Showing posts with label New York Times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York Times. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
"You are the most popular, biggest photo blog out there"
"I care about the situation of human begins in the world and so I’m sometimes attracted to stories that I think are important socially that are particularly under covered. I think photography can inform people. I’m not saying it can change the world, but I think it can inform people and so that’s also something I will take into account."
A Conversation with Jim Estrin, New York Times Lens Blog via Burn magazine.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Life of Marital Bliss (Segregation Laws Aside)
Grey Villet: Mildred and Richard Loving, King and Queen County,
Virginia in April 1965
We have been covering the forthcoming documentary film about Mildren and Richard Loving, an inter-racial couple who made civil-rights history. "The Loving Story" film will premiere on HBO on Valentine's day, February 14. An exhibition of Grey Villet's vintage photographs is currently on exhibition at the International Center of Photography.
Today's New York Times has a review of the exhibit:
"Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple from Virginia whose marriage prompted a benchmark 1967 Supreme Court ruling overturning state miscegenation laws, are portrayed in “The Loving Story: Photographs by Grey Villet” as heroes who fell into history by accident.
Grey Villet, a South African photographer who worked for Life magazine, entered the story in 1965 when he traveled to Virginia to photograph the family, by then living together under an unofficial amnesty with their three children. Mr. Villet shot 73 rolls of film, but Life published only 9 images. The photographer then sent 70 prints to the Lovings. The vintage prints in this show are from that collection, as well as from Mr. Villet’s estate.
The images represent the heyday of social documentary, but also the photo-essay format established by magazines like Life and Look. There is the whiff of Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and other 1930s documentarians, but also of W. Eugene Smith, a revered midcentury photo essayist, and David Goldblatt, a South African chronicler of apartheid" Full post and photographs here.
Concurrently, Monroe Gallery of Photography is opening the exhibition "Grey Villet: The Lovings" on February 3, concurrent with the exhibition "Vivian Maier: Discovered". The exhibition continues through March 18, and Grey Villet's photographs of the Lovings will be on exhibit during the AIPAD Photography Show March 29 - April 1 at Monroe Gallery, Booth #419. Monroe Gallery of Photography is honored to represent the Estate of Grey Villet.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Tyler Hicks Photos of rescue of Iranian fishermen by US Navy in Gulf of Oman
Just in case you thought there was no more "great" photojournalism, check out this from Tyler Hicks of the NY Times:
"In a naval action that mixed diplomacy, drama and Middle Eastern politics, the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis broke up a high-seas pirate attack on a cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman, then sailors from an American destroyer boarded the pirates’ mother ship and freed 13 Iranian hostages who had been held captive there for more than a month."
Slide show here.
Article here.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
NEW YORK IN REVIEW - PART THREE: GREY VILLET
Another highlight of our week in New York was meeting with Barbara Villet, widow of the late LIFE magazine photographer Grey Villet.
In an era before any digital tinkering with his results was possible,Villet's was a technique that required intense concentration, patience and understanding of his subjects joined with a technical mastery that allowed rapid use of differing cameras and lenses to capture and compose the "right stuff" on film as it happened.
Grey Villet was born in a sheep herding center called Beaufort West in the Karoo desert of South Africa in 1927. While he was still a boy his doctor father moved the family to Cape Town where he grew up. His father expected him to follow him into medicine and Grey was duly enrolled in the pre-med program at Cape Town University. It didnt take; he spent most of his time at a cafe downtown where there was music and a lot of smoke...At about this time his sister's fiance gave him a camera and that did take...It was the excitment of seeing his own pictures emerge in a friend's dark room that set the course of his life.
By the late 1940's, his despairing father sent him to London to study photography---but after a few months Grey left school to earn a meager living doing wedding snaps outside the Registry while living in a trucker's stop hostel. At 20 he landed a job on the Bristol Evening News--and within 2 years had moved up to Reuters International in London on the strength of his newspaper work. At 24 he returned to South Africa and a job at the country's leading newspaper, the Johannesburg Star--but the pomposity of management's objection to his disheveled look after a night of chasing a rough news story decided his future. Already determined to become a "magazine photographer" he quit the Star on the spot and soon set off for New York hoping to land a chance at LIFE magazine. With no connections, little money, and a new wife who was expecting a child. he spent most of his time bending iron for a furniture wholesaler until he approached the personnel department at Time Inc. with his portfolio...They sent him to see John Bryson, then picture editor at Life who saw talent in his work and gave him the test assignment still titled in LIFE records as "Pigeon Man"
So it was that Grey's Villet’s career with LIFE magazine began in April of l954 on the outer ledge of a Manhattan skyscraper high above 42nd Street and 5th Avenue. He had come to this perilous perch when that trial assignment from Bryson to photograph a man said to feed thousands of pigeons at the New York Public Library had proven worthless. With hopes of working for the magazine in jeopardy, he had taken himself to a a nearby office building, ridden the elevator to a 55th floor and asked a group of office workers on lunch break to “take a picture out the window.” Folding his 6’4”frame out onto the narrow ledge,he leaned forward to shoot straight down over his dangling feet before horrified office workers could pull him to safety. Bryson found the resulting 3 images on the single contact sheet that the newcomer from South Africa turned in later that day. What he saw was not just a stunning image that LIFE week as its “Speaking of Pictures,” but precisely the sort of resourcefulness the editors looked for in photographers. In retrospect, Grey’s sensational edge of the ledge image could be viewed as a metaphor for what was to follow. Not only did it speak of the courage, ambition, and inventiveness that would carry him to the top of his chosen profession, but of the heightened perspective that working for LIFE would afford him for decades to come.
Within a year of being added to LIFE’s legendary roster of photographers in 1955, he won photojournalism’s most prestigious award when he was named Magazine Photographer of the Year. Other honors followed, including multiple firsts from NPPA and Gold from World Press Photo, but by the time Grey and I met on assignment in 1961 on the celebrated essay, Lash of Success, and began a working relationship that led to our subsequent marriage, he had largely abstained from competitions to focus entirely on the quality of the images he was producing rather than personal recognition. Unwilling to promote himself, he modestly rejected the idea of organizing his own retrospective only months before his sudden death in 2000. “The work will tell” he told me then, “the work will tell.” Self effacing, quiet, Grey was truly a quintessential photojournalist in the service of truth , and the work still "tells" powerfully. -- Barbara Villet
The New York Times Lens Blog published a wonderful feature on Grey Villet, edited by Stephen Crowley. Barbara Villet is hard at work on a book about her husband; she has become a determined advocate for her husband's tremendous legacy of photojournalism. We are extremely pleased to represent a select collection of vintage prints from her collection, and look forward to sharing more news about this very important photographer with our readers in the near future.
New York in Review - Part One: The Alfred Eisenstaedt Award
New York in Review - Part Two: The AIPAD Photography Show
Grey Villet
In an era before any digital tinkering with his results was possible,Villet's was a technique that required intense concentration, patience and understanding of his subjects joined with a technical mastery that allowed rapid use of differing cameras and lenses to capture and compose the "right stuff" on film as it happened.
Grey Villet was born in a sheep herding center called Beaufort West in the Karoo desert of South Africa in 1927. While he was still a boy his doctor father moved the family to Cape Town where he grew up. His father expected him to follow him into medicine and Grey was duly enrolled in the pre-med program at Cape Town University. It didnt take; he spent most of his time at a cafe downtown where there was music and a lot of smoke...At about this time his sister's fiance gave him a camera and that did take...It was the excitment of seeing his own pictures emerge in a friend's dark room that set the course of his life.
By the late 1940's, his despairing father sent him to London to study photography---but after a few months Grey left school to earn a meager living doing wedding snaps outside the Registry while living in a trucker's stop hostel. At 20 he landed a job on the Bristol Evening News--and within 2 years had moved up to Reuters International in London on the strength of his newspaper work. At 24 he returned to South Africa and a job at the country's leading newspaper, the Johannesburg Star--but the pomposity of management's objection to his disheveled look after a night of chasing a rough news story decided his future. Already determined to become a "magazine photographer" he quit the Star on the spot and soon set off for New York hoping to land a chance at LIFE magazine. With no connections, little money, and a new wife who was expecting a child. he spent most of his time bending iron for a furniture wholesaler until he approached the personnel department at Time Inc. with his portfolio...They sent him to see John Bryson, then picture editor at Life who saw talent in his work and gave him the test assignment still titled in LIFE records as "Pigeon Man"
Grey Villet photographing "The Pigeon Man", 1954
So it was that Grey's Villet’s career with LIFE magazine began in April of l954 on the outer ledge of a Manhattan skyscraper high above 42nd Street and 5th Avenue. He had come to this perilous perch when that trial assignment from Bryson to photograph a man said to feed thousands of pigeons at the New York Public Library had proven worthless. With hopes of working for the magazine in jeopardy, he had taken himself to a a nearby office building, ridden the elevator to a 55th floor and asked a group of office workers on lunch break to “take a picture out the window.” Folding his 6’4”frame out onto the narrow ledge,he leaned forward to shoot straight down over his dangling feet before horrified office workers could pull him to safety. Bryson found the resulting 3 images on the single contact sheet that the newcomer from South Africa turned in later that day. What he saw was not just a stunning image that LIFE week as its “Speaking of Pictures,” but precisely the sort of resourcefulness the editors looked for in photographers. In retrospect, Grey’s sensational edge of the ledge image could be viewed as a metaphor for what was to follow. Not only did it speak of the courage, ambition, and inventiveness that would carry him to the top of his chosen profession, but of the heightened perspective that working for LIFE would afford him for decades to come.
Within a year of being added to LIFE’s legendary roster of photographers in 1955, he won photojournalism’s most prestigious award when he was named Magazine Photographer of the Year. Other honors followed, including multiple firsts from NPPA and Gold from World Press Photo, but by the time Grey and I met on assignment in 1961 on the celebrated essay, Lash of Success, and began a working relationship that led to our subsequent marriage, he had largely abstained from competitions to focus entirely on the quality of the images he was producing rather than personal recognition. Unwilling to promote himself, he modestly rejected the idea of organizing his own retrospective only months before his sudden death in 2000. “The work will tell” he told me then, “the work will tell.” Self effacing, quiet, Grey was truly a quintessential photojournalist in the service of truth , and the work still "tells" powerfully. -- Barbara Villet
The New York Times Lens Blog published a wonderful feature on Grey Villet, edited by Stephen Crowley. Barbara Villet is hard at work on a book about her husband; she has become a determined advocate for her husband's tremendous legacy of photojournalism. We are extremely pleased to represent a select collection of vintage prints from her collection, and look forward to sharing more news about this very important photographer with our readers in the near future.
New York in Review - Part One: The Alfred Eisenstaedt Award
New York in Review - Part Two: The AIPAD Photography Show
"Going Under," an examination of farm foreclosures in the 1980's, published in Life.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
UPDATE: AIPAD PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW OPENS; MONROE GALLERY IN NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW
Friday's New York Times has a review of the show mentioning Eddie Adams iconic Street Execution of a Viet Cong Prisoner, shown in a very rare sequence of three prints. Also on exhibit at Monroe Gallery is the shocking burned master print of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, as shown in this blog.
We have welcomed many of our esteemed photographers to our booth, # 317. Here are just a few highlights, we hope to see you Sunday - John Dominis will be among our guests.
Woodstock Reunion: Bill Eppridge and Elliott Landy
Alyssa Adams, widow of Eddie Adams, Adrienne Arrichio, and Bill Eppridge
Dorothy and Guy Gillette
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