When The Stars Align

Sometimes when shooting film it's like the stars align. I was out driving around and looking to start back up my series titled "Concrete Cathedrals" when I came across this scene. It was like not only finding the perfect Cathedral, but a pope to go with it. The title of the large vessel is "American Victory", which I thought was suiting given the fact that the 4th of July is upon us this upcoming weekend. That coupled with amazing clear skies and the exact combination of camera and film that I wanted led to this shot.

U.S. Route 53, Superior, Wisconsin, June 2015

Rolleiflex SL-66 / Zeiss Planar 80mm/f2.8
Kodak Panatomic-X print film developed in Rodinal 1:50

Happy Birthday America

Happy Independence Day, everyone!

U.S. Route 87 (Business), Abernathy, Texas, February 2002

Rolleiflex SL-66 / Zeiss Planar 80mm/f2.8

Agfa RSX-II 50 reversal film

All In A Hard Night's Drink

Milton, Massachusetts, June 2000

Rolleiflex SL-66 / Zeiss Planar 80mm/f2.8

Ilford Pan-F 50 print film

Black Gold

U.S. Route 50, Capon Bridge, West Virginia, June 2013

Rolleiflex SL-66, Zeiss Planar 80mm/f2.8

Kodak Ektar 100 film

Oil. It's been a part of our history for generations. Rockefeller provided the nation with fuel for lamps and streetlights and then figured out how to use the "trash" as fuel for the horseless carriage. We have fought wars over it, rejoiced in the finding of it, cringed over the prices of it, all in the name of convenience and demand. 

Gulf Oil, or the company that we know as Gulf oil, was started in 1901 after the discovery of oil at Spindletop, near Beaumont, Texas. A group of investors, the largest being William Larimer Mellon of Pittsburgh Mellon banking family, joined forces to promote the development of a modern refinery in the nearby Port Arthur to help process the oil. 

Spindletop's output peaked early on at 100,000 barrels per day. The early peak and decline forced Gulf to find alternative sources of supply to sustain its substantial investment. The effort to do so resulted in the construction of a 400-mile pipeline connecting oilfields in Oklahoma with Gulf's refinery at Port Arthur. This pipeline was known as the Glenn Pool pipeline. 

The distinctive Gulf logo was an assurance of sorts for the "name brand" oil so people purchasing it knew they were getting good quality gasoline. At this time in the United States, non-branded gasoline was often contaminated or of unreliable quality. 

This photo shows a sign, though old and worn and riddled with holes, that defined a company. Logos are an influential part of today's society and oftentimes a logo is literally the first and last impression people get from a company. A brown and gold shield, a white eagle on a blue background, a blue oval or a red target. All these signs are what influence us and stay as reminders in our mind. 

Gulf oil may not be in its hayday anymore, but the distinctive orange sign will always be associated with it. 

Vivian Maier and Sins of Omission

Vivian Maier, street photographer, c. 1950s

In all the reading I have done about Vivian Maier, the celebrated photographers (many of whom cannot touch her work - e.g., Mary Ellen Mark) and critics who now fawn over her work, all offer many theories as to why she never put her work out there.  Most are plausible: She was rather private, she lived for the trip of the shutter, not the adulation, and so on.

Yet, what goes unspoken in the thousands of words I've read is this: Vivian Maier was an intelligent, educated woman, yet took menial jobs to finance her own photography.  It would be wrong to say she was not ambitious. However, Maier kept her only work to herself and a few close acquaintances. Perhaps she understood the very nature of the sort of people who run the fine arts photography racket.

Perhaps Maier, living in New York and Chicago, had taken her portfolio around.  And, perhaps after the first couple dozen times being shown the door by the curator-in-black-turtleneck types, she gave up trying. 

Perhaps she got bitterly resentful of seeing lesser talents lauded because they had the social skills she lacked - running the gamut from schmoozing, sycophancy, making Faustian bargains, domineering, to backbiting - to "make it" in the gallery scene and the Museum of Modern Art.

And now, that she is dead, her estate having been purchased for a song by people who are at present living the good life, after she spent the last decade of her life living in penury, scraping by on her Social Security checks. 

The people now making a very comfortable living off her abandoned negatives and prints have brought in all sorts of the hangers-on of the art scene to laud her in death.  How magnanimous they are. Now.

I wonder what kind of experience Maier had when she approached the forebears of these taste-makers and gatekeepers of the art world.  I wonder if she even approached them at all.  Perhaps she was onto them, all along, and knew she would never last a moment among all those social climbers.

As long as this possibility goes unspoken (and it certainly is going unspoken, not even the bread crumbs of hints have been strewn in the wake of her sudden posthumous fame) - from people who know damn well what game they are playing, and who haven't the consciences to care when they crush the aspirations of young artists, and who call people who've already made it "emerging artists," we cannot help but assume that the praise they're heaping on her now is to cover their own asses and assets.

Autumn Is Here

Alisaith, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, October 2003

Belvedere

 Emily Tomlin, State Highway 30, Oslo, Minnesota, July 2012

I took this with my stalwart Rolleiflex SL-66, loaded with a roll of Agfa Optima II 100 film.  It expired in 2001, but thanks to the Frigidaire, it looks just as fresh as the day it was made.

 

Automobile courtesy of Chrysler Corporation.

Makeup by Estee Lauder.

Dress by Mod Cloth. 

Gone Shooting

Emily Elizabeth Tomlin, Winona, Minnesota, May 2012

 

This past month, I got back into the swing of photography.  I hadn't been out with my camera in a long time, and had a most agreeable shoot with Emily Tomlin.  We got just the 1950s look we were going for at this ice cream and burger stand in Winona.  Thanks to Agfa Optima II, we got just the right color palette, too.

Oh, the Humanity!

 Hindenburg Memorial

Lakehurst Naval Air Station, New Jersey, March 2004

This photograph is from, literally, the oldest roll of film I ever shot. I acquired this roll, which had been stored in a cool basement since bought new by an old photographer friend of mine. I shot this photo of the Hindenburg Memorial on a roll of Kodak Panatomic-X, the fine-grained film that Kodak stopped production of in 1989. 

The Panatomic-X film we film photographers all know was rated 32 ASA. This particular roll was rated 12 ASA back in the day, and had an expiry date of April 1939. That meant -- film usually given a shelf life of three years -- this roll was probably manufactured sometime in 1936. Which means the film I finally exposed in 2004 -- 67 years after the Hindenburg disaster of May 6, 1937 -- actually predated the crash landing by at least one year.

I developed this in Kodak D-76. I used that developer as I hadn't the foggiest notion how to develop the ancient roll of Panatomic-X. Fortunately there was a data sheet enclosed in the film's box, and D-76 was one of the recommended developers still in existence, and as I happened to have some D-76, it came out pretty well. The negatives were rather dark, as the film was fogged after almost seven decades of storage. You can see little black spots on the film, which resulted from heat exposure.

Concrete Cathedrals

 U.S. Route 66, Landergin, Texas, November 1999

It's hard to believe that it has been more than twelve years ago that I began the series I now call Concrete Cathedrals.  I was on my way up out of Texas to photograph the Anasazi ruins at Mesa Verde.  I never got there, because I was captivated by the cement grain elevators which dot the landscape in the Texas Panhandle.  These particular silos are found outside the tiny ghost town of Landergin, about 10 miles west of Vega.

Since I photographed this image, I've visited hundreds of grain elevators in the United States and Canada.  It's the longest series I've worked on, and it will be my last book.  I don't ever plan on stopping work on Concrete Cathedrals.

Concrete Cathedrals

Off Interstate 37, Corpus Christi, Texas, May 2000

Rescanned the original negative at extremely fine resolution, and found beautiful nuances in Photoshop I never knew were there before.

Concrete Cathedrals

U.S. Route 150, Fithian, Illinois, August 2011

I was so overwhelmed by the beauty of this grain elevator in Illinois that I previously only shot with my Polaroid Colorpack in June, that I returned in August to get a "proper" photograph with my Rolleiflex SL-66 on the now long-gone Agfapan 25.

Painting With Light

Portrait of Emily Tomlin, Rochester, Minnesota, November 2011

Or, this could be called film from the freezer, as I shot this photograph on a roll of Kodak Panatomic-X, 32 ASA film that expired in 1969.  It held up well.  I took this photograph with a tripod-mounted Rolleiflex SL-66, loaded with the great old stuff.  Zeiss Planar 80mm lens/f2.8, f5.6 at 1-1/2 minutes.

I only used two sources of light:  A 25-watt desk lamp behind the armchair, and a diffused flashlight.

Thanks to Emily Tomlin, especially, for being extremely patient and still during the shoot. 

Stairways to Heaven

U.S. Route 87, Colfax County, New Mexico, February 2002

There is a story behind this memorial.  To be shared soon.... 

Crazy Horse in Black and White

Crazy Horse Memorial

Crazy Horse, South Dakota, April 2011 

I finally got around to developing the film I took of the majestic Crazy Horse mountain, near Custer, South Dakota.  It is simply powerful beyond words!

Rediscovered Negatives: Im Augenblick

Off U.S. Route 87, Happy, Texas, November 2004

This is my Texas.  A hundred years from now, this scene will still be there.  

God willing.

The Breadman Cometh

Butter Krust delivery man, U.S. Route 181, Smiley, Texas, 2000

I lost whatever notebook I wrote this delivery man's name in.  However, he was kind enough to pose for me ten years ago in the sleepy hamlet of Smiley, Texas.

Concrete Cathedrals

Corpus Christi, Texas, May 2000

My first big break as a photographer was having my portfolio, Concrete Cathedrals, accepted for publication by Black & White Magazine (U.S.A.).  I got the acceptance letter in December 2002, which took over a month to reach me, as I'd just moved from San Antonio to Philadelphia.  Coming as it did after seven rejection letters from lesser publications, I was more than elated.

A monochromatic paean to the austere and imposing grain elevators which dot the landscape of the Great Plains, Concrete Cathedrals is a work in progress.  As literally thousands of these monolithic edifices are found across North America, I am certain to pass into the hereafter decades from now no closer to finishing than Franz Schubert was his Eighth Symphony.

A special dedicatory goes to fans in London, who like the SciFi feel of some of my black-and-white compositions.  I hope you enjoy this!

Film From the Freezer

Johnny
U.S. Route 285, Española, New Mexico, June 2006

This portrait was taken on a roll of Adox KB-14, which is pre-Yugoslavian, pre-Efke.  Yep, you read that right:  This particular roll expired in October 1969, and rated at ASA 20, it hasn't lost a bit of its lustre.  This is Frankfurt, West Germany Adox, made 23 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and exposed 17 years after!

In fact, I have never seen tighter grain on any slow-speed film I've used in 35mm.  Not Agfapan 25, not Panatomic-X 32 ASA.  In fact, I was already well aware of Adox's legendary sharp accutance and smooth rendition of the full tonal range that I centered all my subjects on that particular roll, so that I could print them square, by chopping the sides.

This portrait of one young punker was taken with my Nikkor prime lens, 50mm/f1.4.  It is technically -- and artistically -- worthy of my Rolleiflex SL-66.

I'm so blessed that I still have twenty bulk reels of the stuff in the Frigidaire!

Unintentional Photo Effects

U.S. Route 285, Eddy County, New Mexico, 2008

This photograph was taken on Fuji Velvia 50 color transparency (slide) film, on my Rolleiflex SL-66.  At the time this image was captured, I only had Velvia in my camera, as I hadn't brought along any black-and-white negative film for the camera.  I did have a roll of 35mm Kodak Tri-X, but this composition struck me as a square, not a rectangle (either vertical or horizontal).

I finally got around a few months ago to scanning this transparency, as I envisioned it as a black-and-white print.  The strangest thing happened with the tones:  The resultant scan turned out looking almost as if the picture was taken on infrared film, particularly in the deep grays of the sky and the paleness of the shrubbery.  (Red, however -- which is the color of the "WHITE'S CITY" sign -- came out in normal tonality, not as a shimmering white, as it would appear on infrared film, through a red filter).

Of course, this oughtn't to have surprised me, given Velvia's exagerated color curves -- which, when desaturated produce exagerated tonal curves.

Still, I love the otherworldly feel of this picture, something not uncommon in New Mexico landscapes.