Archive for January, 2011
Reconstructions
As a preamble to their performances, traditional storytellers in Majorca would say, “It was and it was not so.” David Shields, Reality Hunger I guess I started to think about the reconstructed photograph when I first saw Sally Mann’s lovely yet disturbing photographs of her children in the now classic book, Immediate Family. She unabashedly [...]
Dandelion Ideas
In a post last year, plagiarism was the topic, citing the example of Steve Burdeny whose photographs had more than a casual resemblance to Chinese photographer Sze Tsung Leong’s images. A number of readers were unconvinced by my arguments and preferred to go with Burdeny’s explanation that the similarity came by happenstance. Others believed as [...]
Azo and Company
My daughter very thoughtfully gave me a book for Christmas, “ How to make Good Pictures” put out by Eastman Kodak in the 50s, and curiously bearing no author’s name. In the darkroom section of this historical relic I came across a mention of Kodak’s Velite paper, a contact printing paper that apparently was so [...]