Photo Treasures: Audrey Hepburn Films "Sabrina"

Fifty-five years ago director Billy Wilder gave movie-goers something to treasure: the film "Sabrina," starring Audrey Hepburn as an elegant chauffeur's daughter who steals the heart of all-business Humphrey Bogart. (In those days, the May-December romantic thing wasn't as weird as it is now.) If you're a fan of the movie, and I certainly count myself as one,  you'll be charmed by a new photo book I just ran across,  appropriately titled "Charmed by Audrey: Life on the Set of Sabrina" (Insight Editions, $18.95). It features never-before-seen images made by Mark Shaw, who was sent by Life magazine to shoot Hepburn during the filming of "Sabrina" in 1953. These were the days when Life magazine could demand total access, and the photographs vibrate with intimacy and fun. My copy of the book goes to my daughter, who like a lot of girls has dreamed of being the kind of princess that Audrey Hepburn made so attractive.--David Schonauer

Instant Film to Make a Comeback?

Fans of Polaroid instant film will not go down without a fight, it seems. Last year, Polaroid announced that it would stop making instant film, which seemed to be another casualty of the digital age (along with half the world's other known products). The New York Times reports today that a group of Polaroid enthusiasts are trying to create a instant film product. A team of chemists and engineers has been put together, and the group, which includes a former Polaroid employee, has even leased a factory in the Netherlands that Polaroid once used to manufacture film. Who wants instant film? Let's get a show of hands.

Film Is Officially Dead in Japan

Film has gone the way of the tintype, at least in Japan. According to this report, hardly any film camera were made or bought in Japan in the last two months—so few, in fact, that a trade organization, the Camera & Imaging Products Association, has decided to stop compiling sales figures for film cameras. The question is, are you sad about this?--David Schonauer

This Day In Photographyy, 1937: The Hindenburg

On May 6, 1937, the German zeppelin Hindenberg exploded while attempting to moor in Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 36 people. The disaster resulted in the death of the commercial trans-Atlantic zeppelin service and the rise of the mass news media. On this date, still photographers, filmmakers, and radio broadcasters put together a perfect storm of coverage that set the stage for the future of communications.
     At least it seems that way to me, but I’m no historian. Yet I can’t think of any event before the Hindenburg explosion that equaled it’s multi-media coverage.
     There are a couple of angles here that are interesting for photographers today.
     (And lots of interesting trivia: According to this article, the Hindenburg was to have been filled with non-flammable helium; however, the United States owned all the world’s helium and had placed an embargo against selling it to Nazi Germany. The Graf Zeppelin Company, which built the Hindenburg, turned to hydrogen as an lifting agent. Kapow!)

Ballad of the 'Tween Angel

Photographs © VanityFair.com

"You can't just say no to Annie." That was part of the explanation given by 15-year-old superstar Miley Cyrus after photographs were made of her "backless" and clutching a blanket by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair. (A VF behind-the-scenes shot is above.) "I think it's really artsy," she told the magazine at the time. "It wasn't in a skanky way."

But by yesterday, Cyrus was backtracking. "I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be 'artistic' and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed," she said in a publicist's statement. She further criticizes the magazine in a People article, as the more financially minded press mulls over the fallout  expected to hit Cyrus's Hanna Montana phenomenon and its parent company, Disney.

What gives? Having shot to the heights of international fame at such a young age, is Cyrus an example of media exploitation or, rather, a reflection of prudish attitudes about portraiture?

Flickr Superstar Profiled in Times Magazine

I’ve been keeping a secret for a while now, and it’s time I just let it out, so here goes: I totally don’t follow the whole Flickr thing. I check out images there from time to time, but I don’t know who the big stars and major personalities are. By now I should be an upstanding member of the Flickr community, since I write about photography, but instead I spend all my spare time working.
    So I was really interested in a piece in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine by Vigrinia Heffernan about Rebekka Guoleifsdottir, describes as “one of Flickr’s most popular photographers.
    The point of the story was that some savvy photographers have learned how to perfect a “Flickr style”—images that look good in thumbnail form, with fulsome digital manipulation—and how to work the social networking aspect of the site to make herself more popular.
     As the piece points out, Guoleifsdottir, who lives in Iceland, isn’t shy about posting images of herself (above, for example). She eventually became so popular on Flickr that she was hired to do a Toyota ad campaign.
      I’d be interested in hearing from Flickr members if they believe there is particular style of photography that defines a new aesthetic. Do film images really get shouted down because they seem out of focus? Is it wrong to game the Flickr system in order to become popular? (Analog artists have been doing that forever.)–David Schonauer

The Little Lens That Could

The Lensbaby, an ingenious optic that brings view-camera style selective focus effects to digital, 35mm, and medium-format photography, just keeps on rockin'. The new movie-camera version of the lens, which we've covered in this space before, has been used by director Eric Schmidt to shoot a new music video for Bruce Springsteen's "Girls in Their Summer Clothes." Watch it (below) and you may long for something sharp!
--Russell Hart

"Sponge-Worthy?"

Last week while spring-cleaning at home we discussed the demise of Polaroid film, set to be discontinued by year's end, but we made the decision to hang onto our nifty little Polaroid instant camera — "hey, you never know what will happen with this technology so let's not toss it just yet" — while we contemplated whether to snarf up some Polaroid film while we can. It reminded me of the Seinfeld episode where Elaine stockpiles boxes of Sponges and then has to decide whether subsequent dates are "Sponge-worthy." (If you need an explanation for that ... never mind, you're too young.)

Then we saw a piece in yesterday's New York Times Magazine that officially reminded us how, for instant-camera film, time is short.

The piece is in the Consumed column by Rob Walker, a personal friend (I hired Rob eons ago as a reporter for a Texas newspaper and I've steadily watched his writing career ascend ever since). Each week the column is all about trends in marketing and consumption, sometimes not in that order, and Rob rightly points out that Edward Land's invention of Polaroid instant pictures led to its modern digital ancestors — which rendered it obsolete.

Film, Stills, and Albert Maysles

As Dave Schonauer writes in his recent blog, Nubar Alexanian has photographed on the sets of many of Errol Morris's documentaries, work collected in a new book called Nonfiction. If you've never seen Morris's 1980 Gates of Heaven, do: I remember it as a brilliant series of talking still photographs. Another great documentary filmmaker, Albert Maysles, actually took his own pictures as he created such classics as Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens. (Those earlier films were produced with Albert's brother and sound man David, who died in 1987.) Albert was in fact a photographer first, and you can catch his vintage black-and-white prints from the 1950s and 1960s, color stills from the filming of Grey Gardens, and his recent "cinemagraphs" at New York City's Steven Kasher Gallery, where they're on display through March 15. The cinemagraphs (below) are printed directly from frames of actual Maysles films.

The Lensbaby and the Diving Bell

Our Photography and the Movies issue, just out, proves that there’s a happily thin line between still and moving pictures—at least for the artists who ply both media. The respective technologies of film and photography have certainly crossed over in many ways. Canon’s D-SLR lenses borrow optical tricks from their video and film counterparts, for example. And going the other way, the Lensbaby (below)—which started life as an innovative still-photography tool—has now played a starring role in an Oscar-nominated French-produced film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.