📷 Steve McCurry, Brazil, from On Reading ||| "Our doubt is our passion, & our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art." - Henry James
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Jun 7, 2023 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
Happy birthday to Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk 🎂
📷 Ara Güler
"His books are multi-layered, allegorical, sometimes fanciful, Proustian in their attention to detail and Borgesian in their dazzling complexity."
- Sarah Lyall
Orhan Pamuk by Sophie Bassouls, 1990
"Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow."
May 15, 2023 • 27 tweets • 13 min read
Celebrate the Richard Avedon Centennial 🎂💯
📷 Irving Penn, Vogue, August 23, 1993
"He was small, dark & electric with his own sort of vitality. Crackling. Sparks seem to fly out of him. He flashes his fingers like tiny rapid moths."
- Ginette Spanier
On Richard Avedon's Centennial, my favourite portraits
Carson McCullers & Tennessee Williams, April 25, 1950 #Avedon100
May 15, 2023 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
I'm listening to Concerto Italiano play Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, in their 2005 recording under Rinaldo Alessandrini.
I've always loved the cover photo; it's by Julia Fullerton-Batten. I'll start a thread of some of my favourites of her photos here. 🧵
Julia Fullerton-Batten
The Lady of Shalott, 2018
May 14, 2023 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
Happy birthday Sofia Coppola 🎂
📷 Kate Barry
"Coppola is a true auteur — a filmmaker with a distinct worldview and sensibility and a personal set of quasi-autobiographical interests."
- J. Hoberman
Sofia with her dad on the set of Godfather 2
📷 Steve Schapiro, 1974
May 14, 2023 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
Celebrate the Red Garland Centennial 🎂💯
📷 Bill Spilka, c. 1957
"Garland's style was understated and harmonically sophisticated; he would delineate a melody, then shade it with distinctively voiced block chords and hints of counterpoint."
- Jon Pareles #RedGarland100
Esmond Edwards' great album cover for Red Garland's "Red in Bluesville", from 1959. Edwards took the photo, & designed the album as well.
Remembering Bea Arthur on her birthday 🎂
📷 Martin Mills, 1972
"Those of us working with her knew we were working with a golden comedic touch." - Norman Lear
Beatrice Arthur with Bill Callaway & Carl Ballantine in Bruce Jay Friedman & Richard Adler's musical A Mother's Kisses
📷 Jack Mitchell, 1968
May 5, 2023 • 22 tweets • 12 min read
John Lennon & George Martin listen to playback, in a photo by Frank Hermann from 1967.
Here's a #playback thread 🧵
I love the staring-into-space looks of the musicians, producers & engineers.
Gregor Piatigorsky listening to #playback of his Brahms sonatas
📷 W. Eugene Smith, 1947
May 4, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
David Crosby by Graham Nash, Sag Harbor, New York, 1968
"This is my favorite image of David that I"ve ever taken. Just look at those thought processes going on in his head."
Neil Young rehearsing for Déja Vu at Stephen's House IV
📷 Graham Nash, Studio City, Los Angeles, 1969
"When viewed closely, the bass string is vibrating."
May 4, 2023 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Happy birthday Ron Carter 🎂
📷 Anthony Barboza, 1985
"He’s a brilliant rhythmic and melodic player, who uses everything in the bass and cello arsenal; walking lines, thick, full, prominent notes and tones, drones and strumming effects, and melody snippets."
- Ron Wynn
Ron Carter by Klaus Schielke, 2008
May 3, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Remembering James Brown on his birthday 🎂
📷 Pete Still, London, 1986
He was in the inaugural Rock n Roll Hall of Fame @rockhall class of 1986, with Elvis, Ray Charles, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Everly Brothers & Buddy Holly.
Diane Arbus
James Brown backstage at the Apollo Theater, 1966
May 3, 2023 • 19 tweets • 5 min read
Happy birthday Gérard Uféras 🎂
📷 Victor Boyko, Paris, 2016
"Uféras works within the tradition of the great French photographers and yet manages to remain unmistakably unique. He succeeds in captivating the observer while constantly coming up with surprises."
- Anna Blume
Gérard Uféras
Untitled, from his series "Un fantôme à l'Opéra"
May 2, 2023 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
A great portrait of Paul Schrader by Richard Burbridge in the latest @NewYorker magazine, May 8, 2023
Richard Burbridge has been providing Richard Avedon-level portraits to @NewYorker for a number of years now. This shot of Salman Rushdie is from February 13/20, 2023.
May 2, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Remembering Hedda Hopper on her birthday 🎂
📷 Eliot Elisofon, 1957
Joan Bennett sent her a skunk on Valentine’s Day.
Hedda Hopper by John Loengard, 1963.
The great gossip columnist was at the Time magazine 40th Anniversary party.
Nov 19, 2022 • 11 tweets • 6 min read
Remembering Gene Tierney on her birthday 📷
Apparently the painting of Tierney in Laura was an air-brushed photograph by Frank Polony. I can't think of a more impressive movie portrait. Peak art direction & set decoration, & don't forget the sitter! #PhoneCallFromPaul tweet on Gene Tierney's birthday
A scene from Personal Affair, 1953 📞 @holdengraber talks with the most interesting people lithub.com/?s=phone+call+… @lithub@CallFromPaul
📷 Ian Jeayes
Nov 19, 2022 • 23 tweets • 8 min read
Remembering Louise Dahl-Wolfe on her birthday 🎂
📷 Margaretta Mitchell, Recollections: Ten Women of Photography
"From the moment I saw her first color photographs I knew that Bazaar was at last going to look the way I had instinctively wanted my magazine to look."
- Carmel Snow
Robert Doisneau
Harper's Bazaar editor Carmel Snow works on a fashion shoot with photographer Louise Dahl-Wolfe & model Suzy Parker, 1953
Nov 19, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Happy birthday Antoine d’Agata 🎂
📷 Valentin Bo, 2019
"I don’t want to control the result, don’t want to be too clever. I am not trying to answer questions through a photograph. I am trying to ask questions."
Antoine d'Agata
Mala Noche, Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, 1991
Nov 19, 2022 • 27 tweets • 11 min read
Remembering Don Hunstein on his birthday 🎂
📷 Eugene Albulescu, 2012
"I’d just like to think that I had a good eye for detail, that I captured the moment at hand. But mostly, I just did my job."
Aretha Franklin by Don Hunstein, 1960
Nov 18, 2022 • 7 tweets • 5 min read
#RIP Ned Rorem
📷 Man Ray, Paris, 1953
"He has the gift for letting poetry sing, and he knows the human voice — the warmth and the timbres, and how to bring them out in exactly the right place."
- Joshua Barone
Ned Rorem in an incredibly cultured-looking group in the home of the Vicomtesse de Noailles, 1951. "She was a rather gifted writer & a very gifted painter, but like many of the rich undisciplined with pen and paintbrush. She was powerful & famous too, and launched me, sort of."
Nov 18, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Happy birthday Linda Connor 🎂
📷 Stu Levy, Linda Connor Photographs the Past, 1988-90
"Walker Evans was my guiding star, though if I had realized it, there was a constellation of influences that included Gowin, Julia Margaret Cameron, Harry Callahan, and others."
Linda Connor
Spirit Figures, Utah, 1992
Nov 18, 2022 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
Remembering George Silk on his birthday 🎂
📷 Daryl John Gregory, 1981
"Capa & Bourke-White saw the big picture and made it 'their war.' George just doggedly wanted to be there and conquer his fears and show people what it was like."
- John Loengard
George Silk
Charlton Heston lifts his two-month-old son Fraser on the set of Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments. The young boy played the baby Moses.
Nov 17, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Remembering August Sander on his birthday 🎂
📷 "Photographer", a self-portrait from his "People of the 20th Century"
"His portraits are as head-on & confrontational as Walker Evans's pictures of clapboard buildings, or Edward Weston's pictures of vegetables."
- Andy Grundberg
August Sander
The Painter Otto Dix & his Wife Martha, 1925-6 @Tate