Photographer of an iconic Beatles photo dies

[Michael Ventura]

Great photo.

 

Article here

[wiskerke]

That's Fiona Adams, for those who don't have a Washington Post subscription:

Guardian obituary

 

And this is that photo

 

from:

More about that day in a life 18 April 1963.

 

Before that Astrid Kirchherr (Guardian obituary) of course died on May 13.

(very brief discussion here)

 

But in between another great photographer has died: John Loengard, one of my all time heroes, on May 24.

There have been some wonderful obituaries.

NYT obituary (probably behind a pay wall);

Harvard Crimson (!) obit;

ASMP obit;

Beatles Magazine obituary;
Medium obit;

rfotofolio remembers with a 2016 interview;

Fox 2 short interview a year ago on youtube;

wikipedia;

personal website;

 

His famous Beatles photo:

 

Actually it was this one, as he shot it in b/w:

Life had it colorized. And somehow it was released as a color print as well: I have one. Unsigned.

So Loengard was a true disciple of Cartier-Bresson who was as the NYT writes working almost exclusively in black and white?

Hmm then what's this?

 

From thet NYT obituary:

One of Mr. Loengard’s photographic heroes was Mr. Cartier-Bresson, the master of street photography, who had done his best to avoid having anyone photograph him.

When Mr. Loengard asked him to pose for pictures that would accompany an exhibition of Mr. Cartier-Bresson’s early work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Mr. Cartier-Bresson asked, “Can you take all the pictures from behind?”

No, he said, he could not.

“I felt the most important thing was to nail him down, as quickly as possible — get that face — and then he started taking pictures of me, and he went click-click,” Mr. Loengard said on the PBS show “Charlie Rose” in 2011, “and I had a motor on my camera, so I went ‘zeep-zeep,’ and we sounded like two insects getting interested in each other.

“He thought this was amusing, and he giggled.”

HCB

 

HCB flies a kite.

 

One of his best portraits:

Which is still in my personal top 20 of great portraits of all time. Despite.

 

I have a signed 1st ed of Georgia O'Keeffe at Ghost Ranch which is beautiful, but my favorite Loengard book is still Pictures under Discussion.

 

The Online Photographer blog on books by Loengard.

 

 

There have been many photographers associated with the Beatles like Robert Freeman, who died last November (Guardian).

He shot some of the best album covers for them. Including With the Beatles;  A Hard Day's Night; Beatles for sale; Help! and Rubber Soul:

 

wim

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Michael Ventura]

Thanks, Wim, for adding the photo and all the other great photos from that time!

[Harry Harrison]

2 hours ago, wiskerke said:

So Loengard was a true disciple of Cartier-Bresson

He did a fascinating book "Celebrating the negative" where he tracked down the negatives of iconic photographs and photographed them. Highlight for me probably is the negative for Cartier-Bresson's 1932 picture "Behind the Gare St. Lazare". As can be seen in this preview of the book, it is reputedly the only picture H C-B allowed to be cropped  because he couldn't get his Leica between the railings so the left-hand side of the frame is obscured. I don't think I've read an explanation for why the sprocket holes were physically cut off.

 

https://loeildelaphotographie.com/en/celebrating-the-negative-henri-cartier-bresson-by-john-loengard/

[spacecadet]

16 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

He did a fascinating book "Celebrating the negative" where he tracked down the negatives of iconic photographs and photographed them. Highlight for me probably is the negative for Cartier-Bresson's 1932 picture "Behind the Gare St. Lazare". As can be seen in this preview of the book, it is reputedly the only picture H C-B allowed to be cropped  because he couldn't get his Leica between the railings so the left-hand side of the frame is obscured. I don't think I've read an explanation for why the sprocket holes were physically cut off.

 

https://loeildelaphotographie.com/en/celebrating-the-negative-henri-cartier-bresson-by-john-loengard/

Paywall.

[wiskerke]

1 hour ago, spacecadet said:

Paywall.

 

If you have an hour to spare, lots of old geezers here including Loengard, as the picture editor of Life.

 

wim

 

edit: and if you have $6500 lying around, you can have this exhibition in your living room.

Or you could buy the book. Bookfinder (set to UK and Pounds). AddAll new / used (set to DC and $).

Edited July 13, 2020 by wiskerke

[wiskerke]

19 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

He did a fascinating book "Celebrating the negative" where he tracked down the negatives of iconic photographs and photographed them. Highlight for me probably is the negative for Cartier-Bresson's 1932 picture "Behind the Gare St. Lazare". As can be seen in this preview of the book, it is reputedly the only picture H C-B allowed to be cropped  because he couldn't get his Leica between the railings so the left-hand side of the frame is obscured. I don't think I've read an explanation for why the sprocket holes were physically cut off.

 

https://loeildelaphotographie.com/en/celebrating-the-negative-henri-cartier-bresson-by-john-loengard/

 

Yep paywall.

The book says about the sprockets:

 

For safekeeping the negative was cut from a a strip of 35mm film at the start of World War II. Sprocket holes are missing on one side. Possibly the film was manufactured without them - or possibly somebody has cut them off. Asked about this, Cartier-Bresson replies: "I swallowed them."

 

When I let Google search for the first sentence of that quote, I got these two brilliant results:

A nice pdf of the available exhibition. From Curatorial Assistance.

A box of prints with 18 pages of images of the negatives with the complete captions. On Luminous Lint. (Never seen that one before.)

 

wim

Edited July 13, 2020 by wiskerke
typo

[spacecadet]

43 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

A nice pdf of the available exhibition.

Interesting what gets left around on the internet. An architect left a pdf of a photocopy of a centre spread of my Apollo Pavilion image lying around and I eventually collected nearly four figures from a supplier they sent it to. Unfortunately I never got the architect because he died and going after a grieving widow, even a rich grieving widow, was a bit too much even for me.

I could always be sure it was my image because a small urinating dog was missing from it- it had been lost in the fold.

[Chuck Nacke]

John was one of the photographers who's images shaped my visual sense, for better or worse....

 

Always been a huge fan of Loengard's work and the Cosby portrait was wonderful.

 

Chuck

[Harry Harrison]

7 hours ago, spacecadet said:

Paywall.

 

4 hours ago, wiskerke said:

Yep paywall.

The book says about the sprockets:

 

For safekeeping the negative was cut from a a strip of 35mm film at the start of World War II. Sprocket holes are missing on one side. Possibly the film was manufactured without them - or possibly somebody has cut them off. Asked about this, Cartier-Bresson replies: "I swallowed them."

Yes, I just provided the link to see the H C-B picture, but fortunately Wim came up with a link to see more of the pictures. Actually someone has super-imposed an outline of the crop over the same picture of the negative here. I've seen that very famous picture at various exhibitions over the years, printed exhibition size and you would never guess its humble technical origins, or at least they don't matter, taken on one of the first Leicas, apparently on nitrate film and then taken from just over half of the negative. So he swallowed the sprockets -  he could be so mischievous. 

[wiskerke]

21 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

 

Yes, I just provided the link to see the H C-B picture, but fortunately Wim came up with a link to see more of the pictures. Actually someone has super-imposed an outline of the crop over the same picture of the negative here. I've seen that very famous picture at various exhibitions over the years, printed exhibition size and you would never guess its humble technical origins, or at least they don't matter, taken on one of the first Leicas, apparently on nitrate film and then taken from just over half of the negative. So he swallowed the sprockets -  he could be so mischievous. 

 

Wow! Thank you.

 

wim