ACADEMY AWARDS

Alan Grant: Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly backstage at the 28th Annual Academy Awards, March 21, 1956.

Neither Grace Kelly nor Audrey Hepburn were nominees at the event in RKO Pantages Theatre. Grace Kelly presented Best Actor Oscar to Ernest Borgnine for Marty, and Audrey Hepburn presented the Best Picture to the same film. That year, Anna Magnani won the best actress award for The Rose Tattoo, and Jo Van Fleet won the award for best supporting actress for East of Eden.

Allan Grant (1919-2008) was a Life magazine photographer–the last photographer to photographer Marilyn Monroe before she died on August 5, 1962, and the first to photograph Marina Oswald after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Related: Making Movies

NEW YORK PRESS PHOTOGRAPHERS ASSOCIATION YEAR IN PICTURES 2012

The NYPPA has just posted the winning images (in no particular order) and will announce the Winning images and their order at a dinner that is tentatively scheduled for May 31st 2012.

Full list here.

The NYPPA YEAR IN PICTURES 2012 were judged by 3 extraordinary judges:

Melanie Burford, Bill Eppridge , and David Burnett

Judges Bill Eppridge, Melanie Burford & David Burnett discuss the images
Photo via NYPPA

Readers of this blog will be familiar with Bill Eppridge. After his graduation from college, Eppridge worked for NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC and then went on to work for LIFE. During the 1960s and until the magazine folded in 1972 Eppridge was a staff photographer for LIFE. He covered many topics and news events, often finding himself in history-making situations.While working for LIFE, Eppridge photographed celebrities such as Alan Alda on the set of M*A*S*H, Gene Hackman, Raquel Welch and others. During the Apollo 13 mission, Epperidge was the only photographer allowed into Marilyn Lovell’s home even as her husband was stranded in orbit above the moon. In 1968 while five feet in front of his subject and friend, Robert F. Kennedy lay on the floor of the kitchen of Los Angeles's Ambassador Hotel, mortally wounded by a bullet fired by Sirhan B. Sirhan. Eppridge went into the crowd and began holding people back, but every once in a while, he would reach down and click his camera.

Bill Eppridge looks at the images

Photo via NYPPA

This last week, Bill's photographs of 1960's skateboarders went viral on the internet. Bill recalls that he photographed skateboarders in Central Park during a competition and kids on the streets in NYC. He says that there were lots of skateboarders around then, and despite what some blogs claim, he never "handed out" skateboards.  Some of the photos that were included were actually shot at Weslyan University in Middletown, CT, aloso at a skateboarding competition.

A special selection of Bill Eppridge's photographs will be on exhibit during the AIPAD Photography Show at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, March 28 - April 1. Visit Monroe Gallery, Booth #419.

Tributes for Remi Ochlik

Rebel forces fight Muammar Gaddafi's troops on a road outside

Ras Lanouf, Libya, March 2011

©Remi Ochlik/Bureau233/Eyevine

The US-born Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik have been killed after shelling hit a safe house for journalists in the Syrian city of Homs.



Remi Ochlik Website


TIME Light Box: In Memoriam: Rémi Ochlik, 1983 – 2012



NYT Lens: Parting Glance: Rémi Ochlik


MSNBC Photo Blog: The work of photographer Remi Ochlik, killed in Syria


The Guardian: Remi Ochlik's photojournalism - a collection


    Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin's last report from Syria – video


Telegraph: Remi Ochlik: the French photographer killed alongside Marie Colvin


Washington Post: Award-winning photojournalist Remi Ochlik, 28, killed at work in violence-wracked Syria


Reuters: U.S., French journalists killed in Syria


Gigaom: Syrian live streamer killed after being watched by millions


Committee To Protect Journalists: 899 Journalists Killed since 1992

Another Day, Another Photograper Arrested, and Photographer Rights Lens Cloths

Via pixiq

"As I prepare my legal battle against the Miami-Dade Police Department for falsely arresting me and for deleting my footage, I am seeking new ways to raise money for my legal defense fund.

I recently entered into a business venture with Keith Robertson, a Vancouver man who runs Zap Rag, a company that sells lens cloths and laminated cards with photo laws printed on them.

The items are designed to be used by photographers when they get harassed by cops or security guards for shooting in public."

Elsewhere: "Today, the NPPA sent another letter of protest to U.S. Parks Police Chief Teresa Chambers asking her to investigate allegations that a photographer was arrested and detained for 48 hours without being formally charged." Full post here.

Related: Your street photography rights on a lens cloth
              Freedom of the Press?

Vivian Maier, Street Photographer

Via Digital Photography Review

By Barney Britton
| Published Feb 19, 2012 | Book Reviews

"Vivian Maier is one of those exceptionally rare things - an artist without a biography. She can’t tell us why she took these photographs, or explain what or who she was influenced by so it’s up to us to decide, if we want to. All we have to go on is the images she left behind. As such, Maier is a gift to critics, who I have no doubt will busy themselves defining her 'value' and what her work 'means' for quite some time to come. My advice is to find this book in your local bookshop, and spend an hour or so leafing through it. 'Street Photographer' is an exhilarating collection and a welcome reminder that greatness and fame are two very different things."

Vivian Maier: Discovered on exhibit through April 22, 2012.

New York City's Sidewalk Clock

Ida Wyman: Sidewalk Clock, New York City, 1947

The Radical Camera: New York's Photo League, 1936-1951, currently on view at the Jewish Museum in New York through March 25, includes several photographs by Ida Wyman.

Her photograph of the sidewalk clock, located at the corner of Broadway and Maiden Lane in lower Manhattan,  was written about in the Photo Hunt blog recently:

"Ida Wyman took great advantage of this unique object for her 1947 photograph Sidewalk Clock, an image that captures the spirit of women’s progress in postwar America. In it, a professional woman in stockings and high heels marches confidently across the frame. The woman is in sharp focus, while the enigmatic clock appears hazy, as if it can barely keep pace with her. Wyman herself was enjoying a successful career as a freelance photographer when she took the picture. Following in the footsteps of acclaimed photojournalists Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, and Berenice Abbott, she published her pictures in popular magazines such as Life, Fortune, and The Saturday Evening Post, an early joiner to the ranks of professional women photographers."

Frank Sinatra by John Dominis

John Dominis: Frank Sinatra and Jackie Gleason, 1965

©Time Inc

Via La Lettre de la Photographie



In mid-20th century, performers would let magazine photographers get close. Audrey Hepburn did so with Mark Shaw in 1953. James Dean let Dennis Stock hang out in 1955. Leonard McCombe shadowed Kim Novak in 1956. John Dominis seized his opportunity with Frank Sinatra in 1965.

John Dominis: It was Sinatra’s 50th birthday, and what he probably thought was that he was going to have a long interview with a writer and maybe a few formal pictures. Often with famous people, when it comes to actually taking real pictures of their lifestyle, they balk. They don't want a guy hanging around every minute of the day and night. But that's what we wanted to do.

I went down to Florida, where Sinatra was performing. I met him and hung around backstage. After the show he’d eat with a bunch of friends. For about a week I just hung around. People would come by all the time, and he'd say, “Hey, John, take a picture of old Joe and me.” So I'd go snap and take this snapshot.

We went out to Las Vegas, and at some point on the plane I said, “Everything's great, but I'd like to start getting some of the stuff we hear about. You have parties late at night with some of your old buddies and things like that.” So he invited me to a party. He had all these girls there and guys up in his suite, and they drank, and he jerked the tablecloth out from under all the dinner dishes on a table. I'd never seen that trick really done. It worked. I was amazed. He didn't spill any dishes on the floor. I shot all this, and he got smashed and ended up singing in the closet with Jerry Lewis. Good stuff. I took three months with Sinatra. That’s unheard of nowadays.

(Interview dated October 27, 1993 was printed in full in the Bullfinch Press book, LIFE Photographers: What They Saw, in 1998. These photographs  ©Time Inc., are courtesy The LIFE Gallery of Photography)

More photos here

A Storyteller Is Seen With New Eyes

Grey Villet:"Slo-Pokes", Drag Racing In Moline, Illinois, 1957

Via The Wall Street Journal


"(Grey)  "Villet really fits into that ICP/Cornell Capa tradition—not only with photojournalism but this real interest in ordinary people and their lives."
 --Erin Barnett, International Center of Photography


"My sense of his power as a photographer was very great, and I was beginning to lose all hope that I was going to get this beautiful work out there."
--Barbara Villet, Grey's widow

"Villet shot for LIFE in both its weekly and reinvented monthly iterations between 1955 and 1985, producing some 40 full-length features of remarkable emotional and intellectual range—from a 1962 visit inside Synanon House, a controversial drug-treatment facility in California, to "The Lash of Success," an allegorical look at a Chicago furniture-chain owner whose abuse of power ultimately destroyed what he'd built. His mid-'70s essay about a hospital nurse, "More Than Compassion," like W. Eugene Smith's "Country Doctor," is a striking examination of life and death. Yet Smith's 1948 essay is legendary, and Villet's is hardly known."

"Grey was able to tell a story about something people necessarily hadn't gotten their minds around," said David Friend, who worked with Villet at LIFE as a reporter and picture editor. "It's not necessarily about [Henri] Cartier-Bresson's 'decisive moment'; it's about the collision or dovetailing of images that add up to a greater whole."

Among his own kind," Mr. Friend said of his former colleague, "he was revered."

"His work is every bit as important as those who were so well known," said Sidney Monroe, whose Santa Fe-based gallery represents Villet's estate."

Full article here.
(Subscription required)

Wall Street Journal slide show
(No subscription required to view)

Wall Street Journal Interactive: Watching and Listening: The Work of Photojournalist Grey Villet
View Grey Villet's photographs during the AIPAD Photography Show March 28 - April 1 at Monroe Gallery of Photography Booth #419.

VALENTINE'S DAY 2012

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Vivian Maier: New York, 1954

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Grey Villet: Richard and Mildred Loving laughing and watching television in their living room,

King and Queen County, Virginia, 1965

 HBO: The Loving Story Tuesday, February 14 at 9 PM (check local listings)


The New York Times: Scenes From a Marriage That Segregationists Tried to Break Up

Time Light Box: The Loving Story: Loving v. Virginia and the Photographs of Grey Villet

Washington Post: Virginia’s Caroline County, ‘symbolic of Main Street USA’

Slide show:
About 6 percent of Caroline Middle School’s population is multiracial, a statistic that would not be possible without Mildred and Richard Loving, a couple from the school’s county whose Supreme Court case 45 years ago paved the way for mixed-race marriages

Mother Jones: The Loving Story: How One Interracial Couple Changed a Nation

Entertainment Weekly:  A Moving Tale Of Love And Civil Rights

Grey Villet: The Lovings




Related: Happy Valentine's Day 2011

On Ellis Island, Examining Those Who Arrived Before and After

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Stephen Wilkes: Isolation ward, curved corridor, Island 3

Via The New York Times

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

The Ellis Island Immigration Museum is expanding its scope to include all immigrants,

not just who arrived on the island.

Officials of Ellis Island estimate that as many as one in three Americans can trace their ancestry to immigrants who landed there from overseas.

Now, the officials are focusing on the other roughly 200 million newcomers who arrived in the United States before Ellis Island opened its doors or after it stopped becoming a portal for immigrants. The national historic site in New York Harbor is halfway through a transformation into a more inclusive National Museum of Immigration.

“The Ellis story is a finite story; American immigration is continuing,” said David Luchsinger, the National Park Service superintendent who oversees the island and the Statue of Liberty.
And Stephen A. Briganti, president of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, said, “If we didn’t tell the current story we would be obsolete in 25 years.”

As part of a $20 million project privately financed by the foundation, 20,000 square feet, comprised of a former railroad ticket office and offices for Park Service staff, are being converted into a new museum that encompasses the story of immigration from the 16th century through today. The first phase, which covers 1550 to 1892, when Ellis Island began operating as an immigration station, opened informally last fall. The second phase, which focuses on the period after 1924—, when strict quotas on foreigners were imposed and the island was used primarily as a detention center—, and especially on the influx following World War II, is scheduled to open about a year from now with a formal ceremony to celebrate the new museum.

Full article here.