After Konrad Cramer settled in the Woodstock artist’s colony, he seems to have gone more and more into photography:
Cramer: Solarized Still - 1946
Jack Kerouac w. Allen Ginsberg, 1959 - during the shooting of Pull My Daisy…
Photo by John Cohen
Robert Frank - from The Americans:
Indianapolis
Robert Frank - from The Americans:
Fourth of July - Jay, New York, 1956
Robert Frank - from The Americans:
Trolley, New Orleans, 1955
Robert Frank - from The Americans:
Rodeo, New York City, 1954
Today’s most important birthday to me is that of Swiss-born American photographer Robert Frank who is 85 today…
Here Frank is seen with his regular collaborator, Jack Kerouac, during the planning and shooting of their short film Pull My Daisy, 1959 - which Frank co-directed together with Alfred Leslie, based on the third act of Kerouac’s play, Beat Generation…
Photo by John Cohen
Much more on that, and on Frank’s great photo book The Americans, on this day in 2008 on OF
Young girl gazing pensively through the pane of her apartment window which grimly reflects the image of barbed wire fencing that tops the nearby Berlin wall, December 1962
Photographer: Paul Schutzer, LIFE Magazine
Tonight we celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall, November 9, 1989 - an event I had never imagined would take place.
As I grew up in the 60s, it was images like the above that we received from the old German capital:
“Close view of Berlin wall bearing the shadowy silhouettes of seven West Berliners waving to their relatives on the other unseen side of the wall in the eastern sector. West Berlin, Germany, December 1962” - Photographer: Paul Schutzer, LIFE
The docks of Stockholm - a city built on 14 islands - in an undated & uncredited LIFE photo…
Ordinary Finds will be Tumblr’ed tonight from the Swedish capital, Stockholm, where I am visiting for the first time ever - on a short university business trip…
As you’ve noticed I live in B&W mostly, so here is a vintage LIFE Magazine study of the bridges and waters of the Swedish capital. It still looks pretty much the same still, on a foggy night like this…
Oops, forgot the goodnight story:
Therefore, the best advice remains to accept everything, to act like a heavy mass even if you feel you are being blown away, to let no unnecessary step to be enticed from you, to regard others with the gaze of an animal, to feel no remorse, in short, to force down any remnants of this ghostly life, that is, to multiply the final quiet of the grave and to let nothing but this remain.
A characteristic motion in such a state is running your little finger over your eyebrows.
From Decisions by Franz Kafka (found in the little 1913 volume entitled Betrachtung - translated by Kevin Blahut as Contemplation, 1996 - Twisted Spoon Press, Prague)
It’s an early nighty-night from OF today - sleep tight with this Nocturne:
Karl Struss (1886–1981): Brooklyn Bridge, Nocturne, ca. 1912–13 - Palladium print
© 1983 Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas
Earlie Hudnall, Jr. (b. Nov. 8, 1946): Lady with Pup, 1990 - Belize
“Earlie Hudnall, Jr. was born in 1946 and grew up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He developed an appreciation for personal history through his grandmother, who passed on to him stories of family and community as they sat together on the porch in the summer. Years later, while majoring in art at Texas Southern, he received further encouragement to draw on his own experience from the artist John Biggers, who had founded the university’s art department and urged his students to explore their African-American heritage. As the school yearbook editor, he went out into the community to document the lives of the people in the wards of Houston. The intimacy that he found among neighborhood residents in the predominantly African-American Third Ward area reminded Hudnall of the sense of community he had known as a boy in Hattiesburg. As an artist, Hudnall is widely praised for his ability to capture the emotion in a seemingly mundane moment. Hudnall views his subjects as universal icons, capable of conveying stories about family and community regardless of their race. Hudnall is the university photographer for Texas Southern University in Houston. The Wittliff Gallery is proud to own ten of his images to date.” - SOURCE: Amon Carter Museum website, and Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present by Deborah Willis.
Also:
Flipping Boy, 1983 - gelatin silver print on paper (Smithsonian)
“Hudnall directs us to the boy’s acrobatics in the street as an expression of the beauty found in everyday or humble circumstances. Upside down, the boy takes in Houston’s urban jumble, a phenomenon that is no less confusing to the viewer right side up. Old and new, poor and rich are sharply juxtaposed in a city that makes uneasy neighbors of historically black neighborhoods, such as the Fourth Ward pictured here, and gleaming commercial skyscrapers.” - Smithsonian label
Looking Out, 1991 - gelatin silver print (Smithsonian)
“Hudnall finds inspiration in the beauty and pride in everyday life in African American communities in the South. This youngster’s stare is so direct that he seems to look at and through us, a glance that suggests he is wiser than his age. Completely at ease in his surroundings, his posture, dress, and expression appear spontaneous, but actually the image is carefully composed.” - Smithsonian label
