Photography : Art and History in 1/125th of a Second

This Christmas season brings photography’s Sesquicentennial year to a noteworthy end with a number of major publications that will be welcome additions to anyone’s bookshelf or coffee table. At the top of every list must come IN OUR TIME: The World as Seen by Magnum Photographers, text by William Manchester, with essays by Jean Lacouture and Fred Ritchin (W.W. Norton: $59.95)

In a 1944 essay Ansel Adams complained bitterly about the “charlatans” among professional photographers who “possess an adequate mechanical ability which only serves to mask their presumptious lack of taste and sensitivity.” To remedy the situation, Adams suggested “a strong and severe licensing control of professional photography” modeled on Medieval guilds.

Probably no art form in modern times has come closer to the guild model than photography, and ironically it happened only three years after Adams’ essay was published. Formed in 1947 by a group of photojournalists led by famed combat photographer Robert Capa, Magnum is a cooperative photo agency run by and for photographers, financed through the sharing of job fees assigned through the agency. Membership is highly selective, with full-fledged status only achieved after a lengthy “initiation” period involving apprenticeship to an established member.

This in and of itself would not necessarily distinguish Magnum from a particularly ambitious camera club, except that its membership list reads as a veritable “Who’s Who” of serious photojournalism: from such pioneering masters as Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and Eugene Smith to less venerable but no less talented workers like Danny Lyon, Mary Ellen Mark and Josef Koudelka.

Magnum photographers have truly set the standard for creative photojournalism. Not only have they covered almost every major news story in the last 40 years, but they have consistently produced lasting images that embody the highest ideals of their art form: honesty, technical and visual mastery, and an underlying passion for life. “In Our Time” provides long overdue recognition to Magnum photographers, and in the process gives a comprehensive and dramatic visual history of the post-War era.

One of the Magnum essayists, Fred Ritchin, points out that the book’s hundreds of images, covering more than 40 years of world history, probably contain an actual elapsed time of under four seconds (an average shutter speed being roughly a 1/125 of a second). The timeless beauty of a masterfully conceived and printed photograph often makes us forget what infinitesimal fragments of time have been frozen by the shutter, and how refined the instincts and timing of the skillful photographer must be.

In TIJUANA SUNDAY (7410 Publishing, Inc., POB 46278, Los Angeles 90046: $40, cloth; $24.95, paper), Leigh Wiener has perhaps set a new “quick-draw” record in photojournalism, for most pictures per second in a major published work. On a Sunday afternoon in 1961, Wiener made a photographic “chronology” of a Tijuana bullfight; in a little under 24 minutes he made 120 images (or about 1 every 12 seconds) that are published in sequence in the book. His extreme telephoto lens poked its way into every nook and cranny of the bullring: bored-looking campesinos peering through the fence, Anglos shouting their approval, the fresh-faced matador intent on his craft.

And, of course, the bull. Through close-ups we follow the protagonist through the various stages of defiance, fear, exhaustion, and grisly death, while the camera swings back regularly to the same faces in the crowd, recording their reactions and interactions as the spectacle unfolds.

Only rarely does Wiener produce a single image worthy of a Magnum photographer, but to criticize him for this apparent defect would miss both the point of the book and his obvious skills. Like an extended set of film stills, “Tijuana Sunday” is more about the ebb and flow of a whole event than about any single, apocalyptic moment, and Wiener’s instinctive sensitivity and compassion are evident on practically every page.

In this age of the snapshot, when Americans alone produce more than 13 billion photographs annually, it’s hard not to like a photographer who emphatically proclaims, “I am at war with the obvious.”

William Eggleston, rest assured, has never photographed a golden sunset or a smiling baby, and his DEMOCRATIC FOREST (Doubleday: $50) contains not a single colorful flower.

Eggleston is a documentary photographer who, unlike the history-minded Magnum photographers, pays attention to the little things: a neatly chaotic row of garden tools next to a Pepsi machine, the abandoned front end of a pick-up under an old tree, a postcard rack in a Washington, D.C. drug store. Things so commonplace that most of us no longer notice, but under Eggleston’s influence they can become miniature revelations about the people that produced them.

Eggleston may not be the great visionary described by Eudora Welty in her glowing introductory essay. He works in the quieter, more reflective tradition of documentary photogrphy pioneered by Eugene Atget and Walker Evans and has thus broken little or no ground stylistically. His images often yield precious little in the way of emotional drama or compelling visual structure, and at times the subject matter is just plain mundane.

Nevertheless his work has insight and substance. The best way to approach this book is slowly, meditatively, not trying to find individually overpowering images, but gradually letting Eggleston’s offbeat sensibility work its way into your mind and heart.

Yosemite is to photography what Mecca is to Islam. Ansel Adams’ magnificent landscapes of the park made in the 1930s and ‘40s barely scratch the surface of Yosemite photography. Beginning with the 1860’s views by Carleton Watkins, literally thousands of photographers, both serious and amateur, have explored Yosemite from every possible angle, leading a few cynics to suggest that much time and energy could be saved by simply putting a convenient film drop on, say, El Capitan.

Yosemite has as a result suffered the fate of many cultural and geographical icons: Its once awe-inspiring vistas have become cliches. Photographer Galen Rowell entered this potential minefield with a courage born of healthy innocence and love. In the face of the ever-encroaching highways, campgrounds, and tourists, Rowell has maintained his sense of wonder toward nature, and the continuing magic and mystery of Yosemite are made overpoweringly evident in his THE YOSEMITE (Sierra Club Books: $40), with text by John Muir. While he does have his share of obligatory grand views and an occasional animal shot that would have made Marlon Perkins proud, he brings to even these potential cliches both a fresh vision and an artistic sensibility that make his photographs the perfect accompaniment to the famed naturalist’s classic text.