2The people Joseph Rodriguez saw through the windshield
Joseph Rodriguez drove a cab from 1977 to 1985, and in the last two of those years, he was studying to be a photographer. He lost his first set of gear in a classic ’70s New York stabbing and mugging, but with a new camera, he documented what he saw on the job.
“I See a City: Todd Webb’s New York“ presents the master documentary photographer’s intimate and wonderfully rich exploration of the everyday life and architecture of New York in the years following World War II. Armed with a large-format camera and tripod, Webb walked around New York day and night, in all seasons and weather, engaging with the people and the landscape surrounding him. He captured in his candid and inimitable way a city of contrasts — midtown skyscrapers, the elevated train tracks along Third Avenue, quirky signs and storefronts, food vendors and open air markets, and the bustling street life in the Bowery, Harlem near 125th Street and old ethnic enclaves in lower Manhattan.
Webb loved to work at street level, which gave him a more human vantage point. His work is clear, direct and layered with light and shadow, capturing the soul of New York’s distinct neighborhoods shaped by the friction and frisson of humanity.
“I See a City ” includes essays by Sean Corcoran, the curator of prints and photographs at the Museum of the City of New York, and Daniel Okrent, an American writer and editor.
5Photographer recreates iconic photos with the same women decades later
Visible Girls was a photo series created between 1980 and 1981 by Anita Corbin that showcased the amazing style of women from a variety of different subcultures.
Corbin went round to different parts of London, documenting 56 young women’s lives and looks, featuring punks, rockers, and everything else that defied the mainstream at the time.
The powerful images were taken in the natural habitat of the women included (whether that was pub toilets or street corners) and showed them looking completely ‘themselves’.
These photos were exhibited throughout the ’80s and ’90s, but eventually, Corbin lost touch with the Visible Girls.
Singh, who came from a wealthy family in Rajasthan, India, never studied photography formally. But soon after his older brother gifted 14-year-old Singh his first camera, he became enamored with the work of French street photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. Singh’s parents owned a copy of Cartier-Bresson’s book Beautiful Jaipur — which became a sort of textbook for him.
After dropping out of college, he began working as a photojournalist for American publications, including National Geographic and The New York Times. And there was a big perk: free access to color film (which wasn’t available in India until 1991).
His work exposed Westerners to the real India, says Shivji Joshi, a photographer and retired professor of philosophy at the University of Jodhpur. “Photos taken by Raghubir Singh showed to foreigners — or rather everyone — that India is more than a land of snake-charmers,” Joshi says. Although Singh lived in Hong Kong, Paris, London and New York, most of his work featured his native India.
7Joel Meyerowitz’s Still Life Photographs of the Objects in Cézanne’s Studio
In his final years, Paul Cézanne worked from a quiet studio in Aix-en-Provence, having returned to live in his hometown as his health waned. He had long been nomadic, traveling between Paris and the south of France, and this studio of his own design was packed with objects from his life. Pitchers, glass bottles, and ceramic containers lined an overhead shelf, presided over by a crucifix (a sign of his return to Catholicism); outside was a view to Mont Sainte-Victoire, which he painted numerous times. The studio even had a specially-designed portal so Cézanne could move big canvases like his “Les Grandes Baigneuses” to the garden, to paint in the natural light.
8Feng Li’s feted book White Night shows the absurdity of life
Based in Chengdu, the Chinese photographer shoots official images by day and the surreal underbelly of existence by night
“You’ve probably never heard of Feng Li’s photography,” wrote Leo de Boisgisson in American Suburb X in March; that was true at the time, but it’s changed rapidly since September, when the Chinese artist was nominated for the prestigious Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation First Photobook award.
He made the shortlist for his first publication, White Night, which was published by Jiazazhi Press in July and contains 160 images shot from 2005-2015. The title is inspired by the Bible, specifically the Book of Job and a phrase which reads “They meet with darkness in the daytime, and grope in the noonday as in the night”.
“In the winter of 2005, I had to shoot in a large lantern festival in the outskirts of the city [Chengdu] due to work commitments,” Feng Li tells BJP. “Fog formed around the shapes of different figures, animals, and a huge Christmas tree like a magic show, then my mind just naturally formed the words White Night.
The world-renowned Magnum Photos photographer David Hurn is Wales’s most important living photographer. This year he is donating his archive to the National Museum Wales, alongside a unique collection of 700 photographs by other photographers, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bill Brandt and Dorothea Lange. It is a remarkable gift to the nation. As Magnum Photos celebrates 70 years at the forefront of photojournalism, this film celebrates one of its longest serving members and profiles David’s extraordinary portfolio and bequest from a career spanning 60 years.
