samedi 9 avril 2011

Emulation: Harry Callahan

I chose Harry Callahan for one simple reason: when I opened his book, my first thought was that he was the photographer I am trying to be.

Harry Callahan was born in 1912 in Detroit and dead in 1999 in Atlanta. He was an autodidact in photography. His work is, in his own words, “a lifetime project”: "I am interested in relating the problems that affect me to some set of values that I am trying to discover and establish as being my life […] through photography”. Thus, his approach of photography was very personal and intimate.

I could have filled the "15 pictures I wish I had taken" article with only Callahan's photos. Because his art is exactly what I wish I was able to do.

Some recurrent themes and motives can be noticed in his work: primarily his wife Eleanor and his daugther Barbara.

 
 

He also photographed cities a lot, and to me most of his urban photographs convey a sense of solitude and loneliness.




 


But Callahan was also interested in nature.




From a formal point of view, Callahan's photos show a strong sense of line and geometry, and light and darkness. Some of his pictures are almost abstract.

He also worked a lot with multiple exposures.


So Callahan did a lot of things. For the emulation project, I chose to adopt a similar approach to pictures: very personal and subjective. I focused primarily on images and themes that obsess me in photography - shadows, elecic wires in the sky, trees, swings... I was particularly careful not to overthink but to take pictures very intuitively.
Style-wise,  Formally, I used multiple exposures, and tried to shoot very simple and geometrical images, sometimes almost abstract.

samedi 12 février 2011

15 B&W photos I wish I had taken


Diane Arbus - A young man in curlers at home on West 20th Street, NYC 1966
André Kertész - Distorsion, 1933
André Kertész - Shadows of the Eiffel Tower, 1926

Robert Capa - Death of a Loyalist Soldier, 1936
Aleksandr Rodtchenko - Stairs, 1930
Aleksandr Rodtchenko - Girl With a Leica, 1934

Lee Frielander - Central Park, 1992
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson
William Klein
Yves Klein - “Obsession de la lévitation (Le Saut dans le vide)", 1960
Elliot Erwitt
 
Willy Ronis - RER, station Chatelet, 1970

Willy Ronis - Place Vendome, Paris, 1947
Barbara Morgan - Pure Energy and Neurotic Man, 1940


5 of my photos

La Défense, Paris

Julien & Biroute - BNF, Paris

TV Tower, Berlin

Laura - Toronto

Brooklyn Bridge, New York