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!)
Continue reading "This Day In Photographyy, 1937: The Hindenburg" »
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?
Continue reading "Ballad of the 'Tween Angel" »
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.
Continue reading ""Sponge-Worthy?"" »
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.
Continue reading "Film, Stills, and Albert Maysles" »
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.
Continue reading "The Lensbaby and the Diving Bell" »