I really geek out out on glimpses of the marked-up copy of other writers, so I was pretty fascinated to see a page of a Presidential speech-in-progress. If you click through to the zoomed-in page, you’ll see that all of Obama’s notes are all copy-edits; there are no developmental “what I’m trying to say here”-style edits. Not sure what that means, but I thought it was interesting. The Flickr caption indicates that the photo was taken “in the Oval Office, Sept. 9, 2009, in preparation for the president’s address to a joint session of Congress.” Cool.

Perched among the tall buildings in downtown San Francisco, my office can feel like a nest in a tall tree. Yesterday evening, the birds that live atop the Transbay terminal swirled up to, and around, the windows of our conference room, and the aerie-like feeling was stronger than ever. One bird even landed, briefly, on the ledge of the window. I have no idea what kind of birds they are, what brought them to us, or what they hope to achieve. But I am in awe of them.

You autograph photos of yourself using Robin Ventura’s head as a speedbag. And, they sell for $100 each on ebay.

Great design hits you on many levels. During our staff meeting today, Nick gave a nice example of the way it can hit the subconscious: When you shut the door of a luxury car, like a BMW, it feels different. And this feeling may not even register in the conscious mind, but I think it matters. The feeling of solidity and integrity during that action is unique and lasting, even though it occupies a tiny sliver around the experience of driving. It reinforces quality, security, class — critical elements of luxury.

I hesitate to admit this in a public forum, but I don’t think I’ve ever purchased a new piece of silverware. Our silverware drawer is a hodgepodge of airline spoons, thrift store forks, garage sale knives, odds and ends of various shapes and sizes. But you’ve got to wonder whether the experience of eating wouldn’t be greatly enhanced — even unconsciously — by great silverware, like the set above by craftsman David Mellor. I saw it yesterday at Heath Ceramics in Sausalito, and even a philistine like me could tell that it’s got something going on. For $160, you can find out for yourself.

If you do, listen to your subconscious, and let me know what it says.

Saul Steinberg’s cover for the first edition The Americans by Robert Frank. Publisher Robert Delpire: “The only point of disagreement was the cover. I insisted right away on using a drawing by Saul Steinberg, whom I had met and whose work I liked. Frank said, ‘It’s a book of photos, we could use a photo.’ I told him, ‘You can use a photo for the American edition, but let me use a Steinberg drawing.’ But when I reprinted the book in 1986, I used a photograph because I had discovered, basically, that he was right.”

We checked out SFMOMA’s 50th anniversary retrospective of The Americans today, and I was astonished at another of Frank’s skills: Grant-writing. In order to fund the gathering of the photos that became The Americans, he applied for a Guggenheim Fellowship. I’ve pasted his clear, simple, two-part essay below.

Part 1: Frank’s brief summary of the proposal

To photograph freely throughout the United States, using the miniature camera exclusively. The making of a broad, voluminous picture record of things American, past and present. This project is essentially the visual study of a civilization and will include caption notes; but it is only partly documentary in nature: one of its aims is more artistic than the word documentary implies.

Part 2: The full statement of intent

I am applying for a Fellowship with a very simple intention: I wish to continue, develop and widen the kind of work I already do, and have been doing for some ten years, and apply it to the American nation in general. I am submitting work that will be seen to be documentation—most broadly speaking. Work of this kind is, I believe, to be found carrying its own visual impact without much work explanation. The project I have in mind is one that will shape itself as it proceeds, and is essentially elastic. The material is there: the practice will be in the photographer’s hand, the vision in his mind. One says this with some embarrassment but one cannot do less than claim vision if one is to ask for consideration.

“The photographing of America” is a large order—read at all literally, the phrase would be an absurdity. What I have in mind, then, is observation and record of what one naturalized American finds to see in the United States that signifies the kind of civilization born here and spreading elsewhere. Incidentally, it is fair to assume that when an observant American travels abroad his eye will see freshly; and that the reverse may be true when a European eye looks at the United States. I speak of the things that are there, anywhere and everywhere—easily found, not easily selected and interpreted. A small catalog comes to the mind’s eye: a town at night, a parking lot, a supermarket, a highway, the man who owns three cars and the man who owns none, the farmer and his children, a new house and a warped clapboard house, the dictation of taste, the dream of grandeur, advertising, neon lights, the faces of the leaders and the faces of the followers, gas tanks and postoffices and backyards.

The uses of my project would be sociological, historical and aesthetic. My total production will be voluminous, as is usually the case when the photographer works with miniature film. I intend to classify and annotate my work on the spot, as I proceed. Ultimately the file I shall make should be deposited in a collection such as the one in the Library of Congress. A more immediate use I have in mind is both book and magazine publication.

Frank was awarded a fellowship, which amounted to $3,600, and he used this to travel in a long loop around the US in 1955–6. That “more immediate use” that he refers to in the final sentence turned into The Americans, a stunning document that is every bit as interesting 50 years later. The exhibition is captured in an extended version of The Americans, including contact sheets and commentary.

Disorder. People fleeing. This was happening as the Tank Man, seemingly so calm, stood in the street. I also think it’s interesting that all the men in the photo are wearing — as a commenter on the NYT blog put it — “the same drab clothes.” A true illustration of how much has changed in China in the last 20 years.

The Roshomon-like details in all of the photographers’ stories are vivid and heartbreaking: “Vehicles were smoldering,” “a line of students facing a line of soldiers and a column of tanks,” “another volley of shots rang out from where the tanks were, and people began ducking, shrieking, stumbling and running,” “some guy in a white shirt runs out in front,” “a man waving two plastic shopping bags,” “waving his jacket and shopping bag,” “remonstrating with the tank driver in an act of defiance,” “he then disappeared into the crowd,” “the PSB (Public Security Bureau) grabbed him and ran away.”

And then what happened?

Charlie Cole: “I then placed the tank roll in a plastic film can and wrapped it in a plastic bag and attached it to the flush chain in the tank of the toilet.”

Stuart Franklin: “The film was smuggled out in a packet of tea by a French student and delivered to the Magnum office in Paris.”

Jeff Widener: “I gave all my rolls of film to [someone named] Kurt/Kirk who smuggled it back to the A.P. office in his underwear. The long-haired college kid was wearing a dirty Rambo T-shirt, shorts and sandals.”

Arthur Tsang Hin Wah: “A colleague rode over on a bike and picked up the film.”

And Terril Jones, the reporter who captured the shot at street level: “I never published them, and only showed them to a few friends and fellow reporters.”

And the rest is history. That keeps unfolding, I guess.

Okay, one last political thing. In the wee hours before yesterday’s inauguration, a genius prankster named Alex Zecca reportedly covered every “Bush” street sign from downtown to the Marina with a sticker that said “Obama.” I heard about it when I got into work, but missed the chance to see it for myself. Luckily, Vanessa Naylon saw it happen. Awesome.

It appears to have been attended primarily by ants. Thx, Chris. From GeoEye.

The New York Times recently ran some photos that were taken from the train carrying Bobby Kennedy’s body between Washington to New York. The photos themselves are amazing documents of a nation in mourning, people from all walks of life lining the tracks, holding signs, saluting or just watching, but they’re also beautiful — saturated and blurred, creating the sensation that things are moving too fast, that something is irresistibly barreling on.

The photographer, Paul Fusco, narrates a slideshow on the New York Times site, and it’s well worth a viewing. He’s nicely describes the experience around the photos, and provides some insight into the mechanics (Kodachrome film, of course). He also mentions that he hadn’t planned on taking pictures while on the train; he was simply traveling along with the coffin to take photos at the funeral.

The first thing I saw were hundreds of people on the platform ... Fortunately, I just reacted. My instinct was: There’s something going on, photograph it ... [The train] was a moving platform. I couldn’t change my view. I couldn’t change my perspective. I had to just ... grab it, when I could.

“Everyone was there. America came out to mourn.” Photos: Paul Fusco/Magnum Photos

Fusco has a show that’s currently at Danziger Project in New York, and a book coming out in the fall, too. Looks nice.

Chicago. A man is about to get on a routine flight. Suddenly he pauses and decides to walk away. He doesn’t know why. An hour later the plane goes down in flames. It’s dismissed as chance ... Britain. A woman has an image of a black mountain that’s moving, with children underneath it. Two hours later, a Welsh schoolhouse is buried in an avalanche of coal slag. It’s dismissed as coincidence.¹

New York. A book designer named Chip Kidd begins to read his New York Times. On the cover is a photo of new Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a suspected puppet of former president Vladimir Putin. The photo has been torn across Medvedev’s midsection to reveal a word: Trickery. It’s dismissed as something that could only happen to a famous book designer who has been known to use this sort of graphic element.

But really, was it all in his mind, or was it much more than that? You decide.

¹ If you were a TV-watcher in the 80’s, you probably saw a commercial for the Time-Life books commercial for a series called Mysteries of the Unknown. This was my favorite: “The Midwest. A mother feels a sharp pain in her right hand. Far away at that exact same moment, her daughter screams as she touches a hot pan. Just chance?” Check it out, for old times sake [YouTube].

See, I criticize Flickr, and then this thing comes along to demonstrate once and for all its inherent goodness. No Flickr stylez or post-processing necessary. Via Sorry I Missed Your Party and BuzzFeed.

This was in Sunday’s interesting pool, and it’s a pretty strong example of the “Flickr style,” i.e. heavy-handed, post-processed and much-adored by like-minded members of the community. Photo: James Neely

I don’t patently dislike post-processing, but I find that the photos deemed “interesting” frequently have a creepy unreality about them, a flatness, an obsessive visual “perfection.” The result is that many of these photos seem like scenes from Dune, or Lewis Carroll, or a Bjork video, or a Thomas Kinkade landscape. Everything is in focus, perfectly lit, tightly composed. In short, I dislike “interestingness” because it feels like a sort of Pixar-ization of photography. (I love Pixar). But I don’t like that CG-esque feel creeping into a medium that, for me, derives its essence from its simplicity and imperfection.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m down with post-processing and unreality

I just appreciate when post-processing supports the natural aspects of the photo, when it adds layers to the scene. The photo below is called “The Flooded Grave,” and the photographer is Jeff Wall. It’s a montage of 75 separate photographs from two separate graveyards and Wall’s studio. Why all the cutting, pasting and blending? Well, If you look closely, you’ll see that there’s actually a small coral reef growing at the bottom of the grave.

Wall says, “I worked with oceanographers to create a momentary fragment of a real undersea corner. I didn’t want an aquarium display, a cross-section of sea-life from the area, or anything like that. I wanted it to be a snapshot of everyday life at a certain depth of sea water.” Read more at the Tate Modern’s online catalog.

So where does the Flickr style come from?

I’ve been excited to talk about Virginia Heffernan’s article in last week’s New York Times, Sepia No More. She addresses the disconcerting popularity of high-dynamic range cheesiness in the Flickr style, and she strikes at the heart of what is emerging as a formula for popularity on Flickr. She discusses Rebekka Gudleifsdóttir, one of the Flickr style’s “leading proponents:”

[Gudleifsdóttir] discovered ... how to create images that would look good shrunk, in “thumbnail” form; and how to flirt with the site’s visitors in the comments area to keep them coming back. As perhaps is always the case with artists, Gudleifsdottir’s evolution as a photographer was bound up in the evolution of her modus operandi, a way of navigating the institutions and social systems that might gain her a following and a living.

Creating images that look good shrunk

I’m intrigued by the interpretation of the UI’s effect on the Flickr style, i.e. that the Flickr interface for browsing thumbnails informs the way in which people compose and upload photos. It makes sense to me. The browsing mechanism is tightly-tiled matrix, so photographers are going to want to craft individual elements that look good when they’re (a) cropped to be square, (b) shrunk down small, and © snugly packed together.

Here’s an example from a photographer I like, a nicely differentiated matrix with some intriguing juxtapositions. Photos: Feedbacklove.

Is “Flickr style” a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Maybe the early users and founders were graphic designers? Maybe they really liked glossy, vivid stuff that often looks like the background of beer billboards? Whatever it is, I feel like the “Flickr style” is much less free-form than most may think. The formula behind “interestingness,” as stated on the site: “Where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favorite; its tags and many more things which are constantly changing.” Interestingness as a function of the community actions makes sense. Tagging, assigning photos to groups, favoriting, commenting — all of these things seem like useful vehicles. But my sense is that everything that’s being folded into “interestingness” is coming from a fairly closed system, a group of like-minded people with similar tastes promoting the same stuff again and again. Back and forth, forever. ))<>((

Un-interestingness

I’ve got a list of my own “un-interesting” photographers, mostly gleaned from the group I Shoot Film. I also follow the feeds of a few Flickr photographers — This Is a Wakeup Call, Feedbacklove, and Last Leaf, to name a few.

Still, it seems like most interesting stuff still lives outside of Flickr. I look at SUCKAPANTS and The Constant Siege pretty often, both of which can be NSFW, by the way.

Like this stuff by Andrei Robu.

Via kottke.