#Margaret Bourke-W

[casadabiqueira]

Public Square (the Terminal Tower) at 5-00, as seen through a Williamson building grill, Cleveland, Ohio

Margaret Bourke-White, 1928

[newyorkthegoldenage]

A crystal-clear shot of a DC-4 flying over Manhattan, 1939.

Photo: Margaret Bourke-White via the Atlas Gallery

[tygerland]

Margaret Bourke-White Fort Peck Dam, Montana. 1936.

[lisamarie-vee]

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 6.14

Beer Birthdays

George Schmitt (1833)

John Seiler (1833)

Bob Brown (1886)

Warren Pawsey (1963)

John Bryant (1966)

Rick Kempen (1969)

James Costa (1972)

Five Favorite Birthdays

John Bartlett; quotation collector (1820)

Margaret Bourke-White; photographer (1904)

Diablo Cody; writer (1978)

Che Guevara; physician, Argentine revolutionary (1928)

Jerzy Kosinski; writer (1933)

Famous Birthdays

May Allison; actress (1890)

Rod Argent; rock keyboardist (1945)

Gene Barry; actor (1919)

John Bartlett; author & publisher (1820)

Nicolas Bentley; English author & illustrator (1907)

James Black; Scottish pharmacologist (1924)

Yasmine Bleeth; model, actor (1968)

Alan Carr; English comedian, actor & screenwriter (1976)

René Char; French poet & author (1907)

Cy Coleman; pianist, songwriter (1929)

Laurie Colwin; novelist & short story writer (1944)

Arthur Davis; animator & director (1904)

Ben Davidson; Oakland Raiders DE (1940)

Julie Felix; American-English singer-songwriter(1938)

Theobald Wolfe Tone FitzGerald; Irish Army Officer & painter (1898)

Boy George; pop singer (1961)

Marla Gibbs; actor (1931)

Giglio Gregorio Giraldi; Italian poet (1479)

Steffi Graf; tennis player (1969)

James Gurney; artist and author (1958)

Lucy Hale; actress & singer-songwriter (1989)

Eric Heiden; speed skater (1958)

James Hutton; Scottish naturalist (1726)

Johann Abraham Ihle; German astronomer (1627)

Burl Ives; singer (1909)

Rudolf Kempe; German pianist & conductor (1910)

Judith Kerr; German-English author & illustrator (1923)

Karl Landsteiner; Austrian biologist & physician (1868)

Irmelin Sandman Lilius; Finnish author & poet (1936)

Ida MacLean; British biochemist (1877)

Peter Mayle; English author and screenwriter (1939)

Heather McDonald; comedian, actress & author (1970)

Dorothy McGuire; actor (1916)

Kevin McHale; actor (1988)

Marcus Miller; bass player & composer (1959)

Lise Nørgaard; Danish journalist, author & screenwriter (1917)

Will Patton; actor (1954)

Thomas Pennant; Welsh ornithologist and historian (1726)

Kevin Roche; architect (1922)

W. W. E. Ross; Canadian geophysicist and poet (1894)

Pierre Salinger; journalist (1925)

Nilakantha Somayaji; Indian astronomer & mathematician (1444)

Harriet Beecher Stowe; writer (1811)

Superman; comic book character (1938)

Donald Trump; gazillionaire blowhard (1946)

Harry Turtledove; writer (1949)

June Walker; stage & film actress (1900)

Junior Walker; singer, saxophonist (1931)

Sam Wanamaker; actor (1919)

Harold Wheeler; composer (1943)

Alan White; rock drummer (1949)

Laurence Yep; author & playwright (1948)

[ultraheydudemestuff]

E.J. Kulas Estate Historic District

W. Hill Dr.

Gates Mills, OH

The main house on the E.J. Kulas Estate, located at the end of Hill Drive in Gates Mills, Ohio, United States was built in 1929.  Elroy J. Kulas, known as “E.J.”, was born in Cleveland in 1880. He received his education in Cleveland Public Schools. At age 18, he commenced his working career in the freight department of the B & O Railroad. Three years later, 1901, E. J. Kulas joined the National Electric Lamp Association (NELA). NELA had been formed through a joint venture of three organizations: Franklin S. Terry’s Sunbeam Incandescent Lamp Company of Chicago, Burton G. Tremaine’s Fostoria Incandescent Lamp Company of Fostoria, Ohio and General Electric Company, in which Kulas had a secret participation as a 75% stockholder.

     During World War I, “E.J.” left NELA and became one of the founders of Cuyahoga Stamping & Machine Company, which made cartridge cases for the Allied Armies. In 1917, Burton G. Tremaine and Franklin S. Terry, the co-founders of NELA, joined others in purchasing the Peerless Automobile Company and soon thereafter engaged E. J. Kulas as Sales Manager for that company.  In March 1923, “E.J.” left Peerless and formed the Midland Steel Products Company by merging the Parish & Bingham Company of Cleveland with the Detroit Pressed  Steel Co. and the Parish Manufacturing Company of Detroit. Years later and after  “E.J.’s” death, Midland Steel Products Co. became the core of Midland-Ross Corp.

     “E.J.” remained President of Midland Steel Products Co. from its founding until hisdeath in 1952. But in a highly unusual step, in 1925, he took on the additional responsibility of being President of Otis Steel Co., a position he held until 1942 when Otis Steel was bought by Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation. During 1928, “E.J.” permitted Margaret Bourke-White to photograph steelmaking in the Otis Steel plant. Later he became so enthusiastic about her work that he published and distributed a small booklet of 16 of her pictures to the stockholders of Otis Steel Company. That booklet and those photographs caught the eye of Henry Luce, who engaged her for his new magazine, “Fortune.” Several years later, when forming Life Magazine, Henry Luce asked Margaret Bourke-White to become one of the four original staff photographers.

    Industrialist E.J. Kulas had his large, impressive Tudor Revival estate erected in the early 1930's by Boston architect Charles R. Greco.   “E.J.’s” other business interests included directorship in the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad, the Pittsburgh & West Virginia Railroad and the North American Coal Company.  In addition to his business career, “E.J.” was very interested in music and served as a vice-president of the Musical Arts Association as well as a trustee of both the Northern Ohio Opera Association and the Cleveland Chamber Music Society. He had a particular fondness for Baldwin-Wallace College, where he was a trustee for many years. The first major grant of the Kulas Foundation was $50,000 to Baldwin-Wallace for its Conservatory of Music.  Elroy J. Kulas died in his home in Cleveland on May 12, 1952.  The house was listed with the National Register of Historic Places as a historic district on March 23, 1988.

[karamacdonaldblog]

Image and Time - Kolman Rosenberg

Kolman Rosenberg is a freelance Fine Art, Editorial, Action and Commercial photographer. He's influenced by many of the great photojournalists and documentary photographers such as W. Eugene Smith, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks, Margaret Bourke-White.

In February 2012 he created a series of images of the Verb Ballet called "The Same But Different". Rosenberg has been photographing the Verb Ballet for years and in 2012 he decided to take multiple exposures. This image in particular was 4 individual images of a singular dancer and he recorded them on a single image.

His images caught my eye because I knew I wanted to do something with long exposure for Image and Time however I never even considered multiple exposures. Until I did a bit of research I wasn't sure exactly how to go about it and didn't know you could do it on a digital camera, I thought it was only shooting over the same image much like double exposure on film.

Rosenberg mentions that the multiple exposures were done within the camera and have very specific settings in the menus. This is a skill that takes much practice and calculating the timing and positioning of the individual shots that creates a pleasing and exciting singular image.

The images below were created the year after, in 2013 still the Verb Ballet. And within the year I think these are completely different. I mean they're so much more technically advanced and interesting ad they are definitely telling a different story. However without looking more in depth, my eye wouldn't have been drawn to them more just because of the lack of bold colour. The images themselves are beautiful and show the graceful, delicateness of ballet but also just because of the tonal difference they make me feel sad and small which could tell you that the story they're portraying is a sad one. It's very confusing however some of the ballerinas are in strong warm happy colours and yet the set is dark green, blue - cold and sad colours.

And on the completely opposite side, in 2012, Rosenberg also put some of his images into black and white. This was inspired by some other images he commissioned for baseball where the consumer wanted them in black and white. He decided to do the same with some of the Verb Ballet ones where the colour didn't work or didn't complement the multiple exposures. Which completely works with the idea of the title "The Same But Different".

In my opinion, 2012 has definitely got to be my favourite year for these overall. The monochromatic images are just so emotive and portray that idea of solidarity and loneliness of solos in ballet. But also giving then their opportunity to single-handedly have the stage. I really like these images as well because I feel like there is more motion in these. Rosenberg never captioned how many exposure he's took for any of his multiple exposure images however you can count. Even though they're roughly about the same, the brightness of the figure gives the idea of more movements which I think makes the image more interesting to look at. Especially the second image, for me, I can almost feel the drama of them reaching up to the sky and collapsing. It's poetic and very expressive.

[littlephotoessay]

002 - Perspective

Margaret Bourke-White is a photographer I looked to for inspiration when I first started studying photography at school. I remember looking at her pictures in a big book of LIFE photographers and stoping on her work. Her work appeals to my sense of order, it feels like everything has its place.

What I find so inspiring about this image is it’s use of perspective to create an image that works in two ways. 

The first is the image that shows the scale of agriculture. It shows the precision and fortitude that’s needed to plow endless fields.

The second image is the abstract Henri Matisse curves. This latter image is the first one that I encounter looking at this photograph. I enter the scene confused by the scale and perspective, questioning whether the lines are raked in sand by a monk? I’m misunderstanding it from my perspective, not from Bourne-White’s arial perspective. Bourke-White’s cropped this image very selectively, this confusion was purposeful. In the end, it was the title that gave it away for me, and it was an enlightening moment when I realised the scale of the image. You can see more of her work in the LIFE archives as well as her ICP.org page

[kestarren]

Backstage Burlesque Chorines, 1936. Photo by Margaret Bourke-White.

[tumbling-dyce]

Margaret Bourke-White/©Life Picture Collection: An Approaching Storm, Hartman, Colorado, 1954 – Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography 

[millimallow]

mount eerie, emptiness pt. 2 (2017) / margaret bourke-white, sierra madre mountains, california (1935)

[casadabiqueira]

Russian workers on the generator housing Dnjeprostroj of the hydropower plant Zaporizhia former Soviet Union (now Ukraine)

Margaret Bourke-White, ca. 1930

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Margaret Bourke-White on a scaffold during the construction of the Chrysler Building, 1931. She holds a Graflex 3-1/4 x 4-1/4 RB Auto camera.

Photo: Life magazine via Life Instagram

[aquatresous]

Vanitie, International Yacht Race, Newport, Rhode Island, 1934. Margaret Bourke-White

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[bytheoceanshere]

Reflections on Chapnick & Kobre: The Photo Story

Photo essays, like photojournalism, have gone through its own unique history in development. LIFE and Look helped spur the creation of the modern photo essay - a series of photographs that tell some form of a story or narrative, or aim to document a certain topic or idea. As Chapnick emphasizes, it was the early masters - Margaret Bourke-White, W. Eugene Smith,  Leonard McCombe, etc., were the originators for the art of the photo essay.

In particular, W. Eugene Smith’s work exemplifies the the sheer power and artistic value the photo story could have. County Doctor, and Spanish Village, in particular, were the epitomes of these tropes. The former mixed artistic values with storytelling, portraying the story of the titular country doctor who worked in a remote Colorado country town. Spanish Village, meanwhile, is the ultimate example of the artistic power of photojournalism. Via the simple power of exposure and composition, Smith portrays the power of the photographic image. 

One interesting thread that both Kobre and Chapnick pick up on is the proper and best way of creating a successful photo story. Kobre notably focuses on the importance of selecting and approaching the right topic (e.g, how do you broach this topic with care?). He notes that photojournalists can best think of a photo story in three categories - the photo essay, documentary report, or narrative story. Each brand has their own unique strengths and weaknesses as a means of conveying information in captions and photographs. There is no “best format” - there is only the format that works best for what you are trying to say.

Going to what Kobre and Chapnick said, Smith’s seminal work, Country Doctor, is a great example of the balance between photojournalistic content and artistic content. W. Eugene Smith’s own style of photographic art and his commitment to his work is frankly admirable; the fact that he has been behind multiple famous photo stories (the aforementioned Country Doctor, Spanish Village, Minamata, etc) is a testament to his work.

Country Doctor stands out to me so much as it is the balance between artistic and telling a story. The work of rural healthcare is often ignored, and having a story that highlights them and their own stories is magnificent. Smith allows us to get invested in the story, weaving us into a tale of the doctor who works in the last remaining remnants of the Wild West. It is his depiction of the hardworking man - Dr. Ernest Ceriani - that earns my attention. We get to know Dr. Ceriani as if he we knew him himself; Smith’s relentlessly intimate portraits feel almost disarming at times, as we are thrust into this life that he depicts. Even though this story was published 70+ years ago, this seminal work still remains just as enchanting and effective. I myself am a big fan of this story (and Smith’s work at large) and I imagine there are many others who feel the same way.

Included in this blog post are multiple selections from Country Doctor itself.