Revealing stories of “The Trans List”

His photos are reflections of the dreams and aspirations of people who’ve felt marginalized for far too long. Serena Altschul introduces us to the photographer, and his subjects:

In Los Angeles this past September, the red carpet was rolled out at the Annenberg Space for Photography for an unusual guest list: the stars of Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ latest project, titled “The Trans List.”

Greenfield-Sanders trains his lens on the transgender community, and catalogs their stories in a film that airs on HBO this Monday.

“My films are my portraits come to life,” said Greenfield-Sanders. “They’re that plain backdrop, that direct-to-camera gaze, that simplicity.”

Some of the stories you may have heard, like Caitlyn Jenner’s:

“Every journey has its struggle. ... Going from a very positive masculine figure to what a lot of people perceive a feminine, weak figure. Publically. Not easy to do.”

Greenfield-Sanders said, “What Caitlyn did was allow men in particular who loved Bruce Jenner, who respected Bruce Jenner, to all of a sudden think differently. This was an incredibly important moment.”

But no less important are the stories that you may not have heard, like that of British actress, model and former “Bond Girl” Caroline Cossey.

“After I was outed by the News of the World, I felt desperate. Suicidal. It really wasn’t anyone’s business. And it should have been left to me if I wanted to talk about it.”

“Our culture has these kind of boxes of, you know, what a man should be and what a woman should be,” Greenfield-Sanders said, “And I think certainly, in the last 40 years, the gay rights movement has made people more aware that it’s not so simple”

Capturing the complexity of the American identity has become something of a specialty for Greenfield-Sanders.  He has been capturing powerful portraits of race, gender and sexuality in photographs and film for the last ten years.

In 2006, he and author Toni Morrison hatched the idea to photograph renowned African Americans -- a series of photographs and films titled “The Black List.” That work was exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery. 

Other lists followed: “The Latino List,” “The Out List,” “The Women’s List” … an unconventional body of work for an artist that fell into photography almost by accident, as a film student in Los Angeles.

“They needed someone for the school to just kind of take snapshots of the visiting dignitaries -- you would see every film for two weeks by Bette Davis, and then Bette Davis would come,” he recalled to Altschul. “But she said, ‘What the f**k are you doing shooting from below?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’  And she said, ‘Well, if you can drive a car, I’ll teach you about photography, young man.’

“And I drove her around for a week. I’d pick her up in the morning and we would drive to her agent’s and have a nice Bloody Mary about 10:30. And she would then talk about these great Hollywood photographers and how they would light her and how light should be set for her face. And it got me more and more interested in portraiture.”

Newly-wed and fresh out of film school, the budding artist moved to New York City’s East Village in 1978. “So we ended up luckily buying this building, a 1905 neo-Gothic German Roman Catholic rectory that we bought from the archdiocese.”

The former priest’s home became his studio.

“People ask, ‘What’s your favorite photo or your favorite?” It’s not really ever that. They’re all kind of great experiences. You know, with Patti Smith or with Victor Cruz or Alan Cummings, those times on this set in this room, in this building were special.

Greenfield-Sanders says the difficulty of working with an antique camera made him a better photographer. “It forced me to think about what the portrait was, rather than just shoot and hope I get something,” he said. “There’s something about large format that’s so beautiful -- the fine art print side of it and the complicatedness of it. And it became kind of a signature, really, for me.”

A signature camera -- and a remarkable career. 

original article 

Why Time’s Trump Cover Is a Subversive Work of Political Art

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This year, it should come as no surprise that President-elect Donald Trump was chosen to grace the cover of Time’s annual issue (shot by Jewish photographer Nadav Kander). “For better or worse,” Trump, during his campaign and now after his election, has certainly been among the greatest influences on the events of the year. For clues as to how Time feels about that question — is it “for better or worse?” — we can look to the image chosen for the cover of the issue. The decisions that Time made regarding how to photograph Trump reveal a layered, nuanced field of references that place the image among, in this viewer’s opinion, the magazine’s greatest covers. In order to deconstruct the image, let’s focus on three key elements (leaving aside the placement of the ‘M’ in ‘Time’ that makes it look like Trump has red horns): the color, the pose, and the chair:

The Color

Notice how the colors appear slightly washed out, slightly muted, soft. The palette creates what we might call a vintage effect. ...namely, Kodachrome. Kodachrome, It was immensely popular between the late 30’s and 70s, and its distinctive look defines our common visual concept of nostalgia.

 Trump ran a campaign based on regressive policies and attitudes — anti-environmental protection, anti-abortion, pro-coal, etc.... also about traditional values (defined primarily by the Christian right), about nostalgia for American greatness and security, about nostalgia for a pre-globalized world.

The Pose

Trump’s pose can be read as a subversive play on a traditional power-portrait pose.....

The Lincoln Memorial ...We see our subject head on, ...The angle forces us to look up at the subject, which in turn creates the impression that the subject is looking down at us. This pose and angle,... makes the subject appear dominant, powerful, judging.

On the Time cover, instead of seeing Trump head on and from below, we see him seated from behind and roughly at eye level. The power relation has shifted entirely.

Trump’s turn towards the camera renders the tone conspiratorial rather than judgmental. ... By choosing not to shoot Trump head on, the Time cover almost offers us a “behind the scenes” glimpse of the man who has spent so much of his time in front of the camera..The highly posed and processed nature of the photograph offers yet another level of irony.

Finally, we must note the ominous shadow lurking on the backdrop. It’s a small, but important and clever detail. Just as this image provides us with two theoretical points of view, it also provides us with two Trumps — Trump the president-elect, and the specter of Trump the president, haunting in the wings, waiting to take form.

The Chair

The masterstroke, the single detail that completes the entire image, is the chair. Trump is seated in what looks to be a vintage “Louis XV” chair ....The chair not only suggests the blindly ostentatious reigns of the French kings just before the revolution, but also, more specifically, the reign of Louis XV who, according to historian Norman Davies, “paid more attention to hunting women and stags than to governing the country” and whose reign was marked by “debilitating stagnation,” “recurrent wars,” and “perpetual financial crisis” (sound familiar?).

...It’s a gaudy symbol of wealth and status, but if you look at the top right corner, you can see a rip in the upholstery, signifying Trump’s own cracked image. ....— the entire illusion of grandeur begins to collapse. The cover is less an image of a man in power than the freeze frame of a leader, and his country, in a state of decay. The ghostly shadow works overtime here — suggesting a splendor that has already passed, if it ever existed at all.

.... like “The Picture of Dorian Gray” suggests more than just a physical deterioration.

As a photograph, it’s a rare achievement. As a cover, it’s a statement.

Jake Romm

Julia Margaret Cameron Victorian Celebrity photographer

Visiting Birr castle in Ireland recently I started reading up on early women photographers and Julia "caught my eye" 

The Parting of Lancelot and Guinevere

Artist: Julia Margaret Cameron (British (born India), Calcutta 1815–1879 Kalutara, Ceylon)

Date: 1874

A little bio from the MOMA

" one of the greatest portraitists in the history of photography, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879) blended an unorthodox technique, a deeply spiritual sensibility, and a Pre- Raphaelite–inflected aesthetic to create a gallery of vivid portraits and a mirror of the Victorian soul."
"When she received her first camera in December 1863 as a gift from her daughter and son-in-law, Cameron was forty-eight, a mother of six, and a deeply religious, well-read, somewhat eccentric friend of many notable Victorian artists, poets, and thinkers. "From the first moment I handled my lens with a tender ardour," she wrote, "and it has become to me as a living thing, with voice and memory and creative vigour." Condemned by some contemporaries for sloppy craftsmanship, she purposely avoided the perfect resolution and minute detail that glass negatives permitted, opting instead for carefully directed light, soft focus, and long exposures that allowed the sitters' slight movement to register in her pictures, instilling them with an uncommon sense of breath and life.
"Cameron's three major bodies of work: portraits of men "great thro' genius," including painter G. F. Watts, poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, scientist Sir John Herschel, and philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle; women "great thro' love," including relatives, neighbors, and household staff, often titled as literary, historical, or biblical subjects; and staged groupings such as her illustrations for Tennyson's Idylls of the King or her Annunciation in the style of Perugino."

See more of her subjects here

And Here