"Had I Planned This, I Would've Failed"

"He knew he was onto something when he got a surprise check for $1,000 for photos he had turned over for one of Dick Clark's Rock and Roll Years specials at ABC in the early 1970s. 'I gave him the stuff for nothing, expected nothing,' he said. 'I thought, hmm - this could be a business here. Then I began to take it real seriously and started fanatically trying to find as many photos as I could.'"

Mike Barnes at The Hollywood Reporter writes an obituary for archivist Michael Ochs.

"Standing United—in Grief"

"The images each have a unique emotion, almost a personality, and the array of views of the American people and their landscapes feels both intimate and collective. Fusco shot for the entire eight hours it took for the train to make the usually four-hour journey. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the tracks of this train as it made its way, in huge crowds, small groups, and alone. The tracks pass through urban courtyards, suburban lawns, dirt roads, and old fence posts, along bridges and byways and secluded patches of nature, farms, and even boat docks. People gather with signs and cameras and American flags, they wave and stand at attention, they cry and hug one another, they stay stoic and solemn; they’ve walked and biked and driven; they’ve been waiting all day."

Shana Nys Dambrot at The Village Voice revisits Paul Fusco's photographs from Robert F. Kennedy's funeral train in 1968.

"The Sad Genius of American Photography"

"Yet we do remember–and revere–what he saw and what he achieved with The Americans. Through his deep looking, he taught us how to see the world anew, without sentiment or illusion. His alert and unforgiving gaze showed many Americans what was right under their noses yet invisible to them. It was, in retrospect, a wake-up call but, more than that, a beautiful, if bleakly poetic, vision of modern America, as evocative and unrelenting in its way as any novel or poem by Philip Roth or Saul Bellow."

Sean O'Hagan at The Guardian writes an appreciation of Robert Frank.

"A Big Middle Finger to the Local Community"

"He didn't realize it at the time but the community was also undergoing drastic changes as tech companies moved in on the boardwalk, inciting protests against rent increases, gentrification, and displacement. Snapchat had started operating out of a bungalow on Ocean Front Walk two years earlier, and by the summer of 2015, the company had acquired tens of thousands of feet of additional office space nearby, including a $25,000-a-month penthouse apartment overlooking the street vendors and homeless encampments.
"The multi-billion-dollar tech company began the process of relocating from Venice to Santa Monica earlier this year, but to Saguy, who is himself a tech entrepreneur and the founder of a mobile app publishing company, the damage had already been done."

Jennifer Swann at Los Angeles talks with photographer Dotan Saguy about his exhibit Venice Beach, Last Days of a Bohemian Paradise.

"The Crowds Who Came Out to Witness Kennedy's Body Being Carried to Its Grave"

"In 2018, looking back at those images, as the train approaches the terminal and the light begins to fade, you realize that you are watching the final hours of the great Democratic coalition that had dominated American politics since the election of Franklin Roosevelt, in 1932—the coalition that would fracture six months later with the election of Richard Nixon, and which is now as dead as Robert Kennedy."

Louis Menand at The New Yorker discusses the San Francisco Museum of Art's exhibit "The Train: RFK's Last Journey."

"A 1950s American Dream Life Lived to Its Fullest"

"'I pay respect to people's lives from another generation,' Townsend says during a phone interview with L.A. Weekly, echoing what he told the seller: 'Even though we don't know who these people are, they took the time—over 30 years—to document their lives, their travels, their family, and kept it all together. They passed away but their story is still intact. If you sell the slides separately, their story disappears forever.'"

Amy Roberts at the L.A. Weekly discusses artist Robert Townshend and his series of portraits.

"The Last Survivor of a Story That Gripped Great Britain and the World More Than 50 Years Ago"

"Platt said his mother was from a generation where there was 'great shame' and she had felt it when she recalled her past. 'But she shouldn't have because, looking back, there was real good that came out of what happened. It did pull the curtain back, and there were changes in society that were needed.'
"He said she was a devoted, loving mother.
"'She was a good, decent person, and she got a very unfair label that was hard for her to live with.'
"The press vilified her, he said."

Caroline Davies at The Guardian writes an obit for Christine Keeler.

Tamsin Blanchard at The Guardian in 2002 talks with Lewis Morley, who took the most famous photograph of Keeler.

"His Timing Was Perfect"

"Hefner the man and Playboy the brand were inseparable. Both advertised themselves as emblems of the sexual revolution, an escape from American priggishness and wider social intolerance. Both were derided over the years—as vulgar, as adolescent, as exploitative, and finally as anachronistic. But Mr. Hefner was a stunning success from his emergence in the early 1950s."

Laura Mansnerus at The New York Times reports the death of Hugh Hefner.

Elaine Woo at the Los Angeles Times writes about the life of Hefner.

As does Carrie Pitzulo at Politico.

As does Amber Batura at The New York Times.

"It Had a Certain Poetry to It"

"By this time, Schiller was a photojournalist of some renown, and with a batch of good-quality LSD finding its way into counterculture circles and talk of so-called Acid Tests–musical events fuelled by Kool-Aid laced with psychedelics–taking place along the west coast, he set out to document the new scene. Through acid guru Timothy Leary, Schiller made contact with Kesey, who told him the Pranksters were due to hold an Acid Test on Sunset Boulevard. Mid-trip, they skipped down the block to pose for portraits. 'Cassady was there,' Schiller recalls. 'At one point I went over, and he started dancing with his silhouette.'"

Louis Pattison in a 2011 Guardian article tells the backstory of the cover of the Flaming Lips album The Soft Bulletin.

"Immersed for a Decade Among Those He Portrayed"

"There are no illusions in these portraits. But there is a lot of warmth and the intimation of rapport, or at least the softening of suspicion brought on by a couple of rounds of bottom-shelf booze. In the end, though, the camera captures some alarming dissolutions.

"'You see how beat they are,' Sheldon Nadelman said of the patrons who managed to hike themselves up on the red and green bar stools, 'so you can imagine the ones that can't make it anymore.'

"Like the Greek, who drank Budweiser. Until he disappeared.

"'You're going to see all these people disappear from the street,' Mr. Nadelman says as the film opens. 'The street eats them alive.'"

In a 2014 New York Times article, David W. Dunlap discusses Sheldon Nadelman's 1970s street photography.

"Quintessentially American in Its Mash-Up of Identity and Culture"

"The show's curator, Anne Mallek (former curator of the Gamble House), chose from published photos and unpublished prints, prefacing each section with Ishimoto's images of Katusura Imperial Villa in Kyoto taken 20 years before the Greene and Greene commission. Compositions tend to focus on geometry and design details–wooden hinges, fixtures, masonry–but few wide shots incorporating complete structures. Despite the gap in time and place, the resemblance between the 17^th century royal retreat and the Greene and Greene houses of the early 1900s are close enough that one could be mistaken for the other."

In the wake of a new exhibit, Jordan Riefe in The Guardian discusses the architectual photography of Yasuhiro Ishimoto.

Construction Time Again

"Griffin was inspired by the German and Russian painters from that era and created his own version of the paintings while making photographs of business leaders, politicians, and personalities. Although he's unsure who came up with the term Capitalist Realism, Griffin likes it."

David Rosenberg in Slate talks with photographer Brian Griffin.

"The 'Authentic' Politician Is a Myth"

"This taste for the apparently uncoached and unscripted goes way back; more than a century ago, the rise of image management was already sowing skepticism about campaign-trail stagecraft and stimulating a hunger for unvarnished candidates. Yet despite its deep roots, our disdain for artifice is itself somewhat superficial. In reality, we're quite happy to tolerate some image-making when it produces a leader with political traits we find congenial."

David Greenberg in the Los Angeles Times looks back at presidential image-making since the early twentieth century.

"Documents of a Disappeared Time"

"'I had to get very close to people to get what I wanted, but then I quickly moved on (or, in many instances, they moved on, in their rush to flee the airport). I was polite but determined; I didn't have any altercations with anyone, but they were usually too stunned to realize what had happened when I walked away,' he said."

Jordan G. Teicher in Slate talks with John Brian King about King’s new book, LAX: Photographs of Los Angeles 1980–84.

Like a Butterfly on a Pin

"'I think they're very 3-D really,' said the artist, a white driver's cap and bright red tie accenting his gray suit. His aim is in part to expand the way we approach digital photography, which has been influenced by the way painting evolved in the West."

Matthew Segal in Los Angeles talks with David Hockney about the exhibit, "Paintings and Photographs."

I Know Why the Vegas Bantam Subway Pinup Sat by the Door

The New York Times reports the deaths of photographer Bunny Yeager, graphic designer Massimo Vignelli, publisher Oscar Dystel, writer Sam Greenlee, entertainer Bob Bailey, and writer Maya Angelou.

"How Photography Helped Shape the Image of Country Music"

"Ask him about that energetic shot of Lynn he took half a century ago and you'll hear pride as well as unflinching honesty: 'It would have been better if I'd had a wide-angle lens. I had the Lenhoff, which was the Cadillac of 4x5 cameras, but darn it, I was so close I cut her hand off,' he said. 'It all happened so fast. But, boy, that was a fun time.'"


In the Los Angeles Times, Randy Lewis previews the Annenberg Space for Photography's new exhibit, "Country: Portraits of an American Sound."

Love in the Time of the Republic of Denial

The New York Times runs obits for singer-songwriter Jesse Winchester, photographer Leee Black Childers, writer Gregory White Smith, writer Gabriel García Marquez, and writer Michael Janeway.

The Hunt for the Ambassor Calvary Cook Book

The Los Angeles Times publishes obits for cookbook author Marcella Hazan, lawyer Leonard Kerpelman, writer Tom Clancy, photographer Bill Eppridge, Protestant pastor Chuck Smith, poet Jose Montoya, and Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap.

"Searching for the Seventies"

"Founded by Gifford Hampshire, Documerica lasted about six years, hired roughly 70 photographers, and knocked out 115 assignments in all 50 states. Photographers were paid $150 a day plus film and expenses and were given the creative freedom to interpret environmental issues outlined to them from EPA employees.
"The results—22,000 images—ended up documenting environmental issues and brought another meaning to environment that focused on local neighborhoods, social issues, political changes, and the remarkable fashion trends typical of the 1970s."

David Rosenberg in Slate revisits the Environmental Protection Agency's Documerica Project.