Dirty Girl Things
Monday, August 20, 2007
Number Eighty-Eight
Louise Dahl-Wolfe
I believe that the camera is a medium of light, that one actually paints with light. In using the spotlights with reflecting lights, I could control the quality of the forms revealed to build a composition. Photography, to my mind, is not a fine art. It is splendid for recording a period of time, but it has definite limitations, and the photographer certainly hasn’t the freedom of the painter. One can work with taste and emotion and create an exciting arrangement of significant form, a meaningful photograph, but a painter has the advantage of putting something in the picture that isn’t there or taking something out that is there. I think this makes painting a more creative medium. — Louise Dahl-Wolfe, 1984
Louise Dahl-Wolfe was one of the most celebrated photographers of the 30s, 40s, and 50s. Her work had enormous impact on great photographers such as Horst, Avedon, and Penn. Working in the heyday of Harper’s Bazaar, she pioneered the use of natural lighting in fashion photography and shooting on location and out of doors.
As a staff photographer for Harper’s Bazaar from 1936 through 1958, Louise Dahl-Wolfe introduced a witty, relaxed, and natural aspect to fashion photography and, in the process, helped “define the post-war look of American women.”
She preferred portraiture to fashion photography and was a pioneer in the technique of color photography. She made memorable portrait photographs of leading figures from politics and the arts including Mae West, Cecil Beaton, Eudora Welty, W.H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Orson Welles, Carson McCullers, Edward Hopper, Colette and Josephine Baker.
Tom Neff created a superb documentary Louise Dahl-Wolfe: Painting with Light highlighting Dahl-Wolfe’s career, which can be seen on The Documentary Channel.
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“California Desert” & “Colette”
“Dappled Nude” & “Isamu Noguchi”
“Japanese Bath” & “Mary Jane Russell in Dior Swan Hat”
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Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant. Unpretentious. Unconventional. ©
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Number Seventy
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“Images without tension are purely decorative or formal” ---Andrzej Klimowski
A few words about Klimowski? Impossible. You can’t capture an imagination such as his in a sentence or two. He is a free man and you’ll never catch him. He looks at things head-on but at the same time inside out and upside down, round the corner and through a shattered keyhole. His eye is a microscope, a magnifying glass, a two-way mirror and a crystal ball. He leads the field by a very long furlong, out on his own making his own weather. He is Klimowski, unafraid. ---Harold Pinter
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Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant. Unpretentious. Unconventional. ©
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Number Sixty-Four
H O R S T
“Tulip With Anthurium” and “Odalisque III”
“Lisa with Harp” and “Eucharis Grandiflora”
“Aednum Holochrrysum” and “Mainbocher Corset”
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Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant. Unpretentious. Unconventional. ©
