Louise Bourgeois (1911 – 2010) In the realm of art, she took her stand, Louise Bourgeois, with skillful hand, A sculptor of emotions, deep and raw, Her works, a testament to all she saw. With…
Sculpting emotions: The artistry of Louise Bourgeois
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Rebel, rebel: how Lee Miller’s defiance in fashion, photography and life still endures
The forthcoming production of Lee, the film starring Kate Winslet based on the life of Lee Miller, has one scene in which Winslet is seen reclining in a two-piece swimsuit of the kind that a decade later would be called a bikini. It is the 1930s, when the item would have been considered “scandalous”, but it showed how the photographer and war reporter liked to defy convention. Now the bikini, along with other items from Miller’s wardrobe, has been discovered in the attic of her old home and will go on display alongside some more of clothes for the first time.
Lee Miller: Dressed, an exhibition set to open at Brighton Museum in October, brings a fashionable perspective to the life and work of the American photographer. It will include a red dress possibly created by Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli, the bikini and Miller’s war uniform
Martin Pel, the curator, says the pieces tell the story of Miller’s life and rebellion against the norms. The bikini – dated to 1937 – was a case in point. It predated the fashion by around a decade. “It would have been scandalous, really incredibly racy, to have worn it 10 years earlier,” says Pel. Miller also wore jodhpurs when trousers were not worn by women, and lent a black fur coat to her brother John, who sometimes wore women’s clothes. These are also included in the exhibition. “She really didn’t care what people thought,” says Pel. “Lee absolutely lived on her own terms.”
Miller will become a talking point again this autumn. In addition to the exhibition and film, there are two books published by Thames & Hudson.
Glamorous and beautiful, and part of a circle that included Picasso and Man Ray, Miller has finally emerged from these associations over the last 20 years to be rightly lauded for her brave and uncompromising images from the end of the second world war.
But Miller also has an important place in the history of fashion and fashion photography. “She’s become so well known for [the war images] that the fashion stuff is overlooked,” says her granddaughter Ami Bouhassane, who is also director of Farleys, the Sussex house that Miller lived in from the late 40s onwards. “We have five and half thousand negatives, and the war work that most people think of is only the last 18 months [of her career].”
Miller grew up in New York state and began her career as a model, working for Man Ray in Paris after convincing him to take her on as an assistant as she was familiar with photography. Romy Cockx, curator of the recent Man Ray and Fashion show in Antwerp’s Momu, says Miller influenced Man Ray’s fashion imagery. “On the one hand she was a model and on the other he was learning how to become a photographer from her.”
“I think the interplay of these elements made it sometimes like a dialogue between them.”When war broke out in 1939 Miller was an established photographer and worked for Vogue. In the early part of the war she created images that managed to turn uninspiring briefs from the Ministry of Information into creative images for the magazine. “We’ve a whole series of fashion images with models looking nonchalant next to some hairy mammoth in the Natural History Museum. She had this amazing imagination,” says Bouhassane.
Although there were other women working in photography in the 1930s and 40s – Cockx points to Berenice Abbott, also mentored by Man Ray – Bouhassane says Miller’s determined rise to the top came from her background. “Her parents gave her this incredible gift of treating her equally to her brothers,” she says. “Her natural bass line was in the space of equality. So when she hit these walls of ‘no, you can’t do that because you’re a woman’, and ‘women don’t run their own business’, she’s like, ‘yes, I can.’”
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Pel says this attitude is borne of her approach to clothing– through both an irreverence, and a desire for functionality. “I think she loved sort of shocking peopleand doing things out of the ordinary,” he says. “Her attitude to clothing [also] reminds me of a heterosexual man’s attitude to dress– she just wants it to work.”Michael O’Connor, costume designer for Lee, studied images of Miller prewar: on the beach in the south of France with Picasso and Paul Eluard, wearing the bikini, a design they replicated for the film. “In those days Lee knew how important clothes were,” he says. “She was part of a set of dapper people – she’s sitting on a picnic blanket with Picasso and she’s a confident part of that scene.”
The film focuses on Miller’s life during the end of the war, but even in this period “her eye for fashion was so acute,” says O’Connor. “Audrey Withers, the editor of Vogue, had Miller’s Class A uniform tailored on Savile Row, we know that from the label in the original. So Winslet went to Savile Row to have hers tailored.” Withers is also said to have sent Miller nice underwear “so she could feel feminine” even under horrific circumstances.
Miller was traumatised by the war and stopped taking pictures soon after. However, her influence can be seen in postwar photography. “The way she brought this more humane aspect to fashion photography influenced British photographic trends in the 60s, reemerging in the work of Lord Snowdon and David Bailey,” says Cockx.
There’s also the now familiar switch from model to photographer – a move that other women including Corinne Day have made recently. Bouhassane says: “She’d been a model so she knew what it felt like to be on the other side of the camera. We’ve got some really great shots where she’s having a giggle with the models, they seem really relaxed.”
Wildenstein Art Dynasty Faces a Tax Trial in France
Guy Wildenstein, the billionaire art dealer, is accused of shielding a prized art collection from tax authorities to avoid a hefty inheritance bill. The case has dogged his family for more than a decade.
Guy Wildenstein, the international art dealer, is scheduled to return to court in Paris this week to face accusations of massive tax fraud and money laundering in a lengthy legal battle that has slowly chipped away at the prestige and secrecy of a family dynasty that once dominated the global art market.
French prosecutors are on their third attempt to convict Mr. Wildenstein, 77, whom they say hid significant chunks of his family’s storied art collection and other assets in a dizzying labyrinth of trusts and shell companies when his father, Daniel, died in 2001, and after his brother, Alec, died in 2008. The motive, according to the prosecutors, was to avoid paying hundreds of millions of euros in inheritance taxes.
Mr. Wildenstein, the Franco-American family patriarch and president of Wildenstein & Co. in New York, was acquitted of the tax fraud and money laundering charges in 2017. That ruling was upheld by a higher court but then overturned in 2021 by France’s top appeals court, which ordered a new trial to be held, beginning Sept. 18.
The Wildensteins, a family of French art dealers spanning five generations since the 1870s, were notoriously secretive about their collection, which included works by Caravaggio, Fragonard, Manet and many others.
As a result, there is no full accounting of the many masterpieces thought to be in a collection that has at various times been scattered across the globe. A Swiss free port, a nuclear bunker in the Catskill Mountains of New York, a former fire station in that state and a vault in Paris are among the many places parts of the collection have been stored. The family also has galleries in New York and Tokyo, as well as a prestigious research institute in the heart of the French capital.
But since the 2000s, repeated legal entanglements slowly lifted the curtain on the Wildenstein business, many of them the result of suits filed by women in the family who were cut off from its vast fortune during messy divorces and inheritance squabbles.
Claude Dumont Beghi, a lawyer who represented Sylvia Wildenstein, Daniel’s widow, over allegations that her stepsons cheated her out of her inheritance, said that the mounting legal woes were “a bit like a cluster bomb.”
“It was an extremely discrete dynasty,” said Ms. Dumont Beghi, who became a confidant for Sylvia until her death in 2010 and was closely enmeshed in the case against the Wildensteins. She published several books about the family and was sued for defamation by Mr. Wildenstein in 2016, although he later dropped the suit.
Now, Ms. Dumont Beghi said, “this case has put the spotlight on them.”
State prosecutors allege that the Wildensteins were responsible for “the longest and most sophisticated tax fraud” in modern French history, by concealing art and other assets under complex trusts registered in far-flung places like the Bahamas or the Channel Islands, and by whisking away millions of dollars in artworks to tax havens.
In doing so, prosecutors say, the family grossly underestimated its enormous wealth and assets, which at the time also included properties in Paris and New York, a sprawling ranch in Kenya, and a number of thoroughbred horses.
A lawyer representing Mr. Wildenstein in France declined to comment. In the past, his defense has been that he had been told by legal advisers that he did not have to disclose artwork to tax authorities if it was technically owned by trusts and not by the family itself.
Tax fraud carries a maximum prison sentence of seven years and potentially hefty fines, in addition to any back taxes. It is still unclear what financial penalty prosecutors will seek against Mr. Wildenstein if he is convicted at the new trial, but at previous ones they had sought a 250 million euro fine, or about $268 million.
Seven other defendants — who had also been previously cleared — are also standing trial in Paris.
They include Mr. Wildenstein’s nephew, Alec Jr., and his estranged sister-in-law, Liouba Stoupakova, who had been married to his brother Alec. Ms. Stoupakova has been locked in a legal battle of her own against the Wildensteins over her share of the proceeds from trusts created by her late husband. A coterie of Swiss and French legal and financial advisers and foreign trust companies also stand accused.
In past trials, judges had ruled that although the family had demonstrated a “clear intention” to conceal its wealth, its actions were either past the statute of limitations or fell into a legal gray area, before France enacted legislation in 2011 that requires foreign trusts to be declared to the authorities.
Léa Saint-Raymond, an economist and art historian at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, said the Wildensteins had over the decades built a vast information-gathering network, by buying up the correspondence of artists or their dealers, by keeping close tabs on which collectors owned what, by becoming the publishers of a famous French art review and even by digging through notarial archives to find lost paintings.
“They are an indispensable part of the market thanks to the information they have gathered since the 19th century,” Ms. Saint-Raymond said. “And information is the lifeblood of the art market.”
The family’s influence has waned somewhat as the tastes of the ultrarich have shifted to more contemporary art and demand for historical art has ebbed. But their trove of information is still valuable. They remain a leading authority on old masters and Impressionists and have published definitive catalogs on painters like Monet and Gauguin that give them all but final say over authentication questions.
That professional and scholarly authority will remain, at least for now, Ms. Saint-Raymond said, even if Mr. Wildenstein’s personal reputation suffers from the tax case.
“What’s really harmful is when you are suspected of trafficking false artwork,” Ms. Saint-Raymond said. Despite the trial, she added, “a Wildenstein provenance is still pretty safe.”
I’m a photographer and will be skipping the iPhone 15 Pro Max
The iPhone 15 Pro Max is the most powerful camera Apple has ever made – yes, even trumping 1994’s long-forgotten Apple QuickTake and its 0.3MP sensor. So, considering I’m TechRadar’s former cameras editor and am rocking an iPhone 11 Pro, you’d think it’d be a no-brainer upgrade – but that isn’t the case.
It isn’t the 15 Pro Max’s high price tag; $1,199 / £1,399 / AU$2,099 is a lot of money, but I spent more on my Fujifilm X-T5 without any lenses. It also isn’t because the Pro Max currently isn’t shipping until at least November. After a lifetime on iOS, going all the way back to the iPhone 3GS, I’m also not ready to jump ship to Android either.
No, my main reason for waiting until at least the iPhone 16 is a golden Apple rule I’ve successfully followed for a long time – for any new Apple product or hardware feature, always wait for its second generation.
That proved wise with the original iPhone, MacBook Air and Apple Watch. And based on the evidence so far, that’s what I’ll be doing again with what is arguably the iPhone’s biggest camera hardware change since my iPhone 11 Pro delivered Apple’s first ultra-wide lens – the 15 Pro Max’s new 5x optical zoom.
Perfectly cooked
One of the few times I didn’t follow my golden Apple rule was with the iPhone 11 Pro. It has Apple’s first ultra-wide camera and it’s pretty average. That ultra-wide camera has a tiny sensor, a slow f/2.4 aperture, and a fixed-focus lens. The photos it produces have tons of distortion around the edges. I only use it in emergencies.
Those issues were improved massively in subsequent generations, particularly the iPhone 13 Pro. This is what Apple generally does with new iPhone camera features, and I’m expecting the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s 5x optical zoom to be no different. Yes, it’s no surprise to see iPhone features improve over time – but I think it particularly pays to skip major first-gen features.
Perhaps I should really wait until the iPhone 17 to guarantee a polished telephoto experience, but ultra-wides are notoriously tricky to perfect – so it’s understandable that it took two generations to fine-tune.
It’s possible Apple has nailed its 5x optical zoom out of the gate. I’m looking forward to trying it out, as I regularly shoot in the middle range of my XF50-140mm lens (equivalent to 76-213mm on full-frame). But Apple didn’t become the world’s most valuable company by releasing a long-awaited smartphone innovation in one go. Even if the refinements in the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro Max are mostly software-based, it feels like the smart move to wait for that second-gen telephoto experience.
On the plus side, the sensor behind the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s telephoto camera is apparently 25% bigger than the one in the iPhone 14 Pro. That will be a big bonus considering the camera’s ‘tetraprism’ design means light rays are reflected four times through its glass structure. But it’s also a 12MP sensor with an understandably slow f/2.8 aperture. And that small sensor, which has a 1.12µm pixel pitch, will be a significant handbrake on image quality.
Timing is important
Of course, the iPhone 15 Pro Max would still represent a giant leap over my 11 Pro. Even compared to last year’s 14 Pro Max, you get a bigger main camera sensor, a bunch of new focal length options (albeit cropped from that wide camera), the ability to shoot 48MP HEIF or JPEG files, speedy USB-3 file transfers and tons of Photonic engine processing upgrades.
But my other reason for waiting one more year to upgrade is that I prefer a smaller smartphone form factor. And there are growing rumors suggesting that, while the 5x optical zoom is exclusive to the 6.7in Pro Max this year, that will likely change with the iPhone 16 Pro series.
According to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the iPhone 16 Pro will arrive brandishing the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s telephoto camera when it lands in September 2024. And this rumor was reiterated again this week by the leaker Digital Chat Station on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo.
The downside? It sounds like the only way Apple is going to squeeze that ‘tetraprism’ camera into the iPhone 16 Pro is by slightly increasing that phone’s display and overall body size. According to display analyst Ross Young, the 16 Pro will be a 6.3in phone. I’d take that – having more phone to grip onto when you’re trying to steady a telephoto lens is never a bad thing.
The sweet spot
Of course, there’s never a perfect time to buy an iPhone. But if you only upgrade intermittently like me, the timing of your upgrade makes a big difference. And I’ll likely get my next iPhone when it has a refined 5x optical zoom camera, rather than when Apple potentially gets tempted to match the 10x zoom of the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra.
Having a 230mm lens in your pocket may sound impressive on paper, but it isn’t a hugely usable focal length for everyday shooting. When I go out with my Fujifilm X-T5, I usually take a wide-angle lens, a 35mm or 56mm prime and my 50-140mm at most. Some of the best zoom lenses you can buy, like the Nikon Z 24-120mm f/4 S, also tend to be in that less ambitious focal range. That’s why the Google Pixel 8 Pro, due to land next month, is also sticking with its 5x telephoto camera.
Another downside of the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s camera setup – and this may well carry over to the iPhone 16 Pro – is the huge focal range gap between its 24mm main camera and that new 120mm equivalent telephoto. Unfortunately, there’s no 3x telephoto on the Max (only the iPhone 15 Pro). That’s why Apple was keen to tout its new phone’s “seven pro lenses”, which promise 28mm, 35mm and 48mm options in between the two.
The downside? They’re really just crops from the main camera with a bit of computational photography thrown in. Still, I’m keen to try them out and I like the new ability to set one of them as your default focal length. I just wish the Pro Max had two telephoto options (a 3x and a 5x zoom), alongside its main and ultra-wide cameras.
There’s no doubt that the iPhone 15 Pro Max will likely be one of the best camera phones you can buy – maybe even the best, if Apple’s nailed its processing recipes and that 5x optical zoom doesn’t have teething issues. But while I’m keen to take it for a spin, that will almost certainly be a dry run for the upgrade I’m planning to make next year.
My iPhone 11 Pro is still an excellent pocket camera, arguably one of the best Apple has made (aside from that ultra-wide). You can pick one up for only $330 / £270 / AU$500 on the likes of Backmarket. So while the temptation to upgrade is strong, my experience with Apple is that patience usually pays off.
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The big picture: when Nick Waplington became a wedding photographer
In 1986, Nick Waplington began documenting the lives of families on the Broxtowe council estate in Nottingham where his grandad had lived for 50 years. His first book, Living Room, gave the viewer a front-row seat to the chaotic world of a neighbour called Janet and her life-loving kids and friends. Some saw the pictures as exploitative. A Guardian critic suggested that Waplington, “had gone visiting the natives to bring back news of their exotic doings and strange gear”. The novelist Irvine Welsh responded in defence of Waplington’s project, writing: “There is no voyeuristic intrusion in this work. You see Nick appearing – as much a subject as anyone else – in his cluttered, crowded pictures, engaging in the mucking about…”
Waplington followed Living Room with a book that focused on Janet and her new partner, Clive, and their wedding day; pictures, including this one, that are included in a new retrospective book of his work, Comprehensive. Looking back on those images now, Waplington tells me that, when it came to the wedding, he was the obvious choice as photographer. “There is a certain element of voyeurism in all documentary photography,” he says, “but I was trying to work with the people in my pictures long term. They became very relaxed around me and so some of the scenes are quite hardcore.” He distrusted, he says, that tradition of photographing families like Janet’s in grainy black and white, “to make them look miserable in damp houses”. His experience, he says, “was something more positive… I just enjoyed being with them”. This particular picture came towards the close of a long day that had begun in early-morning excitement and dressing up, and which was ending in the pub on Alfreton Road in Nottingham, a couple of doors down from where he was living. “I had no choice but to stay to the bitter end,” he says.
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Comprehensive by Nick Waplington is published by Phaidon (£69.95)
Behind the art: New Deal murals on view at Jeannette post office
(Editor’s note: Behind the Art is a recurring series highlighting artistic works throughout the county.)
Two pieces of canvas artwork hang high from a lobby wall at the Jeannette post office.
The one on the left, titled “Glass Industry,” depicts the city’s history as a glass-making juggernaut and the piece on the right shows the Battle of Bushy Run, which happened centuries ago about 3 miles away.
The 1938 pieces use similar muted colors to portray men involved in both historical aspects.
Both were created under the New Deal, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s bid to end the Great Depression by providing federally funded jobs for Americans. That included artists who created thousands of sculptures, paintings and murals for government buildings around the country. Many of the pieces are held at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in New York.
California nonprofit Living New Deal compiles information about those works, including the two murals at the Jeannette post office. Both were designed by Frank Olson and painted by Alexander Kostellow.
“This 20th century history of the New Deal has served communities for decades, which today’s society takes for granted not realizing the nation’s history behind it all,” Donna McCullough, activities director with the Jeannette Historical Society, wrote in an article about the artworks.
• The Battle of Bushy Run happened over two days in Penn Township in August 1763 as Native Americans fought back against British forces encroaching on their land. The artwork depicts both forces amid trees with British soldiers, some on horseback, attacking the Native Americans with guns and bayonets.
• “Glass Industry” depicts men working in an industrial setting with what appears to be smoke wafting through the scene. A man holding a piece of plate glass is in the center of the artwork and another appears to be using a blowpipe to form glass. Jeannette was once home to a number of glass-making operations, earning it the nickname “Glass City.”
The post office was built in 1935. People visit the South Fifth Street building to look at the pieces of art, according to a U.S. Postal Service spokesman. Photographs are permitted in the lobby as long as the person taking them doesn’t interfere with daily operations or other customers. The spokesman refused to let a reporter interview the postmaster.
Renatta Signorini is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Renatta by email at rsignorini@triblive.com or via Twitter .
UW-Parkside announces fall lineup of enrichment classes
SOMERS — The University of Wisconsin-Parkside’s Professional and Continuing Education has announced its fall 2023 lineup of classes designed to inspire and empower individuals in the community. They include:
Annie Leibovitz mentors 1,000 budding Arkansas photographers
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BENTONVILLE — Annie Leibovitz talked to a thousand aspiring Arkansas photographers on Saturday.
Or thereabouts.
The famed portrait photographer was in Bentonville last week for various activities surrounding the opening of her exhibit, “Annie Leibovitz at Work,” at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
The exhibit, which opened Saturday, will continue through Jan. 29.
On Saturday morning, Leibovitz led three groups of about 300 teenagers each through the gallery at Crystal Bridges and talked about her photographs on display. It was part of a teen photography mentorship program at the museum.
One photograph shows the helicopter in which Richard Nixon was spirited from the White House after his resignation in 1974.
Leibovitz said she was elbowed off to the perimeter of the press photographer pack. She was the only female there, just 24 years old at the time, and shooting for Rolling Stone magazine.
The veteran, hard-core White House photographers had staked out their places to get photographs of Nixon boarding the helicopter and waving goodbye.
But from the edge, Leibovitz got one of the most memorable photographs of the day — a wide view of three guards rolling up the red carpet as the helicopter in the background lifted off and the rotor whipped up a breeze that had the guards holding their hats.
“Nixon takes off, and all the veteran photographers are walking off the field, and I’m kind of over there by myself,” said Leibovitz. “I turn around and I see this moment and I take it. It’s an off moment. It’s not the moment.
“And now, today, we see that all the time. It’s like, photographers, that’s what they look for. But at the time, most news photography was doing close-ups, headshots and things like that.”
Leibovitz said to be a good photographer, it helps to be obsessive if not a little crazy.
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“When you’re young, you guys, you’ve gotta be obsessed. You gotta figure to be crazy,” she said. “You’ve gotta have your camera on you all the time. You’ve got to be thinking, you know, what are you seeing in front of you. And it’s really learning how to see. And … how to photograph the moment.”
Marta Knodle, manager of youth and family programs at Crystal Bridges, said the event for teenagers was open to anyone who registered, but limited to 1,000 participants.
“We wanted to make it as accessible as possible, so we opened it up for anyone that wanted to participate, keeping in mind the cap of about 1,000 people just for capacity,” she said.
The teenagers will be paired with a local photographer — Ashley Lewis, Meredith Mashburn or Brandon Watts — to serve as a mentor. The kids will meet periodically with their mentor through January and work on a photo project during that time.
Photographs the teenagers take will be displayed in a room at the museum’s studio area from Nov. 18 through the time that Leibovitz’ exhibit is on display, said Knodle.
“They’re going to take what Annie Leibovitz talks about today and they’re just going to apply it in a way that the team can really learn something about photography, wherever they’re at, whether basic and even if they have some more advanced knowledge,” she said. “So wherever they’re at is where we’re meeting them, and the mentors are going to take them through some more educational aspects of photography, working with the camera … working with whatever picture taking device that they might have.”
During a lecture at Crystal Bridges on Friday night, Leibovitz said she takes a lot of personal photos now on her iPhone.
“To this day, my favorite photographs are still photographs of my family,” she said Saturday.
Olivia Sanders, 16, of Rogers said it was “really inspiring” to see the breadth of Leibovitz’s photo work, from the beginning to recent, and to hear Leibovitz’s talk about how she got started in photography as a student at the San Francisco Art Institute.
“She was very real about her experiences and how she’s kind of socially awkward,” said Sanders. “It was cool to see that she’s just herself.”
“It was a really fun and eye-opening experience to listen to her speak and how everything happened in her life,” said Addison Frazier, 17, of Bentonville. “And all of her pictures are so beautiful.”
Georgia Shea, 16, of Branson said she thought it was particularly interesting when Leibovitz talked about having a disconnect with writers working on stories that she was photographing.
“How sometimes … she would have her own vision when it came to the picture, have her own side of the story that she was just thinking inside, and how you can be reading one thing but just the still picture itself can tell a whole ‘nother story,” said Shea.
“There are some things that just don’t need words.”
Annie Leibovitz answers questions on Saturday Sept. 16 2023 from aspiring young photographers at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville. (NWA Democrat-Gazette/Flip Putthoff)
Teens with a photography interest view on Saturday Sept. 16 2023 pictures shot by Annie Leibovitz and hear her remarks during tours of her exhibit at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentoville. (NWA Democrat-Gazette/Flip Putthoff)Flip Putthoff
