Chasing Light

Sebastião Salgado | Churchgate Station

I work only in 35mm format. I have a small bag so I can carry all my films with me for one or two months. That means I am completely independent and free.

-Sebastião Salgado

Click for larger image.

Henri Cartier-Bresson | Germany, Part One

Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.

-Henri Cartier-Bresson

André Kertész | Landing Pigeon, New York, 1960

This was taken around 59th Street where they had demolished the houses, and I saw a pigeon flying in and out. The original idea for this photograph dates back to my days in Paris, where I also saw some old run-down houses and wanted to photograph them with a pigeon. But the pigeon never came. Here in New York I sat and waited. Time and time again I went back to the same place, but it was never right. Then one day I saw the lonely pigeon. I took maybe two or three pictures. The moment was here. I had waited maybe thirty years for that instant.

-André Kertész, Kertész on Kertész

Cartier-Bresson, Kertész & Koudelka

Once, Henri [Cartier-Bresson] rang me in Paris and said, ‘Josef, [André] Kertész is in town, you must come to dinner and meet him.’ I said, ‘Henri, I love his pictures but I do not need to meet him.’ ‘No, you do not understand, you have to meet him because we three, we are of the same family.’ At the time, this seems to me to be an unbelievable thing to say. Now, though, when I look back from a distance, I can see that maybe there is something in that.

-Josef Koudelka

Some Well-Worn Leicas

Brassed and beautiful. One of the great things about Leicas is that when they are used well over the years, brassing takes over the body. The black paint slowly disappears to reveal the warmth of the soft metal below. All of the Leicas that I have continually bought and sold over the years have been production M6 bodies and the top plates are made of a zinc alloy.

No brassing for me unless I buy an MP or an M4 or earlier.

Jim Marshall’s Leica M4:

It’s a very fine line to draw about taking pictures, you know, not invading someone’s privacy.

-Jim Marshall

Elliott Erwitt’s Leica M3:

All the technique in the world doesn’t compensate for the inability to notice.

-Elliot Erwitt

André Kertész | New York City, 1979

Everything that surrounds you can give you something. Last summer I stayed in my room most of the time and I began playing around with things. Years ago I was given a little primitive Polaroid camera and I didn’t like it–it was for snapshots. But one day I took it out. I had discovered, in the window of a shop, a little glass bust, and I was very moved because it resembled my wife–the shoulder and the neck were Elizabeth. For months and months I looked at the bust in the window and I finally bought it. The lady in the shop said, ‘It’s a beautiful bust, sir.’ ‘I know,’ I said. And I took it home, put it in my window, and began shooting and shooting with the Polaroid camera–in the morning, in the afternoon, in different lights. Something came out of this little incident, this little object. They made a book of all the pictures I took. It is dedicated to my wife. Look how the face of the bust is always changing: a shadow, which is the shadow of the curtain, then a passing cloud.

The sky and its reflection give it the expression. I didn’t arrange this thing–it was “there”. Photography cannot make nature more beautiful. Nature is the most beautiful thing in the world. You can show the beauty, illustrate it, but it is never the real beauty–very far from it. We don’t know how beautiful nature really is. We can only guess. I am always saying the best photographs are those I never took.

-André Kertész, Kertész on Kertész

Elliot Erwitt | California, 1955

To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.

-Elliot Erwitt

Mary Ellen Mark | Seen Behind The Scenes

Mary Ellen Mark’s latest book from Phaidon, Seen Behind the Scene: Forty Years of Photographing On Set, is a beautiful volume, full of genuine, candid moments, posed portraits and a great insider’s peak at the process behind some of the most iconic films since the late sixties.

Whether Mark is shooting portraits of people on the fringe or documenting issues, she brings a lushness and striking empathy to her subjects. Combine this velvety touch with the make-believe machinations of a movie set and legendary figures of cinema, and the results are a surreal anthropologic study of cinematic artists where there is no line between performance and reality.

It’s like looking behind the curtain and seeing nothing but towering giants.

It’s all changed so much. When I first started to photograph, it was really based on individuality. Much more. When I look at photographs now, I think sometimes it’s hard to tell actually who took the photograph.

-Mary Ellen Mark

Now there is a big emphasis on advertising so it requires a lot of studio work. When I first started to work on film sets, you didn’t need to do any studio shots.

-Mary Ellen Mark

I was on that set almost a month [Apocalypse Now], and it was such a luxury. It took away a lot of the pressure to get the material I needed. I can’t stand having my picture taken now. You see a picture of yourself as a young woman and think, ‘I wish I still looked like that.’

-Mary Ellen Mar, New York Times interview

I could never have thought of that pose [above]. I’m not a conceptual photographer. If I’d asked them to do it, it never would have happened. I think I snapped off two frames, and that was it. It was over.

-Mary Ellen Mark, New York Times interview

You used to have much more freedom. You used to really be able to wander the set much, much more. And I work a lot on Tim Burton’s films and when I do go on his set, he does give me a lot of freedom. But I think that often when the film company hires you now, they really just want studio photographs so they can use them for what they call their ‘one sheets’ for advertising.

-Mary Ellen Mark

On Marlon Brando:

I first worked with him in ‘The Missouri Breaks.’ The rule was, before you took his picture, you had to ask his permission. It was so frightening. And if he said no, you felt like a fool. On ‘Apocalypse’ it was easier, but I knew the idea had to be his. So I brought a jar of bugs, set them down.

-Mary Ellen Mark, New York Times interview

‘I asked him if I could come to his dressing room with him, and he said fine, and I took that picture. He was — a kid.’ Later Mr. Penn refused to cooperate on the set of “The Falcon and the Snowman” (1985). ‘I begged him, but he wasn’t in the mood, and it was a terrible situation because it’s your fault. You have to come back with that photograph.’

-Mary Ellen Mark, New York Times interview

With directors who love still pictures, you still have access. They don’t mind you being there. And you learn how not to be intrusive. You just take cues of where you can be that’s not going to be disturbing.

-Mary Ellen Mark

Regarding the contributions written by the filmmakers in this book and the absence of writing by herself:

I always felt as a photographer, what is really interesting about my photographs are the subjects and not myself.

-Mary Ellen Mark

I just think it’s important to be direct and honest with people about why you’re photographing them and what you’re doing. After all, you are taking some of their soul.

-Mary Ellen Mark

Regarding the absence of any images from Arthur Penn’s “Alice’s Restaurant” in the book:

That was the first film that I worked on. And I looked at the pictures and I didn’t really think that I did as well as I should have on that film. It was the first one. I wanted these pictures to all be of a certain level. Although it was a wonderful film to work on, I almost wished it had happened a bit later when I was more experienced.

-Mary Ellen Mark

Reality is always extraordinary.

-Mary Ellen Mark

The obsessions we have are pretty much the same our whole lives. Mine are people, the human condition, life.

-Mary Ellen Mark

She was an innocent 15-year-old who was madly in love with Don Johnson. She was just a little kid with a little baby voice, but her mom trusted me. Now everything has to become this big production. I could never get a picture of that intimate morning now.

-Mary Ellen Mark, New York Times interview

People like Johnny Depp – he’s amazing, and he’s really cooperative – can make the picture for you, but you have to be able to move very quickly. You have to be on top of things, always, and know when to try to catch a picture.

-Mary Ellen Mark

Henri Cartier-Bresson | France, Part One

To photograph is to hold one’s breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It’s at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.

-Henri Cartier-Bresson

André Kertész | Satyric Dancer, Paris, 1926

This picture of Magda was also taken in Beöthy’s studio. I said to her, ‘Do something with the spirit of the studio corner,’ and she started to move on the sofa. She just made a movement. I took only two photographs. No need to shoot a hundred rolls like people do today. People in motion are wonderful to photograph. It means catching the right moment–the moment when something changes into something else. It shows a kind of distortion similar to that in the photograph of the swimmer.

-André Kertész, Kertész on Kertész