Category: Hand Made: Art and Craft

Contemplating the photograph as a fleeting frozen fragment of the eternal present.

The photograph seems little more than a joke unless considered within significant context.

For the last week folks at the LUG cafe (Leica User Group), located in the West Bank of Brian Reid’s email servers, have discussed the concepts of avant-garde, cutting edge, as the terms may relate to current photography. The December 17 issue of The Nation published a photography review by Susie Linfield, titled Dark Rooms. Ms. Linfield discusses the four interconnected Spanish Civil War shows at the International Center of Photography in New York City (on view through January 6).

I highly recommend a complete read of the review and found it most interesting that Ms. Linfield suggested, “The illustrated magazines founded during the Weimar period, such as the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung and the Müchner Illustrierte Presse, covered everything from natural catastrophes to political issues to fashion; pioneered the use of the photo essay; and would inspire magazines and illustrated newspapers like Life, Picture Post, Regards, Ce Soir andVu, all of which would publish Capa’s and Taro’s photos from Spain. And Berlin had become the central locale for émigré photographers of the avant-garde, such as Lászlò Moholy-Nagy, Martin Munkácsi and Gyorgy Kepes (all, like Capa, from Hungary). The sense of cultural energy–of cultural possibility–was thick; the disdain for popular culture and the mass media held by theorists like Siegfried Kracauer wasn’t shared by Weimar’s new breed of creative editors, journalists and photographers. On the contrary: they exulted in the new modes of working and the new outlets for their work. Taro was an avid consumer of what Schaber calls “the visual language of modernity”; it is fitting, perhaps, that her first photograph appeared in a fashion magazine. All this–the merging of an avant-garde sensibility with the tools of the mass media and mass propaganda–is immediately evident in Taro’s work. Her pictures look less hurried and more carefully composed than Capa’s, and she often shot from odd, dramatic angles.”