10 posts tagged “photography”
By accident I ran across the work of Peter Van Agtmael. I read his bio after viewing his images and it should come as no surprise that this guy is represented by Magnum. As one would expect you could describe his images from Afghanistan as brutal, shocking and visceral. However, I think that his most arresting work is his documentation of soldiers that have returned from combat facing the rest of their lives with new found physical and mental disabilities. Please give this a look.
Last night my friend and I finally made it into the Bethlehem Steel admin building. This place was built in 1917 and was abandoned in 1989 after the earthquake. This is a pretty historic site, many battleships were made here during world war one and two. One of many shipbuilding sites that as a whole produced an average of one ship per day during WWII. Getting in was difficult, but incredibly rewarding. I can't wait to go back during the day when I don't have to make 4-5 minute exposures, plus it will be slightly less creepy. Remarkably, the place is pretty much intact, other than copper pipe being stripped out of some of the bathrooms. A wonderful Beaux Arts building with some Art Deco details. This place has an abundance of wood paneling and marble walls and floors. Even some of the office supplies are still there. Due to time constraints we only took photos of the first two floors. Credit all photos to Andre Hermann.
I ran across this little gem when I was helping my Mom move into her new office space. I asked her whether she was using it, she said no and gave it to me. I didn't know much about the camera at the time, but I could estimate that it was an entry level medium format TLR camera. TLR means that it is a twin lens reflex camera. The top lens is used for looking through the viewfinder and the bottom lens is used to project an image onto the film. It has a little light meter (which I never have used, since I'm too lazy to buy the weird batteries that it takes and I don't trust the in camera meter a good deal of the time, besides I have a handheld meter). The image size is 6cm X 6cm which is a fun departure from the usual 6x7 that I normally shoot or 35mm which I use from time to time.
Dear blog readers -
I'm attempting to write a grant for an artistic project with an environmental slant. Does anyone have any good suggestions or know any wealthy philanthopists (kidding). Any advice or direction would be welcome. Thanks.
This evening I discovered a branch of the library of congress named Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Collection. Quite a governmental sounding name I would say, but hey that's what they're good at. The big deal about this website is that you can download these images with file sizes up to 130+ megabytes. Most 35mm slides run at about 45-50 megabytes and the 4x5 slides go to around 130. This means you can make a museum quality print (11x14 for 35 16x20 for 4x5) if you have access to a good printer, or if you want to send it off these guys are damn good. Here are some of my favorites. UPDATE: Some of these scans have pretty funky shadow values and they are scanned in 8 bit, so anticipate some noise/nastiness in the shadows. Also, there is a good deal of pictures of worthless dam projects completed during the 30's and 40's.
