Paul Himmel and Lillian Bassman The First Retrospective

Ingo Taubhorn and Brigitte Woischnik

Haus der Photographie, Deichtorhallen Hamburg

After I submitted assignment 2 I shared it on an OCA Facebook group and a very supportive fellow student, Jayne Kemp suggested I look at Alexey Brodovitch, as my images were blurry like the ones he produced in his collection Ballet(1).  I had not heard of him and Googled. 

As Brodovitch had such a huge influence on Paul Himmel and Lillian Bassman, amongst many others (I’ll write about him too soon), their work came up in the search results as well. 

I was struck by how absolutely beautiful the photos are.  I was also very interested in the two photographers life stories.  I immediately wanted to order a book about them and within minutes of reading Jayne’s suggestion had spent a small fortune at Amazon. 

The book I ordered about Himmel & Bassman is something that I am going to treasure for years and years; I am so bowled over by the photographs and their history.

Both photographers but especially Lillian Bassman are probably known by history of photography experts but their names are not on a par with Diane Arbus, David Baily or Richard Avedon for example, all of who were working at the same time and were colleagues of the couple.  In fact Lillian Bassman and Diane Arbus have a lot of common threads in their histories.  Both came from Jewish immigrant backgrounds, both met and married husbands at a very young age defying their parents’ wishes, both worked in fashion and at Harper’s Bazaar with Brodovitch.  And both worked in partnerships with their husbands.  However, Arbus and Bassman’s lives do not remain similar, as they grow older.  Unlike Diane Arbus, Bassman and her husband did not get divorced and stayed together until they died, both in their 90s although Paul Himmel’s life ended shortly before Bassman’s.  Bassman continued to work in fashion for some time whereas Diane Arbus left fashion behind as much as she could concentrating instead on the people she found who seemed so separate and isolated from society (although she continued to accept jobs from fashion publications as well as topical magazines up until her suicide in 1971).  Bassman crucially had no tragic and violent self-imposed death cutting her career short and propelling her work as Arbus work did, and although her career in fashion lay dormant for a time she nevertheless took the most incredible photos at Paris Fashion week in her 80s.  While she wasn't working in fashion she continued to experiment with photography and explored a variety of subjects such as body builders and abstracts made from pavement cracks. The Birdlady for German Vogue 2000 taken when she was 80 is one of the most striking images I have ever seen.  It’s extraordinary and I think all Lillian Bassman’s long experience as a photographer, art director and a human being is evident in the photograph.

One of the things I enjoy so much about both photographers is their flair.  They both experimented with blur and motion as well light, exposure, aperture and pushing dark room techniques beyond the norm.  Paul Himmel, like Brodovitch, produced a book about ballet exploring the dancers’ movements by slowing down shutter speed and abstracting the images.  Himmel and Bassman produced work that was highly original and artistic and ultimately very beautiful. 

They were absolutely committed to experimenting with form and process.  Their solarized images, for instance, “look(s) half-negative, half-positive; black and white photographs that are embellished with colour, or colour photographs that look as though they are taken with false colours.  What’s more the contours in the image are outlined as if drawn by hand’[2]. 

I was amazed to read about how they used bleach to lighten and change images.  One of the things that struck me about this aspect of their work is that, although Photoshop is sometimes frowned upon for some reason, it really is a only a modern version, albeit one that is far more powerful, of what photographers have done for a long time manually in the dark room.  True, modern methods are quicker, offer far greater possibilities and are perhaps simpler to learn.  But I believe all photographers who worked before digital came along will have learned even the basics of pushing an image, or developing it in a way that produced unusual or unexpected results and have heard David Baily say as much in an interview he did on Monday 10 2014 with Mark Lawson for the BBC.  Bassman and Himmel, however, experimented with greater alacrity and creativity than most and the results are at times extraordinary.

Bassman, unusually, learnt her darkroom techniques before she learned how to use a camera.  Consequently she was extremely adept and both photographers spent hours getting processes right.  Despite their age and as digital manipulation developed they learnt about that too. 

Lillian Bassman, as I mentioned, worked for Brodovitch, the Art Director of Harpers Bazaar before becoming a photographer and eventually as Art Director of Junior Bazaar, the youth orientated sister magazine of the famous publication where so many of Bassman’s contemporaries also worked such as Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Man Ray and Robert Frank amongst others. 

Her experience as Art Director gives her images a very clear sense of design, which is one of the things that I find so appealing in them.  But her work was not confined to fashion and she ‘continually reinvented herself as an artist – particularly in the way she experimentally sounds out new worlds of imagery well beyond the fashion cosmos”[3]

Paul Himmel grew restless with fashion and eventually stopped working as a photographer although he continued to work personally.  At a time when many would be looking towards retirement he retrained and then worked for decades as psychotherapist.

They grew old together working the whole time and staying very much alive from what I have read and understood until the end.   They both died in their mid-90s and I think they are inspirational.

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[1] Ballet - 1945 Publisher: J. J. Augustin, New York

[2]Page 276

[3] Page 30

References from the book produced to accompany the retrospective at
Haus der Photographie, Deichtorhallen Hamburg

Some thoughts for the colour assignment - FRAGMENTS

I have been wondering how to approach the next assignment - Colour.  As well as that I have picked up one of the recommended books in a bid to 'put right' my slight lack of commitment to reading, or rather the failure to make time to do it.  And thanks to Jayne Kemp, a fellow student on TAOP, I been looking at Alexey Brodovitch's Ballet, a figure who in turn led me to Lillian Bassman & Paul Himmel, who's work I am utterly bowled over by.

In addition I downloaded a biography about Diane Arbus and couldn't help but take a peek and became engrossed (the whys for another blog post), even though I have these other two books on the go (plus a rather difficult and upsetting book about high conflict divorce and the effect it has on children, which I think I have put to one side in favour of the photography books for now - perhaps I have enough of an idea of that for the time being and it's actually preventing me from moving on with this work).

So all these different influences are swirling round in my mind at the moment which will probably go on to inform whatever I end up doing for Colour.

And while I was coming home from a family event today I remembered the sets by Robert Wilson and Robert Lepage both of whose work I was very taken with years ago when studying acting and then working, and obviously taking an interest in theatre - the thing that sprung to mind was the bold colours (and shapes) sometimes used in their set design and overall work.

I am thinking about colour and how powerful it is in creating a sense memory or deeply visceral sensation/ response.  Red, white, blue pictures theses directors create with actors, lighting and set design.

And I think I was reminded of them after seeing the work by Jessa Fairbrother, recommended by my tutor.  When I went to see something by Robert Wilson shortly after my first son was born (can't believe I left such a young baby, one who refused a bottle, for several hours - I never did it again with him or any of the others at that age!!) there was a female character whose movement was stuccato and unpredicatable: there was a very clear lack of fluidity and it reminded me of my baby son's early movements - the brain and muscles were not yet working together and so an arm or a leg would flail about randomly and unexpectedly.  So, Jessa Fairbrother's work, The Rehearsal (dedicated to Augustine) is a series of photos presented in a sequence and almost like a stop frame film but with very big jumps between each image rather than the tiny ones you'd normally expect.  This is what bought the character's movement described above to mind I think.  Fragmented movements.

The word that has been floating round my head for days is FRAGMENTED.

Like many people I suspect, my own childhood memories are rather fragmented.  I have images in my head - a room that feels very orange with soft afternoon light and curtains and a window, or crying whilst wearing a blue long sleeved t-shirt - a memory that is cemented by a photograph of me crying in that very shirt, or the red blood on a black skinned man being beaten and pushed into a van in Cape-Town by a policeman.  These are just a few examples of memories from my very early childhood that contain colours in the imagery as well as the words representing colour in the narrative I have in my mind.

The memories are powerful but I can't tell you very much beyond the little scenes that exists in my head, such as what happened before or afterwards.

The reason I think I mentioned the book above that I have put aside for now is that it goes into much detail about how the development of children who are exposed to warring parents or any form of traumatic experience can and often does lead to fragmentation.  The adults who seemingly can't help themselves from putting their children through this experience are often fragmented individuals who have failed to individuate fully and reacting in the present to traumatic events from their own childhoods.  Events that may have caused some fragmentation which is either never fully resolved or deepens under the pressure of a marriage breakdown.

Fragments of self, fragments of memory, fragments of truth, fragmented movements, fragmented communication, fragmented others

I really want to explore some of the memories, memories that contain colour, memories that are fragments from the past that stay with me always, that I describe with words that represent colour - colours that evoke some sensation, and sometimes quite powerful ones.

I understand that colour can be very evocative either because of the sensation it might trigger or because of cultural symbolism - so for instance blue has classically been seen (due in part to the expense of Lapus Lazuli I think) as powerful, regal, godlike.  And I want to try and find ways to explore using colour to communicate something connected to powerful but fragmented childhood memories that have the potential to transport a viewer (audience?)

Am I being too ambitious now - probably??  The feedback I received was that my last assignment had been ambitious even though I didn't necessarily pull it off in every instance - which I agreed with wholeheartedly. However, I am excited by this ambition - now the desire to express something feels not only possible but desirable having just sat, not entirely inanimately as I certainly absorbed a great deal but probably in quite a blocked way, for so long.

I don't know whether to follow in the style of slow shutter speed or not but looking at Lillian Bassman's work gives me tremendous encouragement and inspiration to do so.  I don't want to simply repeat myself without moving forward but fear I may do so.  I have fragments of ideas but to be honest am not really sure at all about what the final product will be - I like that though.  I'm not sure I like the idea of pinning something down to such an extent that there is no room for surprise and invention.  I struggled to learn this concept at drama school - always starting with an effective but ultimately doomed idea in my head that was too stifled to grow and exhilarate which was a shame for me then,  because had I been able to trust myself and let go I might have enjoyed it all a bit more.
So that's where I am at the moment.

I think the thing to do is get the exercises done over the next two weeks or so if I can before I take the boys camping.  Then get all my colours together for the assignment - whatever those colours will be, cloth, make up, props or rooms - perhaps some coloured gels unless I just use Lightroom for that.  I certainly need to sit down with the colour wheel, the assignment requirements and some coloured pencils and do some experimenting, drawing perhaps, colouring in.  I remember reading that Lepage in a rehearsal will start by getting everyone to draw and write things down on a giant piece of paper - an exercise that potentially unlocks ideas and memories and invention from which the company will then draw upon to begin devising.  I might try to do something similar on a smaller scale for this using the colour wheel and pencils - we'll see.

I am aware that much of this reflective post might seem unconnected and perhaps a peculiar swirl of disparate ideas and references but I think it has been helpful to put my thoughts down, and it will hopefully lead to something more tangible with which to work.