JSP Visual Week In Review ~ 07.18.20
We are at the mid-way point.
I consider July to be the mid-point of the year.
It’s mid-July, which means it’s mid-summer.
We’re all still trudging along, masked up, I hope.
Here in New Jersey, we’re heading into 10 days of high heat, 90 or above. And I’m fine with that.
Those cold, windy mid-January (even mid-March) days…this is the run of heat and humidity I dream about.
Even though it’s hot out, my thoughts still turn to cooking.
This weekend, I’ll make another batch of gazpacho. Me and Olivia love it, but last weekend, I made it to thin for Liv’s liking, so I’ll make it chunkier and less watery this weekend (it IS soup, though).
Also thinking about grilling a whole fish, if I can find one I like. Maybe I’ll put a roasted red pepper paste on it, or more of chimichura.
I have a bunch of eggplant and zucchini, and a good vegetarian recipe for those. We’ll have a small BBQ (socially distanced of course) tomorrow. The kids will swim and squeal, the parents will sit and chat.
I’ll put in my walking steps going back and forth to the grill.
It’ll be a nice mid-year, mid-summer, mid-July evening.
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What I Read This Week: Still plugging away at Th ABC Murders by Agatha Christie
What I Watched This Week: Kill Bill Vol. 1. Never saw it before
Kids and Technology: Not all screen time is created equal
In Memorandum: Paul Fusco
From Dave Burnett’s Facebook page (he gave me permission to run this post in its entirety here:)
Paul Fusco has passed away.
Photojournalist – one of the very few people who, when you walked past him, you were afraid to say anything because, you know, he was Paul Fusco of Look, and Magnum, and the RFK Train -you’d seen his pictures for 30 years — it would have been so presumptuous… yet, every day that I think about it, I wish I’d just gone up and said hello, and chatted a while.
I’m sure he wasn’t nearly as dismissive or aloof as that vision I had of him on a pedestal, of someone who had created so much in the photojournalism world. I knew a lot of his pictures, and could only imagine the degree of energy and commitment it might have taken to Be there, and See there. (That is something a lot of young photographers might not realize – nothing makes pictures so much as your own commitment to being in the right place at the right time. It’s not about assignments for this/that magazine, or this/that editor. It’s about You being the lone visionary, the one You follow.
That’s how pictures like the RFK Train were made. By someone who Looked, and Looked, and Saw, and THEN picked up a camera. Paul might very well have been in Washington DC in January 1969: the first inaugural of Richard Nixon. There was a big Anti-war march which ended (when don’t they!) when cops on horses came riding into the crowds of protesters — to break it up.
I remember the look of pain on David Gahr’s face, wondering aloud “Why do they have to DO this?”…. a question we have long asked, with nary a reasonable answer. Earlier that day, I remember with great clarity a moment near the Lincoln Memorial. Out of the morning mist and early beginnings of a crowd came several figures – Fusco might have been among them.
A small group of friends and professional colleagues, including Declan Haun and Flip Schulke, both of whom have since passed away, but who at that moment looked like the ultimate portrait of what I thought a photo-fucking-journalist should look like. Burberry Coat. Hardy Fishing Bag. A couple of Nikons and Leicas neatly crossed over the neck and shoulders.
And above all, a not-quite menacing look of driven Noticing. They didn’t make a big deal out of it.
But they looked. And they Looked. And they weren’t going to miss a picture. I wanted to look like them, but mostly, I wanted to LOOK. Like them. Paul was one of the last of that generation whose pictures needed very few captions.
I’m just sorry I didn’t say hello.
Watch (26 minutes): Creative Q&A with Dan Milnor
Watch (8 minutes): Andy Gotts on IG talking about serendipity
Watch (48 minutes): Dave Burnett at the Museum of Flight
NJ.com: Photographers hit the streets to chronicle the pandemic
CNN: John Lewis, a life in pictures
Tips & Techniques with Joe McNally: Shooting a Portrait with Speedlights
UN of Photography: Every Photographer is a journalist, but not every journalist is a photographer
From the archives: July 2009: Running and Gunning in Chicagoland
“Does not the very word ‘creative’ mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act – rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life – not death.” ~ Berenice Abbott (July 17, 1898 – December 9, 1991)
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