Think, Look, Make

My eyes fixed upon a small ivory sculpture in the window. I looked for the gallery owner to ask if I could take a photo of it. He obliged and I asked him about the price. It was far beyond my means and I told him that immediately so as not to waste his time, but he insisted on having me hold it. We entered into a wonderful conversation about African art and looked at a Senufo mask he had just purchased. Within his perfect French, he had a slight accent that was vaguely familiar so I asked where he was from- Romania, he said. He had been living in France for 30 years. The day before, I spoke with a French woman who told me that France was dealing with huge waves of Eastern European immigrants. "From which countries?" I asked. "First the Romanians, then the Bulgarians, now the Ukrainians and the Georgians." she said. "Je ne sais plus ou on va dans ce pays si ca continue comme ca,"  is something I heard more than once, on the subject of immigration in ...

Another day in the Mission.  What these photos fail to convey are the glorious sounds coming out of each of these cars, cars rolling slowly through the streets of San Francisco. These men could be professional DJ's. They probably are. Funk, Rap, Soul, Blues, Rancheras.  The best party was in each car. And I have never seen cars so spotless. Not a crumb, or a hair, or a piece of paper or a fingerprint on the seats and the floors. Who would want to leave?

" liberté égalité fraternité, hiru gezur horiek egiak balite "  This is a Basque saying regarding France. “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, if only those three lies were truths!” When I was last in Paris, I showed a friend a photo I had just taken of lovers kissing at a café.   I didn’t get the shot I had hoped for, which was when the woman was still walking towards the man. I had stepped into the middle of the street, almost getting hit by a car, while trying to not be noticed.   My friend reacted with horror- I had no right to photograph people in public, he said. What if the man was cheating on his wife? I could ruin an entire marriage. They have laws about this in France, he tells me.   I have since learned that the punishment is one year in prison and 45,000 Euros. I ponder the irony that such laws exist in the country where Daguerre gave to the world the first photograph of a person (actually 2 people), on the Boulevard du Temple. Paris is the city w...

Brassai Andre Kertesz Henri Cartier Bresson Doisneau Aurélie Filippetti, the former French minister of culture has expressed that Article 9 is unacceptable with regards to photographs. “Without them, our society doesn’t have a face,” she said. “Because of this law, we run the risk of losing our memory.”  Doisneau’s “Baiser de L’Hotel de Ville” (1950) landed him in court decades after taking it. According to what I read in Wikipedia, Jean and Denise Lavergne erroneously believed they were the subjects and invoked their rights under the French privacy laws. Doisneau was forced to reveal he had asked the real couple to pose, after having seen them kiss spontaneously and not wanting to intrude. He won the court case. The woman in the photo, Francoise Bornet, said: " We didn't mind. We were used to kissing. We were doing it all the time then, it was delicious.”

Downtown Austin. When I returned to the US after photographing in Paris, I felt that I was in a freer place, artistically speaking. No longer would people yell at me for taking pictures in public, as the French often did. The French privacy laws have made the land of Doisneau and Cartier-Bresson a rather inhospitable place for that same type of street photography today. But, how interesting it is to come to Austin, Texas, which has changed dramatically in the 20 years since I last visited. One of the highlights for me was seeing the "First Photograph" which is enshrined at the Henry Ransom Center. I always teach my students about this image by Niepce, yet I had never seen it. It is kept behind glass and walls in its own “section” of a room, with guards close by, next to the Gutenberg Bible. I love the story of the making of this photograph as it shows the tenacity that it took to create an image, using materials such as bitumen and lavender oil, waiting for hours to make...