Humanist Photography Archives • harbel photographs

Venice and the Cruise Ship

10th July 20202nd May 2023 harbel

I have spent many, many weeks of my life in Venice. I have amassed a great number of images from this incredible city, which I visited for the first time when I was 4. I walked with my grandmother along the canals and went into little cafes. I had my first cup of espresso with 3 sugars. I do not remember, but no doubt I was wired for the next few of hours! But I remember this city as being pure magic from the first time I saw it. All the cool buildings, the canals, the boats, and no cars!

There is a sensation that you get nowhere else, when you enter the city in the lagoon from the only rail and road artery to the mainland. Most pop out of the big, wide and flat modern train station that is one of very few buildings built in the city during the 1930s. Across the canal, past the chaos of vaporettos (water buses), water taxis and flat-bottomed delivery boats, and the odd iconic gondola, there is the first classic church dome. The copper dome of San Simeone Piccolo. This is my first memory of the city. But this blog is not about pretty buildings, canals and bridges, but rather about tourism and what we can do about it.

As tourists, guests and visitors to a city, or country, we have an obligation to participate in the economy in a meaningful way. This means that we stay locally, we eat and drink locally, and contribute to the cultural maintenance of a location by buying museum tickets and perhaps bringing home a trinket, or in the case of Venice, perhaps a great piece of glass. There is the potential for fair trade between tourists and hosts.

In Venice, this has gone completely off the rails. This is in part due to insane cruise ship traffic, which brings visitors to the city in the lagoon, who eat, drink and sleep on their ship and who benefit from volume discounts at museums and galleries and who can be seen walking around in groups with green or red number-stickers on their shirts, or worse with matching hats or jackets. They march like armies of ants through the narrow streets and alleys completely oblivious to everyone around them, listening intensely to a narrative provided by a tour guide, who is rarely local, but has learned the basics from a book, or worse.

Here are the numbers: based on scheduled calls for cruise ships with more than 500 passengers, 1.2 million cruise ship passengers were destined for Venice in 2020, had it not been for Covid19, 56 cruise-lines would have delivered 514 cruise ship arrivals over the year.

Venice is a small city with a shrinking population. The city has a total population of just over 60,000 inhabitants. In 1950, it was 170,000. The number has been falling every year since tourism grew to levels, where it was more profitable to have a shop selling cheap trinkets to tourists than a hardware store. It becomes more and more difficult to live in the city under constant siege from hoards of tourists.

Lots of thinking has been going on during the corona-crisis in the city. What if….. Citizens have enjoyed their own city for the first time in years. People have tried to reimagine what a better managed tourist destination could look like. But I digress. This is a blog about photography, and of course, the city is a wonderful destination for photographers, but also one where the arrival of the cruise ships offer a sad reality that is hard to miss. While I normally do not give cruise ship tourists much time, or film, it is telling that even I, who tries to be timeless in my work, pretending I am local, cannot avoid the disaster that is an overrun city, where more than 1.2 million people come off their cruise ships adding nothing and contributing nothing, but congestion and misery.

I feel strongly that cruise ship traffic to Venice should be banned. The ships are too big, too disruptive, and they damage the seabed and the foundations of the very buildings that tourists come to experience.

Tourist visits should be allowed only, if staying overnight in the city in a hotel. And there should be a minimum-spend per day. I believe countries like Bhutan still enforce a daily minimum spend to help pay for the negative effects of tourism.

There is great beauty in Venice, but it doesn’t work without local people that make it a living, working city. It would be sad, if tourism traffic finally breaks the back of the city and turns it into a Disneyland. I can recommend visiting Las Vegas to see what would happen to Venice, if unscrupulous financial interests are allowed to continue to destroy La Serenissima, the Most Serene Republic.

Sadly, the cruise ship tourists do make for good subjects, but I can certainly live without them.

Harbel

As a Man Sees, so He Is

28th March 20202nd May 2023 harbel

I borrowed this title from William Blake. What does a photograph say about the photographer. When a photographer makes a photograph, does he reveal a little of him, or herself? Many photographers have chimed in on this topic over the years. Here are a couple that made me think:

“Without the camera you see the world one way, with it, you see the world another way. Through the lens you are composing, even dreaming, with that reality, as if through the camera you are synthesizing who you are” – Graziale Iturbide

Or:

“Great photography involves two main distortions: Visual simplification and the seizing of the instant in time. It’s this mixture of reality and unreality and the power and truth of the artist’s statement, that makes it possible for photography to be an art” – Roger Mayne

Whatever your preference, in some ways, we are talking about the holy grail of photography. The so-called personal style. The ability to make a photograph that is recognized immediately as being by you. I once read that Frank Horvat, who is now in his 90s was accused of not having a ‘personal style’ and therefore was difficult to discern and identify as a master of the medium. I would argue that Horvat has periods of personal style, which are fairly easily identifiable, but that the length of his career, going into seven decades now, has allowed him to move here and there on the style spectrum, sometimes making it hard to identify his work.

I think deep down, most photographers would judge their life’s work as complete, if they could walk up to a relative newcomer in the photography world and that person were able to say that a particular photograph is by them.

Particular photographers have particular ways of composing their images, some have particular times of day that they work, usually early morning or just before sunset. Some go after a particular subject matter time and time again. Some print in a particular way. Some overexpose, some underexpose. I remember reading that Bernard Plossu said he only wants greys in his photographs. I am quite sure Ray Metzker would argue against that, were he still alive. Metzker favours a lot of intense and deep blacks. So many ways of seeing, so many photographers. Such a broad and varied range of possibilities.

Photographers strive. Few succeed. With great passion comes hope of maybe a little of the photographer’s personality seeping into every image and someone out there being able to discern your work from that of all others. We live in hope. At least some do. Others are quite happy being forever anonymous and will argue that it is a mistake to do anything but document in a democratic coat of pure, neutral observation. Ah, if only…..

Harbel

The Wabi-Sabi of Photographing with Film

26th March 20202nd May 2023 harbel

I once toured the ‘S’-class Mercedes manufacturing line, where hundreds of highly paid auto-workers hand-build the top-of-the-line Mercedes cars. There is a certain respect owed to those people that build and assemble with their hands. The aura in the great hall was palpable and the pride was everywhere. I crossed the road and went to the ‘C’-class Mercedes plant, which is virtually 100% automatic and has robots swinging large and small pieces back and forth across space and time, before a car emerges at the far end of the line.

In discussing the two plants, which could not possibly have been any more different, the member of the design team that was walking me around said that actually, the ‘C’-class is a much more accurate and precisely assembled car, and if it wasn’t for the customers who insisted on having a hand-built car and were willing to pay for it, rightfully the ‘S’-class Mercedes should be built by a similar line to that of the ‘C’-class. Clearly, there is value in a little inaccuracy, knowing that it was made by a human, and not a machine.

The Japanese have a lovely term called wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi has many definitions. To me, it means that there is perfection in imperfection. That a small error, or imperfection in say a drinking vessel, a flower arrangement, or even a new building, is what adds the human touch. The little something that is a signature of human quest.

Harbel: The Sicilian – (I only saw the mask once I got in the darkroom)

Analog photography is much the same. There is film, a camera, developing, printing, a final print, and at each step, there is a little bit of the photographer. A little bit of wabi-sabi. Bruce Weber talks of clients being impatient and wanting to see a photograph, even before it is taken. How digital has created the need for urgency, immediacy, perfection, and if not, the ability to make perfection.

“A lot of people have gotten so used to this digital age. They all expect to see the picture before it is taken. Or they want to change the picture. I like it when pictures aren’t so perfect.” – Bruce Weber on Shooting with Film

I read recently about the thousands of individual micro-lenses that combine to create the perfect depth of field in a digital camera. The perfect sharpness from the front of the image, all the way to the back. This is like the new hyper clear and sharp televisions that give me a headache. Life is not like that.

When we look at our surroundings, our eyes focus on something. We focus on something close up and everything else around that object falls slightly out of focus. If we look at a wider area in the distance, things that are near us drop a little out of focus. To some degree, analog photography mimics this. As photographers, when we focus a camera on a particular area in front of us, we are making a decision. We are choosing to focus on something, and not something else. Or we may elect to throw it wide open and get as much of the scene in front of the lens into view, but that usually comes at a price, which drops whatever is immediately in front of us out of focus. Of course, modern technology can mimic these types of decisions. A digital camera can be set to take photographs like an analog camera. But, most photographers who shoot using digital don’t bother. They deal with that on the computer later, using Photoshop, or whatever software platform they choose.

The joy to me of analog is that you see the image in your mind’s eye. You set your variables, select what goes where in the frame and focus on whatever draws your attention, or not, depending on what you are trying to achieve. You press the shutter and you wait.

First there is the joy of seeing the negative and placing it on the light table, getting out the glass and having a look at what you have managed to capture. Then there is the print itself, when you place the negative in the enlarger and make the first test print. Perhaps a small 8×10 or 5×7 print. And only after you have studied and played with the process for a while do you end up with the final print. Doubtless, there are imperfections. Things you could have done better. Perhaps a bit of shadow where you had not seen it, when composing the image. Perhaps the horizon line is not entirely level. Perhaps there are a couple of people in the distance that you had not noticed, because you were so focused on getting a particular subject just right. To me, this is the fun of photography. The serendipity that sometimes works in your favour, sometimes not. This is analog photography. Photography as it should be.

I have the luxury of making the same photograph five times; I compose it in my minds eye; I make the photograph; I see the negative; I see the test print; I make the final print. And no matter what, there is always something that you wish you could have done perhaps a little differently. This is wabi-sabi. The small imperfections that make us human.

Harbel

Japanese Post War Photographers

10th January 20202nd May 2023 harbel

I have spent a lot of time recently looking at Japanese photography from the 1960s through the early 1980s. There is a great depth of material. Photographers that are outstanding and so very different from what we are used to seeing in Europe and North America.

I am sure that we can come up with many reasons for this. The end of WWII. The horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The devastation of a nation. The loss of a generation. Famine and malnutrition. Layer upon layer of pain and suffering. But the crop of photographers that are now dying out, who were born during or shortly after the war, are sadly not well known outside of Japan. They did incredible work.

Often heavy and moody. Often a little, or even very sad. Contemplative. More often than not printed with heavy blacks. There is a feeling. An atmosphere that makes me pay attention. Often saying ‘Japanese’ well before I look at the label. It is hard to explain. But, very real. It is as though the Japanese idea of perfection is there, in terms of skill. Like a great sushi chef, who spends 10 years making the rice before being let near the fish, or a knife. Photographers in Japan of the postwar generation are like that to me. Skilled beyond most anyone, but being Japanese they perfect their skills and then they let a little wabi-sabi in. A little natural error. Beauty in imperfection. This is done with the harder blacks in the printing, the crop, or simply shooting from the hip without even looking, and saving it in the darkroom, as in the case of Moriyama.

I was recently able to view a show by Shin Yanagisawa. Now in his 80s. He frequented a particular train station in Japan with obsessive regularity and produced a body of work. A wonderful book. And to my good fortune, a small show of vintage prints in a small gallery in Paris. In the print here, which I admire greatly, he has achieved a feel, a mood and a story to be told by anyone who has ever seen anyone off at a station or airport. Only 18 x 24 cm in size, the black is deep as the darkest night, and the woman… well, what can I say. This is a photograph that is universal, yet, so very Japanese.

In 2001, Shin Yanagisawa said: “…… I have always believed that photographs express something that cannot be captured in words. If I were able to express myself in words, I would stop working as a photographer.”

The lady on the train needs no title, no story. This may be the highest form of poetry.

Harbel

The World of Photography Knew it was Inevitable. Yet We Mourn.

13th October 20192nd May 2023 harbel

Robert and Fred died within a day of one another. Both hugely significant in their own right, and while one will always overshadow the other, it would be a great shame for one to be lost and not given the proper attention that he deserves…..

On Tuesday the September 10^th, it happened. What everyone had been expecting and nobody wanted. Robert Frank, perhaps the most important photographer of the 20^th century passed. I have a great passion for the type of photographs that Robert Frank made. Frank’s timing was not always perfect, his focus sometimes a little off, even his lighting was sometimes a little too hard, or too soft, but he captured images that forever changed photography and gave him almost mythical status. Among those of us who like to think we make photographs in a certain tradition that for all intents and purposes link directly back to him, he is a god.

Robert Frank had an uncanny ability to see things that captured the essence of our existence. I doesn’t matter if you look at his later work, which was more cerebral, or if you look at his break-through portfolio ‘The Americans’, it was always about capturing an honest, unembellished truth. The essence of an American town, a rodeo, a road leading to eternity, or a tuba. His images were not all individually outstanding, though many were, but they have an honesty and a virtual time-stamp that bring out the best in time, place and circumstance.

Robert Frank was Swiss, he captured America with an open mind and an open heart, as only one from ‘away’ can, which leads me to the second thing that happened that week……

The day before, on the 9^th of September, in Vancouver, a city known in photography circles mostly for contemporary work – some in large light boxes – the passing of Fred Herzog went largely unnoticed, except by those who either knew him, or admired his visionary approach to colour photography.

Vancouver in the 1950s was a backwater, a pacific port with lots of warehouses, ships coming and going and a departure point for those engaged in the mining- and logging industries. Not particularly refined, nor particularly pretty. With a setting between ocean and mountains it had a great canvas. But as only we humans can, it was a lot of front row industry, a busy, dirty and noisy port, lots of really bad neon, bars, wooden houses that looked ever so temporary, surrounding a couple of monumental stone buildings, that would eventually come to anchor what most will now agree is a world city.

Transience was the nature of the old wood houses that were usually no more than a couple of stories high, set in a tight geographical setting that over time would require much densification and endless high-rises. As such, much of what was around in the 1950s and 1960s has been erased. Virtually no evidence of the frontier town by the water remains. Thank goodness for Fred! At a time when colour film was slow as frozen molasses, and people still moved as quickly as they do today, Fred captured Vancouver in a way that is both local and global. He found qualities in simple new cars in an alley, a sea of neon lights, the interior of a barbershop, a window at the hardware store, and in people who look like they are from everywhere.

For most people these scenes are difficult to place geographically, other than it being somewhere in North America, but that is what makes them great. Herzog doesn’t dwell on the incredibly beautiful Vancouver setting with mountains, sea and sky, but on the urban. Often the slightly gritty urban. His head-on elegant use of colour and composition with people peppered in for good measure, always in just the right number and somehow perfectly placed, gives rise to his great eye and masterly skill, using tools that today seem almost impossible to handle well.

The Equinox Gallery in Vancouver still has a great selection of Fred Herzog’s work. It is still attainable and exquisitely printed from the original Kodachrome slides that in miraculous fashion have survived less than optimal circumstances.

Fred’s work found its way to Paris Photo a few years ago, the annual mecca for those, like myself who are consumed by great photography. A bold show of only Fred’s work took up an entire, large booth at the seminal event of the year. It was a popular stop for collectors, who found something new, exciting and rooted in photographic excellence.

Fred worked for the University of British Columbia for almost as long as I have been alive. He started the year I was born. He photographed in the name of science and in his spare time out of personal obsession the city he came to love from a very early age. Anecdotally, he came to Vancouver based on a single photograph in a geography textbook at school back in Germany, where he was born, during a time of great upheaval.

Fred came to Canada in 1952. He leaves a legacy, having captured a vanished time, but while geographically specific and significant, also of great universal appeal.

Ulrich Fred Herzog was born in Stuttgart, Germany, September 21st, 1930 and passed away in Vancouver on September 9th, 2019. He was 88.

Both Herzog and Frank were not from where their most famous work is made. Is this significant? Does the outsider see differently…? Save that for another day.

Harbel, Donostia

The Americans – the Book – Robert Frank’s Lessons for all Photographers

6th August 20192nd May 2023 harbel

“I want to do a big project on America, and I’d like to apply for a Guggenheim grant. You would need to sign a paper for me, agreeing to publish a book with my photographs. I think that would allow me to get the grant.”

– Robert Frank to Robert Dalpire, 1954, Artist and Publisher ‘The Americans’

Much has been written about the photography book that defines the genre; ‘The Americans’ by Robert Frank, published by Robert Dalpire. I am interested in this book for three major reasons. One; of course because it is a wonderful collection of photographs by a Swiss photographer seeing America for the first time. Two; the building of a book of images, none of which dominate the others. Three; the origin of the layout and how it came to be.

Let me address these three points in order.

There is something wonderful about seeing a place for the first time. There is something even more wonderful about being a photographer and seeing for the first time. America in the 1950s was a place that experienced unprecedented growth. Prosperity and the development of the suburbs, grilling on the barbeque, big – no massive – cars with fins and all manner of chrome and engines so big, a small village could run for a week on the gas alone. There was advertising everywhere and progress looked like it would go on forever. Optimism was the American way in the 1950s.

Against this excitement of a new era, Robert Frank traveled to the United States and got in a car and drove, and drove, and drove and made pictures all along the way. One could say he looked behind the veneer of what appeared to be endless happiness, freedom and hope. He saw, as only an outsider can, which is what makes ‘The Americans’ such an incredible book.

On my second point, I have written before about how when you make a book you cannot have one or two home-run photographs, you need to have a balance of images that are complementary, without a single stand-out image dominating. There is a fine art to acknowledging that you may not want to take your best photograph and put it on the cover of a book, because it has a tendency to dominate everything in the book, to the point that nobody sees anything but the incredible image on the cover. In short, you need a different approach to making a book than making a photograph. Robert Frank understood this. He decided on one image per double-page-spread. Letting each image speak for itself, without a context, or a story. Just an image. No image dominates the others, and no image stands out as being better, or more successful than the others. There is an elegance and balance here, which every book-maker and photographer could learn from.

On the third point; In an interview Robert Dalpire, Frank’s publisher, says that he and Frank laid out the photographs on the floor, with no pre-determined number of photographs. Dalpire is quoted as saying: “….There was no problem in terms of the selection. As for the sequence, we did it just like that, intuitively.” Dalpire and Frank ended up with 174 pages. What they did that day changed how photography books are made and has set a standard rarely achieved since.

Finally, I would like to address the critic. In ‘The Photobook; A History, Volume 1’ by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger (Phaidon, 2005), there is a description of how ‘The Americans’ is structured around four segments, or ‘chapters’, as Parr/Badger call them. Each section introduced by the American flag. Parr and Badger say the book has…“an internal logic, complexity and irresistible flow that moves from the relatively upbeat pictures at the beginning to a final image of tenderness….”. To this Roger Dalpire responded: “I say it is non-sense. It is a very subjective remark that has no relationship to what we did.”

Jean-Michel Basquiat is quoted as saying: “I don’t listen to what art critics say. I don’t know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.” Yet, we place great emphasis on what is good and what is bad, according to a few people, who in many cases are powerful influencers, who can make or break a career. We cannot all be like Basquiat and not care, mostly because we all need to make a living doing whatever work we do. Artists are no different, they may work for themselves, or in collaboration with a gallery, but there are still influencers out there that can make or break their career with the stroke of a pen. A nasty review and the buyers and public stay home with their wallets tightly shut.

All this said, it is great to see now and again that the critic, who takes himself seriously and writes eloquently about photography, in this case photography books, is completely overthinking the work and is outright wrong, creating context that simply is not there. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Harbel

Remembering D-Day 1944

5th June 20192nd May 2023 harbel

For those that weren’t there, D-day will always be a concoction of movies like The Longest Day, A Bridge too Far, Saving Private Ryan, etc. mixed with stories from books, and in my case the 11 photographs by Robert Capa, that in my mind are among the most mind blowing photographs ever taken.

As we park our car and walk into the centre of Sainte-Mère-Église, on the 5^th of June, we are immediately taken by the carnival atmosphere in the small town. I don’t know what I expected, but what I clearly failed to understand was that for the French June 5^th, 1944, and the many days that followed from town to town, was a celebration. A party.

I am sure the local population thinks every year about all the sacrifices that were made to liberate their towns The locals were people that for the better part of 5 years had been under the thumb of the Germans. Over the 5 years leading up to the 5^th of June, the Germans were either preparing for invasion and laying out their coastal defences. The villages must have been crawling with Germans. And then one night there was deliverance from the sky in the form of hundreds of parachutists that were to help hold the bridgehead, when on the 6^th of June the main landing would take place.

The local people of Sainte-Mère-Église dress up in period costume, they wear fatigues, the women and girls wear dresses in the style of the 1940s, they set up stands selling anything and everything that could pass as a souvenir, or could be consumed in the form of food and drink. But don’t misunderstand. They honour the allied soldiers that came to their rescue and they mourn those that never made it off the beach.

Canadians, British and Americans come here to mourn their dead and honour those who survived the greatest amphibious landing in history, ultimately leading to the downfall of yet another tyrant set on global domination. Those that were there come to remember those that made the ultimate sacrifice, those same men who to this day cannot understand why they are still alive when their comrades fell by the hundreds and thousands.

On the 5^th of June we watched as the large Hercules aircraft dropped hundreds of parachutists in a field near Sainte-Mère-Église. A parachute jump organized across regiments and nations that participated on that fateful day 75 years ago. As the parade passed along the streets to the main square, where the famous parachute still hangs each year from the top of the church with a dummy representing the famous parachute drop that was a little too close to town, so prominently part of the famous story that became The Longest Day.

Penn, Bob – Contact Sheet – The Longest Day

We honour those that made it ashore and lived to fight another day, ultimately making it to Berlin and ending what was perhaps the greatest risk to the freedom and democracy, that we enjoy today.

On the 6^th of June, we visited the beaches, walked through the cemeteries and at one point stood above a beach, where a single solitary figure stood hunched over, only a few feet from the water’s edge. No, I didn’t take the photograph, nor did I go closer. This was a veteran that needed to be alone and to remember his friends. Those that did not survive the day.

This is neither the time, nor the place to play politics, or pontificate, however, it seems to me that we are standing at a time when democracy is at great risk in many places around the world and it behooves us to remember and to make sure that the men that landed on D-Day did not do so in vain.

Harbel

Peter Fetterman – The True Gallerist

27th March 20192nd May 2023 harbel

For a long time I have been subscribing to Alex Novac’s newsletter. Alex sells photographs and is a well-respected expert, particularly in the area of 19^th century images. He also takes it upon himself to provide updates to his subscribers on a variety of current events, and I paid particular attention to his summary of discussions with exhibitors at Paris Photo, which I attend each November and have for years.

This year, he interviewed and quoted a number of exhibitors who overall were very happy with the exhibition and enjoyed the incredible attendance and the many sales, as well as seeing what their colleagues are up to. Paris Photo remains the key event in the calendar of anyone collecting photographs, wherever they might be from in the world.

In 2018, one of the booths at Paris Photo was Peter Fetterman, one of the Grand Masters of the medium from his gallery in California. Peter Fetterman’s booth at Paris Photo was a wonderful display of what the French call ‘Humaniste’ photography, what I often translate to ‘The Human Condition’. I quote, as follows from Alex’s newsletter:

With regards to the photography market generally, Fetterman commented, “If it’s great material and it touches people, then the market is strong. I think people are more sensitive now and can tell when an image has been created for a market rather than as a personal statement. All these photographers in my booth, back in the day they never sold anything. They did it, because they had to do it. Emotionally they had to express themselves through their photography. But a lot of the work created today is big prints about nothing, in an edition of three, and that’s supposed to make it important? It’s manufactured, and I think people are catching on to that. It’s a lot of hype. I think the real artists will always be successful, and the here-today, gone tomorrow won’t. It’s Darwin basically, survival of the fittest and the most talented. And I think market corrections are good.”

I have for many years been wondering how some of the modern photographs that we see commanding huge prices can possibly be set along side some of the masters of the medium. More about that another day, and hats off to Peter Fetterman. I share his views.

Harbel