Manuel Álvarez Bravo

Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Frida Kahlo in Manuel Alvarez Bravo's Studio
1930s
courtesy of Masters of Photography

The Mexican photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo was in my view one of the true masters of the 20th Century. His portrait of Frida Kahlo is a classic, but his main contribution was the pictures of ordinary people in everyday life situations. Here are some samples from his rich production and at about photography you will find a biography of this great, fascinating man.

Invited guest: JP Zorn

Running around on the internet you stumble on lots and lots of photographs. Some of them you forget the same time you click on the next one but some gets stuck in your mind. These polaroids by JP Zorn I found on www.photoseen.com along time ago and I've revisited them several times. It's an honour to be able to invite JP as a guest here at the F Blog.
Invited by Markus Andersson

Garry Winogrand once said: "I photograph to find out what something looks like photographed."

Taking polaroids is an act very much in the spirit of that credo. These pictures were taken with a Polaroid SX-70 camera and a Polaroid 680 SLR using Polaroid Time-Zero and 600 film between the fall of 2003 and the winter of 2006. They are part of a series that recorded suburban scenes and spaces and things around where I live. They are concerned with light and shape and color as well as the lives of objects. They come out of the tradition of documentary photography but, in the end, are simply personal.

Polaroid discontinued the production of Time-Zero film in the first quarter of 2006. Since then I have been taking landscape pictures using a Holga camera.

/JP Zorn

Francis Picabia and 391

[Francis Picabia, unidentified man (possibly a chauffeur), and André Roosevelt, Paris, winter], between 1912-1913 / unidentified photographer. 1 photographic print : b&w ; 20 x 24 cm. Adelheid Lange Roosevelt papers, 1955-1959. Archives of American Art.

He was a remarkable man Francis Picabia. Read more about him here and here. Notice the relation to Camera Work and gallery 291 demonstrated on this cover from the Dada periodical 391.


391. Edited by Francis Picabia. Barcelona, New York, Zurich, Paris, 1917-1924. 19 Numbers.
scan courtesy of International Dada Archive

I eat cat´s for breakfast

Photo: Gordon Flash

every man must shout:

there is great destructive, negative work to be done. To sweep, to clean. The cleanliness of the individual materialises after we've gone through folly, the aggressive, complete folly of a world left in the hands of bandits who have demolished and destroyed the centuries. With neither aim nor plan, without organisation: uncontrollable folly, decomposition."
/from Dada manifesto, 1918


Cover from Der Dada no 1. Edited by Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield, and George Grosz. 1919-1920. 3 Numbers. scan courtesy of International Dada Archive

Haha, the cats have taken over the keyboard!!

From now on, there will only be cat pictures on this BLOG. Muahahaha!

/Isis helped by Ramses

invited guest: Peter Burda

Peter Burda is perhaps most creative photographer I know. He bravely plays
with convencies and techniques, feeling well in classical B&W portrating
(circus people series), night photography (english nights) and picturesque,
surreal landscaping. His work doesn't allow to give him a stable lable and
put him into certain drawer. His photographic motto is: I photograph,what
I don't see. what I see, I don't photograph.

Peter has no formal photographic education, but he is fully devoted to
photography.He lives in a small village Mlynica in Slovak Tatra mountains.
He exhibited in Slovakia, Poland and France. Recently his work was
presented by major Polish magazine Fotografia

I am grateful Peter agreed to share his work with F blog.

english nights: 24#50

how an angel learns to fly: lesson 6

circus people/humberto: humberto #5

landscapes: about small boy in the big city

chat: chatroom2#1

More you will find here

Invited by Marcin Górski

Alfred Stieglitz and 291

[Alfred Stieglitz], ca. 1907 / Alvin Langdon Coburn, photographer.
1 photographic print : b&w ; 36 x 28 cm. Miscellaneous photograph
collection. Archives of American Art.

Alfred Stieglitz´s Photo-Secession gallery at 291 Fifth Avenue,
New York opened 1905 and existed until 1917 as a major force
to promote photography, painted art and sculpture to a sometimes
not too impressed audience. Here is what a critic wrote about
Pablo Picasso the Spanish painter who was introduced for the first
time in USA at "291":

"Any sane criticism is entirely out of the question; any serious
analysis would be vain. The results suggest the most violent wards
of an asylum for maniacs, the craziest emanations of a disordered
mind, the gibberings of a lunatic!”/Arthur Hoeber in the New York Globe

Other artists seen at "291" were Matisse, Cezanne and Rodin.
Stieglitz had good help from his associate Edward Steichen who
often travelled to Europe.

There is a lot of interesting stuff to be found on the net about 291
and Stieglitz. I recommend:
- Alfred Stieglitz and Gallery 291 A Modern Art Revolution Before the
Armory Show by Brooke Schieb
- Alfred Stieglitz and his New York Galleries From National Gallery of Art
- Alfred Stieglitz from Masters of Photography
- Documentary about Stieglitz made by PBS (American Masters)

Alfred Stieglitz
Winter on Fifth Avenue, New York
1893

scan courtesy of Masters of Photography

Adinkra symbolism

The Adinkra symbol language is found on ornamental cloths and textile, often worn as clothes by ordinary modern Africans. It was founded mainly within the Asanthe tribes in Ghana in West Africa.

This picture is from a poster I bought personally in Ghana, filled with the symbols. A bit dissappointed, a quick google on this turns up perfect dictionaries of the symbols. I prefer my poster.

Actually go read some of the symbols on the dictionary. It is quite interesting to find symbols for what we in Western society find as opposites, instead being married into one symbol - actually having a symbol and a language for the tension between different opposites. To me it shows a rather nuanced and complex society. Some examples are 'DWENNIMMEN', 'ESE NE TEKREMA', 'WO NSA DA MU A'. The culture really shows in the language. :)

I can really recommend travelling to Ghana, it is a most friendly and wonderful country!

the song remains the same

Not a visualisation of the Led Zeppelin song really, but this gone summer I have listen more to that then anything else, it has been in my blood for a while.Songs like: Going to California, Dazed and Confused, Ramble on and No Quarter...

Led Zeppelin has that effect on me, in periods I almost don't listen to anything else, then I get fed up. And I ramble on.

photo: Christofer Grandin