Helen Levitt’s 1970s color photos resonate with a distinctive color palette, full of blue, turquoise, green and red hues. Her shots are of people, alive in their environment, rich in the structure of “ordinariness,” and not simply adornments found in a grey-hued urban landscape. Like Joel Meyerwitz, Levitt waits for those normal gestures that mark…
This is a lovely, inspiring video regarding the life of photographer and artist, Saul Leiter, who lived most of his life in the obscurity of New York, but whose groundbreaking color photography perhaps permanently shattered the dim, enamored yearning of Leica lovers for the monochrome image.This video was recommended to me by fellow photographer and…
Anyone who’s ever seen my photography probably knows that I strongly prefer color to black and white. Maria and I have written on the differences before, so I won’t repeat those arguments here in total. I realize that many people think true photography is black and white, but suffice it to say, you’re wrong. 😉…
There has long been a debate on whether black and white or color photography is better. Many love black and white for its ability to separate viewers from the subject and its ability to reduce the photo to its compositional elements. Y’all are wrong. 😉 Here’s a famous photo by Dorothea Lange, taken in July…
Sleeping Passengers, Greyhound Bus Terminal, New York City, 1947, Esther Bubley, American (1921 – 1998) Esther Bubley was an American documentary (street) photographer who specialized in photos of ordinary people, taken in an intimate, expressive manner. She spent much of her career in New York City and Washington, DC, and is, among other things,…
I’m going to try an experiment I’m calling “Photo of the Day,” wherein I post a photo I’ve come across and fallen in love with. I’m hoping it stimulates my not leaving this blog idle for so long. It will only work, however, if people view the photo and the brief blurb on its background.…
In 1977, Winogrand was invited by photographer and professor Geoff Winningham to speak with students at Rice University in Houston. The video of the event, below, was produced by the National Gallery of Art in conjunction with the exhibition Garry Winogrand, organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the San Francisco Museum of…
In honor of Women’s History Month, we’ve put together a listing of the top female street photographers in History. Some of these have been profiled before, others are being listed for the first time. We hope you check them out. More about these ladies can be found via Google and other such things. We’re late…
Robert Frank (Switzerland / USA) – 1924 to Present I come to profile Robert Frank, not to praise him. With apologies to Shakespeare, that subtle but important distinction is one the reader needs to understand. To this point, with the exception of some shooters whose contributions to street photography have been exaggerated (e.g. Henri Cartier-Bresson),…
M and I have both written about color versus black and white photography, and others have voiced their own, sometimes dissenting views. I wanted to add another viewpoint to the discussion, this time from New York photographer Joel Meyerowitz, who wrote, in Joel Meyerowitz Retrospective: It’s easy to make a simple comparison about – for…
