'Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits'

I started reading this biography on a trip this past winter:

I saved a few quotes from it. Here are 2 from the introduction that I particularly like:

Most of Lange's photography was optimistic, even utopian, not despite but precisely through its frequent depictions of sadness and deprivation. By showing her subjects as worthier than their conditions, she called attention to the incompleteness of American democracy. And by showing her subjects as worthier than their conditions, she simultaneously asserted that greater democracy was possible.

And here's a bit about "documetary" photography and representation:

The camera's capacity to replicate what the eye can see made it appear, originally, to be the ultimate documentary tool. It seemed to be a machine for exact replication, its products machine-made, until the myriad means of constructing photographs were widely understood. Invented just as art steered toward expressing a subjective vision, an individual inner consciousness, the camera seemed limited to representing that which is visible to the naked eye. Honoré Daumier said that "photography described everything and explained nothing." Photographers engaged in some self-delusion along these lines; Walker Evans called documentary "a stark record ... [of] actuality untouched." Lange did not fuss about exact representation in her photography. Her experience as a portrait photographer left her at ease in retouching an errant hand or shadow, in asking her subjects to move to a different spot or position. Like an historian, she wanted her photographs to emphasize what she saw as the main point and to prevent her viewers from being distracted by details. In her portrait studio she wanted to reveal the inner, not the outer, life and character of her subjects, and she continued the search for hidden truths in her documentary work.

Insta-Worthy Medium Format Shots

I explained what was happening in my last blog post in a recent social media post:

Last month, I did a medium format film / camera demo in my Photo II / Advanced Photo class. I sighed and mentioned a “trend” of not actually shooting with the camera, but instead pointing the camera at your subject and then getting a photo of the ground glass with your phone. After the demo, many students made photos of themselves in that manner using my cameras. 🙄🤷🏼‍♂️

This morning, I stepped outside and tried it myself for the first time (with an old Mamiya twin lens reflex), and made photos of our flowering tree and a pair of tulips in our garden. My students would be proud… I think…

Here were my 2 attempts:

[click each image to enlarge]

See my students doing this in our classroom in my last post.

Playing with Medium Format

I brought in a couple of medium format cameras to my Photo II / Advanced Photography class last month: a few twin lens reflex cameras along with my Mamiya RB 67.

After class, a few students stuck around to check them out in more detail. And they started taking "cutesy" Instagram-worthy pics with their phones looking down onto the ground glass. Here's a pic of the student on the left posing with a camera while the student in the middle makes a photo of her on the ground glass of another camera:

Click image to enlarge.

Oh, and note my drawing on the board of an unrolled roll of medium format film, showing the paper backing. I destroyed an old roll of expired film during class to show them how it works, but I had that drawing up on the board before class to discuss it before we got real "hands on."