Last Weekend

Hello Guys and Girls,

I hope that you all enjoyed your prom night and everyone is safe and well rested by now.
I had great time working with you on your various projects and I cannot wait to see them all coming to complition.
Please use this thread to voice your experience, concerns, thoughts and wishes.
See you soon.

Project Brainstorm

Hello guys,

What a great session we had this Wednesday!
I'd like to dedicate this area to further develop your idea. You can post link to images, thoughts, ideas, concerns, jokes or anything else you may think of. There is no formula. ANYTHING is acceptable! Together we will create an amazing project proposal for each and every one of you.
Those of you who think they have it figured out, please post all that you have. I am sure we can spark things up a bit. Those of you who still feel like you are in the dark—let us hear your concerns. We will show you how close you really are and please don't get discouraged...

The Decisive Moment

Many of you have posted interesting thoughts about Bresson and the Decisive Moment. I would like to open the "floor" for some discussion about what it means to you. Once again there is no wrong answer. I'll start first:

The way I see it, the Decisive Moment is not a moment in our timeline. It is a moment in space that the Photographer envisioned, moved by and captured. As I mentioned in my lecture, Bresson was part of the surrealist movement in the 1920's and 30's, part of the surrealist philosophy had to do with the way by which an artist "received" images from the universe. Now, bare with me for a second, this is a bit out there by you may have heard about it already. The surrealist is aware of everything in the world around him, the mundane, the unexplained, the usual but not necessarily the spectacular. stop and think for a second! We are mostly inspired by the amazing but what about the those images that happen everyday, constantly repeating? A person jump over a puddle, or boys playing in the snow, or in the hot streets of brooklyn in 1981, all those images have some familiar emotional weight, something that make us feel good. The moment when the event occurred, the moment when the photographer recognized the event and its vast meaning, is the Decisive Moment. I'll take it even further and say that the moment never seized to exist. Each time we view the photograph the moment is what we feel. It can be utterly unfamiliar or common that does not matter; it is a moment well wordy of experiencing.
One more important point to understant is that the moment is not limited to a stop action shot, as in the man over a puddle.
For the next day try to be aware of such moments in your own life. Think about how would you capture them, what part of the action or nonaction you will choose to reproduce and why. Come back here and tell us about it in as much details as you can. The idea is to reproduce what you felt when you witness an event. Have fun!

Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare, 1932

075
Originally uploaded by realnyc.

"For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and
spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to "give a meaning" to the world, one has to feel involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression." -Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Hello Guys,

We are getting close to our next meeting and I want to introduce to you another one of my favorit photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson. After reading the following introduction, I would like you to tell me what you like about this amazing master.

Biography:

Henri Cartier-Bresson was born in France in 1908. Trained as a painter, he began his career in photography in 1931 on a trip to the Ivory Coast. He was one of the first photographers to shoot in the 35mm format with a Leica camera, and helped to develop the photojournalistic "street photography" style that influenced generations of photographers to come.

Cartier-Bresson is well known for his concept of the "decisive moment" in photography. He defined this moment as "the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which gave that event its proper expression." His famous photograph of a man jumping over a puddle ("Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare, 1932") illustrates this concept perfectly.

During his photographic career Cartier-Bresson photographed all over the world - Mexico, Canada, USA, Europe, India, Burma, Pakistan, Indonesia, Africa, Burma, China, Japan, Cuba, and the USSR, among other places. He also photographed many famous personalities and artists of the 20th century, including Matisse, Picasso, Coco Chanel, Truman Capote, and Gandhi. His interest in the visual arts also extended to film - he made films with Jean Renoir, Jacques Becker and André Zvoboda and a documentary on Republican Spain (1937).

During the Second World War Cartier-Bresson was taken prisoner by the Germans and escaped, then photographed the occupation and liberation of France. During this time rumors reached the USA that he had been killed, and the Museum of Modern Art began to prepare a "posthumous" show. Cartier-Bresson later spent a year in the US helping to prepare this show.

In 1947 Cartier-Bresson co-founded the photographic cooperative Magnum along with fellow photographers Robert Capa, George Rodger, David Seymour, Bill Vandivert and others. Valuing his anonymity as a tool for capturing decisive moments with his camera, Cartier-Bresson did not like to be photographed, and shot with a Leica camera which was smaller, quieter and less intrusive than other cameras. Cartier-Bresson retired from photography in the early 1970s to return to drawing and painting. Although no longer taking photos, his influence on photographers and the photographic world was solidified. The Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation was created by Cartier-Bresson and his wife and daughter in 2002 to preserve and share his legacy.

Henri Cartier-Bresson died on August 3rd, 2004 in Paris. He is survived by his wife and fellow photographer Martine Franck, and his daughter Melanie.

Sebastiao Salgado

salgado
Originally uploaded by realnyc.

Protected by their covers against the cold morning wind, refugees wait in the Koyan camp, Ethiopia, 1984, from Famine in the Sahel, 1984. Salgado's work has always been an inspiration for me. A week before I went to Vietnam, I was lucky to see his show, Migrations: Humanity in transition, here in NYC, it really set the tone for my trip.

Post your inspiration!

Ok, guys,

Now that we all have our blogs lets have some fun. I'd like you all to find an image that moves you. You can research the web, find it at home(your parents old album maybe..), or just grab a camera and photograph that which inspires you. This can be as abstract, formal, serious, playfull, landscape, whatever makes you feel the strongest. After you have the image saved as a JPEG (400x400 dpi should be more then enough), I'd like you to create an account on flickr www.flickr.com and upload the photo to that account. Flicker allows you to post images directly onto your blog which is easy and very coool. Once an image is on flickr double click on it and an icon will appear on top that say "blog this". Enter YOUR blog address and password and a few words of wisdom for us lay people. Remember, have fun with it and keep it real.

Welcome to Realism

Hello Friends and welcome to the world of documentary photography. This is going to be our virtual podium, from it, each of us will deliver his vision. We also going to explore the life and work of many esteem photographers such as: Henry Cartier-Bresson, Dian Arbus Sebastiao Salgado, Frank Capa and others. With their images, those photographers invoke, feelings, ordinarily unexplored. I invite you all, to dive in and explore such feelings. Once you do, learn to express them in your own photographs.

It is important to remember from the beginning, that all of us see the world differently. You are exceptional, don't be hesitate to discover that.
With that said, lets start!

Diane Arbus

Norman Mailer, Newsweek NY, have commented on this image: Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child.

What do you think he ment by it?

Just some background on Diane's early life:

The American photographer Diane Nemerov Arbus (1923-1971) specialized in photographs of nontraditional subjects,
including gays, the physically challenged, circus performers, and nudists.

Diane Arbus was born Diane Nemerov on March 14, 1923. The daughter of a wealthy New York businessman (the
family owned Russeks department store on Fifth Avenue), Arbus led a pampered childhood. Being a member of a
prominent New York family, she grew up with a strong sense of what was "acceptable" and what was "prohibited" in
polite society. Her world was a protected one in which she never felt adversity, yet it seemed to her to be an unreal
world. Ludicrous as it may seem, the sense of being "immune" from hardship was painful for her. An extremely shy
child, Arbus was often fearful but told no one of her fantasies. Her closest relationship was with her older brother,
Howard.

From the seventh through the twelfth grade Arbus attended Fieldstone School in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, a
part of the Ethical Culture educational system. Here she became interested in myths, ritual, and public spectacle, ideas
which would later inform her photography. At Fieldstone she also devoted much time and energy to art class--painting,
sketching, and working in clay. During this period of her life Arbus and several of her friends began exploring New York
on their own, getting off the subway in unfamiliar areas of Brooklyn or the Bronx, observing and following interesting or
unusual passersby.

At the age of 14 Diane met Allan Arbus, a 19-year-old City College student who was employed in the art department at
Russeks. It was love at first sight. Her parents disapproved, but this only served to heighten Diane's resolve to marry
him as soon as she came of age. In many ways, Allan represented an escape from all that was restricting and
oppressive in her family life. They were married in a rabbi's chambers on April 10, 1941, with only their immediate
families present.

Lisette Model

Lisette Model
Originally uploaded by realnyc.

Arbus found herself most drawn to the photographs of her
contemporaries Louis Faurer and Robert Frank and, especially, to the unusual images of Lisette Model. In 1958 Arbus
enrolled in a class Model was offering at the New School.

It was during this period of work with Model that Arbus decided what she really wanted to photograph was "the
forbidden." She saw her camera as a sort of license that allowed her to be curious and to explore the lives of others.
Gradually overcoming her shyness, she enjoyed going where she never had, entering the lives and homes of others
and confronting that which had been off-limits in her own protected childhood.

Lisette Model was born in Austria to a wealthy family in 1901. Her first artistic pursuit was music, which she studied
during the 1920s in Vienna and Paris. She switched to painting and then photography in the early 1930s.

One of her most famous photographs was taken during her first assignment for Harper's Bazaar: it showed an
obese woman wearing a black bathing suit, crouching with her hands upon her knees, on the beach at Coney Island.
Like most of Model's later work, the image was tightly cropped so that the subject filled the frame, giving it a radical,
confrontational style.

puertorican woman with a veil

puertorican
Originally uploaded by realnyc.

Arbus posed her subjects looking directly into the camera, just as she looked directly at them. She said, "I don't like to
arrange things; I arrange myself." For her, the subject was always more important than the picture. She firmly believed
that there were things which nobody would see unless she photographed them.