Going Going Greece....Gone

Gone fishing...back on the 1st September.

Going Going .....Greece

Caftans and spartan sandals, bikini's and ouzo. Tzatziki and fava bean dip and blue water as far as the eye can see. In two days we land in Athens and then head to Amorgos, a small island in the Cyclades for two weeks holidays. I can't wait........

Carla Loves - The Paul Guillaume Collection at the Musée de L'Orangerie Paris

I went to see Claude Monet's Water water lilies at the L'Orangerie in Paris and discovered downstairs an enormous private collection of Impressionist and leading modernist paintings. The Paul Guillame Collection takes up the entire ground floor at L'Orangerie and from humble beginnings he became one of the great collectors of art of his time. There is even a model of his former house with the works of art in place. Picasso, Cezanne, Renoir, Utrillo and Modigliani all feature.and I had the pleasure of discovering the bright and colourful Henri Rousseau (think David La Chapelle) the pastel's of Marie Laurencin (kind of like a Paolo Roversi photo), the fish-eye effect of Chaim Soutine the pure beauty of Andre Derain. http://www.musee-orangerie.fr/

Loving Karsh

I was surfing around the net the other day and stumbled across the beautiful black and white portraits of Yousef Karsh, an Armenian born Canadian resident who died in 2002. The first thing that struck me about Karsh's portraits was his elegance and his dramatic use of studio lights., apparently he lit his subject's hands separately. Karsh photographed many of the great and celebrated personalities of his generation. and throughout most of his career he used the 8×10 bellows Calumet camera. Journalist George Perry wrote in the British paper The Sunday Times that "when the famous start thinking of immortality, they call for Karsh of Ottawa."

Karsh said "My chief joy is to photograph the great in heart, in mind, and in spirit, whether they be famous or humble."

Check out an article on him from the 60's....http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1xbKKjKkw8c/R-Kaia3d-gI/AAAAAAAAACY/iCDs7W_D0fk/s320/Ossip%2BZadkine-Yousuf%2BKarsh.jpeg&imgrefurl=http://samuel-merrin.blogspot.com/2008/03/gallery-of-greatness-by-yousuf-karsh.html&h=320&w=285&sz=19&hl=it&start=40&tbnid=eEpSRlp1ubLIyM:&tbnh=118&tbnw=105&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dyousef%2Bkarsh%26start%3D21%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D21%26hl%3Dit%26sa%3DN

Bruce Weber and Chet Baker

'Let's get Lost' a documentary film by Bruce Weber that was released in 1988 about the famous trumpet player Chet Baker has recently been restored and is showing at MK2 Beaubourg in Paris. Weber is one of my favourite photographers so I was interested to see how in photographed this documentary in the same way I couldn't wait to see what Anton Corbijn did with his first feature film Control. There were many common threads from his photographs, the beautiful boys, the movement and fun and the dogs! Weber spent over a million dollars of his own money on this private project that reminds me of the collages he often makes in the middle of a photo story, snapshots of life. One of the most wonderful discoveries in the film was the interview with photographer William Claxton http://www.williamclaxton.com/movie.html and a montage of photographs he took of Chet Baker at the beginning of his career. Gorgeous black and whites that ooze charisma and charm. Bravo Bruce! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095515/