BurningbirdI haven’t said anything about the beheading of Nick Berg, and I won’t other than to point out a comment thread on a posting at David Weinberger’s and state that Dave Rogers is both eloquent and thoughtful for a man who says, ‘What do I know? I make all this shit up.’
Whatever I could wish to say, he’s said it.
Nuff said.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
For those of you who subscribe to my feeds, note that I’m dropping the RSS 2.0 feed starting next week.
Why? Because hosting an RSS 2.0 feed is providing indirect support for behavior that sucks the joy out of my day. Because Dave Winer is a hypocrite, and the so-called RSS 2.0 ‘advisory board’ is a mockery on true open standards efforts. More importantly, though, when I woke this morning, I said to myself:
Today is a good day to stop supporting assholes.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I am trying not to focus too much on Iraq because frankly the situation over in that country makes me so angry that I want to break something. But it’s hard to ignore the reports about our abuse of Iraqi prisoners in the very prison we have used as a model for our justification of overthrowing Saddam Hussein. This abuse is not rumor but has been proven to be fact and pretending that it doesn’t exist does no one any good.
But that’s just what’s happening among our warblogging compatriots. They cannot see a way to spin this into being the fault of terrorists or the Iraqi people themselves, so they just pretend–like Sinclair in the previous post about the soldiers who have died in Iraq–that it doesn’t exist.
For instance, nary a word at Glenn Reynolds weblog that I can see. That wouldn’t have bothered me much, or surprised me really, except that he also chose this particular time to run with a posting about our forces being too soft in Iraq. And then he has the unmitigated gall to say that there is a ‘consensus’ among webloggers that we all somehow agree with this, that we are too soft in Iraq.
Over 10,000 Iraqi have died in this little ‘rightous’ war of yours, Reynolds. Over 600 in Fallujah, alone. When you say ‘consensus among webloggers’ you’re saying you speak for all of us, and that we want more people dead in Iraq.
Other pundits might like to take the more intellectual route on this issue in refuting you, and more power to them. My response is more simple and direct: fuck you, Reynolds.
Beg pardon. What I meant to say is: Instafuck you, Reynolds.
Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I recently finished a wonderful biography on Walker Evans: Walker Evans: A Biography by Belinda Rathbone. Some critics have said that the book reads a little too matter of fact to be interesting, but that’s a perfect type of biography for a man like Walker Evans–an objective biography for an objective man.
In the book I discovered that Evans was born in St. Louis, though he didn’t live here long, moving to Chicago, and eventually ending up in New York. He came from a dysfunctional family, was himself married twice, had numerous affairs, almost always with married women, and preferred rooms decorated in black, white, and gray. Additionally, I found out that he was not a particularly good student, kept flunking Latin, and always saw himself as a writer. Even after his photographic career was established, he saw himself as a writer, an interesting fact which I’ll get into in more detail in a later essay.
From the start, Evans rejected much of the contemporary style of photography that was prevalent in his time (and to some extent, still in vogue today). One style of photography popular with art photographers at the time was called pictorialism and rather than utilizing the power of the camera to capture images as is, featured created images that were contrived rather than found. You still see these types of photos today when a woman or man is posed holding an apple, looking pensively off into shadows, staged next to a carefully undecorated and plain white wall.
The second style popular at that time was modernistic photography, subjects of which are best described by a quote from M. F. Agha, art director of Conde Nast:
Eggs (any style). Twenty shoes, standing in a row. A skyscaper , taken from a modernist angle. Ten tea cups standing in a row. A factory chimney seen through the ironwork of a railroad bridge (modernistic angle). The eye of a fly enlarged 2000 times. The eye of an elephant (same size). The interior of a watch. Three different heads of one lady superimposed. The interior of a garbage can. More eggs…
One can see why Evans rejected both pictorialism and the modernistic photographic styles, but he drifted about for a time, trying to establish what type of photography he wanted to do.
It was after seeing a photograph by Paul Strand, of a blind woman with a hand lettered sign reading “Blind” hung around her neck that served as Evan’s inspiration. As Rathbone wrote:
The picture implied an encroaching crisis of the American dream of prosperity, but it showed no obvious emotion. The fact that the photographer had stolen his photograph was pointedly expressed by the stark sign hanging around the woman’s neck, as if the subject had come with her own caption. Was the portrait cruel or sympathetic? It was the fact that it was neither, that it appeared not to reveal the photographer’s feelings at all, that intrigued Evans.
…that it appeared not to reveal the photographer’s feeling at all. If there is any key to Evans, it is contained in that one sentence. In all of his photos, not once does he impose his view, his thoughts and feelings, between the subject and the audience. He disdained photos that deliberately attempted to manipulate the viewers emotions; particularly those that used sentiment, which he considered contrived.
The distinguishing component of all Evans’ work, was his objectivity.
But Evans wasn’t just known for his objectivity and his excellent eye for an image — he was also known, or should I say, not known for his grasp of the mechanics of photography. He would ruin several images by his somewhat haphazard lab skills, and lose other images because of under or over exposure. It was not through knowing the mechanics of photography that Evans achieved his work; it was through his exceptional ability to see an extraordinary image from every day things; and then to patiently stalk that image, returning day after day, if needed, to capture it on film. He would never change the scene, or add or subtract elements from it. This, to him, would be completely dishonest. The most he would do would wait for a different light, or if he were taking photographs of people, wait until they were either unaware of the camera, or had relaxed from being in front of the camera.
Needless to say, Evans was almost always late in delivering on his assignments, and drove more than one person to distraction by his exacting nature. Lucky for us, he was not a conciliatory person.
In fact, one of my favorite Evans photograph (another one I can’t locate to reproduce here) was a somewhat blurry photo of Evans’ second wife, Isabelle Boeschenstein, wearing evening dress, hair in her face, lighting a cigarette at what looks to be some kind of gathering. It was not the photographic quality of the image that caught my eye; it was how much information about the woman was captured in that one simple photo. It is astonishing.
Evans did not rely on photographic tricks to make his images, and rarely did more in the darkroom then crop shots. But he was obsessed with how they were presented at shows, usually asking to hang his works himself, with no one else present. For the first edition of Now Let Us Praise Famous Men he was determined that the images for the book be perfect, and worked almost daily with the engraver to make minor adjustments to correct an engraving until it reflected the image he had of it in his mind. From Rathbone:
The wrinkles on the Burroughses’ bedsheets did not show up clearly enough; could he make them sharper? Could he show more clearly the tear in the pillowcase? Could he bring out the texture of the wooden wall and the objects around the fireplace? Could he soften the lines on Allie Mae’s face, sharpen the creases on Bud Fields’ overalls? Under Evans’ scrupulous direction, several of the plates had to be made over again entirely, while small imperfections in others were painstakingly corrected.
The engraver was too helpful at one point, and removed dead bugs from a photo of a bed, and Evans refused to allow the image be used as it was, and the fleas had to be added back in.
This reminds me of earlier discussions about the purists view of photography. Despite the care taken with the engravings for the book, Evans did very little with the actual images himself. Because of this, and his belief in photographs reflecting the image as taken–the true image–we would consider Evans a purist. I’m not sure what he would make of today’s digital cameras and Photoshop, though I have a feeling he would like the camera. So much easier to take those unexpected, hidden photos.
Earlier I published a link to a baby squirrel image that had been rescued from a mediocre photograph through the use of Photoshop. I have no doubts that this is not something that Evans would do.
No, if Walker Evans wanted a photo of a baby squirrel, it would be because he discovered the baby squirrel by accident one day and was struck by the image for some reason*. He would then get someone to hire him to take photographs of Native American wildlife, and would use the money to purchase new camera requirement, and probably to take other images in the neighborhood–the broken fence, the lost cat notices on the telephone poles, the old woman buying tomatoes at the market. He would then set up his camera by the baby squirrel’s hole, and if the baby didn’t oblige with the proper image one day, he would return the next. If a week goes by without the image, and by then the squirrel was too old, Evans would return the next year, much to the consternation of his employer (who he would still charm, even while irritating).
But by the time he was done, you’d have a rich, fascinating image of a squirrel, sitting in a hole of a tree, the grain of which would stand out in the image, almost as if the image was three-dimensional. The light wouldn’t be the proper light, it would be the perfect light, and the squirrel wouldn’t be enticed to pose–it would be acting as a baby squirrel acts, normally.
And it wouldn’t be a photo of an adorable baby squirrel, eliciting cries of, “How cute!” It would be a photo of a rodent.
*I doubt Evans would be interested in a photo of a baby squirrel.
I was introduced to James Agee with the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men but became aware only recently that he was at one time a film critic, as well as a poet, and a screenwriter (he helped adapt The African Queen for the cinema).
I was also unaware that James Agee died so young, at 46. His accomplishments remind me of David Marr (author of Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information), another person who died far too young (at 35 from leukemia) but who still managed to make a lasting impact in his field.
At the library, I found a book, Agee on Film with a collection of reviews and articles from his tenure as movie reviewer for the Nation. The editor had promised him that he could review any film he wished, and write what he wanted; an offer too good for Agee, who had a passionate love of movies and unrestricted writing.
I’ve enjoyed reading through the book, not only because it’s fun to see a contemporary review of some of the movies we now consider classics; but also because Agee’s reviews were an art form themselves.
Deerslayer on the other hand, can be recommended to anyone who would not feel that an eight-year-old boy that gallops up howling “Wah-wah, I’m an Indian” needs to consult a psychiatrist. I don’t feel that most bad pictures are “bad enough to be funny”; they are bad enough to be fascinating, not to say depressing as hell. But this defenseless and disarming show is the purest dumb delight I have seen in a long time.
Agee wrote his reviews in the midst of World War II, and it is his commentary on the war that stands out for me because the words, though over half a century old, are still as fresh as the mind from which they sprang.
Even the Army Orientation films, through no fault intrinsic to them, carry their load of poison, of failure. You can hear from every sort of soldier from the simplest to the most intricate what a valuable job they are doing. But because they are doing it only for service men they serve inadvertently to widen the abyss between fighters and the civilians who need just as urgently to see them. Civilians, however, get very little chance to learn anything from moving pictures. We are not presumed to be brave enough. And the tragic thing is that after a couple of decades of Hollywood and radio, we are accepting such deprivations and insults quite docilely; often, indeed, we resent anyone who has the daring to try to treat us as if we were human beings.
For the time, when people in this country were more interested in escapism, Agee’s reviews would stand out for their uncompromising look at the movies. What I found particularly compelling about his writing, though, is that he recognized when his emotions were engaged by a movie, and in a couple of cases, actually held off on reviewing the movie until he had a chance to regain enough objectivity to review the movie effectively.
Recently I saw a moving picture so much worth talking about that I am still unable to review it. This was the Italian Open City. For the moment I can say only that I am at once extremely respectful and rather suspicious of it, and that I can recommend it very highly, with a warning, however, to those who are particularly sensitive to scenes of torture. I will probably be unable to report on the film in detail in the next three or four weeks.
Agee ended up reviewing the movie almost a month later, and was able to be critical as well as complimentary.
Agee’s reviews differed enormously in length. Some, like those for Open City went on for pages; others were just a sentence or two. However brief, though, his opinion always came through, loud and clear:
San Diego I love you is a coarse-weft, easygoing little farce about an inventor(Edward Everett Horton), his daughter (Louise Albritton), a girl-shy financier (Jon Hall), and some pleasant comics (notably Buster Keaton). I can’t exactly recommend it, but if you see it by accident if will cause no particular pain.
Tycoon. Several tons of dynamite are set off in this movie; none of it under the right people.
You Were Meant for Me. That’s what you think.
I wonder what Agee would think about our modern movies and movie goers, especially with movies that have caused some controversy. I noticed with Lost in Translation and in particular, Mel Gibson’s Passion that people’s views of the movies are, to a great extent, a reflection of their life experiences, their viewpoint of themselves, and the world around them. There seems to be little room left for appreciation of the movies as craft.
Or is that the ultimate measure of the success of a movie?
Lost in Translation. I haven’t seen it yet, though plan to from all I’ve read. According to reviews of the movies, I gather the story is about a has-been comic in Japan to make commercials, who meets up with another American staying at the same hotel. The movie focuses on them, and the possibility of a relationship between them, all surrounded by Japan: Japanese culture, people, and activities.
Some say that Lost in Translation is racist because of the stereotyping of the Japanese in the movie. Others say that the view of the Japanese in the movie reflects the alienation that the Americans feel, strangers in a strange land. One innovative person said that the movie really demonstrates Japanese stereotyping of American stereotyping of the Japanese–a circular reference I can’t help thinking that Agee would like, if his review of The Lost Weekend is anything to go by.
While I watched the movie, which Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett have made out of Charles Jackson’s story about alcoholism, The Lost Weekend, I was pretty consistently gratified and excited. When I began to try to review it, I could not forget what Eisenstein said, years ago, when he was asked what he thought of Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front. He said he thought it was a good Ph.D thesis. I am afraid that applies to The Lost Weekend, too. I don’t mean that it is stuffy: it is unusually hard, tense, cruel, intelligent, and straightforward. It is, rather, a skillful restatement, satisfying and easy to overrate in a time of general dereliction and fatuousness, of some sound basic commonplaces.
On that scale, of course, excellent things can be done.
Agee’s reviews were fun reading, but it was his award winning article on comedy in the movies that made me take a closer look at Passion.
