"Looking in the Right Direction"

"In no way do I believe that I have my own fairy godmother who has sown little miracles in my path throughout my life. Rather, I believe miracles pop up all the time and everywhere, but we forget to look for them. What a joy to have been looking in the right direction so often."

I've been trying (with only modest success) not to buy books. Even after a major culling out our house is awash in books. But I just couldn't stand it and bought the eight-pound, 2 1/2" thick "Willy Ronis -- The Master's unpublished albums". The quotation above is from that book. The great Willy Ronis is one of my photographic heroes -- not only because of his work but also because of way he lived his life. As an example, he refused to allow Life magazine to use his photographs after they captioned one of them in a way that he felt was not an honest description of what was shown in the image.

I highly recommend this book -- but it was any bigger it should come with wheels.

... and speaking of Willy Ronis, he loved back-lit scenes.

May's Print of the Month (or thereabouts)

is #90 in my "Hangouts" series. I have a favorite cafe or coffee shop in many Seattle neighborhoods. This one, the J&M, is on 1st Avenue a couple of blocks south of Yesler. It has been there a very long time but, like a lot of my hangouts, has morphed from a seedy waterfront dive to a cafe with good food.

Gary Winogrand on PBS

The PBS "American Masters" series just did an episode on Gary (or Garry) Winogrand (or Winograd) -- he seemed to be uncertain of the spelling. It's available at:

https://www.pbs.org/video/garry-winogrand-all-things-are-photographable-tdq83s/

He and his work are more than a bit of a puzzle to me -- I'm trying to get my thoughts together for a longer post about him for my blog, notbadbutisitart.blogspot.com