John Szarkowski (1925–2007)

·EJ Bellocq, Storyville Portraits, c. 1910–1912
·Natasha Trethewey, Bellocq's Ophelia, 2002

https://i.imgur.com/r49lc4p.jpg

I wear my best gown for the picture—
white silk with seed pearls and ostrich feathers—
my hair in a loose chignon. Behind me,
Bellocq's black scrum just covers the laundry—
tea towels, bleached and frayed, drying on the line.
I look away from his lens to appear
demure, to attract those guests not wanting
the lewd sights of Emma Johnson's circus.
Countess writes my show more description for the book—
“Violet,” a fair-skinned beauty, recites
poetry and soliloquies; nightly
she performs her tableau vivant, becomes
a living statue, an object of art—
and I fade again into someone I'm not.

After reading Michael Ondaatje's Coming Through Slaughter, I wanted to see more of the EJ Bellocq photographs that inspired many of the scenes – and so much of the mood – of that novel. The portraits he took of Storyville prostitutes were found many years after his death, and many of them are damaged, but this somehow adds to their air of poignancy. It's remarkable how much feeling and personality is captured in these strange shots, which Bellocq took privately and never showed to anyone except a few close friends.

They hit us, now, through multiple layers of interpretation – all carefully posed and set up by Bellocq, never candid, and therefore making you constantly aware of how we see these women through a male gaze, however complex. Natasha Trethewey's second poetry collection attempts to give them back a voice – an imagined one, of course, and therefore not without its own problems, but even so it's quite a powerful and inspiring feat of creative energy.

It's possible to flick back and forth between her book of poems and a book of the photographs, and look for one-to-one matches – I certainly did, and many of the sonnets do represent little bursts of direct ecphrasis:

https://i.imgur.com/LJdQ7MA.jpg

I pose nude for this photograph, awkward,
one arm folded behind my back, the other
limp at my side. Seated, I raise my chin,
my back so straight I imagine the bones
separating in my spine, my neck lengthening
like evening shadows. When I see this plate
I try to recall what I was thinking—
how not to be exposed, though naked, how
to wear skin like a garment, seamless.
Bellocq thinks I'm right for the camera, keeps
coming to my room. These plates are fragile,
he says, showing me how easy it is
to shatter this image of myself, how
a quick scratch carves a scar across my chest.

But many of them don't necessarily have direct correspondences in that way. Instead, they make up a sort of imagined biography of one (pick one) of the girls in a New Orleans ‘coloured’ brothel like Lula White's or Willie Piazza's in the second decade of the century – the letters home, the reflections on the different types of customer, the mixed feelings about posing for Bellocq.

It troubles me to think that I am suited
for this work—spectacle and fetish—
a pale odalisque. But then I recall
my earliest training—childhood—how
my mother taught me to curtsy and be still
so that I might please a white man, my father.
For him I learned to shape my gestures,
practiced expressions on my pliant face.

https://i.imgur.com/qEct5K4.jpg

I've learned the camera well—the danger
of it, the half-truths it can tell, but also
the way it fastens us to our pasts, makes grand
the unadorned moment.

https://i.imgur.com/7W6OEnX.jpg

In Trethewey's verse, these women are wry and articulate, thoughtful, analytical, well aware of their circumstances and opportunities. ‘I'm not so foolish / that I don't know this photograph that we make / will bear the stamp of his name, not mine,’ one says. How realistic it all is no one can say – certainly the faces in Bellocq's pictures suggest a variety of different responses and emotions whose range goes beyond even what can be captured in Trethewey's poems. Her writing sends you back to the photos, studying each subject anew, and thinking:

Imagine her a moment later—after
the flash, blinded—stepping out
of the frame, wide-eyed, into her life. show less

This is a reprint of John Szarkowski’s book about the unique characteristics of this medium and what makes a photograph what it is. Szarkowski was the Director of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York for thirty years and his chosen images, all black and white, are taken from a show done in 1964.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect is that he takes the adage of “show not tell” literally: each point he wants to make has just a few sentences of text but pages of photographs show more that he thinks illustrate his concept in some manner or another. So, on the subject of Time he might offer you everything from a Mathew Brady iconic Civil War image emblematic of a specific period, to a Harry Callahan multiple exposure conveying the bustle of Detroit, to a Robert Doisneau pair evoking things lost and forgotten.

It’s a collection that makes you think about what you’re looking at as well as allowing you to enjoy the works a wildly diverse group of photographers ranging from the famous to the unknown. show less

Lee Friedlander's surreal sensibility is on full display in this set of photographs, originally published in 1970. Here Friedlander focuses on the role of his own physical presence in his images. He writes: “At first, my presence in my photos was fascinating and disturbing. But as time passed and I was more a part of other ideas in my photos, I was able to add a giggle to those feelings.” Here readers can witness this progression as Friedlander appears in the form of his shadow, or show more reflected in windows and mirrors, and only occasionally fully visible through his own camera. In some photos he visibly struggles with the notion of self-portraiture, desultorily shooting himself in household mirrors and other reflective surfaces. Soon, though, he begins to toy with the pictures, almost teasingly inserting his shadow into them to amusing and provocative effect--elongated and trailing a group of women seen only from the knees down; cast and bent over a chair as if seated in it; mirroring the silhouette of someone walking down the street ahead of him; or falling on the desert ground, a large bush standing in for hair. These uncanny self-portraits evoke a surprisingly full landscape of the artist's life and mind. This reprint edition of Lee Friedlander: Self Portrait contains nearly 50 duotone images and an afterword by John Szarkowski, former Director of the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art. show less

The photographic selection is not - in my opinion - as good and consistent as the one contained in The Photographer's eye. But the distinction which gives the book its title (generated by the opposition between Minor White and Robert Frank) is fundamental for the history of photography.