Sam Abell

was born in 1945 in Sylvania, Ohio. He is an American photographer known for his frequent publication of photographs in National Geographic. He first worked for National Geographic in 1967. Abell's style of photography is documentary in the sense that his major avenue, the National Geographic magazine, is a publication of record. However, his best work is known for its transcendent qualities, starting at the documentary level yet open to interpretation on an aesthetic level.


Sam Abell's love of photography began due to the influence of his father who was a geography teacher who ran a photography club. In his book The Photographic Life, Abell mentions a photograph he made while on an outing with his father, a photograph that subsequently won a small prize in a photo contest. He credits that prize as being a major influence on the direction his life would take. Abell was the photographer and co-editor for his high school yearbook and newspaper.


Abell graduated from the University of Kentucky in Lexington where he majored in English, minored in Journalism, and was the editor of the Kentuckian Yearbook. He is also a teacher, an artist and an author.
Abell received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of Toledo on May 10, 2009.
Sam Abell's books are essential for any photographic book collector. His latest, The Life of a Photograph, completes a set of three volumes begun in 2000 with Seeing Gardens. It was followed in 2002 with The Photographic Life.

Opionion


One of my favorite photographs by Abell is the one of the tree viewed through a Japanese window, It just so happens that the image is on the  cover of his book Seeing Gardens.


It's a documentary photograph of a tree, but due a combination of light and Abell's inclusion in his composition of roof tiles in the background, the photograph takes on the transcendent, illusory quality of a stained glass window.


This is a rare photograph as Abell rarely uses flashy imagery, preferring a pure relationship with light. He has been quoted as saying that he could be perfectly happy with his photography even if his only subject was light itself.

Jim Brandenburgh

was born and raised in Luverne, Minnesota in the farms and prairies of Southwestern Minnesota. After studying at Worthington Community College, he went on to attend the University of Minnesota Duluth, where he majored in art history and worked for the local public television station. 

Upon graduating, he returned to Worthington, Minnesota and began working as a photojournalist for the Worthington Daily Globe. Within months, he began submitting work to the National Geographic Society as a freelance photographer, and in 1978 he became a contract photographer for National Geographic Magazine. Additionally, his photography has been published in a number of National Geographic Society books including "Journey Into China", "Heart of a Nation" and "Discovering Britain and Ireland", in which his photos of the Highlands in Scotland were featured.

His work has been included in many other magazines, such as Life, Newsweek, The Smithsonian, and GEO and has been featured on all the major television and radio networks including ABC’s Prime Time Live and CBS News Sunday Morning and Dateline NBC as well as National Public Radio's All Things Considered.

Brandenburg was commissioned by the United States Postal Service to create a set of wildlife stamps. They were released on May 14, 1981.

In 1980, Brandenburg learned of a population of wolves on Ellesmere Island who had not yet had the fear of man instilled into them. Brandenburg therefore traveled to Ellesmere and worked to create his bestselling book, “White Wolf”. He later went on to co-produce and direct a documentary of the same name and subject matter, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was produced by National Geographic Society and the BBC. It has since aired in over 120 countries across the globe.

Opinion

My favorite image in Brandenburg's "White Wolf" book of photography is Watching for Deer. It can be seen on the right.  Watching for Deer features an extreme close up of the back of a single wolf's head. You can get a real sense that he his urgent for food. Maybe, he has not eaten in a while. I feel as if the snow completes the urgency of the image.

All of his images can be viewed in his gallery on his website. 

Irving Penn

For Half a Century, Irving Penn has been the leading American celebrity portraitist and fashion photographer. Throughout the entire period, he has been associated with Vogue, and most of the photographs he has published were done as editorial assignments for that magazine. Yet, from the beginning, Penn's work has gone beyond the merely commercial. His vision has been intensely personal in a way that has inspired projects of his own -- for instance, a series of nudes done in 1949-50 -- and that has allowed images first made for magazines to be re-interpreted later in aesthetic terms.

Since 1964, Penn has printed new work and reprinted earlier negatives in platinum palladium, an esoteric process in which photochemistry is painted onto drawing paper. The degree of control this permits has made him one of the great master printers in the medium's history.

The complex relationship between commerce and art in Penn's career is reflected in the number of genres in which he has worked. Each has been a balance or counterpoint to the others, and only by looking at their individual significance can viewers appreciate the cumulative power of Penn's photography.

Portraiture. When Penn began doing celebrity portraits as a young and relatively unknown photographer, the face-to-face confrontation with his famous subjects was so unnerving to him that he wanted to find something else, besides the camera and himself, for them to react to. Of various simple settings he devised for this purpose in the late 1940s, the most inventive was a tight comer in which his subjects appeared trapped.

Opinion

 I feel as if Penn's full body shots are not as successful as his up close portraits. When I'm in a subject's face I can see their eyes and can get a larger sense of what they are thinking and feeling. I don't really care for all the long full bodied images where the subject is aloof and doesn't seem to care that they are being photographed. Yes, full shots can be amazing images, however, I want my images to say something about the person who is being photographed as well as speak about me as an artist.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

first started photographing in 1932 with a Leica, a new camera which was small and light; however, before that time virtually all cameras were larger and more cumbersome. The amateur's Kodak, although easy to use, offered little control over composition, and the press photographer's Speed Graphic used large sheets of film that had to be loaded one at a time and often needed a bulky flash.
 

Henri Cartier-Bresson was an aspiring painter and student of literature when he first saw Martin Munkacsi's brilliant photographs of runners, swimmers, and race-car drivers, which appeared in the new illustrated magazines being published in Germany and France. Through Munkacsi's work, Cartier-Bresson recognized how the new small cameras made it possible to capture spontaneous motion while creating beautiful compositions within the rectangular shape of a single frame of 35 mm film. He was also deeply influenced by the contemporary movement known as surrealism, which encouraged artists and writers to explore the meaning that lay hidden below the surface of everyday life.

 
Henri Cartier-Bresson is known for his ability to find these occasions and preserve them, using his camera to identify what has come to be called the "decisive moment."
 
In 1947, Lincoln Kirstein compared his method to "the preoccupied intensity of a fisherman playing to land a big catch or a boxer landing a knockout."
Henri Cartier-Bresson chose his portraits from many thousands of negatives made over six decades. The earliest images date from his travels to Mexico in 1934, and the most recent, a portrait of the British painter Lucien Freud, was made in 1997.

As both artist and journalist, Cartier-Bresson met and photographed the world's leading artists, writers, and politicians. Many familiar faces appear in his printed works, alongside compelling portraits of anonymous men and women he encountered along the way. Cartier-Bresson photographed them all with the same endless curiosity, the same uncompromising eye. His portraits comprise an unrivaled record of our time, the way we look, the people we admire, and the secrets we try to keep_until he gently seizes them with his camera and turns them into art.

Opinion

The act of making such photographs relies partly on intuition and partly on chance, but it also grows out of enormous discipline. For despite the spontaneous nature of his subjects, Henri Cartier-Bresson never abandoned his formal training as an artist. Each image is a complete composition within a single frame of film, and it cannot be cropped or altered without destroying the whole. This whole image can take many different forms, however. It is not unusual for one image to appear on the pages of a magazine, in a book, or enlarged and framed on a museum wall.

Cartier-Bresson is not alone when he calls portraiture "the one domain which photography has won away from painting." In the hands of Cartier-Bresson, a photographic portrait seems transparent, as if no photographer has intervened between the subject and the viewer. We feel that we know them, because Cartier-Bresson captures what seems to be the essence of their being, the way they look when they are most themselves. These images convey a palpable physical relationship between the viewer and the subject. To see through Cartier-Bresson's eyes, to stand in his shoes, we find ourselves poised on the threshold of a new discovery.

Annie Leibovitz- Disney Dream

Annie Leibovitz was born in Westbury, Connecticut. Leibovitz is the third of six children and is a third-generation American whose great-grandparents were Russian Jews. Her father's parents had emigrated from Romania. Her father, Sam Leibovitz, was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force; her mother, Marilyn Leibovitz, was a modern dance instructor. The family moved frequently with her father's duty assignments, and she took her first pictures when he was stationed in the Philippines during the Vietnam War.

In high school, she became interested in various artistic endeavours, and began to write and play music. She attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where she studied painting. For several years, she continued to develop her photography skills while working various jobs, including a stint on a kibbutz in Amir, Israel, for several months in 1969.

She is best know for taking the last photographs of John Lennon before he died.

In 2007, she was recruited by Disney to promote Disneyland and Walt Disney World's Year of a Million Dreams campaign, Leibovitz persuaded her famous friends to dress up as classic Disney characters. The first images in this ongoing series appeared in the March issues of Vogue, Vanity Fair, W, GQ, Conde Nast Traveller, Cookie and The New Yorker.

Scarlett Johansson was the first A-lister to sign on. She plays Cinderella, dashing down a staircase with the castle aglow in the distance. The image was photographed on the steps of the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial on New York's Riverside Drive with Disney World's Cinderella castle digitally imposed behind her.

The Alice photo shoot took place in a field on Leibovitz's farm in upstate New York. The artist says:

"We had some teacups from Disneyland shipped in. I hadn't realized that they each weighed several hundred pounds. We had to place them with a forklift. It took a whole day to do that, and then I couldn't move them, because the field was wet."

Leibovitz, who soon after dressed another set of celebrities as Peter Pan, Tinker Bell and Little Mermaid Ariel, approached British soccer superstar (and new American import) David Beckham, with the concept of playing Sleeping Beauty's Prince. Not surprisingly, Beckham was game, and the image was photographed near a lake outside Madrid, where he had been playing soccer for the team Real Madrid. The castle superimposed in the background is from Disneyland Paris.

Opinion

I absolutely love these images. They are very creative even though they have been digitally enhanced. Each image also comes with its own catch phrase emulating an idea that the Disney company believes about its parks. The care and attention to the images emphasizes and make the viewer believe in the portraits messages. The parks indeed become places "Where dreams run free" and "Where every Cinderella story comes true."

I encourage any company looking to have a successful advertising campaign to look at Disney's care to detail as well as graphics and messages.

Also, remember what your brand says about you.

Harrison Vs Gordon

The artist of this, "Running Through", piece is Harrison. The image was voted one of the top ten photos by viewers on the Wired website. There are comments posted on the site discussing whether any of the top pics have any real substance with the favorite image being "Man in the Fog" by David Gordon  which is posted to the right.

Yes, Gordon's image is powerful but I'm more of the playful type and have more fun with Harrison's image.

I believe both are beautiful images and that they represent different attitudes about photography and what an image should and could represent. In the end, an image is just a reflection of the artist.

The Perfect Image by an Unknown Person

Unfortunately, the author of this photograph is unknown, however, I thought that it was a very powerful image and wanted to share it with everyone.

The photo seems to be taken at exactly the right moment from exactly the right angle with a perfect lighting. The vertical lines created by the windows run up the side of the buildings drawing the viewer's eyes directly toward the birds and the leaping figure. The silhouette is very engaging with the birds seemingly hovering around the person as a mother bird does its young at first flight.

I definitely have a feeling of flight. I am not worried at all about falling when I view this image.

Steve Gosling

 is a professional photographer who produces creative & contemporary landscape and nature images.

His photographs have been published internationally as posters & greetings cards and have appeared in books, magazines, newspapers & calendars across the world. Prints of Gosling's work have been exhibited in venues throughout the UK and have appeared on sets for both theatre and film productions.

Gosling has also won many awards in both national and international competitions. These include: Winner of the ‘Places’ category and runner up in the ‘Inkjet Printer of the Year’ category of the ‘Black & White Photographer of the Year’ competition, Award Winner in the Royal Horticultural Society’s International Photographic Competition - ‘Tree & Shrub’ category and Award Winner in the Royal Horticultural Society’s International Photographic Competition - ‘Flower & Plant’ category.

Artist Statement

I believe that a passion for the subject is an essential pre-requisite for a successful photograph. If the photographer feels ambivalent about whatever is seen through the viewfinder how can they hope to have any impact on those who see the final photograph? Communicating mood & emotion are my most important motivators for making images. I’ve never been overly concerned with technical perfection or producing an accurate pictorial record of a subject or a location. For me the heart of photography is to capture and communicate what I’m feeling, as much (if not more) than what I see at the time of releasing the shutter. If my photographs speak to the viewer on an emotional level then I have succeeded in my work.

Opinion

I hold the same opinion of Gosling that I do of Kim Weston in that if Gosling did not care about his subject the way Weston cares for his craft the image would be lost. Love for the subject allows the creator to feel for subject, they want to represent the subject right in the image. The artist spends more time focusing and more time making sure abstractions do not break into the image. In short, they attempt to make every thing perfect thereby revealing more of themself to the viewer.
Love allows the artist to be as abstract and thourough as possible rather than being shallow and just snapping random images.


Those that love make and create because they care about their subject and want the world to see it they way they do. Gosling infuses his images with his own feelings to charge the work and invites the viewer to think about how they feel when they see his works.

Warwick Saint

Warwick Saint was born in South Africa in 1972. With a Creative dad and a Model mom, it was not surprising Warwick Saint became a photographer. Warwick jokes:

“The moment I arrived in the world I knew that I could have done a better job with that harsh hospital lighting”

After graduating with BA in Art and Philosophy, Warwick Saint left South Africa for London.  There Warwick Saint worked as an apprentice for 5 years before launching his own career. 


Warwick Saint's talent was quickly recognized by Dutch magazine who published Warwick's first editorial in 1999, titled Dazed & Confused, Arena and Numero were quick to follow. He was soon invited to exhibit at the Festival d’Hyer in France.  Saint's early successes soon transpired into campaigns for Puma, Nike, Costume National and Diesel. This brought Warwick to New York where he still lives today. 

Warwick Saint's portraiture is in constant demand by famous celebrities including, Drew Barrymore, Cate Blanchett and Sharon Stone. Saint shoots for magazines such as Rolling Stone, Interview, Flaunt, Citizen K, Blackbook, London Sunday Times, Arena and S magazine. Warwick Saint has been published in numerous books including, Making Faces by Kevin Aucoin, Dolce And Gabbanna Music, Beauty by Iman and Fashion images de Mode. 

Warwick Saint currently works between London, Paris, New York and Los Angeles.


Opinion


I'm so being so biased by picking this artist. I chose to blog about Saint simple because he reminds me of the self-nudes I did for my Photo I class at university. The black, messy, in your face hair is almost exactly what I was trying to emulate though my inspiration was probably way off Saint's. 


The images have a very moody quality that I enjoy very much. The subjects eyes are penetrating and often very direct with the viewer. 


The cigarettes and tattoos are obviously way off the mark as I don't smoke or have any body art. I do wish at times that I were brave enough to get crazy piercings or tattoos but that's like thinking I'm guaranteed the job even though I went to the interview wearing pajama bottoms (which I've never done).

Chris Fortuna

There is a poor lack of information regarding Chris Fortuna and his life as a photographer. Much of what is know is copy and pasted by people from his website: Chris Fortuna [Fashion Photography]. Information from this site is posted below. Feel free to visit his site for more images.

Chris Fortuna was born in Boston, Massachusetts and began photographing in his early teens with a Yashica Mat camera. He studied fine art photography at New York University Tish School Of The Arts. After graduating he was awarded the Daniel Rosenberg Traveling Fellowship For Photography. 

His early photographic work was transformed by working under such old world masters as Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon And Paolo Roversi. After living and working in New York City for much of his career Chris has recently relocated and now calls Los Angeles home. 

When not working on either coast he can be found at the racetrack on his Ducati.

Clients include: Converse, Sony Music, Interview, Def Jam, Warner Bros, Joie, Sprint, Maxim.

Opinion

I enjoy Fortuna's B&W photography (pictured at top and right). The people seem real, like they are speaking to the audience about who they are and less about what they are wearing. I don't get the impression they are trying to sell me their shirt or their hair ribbon.

They seem bored or nervous.

The glassiness of the eyes bother me. Reflections are cool from an artistic stand point if you are trying to show less of the person and more of what they are looking at or display who is looking an them, otherwise it is simply distracting from their expression. Yes, one should see their eyes; yes, the eyes should be the main focus; but, one should always be able to rest their eyes elsewhere for a time.

Toni Frisell

Antoinette Frissell was born in 1907 in Manhattan, but took photos under the name Toni Frissell, even after her marriage to Manhattan socialite Francis M. Bacon. She worked with many famous photographers of the day, as an apprentice to Cecil Beaton, and with advice from Edward Steichen. Her initial job, as a fashion photographer for Vogue in 1931, was due to Condé Montrose Nast personally. She later took photographs for Harper's Bazaar. Her fashion photos, even of evening gowns and such, were often notable for their outdoor settings, emphasizing active women.

Though she is remembered today for her high-fashion photography for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, Frissell volunteered her photographic services to the American Red Cross, Women's Army Corps, and Eighth Army Air Force during WWII. On their behalf, she produced thousands of images of nurses, front-line soldiers, WACs, African-American airmen, and orphaned children.

Frissell's leap from fashion photography into war reportage echoed the desires of earlier generations of newswomen to move from "soft news" of fashion and society pages into the "hard news" of the front page. On volunteering for the American Red Cross in 1941, Frissell said:

"I became so frustrated with fashions that I wanted to prove to myself that I could do a real reporting job."

Using her connections with high-profile society matrons, Frissell aggressively pursued wartime assignments at home and abroad, often over her family's objections.

Frissell's work usually involved creating images to support the publicity objectives of her subjects. Her photographs of WACs in training and under review by President Franklin Roosevelt fit into a media campaign devised to counter negative public perception of women in uniform. Likewise, Frissell's images of the African American fighter pilots of the elite 332nd Fighter Group were intended to encourage positive public attitudes about the fitness of blacks to handle demanding military jobs.

In the 1950's, she took informal portraits of the famous and powerful in the United States and Europe, including Winston Churchill, Eleanor Roosevelt, and John F. and Jacqueline Kennedy, and worked for Sports Illustrated and Life magazines. Continuing her interest in active women and sports, she was the first woman on the staff of Sports Illustrated in 1953, and continued to be one of very few female sport photographers for several decades.

In later work she concentrated on photographing women from all walks of life, often as a commentary on the human condition.


Opinion

Frisell is very much a pioneer for the women of today. If she had not insisted upon moving outside the realm of fashion there would probably be fewer female photographers.

Due to her unique experience in the fashion industry she had a different way of seeing the world. This veiwpoint allowed the artist to create images with meaning on more than one front. Images of nurses, front-line soldiers, WACs, and African-American airmen helped paint positive images of the people representing the United States while reinforcing minority rights. At the same time, images of orphaned children shared the cost of the war to the people farthest from the battle field painting a reason for the country to keep fighting (to make tomorrow better for the children and their children).

Paul Politis

is a self-taught photographer from Montreal, Quebec, (born in 1969). He has been making photographs since 1988, first in the traditional chemical darkroom, and since 2005, digitally.

In his photography, Politis attempt to capture moments in time that have a quiet emotion to them. He tends to avoid human presence, instead focusing on the objects that humans construct, maneuver and discard. Through patterns and shapes, as well as light and shadow, he hopes to kindle in the viewer an empathy for the objects being photographed.

Working primarily in black and white, his recent work has focused on themes of personification within an urban landscape. He feels the concrete and asphalt of a city imparts a cold and lonely feeling that is further accentuated by the tonalities of a black and white photograph. The city is rife with still lifes and juxtapositions, waiting to be photographed.

He usually sells prints to collectors and black and white photography enthusiasts through his website, http://www.paulpolitis.com/, since 2001, and is currently represented by La Petite Mort Gallery in Ottawa.
His work has appeared in and been reviewed by several magazines internationally, including Shutterbug Magazine, Black & White Photography (UK), The American Muse, and more.

A series of his photographs of Ottawa Valley ghost towns also appeared online at Canadian Geographic in 2006.

Opinion

I feel that a large portion of Politis' works are abstract. He is semi-successful at capturing quiet moments as I always feel that someone or some thing is about to come up and disturb his works. Perhaps, a bird is going to land on the railing in his piece Wind Chime, take a dump, and leave.

His nude landscapes are far more successful at attempting peace and quiet as they are simple forms. The eye of the viewer can follow the shape of the figure up the back and down the arms in a circle while displaying tons of detail for the viewer's interest.

Kim Weston

is a third-generation member of one of the most creative families in photography. He learned his craft assisting his father, Cole Weston, in the darkroom making gallery prints from his grandfather's, Edward Weston, original negatives. Kim also worked for many years as an assistant to his uncle Brett, whose bold, abstract photographs rank as some of the finest examples of modern photographic art.

After spending countless hours and producing thousands of images in both his fathers' and Brett's darkrooms, Kim felt he needed to prove that the process of making a photo in the dark room was more rewarding and important compared to the image. Therfore, for ten years Kim made only one print of each image, and mounted the negative on the back.

"The great thing about this thing we call art is that it has no rules. I wouldn't have it any other way.”

For the past six years, Kim and his wife, Gina Weston, have been sharing their passion, artistry and unique photographic vision with a select group of participants at several workshops held at Wildcat Hill, Edward Weston's former home in the Carmel Highlands. Each workshop combines practical, hands-on instruction in camera and darkroom technique with informal lectures and field trips that immerse participants in the history of the Weston family's contributions to fine art photography.

The Weston Photographic Workshops are a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to embrace one's own creative spirit. Each workshop is open to photographers at all levels of experience. The only requirement is a love for the beauty and expressive potential of the photographic image.

"What I've learned as an artist and photographer is we all take from our artistic endeavors what we as individuals need to make the process unique and fulfilling to ourselves," says Kim. "I'm always learning from my students, and hope they take away a renewed passion and interest in photography as an art and lifestyle."

Kim's Artist's Statement :

"I make pictures which are meant to be direct and truthful. I do not explain or rationalize this work or my passion for it. I leave it to the viewer to find the surprises. I hope the work generates feelings; otherwise I have failed".

Kim's view of his work:

"The photographic process is an internal part of my life. It is the process of camera, vision and execution. All steps to a statement either capturing in its whole a (vision) or an interpretation of a feeling hopefully interpreted by the viewer. But through the whole process the finished product must be an immaculate rendition of the vision, the surface is of paramount importance. Which is something I do well and have for 30 years plus. My painted photographs have given me a release from surface importance and visual certainty. I can take my image and tweak it to another dimension which if I think about it was my original direction and interpretation of the subject to begin with".

Kim has been a fine art photographer for 30 years specializing in large format photography. His main body of work consists of silver contact prints made from 8x10 negatives. In addition to the 8x10 format he prints in 11x14 and 16x20 sizes. Kim also photographs with a Mamiya 67 that he inherited from his father Cole Weston. He prints in Platinum and lately he has added paint to his photographs.



Opinion


One can always tell the level of commitment one has by how much they love. If Kim Weston did not love making photographs his works would be of low quality and worth. Just the shear love and pleasure in creating something raises the creater's expectations of themselves and changes the way others see them.

All the #1's in the world got where they are by sacrificeing time and effort to create perfection in something they love. If they did not love their actions would be flawed (usually in the name of a good pay check) and their end results would be rubbish.

When one becomes famous and/or are admired for something they love it never really seems like fame. It allows people to be humble and self respecting rather than egotistical and demeaning to others. Those that love make and create because they care about what they are doing. Often times it matters little if others enjoy or appreciate what is being created so long as the creater finds worth in it (whether it be self-worth or simple satifaction with the end result).

In this way, an image can be absolutely devoid of meaning yet still present itself as an artistic challenge in the form of craftsmanship. Superior craft usually trumps works with great content but are made without love.

Alice Neel

was born in 1900, to Alice Concross Hartley, a descendant of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and George Washington Neel, an accountant in the per diem department of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Her father’s family is variously described as owners of a steamship company and as a family of opera singers. Neel was the fourth of five children.


In 1918, she graduated from Darby High School, afterwards taking a business course including typing and stenography. Upon completing the course, she took the civil service exam. She held a secretarial job with the Army Air Corps, working for Lieutenant Theodore Sizer, who later became an art historian at Yale University. She took evening art classes at the School of Industrial Art and later turned down a secritarial job at Swarthmore College.


Shortly after finishing her studies Neel married a Cuban painter named Carlos Enríquez, the son of wealthy parents. They were wed in 1925 and moved to Havana the following year to live with Enríquez’s family. In 1926 she became pregnant with her first child. Following the birth of her daughter, Santillana, Alice returned to her parents’ home in Colwyn. Carlos followed soon after, and the family moved to New York City. Just before Santillana’s first birthday, she died of diphtheria. The trauma caused by Santillana’s death infused the content of Neel’s paintings, setting a precedent for the themes of motherhood, loss, and anxiety that permeated her work for the duration of her career.

Immediately following Santillana’s death, Neel became pregnant with her second child, Isabetta. Isabetta’s birth in 1928 inspired the creation of "Well Baby Clinic", a bleak portrait of mothers and babies in a maternity clinic more reminiscent of an insane asylum than a nursery and, in the spring of 1930, Carlos returned to Cuba, taking Isabetta with him.

Mourning the loss of her husband and daughter, Neel suffered a massive nervous breakdown. After a brief period of hospitalization, she attempted suicide. She was placed in the suicide ward of the Philadelphia General Hospital. Deemed stable almost a year later, Neel was released from the sanitorium in 1931 and returned to her parents’ home. Following an extended visit with her close friend and frequent subject, Nadya Olyanova, Neel returned to New York.

Toward the end of the 1960s, interest in Neel’s work intensified. The momentum of the Women’s Movement led to increased attention, and Neel became an icon for Feminists. In 1970 Neel was commissioned to paint Feminist activist Kate Millett for the cover of Time magazine. In 1974, Neel's work was given a retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and posthumously, in the summer of 2000, also at the Whitney.

By the mid-1970s, Neel had gained celebrity and stature as an important American artist. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter presented her with a National Women’s Caucus for Art award for outstanding achievement. Neel’s reputation was at its height at the time of her death in 1984. Neel's life and works are featured in the documentary "Alice Neel," which premiered at the 2007 Slamdance Film Festival and was directed by her grandson, Andrew Neel. The film was given a New York theatrical release in April of that year.

Alice Neel was also the subject of the retrospective "Alice Neel: Painted Truths" organized by The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, and on view March 21-June 15, 2010.


Opinion


Alice Neel's works always remind me of a paint by numbers book even though they are obviously more. She quotes:

I do not pose my sitters. I do not deliberate and then concoct... Before painting, when I talk to the person, they unconsciously assume their most characteristic pose, which in a way involves all their character and social standing – what the world has done to them and their retaliation.

This is an interesting concept. It hints that she is painting a person Esse Quam Vidiri (a latin phrase meaning: to be rather than to seem) hinting they feel, act, and see life as a result of everyting that has happened to them. Neel's attitude is very mental as these ideals stem from the basics of psycology. One is a result of there culture, their mind, and their lives experiences, either good or bad.

Self Portrait by Steve Ditko

Ditko studied at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School in New York City under Jerry Robinson and began professionally illustrating comic books in 1953. Much of his early work was for Charlton Comics (for whom he continued to work intermittently until the company's demise in 1986), producing science fiction, horror and mystery stories. In the late 1950s, he also began working for Atlas Comics, the 1950s precursor of Marvel Comics. 

Whichever feature he drew, Ditko's idiosyncratic, cleanly detailed, instantly recognizeable art style, emphasizing mood and anxiety, found great favor with readers. The character of Spider-Man and his troubled social life meshed well with Ditko's personal style and interests, which Lee eventually acknowledged by giving the artist plotting credits on the latter part of their 38-issue run together. But after four years on the title, Ditko left Marvel; he and Lee had not been on speaking terms for some time, though the details remain uncertain. The last straw is often alleged to have been a disagreement as to the secret identity of the Green Goblin, but Ditko himself has stated in print that this was not the case. 

At Charlton — where the page rate was low but which allowed its creators great freedom — Ditko worked on such characters as Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, writer Joe Gill's Liberty Belle (a backup feature in the comic E-Man), and Ditko's own Killjoy (also in E-Man) and The Question. With the latter two, Ditko freely expressed his personal philosophy, inspired by Ayn Rand's Objectivism and the writings of Greek philosopher Aristotle. Also at Charlton, Ditko did much work on their science-fiction and horror titles.

By 1968, Ditko was producing his first work for DC Comics. He created the Creeper (in Showcase #73, March-April 1968, with scripter Don Segall), and with writer Steve Skeates, co-created the short-lived title The Hawk and the Dove, working on the first two issues (Aug.-Sept. to Oct.-Nov. 1968) before it was turned over to artist Gil Kane. Unusal for the time, plotter and penciller Ditko used these fondly remembered superhero features to explore complicated ethical issues. 

He finally returned to Marvel in 1979, taking over Jack Kirby's Machine Man title. He worked regularly for both companies until his retirement from mainstream comics, producing a wealth of work showcasing his unique take on everything from such established chararacters as The Sub-Mariner (in Marvel Comics Presents) to the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. 
Ditko retired from the mainstream in 1998. 

Rare Interview 

Opinion

I've always been a fan of comics, especially the ones from the late 60's early 70's. As great as the new, digital comics are they are almost from a completely different planet as the older ones; mainly, because of a changing culture.

I believe the older comics have a better since of person. As a viewer I believe in the character and want him to prevail at what he is doing. When he suffers, I suffer (as in Amazing Spider-Man #121 when Gwen Stacey dies - *heart sob!*). Most of this emotion is due, in part, to the art. The artwork is direct and to the point; there are no "whistles and bells"  of which to speak. What you see is what you get even though it might not be extravagant or politically correct.

Newer comics, however, are somewhat shallow. Comic industries today have replaced there sense of character expansion and story depth with highly cliché and shabby character which only survive due to digital manipulation. Yes, these newer comics are far more dynamic but they are designed for children whose parents have dumbed down the system in fear that their children will go fight crime and get shot. If a parent has this fear they have not properly educated their child. If a parent cannot teach their child the difference between what's fake and what's real they are clearly incompetent and should not have had kids to start with.

New comics will ALWAYS lack heart until irrational fear of them is abolished.

The Creeper #1
Cover by Josue Justiniano

Showcase #73
Cover by Steve Ditko