POST #161: RENEE KAHN -THE PHOTOFRAUD

I was never much of a photographer, mainly because photography, especially back in the days when I was starting out as an artist, required a lot of technical expertise which I didn’t have, as well as expensive equipment which I couldn’t afford. But, since I drew pretty well the only time I really needed a photo was to jog my memory, provide some details I couldn’t remember and my $2.99 Brownie camera was just fine for that. Nowadays, thanks to the incredible I-phone cameras, everyone can take good photographs, be an artiste. What nobody seems to realize is that it takes more than equipment to make a good photograph.

Over the past few decades I’ve had the mixed blessing of being invited to judge a half dozen Camera Club competitions, mostly little local meetings, not the major shows that want big names. I would be invited, not because I had any expertise in photography, but because I taught art history at the local university and the club leaders thought I might add a “different point of view.” And that I did! At the beginning of the session, the judges would be introduced. No one had any idea (or interest) in who I was and why I was invited, so my first job was to inform the group that I had very little, if any, knowledge of photography as a skill, however, I could teach them something about photography as an art. The other judges got to critique before me, quick to point out smudged negatives, out-of-focus backgrounds, poor lens work, in other words, the technical aspects of photography.

The modus operandi of the meeting was to project the photos the members had brought with them onto a large screen for the judges to critique. When it was my turn, I would walk back to the projector and with a couple of pieces of masking paper crop their mediocre images into something that produced gasps from the audience. I would hear complaints from the other judges that cropping was “cheating,” that “good” photographers (like Henri Cartier-Bresson) cropped with their eyes before they took their photos. “B.S. I would reply, there are no no’s, only what works.” I would then proceed to give the audience a crash course in “Principles of Design 101”, the underlying basis for a good photograph or any work of art.

A few weeks ago, my friend Bob gave me his usual copy of the art section of the London Financial Times. Much to my surprise, there was a review of a newly published book of photographs by one of my all-time favorites Helen Levitt. She was one of a group of talented “street photographers” influenced by the great Walker Evans who roamed the city in the 1940s taking candid snapshots of run down New York City neighborhoods. She died over ten years ago in her mid ‘90s, leaving behind over 10,000 unpublished negatives and the images in the new book were taken from this archive. The FT generously reprinted several photos that were in the book along with the review. But something wasn’t right. The images they showed, although very interesting, didn’t have the flawless composition and punch of Levitt’s usual work. Maybe that’s why she never published them in her lifetime. Or maybe she never had a chance to work on them. I was bothered enough to get up in the middle of the night, find my copy of the newspaper, cut out the illustrations in the article – and crop them myself.  There ya’ go Helen Levitt! I went back to sleep, content. The next day, I proudly showed what I had done to a photographer friend. He looked puzzled. “They looked okay to me before.”

P.S. If anyone is interested, I can give a one-page intro to the “Principles of Design” in my next post. The rules are easy, but they’re only the beginning; you have to practice a lot.