Tags:   Red

© All Rights Reserved

© All Rights Reserved

I hope you like my little friend.

You will probably have received the email from Flickr designating this to be Polaroid Week. To get in the spirit I will post a few recent Polaroids over coming days. On Thursday April 25 it is a day of remembrance in Australia (Anzac Day) and so I will be posting specifically related to that. Next Sunday April 28 is also World Pinhole Photography Day and I will post some pinhole photographs as well. There's always plenty going on in photography.

Tags:   Luminosity7 Launceston Tasmania Australia Polaroid Now Camera Polaroid Instant photography I-Type instant film Film Film photography Colour Polaroid Week Expired film John's Photo Philosophy

© All Rights Reserved

I hope some people will take the time to read this, because if you do you will be entranced by a story of how undying love can produce work of utter beauty.

The Hungarian/American photographer André Kertész (1894-1985) lived a long life. For most of it he was relatively unknown except to the circle of photographer friends who knew and loved his work in New York. If ever there was a photographers' photographer, here is such a person. A brilliantly skilled black and white photographer who had been taking pictures with a camera since 1912, was not really discovered until the 1960s.

I won't tell you much about his life here. You can look that up for yourselves.
www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/andr%C3%A9-kert%C...

But in honour of Flickr's Polaroid Week I can think of no greater collection of Polaroid images to present to you. This little book, André Kertész, The Polaroids is one of my photobook treasures. When you see the images in the link I provide below, I hope some of you will go out and buy the book. It doesn't matter if you never take a Polaroid in your life, this is some of the greatest still life photography you will ever see. I mean that absolutely!

And you know there's a reason why these still lifes are so beautiful. They were done for love. André Kertész was 85 years old and had just lost his wife of many decades when the Polaroid Corporation gifted him an SX-70 camera. He found some amazing glass ornaments with humanoid features, and while still grief stricken for his late wife, began to create a series of images that haunt us with their magical use of light and colour to express an undying love for his beloved. The collection was not published until 2007, long after his death.

Please, do yourself a favour and take a few minutes of your time to watch this video presentation. They are to my mind the greatest Polaroids ever taken.

Andre Kertesz The Polaroids
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHsoJ6NGFVU

Tags:   Luminosity7 Launceston Tasmania Australia Leica D-Lux 7 Leica Photography Notes Book André Kertész, The Polaroids André Kertész (1894-1985) - Hungarian/American photographer Polaroid John's Photo Philosophy

© All Rights Reserved

In my recent discussion of Wes Anderson I mentioned the clear link between still photography and film making. Many fine film directors are also excellent photographers. Werner Herzog, Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch are three who come to mind immediately. Andrei Tarkovsky is another.

Tarkovsky (1932-1986) was the finest film maker of the late Soviet era. Films as diverse as the sci-fi classic Solaris, the medieval epic drama of Russian history and spirituality, Andrei Rublev and The Mirror, are just three of his brilliant movies where music and images are as important as the story.

In the 1970s Tarkovsky discovered the amazing SLR made by Polaroid, the SX-70, and began using it to photograph potential shooting sites for his films. In the process he took some of the greatest Polaroids ever taken. The SX-70 was an outstanding camera, providing quality unlike any of the new Polaroid cameras today. The film was also of a much more reliable quality as well.

But nevertheless, Tarkovsky had a brilliant photographic eye for light honed over many years of film making since his days as a student in the State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow. His Polaroids have been published in a book called Instant Light. www.theculturium.com/andrei-tarkovsky-instant-light/

Instant Light - Tarkovsky Polaroids
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyaGuihqOMc

They are also reproduced in this book I am showing you today, which is a wonderful collection of his writings on the art of film making. For those interested in his films, I suggest you watch this wonderful short documentary:
Praying Through Cinema – Understanding Andrei Tarkovsky
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNezdOlS-aw

Tags:   Luminosity7 Launceston Tasmania Australia Leica D-Lux 7 Leica Colour Photography Notes Book Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986) - Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky, Polaroids John's Photo Philosophy

© All Rights Reserved