Geoff Dyer – ‘The Street Philosophy of Garry Winogrand’

The Street Philosophy of Garry Winogrand is Geoff Dyer‘s new-ish homage to John Sarkowski, whose Atget and Looking at Photographs form the jumping off point for Dyer’s exploration of the Winogrand archive.  As a Winogrand monograph, it might fall a bit short, though it does include 18 previously unpublished color(!) photographs and a contact sheet from Winogrand’s time at the Ivar. But as a lesson in looking at photographs—and at least 7 of Errol Morris’ 10 tweets about photography—it’s an insightful, hilarious, thought provoking book, filled with some great—and some not-so-great—photographs.

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1970s Ricoh Compacts, part 2: the Sears 35rf

The Sears 35rf (not to be confused with the Sears 35|RF) is a Sears-branded variant of the Ricoh 500 RF,  a compact rangefinder from 1980, and one of the last  in the line of cameras that began with 1972’s 500 G.  Like other cameras in the series (and I’m going to tire of writing this), it’s a shutter-priority or manual camera, with shutter speeds from 1/8th to 1/500th (plus B), ISOs from 25-800, and the excellent 40mm f/2.8 Rikenon lens. As a bonus, the fact that it’s a Sears-branded camera means that you can usually find one for about half the price of the Ricoh branded version.

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a cautionary tale

Sanger-Harris was a regional department store chain in Texas and Oklahoma, known nearly as much for the large mosaic murals that adorned the façades of its stores as for any of the clothes it carried. As a child, I remember being frightened of the mural at North Hills Mall—I’m not sure why—but I was shocked and a little bit saddened when I went by one day and found only some overgrown parking lots and a concrete slab where the mall, and the Sanger’s mural, used to be.

In 1987, Sanger’s rebranded as Foley’s, and in 2006, Foley’s became Macy’s, so Sanger’s lives on only in memory, some slowly deteriorating clothing labels, some promotional comic books, and the few murals that remain.

One day, my wife and I passed the old Sanger’s at Valley View Center. Macy’s had recently closed its store there, and I said, “I should really stop and photograph that mural before they tear it down.” My wife encouraged me to stop there and then, but I was in a hurry, and despite passing it every day on my way home from work, it was nearly 6 months before I finally stopped…

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Michael Watson – ‘The Wrestlers’

Michael Watson’s The Wrestlers: Polaroid Portraits 2015-2018 collects a bunch of Polaroids (or, really, Impossible Project black frame black & whites) of amateur wrestlers, shot backstage at various events in Chicago and the Midwest, California, and Florida, in costume/character and more relaxed. I helped to kickstarter it back in January 2018, and it arrived in my hot little hands back in April.

It’s a fun one, for sure.

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1970s Ricoh Compacts, part 1: the Ricoh 35 ZF

The Ricoh 35 ZF is a zone focus, shutter priority (and full manual) 35mm camera from 1976. With a 40mm f/2.8 lens, shutter speeds from 1/500 to 1/8 (plus B), and an ISO range of 25-800, there isn’t too much to worry about: set the shutter speed (1/250 or 1/500 in daylight), put the aperture on ‘A’ and pay some amount of attention to the focus pictograms. It’s pretty much ideal for a walk-around, happy snapper-type camera and I’ve been (mostly) happily snapping away with mine for many years now.

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Mhtab Hussain – ‘You Get Me?’

I acquired Mahtab Hussain’s You Get Me? as part of a Contact Sheet subscription renewal.  Copublished by Mack and Light Work, the book is beautifully printed,* and the project itself—portraits of young, working class British Asian men and boys—is hard for me to talk about with any clarity.

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