Woman at Window in Jerome, Arizona

There are a number of ghost towns in the West of the United States. These are towns that were built in the 1800s to provide a stable environment for miners. Gold, silver and copper were among the metals that created the rush to the West. These towns had little to offer as far as lifestyle went – bars and houses of prostitution made up the “main street” of every mining town. A barber who was also a surgeon; a sheriff who also supervised the bordello and the bar, and maybe a hotel owner for the occasional visitors if the mining was prosperous and the town large enough.

Today these towns are either touristy places where the old structures and the often open mines are kept as historical “monuments”; or, they are abandoned and in ruin.

Jerome Arizona belongs to the first group of ghost towns. Actually it is a very busy town with art galleries, hotels, restaurants and bars perched upon the cliffs of Cleopatra Hills, a mountain side about 5000 feet in altitude in Black Hills of Yavapai County. The now non-active copper mine (one of the largest in the world in the early 1900s) is in the valley and a tourist attraction. Two other mines are nearby – the Gold King Mine and Ghost town, and the United Verde mine.

I have written about Jerome and posted photographs here https://liveingray.blogspot.com/2014/07/jerome-arizona.html, and here https://liveingray.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-eclectic-town-of-jerome-arizona.html .

For a street photographer it is difficult to go to Jerome and not return with one or two keeper photographs.

And that is what I did on a recent visit. A seemingly ordinary moment when a woman is at the window becomes less ordinary when in a historical or symbolic contest. This woman was at the window of an old building now an art gallery. The side of the building has a faded Standard Oil Sign from the 1920s when Jerome was a bustling mining town.  The silver hair of the woman along with the grey color and texture of the building was a perfect composition for B&W photography.

The theme of photographing or painting women at a window or upon a balcony has always attracted me. There is something intensely human to be at the intersection of the inside and outside of the physical or emotional world. It is also a moment when the person, in this case a woman, is half protected by the known inside of her home but faces the unknowns of the outside world. A window or balcony is also most inviting when a woman looks out …

I do have my favorite painting of a woman at the window out of hundreds I have seem. It is by the German painter Caspar David Friedrich who painted his wife in 1822 as she looked out of his studio window overlooking the Elbe River in Dresden. 

This seemingly ordinary moment is full of symbolism and romanticism. The large window over her head has a cross making this a spiritual setting and moment. Her left side is dark (sinistra) while her right (destra) is luminous and promising. The mast of the ship is about exploration while she seems very at ease where she is.

This painting by  Friedrich is now displayed at the Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen, in Berlin.

So, is there really an ordinary moment or a moment is deemed ordinary when we do not see the extraordinary in it? Maybe that is what makes a scientist discover and an artist be considered creative.

April 28, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

PS/ I used a 1980s Nikon Micro Nikkor 55mm flat field lens set to f 11. The film is Ilford FP4 Plus ISO 125.

Inter-Tribal Gathering of Contemporary Native Arts in Prescott, Arizona

Since the mid-1970s, I have constantly wondered if a 6x6 medium format camera was always better for street photography than 35mm rangefinder cameras. Of course I continue to use 35mm Leica rangefinder cameras from late 1930s even today. But I always carry a twin Lens Reflex medium format camera with me, just in case… My 1948 Rolleiflex or 1970s Minolta Autocord remain my favorites.

But there is one camera that has always attracted me, primarily because of one of its lenses. It is my 1976 Mamiya M645 6x4.5 camera and the Mamiya Sekor C 80mm f1.9 lens. There is a magical character to that lens when wide open. After using hundreds of portraiture lenses in all formats, I have to say that the Mamiya when open to f1.9 is the portraiture lens with the creamiest bokeh and adorable tonal range. Of course I only use B&W film, for which I think this lens is most unique.

…So, a couple of days ago there was an Inter-tribal Native Arts weekend gathering in town. Native American tribes from Arizona and surrounding states joined together for drum beat, singing, dancing and showcasing various forms of arts creations.

For a street photographer, it is heavenly when large groups of people gather!

After thinking for a short while, I decided to take the M645 and 80mm lens with me. I would not be able to take photos from a distance as the 80mm is equivalent to 50mm in 35 mm format, but I wanted to see how the lens would do under the brightest of the high desert suns. I set the shutter speed to 1/250 second and the aperture to f8.

… There were photographers each with a couple of digital cameras hanging from the harness they wore given the weight of these monstrous tools. And the lenses on them seemed they could take photos of a flea’s eyelashes from a mile away…

Next to them, my 1976 M645 looked anachronistic, diminutive, and odd.  I almost had to cover it with my hands given the looks some of the young attendants were giving me. But that ended when a man in his 80s came to me and said “Gosh, I used to have one of these in the 1970s. It still works?”

To which I replied “Sometimes it does.”

Consequently, I decided to take a few photos and test my assumption.

…The opening photo of the three dancers is about composition and privacy.  We were told not to take pictures of the dancers if they did not allow us, but it seemed too difficult to do so as they were dancing around the field and we had no opportunity to ask for permission. So I decided to take a photo without the faces of the dancers showing. Plus, it was a windy day and I had to guess when the wind would blow the head-feathers all in the same direction. Finally, I wanted the American flag to be positioned in a way that tells a story.

I chose this photo also because there is a flare on the left side, making the first dancer from the left less focused and hazier. I find that attractive because it accentuates the feel of ancient optic/old photography. But there is a purposeful reason for it:

I have a modern Besseler enlarger but often I like using my 1960s Hansa Pro simple enlarger because the enlarger lens mount is the Leica 39mm mount which means that I can use Leica (and its clones) camera lenses instead of enlarger lenses. The use of Leica 39mm screw mount on both cameras and enlargers was to allow photographers in the 1940s and 1950s to take pictures with the Leica camera, then take the lens off, mount it on the enlarger and print the negatives in the darkroom. But the camera lenses are not made the same way as an enlarger lens (they are not flat field) and there will be distortions and flare when used as an enlarger lens.

While many see distortions and flare as nefarious, I see them as unpredictable and creative!

Here is my 1960s enlarger with a 1940s Soviet/Ukrainian Industar-22 Leica 39mm screw lens. I love using this lens to take photos, but sometimes, as in the photo of the three dancers, it adds that unexpected outcome to a captured moment I print.

Ok, while every other photo-taker was incessantly clicking on their digital cameras to capture every move of the dancers, the street photographer in me was looking for a story elsewhere.

And I found it. There was a little girl under the umbrella tent next to me and the dancers were in the background. I opened the lens to f5.6 and here is the magic of the Mamiya lens – the background is delightfully smooth in bokeh. The dancers are like whirling spirits, and the trees like clouds. But  little girl is perfectly focused.

The next generation. Continuity, beauty and hope.

April 15, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019

Storytelling Versus Technical Correctness: the One-frame Compressed Movie of Street Photography

There is an increasing interest in taking pictures with all types of digital gizmos. The days of film photography seem to be increasingly cherished in portraiture where the tonal range of digital photography still lacks that je ne sais quoi.

Indeed, our reality is now intricately related with taking pictures of everything, all day long. Of places, signs, computer screens, food plates, dogs, cats, and of course when all creativity takes respite, of ourselves! Taking selfies may not be a new behavior, but it is now part of how we communicate by posting our own pictures on social media sites. I found this delightful archival photo (no copywrite specified) of a historical selfie:

So, is it ok to tell a story without excessive concern about the technical correctness of composing, focusing and light characteristics? Of course the last two technical characteristics of a photograph are today mostly left to the microchips in our disposable cameras. But for people like me who still use film, repair their own 50 or 70 year old mechanical cameras, do not own a digital picture-taker, and spend time in a darkroom they cherish, the focusing is the most critical activity. Indeed, a story in street behavior of people is elusive – in a split second all changes (light, composition, and the behavior itself) so if one takes a couple of seconds to focus, then there may be no story left to tell.

Except in the photographer’s memory of the moment he/she did not capture.

So, here are a couple of illustrations through photos I have taken.

A.      Focusing. I took this photo on Bilbao, Spain with a 1969 Nikon F sporting a same age 20 cm Nikkor-Q telephoto. The street telephones were on each side of a magazine cover advertisement, and I saw a woman put a few coins in the phone while the man was already chatting. I wanted to capture the moment of both phone users being on the sides of that poster and did not trust that taking my time to focus perfectly would have allowed for the action in this otherwise static composition.

B.      Framing. This is a moment from Times Square, New York. It was a rainy day and I wanted to contrast the folks holding umbrellas with the “Steam Heat” mural advertisement of Ann Reinking and Bebe Neuwirth in Fosse. A couple walked into the frame composition without holding umbrellas but to capture their passage I had to sacrifice the better composition of the mural advertisements.

C.      Light. I took this photo in Ferrara, Italy. I had my 50mm Nikkor lens wide open to 1.4 as it was almost evening with practically no light. This man walked passed me and I noticed his face being painted like a clown’s. The moment I put the Nikon F to my face he looked into the mirror of a parked motorcycle to touch up his facial painting. The shallow depth of field testifies to the aperture and the blurred profile of a woman in the background provides a sense of movement.

So, do these photos tell a story? They are not photojournalistic as there is no unfolding story behind that one frame. They surely are not technically perfect, in part due to the tool I used – 1960s mechanical film camera and manual focus lenses.

With all the criticism one can justify having of such photos, still when I see the white photographic paper metamorphose into a photo in the tray under a red light, I feel good that I did not worry about the technical correctness and just took the photo!

April 10, 2019

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2019