With DB. Atlanta, Summer 1994
Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
01 June 2014
26 May 2014
Don't Lose the Dignity of the Day
Cheapen uniforms of those who served and died by the uneducable and characterless who dress up as a soldier one day and a cowboy the next.
25 April 2014
"36 Hours 'til Monday"
Last year I spoke with Lee regarding these ads. "36 Hours ‘til Monday" ran in a 1986 issue of "'M' The Civilized Man" and I wanted to know who the ad agency was. They got back to me after a couple weeks and told me they knew nothing about the ad, photographer, models... zip.
This happens a lot more than you’d expect. When it comes to ads, retailers are notorious for lousy record keeping much less having an actual archives — I’m guessing Lee wouldn’t have any trouble telling me what their EBITA was in 1986. The ads are from the little known Tom McElligott of the long gone agency, Fallon McElligott Rice.
I found out about about Tom by way of this wonderful piece by Dave Dye of, "Stuff from the Loft" blog. The ads ran in two page spreads so the impact wasn't lost then and, after almost 30 years, they're even more powerful. While McElligott gave up the ad business and retired at age 50, a college kid scored an interview and Tom gave him some very wise advice which follows and which I wish someone gave me when I was starting out...
“Don’t be distracted by anything. The work is what counts. There are a lot of things that can get in your way, that take up your time and your emotional and intellectual energy; none of them account for anything. They mean nothing. The only thing, in the final analysis, at this stage of the game, that really counts, is the work. The work is everything.
The years that I spent in advertising I saw an awful lot of people who had the potential to be good lose a lot of their ability to distraction, to politics, to fear and to who has the bigger office. You’ll get the bigger office; you’ll make the money. Anything you want will happen, but sometimes it’s hard for people to see that when they’re in the middle of it.
It looks like it’s incredibly complicated. Well, it’s not complicated at all. In fact, it’s so uncomplicated it’s amazing. All it is about is the work. Finally, if you do the work people will notice and you will get what you want. That’s it. It’s as simple as that.” Tom McElligott
12 August 2013
13 July 2013
Wintertime at the Jersey Shore, 1982
There's a series of photos from Asbury Park on the New Yorker web site here. 'Evocative' doesn't seem to do the 1979 series justice. My shot of Wally, a Long Branch native, was taken on the coldest day I've ever experienced...and I lived in Chicago for 19 years. It was so cold, the OM-1 power winder, a cheap hair dresser's version of a motor drive, froze up. It's also why there's no one in the background.
18 June 2013
08 April 2013
27 March 2013
It looks topless to me...
The college girl friend posing topless for my best friend. Similar feelings resurfaced years later when a girlfriend, who had refused my intimate advances for months, returned from a week long business trip with her first full Brazilian claiming it was for hygienic purposes.
27 February 2013
The Trad Tumblr
21 January 2013
Vive L' Ecosse
17 January 2013
Harry Winston Security
Elite model 'Deedee' with Stanley Butkowski, Joseph Kestener and Al La Rocca of Harry Winston Security
02 January 2013
Neck Ties & Tortured Socks
"Pull my daisy
Tip my cup,
All my doors are open.
Cut my thoughts for coconuts,
All my eggs are broken."
Anita Ellis
Tip my cup,
All my doors are open.
Cut my thoughts for coconuts,
All my eggs are broken."
Anita Ellis
I gotta hand it to the kids -- This whole internet bag is mighty stuff. Dig, I'm laying in bed, right. It's early morning and I got no where to go so I flip through an old magazine -- From '59 when men were men and knew how to part their hair. Anyway, I read a movie review for a Jack Kerouac short film called, "Pull My Daisy." I'm grooving on the title and assume there's gotta be some wicked sex.
I drop the magazine to the floor where it plops on neck ties and tortured socks. I grab my phone, do a Google search and up pops a You Tube clip for Pull My Daisy. It's B&W, made in '59 and is under 30 minutes. Opening scene of a skinny '50s chick opening windows of a lower east side loft grabs me by the gonads. The photography is outta sight. No small wonder since the man shooting it was Robert Frank.
It looks raw, all cinema verite like. Later I read the whole thing was well rehearsed and planned out but you'd never know, man. The story? It makes no sense. The chick is an artist who shares the flat with her son and husband, a railroad brakeman. I mean, the cat's a brakeman? Don't they all live in Linden? But it's cool 'cause Kerouac narrates and he's all you hear - like you need to hear anything else.
Allen Ginsberg comes over and shoots the shit with Gregory Corso, Larry Rivers and Peter Orlovsky. There's a lotta smoking and drinking. Arguing. Shouting. But you hear none of it, man. Only Jack's poetry. It's a wild little flick. I'm watching. In bed. On my phone. Secret scatological thought, man.
31 December 2012
07 December 2012
Christmas Tea
My college journalism professor, Jack S Smith, was chief editor of the Associated Press in London during WWII and news editor for the Today Show until his retirement in 1980. I was photo editor of the college newspaper and D-76 pumped through my veins. It was one of my career fantasies to be a photojournalist... complete with safari jacket and a couple black bodied Nikons hanging around my neck and a Lucky Strike hanging outta my mouth.
We were discussing ethics in journalism one day when I asked Jack what purpose was served by sticking a camera lens in the face of a grieving mother who lost her son in a tragic accident. Jack said it was news and that years after the initial story, that image would still be around... telling its story. I thought of Capa, Weegee, W Eugene Smith and other photographers who had to stick a lens in a grieving face and I understood Jack. I also understood I didn't have that ability.
Years ago, I was asked to take photos of my mother in law's Christmas Tea. And long after the tea...the images are still around. Haven't had any hits Googling, "Christmas Tea Photographer Job" yet, but I'll keep trying.
05 December 2012
Trad Xmas List: Duke Wayne - Born in the USA
Life can be terribly unfair and nothing brings that home quite like 'John Wayne: The Legend and the Man' (powerHouse Books $24.91). Chock full of personal photos of family and friends, it really is something to see the charmed life John Wayne lead or, in the case of John Huston, followed.
Huge family, successful career, yacht, homes, wives...Like last year's 'Gary Cooper: Enduring Style,' there's nothing that connects to a celebrity, dead or alive, like ogling their personal photos. More so when that life resembles royalty.
Twitter and Instagram are diluting these images as celebrities post pictures of themselves left, right and center. I've been obsessed (in a good way) with Faye Dunaway for over 40 years but after following her on Twitter...I'm not so sure I want to see her scrap books.
For that reason, studio and publicity images of John Wayne ring tired and mostly false. Tired, because they've been seen too many times. False, because despite all those pictures in uniform, John Wayne never served in the military. What really impresses me, like the Cooper book, are the family scrap book pics of Wayne and his family.
It's like looking in an 18th century mirror and wondering who all has seen their reflection in it. I look at Wayne and Pilar in the bathroom with their daughter, Assia and I don't see a movie star as much as I see a proud Dad with a film director's eye for composition and a laugh.
Calling someone in my army, 'John Wayne' was not a good thing. Although, there was a round disc of chocolate that came with C rations called a 'John Wayne' bar. That was a good thing. There's a lot of speculation that Wayne's intense patriotism came from guilt from never having served. It's a complicated story when you dig into it but it's easy to see the connection Wayne made with the sailors below in a Hawaiian bar.
I grew up with John Wayne movies so it's hard for me to see him without a certain amount of Duke Dogma. Wayne died in 1979 while I was stationed at Ft Bragg. As corny as most of us thought him for the Gung Ho Show - I don't think there was a one of us who thought it an act. There was a party at the main post all-ranks club shortly after Wayne's death where the John Wayne Special was invented. It was a bastardized version of the 'Airborne Special' served at Ft Benning. Best as I can remember it goes something like this:
The John Wayne Special Cocktail
2 ozs Gin
2 ozs Vodka
2 ozs Scotch
2ozs Bourbon
8 ozs Grapefruit Juice
Grenadine
Bragg shared a connection with Wayne through his 1968 film, The Green Berets, even though most of the picture was shot at Ft Benning. Somewhere on Smoke Bomb Hill, the Special Forces A.O. at Bragg, there's an odd marker, almost a tombstone, dedicated to Special Forces from Wayne. God only knows what tribute was given to Duke at the Special Forces Sport Parachute Club.
I don't know when the day will come that I won't be surprised by the homes of celebrities. Usually it's someone like Howie Mandel living in a palatial estate with mixed media sculpture on his grounds and a collection of antique cars in a custom built garage. Their aesthetic always in close approximation to their talent. John Wayne's digs are nice...don't get me wrong, but no fur sinks here. Understated in that Marin County way where the heavy spending goes to landscapers.
Who knew? You think Wayne would have people for this sort of thing. Maybe that's the point. Toupee-less, wrench in hand...John Wayne was a man. A lucky man? You bet your ass. A legend? I used to think so...until this book. He was a man. He made mistakes. He put together bicycles on Christmas morning. He drank too much. He smoked too much. In him, some of us see the man we'd like to be. I think he saw in us, the man he wanted to be. Just a man. Bold talk for a one-eyed fat man.
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