Friday, December 31, 2010

The 2010 Top Ten list


What is December 31 without a top ten list?

It’s been an odd year. A recovery year where it seemed like there were fewer highs and lows as everyone hunkered down with fingers crossed. Photographers being the creative people they are, however, signs of life could not be kept down and so in no particular order here are my top ten visual pleasures of 2010.



1. Richard Learoyd.

Working with a self-made camera that creates highly detailed near life-size images by projecting an image directly onto photographic paper without any interposing negative – Learoyd has invigorated at least three genres at once – cameraless (or more accurately film-less) photography, portraiture, and still life.




2. Auctions.

Continuing to make inroads into what was traditionally gallery territory, the auction houses (particularly Christies and Phillips) are putting on more interesting, original, and varied sales. And for the astute collector there are always bargains. This Irving Penn self-portrait from 1948 went for what I’m sure will be seen as a buy at $45,000 at Christies in London this past spring. I'd say it's worth at least double.




3. Mickalene Thomas.

The connections between contemporary art and traditional photography continue to intertwine as seen here in Mickalene Thomas’ bad-ass tribute to Seydou Keita. Jumping between painting, appliqué, and photography, Mickalene Thomas is just one of the new breed of hyphenates making waves as the art and photography world continue to grow closer together.




4. Susan Derges.

After a relatively quiet period, Susan Derges – one of the fab four of British camera-less photography – has re-emerged with a series of new photograms based around the idea of rock pools. In this image, Jackson Pollock meets Turner as light, color, and line intersect in a glorious mixture of fresh photographic ideas.




5. Tokyo Photo.

Gaining strength and energy – Tokyo Photo is fast emerging as the go-to fair of the east. Founder Tomo Harada, pictured above, has made it his mission to make the event a must see and entering year three the mix of American and Japanese dealers is creating an ever more exciting cultural exchange.




6. Patrick Smith.

Top of the list of new(ish) names that have emerged in photography this year is French photographer Patrick Smith. While clearly working in the tradition of Vitali and Niedermayr, Smith’s pictorial eye and immaculate exposures have a purity all their own.




7. Surprises.

No matter how much you think you know about photography, there are always surprises. Going through Art Miami I came across a group of pictures of Elizabeth Taylor by Frank Worth. I don’t know how I had never seen or heard of these images before but that is what makes life so interesting. (And boy, was she a beauty!)




8. Bruce Weber.

One of the best museum shows around (and up through February 13), Bruce Weber’s photographs of the residents of Miami’s “Little Haiti” neighborhood at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami are a reflection of Weber’s outstanding skill and diversity. To those who only think of Weber as a fashion photographer, the work may be a surprise, but to any one who has followed his career closely, the humanism and warmth of the work should come only as a welcome treat.




9. Jim Krantz.

One of the few disappointments of this gallery year for me was putting off a show of Jim Krantz’s work when we couldn’t get the releases we needed. Krantz is probably the most distinguished of the Marlboro photographers whose work was appropriated by Richard Prince for his “Cowboys” series. But Krantz is back in the saddle making new images strictly for himself of which the above image shot in 2010 is just the beginning. Stay tuned.




10. Teresa Vlckova

Noted as one of the highlights of Aperture’s latest round-up of new talent - reGeneration 2 – Teresa Vlckova creates pictures that pull us into her otherworldly universe of flying girls and Brothers Grimm-like twins. Born in 1983 in Vsetín, Czech Republic, Vlčková’s work will be seen in the U.S. for the first time in January when Aperture exhibits a selection of work of the 80 photographers featured in the book "reGeneration 2". If Vlckova lives up to her early promise, she will clearly be a name to be reckoned with.


Good-bye 2010

Have fun as you welcome in 2011.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Tick… Tick… Tick…

As the last hours of 2010 elapse, let’s look forwards to the new year. January is always significant for a repository that holds archive material: each new year brings the opening of new material to the public, material that was already catalogued but could not be made available because of its sensitivity. This is doubly significant for the Wellcome Library, of course, as we hold a large amount of material relating to the medical issues of named individuals, and this is a category of material that the UK’s Data Protection Act highlights as particularly sensitive and in need of careful handling. (Our access policy, setting out how we deal with this material and the demands placed by legislation, can be seen on our website at http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/node159.html: see the first bullet point under Access.)

Full details of the material newly-opened, of course, will have to wait until the new year! For the moment, although we cannot open the files for you, we can list the materials whose closure expires at midnight. Chief among them are papers from Churchill’s personal physician, Lord Moran; files on various rare conditions collected by the physician Donald Hunter during his many years at the Royal London Hospital; files on recipients of the Beit Memorial Fellowship; ledgers from two mental hospitals, the Holloway Sanatorium in Egham and Ticehurst House in Sussex; and some staff records from the Wellcome Foundation. The full list is below. Only a little while to go…

Lord Moran papers
PP/CMW/D.1/2: Minutes, 2nd-4th meeting, 22 Jul, 29-30 Dec 1949 and 17-18 Jan 1950; 1949-1950.
PP/CMW/D.1/3: Agendas and minutes, 5th-13th meeting; Jan-Dec 1950.
PP/CMW/D.2/1: Official lists of consultants and proposed awards (papers A3-A7, A12-A16); Jan-Feb 1950; Also lists of regional hospital boards, chairmen of medical committees of teaching hospitals and notes on grading of specialists.
PP/CMW/D.2/2: Further official lists of doctors and recommended awards with associated documents (papers A21-24, A28-29, A31-33); Feb-Mar 1950.
PP/CMW/D.2/3: Review of the Committee's Work up to June 1950' (Paper A35); Jun-50.
PP/CMW/D.6/1/2: Lists for London regions, some headed 'not on photostat list', surgeons (carbon typescript) with covering letter to selectors Jan 1950, paediatricians (carbon typescript), general medicine (carbon typescript), lists of surgeons (pencil manuscript, not Moran); c.1950.
PP/CMW/D.6/2: Schedules of consultants listed by speciality for Professional Assessment Committee; c.1949-1950.
PP/CMW/D.6/2/1: South East metropolitan region, with recommendations; c.1949-1950.
PP/CMW/D.6/2/2: South West metropolitan region, annotated by Moran with recommended grades; 1950.
PP/CMW/D.6/2/3: North West metropolitan region, Supplementary list, annotated by Moran with recommended grades; 1950. .
PP/CMW/D.6/3: 'Results of 1950 Voting'. Manuscript lists, annotated by Moran, for Birmingham, Bristol, East Anglia, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Oxford, Sheffield, Wales and London regions; 1950.
PP/CMW/D.6/4: Surgeons. Lists of recommendations by Association of Surgeons and Royal College of Surgeons; 1949-1950.
PP/CMW/D.6/5: Whole-time clinical teachers. Lists and manuscript notes by Moran; 1950.
PP/CMW/D.13/1: 1950 (?) Awards; 1945-1950.
PP/CMW/D.13/1/1: Bristol, Sheffield, North East, North West, South East Metropolitan Regions, Association of Surgeons (with partial index); 1949-1950.
PP/CMW/D.13/1/2: London Teaching Hospitals (with index); 1949-1950.
PP/CMW/D.13/1/3: 'Faculties', Anaesthetics, ENT, Orthopaedics, Radiology, Ophthalmology, Royal College of Surgeons and Royal College of Physicians recommendations. All areas; 1945-1950.
PP/CMW/K.5/1/1: Casablanca (1st Version, with Sir Desmond MacCarthy's comments), covering Jan-Feb 1943; c.1950.
PP/CMW/K.5/1/2: Untitled typescript, with Desmond MacCarthy's comments, covering Feb-Oct 1943; c.1950.
PP/CMW/K.5/1/3: Red Twinlock, revised version of Casablanca by CMW with comments and annotations by CMW, John Wilson and others. Covering Dec 1941-Feb 1945; c.1950.
PP/CMW/K.5/5/1: Mr Churchill's fall from Power, '1st typing, with Sir Desmond MacCarthy's comments'. Period covered Feb 1945-Dec 1947; c.1950.
PP/CMW/K.6/1/1: 'Mr Churchill's Fall from Power' (1945 period); c.1950.
PP/CMW/K.6/2: Early revisions of war-time volumes; c.1949-1950.

Donald Hunter papers
PP/HUN/C/1/2: Acromegaly; 1923-1937.
PP/HUN/C/1/16: Chloroma; 1913.
PP/HUN/C/1/38: Grave's disease; 1928-1929.
PP/HUN/C/1/66: Pigmentations; 1919-1937.

Beit Memorial Fellowships
SA/BMF/A.2/102 : Lythgoe, Richard James; 1926.
SA/BMF/A.2/103 : Burnet, Macfarlane Frank; 1926.
SA/BMF/A.2/104 : Frew, John Glover Hugo; 1926.
SA/BMF/A.2/105 : Goldblatt, Maurice Walter; 1926.
SA/BMF/A.2/107 : Stephens, John Gower; 1926.
SA/BMF/A.2/108 : Woolf, Barnet; 1926.

Mental After Care Association
SA/MAC/G.2/6: Case Agenda Books; Jul 1925-Dec 1926.

Wellcome Foundation records
WF/CA/07: Staff Index Cards; c1898-c1933; Contents of six wooden filing drawers, originating from a larger series, containing staff index cards, arranged alphabetically by surname. Cards record: name, staff number, age and date of birth, start and leave date, reasons for leaving, department and wages. These cards refer to staff overseas as well as in the UK and include staff at WPRL.
WF/CA/07/01: Brown - Carnay; c1898 - c1933.
WF/CA/07/02: Carnay - Cook; c1898 - c1933.
WF/CA/07/03: Cooke - Cooper; Hasleden - Hopkins; c1898 - c1933.
WF/CA/07/04: Horley - Huckstep; Hum - Judges; c1898 - c1933.
WF/CA/07/01/05: Judson - Ken[?y]ie; c1898 - c1933.
WF/CA/07/06: Mee - Narayen; c1898 - c1933.
WF/CA/07/07: Nash - Noye; Oakes - Pearson; c1898 - c1933.

Holloway Sanatorium
MS.5161: Females no. 28: Certified female patients admitted November 1924-October 1926; 1924-1926; Notes mainly by Elizabeth Casson and C Rutherford.

Ticehurst House
MS.6277: Medical journal; 1905-1910.

Image: detail from a computer graphic by Rowena Dugdale, depicting costs of long-term care: from Wellcome Images.

Thursday, December 30, 2010


It Happened One Night Spooks Me!




Guess I'm safe for assuming that no one else refers to It Happened One Night as the Dawn Of The Dead of romantic comedies, and yet for me, it's every bit as unsettling as that zombie-fest of 1979. I might not even have watched but for Netflix streaming IHON in HD this month, thus chance to look again at latest tweaks Sony/Columbia's applied to long-problematic surviving elements. The feel-good Frank Capra classic never left me feeling so, for here's Depression (that D in caps throughout) spread like black tar down roads Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert travel. Post-apocalyptic movies are all the rage now --- who knew they did one in 1934? This is our lives was maybe what patrons thought then, and could be that's what put them in seats by droves. Would It Happened One Night disquiet me less were I not so spoiled? Depressionists didn't just expect food, shelter, and overcoats the way we do now. Life was struggle and there's no assurance Claudette will finish this bus ride intact, hers a perilous trip to Oz with Gable as sole protector. Everyone else traffics at thievery, extortion, and fortune hunting. Even a kid in tears over his mother's starvation comes across as maybe running a scam. You can go cynical quick on human nature watching It Happened One Night.







Jolly Alan Hale gives the couple a lift, then steals off with their luggage, a second time that happens to Claudette's character. Gable takes after the guy, subdues him (offscreen), then reports back later of having tied the would-be rogue to a tree, to which I wonder what'll happen to immobilized Hale when the next band of road agents come along. At one point, Colbert unknowingly breaks line at a communal shower, incurring wrath of surly-at-the-least women I half expected to gang-whoop her. Transit life for all I know is more dangerous now than then, but what engaged me here was Capra's refusal to sugarcoat hardship of living minus a safety net. Busted Gable makes do with raw carrots off the ground and you figure it's not his first time. I wonder how many in 1934 who saw and loved It Happened One Night had known hunger in their own lives and were only recently endowed with means to buy a movie ticket. Something made it click to fantastic rentals, and I'd doubt that was mere Gable and Colbert Together For The First Time (as promoted in the fan magazine ad above).



































Don't know where, but I read David Selznick considered It Happened One Night the perfect blend for boxoffice, one he wished could have borne his name. Histories positioned IHON as little engine that could, up from poverty row and defeating odds to become sleeper of all time. Some of that I'd guess is true. Frank Capra would cast the film as underdog not unlike characters he developed for stories to come. You almost wonder why he didn't make a movie about the making of It Happened One Night, so entrenched were legends within short time after perfect storm of its 1934 reception. Remember the part where ...? led off conversation that inspired second, third, whatever viewings. Theatres did better with It Happened One Night on repeat runs than most product on a first, it being among few comedies to engage a truly mass following. Was Capra's just perfect timing? Variety wondered why 1948's reissue booking delivered short for a Los Angeles circuit. Well ... life, roads, and romance saw change (a lot) in those fourteen years between, and maybe folks didn't want reminding of how austere things had all too recently been.














































Documentaries about Hollywood weren't complete without excerpts of It Happened One Night. Those walls of Jericho bespoke movies as they'd been and wouldn't be again. Gable and Colbert hitch-hiking encapsulates what Classic Era stars and story-tellers did best ... proof that an industry wasn't making movies like it used to. Such ease of perfection loomed over Frank Capra as well --- why couldn't he do them so well anymore? It Happened One Night, with ducks in a row five minutes past titles, was economical like this director's silent comedies had been. Gable and Colbert vehicles to come were evidence that such quality was had once in a hundred. Part of the freshness came of their acts being not so ossified in 1934. Both major names, neither Gable nor Colbert were yet crated with fixed image that would make later work more predictable. Watch their reunion in 1940's Boom Town and note mannerism, tricks, and gesturing clearly sops to fan expectation. Is it a wonder stars got bored being stars? For It Happened One Night at least, there was fun of personas still developing. Gable doffing clothes to reveal no undershirt was image-defining he (and Metro) would trade on long after this kind of spontaneity got corporate-scrubbed off his plate.










































I'd give Frank Capra credit for inventing romantic comedies as we've known them for a past seventy-six years. Was there anything prior to 1934 you'd call a precursor? Not among pics I've seen. Prior (talking) battle-of-gender comedies play more raffish and precode. It Happened One Night got under wire of strict enforcement too, but doesn't really speak in pre-coded terms (could there have been trims made to the negative for subsequent releases?). I wonder if writers of Kate Hudson and Jennifer Aniston rom-coms have watched It Happened One Night. Certainly they know the blueprint, having doubtless looked at numerous other shows that imitated Capra's original. Is it safe to say that all romance comedies are six (more or less) degrees removed from It Happened One Night? My own uneasy response notwithstanding, I'd think civilians would enjoy IHON as much as any 30's sampling, possibly more for having seen its devices reused right up to present day. Frank Capra would travel with It Happened One Night till nearly an end. One early eighties revival he attended at the long-shuttered Capri Theatre in Charlotte found management presenting a 35mm print that looked like a third-generation dupe, for which Capra apologized profusely. This was not the movie I made, said the director to an audience stilled by disappointment.

The View is Great

A glass and steel shopping centre with all the same high st chain stores has opened next to St Paul's.
Why? One may ask. Gordon Ramsey is scheduled to open a restaurant on the top floor early next year. I took the lift up to check out progress.
Well I might not like anything else about the place, but the view, well it is simply spectacular.
This will become the new iconic view of London I suspect.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Postcard from Poland

Temperatures of minus 19, lost luggage, Flights rerouted through three countries.
Think I'll stay in London next year.

Almost tropical here by comparison

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Lines and Shadows

Euston Square can look rather bleak and uninteresting. Not a place you would choose to wander around. Desperately hungry in search of a sandwich, I was suprised to find this rather stunning sculpture. The figure in the distance is a digital girl constantly walking.

Monday, December 27, 2010

GREENBRIAR'S FIFTH ANNIVERSARY


I'll admit to not preparing this as I ordinarily would a Greenbriar post. A weekend normally occasion for that was taken up with Christmas and snow, snow, snow, which among other things knocked my power (temporarily) for a row of pins. Such panic that ensues when computers go down! Twelve years ago, I didn't even own one. Well, five years back of this date, there wasn't Greenbriar Picture Shows either. Latter was an idea that came of reading other bloggers and wondering what my stills might look like online. Seemed simple enough to publish a few Black Cat images with offhand commentary. Maybe that and a couple more posts would be extent of it ...


Greenbriar has been up 710 times since December 27, 2005. I wouldn't have thought there'd be that much to talk about. Health permitting, 710 more should come down the line, for maybe surprisingly, I've not burned out on GPS yet. Heaviest Greenbriar traffic tends toward the archive. That's a separate site with links, index, and search options that's a lot handier than archive and search features provided by Google/Blogger. Click on a past month at the bottom of this page, for instance, and you'll only get half or so of the posts that went up that month, a bugaboo I have not means of correcting. There is a page at Greenbriar Archives that lists every post by date with links to all. That's the surest place to find whatever's wanted, in addition to the names and titles index.



What I need to do now is shut up and put up some (hopefully) unfamiliar images to decorate this anniversary post. These I've saved over a period of time, but had no place to display 'till now. Call today's a hodgepodge then, but one I hope will be fun looking at:



EC COMIX FOR DUCATS: Let's call this a portrait of kids trading hundred dollar bills for admission to wily Warren "Bud" Patton's playhouse back in 1954. Read the caption and imagine what these comic books would be worth today. Did Bud really sell them for waste paper or have heirs cashed in on fantastically accelerated value of EC horror mags since? The idea of this civic-minded promotion was to liberate youth from mind-rotting Vaults of Horror thought to be leading a generation down perdition's tunnel. These comics were, after all, far more explicit than content you could put on '54 screens, so maybe exhibs like Bud wanted much as anything to rid themselves of published incubi and put moppets back in theatre seats for spook subsidy. Patton's Tulsa, Oklahoma scheme was tried elsewhere, and in fact, backfired Miami-ways where small fry queued up to swap over 8,000 horror comics for theatre admission and so-called "approved" mags which were distributed with tickets. Trouble was the promotion actually stimulated interest among Miami's young in shock graphics once they got ganders at contraband gathered for the drive (Miami had an ordinance forbidding sale of chill and crime comics to anyone under seventeen years of age).

CLARA ON THE BEACH: Someone better informed re Clara Bow needs to clue me on wherefores (and whereabouts) behind this Paramount Pictorial short. Your audience swims and romps with Clara in an intimate way ... now does this have possibilities or what? So many single-reel subjects wait to be unearthed. I've spoken to no one who's come across the treasure referenced in this 1930 trade ad. Maybe it's buried in same sand Clara romped upon.

HAROLD LLOYD with GARY COOPER: This was taken at Paramount in the early thirties. Note Cooper holding eyeglasses ... Harold wears fake ones and Coop needs the real thing. I like those novel belts they're sporting. Why can't men's fashions today be remotely like this? Wonder if GC ever visited Greenacres. Assuming he did, it must have astounded Cooper how much money could be realized out of the picture business, though very few saw so much as to equal Harold Lloyd.







GLIMPSE OF A SET: This one is a "spaghetti joint" as envisioned for The Roaring Twenties. Such a thing looks modest put against a sound stage corner. Remarkable how it comes to life in the final movie. I like the cars parked outside the windows. You could still fool people into thinking they shot this outdoors. Warner pics were amazing for bringing exteriors inside. They even shot Sea Hawk ship battles in a sound stage tank.















SNEEZIN' FOOLS: Celebrities were wisest who played to each other's strengths. Billy Gilbert's was a sneezing routine indelible as his signature. Gilbert would perform it to the end of a long life. Here a late 30's Universal gathering with Mischa Auer and letting-hair-down Basil Rathbone, perhaps on break from Son Of Frankenstein doings. Would Basil have maybe preferred clowning to so much screen villainy?









LUNCH IN COLOR: Looks like Bette Davis is having chicken salad with her cigarette between Elizabeth and Essex set-ups. I'll bet actual eating found a blanket-sized bib in the star's lap so as not to stain that period costume. How distracting was it to have still photographers trailing you to lunch? For work days like Davis put in, you'd think fuller course meals would be in order, but stars then as now lived on crumbs (and nicotine) so as to keep weight gain at bay. Given a choice between celebrity and food, which would you select?

LEAVE HER TO FASHION: Here is Gene Tierney in another of those fab fotos in color out of fan mags that promoted she and newly arrived Leave Her To Heaven, a Fox 40's hit of cosmic proportion ($8.2 million in worldwide rentals --- Fox's biggest of that decade). Word-of-mouth was intense, especially for that scene where she let the kid drown. Truly a must-see picture in 1945, and probably better-remembered by its first-viewing generation than Laura.

















MUMMIES IN LOVE: Uh, I don't think this scene is in the picture ... but what a stopper it would have made! Selling in those days was pursued with whatever it took. The mummy exiting his sarcophagus into the arms of ... just who is this gal? ... doubtless separated many a twenty-five, then forty cents, from patron purses. So what if the film was something else entirely?










LOCAL PALACES: Finally, here is rare glimpse of our own Liberty and Allen Theatres, both referenced many times over five years of Greenbriar endeavor. The Liberty is circa 1935, way before my time and unlike the Liberty I grew up attending. Among other things, its boxoffice was moved and the marquee replaced. The lady in the window looks almost like a wax figure you'd see in one of those arcade fortune-telling devices. For all I know, however, she might be kin to me. The Allen is a snapshot one of Ann's friends recently came up with. Could you pick a better attraction for that marquee? And how many small town venues put Howard Hawks' name among featured lettering? Yes, he was somebody to average patrons long before auteurists (think they) discovered him. The building is still there with four upper windows intact, but alas, no more Allen.

December World - Texture

12 23 10 Mushrooms tall

We had a break in our rainy weather so that meant we seized the opportunity to get out and walk with the dog on the walking trail. Our surprise nature study subject of the day was "mushrooms". They were in abundance on this trip down the trail.

After looking at all the photos when we got home, I decided the theme of the day was "texture".

12 23 10 Lots of Mushrooms
Must be something rotting underneath the debris....makes for a great photo.

12 23 10 Moss

Lots of things going on in this photo...reds and greens make a nice contrast to each other.

12 23 10 Moss and Lichen
This is my favorite image of the day....wow! Look all those textures and colors and layers.

12 23 10 Mushroom

Someone or something had knocked a bunch of mushrooms loose along another section of the trail. Love the gills in this mushroom image.

12 23 10 Mushrooms and needles
Last one for today....mushrooms and brown grass make an interesting composition for this image.

We are enjoying our winter break and spending lots of time outdoors, both in the yard and out on walks. I haven't had any nature study subjects in mind except to enjoy the pleasures that December has offered. I am sort of itching to get started on a more focused nature study plan again in January.

The Winter Series of Outdoor Hour Challenges is available from last year on the sidebar of my blog if you are interested in working through those this year. I also am writing a complete set of notebook pages and compiling last year's Winter Wednesday challenges into an ebook with some updated information and links. I hope to have that book available to purchase by the end of the week. I am thinking if you completed the Winter Series of Outdoor Hour Challenges last year, you can use the Winter Wednesday ebook this year with the notebook pages. You can look at the Winter Wednesday topics if you click the Winter tab at the top of my blog. I am writing the WW ebook in such a way that you DO NOT need the Discover Nature in Winter book to complete them, it is suggested but not necessary. This will cut your investment considerably since you really only need the ebook to complete all the WW challenges.

I hope that explains what I am up to for the winter season of nature study. Please feel free to email me if you have any confusion or any questions.

I am off to San Francisco today to spend the day looking at some great art....Post-Impressionists! Of course the museum is in Golden Gate Park so we will more than likely be taking a walk to see what we can find.

Have a great week!
Barb-Harmony Art Mom