Enrique Metinides was a Mexican photojournalist working for the nota roja tabloids, producing pictures of murders and accidents such as “Adela Legarreta Rivas is struck by a white Datsun on Avenida Chapultepec, Mexico City, 29 April 1979” (1979).
Tag Archives: photography
RIP Letizia Battaglia (1935 – 2022)
Letizia Battaglia was an Italian photographer whose photos documented Sicilian life, but especially the Sicilian Mafia.
RIP Patrick Demarchelier (1943 – 2022)
Patrick Demarchelier was a French photographer known for such photos as the cover of Janet (1993).
RIP Kohei Yoshiyuki (1946 – 2022)
Kohei Yoshiyuki was a Japanese photographer known for his book The Park (1979, 2007) which shows people cruising for sex in Tokyo parks in the 1970s.
The book was hailed by Martin Parr as “a brilliant piece of social documentation, catching perfectly the loneliness, sadness and desperation that so often accompany sexual or human relationships in a big, hard metropolis like Tokyo.”
Of all the deads I posted about since the death of Elza Soares, this one is the most interesting one. Erotomania is still my main affliction. Long live public sex and its voyeurs.
RIP Sabine Weiss (1924 – 2021)
Sabine Weiss was a Swiss photographer, best known for her street photography in the humanist style.
Her work reflects the optimism of the Wirtschaftswunder, of ‘Les trente glorieuses’, of the post–World War II economic expansion.
Furthermore, the term humanist photography, strictly linked with the Family of Man photo exhibition which traveled around the world, was the instrumentalization of photography to obtain “niemals wieder Krieg!.”
RIP Mick Rock (1948 – 2021)
Mick Rock was a British photographer known for such portraits as Iggy Pop on the cover of Raw Power (1973).
RIP Eddy Posthuma de Boer (1931 – 2021)
Eddy Posthuma de Boer was a Dutch photographer.
RIP John Margolies (1940 – 2016)
This will have happened five years in two days, but I only found out today.
John Margolies was an American architectural critic and photographer.
I just spent (while researching the fantastic Jacques Moeschal) two hours intermittently trying to find the title of the book on roadside architecture I sold five years ago and then I found out that it is the one above: The End of the Road: Vanishing Highway Architecture in America (1981).
The link with Moeschal being that with lots of irreverence (I love the word, as well as the practice of irreverence) you can call the ‘signs’ of Moeschal ‘roadside attractions’.
RIP Frank Horvat (1928 – 2020)
Frank Horvat was a Croatian-French photographer of world renown.
I’m doing this man a grave injustice by narrowing him down to the book J’aime le strip-tease (1962) with portraits by stripteaseuse Rita Renoir.
You can see some pictures of that book here.
And to make it up to you:
RIP Robert Frank (1924 – 2019)
Robert Frank was a Swiss photographer, best-known for his photo book The Americans (1958) and his documentary on The Rolling Stones, Cocksucker Blues (1972).
Of that book, which was criticized at the time with the words “meaningless blur, grain, muddy exposures, drunken horizons and general sloppiness” by mainstream media, a criticism that by the way, became the hallmark of a new aesthetic in photography: the new snapshot aesthetic.
My fave picture of that collection is the photo of three gay men, looking defyingly into the camera. Behind them is a sign which reads ‘Don’t Miss Mister Instin …’.
This particular photo is reminiscent of the work in Naked City (1945) by Weegee, of the photos of Paris de Nuit (1933) by Brassai and is also a precursor to Diane Arbus and Nan Goldin.
And then there is Cocksucker Blues.