Photographic Truths and Other Illusions

Image copyright: Henry Aragoncillo, 2008

 

"Photographic Truths and Other Illusions”
Society for Photographic Education
2011 SPE Southwest Regional Conference: November 11-13, 2011
School of Arts & Design, Santa Fe Community College
Santa Fe, New Mexico

Details and information here.

A WEEKEND IN HISTORY

Photo by David Marks

On Friday evening, Bill Eppridge, one of the most accomplished photojournalists of the Twentieth Century, presented an eyewitness account of some of the most significant moments in American history he has covered: wars, political campaigns, riots, civil rights murders, heroin addiction, the arrival of the Beatles in the United States, Vietnam, Woodstock, the summer and winter Olympics, and perhaps the most dramatic moment of his career - the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles.

After a brief blackout Saturday morning, Bill returned to the gallery to sign copies of his book "A Time It Was: Bobby Kennedy in the Sixties" and meet with gallery viewers of the current exhibition celebrating his 2011 Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism.

We will be posting highlights of Bill's conversations here in the near future. The exhibition continues through November 20, 2011

YouTube: Robert Kennedy's Last Days in Pictures by Bill Eppridge

History, Lived and Documented

The Beatles at the Plaza Hotel, February 7, 1964 Bill Eppridge

©The Albuquerue Journal North
By Malin Wilson Powell
on Fri, Nov 4, 2011

Ignorance of history, like many omissions, happens effortlessly and silently in the contemporary barrage of day-to-day life. The photojournalism of Bill Eppridge is a sobering reminder of the necessity of a common history to a civilized society. The Monroe Gallery is presenting three major Eppridge photo essays from the tumultuous ’60s when he was on assignment for Life magazine (1961-1972), plus a smattering of individual iconic images up to 2007.

One of the most striking aspects of Eppridge’s work is his impeccable instinct for orientation. Eppridge’s photographs bear witness to his ability for in capturing powerful images by constantly honing and adjusting his physical and ethical compass. He not only finds the right place to frame the uncertainties of life unfolding in front of him, but he does this by continually refining the right frame of mind. This holds true whether he might be hanging out of a helicopter with his editor holding onto his ankles, or “sticking with” the Beatles on their first 1964 American tour, or whether he could keep his bearings in the most extreme and devastating situation – Robert Kennedy’s assassination on June 5, 1968.

Bobby Kennedy’s extraordinary vitality and traumatic death were clearly defining experiences for Eppridge, who never accepted another political assignment after the senator’s death. His first assignment with Bobby Kennedy was in 1966 when the young politician was testing the waters for a presidential bid in 1968. During this grueling eight-month campaign Eppridge took thousands of photographs in both black-and-white and color, always “staying close” to the candidate every single day and night.

Robert F. Kennedy in front of a poster of his brother, Columbus, Ohio, 1968
Bill Eppridge ©Time Inc.

The access, rawness and intimacy of Eppridge’s photos are hard to comprehend while immersed in today’s packaged news. As the photographer has noted, “The press is controlled in such a way today that you almost never see the real person you are photographing. You’re taking pictures of what their handlers want you to see.”

Everywhere Bobby Kennedy campaigned he insisted on a convertible to greet the eager crowds. Looking at his exposure and absence of security, the question arises: How could he do this after his brother John’s death in Dallas from a sniper while riding in a convertible? Yet, here are images of Bobby’s courage and enthusiasm for meeting his supporters. His hands and arms reach for them with an appetite as strong as theirs reaching for him. In a time when politicians demonstrate so much disdain for the average voter, these photographs are riveting proof of mutual openness, respect, even admiration.

The Kennedy campaign travels through the Watts section of Los Angeles on the last day before the primary, 1968


For anyone who lived through the ’60s and the repeated blows of the assassinations of John Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, their bankrupt slaughter still reverberates. Bobby was shot on the last night of his campaign, the evening he won the all-important California primary and when exhausted he left the press of the crowd by way of the Ambassador Hotel kitchen, where Sirhan Sirhan shot him and five others. Only 12 feet away, and almost certainly unhinged by the mayhem, Eppridge’s eye was steady and he remembers thinking: “You are not just a photojournalist; you’re a historian.” His photograph of the wounded senator is often described as a modern Pieta. It cannot be seen too often.

This is also true of Eppridge’s photo essay “Mississippi Burning: The James Chaney Funeral.” James Chaney was the one black civil-rights worker along with two young white civil rights workers who were kidnapped and murdered during “Freedom Summer” by the Ku Klux Klan on June 21, 1964. They were investigating the burning of Mt. Zion Methodist Church, a civil-rights training site. After an intense 44-day search, the bodies of Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwermer were found under 25 feet of dirt at a nearby earthen dam.

The dignity and sorrow that seep from Eppridge’s photos of the Chaney family bespeak wounds that can’t be healed. Suffused with an unflinching, upright gravitas, gallery viewers are noticeably stilled as they process through this deeply affecting black-and-white series: they whisper and stand taller. Not only is there the great graveside photo of Ben Chaney, the younger brother, shedding a tear in the embrace of his mother, there is an especially eerie photo of a troubled Ben looking straight at the camera, all alone with his grief in the middle of the image, bracketed by his parents and three sisters steeped in their own thoughts. Because of death threats, the Chaneys left Meridian, Miss., for New York City, and by 1969 Ben Chaney had joined the Black Panther Party. After 13 years in jail, he was paroled and has since established a foundation in his brother’s honor and worked as a legal clerk for former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who secured his parole. As the gallery text notes, only one of the 10 men responsible for the murders was prosecuted and incarcerated by the state of Mississippi, and that was in 2005.

Mrs. Chaney and young Ben, James Chaney funeral, Meridian, Mississippi, 1964
©Bill Eppridge

Eppridge has written eloquently about his craft and his art, including the unimaginable freedom his generation of photographers had to pursue truth during the 1960s golden era of photojournalism, inserting such anecdotes of a robust participant/observer as the perfect, unchoreographed ballet of a three-man CBS crew filming the Bobby Kennedy motorcade while in motion.

Looking back, the ’60s were terrible and wonderful, and certainly fulfilled the Chinese adage “May you all live in interesting times.” History is always in the making, but there aren’t always visual historians of Eppridge’s highly developed sensibilities to frame resonant and crucial junctures for posterity.

On Oct. 24, Bill Eppridge, born Guillermo Alfredo Eduardo Eppridge in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to American parents, was awarded the 2011 Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism at Lincoln Center in New York. He is currently visiting Santa Fe and will be at the Monroe Gallery for a discussion of his work from 5 to 7 p.m. tonight.

If you go WHAT: Bill Eppridge
WHERE: Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar
WHEN: Through Nov. 20.
HOURS: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Saturday and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday.
Gallery discussion with Bill Eppridge 5-7 p.m. tonight. Limited seating on a first-come, first-served basis.
CONTACT: 505-992-0800 or info@monroegallery.com

PARIS PHOTO CELEBRATES 15TH ANNIVERSARY NOVEMBER 10 - 13

Paris Photo will celebrate its 15th anniversary at the Grand Palais — a major step ahead for the renowned international event.

117 galleries from some 23 countries will present the best of 19th century, modern and contemporary photography in the heart of the French capital. To complete this panorama of worldwide photography, a selection of 18 publishers will have a dedicated space in the fair.

Paris Photo will celebrate African photography from Bamako to Cape Town, unveiling the creative wealth of historic and contemporary African artists.

These exciting developments put forward the new energy that Paris Photo is displaying by reinventing itself. Four programmes will articulate Paris Photo's new identity: Institutions' recent photography acquisitions, the platfrom, Private Collection from Artur Walther, focus on the Photography Book and launching of the Paris Photo - Photo Book Prize.


>>> Buy your ticket online in advance and avoid waiting queue

Paris Photo website here.

AN EVENING WITH BILL EPPRIDGE

Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is honored to welcome Bill Eppridge, recipient of the 2011 Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism, to Santa Fe for a gallery discussion of his work. The discussion takes place on Friday, November 4, from 5 to 7 PM. Seating is limited and will be on a first-come basis.

Bill Eppridge is one of the most accomplished photojournalists of the Twentieth Century and has captured some of the most significant moments in American history: he has covered wars, political campaigns, heroin addiction, the arrival of the Beatles in the United States, Vietnam, Woodstock, the summer and winter Olympics, and perhaps the most dramatic moment of his career - the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles. Over the last 50 years, his work has appeared in numerous publications, including National Geographic, Life, and Sports Illustrated; and has been exhibited in museums throughout the world.

Currently on exhibition: many of Eppridge's most important photo essays, including The Beatles arrival in America, Mississippi Burning: The James Cheney Funeral, and The Robert F. Kennedy 1968 presidential campaign and assassination; continues through November 20, 2011.

Gallery hours are 10 to 5 every day, Monday through Sunday. Admission is free. For further information, please call: 505.992.0800; E-mail: info@monroegallery.com

The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936-1951

The Photo League students take their camera anywhere . . . they want to tell us about New York and some of the people who live there . . . there was almost a sense of desperation in the desire to convey messages of sociological import.”
Beaumont Newhall, 1948

Via The Jewish Museum
In 1936 a group of young, idealistic photographers, most of them Jewish, first-generation Americans, formed an organization in Manhattan called the Photo League. Their solidarity centered on a belief in the expressive power of the documentary photograph and on a progressive alliance in the 1930s of socialist ideas and art. The Radical Camera presents the contested path of the documentary photograph during a tumultuous period that spanned the New Deal reforms of the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War.

Sid Grossman, Coney Island, c. 1947



Jerome Liebling, Butterfly Boy,
New York, 1949

Photographing the City
Members rejected the prevailing style of modernism in order to engage the gritty realities of urban life. Leaguers focused on New York, and this meant looking closely at ordinary people. That impulse spurred the group to explore neighborhoods, street by street, camera at the ready.

The League and Its Legacy
A unique complex of school, darkroom, gallery, and salon, the League was also a place where you learned about yourself. One of its leading members was Sid Grossman who pushed students to discover not only the meaning of their work but also their relationship to it. This transformative approach was one of the League’s most innovative and influential contributions to the medium. By its demise in 1951, the League had propelled documentary photography from factual images to more challenging ones--from bearing witness to questioning one’s own bearings in the world.

Mason Klein
Curator, The Jewish Museum, New York

Catherine Evans
Curator, Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio

Jack Manning (American, 1920-2001)
Elks Parade, 1939, from Harlem Document, 1936–40
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 13 in. (25.6 x 33 cm)
The Jewish Museum, New York
Purchase: Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund, 2008-95
© Estate of Jack Manning


Sid Grossman (American, 1913-1955)
Coney Island, c. 1947
Gelatin silver print
9 3/8 x 7 7/8 in. (23.8 x 20 cm)
The Jewish Museum, New York
Purchase: The Paul Strand Trust for the benefit of Virginia Stevens Gift, 2008-62
© Howard Greenberg Gallery, NYC

Jerome Liebling (American, 1924-2011)
Butterfly Boy, New York, 1949
Gelatin silver print
9 1/2 x 9 1/2 in. (24.1 x 24.1 cm)
The Jewish Museum, New York
Purchase: Mimi and Barry J. Alperin Fund, 2008-90



The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936-1951 has been organized by The Jewish Museum, New York and the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio.

The exhibition is made possible by a major grant from the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation, with generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts and Betsy Karel.

The exhibit opens November 4, and runs through March 25, 2012 and will then travel to the Columbus Museum of Art, the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, and the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida.

See related article here

See related slideshow here

Ida Wyman's photographs are included in the exhibition

Ruth Orkin's photographs are included in the exhibition

Palace of the Governors Photo Archives Wins Award for Excellence

Palace of the Governors Photo Archives Wins the Edgar L. Hewett Award for Excellence

 New MexicoAssociation of Museums to present the honor on Nov. 4

Santa Fe—Citing its many resources and online accessibility, the New Mexico Association of Museums will bestow its Edgar L. Hewett Award for Excellence on the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives at its annual business meeting in Farmington on Friday, Nov. 4.

“The staff of the Photo Archives has worked diligently to make the state’s visual record readily available to people in any part of the state and even the world,” said Dr. Frances Levine, director of the New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors. “These resources will prove especially valuable as we prepare to enter our Centennial year as a state. We’re honored by this award.”

The History Museum as a whole received the Hewett Award in 2009, the year it opened on a campus that includes the Palace of the Governors, Photo Archives, Fray Angélico Chávez History Library, Palace Press, and Native American Artisans Program. The award is named for the first director of the Museum of New Mexico, Edgar Lee Hewett, who led the agency from 1909 until his death in 1946. He also taught anthropology at the University of New Mexico and was instrumental in encouraging the development of small museums throughout the state.

“The Palace of the Governors Photo Archives is a rich and tenured resource in our state that promotes preservation and scholarship through a unique collection of historic photographs, films, glass plate negatives, photo postcards, and other visual imagery,” said Laurie Rufe, president of NMAM and director of the Roswell Museum and Art Center. “Recipients of this award illustrate exemplary leadership in the field, and the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, with its multitude of resources and online presence, serves a community of scholars, authors, researchers, and the general public on an international level.”

The archives hold an estimated 800,000 items dating from 1843 to 2011. Included among them are historic photographic prints, cased photographs, glass plate negatives, film negatives, stereographs, photo postcards, panoramas, color transparencies, lantern slides, and more than 1,500 books on photography. More than 16,000 images have been digitized and can be keyword-searched by clicking here. Other images can be searched in person. Nearly all are available as high-quality digital scans and prints, for editorial reproduction, and use in advertising, publishing, media projects, and TV news media stories at nominal cost.

Research into what the archives already hold is ongoing. Just last year, Archivist Daniel Kosharek discovered a rare, ca. 1870s photograph of famed Navajo war chief Manuelito. The image, now on display in the History Museum, was among photographs, glass-plate negatives and other photographic ephemera in the archives’ Henry T. Hiester/Melander Brothers Collection. Most recently, staff and volunteers have been processing and digitizing 5,000 early 20th-century images of Santa Fe and northern New Mexico taken by Jesse Nusbaum.

Some of the most important 19th- and 20th-century photographers of the West are represented in the Photo Archives’ collections, and the subject matter spans the history and people of New Mexico, anthropology, archaeology, and ethnology of Hispanic and Native American cultures. Smaller collections document Europe, Latin America, the Far East, Oceana, and the Middle East.

The archives are widely used by researchers, authors, publications and the public. More than 1,000 people visit the archives each year to conduct research, and several thousand more submit direct research queries, photograph orders, and permission requests each year from the website.

The collection continues to expand, and long-range preservation and conservation projects are underway. To inquire about donating historical or contemporary photographs, contact Daniel Kosharek, Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, 120 Washington Ave., Santa Fe, NM 87501; (505) 476.5092; or Daniel.kosharek@state.nm.us.

Image above: "Hispanic family, New Mexico," 1949, by Anacleto (Tito) G. Apodaca. From the Tito Apodaca "Mi Gente" Collection, Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, #142320.


Media contact: Kate Nelson, Public Relations and Marketing
 New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors
 (505) 476-1141; (505) 554-5722 (cell)
 kate.nelson@state.nm.us

http://media.museumofnewmexico.org/

The New Mexico History Museum is the newest addition to a campus that includes the Palace of the Governors, the oldest continuously occupied public building in the United States; Fray Angélico Chávez History Library; Palace of the Governors Photo Archives; the Press at the Palace of the Governors; and the Native American Artisans Program. Located at 113 Lincoln Ave., in Santa Fe, NM, it is a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs.

New Book: Jack Kennedy Elusive Hero Cover Photo by Mark Shaw

Photograph by Mark Shaw



Library Journal

Matthews (Kennedy and Nixon), host of MSNBC's Hardball and former aide to the late Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, has come to know many JFK insiders. Here he uses to excellent effect his conversations and interviews with those officials and friends as he seeks the real John F. Kennedy, that "elusive man," as JFK's own wife called him. Using the first person as he seeks out a full portrait of JFK, Matthews gives us an eminently readable biography, following Kennedy through his sickly and less-than-happy youth, his wartime heroism, and his presidency during the most perilous years of the Cold War. Although Matthews's coverage of Kennedy's pre-presidential career and the 1960 election is nearly as long as that devoted to the presidency, his most significant conclusion is that Kennedy's decision not to invade Cuba in 1962 likely saved the world from nuclear annihilation and at the very least stopped Soviet premier Khrushchev from invading West Berlin. VERDICT Robert Dallek's An Unfinished Life and Richard Reeves's President Kennedy provide in-depth investigations of Kennedy's politics, but readers wanting a lively overview of Kennedy, the flawed man and inspiring leader, should turn to this poignant study

REFLECTION: A tribute to a journalist - John Neary

Via The Santa Fe New Mexican
Sunday, October30, 2011


People choose their careers for a variety of reasons. I chose mine because I wanted to be around people like John Neary. My career in journalism was dawning as his was ending. In so many words, he warned me: "I assume you know what you're in for, but just in case you don't ...." John Neary, who died Oct. 21, was like that, a vintage blend of Irish pessimism and Irish humor. He would have chided me for redundancy there.

I ignored his warnings. Why would I not pursue a profession that employed people like John Neary? Listening to him reminisce was like listening to a character from Jack London or Robert Louis Stevenson recall a perilous ocean voyage. The stories he told, the way he spoke of the perils, the low pay and the SOBs in charge, the more you wanted to head out on a voyage of your own. He had a writer's genius for spinning irresistible stories out of the grimmest adventures.

John wrote and edited stories for Life magazine before moving to Santa Fe in the 1970s. At least one of the books that celebrate the achievements of Life recalls him fondly. His work for Life endures in anthologies of the best of the magazine. After he left Life, he wrote a couple of books and numerous articles for magazines and Time Life Books. What I remember about him from that period are his descriptions of going back to New York every summer to work as a substitute for vacationing editors at Time Life. Hearing him chronicle the miseries of New York City in the dog days of summer and the thankless editorial chores worthy of a modern day Bartleby the Scrivener only made me yearn for that very life. He could not help but make journalism sound romantic. When he turned from journalism to blacksmithing, it was as if he were transferring his power of expression from one tool to another. Just as the typewriter had been, the forge was a precision instrument in his hands.

When I began thinking seriously of returning to Santa Fe to live, John was again full of dire warnings, about drought and wildfire and about how Santa Fe had changed for the worse. John was the opposite of lace-curtain Irish, and, to him, Santa Fe had become a bit lacey. He talked about hiding out in the Tesuque barrens and refusing to come any closer to the Plaza than the flea market. If Cassandra had been a 6-foot 4-inch Irishman, her name would have been Neary.

He was right about journalism, at least about the world of journalism he knew and I came to know. It was doomed. The newspaper where he started out, the Washington Star, is long gone, as are three of four papers where I worked. The fourth is in bankruptcy. If I possessed John's story-telling skill, I would write about getting stiffed for the last $9,000 I earned while bankruptcy court awarded the bosses millions in bonus money. If I were John, perhaps, I could tell the story in a way that might entice some green youngster to still want to be a journalist, to still want a taste of the bygone grandeur that John Neary represented.

Former Los Angeles Times reporter Frank Clifford lives in Santa Fe.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Steve Schapiro: Halloween, Brooklyn Heights, New York, 1960

A must-see NYT Lens slideshow: "Why is everyone so scared?"

Archive: Halloweeen 2010