October 2009
16 posts
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Reading Notes - Woody Allen on Woody Allen pg....
Very impressed with Bergman’s films when they were imported to the states.
Thought the French, Italian, and some German cinema was far more mature, more serious. This got him interested in directors and film history.
Bergman started off as a script writer. He had to study American scripts and learn to reproduce them. Apparently he has written about this time.
Allen initially wanted to be a...
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Script Review - Network by Paddy Chayevsky
I’ve been writing bits of dialogue all over the place, but at the AFTRS library I’ve run into a set of film scripts and decided to take a look at what one looks like. I chose Network which is a movie that I really like, and which I remember as being quite talky. Here’s some impressions.
Nearly everything is ‘visual’ in a way that I’m not used to writing. So where as I’d have something like: ‘He...
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Reading Notes - Szarkowski on Garry Winogrand Part...
Photo by Lee Freidlander
Winogrand later turned to advertising. He wasn’t very good at it, but got by.
“For Winogrand, as perhaps for most ambitious photographers of this century, the essential, supportive audience was often small enough to gather around a cafe table.”
The New Documents exhibition photos were mainly made of of his Guggenheim fellowship. “The exhibition received considerable...
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Review - Alice Munro’s Short Story Silence in her...
Photo by Unknown
The thing to learn from her is a simplicity of style. Saying that it is understated, is, well, an understatement. She has a polite, but razor honesty. Stealthy, when she slaps, she comes hard and her eyes don’t flinch. She means it!
What she does is build pristine paragraphs, and pages, and stories. Other writers conjure up gaudy facades. Like a Shaker, with her plain,...
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Dialogue - You Want to Make What Now?
So I’ve always wanted to make films. And now I have the freedom to try it. This may end up a spectacular failure. But since all failure is just success … but a lot shittier, I’m looking forward to it.
Inquisitor
So tell me what’s going on with this cinema thing.
Aspirant
Well, it’s something that I’ve always wanted to do. I think it fits me the best.
Inquisitor
Have you...
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Reading Notes - 8 October 2009 (Szarkowski,...
Photo by Callahan
Finished off the Friedlander book’s opening essay. Relief. Galassi is not super fun to read. Tosser.
Good end though: “‘Incessantly’ is if anything an understatement. Having long ago made the labours of discipline into the instincts of habit, and having still earlier obliterated whatever barrier might once have existed between his thirst for experience and his compulsion to...
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Review - Notes of Szarkowski on Garry Winogrand...
Photo by Winogrand
Of all my readings in photography, this has had the most profound effect on my thinking. It is the greatest critic, Szarkowski, writing on who is the most important photographer, Winogrand. It’s like the super bowl of essays. Get some chips and coke and settle back. The common sense and sheer insight is astounding.
“Garry Winogrand discovered photography—or was...
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Essay - Transcript, First Interview, Part 1
It was an Autumn morning in New York. The Artist is half an hour early. He has found a spot right in the middle of the bleak cafe he likes and sits looking towards the door. He is dressed in a black t-shirt, black pants, black socks, and black shoes. Later he tells me that he is wearing quick-dry underwear which are black. He says they dry in a hotel room within the hour. He has on black plastic...
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Reading Notes - 5 October 2009
Photographs by Stephen Gill
Had a look at Stephen Gill’s A Book of Field Studies put out by Chris Boot. I was predisposed to not like him. And the introduction is written by an idiot. But looking at the pictures I realised that there was a deep sweet intelligence and restraint with them. They are very basic exercises in looking.
Gill is looking at many of the things that I look at everyday...
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Reading Notes - 4 October 2009
Photos by Harry Callahan
Read Liz Wells’ ‘Photography Reader’. Most of it is academic, theoretical, badly written wank. But some classic stuff by Weston (blogged already), and Wright Morris.
Wright Morris writes about the key problems with photography today:
Criticism displacing the very things they are meant to explain.
The photographer as artist displaces the photograph
Too many...
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Review - Garry Winogrand Interview with...
Top photo by Garry Winogrand, second photo of him shooting.
Here’s the complete interview. The video is good. You can get it on iTunes.
Winogrand’s personality is never hidden. It comes through plainly as cantankerous, intelligent, virtuosic, insecure, but always, always honest. Even when he is being terribly dishonest you can see the twinkle in his eye which tells you that he just...
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Review - ‘Seeing Photographically’ by Edward...
Photos by Edward Weston
I liked my skim of his daybooks so I thought I’d have a look at this essay he’s written. Also, I’ve taken to photographing fruit because of him, and he may talk about fruit!
The early Art strain of photography veered erroneously to painterly effects as that was the dominant and seemingly closest tradition. This was anti-photographic.
That is why the photography that...
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Reading Notes - 1 October 2009
Photo by Unknown
The Pompeidou centre library is truly wonderous. The photography section is the largest I’ve seen and the tables, and stuff is great. There is wireless internet but it is like owning a temperamental ass, it does what it wants, and only works part of the day. So many attractive girls in the art section. They all seem very wary of me though. They must know that I’m writing an...
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Photo Note - The Scream of Art History
The biggest problem that has been occupying me in Paris is the construction of sets and the inter-dependence between individual pictures. I wrote an essay earlier on the slow building up of symbols and feelings that I’ve been attempting for the twilight set. In these pictures I’m trying something more obvious, just a straight, simple narrative. The light was good and I...
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Reading Notes - 29 and 30 September 2009
Photo by Lee Friedlander
Photo by Luigi Ghirri
Looked at some of Curtis’ work with the Indian Americans. Some interesting masks and full costumes. Otherwise fairly standard portraiture stuff. Not super impressed. But it was the beginning of me learning the vernacular of shooting primitives. Not that it will matter. I’ll go out there and do work until I like the look of it. And if the past is...