What more can be said about the great Henri Cartier – Bresson that has not been said before. Known for “the decisive moment” with his incredible candid photography on the street and elsewhere, it turns out he was a pretty damn good maker of portraits. Unlike others of his generation, such as Arnold Newman, that specialized in the genre and used larger format cameras, HCB made his portraits of the famous and not so famous using a Leica, so the pictures have a different feel to them. Perhaps more fluid even though they were made in the subject’s environment as Newman and others did.

Tête à Tête is simply a wonderful book, containing almost 150 terrific black and white images (Have you ever seen an HCB picture that wasn’t stellar? Answer: No!).  The book is made all the more interesting because he sequenced the photographs himself rather than leaving that all important task to the editor, so we get further insight into the thinking of this very private photographer. Also of interest is the wonderful introduction by the great art historian E.H. Gombrich, accompanied by eight of HCB’s portrait sketches. Many younger readers may not be familiar with a number of the subjects captured in this tremendous book, but no matter, it is the pictures that count and the portraits are timeless!

I am lucky to own several of HCB’s books, including the recent incredible re-issue of the Decisive Moment.  While most would probably think the photographs contained in that landmark book and others such as Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photographer as his go to body of work, it would be a terribly remiss not to be aware of these important images.

It appears that Tête à Têteis still available new in hard cover, although it may be a different printing then my Bullfinch edition. What I can tell you is that the Bullfinch publication is beautifully printed. In any case, this is a book that belongs on every photographer’s bookshelf! Get it and enjoy!

Whenever I traveled overseas I always tried to find some time to visit museums … and of course photograph if possible. I think it was about 1984 or so. I was in London on business with the State Department and had some time to kill during an evening. As usual I would ask around or look at local artsy publications usually found in hotel lobbies. So I was skimming through one of them in my room and what do you know … Paul Caponigro was going to be giving a lecture that night at the Barbican Centre, not far from where I was staying!  So much for dinner, I had an hour to get there!  As I recall, Caponigro was speaking courtesy of a US Government sponsored tour. Perfect … I worked for the US Government!

You can imagine how excited I was as I scurried to get there and then get seated before the lecture began. Let’s face it Caponigro is one of the great 20^thcentury masters. Black and white, large format, iconic landscapes, architecture, flowers, still life.  I had seen his pictures in magazines but had never seen them in the flesh. And of course I never had met the master himself! He finally emerged and the slide projector began projecting images on the screen. Oh no!  Caponigro was showing color photographs made with a Leica M6!  Not what I hoped to see and not what I hoped to hear about! Nevertheless, I still got a chance to hear Caponigro discuss his work and it was an unexpected opportunity to meet a truly inspirational photographer. No matter … it bothered me for a long time that I didn’t get to hear Caponigro talk about his incredible black and white large format pictures made at Stonehenge, Ireland, Maine, Yuma, Arizona or in Redding, Connecticut. And the list goes on.

Somehow though, I found the will to go on.

Then about twenty years later a very good friend of mine, who also happens to be a fine photographer, gave me a most wonderful gift for my fiftieth birthday … a beautiful first edition copy ofThe Wise Silence: Photographs by Paul Caponigro! Now we were talking! The incredible retrospective of Caponigro’s work up until the early Eighties was published to go along with the 1983 exhibition, The Wise Silence: Photographs by Paul Caponigro shown at the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, New York.

Suffice to say, all the classics are in this incredibly beautiful book! The great images we know about, but many others as well. A beautiful leaf suspended in space, the white dear, churches, sunflowers, beautiful streams, ancient stone monuments, ice and snow, the American Southwest, architectural details, doorways and more! Over a hundred and forty stunning photographs in a large exquisite book you will want to look at again and again … serene, quiet and beautiful.

No disrespect to Caponigro’s 35mm color work, but what is contained in this book is truly special!  The book is not cheap, but would make a worthy addition to anyone’s photographic library.

Harry Callahan was a great American photographer and Water’s Edgeis a stunning, yet quiet book. Throughout Callahan’s life he found great pleasure and inspiration walking and photographing the beaches in Chicago, at Lake Michigan and on Cape Cod. Published in 1980, Water’s Edgecontains a magnificent collection of his elegant black and white images from what he called his Beach Series and is a real gem.

While some of the photographs focus in Callahan’s wife Eleanor, both clothed and in the nude, most are exquisitely captured images of beach activity, sand and water and plant life. These are simple scenes that any of us have witnessed a million times on our own beach outings, but few have had the intensity of vision to capture.  For over forty years Callahan had a singular intensity of vision for everything related to the shoreline and that is on full display in Water’s Edge.  He never tired of the exploration or the opportunity to grow and expand that vision as he discovered new things there.

I have always loved the beach and have spent many beloved trips and vacations at the water’s edge by myself and with my family. I didn’t make that many photographs there when I was younger but recently have thought about it again and have begun making photographs in and around the beaches that are within two hours driving distance from where I live … at the Jersey Shore and Coney Island. While I may not make the types of photographs Callahan made, this book is a true inspiration to me, as it illustrates in no uncertain terms to what can be accomplished if your mind’s eye and heart are open to seeing the quiet but incredible scenes that often stare us in the face but are seldom captured.

Water’s Edgeis a book I feel lucky to own. I treasure it and it inspires me often.

I was thinking about places I would like to visit and photograph someday.  Iceland is one of those places, along with the Outer Hebrides and Ireland.  There are some others but those are the big three. Maybe it will happen, but if not I’ll survive. As I have mentioned elsewhere on this site I don’t get obsessed about going to exotic locations in order to find photographs to make, but there are places on this planet like Iceland that are changing rapidly for all the reasons we know.

So I was thinking about Iceland. A good friend of mine who happens to be a fine photographer once visited it and made some beautiful images. Recently my neighbor spent a week there, and I just got Michael Smith and Paula Chamlee’s beautiful two volume Iceland set … hand delivered over coffee with Paula herself!  That’s a lot of Iceland, which made me want to write about a little known and unique gem I am lucky to own … Fred Picker’s The Iceland Portfolio.

The Iceland Portfoliois just that … a portfolio of photographs made by Picker during 1974 and 1975. Originally the concept was to produce a book, but Picker’s publisher, Amphoto, decided to make a large format portfolio instead.  The result is a beautiful box containing 16 exquisite images made from the great Chip Benson’s half tone negatives and 300-line screen double impression lithography on 14×17 100 lb. stock. Between each print is protective slip-sheet. In 1976 this was state of the art, and the quality has withstood the test of time. The reproductions range from 6×8 to 11×14 in size.  Also included is a very nice introduction written by Ben Maddow. Only 1000 copies were made and each was numbered and signed by Picker. Mine is #277.

When first published, The Iceland Portfoliosold for $75.00. I think I got mine sometime in the Nineties from a used bookstore and I paid the same price. Now they fetch several hundred dollars. Perhaps enough people have gotten beyond the Picker bashing and have come to realize he could make wonderful photographs. The black and white landscapes produced from large format negatives are exquisite and well seen, suitable for framing if one wanted to do that. They were made in a time that feels so long ago. Not because I am much older now, but because both the world and we have changed so much. My guess is that much has changed in Iceland during the more than 40 years since these photographs were made.  Time doesn’t stand still and it has not treated the land and waters well in my view. One only has to look around to see that. I see it here in Bucks County where I live, just in the six years I’ve lived here. Right now there’s a fight going here in Doylestown to see if a large brightly lit 24/7 convenience store with 12 gas pumps will be what one first sees as they drive into town.

When I look atThe Iceland Portfolio I stop thinking about the monstrosity that will most certainly be built not far from where I live. I don’t think about the daily horror show that is the nightly news. Instead, I think of a better time in a different place that isn’t now. I’m reminded of the wonderful places I’ve lived or visited. It doesn’t seem like a distant memory so long ago.

There is something special and quite beautiful about The Iceland Portfolio.  Maybe one day you will be one of the lucky few that owns a copy. 

When he was alive Fred Picker was one of the more polarizing figures in photography. Feelings still run high for black and white film photographers that print their work and debate the fine points of the Zone System. Was he a businessman or a serious photographer … or both? I never really cared. Everyone has a right to make a living and by all accounts he was pretty successful. He also did a lot to keep large format photography alive, produced wonderful tools for the serious photographer and demystified the Zone System religion so that it was understandable. He had his detractors and some of their criticisms were valid. I even hung up the phone on him once; but that having been said, I attended his funeral even though I never met the man! I read his newsletters as soon as they came to my door, thanked the heavens for his wonderful little book, The Zone System Workshop and used many of his products (many of which are still functioning flawlessly after thirty some years of steady use).

Fred also produced a book called The Fine Print. Not nearly as popular as The Zone System Workshop, it is just as useful but in a different way. His first and wildly popular book made the Zone System understandable to anyone. The Fine Print showed how it could be applied in the field to capture images as envisioned and enable the production of fine prints back in the darkroom. Some have debated how good a photographer Fred was, particularly with respect to this book, but again I don’t care. What matters is that by looking at the photographs and reading his detailed descriptions of exactly how they were made … from considerations about light and camera position, the type of camera/format, lens and film he used, shutter speed and aperture for exposure, to film development and paper used for production of the “fine print” … and yes his opinions … it is like being in the field and the darkroom with him, understanding his thought processes and esthetic considerations he made to do the best job he could.

The best job we can do … isn’t that what we all should strive to achieve?

In short, reading and studying this book is a real learning experience and to me still valuable even though some of the films, papers and chemicals he used no longer exist. None of this detracts from what is a workshop experience that can be had in the comfort of one’s favorite chair.

This book can be had for a song and is available at used bookstores and on ebay for less then five bucks! For less than fancy cup of coffee you can really learn something, get motivated if you need to be, and do some good work!

Henry Gilpin was a truly great photographer and human being. I had the good fortune to meet him during the mid 1980s when I took two workshops with John Sexton in Carmel, California. Afterwards, I had the further good fortune of having career responsibilities that periodically took me out to the San Francisco and Silicon Valley for the next ten years or so. Whenever I was there I always figured out a way to get down to the Monterey Peninsula to visit with John if he was around, but always with Henry and his wonderful wife Doris. He always made time to see me, often for spur of the moment flybys. I remember making several five hour round trips from San Francisco to Monterey just to get together for short visit or dinner. It was always worth the drive!

He was absolutely world class, but didn’t have a pretentious bone in his body. Probably one of the most unselfish people I’ve ever met and certainly one of the best teachers I’ve had the fortune to learn from. Henry remains far less known then he should be. Most likely because he was not a big self-promoter and probably didn’t care too much about that sort of thing. What he really cared about was making wonderful photographs and teaching others how to do the same thing. One of my most prized possessions is his stupendous Highway 1. When I was getting ready to purchase that print I asked what his favorite size for it was. 11×14 – so that’s what I bought! It hangs on a wall in my workroom, right next to the entrance to my darkroom. I spend a lot of time in both rooms so I see it often.

Another prized possession is my signed copy of an exquisite little book, Henry Gilpin, Photographs. Typical of Henry; he never told me it existed. It’s a somewhat rare book, published in 1997 by the Monterey Museum of Art to commemorate the exhibition of his work. I found out about it by accident while rummaging around the Internet … sadly, a couple of years after he passed away in 2011.

It’s a small slender book containing nineteen jewel-like black and white images inside, and a real one attached onto the cover. All of his best works, including Highway 1 and Wonder Lake, just to mention two of them. To top it off it includes an eloquently written essay by John Sexton, Henry’s one time workshop student, colleague and long-time friend. I keep it in a protective plastic bag, prized possession that it is. When I look at it I admire his work and think the many fond memories I have. I can’t say enough about this wonderful book. Suffice to say, if you appreciate beautifully seen and created black and white photographs of the land you should endeavor to find a copy. It can be found occasionally at used bookstores and on eBay. Start looking … if you find one you won’t regret the effort!!

In the late Eighties I was working in the White House and got very involved in promoting US high technology competitiveness. Of particular interest and importance was the small US supercomputing industry. Through my work I happened to meet and get to know John Rollwagen, CEO of Cray Research. During that time the Science Advisor to the President, who happened to be my boss, decided he wanted to visit Cray Research and meet Seymour Cray, it’s resident genius and pioneering founder. After some difficulty I was able to arrange the trip to the small town of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin to visit Cray’s research and manufacturing facility and get together with Seymour and John. It was a visit I will never forget, beginning with our lunch together at the Flame. I never saw or spoke to the “father of supercomputing” again but I will always cherish the memories of that great day! Tragically Seymour died in 1996 due to injuries suffered in a car crash.

Another takeaway from the trip was a copy of the book Cray at Chippewa Falls, by the great Lee Friedlander, given to me and signed with a nice inscription by John Rollwagen. I own it proudly and take it out from time to admire the photographs it contains and to remember that day so long ago.

So what about the book? Friedlander was commissioned by Cray Research to document the workings of the company for its 15^th anniversary in business. To me Cray at Chippewa Falls is a wonderful example of a documentary project that includes environmental portraits of Cray workers, the town of Chippewa Falls where they worked and lived, and the surrounding countryside. The book contains almost 80 black and white photographs and is beautifully printed. They do a great job of capturing what it was like for those building the enormous and state of the art supercomputing machines 30 years ago in small town middle America.

One of the most fascinating things is the obvious dichotomy between the work “Crayons” did in their high tech day jobs and their lives outside the company in Chippewa Falls. By looking at these wonderful images you gain a strong sense of what it was like to build these great machines, that were so powerful for their time, yet today would be rivaled by something you can hold in the palm of your hand. At the same time you get a real sense of the beauty and vibrancy of small town life in America’s heartland during what now seems to be a much, much different time.

Cray at Chippewa Falls had only one printing run and is accordingly somewhat of a rare and pricy book, yet it is certainly available. I’m not sure how it compares with other Friedlander books, as it’s the only one I own. But one thing I’m sure of is that you couldn’t find a better guide for what to do if you wished to create your own documentary project on the area you live in and those that work and live there too. For this reason, for all the great images, and of course for those reasons that are personal to me, I am extremely grateful to own this wonderful book.

I had a great Thanksgiving and I hope those who celebrate it had one as well. One of the things I am thankful for is to have a wonderful photographic library that contains Certain Places, by the great photographer William Clift.

I won’t waste any time and get right to the point. This slender and not overly large book containing only 22 black and white photographs is perhaps one of the finest I own. The subjects include the New Mexico landscape, Mont Saint Michel, public buildings, sculptures and a few other assorted images. A particularly memorable photograph is Swing, Tesuque, New Mexico, 1973. It’s a picture of swing made of woven rope blowing in the New Mexico breeze with what looks like storm clouds in the distance. The light is amazing the scene is breathtaking. In short, it is one of the most beautiful photographs I have ever seen. I can only imagine what it would look like in front of me!

I found an interesting interview of Clift. He states that he is not a traditionalist and uses a range of cameras including 8×10, 5×7, 4×5, medium format and 35mm. Sounds like using the right tool for the job, or perhaps he just makes great pictures with whatever camera he chooses. That wouldn’t surprise me at all! What was most interesting was his statement that he makes very few pictures.  In other words only what is meaningful to him. In a video interview he discusses the mistake of attempting to make photographs that will appeal to others. No doubt his approach to seeing and making photographs that move him contributes to a very high rate of successful images and is something we should all think about!

His philosophy and working methods shine through in this most beautiful of books and I never tire of looking at it.

Yes, only 22 photographs, but a truly remarkable book that belongs in everyone’s photography library!