Photographer’s Spot

Here’s a deep treasure fished out of photography’s recent past, rescued and revived by Steidl and the Pace McGill Gallery (where there was a show of the work this past spring). Emmet Gowin: Photographs is another of my long-time favorite photobooks, available once again, after many years, in a lovely new reprint. A straightlaced young man from a strict upbringing married into a more freewheeling, open, and expressive family and made art of the collision, with the fully open eyes of one who belongs but sees everything as if it were new (and astonishing). A book made out of the energy of young love and new freedom, and ambition.

In retrospect this is something of a period piece. The sparse highlights pulled up out of the inky blacks is a printing style that now looks very ’70s. Gowin includes Sommeresque landscapes, extreme wide angles, the dense, textured, flat-field arrays that would preoccupy his later work, and a Callahan-like extended portrait of his wife Edith. But it’s the snapshot-made-art quality of his new family’s faces, bodies, activities, environs, and lives that are the core of the book. Lives and deaths, I should say.

Some of the pictures were made with a medium-format lens mounted on a view camera, making the pictures circular, with the areas outside the image circle carefully burned to gray or black by the photographer (who had the reputation of being a virtuoso printer). The effect is like a keyhole, or like a peephole in a door, although we’re looking in, not out. It enhances the feeling that we’re seeing something private and essential.

I knew this book very well as a student, and in the mid ’80s I got to meet Edith Gowin. I told friends at the time that it was like meeting Lincoln, another famous subject of many photographs. To me she had a legendary quality. She spoke, however, in a high-pitched voice with more than a trace of a mountain twang, her words full of warmth and generosity. (Lincoln, too, is described by contemporaries as having a peculiar-sounding, high-pitched voice.) Not at all like the imposing, vivid, and somewhat dark figure, half wild lover, half earth mother, that inhabits the book.

Emmet Gowin: Photographs contains one of my all-time favorite pictures, too, called Nancy, a picture that could neither be simpler nor more rare. (Reproduced in this article from a while back.)

The edition I have was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1976. It cost me $4.47, which means I bought it used. I got it perhaps four or five years after it came out. One of the essential books in my library. I look at it every year. A book that’s grown with me, like a much-loved piece of music.

(Here’s the U.K. link.)

A couple of readers sent me this link, to a young woman in England with a German (or Dutch?) accent handling the Olympus E-P1. Sometimes seeing someone handle a camera can give you a better idea of what it really looks like.

(P.S. Somewhat annoyingly, I can no longer post YouTube videos directly here, because the minimum size of the videos now exceeds the width of my column. You know what they say: oh well. I wonder what would happen if I reset the size constraints manually….)

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Featured Comment by Martin B.: “German accent, definitely. The name is German too. For a Dutchman like me it is very easy to hear.”

Featured Comment by Clayton Lofgren: “Another one with funny accent.”

 
The Hartmann Leica, $1475

After I published the post called “The Leica as Teacher” on May 28th, followed by “Why It Has To Be a Leica” the next day, a number of people contacted me to say that they’d been inspired to try the “one Leica, one lens, one year” experiment that I was suggesting. Some people sent along pictures of their Leicas, or their darkroom setups, or their first results. (Good going and good luck to one and all, by the way!)

My old friend Nick Hartmann did that very experiment—one lens, one Leica—but he did it for almost a decade. He contacted me last week wanting to know how he might de-accession his old trusty Leica and 50mm Summicron while at the same time helping it to get into the hands of someone who might actually use it for the purpose for which it was intended.

So: Leica for Sale. Cosmetically it’s what would be called a “good user”—it has a few scars, and some scratches on the baseplate. Probably the worst thing appearance-wise is that Nick blacked out the engraved camera name and the “red dot” with a sharpie, and, when that didn’t quite work, covered them with black electrician’s tape. He’s removed the tape, but the engraving and the red dot don’t look so hot. (You might want to factor a roll of black tape into your budget.)

Although it looks rough, it’s been scrupulously maintained since new. Nick bought it in September of 1996 and used it “almost daily” until April of 2005. During that time he logged 500 rolls of film (you can see some of his work online), which means the camera has seen about 20,000 shutter actuations. The M6 shutter will go to about 100,000 shots before needing service, and has been known to last for as many as 400,000. So there’s a lot of life left in it.

The lens is also “experienced,” but the rear element has been protected by being on the camera since new, and the front element has always had a protective filter on it.

Mike and Zander at the Cozy Corner, Oak Park, by Nick Hartmann

Nick shot one of the best photo archives I have—for years when we’d see one another I’d drag Zander along to whatever restaurant we met at, and Nick would take pictures of us, then send prints to me. I have them all in an archival box, and the set as a whole is a lovely record of me and my son over the years of my adventure in single parenthood. Most of those pictures, of course, were shot with this very camera and lens.

Anyway, if you’re one of those who are thinking of trying the “Leica year” experiment, here’s a camera you can use. Nick would like to get $1475 for the camera and lens, which seems a fair going price. He’ll stand behind the sale, as will I: in June, a year from now, if you’d like to sell the Hartmann Leica on again (assuming of course you haven’t done anything grievous to it in the meantime), I’ll advertise it again here on TOP and you can pass it along to someone else who wants to try it.

Anyway, if you’re interested, leave a comment and I’ll pass your email address along to Nick. (In order, in case there is more than one.)

BONUS: In the spirit of passing useful things along, the buyer of the Leica can also do a favor for another (perhaps young, perhaps impecunious) photographer he or she knows: Nick will send a “good user” Canon EOS Rebel XT DSLR and a 50mm ƒ/1.8 lens to a photographer of your choice, for free. Just let him know the name and address of the person you want the DSLR to go to when you make the arrangements for the M6.