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By Kadambari Khaire
19 February 2010
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 Kornel Friedmann, better known as Cornell Capa, was a Hungarian American photographer who revolutionized the field of photojournalism. Brother of legendary photojournalist, Robert Capa, Cornell Capa picked up from where his brother had left and brought to life the horrors of war through his exceptional photography. His famous work, The Concerned Photographer was a composition of his vivid imagery that illustrated post WWII human crisis. Capa also founded New York City's influential International Center of Photography and served as its Director in the latter half of his photography career.
Born in Budapest to a business family, Capa was originally name d as Kornel Friedmann by his parents. The youngest among three brothers, he moved to France in 1930, to team up with elder brother Robert Capa as a photojournalist. With anti – Semitism on the rise in Europe he soon started going by the name Cornell Capa.
Capa had initially aspired to study medicine, but took up photography instead after being influenced by his brother and his photographer friends which included renowned War photographer, David (Chim) Seymour and French photojournalist, Henry Cartier Bresson.
In 1937, Capa moved to New York along with his mother. His growing passion for photography led him to join the new Pix photo agency as a printer and later switch to Life Magazine’s darkroom in 1938. During this time, he also honed his photography skills and published his first photo-story on New York World’s Fair in Picture Post. Capa was then drafted to join the US Air force where he worked extensively with its photography department.
 After the war, Capa rejoined Life as a staff photographer. While at Life, his portraits of famous personalities like Jack Paar, painter Grandma Moses and Clark Gable made it as the cover shots of the magazine. The death of his brother in May 1954, while covering the First Indo-China War, saw Capa join Magnum Photos and take up its presidency two years later following the death of David 'Chim' Seymour.
After joining Magnum, Capa covered many high profile stories on the Soviet Union and the Israeli Six-Day War. He also covered the electoral campaigns of John and Robert Kennedy, Adlai Stevenson and Nelson Rockefeller. In 1967, Capa published a series of exhibits and books titled “The Concerned Photographer”. One of these books was the Farewell to Eden (1964), which was a study of the destruction of indigenous Amazon cultures.
The growing number of exhibits eventually led him to start  the famous International Center of Photography in New York City in 1974 for conserving and promoting the work of photojournalists from across the globe. Capa served at the International Center of Photography as the Director for 20 years.
On May 23rd 2008 Capa passed away in New York of natural causes at the age of 90. He will be forever remembered for his exceptional images and his immense contribution to the field of photography.
Photo Courtesy: Magnum Photos
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25 November 2009
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 French photographer Patrick Demarchelier was the first non-British photographer to click the British Royal Family. As a teenager, Demarchelier loved to capture his friends and family. He later turned this interest into a profession and earned enormous success in the field of fashion photography. His work on Princess Diana and for Harper’s Bazaar earned him international fame and appreciation. Till date, Demarchelier has worked with all the top brands and shot some of the most beautiful models and celebrities from across the globe.
Born in an unpretentious family near Paris, on 21st August 1943, Demarchelier lived with his divorcee mother and four siblings in La Havre. In his early teens, the Frenchman was convinced he wanted to take up photography as a profession. On his 17th birthday, he was gifted an Eastman Kodak camera by his stepfather and Demarchelier spent little time to learn how to develop films and improve negatives.
In 1975, Demarchelier followed his girlfriend to New York where he explored and learnt fashion photography  by working as a free lance photographer. He soon found himself socializing and working with well known photographers like Jacques Guilbert, Terry King, and Henri Cartier – Bresson who played a big role in helping him develop his skills and discover his own style. His creativity and skill soon got noticed and drew the attention of famed publications like 20 Ans Magazine, Elle and Marie Claire. In September 1992, Patrick got the chance to work for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar which not only earned him fame and appreciation but also a 12 year alliance. This also helped him tap other top international brands like Calvin Klein, Celine, TAG Heuer, Lacoste, Ralph Lauren, Dior and Louis Vuitton.
Demarchelier is mainly known for his pictures of Princess Diana. Impressed by his work in Vogue especially the photograph of a model opening her coat to show the picture of a laughing boy placed in the inside pocket, the princess got in touch with the French photographer and soon developed a friendly bond with him. Demarchelier soon got an opportunity to shoot Princess Diana in her natural environment and his charismatic personality and stunning photography led him to become the official photographer of the Royal Family.
 Although he has been described as “A worshipper of female beauty” by writer Glenn O’Brien, Demarchelier has maintained that he is equally eager to capture animals, landscapes and ugliness. He claims that he is fond of beauty and that it is something which is not restricted to young women. Yet the photographer is famous for his sensual nudes featuring some of the most beautiful women in the world.
Among the numerous gorgeous women he has shot, the nudes of supermodels, Claudia Schiffer, Giselle Bundchen and Naomi Campbell have won him a lot of critical acclaim. According to Demarchelier, a woman looks her prettiest best when she is caught unaware and is trying to cover herself in front of the camera and it is this mix of timidity and nudity that he likes to capture in his photo shoots. Some of the other famous personalities he has shot include Anthony Hopkins, Bill Clinton, Robert De Niro, Madonna, Reagan, Elton John and Tom Cruise.
In 2007, the photographer was honoured with the most prestigious French award for an artist by Mrs Christine Albanel, Minister of Culture, who declared Demarchelier as an Officer dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres on the 50th anniversary of the award. A true legend in every sense of the term, Patrick Demarchelier continues to grace hundreds of covers with his sensual photographs.
Photos Courtesy: www.demarchelier.net
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By Kadamabari Khaire
10 November 2009
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 The “Father of Environmental Portraiture”, Arnold Newman is one of the most renowned portrait photographers of all times. In his over 60 year long photography career, Newman captured several high profile personalities from all walks of life in his signature style. This included shooting the celebrities in meticulously composed settings that would bring their vibrant personalities to the fore. Some of the famous personalities he had portrayed include John F Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe and Pablo Picasso among others.
Born on March 3rd 1918, in New York, Arnold Newman grew up in a middle class family. He graduated from high school in Miami Beach in 1936, after which he earned a scholarship to study painting at the Miami University. Due to shortage of funds, Newman gave up painting after two years and took up photography. He moved to Philadelphia to work at a portrait studio where he learnt the importance of interacting with the people in the front of the camera.
In the following years, Newman took to social documentary photography after being influenced by Dorothea Lang and Walker Evans. In 1939, he came back to Florida to work with a portrait studio at West Palm Beach. After handling this studio for about three years, he opened his own studio called the Newman Portrait Studio at Miami Beach. He then moved to New York in 1946 to open the Arnold Newman Studios and work as a free lance photographer for publications like Fortune, Life and Newsweek.
From the 1940s, Newman developed his unique style of photography which came to be known as “Environmental portraiture”. With the aim to capture the essence of their work and personality, Newman placed his subjects in carefully composed settings. He believed that surroundings added to the composition of photography. He was never interested in simply capturing the faces of the rich and famous. Newman wanted his pictures to speak for themselves and he therefore captured all his subjects with a background that could talk about their professional life and give a glimpse of their true self. So an artist was captured with his art work in the background, or a musician with his instrument.
Newman’s Black and White images also earned him a lot of accolades. The portrait featuring Igor Stravinsky with his piano, which was initially rejected by the magazine he was working for, became Arnold’s signature image and won him a lot of critical acclaim. His revolutionary technique and creative vision also earned him the opportunity to photograph Henri Cartier Bresson who was known for being camera shy.
In the last years, Newman took up teaching photography at Cooper Union and taught there for several years. For his immense contribution to the world of photography, he was felicitated with the “Infinity Award for Master of Photography” at the International Center of Photography, Manhattan in 1999 and the “Lucie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Portraiture Photography” in 2004. On 6th June 2006, he passed away at Mt. Sinai Medical Center, New York at the age of 88 but left behind a photographic heritage that photographers of the succeeding generations will forever cherish and uphold.
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By Reeti Roy
05 November 2009
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 They called themselves the Bang Bang Club. They were a group of white South African photojournalists, determined to be instrumental in capturing the horrors of the apartheid on camera. Kevin Carter was one such idealistic photographer in The Bang Bang Club.
"Carter- The Photographer":
As Tim Porter establishes in his essay Covering War in a Free Society, Pulitzer Prize Winning Photographer Kevin Carter felt that what he was doing was right when he was taking pictures of necklacing- a practice of execution carried out by forcing rubber tyres filled with gasoline on the victim’s chest.
This practice is not only horrifying, but it also strips the individual of the basic human dignity that every person is entitled to, by virtue of being human. When Carter later spoke of the images that he had taken, he said, “I was appalled at what I was doing. But then people started talking about those pictures... then I felt that maybe my actions hadn't been at all bad. Being a witness to something this horrible wasn't necessarily such a bad thing to do.” What Carter had done was to capture the inhuman acts on camera, so that people could look at the horrifying images, introspect and reflect. This reflection would then bring about change because people would then be moved enough to do something about it. That didn’t stop Carter from feeling miserable though. Carter later killed himself and in his suicide note articulated his depression and the visions of dying children floating in his mind.
Carnage after the glory:
On March 26, 1993 The New York Times published a controversial picture that Carter had taken of a Sudanese toddler crouching while a vulture looks upon her in a menacing fashion. In 1994, Carter was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Just months after receiving the Pulitzer, Carter killed himself. He was only 33. This begged the question- did Carter die because of his own guilt for not having helped the child? The picture published by the New York Times created furore, with readers asking about the plight of the child. After a slew of letters, the editor was forced to explain that although the child had escaped unscathed, her present whereabouts were not known. Carter was severely criticised for not trying to help the child out and instead, adjusting his own lens in order to ensure that he procured a stunning photograph. As reported by a New York Times article soon after his death in 1994, he sat under a tree after having taken the photograph, “smoking cigarettes and crying.”
Peer’s view:
His Pulitzer was not looked upon favourably by his peers. While some thought that his award was a “fluke”, others questioned his motives. They argued that a person who could afford to see a toddler suffer and whimper was no less a predator than the vulture on the scene. Carter hims elf was on an all-time low- his love life was in jeopardy and an accompanying journalist, Joao Silva, who was with Carter in Sudan, recalls Carter breaking down after having taken the picture and wanting to hug his daughter. In his insightful essay, Reporting in The Time of Conflict, Harold Evans aptly points to the fact that the candour of journalists often rankles us. In order to consolidate his point, Evans draws upon mythology where war heroes are supposed to be the victors and never the vanquished. The glorified picture of war that is painted in our minds is a far cry from the dreariness and the ravages of war- the bleak realities that we find so difficult to come to terms with.
A Manichaean view of the frame:
Here’s something to think about- are Carter’s critics projecting their own weaknesses on Carter? Is it that one is so used to denying the harsh realities of political life that one tends to critique those who attempt to tell the world about it. Another pertinent question that Evans raises is do journalists (in this case photojournalists) think that it is worth risking their own lives for war?
Photographers and journalists put themselves through so much in order to capture that one moment, that one story or that one photograph. Is it really fair to bring it all down to good versus bad and right versus wrong? Isn't such a Manichaean view of the world problematic? |
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By Kadambari Khaire
22 October 2009
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 Noted as one of America’s finest photographers, Brett Weston was inclined most towards abstract photography and always chose subjects that would seem ordinary to a normal eye. Throughout his photography career, Brett continued his relentless pursuit to experiment with styles. His main focus was on abstracts and close ups but his prints also illustrated his fondness for high contrast. Brett’s involvement and devotion to photography resulted in some of the most remarkable photographs this world has seen and helped him earn the pedestal of a legend in the field of photography.
Weston was born on 16th December, 1911 to a photographer father, Edward Weston. At the age of 14, Weston was pulled out of school by his father to relocate to Mexico and manage their studio there. This is where Weston had his first encounter with photography. He trained under his father and began shooting with a Graflex 3 ¼x4 ¼ Camera. Weston soon got introduced to artists like Jose Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera and photographers like Tina Modotti who acquainted him with modern art forms. This helped Weston develop a sense of composition at a very young age.
Weston’s father was among the first to recognize his son’s talent as the 14 year old’s photographs were just as good if not better than what he could click at 30. Weston was also titled as “Child Genius of American Photography” by Van Deren Coke, the curator of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 1926, he again moved to California to assist his father at the Glendale portrait studio where his own work came to be exhibited and sold. In 1927, his first prints were displayed at UCLA and in the same year Weston held his first ever solo exhibition in Los Angeles at Jake Zeitlin’s bookstore and gallery.
By the age of 18, Weston had already caught the attention of critics after his work was exhibited at the Film and Foto Exhibition in Stuttgart, Germany. His photographs were displayed alongside the work of several well known photographers and his father was one of them. In 1936, Weston took up a job as a photographer and sculptor at the Works Progress Administration. He also worked as a camera man for the Century Fox War Films. In the following years, Weston served in the army under Arthur Rothstein, an ex-farm security administration photographer. Even during this period, he pursued his passion for photography and captured various shades of New York City, whenever he was away from duty, using his 8x10 and 11x14 view cameras. These images were later published in 1951 after he was released from the army.
Having captured the eastern coast extensively, Weston shifted base to California to practice and concentrate on Fine Art Work. During this tenure, he revealed only a few of his prints and Brett Weston Photographs was his first publication which was released in 1956. From 1978, Weston spent much of his time in Hawaii where he explored the unlimited possibilities of photography.
He left for heavenly abode in January, 1993 in Kona in his Hawaiian house and left behind a legacy which still graces the walls of numerous publications and galleries across the world. The photography world will always remember him for his creative vision and undying dedication towards photography.
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