Book and Film Review: Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits (2009), Grab A Hunk Of Lightning (2014)

Gordon, Linda. Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits. 1st ed. London: W.W. Norton & Co., 2009. Print.

American Masters: Dorothea Lange: Grab A Hunk Of Lightning. Dyanna Taylor, dir, 2014. DVD.

It’s not difficult to understand why this book was a prizewinner.  The writing is crisp, sufficient background is provided to contextualize the actions and behavior of the actors, and the main subject is presented as a complex, contradicted human, one who through her images expressed great empathy but was so driven in her work that she often took for granted the people with whom she shared her life.  This was my first extended exposure to Lange and so I had no preconceptions to be challenged or reinforced.  As presented by Gordan, I found her someone with whom I could sympathize in her curiosity about the working and living conditions of others, in her interest in exploring new surroundings, her sense of adventure, and her sensitivity to injustice.  I also appreciate her approach to photography as a method of communication and a tool for changing the world.  Lange was foremost a documentary photographer, one might argue even an ethnographer, who first honed her skills making commercial portraits and who took the portraitist’s sensibility, of making people look their best, into the field.  She was least interested in photography as a means of exploring self, though of course no conscientious image maker can deny the power of the process to affect the camera operator.  It is clear from comments made late in life that she was fully aware of the transformative potential of engaging in the visual arts.

The American Masters film was directed by one of Lange’s grandchildren and provides a concise summary of the photographer's life and work should you not have the time to devote to Gordan’s biography.  The film is actually a suitable companion to the book, allowing the reader to hear Lange’s voice, to witness her gait (caused by childhood polio), to see her interact with grandchildren, and with photographic colleagues such as John Szarkowski, who aided her in preparing her retrospective at the MoMA.  The granddaughter’s presentation appears a bit more idolatrous than Gordan’s, but does not entirely overlook some of the less romantic aspects of Lange’s life.

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Shooting Hong Kong in 3.5 days

Images taken:  472
Images flagged:  157
Images developed:  95
Images selected for album:  50

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I had no plan and did no research on shooting Hong Kong.  The trip was occasioned by an invitation for a job interview and I expected to simply wander the streets for a couple of days apart from attending the interview itself.  The only bit of planning was to look for a photography museum (an account of my visit to which is reported here) and a suitable hotel.

On two previous visits to the city I stayed in Kowloon and so wanted this time to stay somewhere different.  I didn’t really want to stay on the island, as my impression from previous visits is that it is highly developed and in many regards similar to other large, over-developed cities.  I was looking for something more Chinese, something a little grungier and middle to working class.  I found it in the area around Ya Ma Tei.

Review: F11 Photography Museum, Hong Kong

F11 exterior

In preparation for this month’s visit to Hong Kong, I checked online to see if the city had a photography museum.  There is in fact a lovely new facility housed in a recently refurbished early 20th century building, but viewable only by appointment, and only on certain days of the week.  Planning ahead was fortunate and is imperative if you don’t want to miss a visit.

F11 is one of the few private museums in Hong Kong and the only one dedicated to photography.  At present there is no permanent exhibit apart from the Leica camera collection, some pieces of which are rotated on a regular basis.  Photo exhibits are held several times a year, running from a week to a couple of months.  On display during my visit was a collection of 85 black-and-white images by Swiss photographer Werner Bischof taken during his one and only 1952 visit to Hong Kong.  These were what you might think of as street or travel photography, impressionistic images of a Westerner’s first visit to Hong Kong.  Perhaps a third of the images exhibited were noteworthy, images I would look at more carefully or care to revisit.  The remainder were perhaps notable 50 years ago; today they appear rather pedestrian (though may be of great historic value, as revealed in the following paragraph).   Included in the exhibit were several period artefacts, including magazines featuring Bischof’s images, a guide to Hong Kong, and a horse-racing guide, among others.

From the OCA Blog: The Big Issue in the North – 600 photographs later

A bit of background on the publication and initiative that published four of my images in 2016:

Thanks to the generosity of the editor of independent street paper The Big Issue in the North, more than 600 photographs by around 100 OCA photography students have featured in the magazine. OCA’s partnership with the magazine began in 2011. Now that we have become part of UCA and no longer have the charitable status we had back then, we’ve agreed not to continue the partnership in 2017.

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The Big Issue in the North has a circulation of over 20,000. It’s sold on the streets of towns and cities in the north of England (Lancashire and Greater Manchester, Yorkshire and the Humber and the North East) by vendors who want to earn a living to help them get off the streets. The partnership has given OCA students the opportunity to bring their work to a wider audience and exposed the readers of the magazine to the possibilities of photography they may not previously have considered. 

More at the link.

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