Goodbye’s and Hello’s

Kodachrome

I’ve never been a huge user of slide film, but you can’t dispute the joy of looking at a perfectly exposed slide. The colours can have a magic that we don’t often see in prints. The demise of Kodachrome has been well documented this year. Produced since 1935, it was an icon of photography in its own right and beloved of millions of photographers. Paul Simon put it in his own words –

Kodachrome

They give us those nice bright colors

They give us the greens of summers

Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, Oh yeah

I got a Nikon camera

I love to take a photograph

So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away
If you took all the girls I knewWhen I was single

And brought them all together for one night

I know they’d never matchmy sweet imagination

everything looks WORSE in black and white

 

Some of the photographers we said goodbye to in 2010 were

Henry Miller (c) Peter Gowland

Peter Gowland, March 17th 2010

 

Demonstrators huddled in a doorway, seeking shelter from high-pressure fire hoses, in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963. (c) Charles Moore

Charles Moore, March 13th 2010

 

(c) Jim Marshall

Jim Marshall, March 24th 2010

 

Paul Newman, 1964 © Dennis Hopper

Dennis Hopper, May 29th 2010

 

John Lennon (c) Brian Duffy

Duffy, May 31st, 2010

 

Kate Moss (c) Corinne Day

Corinne Day, August 27th 2010

 

So, with goodbye’s to some of the greats, lets look forward to 2011. Cork Analogue Photographers are welcoming new members (interested? leave a comment below). We are planning on printing and exhibiting the Faces Project, a portraiture project we shot during the Cork Live at the Marquee concerts. We will also hold a version of the Disposable Camera Day – probably along the lines of a Crappy Camera Day (crap camera? check. roll of film? check. day out? check!). So we’ll be out and about

All the best to everyone for 2011, have a happy and healthy New Year. I’m off for a drink now 🙂

– Rory

Of sexy cameras, W. Eugene Smith and Japan Exposures

W. Eugene Smith, Hitachi, Japan, 1962. Photograph by Kozo Amano

So I was dawdling around the web, looking at the sexy objects of desire flaunted shamelessly on Tokyo Camera Style, when I came across the above image of W. Eugene Smith standing on a wall adorned and surrounded by eight cameras of various descriptions.  Something about his pose, his outstretched gesticulating left arm being mimicked by a gesticulating lens in his right, the point of view from below … Well it’s just a cool photo, isn’t it?

Seems Tokyo Camera Style came upon the picture via Japan Exposures who quoted Jazz Loft Project Blog who said,

It was late in the year of 1961 when W. Eugene Smith and Carole Thomas traveled to Japan. Smith was hired via the fledgling  Japanese public relations firm Cosmo PR to produce photographs for a publication on behalf of the firm’s first client, Hitachi. This assignment, like Smith’s Pittsburgh project/expedition/ordeal, started out as a simple one that got complicated and ended up taking the better part of a year to complete. The end result appeared in 1963 as Japan . . . a chapter of image.

Which really is a long way round way of saying I saw this photo and I liked it 🙂

– Rory

BBC’s Genius of Photography – available on YouTube

(c) William klein

I tried to catch these when they were aired on terrestrial telly a few years ago, but I missed a few. Didn’t have one of those series-link-record-em-all magic boxes then either.  I’ve found bits of episodes occasionally since then around the web, but it was hard to find the whole series in one place.  Just came across a link today that seems to have all the episodes in one place together on YouTube – http://www.youtube.com/user/GeniusOfPhotography#g/p.

I am of course talking about the Genius of Photography series that was aired by the BBC back around 2006 (can’t remember exactly when). It was a good series, though not without it’s critics. A bit American-centric and very few female photographers profiled,  from what I remember. But an entertaining history of photography none the less – good television. Anyway, I’ll be watching the series again on YouTube over the next few weeks I think.

By the way, the above is a gratuitous use of a very famous William Klein shot, who is profiled in Episode 4.

 

– Rory

Disposable Camera Day – a success!!

C c c cold snappers!

Eleven intrepid photographers made their way along slippy icy roads to meet in Cork this morning for Disposable Camera Day 2010. Armed with the cheapest plastickiest cameras we could find, we dispersed around the city snapping as the city came to life. We met again at noon in Boots on Half Moon St, who did a great job in turning around 15 or so films in an hour (some people shot two cameras!)

The day was about getting together and meeting new friends and trying to take a half decent photograph with a half crap camera along the way. Actually, the quality of the prints wasn’t bad at all – hooray for film!

After picking up the film we stopped for an hour in that bar who’s name I can’t remember (across the road from Boots!), and laid our prints across the table for an enjoyable drink and compare and contrast.

Compare and contrast!

Top marks go to Vera and Kate, who made their was out from Clonakilty (wow!), and to Maia who was the youngest snapper at five years old. Hello also to Vincent and Azem who joined us, and some of the old CorkAP crew – Sanda, Ann, Jason, Brian, Padraig and meself.

If you took disposable pictures with some disposable friends today, please post them on the flickr group – http://www.flickr.com/groups/dcd2010/

Schnaps

Disposable Fun

– Rory

It’s just about being there

(c) William Eggleston

“Sometimes i’ll leave the house with a fully loaded camera and end up with nothing. It’s just about being there. Anywhere. Even the most uninteresting ugly or boring places can for an instant become magical to me” – WILLIAM EGGLESTON

Still on – Disposable Camera Day!

Bring a disposable friend!

‘Tis chilly, but still no sign of any snow in Cork. DCD 2010 is still set to go on Sunday coming, Dec 5th.

We will be meeting at 10am outside Brown Thomas on St. Patricks St. in Cork city. We will then split and make fantastic creative disposable pictures around the city. We will meet up again for coffee, chat and warmth at noon.

We have made inquiries, and Boots will be able to 1 hour process the cameras on the day. Well, we asked how long it would take them to do 25 cameras (should that many people brave the cold) and they said 3 hours. There may be a few more places that will do 1 hour processing, but with the volume of film sales these days, it’s hard to say. But it would be really cool to compare prints sometime somewhere on the day and see what gems we have!

There’s also a flickr group set up that you can post your DCD images to – http://www.flickr.com/groups/dcd2010/. It would be great if everyone who takes part in the day could join this group and post some photos. Especially to anyone elsewhere in the world who joins us from there home place!

The post shoot coffee location hasn’t been decided yet, but we will have a decision made when we hook up on Sunday morning.

Hope to see you on Sunday!

– Rory

We would also like to extend the invitation to people who might like to join our group. Cork Analogue Photographers was set up in 2008 by a bunch of people who met at the excellent photography night class in the Crawford College of Art and Design between 2006 to 2008. We have felt our way along this far, and now would love to know if there are film loving photographers based in and around Cork who might like to get involved. We thought that a Disposable Camera Day would be a good way to meet like minded people, have a laugh, and shoot some film 🙂

Gilles Perrin – People of the Sea, at Sirius in Cobh

(c) Gilles Perrin.

An exhibition of photographs by French photographer, Gilles Perrin. The large format black and white images capture the lives of people working in maritime industries around the Cork coastline.

It opens tonight in the Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh with some additional images in the West Cork Arts Centre in Skibbereen (opening tomorrow night). iophotoworks did all the printing and mounting- a Herculean but very rewarding task! This is a must-see show

(I copied the above quoted text from the IOPhotoworks facebook news page).

I’d like to get to this opening myself, and by boat I live only a couple of miles away (how wide is the harbour?),  but with the icy conditions I’m not sure that I’ll venture away from the fire. Will definitely try and see it before it closes though

– Rory