How to Create Compelling Portaits

Check out my first blog post for the New York Institute of Photography here.
I am proud to be part of this great institution and look forward to many more blog posts to come. Stay tuned!
Many thanks for your support!

Cheers!
Anthony

Scott ©anthonylukephotography.com

Faking It ~ Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop

While digital photography and image-editing software have brought about an increased awareness of the degree to which camera images can be manipulated, the practice of doctoring photographs has existed since the medium was invented. Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop at The Metropolitan Museum of Art was the first major exhibition devoted to the history of manipulated photography before the digital age. Featuring some 200 visually captivating photographs created between the 1840s and 1990s in the service of art, politics, news, entertainment, and commerce, the exhibition offered a provocative new perspective on the history of photography as it traces the medium’s complex and changing relationship to visual truth. [via The MET NYC]

If you missed the exhibition do not despair because the book is still available at the Amazon link below:

Unidentified American artist
Man on Rooftop with Eleven Men in Formation on His Shoulders
c. 1930

Leap into the Void ~ by Yves Klein

As in his carefully choreographed paintings in which he used nude female models dipped in blue paint as paintbrushes, Klein's photomontage paradoxically creates the impression of freedom and abandon through a highly contrived process. In October 1960, Klein hired the photographers Harry Shunk and Jean Kender to make a series of pictures re-creating a jump from a second-floor window that the artist claimed to have executed earlier in the year. This second leap was made from a rooftop in the Paris suburb of Fontenay-aux-Roses. On the street below, a group of the artist’s friends from held a tarpaulin to catch him as he fell. Two negatives--one showing Klein leaping, the other the surrounding scene (without the tarp)--were then printed together to create a seamless "documentary" photograph. To complete the illusion that he was capable of flight, Klein distributed a fake broadsheet at Parisian newsstands commemorating the event. It was in this mass-produced form that the artist's seminal gesture was communicated to the public and also notably to the Vienna Actionists. [via The MET NYC]

Maurice Guibert (French, 1856-1913)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec as Artist and Model
c. 1900

Unidentified artist
Man Juggling His Own Head
ca. 1880

Io + gatto ~by Wanda Wulz 1932

Wulz, a portrait photographer loosely associated with the Italian Futurist movement, created this striking composite by printing two negatives—one of her face, the other of the family cat—on a single sheet of photographic paper, evoking by technical means the seamless conflation of identities that occurs so effortlessly in the world of dreams.[via The MET NYC]

The Pond - Moonrise ~ by Edward J. Steichen 1904

Using a painstaking technique of multiple printing, Steichen achieved prints of such painterly seductiveness they have never been equaled. This view of a pond in the woods at Mamaroneck, New York is subtly colored as Whistler's Nocturnes, and like them, is a tone poem of twilight, indistinction, and suggestiveness. Commenting on such pictures in 1910, Charles Caffin wrote in Camera Work: "It is in the penumbra, between the clear visibility of things and their total extinction into darkness, when the concreteness of appearances becomes merged in half-realised, half-baffled vision, that spirit seems to disengage itself from matter to envelop it with a mystery of soul-suggestion." [via The MET NYC]

Human Relations ~ by William Mortensen 1932 

Mortensen began his career as a Hollywood studio photographer, turning out glamour portraits of stars such as Clara Bow and Jean Harlow. In the early 1930s he established a photography school in Laguna Beach, where he refined and promoted his own aesthetic—an eccentric blend of late Pictorialism, Surrealism, and Hollywood kitsch. Restlessly inventive in the darkroom, he employed a wide variety of techniques, including combination printing, heavy retouching, and physical and chemical abrasion of the negative. At times, his use of textured printing screens gave his photographs the appearance of etchings or lithographs, as in this audaciously grotesque picture, which was prompted, according the artist, by an overcharged long-distance telephone bill. [via The MET NYC]

Untitled ~ by Jerry N. Uelsmann 1976

Uelsmann revived the technique of combination printing pioneered by such Victorian art photographers as Oscar Gustave Rejlander and Henry Peach Robinson in the early 1960s, when darkroom manipulation was denigrated by many proponents of straight photography as a flagrant violation of photographic purity. His pictures, which he creates in a darkroom equipped with seven enlargers, are filled with mind-bending paradoxes, oblique symbolism, and bizarre contrasts of scale. Uelsmann’s work is now considered an important precursor to the seamless compositing widely associated with digital photography and Photoshop. [via The MET NYC]

Jerry N. Uelsmann (American, born 1934)

Untitled

1969

Find ~ Will Connell 1937

In 1938 Connell, an advertising photographer and teacher at the Art Center School in Los Angeles, published In Pictures: A Hollywood Satire, a book of forty-eight photographs that used Surrealist fantasy and photomontage to lampoon the Hollywood studio system. The book offers up a vivid assortment of Tinseltown types: the cigar-chomping producer, the pushy stage mother, and this scantily clad starlet besieged by a horde of colossal sensation-seeking cameras. [via The MET NYC]

John Paul Pennebaker (American, 1903-1953)

Sealed Power Piston Rings

1933

Carving One of Our Watermelons~ by William H. Martin 1909

The tall-tale postcard was a uniquely American genre that flourished in the Midwest between about 1908 and 1915. The earliest master of the genre was William H. “Dad” Martin, a studio photographer in Kansas who established a successful sideline crafting photomontages of outlandish agricultural abundance. Intimately familiar with the tribulations of Midwestern farmers, including a fierce drought that parched the land for most of the 1890s, Martin lampooned the inflated promises of fertile soil, abundant rain, and hardy livestock that land companies used to lure settlers westward.

In Olden Times, if Folks Were Good, the Stork Would Bring a Baby Sweet and Fair~ by Keystone View Company, London 1907

A Pair of Hungry Pike ~ by Unknown, Canadian 1911

A Car Load of Texas Corn ~ by George B. Cornish 1910

Stunning Time-Lapse of Europe's Most Famous Landmarks ~ by Luke Shepard

Nightvision is a celebration of the brilliance and diversity of architecture found across Europe. Over the course of three months Luke Shepard journeyed with a friend through 36 cities in 21 countries with the ambition of capturing some of the greatest European structures in a new and unique way.

 Comprised of thousands of carefully taken photographs, strung together and stabilized in post-production, Nightvision aims to inspire appreciation for these man-made landmarks. [via NIGHTVISON]

Take a tour!

 Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao Spain designed by Frank Gehry ~ Photo by Luke Shepard

Watch full screen for full effect!
NIGHTVISION from Luke Shepard on Vimeo.

Fantastic Skateboarding Self-Portraits by Fabiano Rodrigues

Fabiano Rodrigues was born in Santos, São Paulo, 1974. He approached photography through skateboarding, first appearing in photographs as a professional skateboarder, while performing maneuvers through out Brazil and Europe.

The interest in composition, in motion capture and architecture, propelled him to photograph other skaters in the city, so as to be recognized both as a photographer and as a skater.

Shooting with a Hasselblad camera using a remote control, he records the apex of his own motion in a previously planned framework. These photographs are always one off prints, exploring the history and repertoire of skateboarding movements, particularly its relationship with the city, its architecture and urban furniture. [via GaleriaLogo]

These remarkable images are impressive on their own merit, but even more so considering they are self portraits. Enjoy!

Fabiano Rodrigues looking rather serious posing next to one of his images.

Afghani Photojournalists Face an Uncertain Future

Frame by Frame: A documentary exploring Afghanistan's recent revolution of photography through four local photojournalists.



In 1996, the Taliban banned photography in Afghanistan. Taking a photo was considered a crime. When the regime was removed from Kabul in 2001, their suppression of free speech and press disappeared. Since then, photography has become an outlet for Afghans determined to show the hidden stories of their country. In this coming year, as foreign troops pull out of the country, international media will inevitably follow. The Taliban is poised to gain influence, if not fully return to power. The future of journalism in Afghanistan is unknown.[via kickstarter]




photo by Farzana Wahidy

Photo by Wakil Kohsar

photo by Massoud Hossaini 

Lend your support here:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/framebyframe/frame-by-frame

Photographer Profile ~ William Klein

William Klein (born in NYC, 1928) is ranked 25th on Professional Photographer’s Top 100 Most influential photographers.

William Klein grew up in New York and, as a painter, went to work in Fernand Leger's Paris studio. He became interested in photography to record movement in his paintings and began using a camera. He was soon photographing other interests, and in 1954 his work was seen by American Vogue art director (and sculptor) Alexander Liberman, who offered him a contract as a fashion photographer. Liberman saw in his work a fresh approach and one that seemed to have a certain violence that would move the magazine away from the 'polite' images of Cecil Beaton.

 Because Klein did not know how to use a studio, he took the models out onto the streets to photograph. Later he pioneered the use of wide angle and telephoto lenses for fashion work. Klein's photo-reportage style involved a rejection of the established notion of the photographer as a 'fly on the wall', an unseen recorder of events. Klein recognized this and through his methods emphasized the interaction between photographer and subject, oftentimes almost pushing his wide angle camera lens into people’s faces.

He went on to produce a book, New York, New York (1956) which featured this quick reflex 35mm street photography with a graphic design and text reflective of the New York Daily News and cheap advertising. This was followed by later books on Rome (1960), Moscow (1964) and Tokyo (1964).

 Klein also made a number of movies, starting with one of the first Pop films, Broadway by Light. In 1962 he gave up still photography (except for a few fashion pictures for Vogue) to produce films on Muhammed Ali and Little Richard, the Vietnam War, and experimental films Mr Freedom and Who are you, Polly Magoo, a satire of the fashion industry

Klein returned to still photography circa 1980, mainly photographing people in crowd situations using an extreme wide angle lens. [via art-miami.com]

Klein has had solo and group exhibitions including Prints 1955-2007, Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, galleria Carla Sozzani, Milan, Italy and Rand Manège, Moscow. Klein’s work is in the collection of The Guggenheim Museum, New York, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

With a major Tate Modern exhibition currently celebrating his work, BBC spends time with William Klein to discover the irrepressible, charismatic personality behind a remarkable creative life in this fascinating documentary. Enjoy!

“I came to photography from the outside, so the rules of photography didn’t interest me.” William Klein

Smoke & Veil - William Klein for Vogue - 1958. © William Klein

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NYC 1954

St Patrick’s Day, Fifth Avenue 1954 © William Klein

I photograph what i see in front of me, I move in close to see 

better and use a wide-angle lens to get as much as possible in the frame." William Klein

NYC 1954 © William Klein

William Klein, Selwyn, 42nd Street, New York, 1955.

“In the 1950s I couldn’t find an American publisher for my New York pictures,” he says. “Everyone I showed them to said, ‘Ech! This isn’t New York – too ugly , too seedy and too one-sided.’ They said ‘This isn’t photography, this is shit!’” – William Klein (1981)

NYC 1955 © William Klein

Regarding his street photograohy : "People would say, ‘What’s this for?” I’d say, ‘The News.’ ‘The News! Wow! No shit!’ I didn’t much care.” ~ William Klein

Moving Diamonds, mural project, Paris, 1952

Red Light and Vespa, Rome,1956

NYC 1954 © William Klein
As well as painting and photography, Klein is also remembered as a film-maker (In 1956, a 28–year old William Klein arrived in Rome to assist Federico Fellini on his film Nights of Cabiria [1957]). His most notable feature being the 1969 documentary on Muhammad Ali, “Muhammad Ali: The Greatest.”

Paris 1960

Evelyn + Isabella + Nena + Mirrors, New YorkVogue, 1962

Nina and Simone, Piazza di Spagna (Rome), 1960Vogue US, April 1960
Photographer: William Klein 

Tatiana, Mary Rose and Camels, Picnic, Morocco, 1958

Hat + 5 Roses, Paris (Vogue), 1956
Photographer: William Klein 
Model: Barbara Mullen

Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (1966) - William Klein (full film)