While choosing a planner, venue, fashion, or décor are huge decisions that determine how you’ll experience your wedding day, picking out a photographer makes a major impact on how you look back on your nuptials for years to come. And even if you might think anyone with a camera can capture your wedding day, shooting a wedding is an art that takes plenty of skill, stamina, creativity, and experience. You should invest in a photographer that is not only talented, but has a photography style that reflects the aesthetic you want to capture throughout this milestone event.

“The role of the photographer—whether more photojournalistic or more fine art—is to go into a wedding with a sensibility and vision, but being open to the wonderfully unexpected moments,” explains wedding photographer Corbin Gurkin. “Find a photographer whose work you feel so deeply connected to that you cannot imagine any other person interpreting your day. You are hiring this person for his or her eye and that should really guide the decision. If you look at this artist’s images and think to yourself, ‘this is how I want to feel’ in my photographs and you can imagine the visual spirit of your wedding being honored in those images, then this is your photographer.”

Photographer Adriana Rivera adds that it’s important to connect with a photographer before choosing to hire them as well. “Couples also need to think how the person they trust to capture their wedding will greatly influence their overall wedding experience, contributing their energy to every moment,” she says. “Rather than simply choosing your photographer solely on talent, look for chemistry, connection, and an understanding that the process is just as important as the outcome.”

It’s also important to have a knowledge of wedding photography styles to begin searching for a vendor that can fit your vision. However, don’t let yourself be too prescriptive with what style you think you want. “My typical advice to couples is to not actually put too many words into what they think they are looking for,” shares Lisa Raffo Ashley, who represents wedding photographers as the owner and curator of The Wedding Artist Co. “What one person thinks is editorial, another person might think is classic or artistic.”

Pricing is something many photographers struggle with. While things like camera settings can be quantified and are, thus, easier to learn in a way, pricing can be a nebulous and tricky thing to nail down. So, when it comes to selling prints, how do you set your prices? This helpful video tutorial features an experienced photographer sharing some useful advice sure to put you on the right track. 

Coming to you from Keith Cooper, this great video tutorial shares a range of useful advice for pricing photography prints. The important thing to remember is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to pricing, and photographers often get in trouble by oversimplifying the process and not considering the multitude of factors that go into it. While heuristics are tempting, they ultimately overlook things like market factors, time investment, travel, the uniqueness of a print, its demand, target market, and more. This is why (if you plan on doing it professionally) it is so important to not only have a strong understanding of how to create a compelling photo and a quality print, but of sound business approaches and tactics. Check out the video above for a lot of useful advice from Cooper. 

Art by David Yarrow is featured through the end of 2023 at Samuel Lynn Galleries in Dallas. He is showcasing his latest photography along with fan favorites from years past at two of the galleries, one at The Thompson Hotel, 205 North Akard Street,, and the other at Samuel Lynn Galleries’ Design District location, 1105 Dragon Street.

Working with top athletes, models, and cultural movements, Yarrow has broken the glass ceiling to his Storytelling series, and means to challenge minds and the boundaries that surround what a photograph “should ” be. Yarrow packs his images full of symbols and characters, creating narratives that have existed for centuries and have never been captured in these ways before. He reminds us that a good story can always be retold, and that the reshaping of these narratives reignites the fiery lure of the history, people, and places that shape his inspirations. 

Whether he is cracking jokes with collectors, attending philanthropy events, or falling into arctic crevasses, Yarrow reminds most of all that to make great art, first make great friends. It is this desire to build relationships with each person he encounters that has made these new photographs so special.

As Yarrow travels around the globe and opens a listening ear to the local people he hopes to represent, that same tune carries on in the essence of his artworks. It is the connections Yarrow forms with people that allow his photographs to connect with his audience so deeply. 

Yarrow holds an exhibition with Samuel Lynne Galleries annually, and each year the excitement around his presence amplifies, they say, in celebrating the return of a photographer who has done so much to get to know the people of Texas, so that he may capture the energy of the beloved cities in his ground-breaking artworks. 

Learn more before you go at www.samuellynne.com.

The photography of Pam Riley Blake is now on display at the Verona Public Library.

Blake, who grew up in East Orange, has lived in Verona for 43 years. She attended Ursinus College and did graduate work at Penn State University. She was a vice president at both Marsh and Aon companies in New York City in the field of professional liability and still provides seminars to architects and engineers as an independent consultant.

Much of Blake’s photography is inspired by her home in Downeast Maine as well as her travels. In addition to her love of photography, she enjoys being active with the Woman’s Club of Verona, the Food Pantry at Church of the Holy Spirit, the Verona Book Club, and Verona UNICO.

There will be an artist’s reception at the Library on Sunday, November 5, from 2 to 4 p.m.

Much of the photography collection of Sir Elton John and David Furnish will be loaned to and exhibited at the V&A Museum in London, England, and will showcase a who’s who of legendary photographers.

Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection will be exhibited in partnership with Gucci at the V&A next year. The exhibition will be comprised of over 300 rare prints from over 140 photographers – the majority of which will be on display to the public for the first time. This is a perfect opportunity to see the work of some of the greatest photographers of all time.

The exhibition will showcase photographs from the 1950s to the present day and will follow on from a previous exhibition at London’s Tate Modern – The Radical Eye: Modernist Photography from the Sir Elton John Collection. 

The new show brings together an unrivaled selection of the world’s leading photographers to tell the story of modern and contemporary photography. Works by Robert Mapplethorpe, William Eggleston, Diane Arbus, Sally Mann, Zanele Muholi, and others will be included. 

The V&A states that the exhibition will include photographs “across eight thematic sections, it will explore subjects such as fashion, reportage, celebrity, the male body, and American photography. Portraits of stars from stage and screen will feature, including photography of Marilyn Monroe, Miles Davis, and Chet Baker, as well as iconic images from key moments of history from the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, AIDS activism of the 1980s and the events of 11 September 2001”.

As well as showcasing and celebrating some of the great photographers, this exhibition also marks 30 years of collecting, John and Furnish’s passion for the medium, and their unique eyes as collectors. 

“Since we first loaned a selection of Horst photographs to the V&A in 2014, our relationship with the museum has grown significantly,” said Sir Elton. 

“Fragile Beauty takes our collaboration to really exciting new heights, showcasing some of the most beloved photographers and iconic images from within our collection. Working alongside the V&A again has been a truly memorable experience, and we look forward to sharing this exhibition with the public.”

Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection is curated by Duncan Forbes, head of photography at the V&A, Newell Harbin, director of The Sir Elton John Photography Collection, and Lydia Caston, exhibition project curator.

Just by looking at the list of photographers included in the exhibition, this is a must-see! I always appreciate photography and the work involved in making an image more when viewed in person – there is magic to a print’s physicality that is lost in the modern age of artificial screens. This will also be a great time to see so many great works in one place, with many being shown for the first time. 

The exhibition will take place May 18 2024 – January 05 2025 in The Sainsbury Gallery, V&A South Kensington, London, with tickets available soon. Plenty of time to make travel arrangements!

William H Mumler created what is known as the First ‘Spirit Photograph.’

Spirit photography, as it sounds, is a type of photography that tries to capture pictures of the spirits of dead people. It became popular in the mid-19th century, shortly after photography was invented. William H Mumler was one of the first people to take spirit photographs. 

Many people believe that spirit photographs are evidence of the existence of the spirit world or the afterlife. Spirit photography was popular from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century.

The First Spirit Photograph that William H Mumler, who was a jewelry engraver and amateur photographer, created was apparently taken accidentally when he shot a double-exposure image. Later, it turned out that he took a picture of himself in 1862 that also showed the spirit of his dead cousin standing behind him.

According to The New Yorker, regarding the photo as a curio, he began to pass it around, garnering astonishment and acclaim from the city’s thriving spiritualist community. As word spread, Mumler’s hobby became a lucrative business, and soon he was taking spirit photographs from dusk till dawn, summoning lost loves beneath his skylight, and dispensing solace to a public addled by the rising death count of the Civil War. His images retain their intimate, macabre tint even now.

The Man Who “Captured” Lincoln’s Ghost on Camera

The Guinness Book of World Records reported that some of Mumler’s most famous photos include Mary Todd Lincoln with the spirit of her husband, Abraham Lincoln. According to the book Ghosts Caught on Film, the photograph was taken around 1869. Mumler supposedly didn’t know that the spirit in the photograph was Lincoln and did not realize who it was until the photo was developed.

Controversies 

The GWR refers to a History article and mentions that Peter Manseau, curator of American religious history at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, says Mumler was a fraudster but admits he did not know how the photographer managed to pull off his hoax.

“It was a genuine religious movement that meant a lot to people at a time when the nation was going through mourning and loss like it never had before,” Manseau said in the article.

According to the history article, there was a case where Mumler created a spirit photograph for a woman who had recently lost her brother in the Civil War. Eventually, her brother returned home, but rather than accusing Mumler of fraud, the woman blamed it on an evil spirit trying to deceive her.

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Earlier this year in Stockholm, Elton John performed the final concert in his five-year Farewell Yellow Brick Road world tour, bringing down the curtain on one of the most successful music careers in history. Yet anyone expecting the global superstar and hugely influential activist to sink quietly into the oblivion of retirement is badly mistaken.

This week, the Victoria and Albert Museum announced the biggest photography exhibition in its history, to open next May, and drawn entirely from the collection of Sir Elton and his husband, David Furnish. Comprising 300 works by 41 artists, it not only features some of the most iconic images in the history of the medium, but announces John as one of the most significant collectors of the post-war era. “Everything [in my collection] has been chosen by me,” Sir Elton told The Observer in 2016. “My curator will suggest stuff, but nobody goes and collects on my behalf. I’m not known for my restraint, but for me this collection is about love, not collecting for the sake of it or grandstanding.”

Certainly, as you’d expect from a singer-songwriter whose trademarks include diamond-studded glasses, diamond-studded jackets and diamond-studded, well, everything, John never does things by halves. He began collecting photography in 1990 after successfully entering rehab following a 20-year struggle with cocaine addiction. He now has 9,000 works in his possession – a number that dwarfs that of many major museums – and which require the services of a full-time director. In 1993, he set the then record price for a single photograph when he paid £112,000 for Man Ray’s Surrealist masterpiece Glass Tears.

Alex Spear

On Tuesday night, Bowdoin welcomed Deborah Dash Moore, a professor of history and Judaic studies at the University of Michigan, to a crowded Kresge Auditorium as this fall’s Harry Spindel Memorial Lecture.

Since 1977, the Spindel lectureship has brought Jewish artists, writers and academics who study Jewish topics to Bowdoin. Dash Moore, a historian of American Jews, spoke at this year’s lecture about her most recent book, “Walkers in the City: Jewish Street Photographers of Midcentury New York,” which examines photographs taken by working-class Jews in twentieth-century New York City.

For roughly an hour, Dash Moore spoke about the photographers and photographs she explores in her book to a group of students, faculty and community members, many of whom were photographers or Jews themselves.

Dash Moore explained how the development of photography and subsequent dissemination of relatively low-cost cameras afforded Jewish New Yorkers new opportunities to explore the city that they previously did not have, equipped with the power of a camera.

“A significant cohort of these young Jewish men and women embraced photography and its possibilities,” Dash Moore said. “A camera’s basic documentary potential presented an intrepid New Yorker with a world of challenges: how to see—how to review—the street and make sense of its traditions and its occasional outbursts of chaos with their urban smarts and small cameras.”

Dash Moore then shifted her focus to discussing the specific photos taken by Jewish photographers Morris Engel, Sid Grossman and Helen Levitt, among others. She discussed the gendered dynamics of photography, specifically in relation to the male gaze, and the skills that made a good photographer, including “luck and pluck, patience and skill.”

The photos Dash Moore examined included photos of New Yorkers watching other New Yorkers, New Yorkers gathering at restaurants and storefronts and New Yorkers at Coney Island. Many of these photos included groups of younger city dwellers gathering in a way the urban elite at the time didn’t appreciate.

“Reformers have long observed city people loitering on busy corners, hanging around in candy stores and bars and drinking soda pop on stoops and have passed a judgment that most of which is, ‘this is deplorable,’” Dash Moore said. “Photographers disagreed. They often pictured these groups, rarely presenting them in a threatening or negative light.”

Many Bowdoin students and faculty members enjoyed the event, including Senior Lecturer in Environmental Studies and co-chair of the Spindel Lecture fund, Jill Pearlman. Pearlman’s pedagogy focuses on architecture and urbanism, and she serves as one of the advisors for the Urban Studies minor.

“You can’t understand the urban landscape of New York without factoring in the Jews,” Pearlman wrote in an email to the Orient. “The impact of the Jews on the urban landscape has been felt in many ways.”

Pearlman also discussed factors behind bringing in Dash Moore, including relevance of her work to current Bowdoin course offerings, namely her own “City, Anti-City” course and Professor of Art Michael Kolster’s documentary photography seminar.

“Because of that, we knew we would have an engaged (and captive) audience,” Pearlman wrote.

Elias McEaneney ’27, a student in Pearlman’s “City, Anti-City” course, enjoyed how Dash Moore’s talk blended history with art.

“One of the biggest things I took away from the lecture was a glimpse into what it’s like to try and analyze history not from a purely scholarly lens,” McEaneney said. “I found myself viewing these photos the way I would view them as an artist as well, incorporating context and my understanding of the principles of art into the greater understanding of the photos.”

Not a great deal is known about Carlo and Luciana, it seems. They came from Vignola, a small Italian city near Modena and not far from Bologna. They married and honeymooned. Carlo worked as a clerk in a hardware store and Luciana worked as a tailor. They retired. They spoke only Italian. They were childless. Luciana died first, Carlo several years later.

When they had the opportunity, they liked to travel. And travel they did – to China, Cuba, India, Thailand, the Red Sea, America and beyond. The reason we know so much about their holidays is because of the photo albums they made, filled with the portraits they took of each other, always pictured in exactly the same spot.

Their pictures are the subject of an exhibition in Bologna, part of the city’s Foto/Industria festival, by curator and self-styled “photographer without a camera” Erik Kessels, a longtime curator, editor and repurposer of amateur, “found” and vernacular photography.

For more than 20 years Kessels has been riffling through once precious, now unwanted, photo albums, finding the work of amateurs who, as he puts it, “without them knowing, make a beautiful narrative or document of their lives, sometimes with lot of mistakes, sometimes in a very beautiful way”.

He often makes his finds in flea markets, or by buying online, or occasionally through more direct contact. “Sometimes a person rings my doorbell with a bag of albums, saying: ‘I won’t live that long any more and I want you to have them.’ Mostly it’s not interesting, of course,” he laments.

“I have around 15,000 family albums that I have bought over time, and 99% of those 15,000 are fucking boring. They are really horrible because they are only landscapes or waterfalls or boats or cars.”

On this occasion, Sergio Smerieri, a studio owner and neighbour of Carlo and Luciana’s who had helped the couple print and compile their photos, brought the work to his attention. Kessels, always looking for personal documents to use as working material, was undeterred by the prosaic content. “There are still a lot of stories to tell behind existing or mundane images,” he says.

Carlo and Luciana began travelling, by motorbike and later in their Fiat, when they were young, and when snapshots were black and white. By their mid-20s, though, it appears that work commitments curtailed their activities. Certainly they took no photos until their retirement 40 years later. Then their package holidaying began in earnest. “They started again,” says Kessels, “they travelled all over the world, and always did the same trick.”

With the couple’s adherence to a rigid pictorial protocol and a deadpan systematicity, their pictures could be mistaken for those of a pair of itinerant conceptual artists. Kessels concedes that is one way of viewing the work, but he stresses that for a couple travelling alone, “this was purely practical for them. That’s why I quite like it.

“Carlo and Luciana had no children. They didn’t do this as an artistic act – they just did it out of practical reasons. Of course there were no selfie sticks or other ways of making the picture. He took a picture of her, and she of him in the same spot, and then they put them next to each other in the album so they have, in a way, one image with both of them in it.”

For Kessels, presenting the pictures in a new context offers an opportunity for them to be re-evaluated. “Just by taking them out of their context and putting them in a book or an exhibition, people start to look at them differently. I didn’t crop them; I never do anything to the colour; I never retouch them. In my case the edit is important. How to exhibit it is like my act of reappropriation.”

As part of his reimagining of the holiday snaps, Kessels takes pains to include the 40-year hiatus that interrupts the albums. He displays blank panels in the exhibition, and 40 white pages in a book of the work. “The beautiful thing in this case is that there are 40 years without any image and that is quite special,” he says.

One reason the dual portraits hold such appeal for him is that they predate the era of selfie sticks, social media and filter apps.

“In a way that’s also what I’m interested in. I mean nowadays maybe people are much more aware of what they do because we grow up now in an image culture. With a mobile phone and its images you are very aware that you can be quite artistic, or that people have seen there are certain ways of doing things that are interesting.”

Not so for Carlo and Luciana.

And, unlike the original albums which were arranged by country and dated, he is reluctant to include caption material. He prefers, he says, “to try to make people pause, to look at the images first, and slowly maybe imagine your own story”.

“I’m always searching in people’s very mundane albums for very specific stories. I’m almost like a visual archaeologist,” he says. “Sometimes the images are quite clear and the narrative is quite clear. Sometimes I need to look at it and digest it and wait and see before I get the idea of ‘OK it’s about this.’ That is the nice part of it – it’s a puzzle sometimes.”

Carlo and Luciana is on display in Bologna as part of the Foto/Industria festival until 26 November.

Carlo and Luciana, edited by Erik Kessels and Sergio Smerieri, is published by Kesselskramer.

This interview was made possible with the assistance of Foto/Industria