Art Dubinsky, or Arthur Dubinsky, has left a thin, bright trail of photographs on the web and in various archives. As I approach publication of a biography of Ava Helen Pauling (OSU Press, forthcoming Spring 2013), I seek him, his family, or his heirs in order to gain permission to use two photographs he took […]
I watched The President’s Photographer a few months ago, and decided to celebrate the inauguration by watching it again. This is a PBS documentary mostly about Pete Souza, President Obama’s official photographer, but with significant glances back over the history of presidential photography back through LBJ. (Of course there were photographs of presidents before Lyndon Johnson, […]
Cracker Barrel. Gordonton, N.C., July 1939. I’ve just finished reading Linda Gordon’s 2009 biography of Dorothea Lange (Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits). It’s a thorough, honest narrative of this difficult life and its astonishing production. And it must have been hard to be honest about this life of choices. It is still the case […]
My friend Marilyn Walker called my attention to an amazing archival project by Jo Teeuwisse of Amsterdam. From a batch of World War II photographs that she discovered in a flea market, Teeuwisse has created photographic reenactments of wartime action and agony on modern European streets. Rebecca Rosen of The Atlantic captures the essence of Teeuwisse’s […]
I wrote in another post that in an earlier photographic life — the film era — I gravitated from a Pentax K1000 to a Pentax MX, because I loved the styling’ all-black looks, but also because I wanted to be a purist, and choose all the settings myself. But the Pentax MX was a piece […]
Did you ever find a photo that changed an important story in your life? Most of us have had that experience, I believe. It doesn’t have to be a photo; it can be an overheard phone conversation, an uncle’s casual remark, or a letter that somebody did NOT intend for you to see. Sometimes, if […]
It took me an awfully long time to figure out what “IQ” means to a photographer. (For those non-photographers out there who don’t like waiting for the punch line, it’s “image quality.” I know, you knew that. In my own defense, I had expected something rather more technical and obscure.) But in addition to poking […]
