American Silence: Highly Recommended

Go ahead and put a pin in whatever it is you’re doing right now. Now, get yourself over to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and spend some quality time looking at the extensive retrospective exhibition of Robert Adams’s photography. Seeing sixty years of work together in one show was a remarkable experience, and is not something that can be captured in a book (although there is one available). Go calibrate your eyes and sensibilities. There is much to learn about the medium of photography, Adams’s changing approach, all of it. Worth your time, and you’ll thank yourself later.

A Contax for Christmas

"At our best and most fortunate we make pictures because of what stands in front of the camera, to honor what is greater and more interesting than we are. We never accomplish this perfectly, though in return we are given something perfect -- a sense of inclusion. Our subject thus redefines us, and is part of the biography by which we want to be known." -- Robert Adams

From the back cover of Why People Photograph, seen in the image below. What is between the covers is also pretty good stuff.

You've stood in front of some interesting things this year, and you've tried to be a decent human being. In other words, you've put some real effort into your bio. You deserve something nice, but that kinda goes against your better nature, doesn't it?

Well, that's old Saint Beatnik standing in the background, with his cool crazy black beard, Dad. I hope he brings you something groovy this year, like a Contax.

As good as church letting out

Recently, I came across and purchased a set of books published in 1980 by Lustrum Press, all edited by Carol di Grappa. So far I have found three -- Landscape: Theory, Contact: Theory, and Fashion: Theory -- that seem to form a series. Contact: Theory features discussions about contact sheets, a fascinating topic, worthy of discussion in itself. The topics of the other two volumes are just what you'd expect from the titles. All three present the work of an interesting cross section of photographers. Some are no longer alive after 40 years, and others have faded from our attention. But the work is solid, and it is informative to go back and read what was on folks's minds half a lifetime ago.