available”. For example I searched for Ansel Adams and got 18 pages of results. On the first page there were 24 entries. 18 of them indicated that the image was not available. I’m sure that over time these gaps will be filled.

It’s potentially a great resource.

More from Christies

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I mentioned in an earlier post (See: Self portrait with Cindy) that we went to Christies in New York City the other day. Here are a few other items that caught my attention. Above: The star of the show.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Salvator Mundi
oil on panel
25 7/8 x 18 in. (65.7 x 45.7 cm.)
Painted circa 1500.
Estimate: Only available on request. Some sources (e.g. NY Times – Contemporary Art Sales: Do I Hear $100 Million?) anticipate that it will fetch $US100 million or more. UPDATE: It eventually sold for the to me obscene amount of $US450 MILLION!

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Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010)
Spider II
signed with the artist’s initials and stamped with the edition number ‘LB 5/6’ (on underside)
bronze
73 x 73 x 22 1/2 in. (185.4 x 185.4 x 57.2 cm.)
Executed in 1995. This work is number five from an edition of six plus one artist’s proof.
Estimate: $US10,000,000-15,000,000.

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David Smith (1906-1965)
Voltron XXIV
signed, titled and dated ‘XXIV Voltron David Smith 3-25-63’ (on the base)
steel
98 5/8 x 33 x 13 in. (230.1 x 83.8 x 33 cm.)
Executed in 1963.
Estimate: US5,000,000-$US7,000,000.

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Cindy Sherman (b. 1954)
Untitled #408
signed, numbered and dated ‘Cindy Sherman 3/6 2002’ (on the backing board)
chromogenic print
54 x 36 in. (137.2 x 91.4 cm.)
Executed in 2002. This work is number three from an edition of six.
Estimate: $US80,0000-$120,000.

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Richard Avedon (1923-2004)
Marilyn Monroe, actress, New York City, May 6, 1957
signed and numbered ‘Avedon 34/50’ and stamped with title, date and photographer’s copyright credit (on the reverse)
gelatin silver print flush-mounted on linen
image: 18 3/4 x 15 1/2 in. (47.6 x 39.4 cm.)
sheet: 20 x 15 7/8 in. (50.8 x 40.3 cm.)
Printed in 1980. This work is number thirty-four from an edition of fifty.
Estimate: $US70,000-$US100,000.

Self Portrait with Cindy

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Our younger daughter was in town doing PR work for a Swiss company that was showing their wares at Christies and we went into New York City to see what she was up to and to meet with some other friends for lunch. Simultaneously a massive auction was taking place (See: NY Times – Christie’s Has Art World’s First $1 Billion Week).

Among the many paintings and sculptures were a few photographs, most of them by Cindy Sherman. This is one of them. According to a card next to the photograph: “Cindy Sherman (b. 1954). ‘Untitled 65’: signed, numbered and dated ‘Cindy Sherman 1/10 1981’ (on the reverse). Color coupler print. 24×48 in. (60.9 x 121.9 cm.). Executed in 1981. This work is one from an edition of 10.”

It was estimated to sell for $US 600,000 – $800,000 and actually sold for $US783,750. Seems like a lot, but peanuts compared to the Van Gogh “Laboureur dans un champ“, which fetched $81,312,500 and the Da Vinci “Salvator Mundi“, which is expected to fetch in excess of US100 million when it goes on sale on Wednesday.

As I was taking my picture I realized that I could see my own reflection in the glass. Moreover, I couldn’t figure out a way to avoid it. So I’ve now made it a feature of the photograph. Appropriation art à la Richard Prince? Some kind of comment on the state of contemporary photography? Maybe I’m onto something here. Don’t think it would fetch close to $US800,000 though.