In Kodak’s Hometown, Memory and History By JAMES ESTRIN

Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, a husband and wife photography team, documented Rochester after Eastman Kodak’s bankruptcy in their new book, “Memory City,” published by Radius Books. Previously they published “Violet Isle,” a volume on modern-day Cuba. Ms. Norris Webb’s book “My Dakota” was featured on Lens in  2012, while Mr. Webb’s book “The Suffering of Light” was featured on Lens in 2011. He is a member of Magnum Photos. Their conversation with James Estrin has been edited.

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‘Finding Vivian Maier’ Explores a Mysterious Photographer (by Manohla Dargis)

The photographer Vivian Maier, shown here in an undated self-portrait, is the subject of the documentary “Finding Vivian Maier.” Now widely considered an exceptional photographer, her talent went largely unrecognized in her lifetime. Some of her work is on the following slides. Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection

The Nanny as Sphinx, Weaving Enigmatic Magic on the Sly

It’s no surprise that Maier is now the subject of a documentary, given the quality of her work, the nominal exoticism of her life and the secrets that still drift around her. She’s a terrific story — part Mary Poppins, part Weegee — who was at once emancipated and in service. She was introduced to the world, as it were, by John Maloof, one of this movie’s directors, who bought a box of her negatives at a Chicago auction in 2007 for about $400. The auction house, he explains, told him the work was by Maier, but he found nothing about her on Google. He had purchased the negatives for a book he was working on, but after deciding that they were of no use, he stashed the box away.

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In Photography, Cool Rules By JOHN LELAND

Philippe Halsman

The thing about “cool” is that it shows itself equally in moments of distress or pleasure, driving people indifferently to greatness or stupidity. It comes from gritty streets and prices out the people who live there; it pulls couples together or cleaves them apart. And even as its meaning dissipates from overuse, you still can’t talk about Miles Davis without mentioning it.

Cool is, in short, a story about America, full of contradictions and unresolved riddles, a mask that often reveals more than the face beneath it.

You won’t find it preserved under glass at the Smithsonian – except that, ahem, it is now on display at the museum’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, in a parade of images that say a lot about how the nation sees itself when it pretends everybody is looking. They are also pretty cool. (Or, as the art historian Robert Farris Thompson categorizes in his essay “An Aesthetic of the Cool,” it’s a “metaphor of moral aesthetic accomplishment.”)

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Fashion at Stanford: Annie Leibovitz, Pascal Dangin, & Cathy Horyn

Photo via Stanford Arts Institute

Annie Leibovitz has an impressive four decade career in photo-journalism and images of some of the world’s most prominent rock stars, poets, and government leaders stored in the boxes of negatives lining her attic. Pascal Dangin, founder of Box Studios and CEO and Creative Director of KiDS, has been referred to over the years as the ‘photo whisperer’, a digital artist, and the retoucher’s retoucher. Both are highly respected throughout the world of art, and recently came to speak before a full house of eager Stanford students and community members.  In this second Fashion at Stanford conversation, these image-makers addressed their works and their creative paths. As stated by Leibovitz, “there are two sides to taking a picture.”

Alongside Cathy Horyn, fashion critic for The New York Times and curator of Fashion at Stanford, the conversation moved from Leibovitz’s original landscape photography to the influence of Snapchat on the lexicon of the photographic language. Leibovitz highlighted her experience photographing the Queen, and Dangin discussed whether editing actually enhances an image’s quality.

via: 

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Creating Neon Poetry With a Patient Camera

The New York School street photographer Saul Leiter is the subject of Tomas Leach’s “In No Great Hurry.”

‘In No Great Hurry,’ a Documentary About Saul Leiter,

By DANIEL M. GOLD

Published: January 2, 2014

Now considered among the very best of the New York School street photographers, and a leading exponent in the artistic use of color film, Saul Leiter came to this acclaim rather late. While much of his most powerful work was made in the 1950s, it wasn’t truly rediscovered until nearly a half-century later. 

That’s largely because of Mr. Leiter’s almost pathological modesty, as Tomas Leach’s documentary, “In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons in Life With Saul Leiter,” amply demonstrates. “My own achievements are rather minor,” Mr. Leiter, seated in his cluttered East Village apartment, insists genially, questioning the need for a film. Half-jokingly, he says that if he doesn’t like it, he won’t allow its release.

“In No Great Hurry” is not a rigorous examination of Mr. Leiter’s art. Instead, between conversations, it floats some of his most ethereal, lustrous images, soft, layered scenes that glow with a watercolor’s warmth, sharp departures from the gritty cityscapes of his contemporaries. His best work seems both of the moment and timeless. 

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Josef Koudelka: Formed by the World by James Estrin

Photo © Josef Koudelka

An interview with Magnum's Josef Koudelka on The New York Times' Lens.

Josef Koudelka started his professional life as an engineer in Czechoslovakia and switched to photography in his late 20s. He photographed the Soviet invasion of his country in 1968 and published his seminal book, “Gypsies,” in 1975 (a revised and enlarged edition was published by Aperture in 2011).

His new book, “Wall: Israeli and Palestinian Landscapes,” also published by Aperture, is a result of four years of photographing the Israeli-built wall that separates the Palestinian West Bank and Israel. The book came out of a group project, “This Place: Making Images, Breaking Images — Israel and the West Bank,” that was organized by the photographer Frédéric Brenner and included Mr. Koudelka and 11 other photographers.

Mr. Koudelka, 75, has been a member of Magnum Photos for more than 40 years. He spoke with James Estrin in Paris last week. The conversation has been edited and will run in two parts on Lens, Tuesday and Wednesday.

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