NYC Photo Talks

New York Public Library:  Mid-Manhattan Branch (40th and 5th)

March 24th, 6:30 PM

"Strangely Familiar: Acrobats, Athletes, and Other Traveling Troupes with Michel Chelbin"

The Israeli-born artist presents a slide show featuring her sympathetic pictures of performers and wrestlers from small towns in Ukraine, eastern Europe, England, and Israel.  The settings, costumes, and even some of the subjects may seem exotic, but her portraits capture a transcendent sense of individual character.

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New York Public Library:  Mid-Manhattan Branch (40th and 5th)

March 30th, 6:30 PM

"Into the Sunset:  Photography's Image of the American West, with Heather Cotter"

Into the Sunset examines how photography has pictured the idea of the American West from 1850 to the present, illustrating photography's role in popularizing ideas of the sublime landscape, Manifest Destiny, the "land of opportunity," and a vision of the West that addresses cultural dislocation, environmental devastation, and failed social aspirations.  Photographers represented include Robert Adams, John Baldessari, Dorothea Lange, Timothy O'Sullivan, Cindy Sherman, Joel Sternfeld, Edward Weston, and Carleton E. Watkins.

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So not only do I score a boat-load of great reading from the NYPL, they're featuring what look to be great photography talks in the next week.  Very timely as well because I've just finished Water for Elephants (Gruen) and have circus fever AND just finished a reading brief discussion of photography in the American West.  Whodathunk?

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I was taught while studying to be a teacher that people learn in specific ways: through reading/writing, by doing, or by listening.  There's probably a fourth one - I don't remember it.

I'm a reader.  I retain information I read much longer than if I hear it, which is probably why I'm told things over and over.  I figured I better start my own little photographic journey of Ulysses with a trip to the New York Public Library.

Not the one with the lions.  Oh, no.  You cannot even get a library card there (learned the hard way).  It's sort of where books come to die, it seems.  But right down the street is the Mid-Manhattan branch, and there I found a sort of mecca of resources.

The most difficult thing in searching for photography books at the library (and I surmise this is true no matter what library you go to), is the amount of specificity you have to add to your search.  Things transforming to digital is pretty awesome - the libraries have yet to catch up.  I found myself looking at books on color photography that had sample pictures of 80s hair models, in all their soft-focus, florescent-background glory.  

Relevance is key.

Luckily, I'm at home with books.  I can search through them for hours and hours, completely lost in my thoughts and losing all sense of time.  I began frantically grabbing at things, as if someone was going to sneak up behind me and take the only copy of the one book that I really wanted.  Anyway, after coasting up and down my new Aisle of Doom and Delight, I found a specific section regarding digital.  Please forgive me - I haven't used a library for at least two  years, and never searching for photography.  It was difficult to get whether all the "color photography" stuff would be together, or if the standard/digital would be split.  Turns out, they're split.  At least, I think so.  

I ended up hauling an absolute ton of books home, partly due to not really knowing which area I wanted to start with, and mostly because I wanted to learn absolutely everything.  There's a good mix of philosophy, artist POVs, technical stuff, photographic history, and . . . stuff.  As I go over stuff, I'll be posting here with anything relevant.  

so it begins

I do photography.  For fun/hobby purposes (I hate the word "hobby," as its sound is as half-assed as its meaning can sometimes be).  

I've reached a point where I'm a bit mystified by what I do.  People seem to like the photos I take, and I lurve taking them - but in terms of technical stuff ("the number with the 'f' in front"), in terms of photo history and philosophy, I'm at a loss.

I have a pretty strong desire to fix this.  I'm in the "craving information" phase of things.  I want to gain a feeling of control over my camera, and craft photos as opposed to simply capturing moments.  I need more "me" in what I produce, and I'm not sure how to do that.

So, I'm bloggin'.  Most likely, no one will read it.  But, if they do, I hope they find it useful.  We have such an influx of photographers today.  The whole digital-age sort of thing - it's so easy, and it's not even much money for a digital SLR, that everybody's doing it.  The standards, as a result and as they should, are getting higher.  So well, we'll learn with it.  I want to keep track of the resources I use, and maybe other people'll take a recommendation (ha!)

I should also say that this is a strictly amateur operation.  It's not to be confused with a how-to, and it should be understood that I have little idea of what I'm doing - which is the entire point.