Eric Smith Photographs "Murdertown, USA"

Steve Howe patrols the mean streets in his Chevy cruiser.

Eric Smith for The New York Times

The New York Times
By CHARLIE LeDUFF
Published: April 15, 2011

You Are Here

Riding Along With the Cops in Murdertown, U.S.A.

A sign taped to the entrance of police headquarters says it all: “Closed weekends and holidays.” Every weekday, the doors are locked at dusk.

It’s not that the cops here are scared; it’s just that they’re outmanned, outgunned and flat broke.


Flint is the birthplace of General Motors and the home of the U.A.W.’s first big strike. In case you didn’t know this, the words “Vehicle City” are spelled out on the archway spanning the Flint River.

But the name is a lie. Flint isn’t Vehicle City anymore. The Buick City complex is gone. The spark-plug plant is gone. Fisher Body is gone.

What Flint is now is one of America’s murder capitals. Last year in Flint, population 102,000, there were 66 documented murders. The murder rate here is worse than those in Newark and St. Louis and New Orleans. It’s even worse than Baghdad’s.

After the door is unlocked and I enter police headquarters, it is easy to see why. There are only six patrolmen on duty for a Saturday night. So broke is Flint that the city laid off two-thirds of its police force in the last three years. The front desk looks like a dusty museum piece.

I am assigned to ride along with Officer Steve Howe, a 20-year-veteran of the department. Caucasian. Late 50s. Medium build. Mustache. Clump of very well-kempt salt-and-pepper hair.

I sign a release form and am given a bulletproof vest.

"Isn’t that a little bit much?” I ask the sergeant on duty.

“You have to sign your life away,” he tells me.

Cops can be a suspicious, insular lot when it comes to reporters. But Howe and the others are blunt and self-effacing. “We ain’t cops anymore,” Howe says. “We’re librarians. We take reports. We don’t fight crime.”

He guides me through the yellowing jail cells upstairs that had to be closed down recently because of lack of manpower. “If you break into someone’s house, we can’t hold you,” he says with a straight face. “If you’ve got a weapon or you’ve murdered somebody, then county will take you. I don’t see any light at the end of this tunnel. Only darkness.”

We leave headquarters and head out into the night. Howe turns up the heat in his Chevy cruiser and switches on the computer.

“That’s something,” I say hopefully. “Some squad cars in Detroit don’t even have computers.”

“Hold on a sec,” he says. “Let it warm up.”

When it does, I see that there are more than 12 runs stacked up, including a kidnapping call that is more than six hours old. A home-invader call is two hours old. A “man with a gun” call is 90-minutes old.

“Sometimes, we don’t get to a call for two days,” he says. Last fall, an elderly couple called after being held up at gunpoint in their driveway. The police arrived on the scene five hours later.

Traffic tickets?

“Don’t make me laugh,” he says.

We drive 50 miles through the evening, and the city flashes by us in all its monotony. Liquor store. Gas station. Liquor store. Hi-C, 25 cents. Catfish steaks, $1.25. Regular unleaded, $3.65.

The action isn’t heavy tonight, either. Domestic disputes, mostly. A woman will not let her brother into the house, having already destroyed his furniture with a pipe and thrown his clothing into the snow. Another man has beaten his girlfriend and locked himself inside a neighbor’s house. Howe takes reports. The kidnapping call gathers dust.

We pass by an abandoned Victorian with a sign neatly spray-painted on the peeling door: “Please don’t burn.”

“Sorry, slow night,” Howe apologizes. “Last weekend we had four murders.”

Nature calls. Howe pulls into the 7-Eleven for a toilet break and a Big Gulp. As we get out of the car, I see a blue flash of light near the side of the store and the sound of gunfire. A shadow runs toward the apartment complex.

“Back in the car!” Howe barks at me.

Someone might have just become the 14th homicide victim of 2011, and winter hasn’t even broken yet.

Howe calls in: “Shots fired.” He gives the following description: A shadow wearing a hood. And in less than two minutes, the entire Flint police force on patrol swarms the area. All six of them. They find no gun and no victim. They do, however, round up a fidgety kid in a hood, but since he doesn’t have a gun, they kick him loose.

Frustrated, Howe heads back to the car and watches the kid walk away. Two more people are killed in Flint the following week.

Related:

Eric Smith: The Patriot Guard and The Westboro Baptist Church

NPR: Eric Smith Photographs historic Michigan Central Station

The Pulitzer Eddie Adams Didn’t Want

April 19, 2011, 5:00 am
By DONALD R. WINSLOW

For a long time after Eddie Adams won a Pulitzer Prize for “Saigon Execution,” he wouldn’t speak of it. He turned away questions about the picture, grumbling some dismissive rebuff like, “Everything’s already been said about it.” Or: “There’s nothing new. I don’t want to talk about it now.” I experienced this firsthand in the 1970s as a college student. At an Indiana University seminar, I asked him about “Saigon Execution.” Before an auditorium packed with photojournalism students, Eddie cut me off at the knees, then pointed to the next raised hand.

I was stunned. After the slide show we’d just watched, we were collectively in awe. Eddie seemed like some kind of photojournalism God. I had no idea I’d stumbled onto such a sore point. It didn’t make sense. Who wouldn’t want to talk about one of history’s most iconic war pictures and winning the Pulitzer Prize? Why on earth would someone shun such an honor?

Eddie and I were later to become friends. But even in 2004, when he died of Lou Gehrig’s disease at 71, I still didn’t have the full story.

Indeed, the reason for his seemingly inexplicable feelings remained a mystery until just recently. His widow, Alyssa Adams, donated his archive to the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin on the fifth anniversary of Eddie’s death. The archive includes more than 50 years’ worth of material from a journalist who covered 13 wars, six American presidents and nearly every major film star. With his family’s permission, Alison M. Beck of the Briscoe Center allowed me an advance peek into the archive as the staff categorized 200 linear feet of slides, negatives, prints, audio and video materials, diaries, notes and tear sheets. Everything captured my interest, but Eddie’s journals were the gems.

It turns out that he did, in fact, very much want to win a Pulitzer Prize. Desperately. Almost obsessively. But what I didn’t know until I sat in the basement of the Briscoe Center reading his 1963 and 1964 journals — scrawled in little red leather notebooks — was that Eddie wanted to win a Pulitzer long before he’d ever encountered a Vietcong prisoner named Nguyen Van Lem or Brig. Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, chief of the South Vietnamese national police.

There, in his own handwriting, Eddie acknowledged how deeply he wanted to win a Pulitzer for his photograph of the first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, holding the folded flag that had been handed to her at President John F. Kennedy’s funeral in November 1963. Eddie was angry when he didn’t win a Pulitzer and then furious when he found out that an administrator at The Associated Press had submitted other A.P. pictures to the Pulitzer jury instead. His photo hadn’t even been entered.

The photo that did win the Pulitzer Prize that year was by Bob Jackson of The Dallas Times-Herald. It showed Jack Ruby lunging out of a crowd to shoot and kill the suspected assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, during a perp walk. It was what’s known as a “reflex” picture; taken when there isn’t time to think, when some movement or sound screams to the brain, “Push the shutter now!”

So Eddie watched the Pulitzer for coverage of the Kennedy assassination go to a reflex picture rather than one so intentionally poignant, one that captured a national moment of mourning, a timeless and heartbreaking milestone in America’s history.

Associated Press

Eddie Adams in Vietnam. 1965.

But that doesn’t seem enough to keep him angry about the Pulitzers for so many years. After all, Eddie often felt slighted, overlooked; in the shadow of others who seemed to get the spotlight for lesser accomplishments. Especially in his early career, he suffered from what friends called “insufficient adoration.”

I scanned his journals, thought back on our conversations and recalled the many times I’d listened to him speak to student photojournalists and professionals in classrooms or in bars or on street corners waiting for news to happen. I cobbled together the bits and pieces of insight he’d share sparingly with one friend or another over time. That’s when it dawned on me. As I held both photos side by side, I realized what he’d been hinting at and saying indirectly.

Eddie thought he’d won the Pulitzer for the wrong picture.


There’s something you have to take into account about Eddie. Before he was a photographer, he was a Marine. And some Marine principles took root in his heart: honesty, fairness and the importance of holding and protecting a higher moral ground. Bear this in mind as you contemplate the two photographs.


Eddie made the picture of Mrs. Kennedy on purpose. It was intentional. Methodical. It spoke to the deep photographic talent of Edward T. Adams. A perceived moment was approaching, it came, and he captured it. Magnificently. This is a shining example of the best of the best of his photography.

Now consider “Saigon Execution.” Eddie himself said it was a reflex picture. That day in Saigon in 1968, Eddie saw the general reaching for his pistol as he walked up to the prisoner’s side. When the general raised his hand, Eddie raised his 35-millimeter camera to his face. In a pure reflex he released the shutter. He wasn’t certain of what he’d photographed until the film was developed and an A.P. editor, Horst Faas, picked out that negative.

And that, for Eddie, was that. In the following days there’s barely any mention in his journal of “Saigon Execution.” What’s clear is that in 1968, this ex-Marine saw the shooting as something that simply happened in war. It was just another day in Vietnam. No big deal. A prisoner had been shot. As time passed, Eddie came guiltily to believe that the general had gotten a bum rap for the execution and that he — as the photographer — had played a significant role in “ruining a man’s life.” To a rough-and-tumble, blue-collar Marine from New Kensington, Pa., this wouldn’t have fit the definition of higher moral ground.

Years later, while laying out the pages one day for News Photographer, the monthly magazine of the National Press Photographers Association, I received a surprise phone call from Eddie. He said he knew I’d have to write his obituary sooner or later and he told me what he didn’t want the first sentence to say. He also grumbled that he’d made a similar phone call to The New York Times but that he knew, when the time came, “they probably won’t be able to help themselves.” (The Times’s obituary.)

Boat of no smiles, Vietnamese Refugees, Gulf of Siam, Thanksgiving Day,1977

Related: Armed With A Camera

“You don’t understand. This is history. I have to photograph it now. Later is too late.”

Via The American Society of Cinematographers

April 11, 2011 by John Bailey, ASC

Lynsey Addario: Back From the Brink

 

Khalid, age 7, wounded by shrapnel in Korengal Valley, Afghanistan

"After all I have done to get these images of war, up close, personal, soldiers and civilians, please stick your neck out in the most minimal way. To hear that you don’t want to “risk further scrutiny” after I risked my life for two months is the most offensive thing I have ever heard."

You don’t understand. This is history. I have to photograph it now. Later is too late.” New York Times photojournalist Lynsey Addario is talking to Army Captain Dan Kearney at 6 a.m. on the side of a mountain in the dawning Korengal Valley of northeastern Afghanistan. It is fall, 2007, and Kearney’s forces have dropped into a village to confront insurgents following nighttime bombing by American planes. There likely has been “collateral damage.” Afghan civilians have been wounded and Addario wants Kearney to help her get to them to document the injuries. Khalid, a seven-year-old boy with shrapnel wounds and watery eyes becomes a haunting portrait that underscores the absurdity of a term like “collateral damage.”

At first, the photo was going to be the cover image for a NY Times Sunday magazine feature story. But it was quashed. Then it was to be in the story inside, then on the Times website on a slideshow—also all quashed. Kathy Ryan, the photo editor argued for inclusion on the website; editor–in-chief Gerry Marzorati refused, citing that it could not be proven that Khalid’s and other villagers’ wounds were caused by American bombs; so, the photo was not run despite strenuous pleadings by Addario. Later, Captain Kearney affirmed that most likely the wounds were caused by shrapnel from American bombs.

Burial in Falluja, chaos even in death

This sense of urgency and fierce dedication to her assignments pervades all of Lynsey Addario’s photographs. Here is part of what she wrote to the then current editor-in-chief of the magazine in defense of her work.

"After all I have done to get these images of war, up close, personal, soldiers and civilians, please stick your neck out in the most minimal way. To hear that you don’t want to “risk further scrutiny” after I risked my life for two months is the most offensive thing I have ever heard."

She takes no prisoners in her fierce focus. There are few images of stasis or quiet moments of idyllic peace in the maelstrom of her work.

Five years after graduation from Staples High School in Westport, Connecticut, Addario was working as a professional photojournalist for the Buenos Aires Herald. Shortly after, she was in Cuba for AP. The past decade she has worked for the NY Times and its magazine as well as for National Geographic. Always on the move, she somehow made time to marry Reuters journalist Paul de Bender in July 2009.


Addario may be an anomaly as a conflict photojournalist: a woman in a field dominated by men. On many of her assignments she is paired with another woman, journalist Elizabeth Warren, covering stories from each of their perspectives, in images and words. It is Warren who recalls the incident that opens this essay. Embedded in the fall of 2007 in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, much as Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger had been for their Oscar nominated documentary film, Restrepo, Warren was already months pregnant. She and Addario are self-described “partners in crime” on assignments throughout the decade’s conflict zones. Here is a PBS slideshow of the Korengal Valley story.

And here is Warren’s account of her and Addario in the Korengal.

Rubin also discusses her relationship with Addario and their history in northeastern Afghanistan in a recent feature article in the Winter 2010 issue of Aperture magazine. It is worth getting, not just for Rubin’s detailed account of her relationship with Addario, but as a lesson in the daily rigors of the conflict journalist:


Rubin writes about Addario’s penchant for using wide lenses, for working in close:

Wide angles lure me into Lynsey’s work. The intense focus that opens to another layer and then another and another. I asked her once about that. “I don’t know. I just see that way.”

There is no better introduction to the way Addario “sees” than going to her website. The stark, severe black field comes up right away. A seven-image slideshow follows.

Links to the left side of the homepage lead to slideshows of other photo essays.

Hotspots of international conflict, all the usual countries run amok with warring men, are listed, a veritable Zagat guide into hell. But what else emerges as you look, are links to essays that document women’s issues: women in the military, women’s health and maternity in Africa, female-self-immolation in Afghanistan, an Indian beauty pageant, transsexual prostitutes. She’s on the front lines in war zones, alongside the boys—but she also stalks a space and themes that most male photojournalist eschew. As you get to know her work, you realize that covering women’s issues is not an ancillary assignment. It is as much the core of her identity as an “engaged observer” as her higher profile war stories. She does not just caption the images; she narrates the story beyond.



”I saw two women on the side of the mountain, in burkas and without a man. In Afghanistan you seldom see an unaccompanied woman. Noor Nisa, about 18, was pregnant; her water had just broken. Her husband, whose first wife had died during childbirth, was determined to get Noor Nisa to the hospital in Faizabad, a four-hour drive from their village in Badakhshan Province. His borrowed car broke down, so he went to find another vehicle. I ended up taking Noor Nisa, her mother, and her husband to the hospital, where she delivered a baby girl. My interpreter, who is a doctor, and I were on a mission to photograph maternal health and mortality issues, only to find the entire story waiting for us along a dusty Afghan road.”

Here is a slideshow of an essay on maternal mortality in Sierra Leone.

Addario works so close up that she has run smack into numerous situations that could easily have meant her death: a kidnapping; a car wreak that left her driver dead and her with a broken collarbone—and most recently, an arrest, detention and beatings that put her and three other NY Times journalists in the world spotlight when they went missing in Libya for six days.The story of their capture and eventual release highlight the risks taken every day by the men and women who give witness of the world’s traumas.

Four “NY Times” journalists with Turkish ambassador (center) after their release in Tripoli.

Here is an audio interview with Addario and Renee Montagne of NPR on April 1, describing the ordeal she and her three times colleagues endured:

Margaret Warner on the PBS Newshour interviewed both Addario and Anthony Shadid who is the NY Times Bureau Chief in Beirut and who was arrested with her.

One section of Addario’s website features images of Afghan women who have tried to immolate themselves to escape violence and oppression.

“Bibi Aisha was 19 when I met her in Kabul's Women for Afghan Women shelter in November 2009. Her husband beat her from the day she was married, at age 12. When he beat her so badly she thought she might die, she escaped to seek a neighbor's help. To punish her for leaving without permission, her husband, who is a Taliban fighter, took her to a remote spot in the mountains. Several men held her while he cut off her nose, ears, and hair. She screamed—to no avail. "If I had the power, I would kill them all," she told me. I wanted to be strong for Aisha to give her hope she would be fine again. But when she described that moment, I began to cry.”

I took the bottle of petrol and burned myself," Fariba, who is 11 and lives in Herat, told me. "When I returned to school, the kids made fun of me. They said I was ugly." She now says, "I regret my mistake." The reasons for her action are unclear; Fariba claimed a woman came to her in her dreams and told her to burn herself. Many Afghan women burn themselves because they believe suicide is the only escape from an abusive marriage, abusive family members, poverty, or the stress of war. If they do survive, women fear being shamed or punished for what they did and may blame a gas explosion when they were cooking. Doctors know when the burns were intentional from their shape, location, and smell.”

 

“In Esteqlal Hospital in Kabul, doctors tried to save 15-year-old Zahra, who had doused herself with petrol and set herself on fire after she was accused of stealing from her neighbors. The teenager, from Mazar-e Sharif, suffered burns over 95 percent of her body. She died three days after I took this picture.”

Her passion to document the horror of their fate led her to move beyond these still images to a video documentary with her voiceover narration of the women’s plight. Be warned, this is a difficult video to watch.

But hope for a brighter future for Afghan women is documented in this beautifully arrayed essay for National Geographic titled Veiled Rebellion. It covers a full spectrum of the lives of women in this hardscrabble country struggling to engage the contemporary world outside its boundaries, even as powerful internal forces try to quash it. The essay speaks to the long reach of Addario’s mission letting the world know the reality and the aspirations of Afghan women.

But hope for a brighter future for Afghan women is documented in this beautifully arrayed essay for National Geographic titled Veiled Rebellion. It covers a full spectrum of the lives of women in this hardscrabble country struggling to engage the contemporary world outside its boundaries, even as powerful internal forces try to quash it. The essay speaks to the long reach of Addario’s mission letting the world know the reality and the aspirations of Afghan women.

“With face, hair, and arms in full view, actress Trena Amiri chauffeurs a friend around Kabul on a Friday. She blasts her favorite songs off a cassette and shimmies and sings along, tapping the steering wheel as she dances in the driver's seat. Even in relatively progressive Kabul, men and women glare, honk, and scream at her. It provokes men in Afghanistan to see strong women. It symbolizes a freedom they just aren't comfortable with. Amiri fled her husband of seven years, who, she says, kept her home and beat her. She left her three sons behind. She doesn't plan to remarry but knows she might have to in order to survive in Afghanistan, where women are dependent on men for so many things. When I ask about her current boyfriend, whose name is on the gold bracelet around her wrist, she says she couldn't marry him: ‘He won't let me act anymore, and I want to continue my art.’”

The photojournalists that I know personally do not seek the spotlight. The stereotype of the gung ho, half mad provocateur played by Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now, is mostly fiction. Being a weeklong international media sensation is not a fate that either Addario or Tyler Hicks would have chosen. But like my photojournalist friend, Jehad Nga, who was also arrested and interrogated in Libya a few weeks before them, the facts of their ordeals brings into all too sharp focus for the rest of us just what is the cost of these so compelling photos—images made in the face of danger, that they bring to the rest of us, who over a cup of morningcoffee impassively scan the tribulations and exaltations of our fellow man.

 

 



LA Times, Washington Post Photographers Win Pulitzers for Photos

Via PDNPULSE
April 18, 2011


Barbara Davidson of the Los Angeles Times has been awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography for her story on innocent victims of gang violence. Carol Guzy, Nikki Kahn and Ricky Carioti of the Washington Post were awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Photography for their images of the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti. The Pulitzers were announced today at Columbia University in New York.

Both prizes come with a $10,000 award; the Washington Post photographers will share their $10,000 prize.

Finalists were also announced today. In the Feature Photography category, Todd Heisler of The New York Times was cited for his photo essay on a Colombia family carrying a genetic mutation that causes early Alzheimer’s; Greg Kahn of The Naples Daily was cited for his study of how the recession in Florida has meant loss of jobs and homes for some, and profits for others.

In the Breaking News category, Getty Images photographers Daniel Berehulak and Paula Bronstein were cited for their images of people surviving the floods in Pakistan. Carolyn Cole of the Los Angeles Times was named a finalist for her images of the oil spill off the Gulf of Mexico and her documentation of its widespread devastation.

The jury for the Pulitzer’s photography prizes was chaired by Nancy Andrews, managing editor/digital media, Detroit Free Press. The other jurors were Francisco Bernasconi, senior director of photography, Getty Images; Colin Crawford, deputy managing editor, photography, Los Angeles Times; Richard Murphy, photo director, Anchorage Daily News; and Steve Gonzales, director of photography, Houston Chronicle.

The full list of 2011 Pulitzers can be found at http://www.pulitzer.org/. Davidson’s gang story can be found on the Los Angeles Times web site. Images from “Haiti Profound Sorrow” can be viewed on the Washington Post web site.

The photographic collection of veteran Picture Editor John G. Morris

 Toni Frissell
Jackie and the Kennedys, Wedding day in Newport
John G Morris: "Toni Frissell, whose work appeared mostly in Vogue, was the family photographer at the wedding of Jack Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier – "Jackie." She gave me prints for the Magnum story, which I sold to the Ladies’ Home Journal for $100,000. This is perhaps the most rare, as it shows the three Kennedy daughters, Patricia, Eunice and Jean, with the three then surviving sons, Bobby, Ted and Jack. The eldest son, Joseph P Jr, had died as a pilot in World War II"


The Photo Diary of John G. Morris auction takes place on Saturday 30 April 2011 at 3:15pm.



The 230 photographic prints for the sale will be exhibited for three days in Paris at Drouot Montaigne, 15 avenue Montaigne on Thursday and Friday 28-29 April from 11:00 to 18:00 and Saturday 30 April from 10:00 to 13:00. The exhibition is open to the public and a fully illustrated paper catalogue will be available for 30 euros.

In our visual age, photo editors have silently written history behind the scenes. John G. Morris has participated in the greatest photographic chapters of the 20th century. Perhaps best known as Robert Capa’s picture editor for Life magazine on D-Day, Morris’s impact on the visual lexicon spans nearly seventy-five years. While at the Ladies’ Home Journal, he conceived of the series, People are People the World Over, changing the way America viewed the world and inspiring Edward Steichen’s influential Family of Man 1955 exhibition. As the first Executive Editor of Magnum Photos, Morris played a key role in establishing many standards of practice in photojournalism, from story boarding to distribution. At The Washington Post, he balanced images inside the White House with coverage of the conflict in Vietnam. As picture editor for The New York Times he chose the first images of the moon landing published in color.

Morris moved to Paris in 1983 where he worked for nearly a decade as correspondent and editor for National Geographic. In May 2010, John G. Morris was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by The ICP, International Center of Photography.

Highlights of the sale include vintage works by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, David Seymour, Elliott
Erwitt, Robert Frank, Toni Frissell, Frank Horvat, Dorothea Lange and award-winning press photographs.

The photographs in this memorable auction are both personal gifts from the artists to John and creative working prints completing the visual diary of John G. Morris. The verso of each print in this collection is inscribed by hand to share the stories behind the images and celebrate John’s enduring friendships with the photographers themselves.

Auction details here.

Download the catalogue here.

Speaking from his home in Paris, where he has lived since the early 1980s, Morris said: "My hope is that this auction will change the outlook on photojournalism in the money markets. I know that's a strange thing to say, but photography auctions in the past have consisted primarily of aesthetically beautiful prints which did not necessarily have much to do with telling the truth about life through the daily newspapers and in magazines. As far as I know, this is the first photojournalism collection to come on to the art market," said Morris. "So in setting minimum prices for the pictures, and estimates, it's been a sort of ballpark thing. We don't know what will sell and what won't." Read more from the Guardian newspaper.


The Guardian newspaper also has an excellent slide show of selected images with commentary from Morris.

"Veteran Life magazine picture editor John G Morris talks us through some of the photographs from his extraordinary personal collection that are to be auctioned in April 2011".

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Military appraisal at Moscow trolley stop, 1954 (Life cover)
John G Morris: "This is the photo I recommended to managing editor Ed Thompson of Life when he asked me, 'What do you see for a cover?' In December I came back from Paris with hundreds of prints of the USSR, I remember the customs officer asking me how much they were worth (in 1954) I replied: 'That’s what I am here to find out'."

APRIL 15: 64TH ANNIVERSAY OF DAY JACKIE ROBINSON BROKE BASEBALL'S COLOR BARRIER

Ralph Morse: Jackie Robinson rounding Third base during the third game of the World series against the Yankees, 1955

Today is Jackie Robinson Day throughout the Majors, marking the 64th anniversary of the day baseball's color barrier was broken. It also commemorates the 64th anniversary of his historic debut in Major League Baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Almost 14,000 of the 26,623 in attendance at Robinson's first game, which took place at Ebbets Field, were black patrons

The barrier-breaking legend retired from baseball in 1956, and passed away October 24, 1972 at the age of 53.


Major League Baseball: Jackie Robinson Day

The Official Jackie Robinson Site

Related: 55 Years Ago, Jackie Robinson Steals Home Base

Flash of New Talent: Photography Auctions Embrace Some New Stars

 


The New York Observer
By Julia Halperin

Auctions are nothing if not ruthless. Last week, Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips held multimillion-dollar spring photography sales of a combined 644 images. The results offered clues, as the art market continues to thaw from the 2008 recession, as to which contemporary photographer's stocks have risen, whose have fallen and whose are holding steady post-crash. In a surprising market move, prices for works by a handful of auction virgins took off; demand for photographs by the rising stars of perhaps 5 or 10 years ago, meanwhile, like Iranian artist Shirin

 

Neshat and Spencer Tunick, famous for staging photos of crowds of nudes, headed in the other direction.

"It's not that the younger clients are purchasing the new photographers—we have stable collectors going after fresh new talent," said Vanessa Kramer, worldwide director of photographs at Phillips. "The price point is more accessible—you can buy a really important photograph for $3,000."

In a shift in taste, the photographers who sold well often seemed to feature either striking, ethereal imagery or wildlife themes. Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf specializes in sleek, lonely interior scenes (think Edward Hopper meets Apple). He sold three of five works for sale—impressive for a basically unknown name. His Grief, Troy, an image of a man leaning against a window in despair, brought in $11,500, well above the high estimate of $7,000. And the price of a single work offered by artist Dash Snow, who died tragically in 2009 of a heroin overdose, also soared.

All told, the three auctioneers sold about four out of every five works offered and raised more than $16 million. (The biggest prices were made by classic photographers; Christie's got $80,500 for a 1950 Irving Penn, for example.) The totals were at least half a million dollars higher than last year at every house, though Philips de Pury, which specializes in more contemporary photography, showed the most improvement.

Wildlife and fashion photographer Peter Beard was a breakout star. Born in 1938, he's far from a newbie, but "he's getting stronger and stronger. This is just the beginning for him," said Phillips' chairman, Simon de Pury. Mr. Beard's works brought in a total of almost $950,000 to the three houses last week.

But British photographer Adam Fuss, who had work added to the collections of the Israel Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art a few years ago, didn't make a splash. One Fuss piece, Woman Weeping From My Ghost, returned to Phillips for the second time since 2009—but now with an estimate $2,000 lower. (It went for $11,250, just above the low estimate.) The New York-based artist and former waiter at the Metropolitan Museum of Art specializes in carefully constructed photograms. Several of his works sold at the low end of their estimates, and two were passed over entirely "We don't have to offer work again—we'll only do it if we think it's important," said Ms. Kramer. German photographer Loretta Lux also didn't sell strongly. The artist, who specializes in dreamlike, creepy images of children, was regularly selling at auction in excess of $30,000 five years ago.

Photographs by Ms. Neshat, known for her provocative images of Muslim women and a superstar within the art world, performed unevenly. Perhaps it was too much of a good thing. Sotheby's sold one Neshat a few thousand dollars over estimate—Rebellious Silence (1994) sold for $18,750—but Phillips, who had several, had mixed results. "One thing that you need to be careful [of] with recent work is having too much of it on the market," said Christopher Mahoney of Sotheby's. "It undermines people's assurance of the specialness of the material."

British filmmaker-turned-wildlife photographer Nick Brandt, relatively new to auctions, saw both of his works up for sale bring well over their high estimates. Mr. Brandt filmed Michael Jackson's "Earth Song" music video in Kenya, and now works in East Africa. His Elephant with Exploding Dust, a majestic black-and-while image, sold for $59,375, well above the presale estimate of $35,000.



editorial@observer.com

PHOTOLUCINDA APRIL 14 -17, 2011

what is photolucida?


Lucida: bright, luminous, suffused with light, the brightest star in a constellation.

Photolucida is an arts non-profit whose mission is to increase the understanding of the world through photography. Our name captures our purpose: To bring light into an art form born of light.

Photolucida does two primary things to support and promote the work of emerging and mid-career photographers:

Portfolio Reviews Festival: Every other April, an international set of photographers and reviewers gather in Portland, Oregon for a five-day celebration of photography that includes lectures, workshops, and exhibition collaborations. Intensive portfolio reviews are at the heart of the Festival. Reviewers are selected for their experience, involvement, and commitment to advancing the work of emerging and mid-career artists. Over the years, many participants have made contacts that have led directly to exhibitions, publications, and sales, in addition to receiving useful critiques.

By providing a venue for in-depth, informed, and supportive dialogue between photographers, gallery owners, curators, publishers, editors, and consultants, Photolucida promotes the culture of photography locally, nationally, and internationally. The next Portfolio Reviews Festival will take place in April, 2011.

Critical Mass is an annual online program geared towards creating connections within the photography community. Photographers at any level, from anywhere in the world, submit portfolios for review. Through a pre-screening process, the field is narrowed to a select group of 175 Finalists who go on to have their work reviewed and voted on by over 200 esteemed international photography professionals. Each year, two or three Finalists are awarded published monographs of their work. Photolucida publishes and distributes the titles, giving copies of the books to all participating photographers and Jurors.

Photolucida is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. We award merit-based scholarships to our Reviews to Oregon photographers, and to international photographers in Critical Mass. Dedicated to increasing understanding through photography, Photolucida also donates Critical Mass books to over 30 Oregon art schools, colleges, and libraries.

Photolucida is a member of FESTIVAL OF LIGHT, an international collaboration of more than 20 photography festivals around the world.

Who we are.

Schedule of events.

Spring Auctions Looking Bright

Via Photograph Magazine
Posted April 12, 2011 by Jean Dykstra


The weather still felt a bit wintry, but the spring photography auctions suggested that a new season might be upon us. The sales had lower buy-in rates than we’ve been seeing (under 20 percent for most) and totals surpassing the firms' estimates. Sotheby’s kicked off the season on April 6 with a successful general-owners sale totaling $5,632,187, and a buy-in rate of 18.8 percent. Jaromir Funke’s abstract Composition, 1929, set a record for the artist at auction, selling for $350,500, far above the $70,000 high estimate. Mathew Brady’s portrait of politician John C. Calhoun, from 1849, sold for $338,500, also above the high estimate of $50,000. Two Man Ray images sold in the top ten: Untitled (Photomontage with Nude and Studio Lamp), 1933, was the top lot, bringing a whopping $410,500, and Solarized Male Torso, 1936, sold for $122,500.

On a side note, Sotheby's announced in February that it has made Paris its European center for photographs and decorative arts. Sotheby's won't hold photo sales in London, but the firm will hold bi-annual sales in Paris in May and in November, to coincide with Paris Photo and capitalize on the active market for photography in Paris. The department is headed by Simone Klein, who joined the firm in 2007.

Christie’s had three photography sales in April: Part I of the Consolidated Freightways collection, which focuses on American photography, was sold on April 7; 130 lots were offered, and the buy-in rate was 15 percent. The top lot was Robert Mapplethorpe’s Flag, 1987, which brought $158,500. That same day, a private collection went on the block, in a sale dubbed "The Feminine Ideal;" it brought a total of $942,125, with 18 percent of the 79 lots sold. Given that the sale focused on female beauty, it was no surprise that the top three lots were by Irving Penn, or that two of them should feature Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn. Balenciaga Mantle Coat, Paris, 1950, sold for $80,500, and Woman with Umbrella (Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn), New York, 1950, brought $60,000. Penn’s photographs, reliable favorites in the marketplace, were also top sellers in the general-owners photographs sale on April 8, with Bee on Lips, New York, September 22, 1995, selling for $182,500. Twentieth-century masters such as Avedon, Eggleston, Penn, and Frank were well represented in the top lots, with Avedon’s Marilyn Monroe, New York, May 6, 1957, bringing $482,500, and Eggleston’s iconic Memphis (Tricycle), c. 1969-1970, selling for $266,500

Robert Mapplethorpe, Flag. Courtesy Christie's New York

On April 9, Phillips de Pury and Company held its first photography sale in its new digs at 450 Park Avenue. The sale offered 260 lots, and totaled $5,802,250, with a slim 9.6 percent buy-in rate. Phillips’s chief auctioneer, Simon de Pury, held a Photographs Aficionado Class before the auction, and he conducted the sale as well. The top ten list included such contemporary works as Cindy Sherman’s Oriental-themed Untitled #278, which sold for $242,500. Dutch photographer Desiree Dolron’s Xteriors VI, referencing the history of Flemish portraiture, brought $194,500, well above its high estimate of $60,000. Peter Beard’s Tsavo North on the Athi Tiva, circa 150 lbs, - 160 lbs, side Bull Elephant, February, sold for $120,100. And Florian Maier-Aichen’s contemporary take on the Sublime, Untitled, 2005, brought $104,500.

Desiree Dolron, Xteriors VI. Courtesy Phillips de Pury and Company

Two weeks earlier, photobooks, photographic albums, and historical and 20th-century photographs sold well Swann Galleries on March 24. The total was $1,037,574, with a 20 percent buy-in rate. Adam Clark Vroman’s album Arizona and New Mexico, Volume II, with more than 165 platinum prints of Native Americans, from 1897, sold for $62,400, a record for the photographer at auction and Alfred Eisenstaedt’s Children at Puppet Theatre, Paris, 1963, printed 1991, brought $48,000, the top price for an individual photograph at the sale.

Steve Schapiro: Memories


Via La Lettre de la Photographie

Steve Schapiro, the photographer of The Godfather and Taxi Driver, is in Paris for his exhibition at the A. Galerie. Christophe Lunn and Paul Barrois met with him for La Lettre in order to evoke some of his memories on the set of these epic movies.

"The Whisper"

Click here for interview.

http://www.a-galerie.fr/

Related: Steve Schapiro exhibition review in Summer 2010 issue of ARTnews.