William Horberg

Flea Market Photographs

A rare trip home and an even rarer Easter excursion with the family to the Rose Bowl flea market yielded a few precious vernacular photographs fished out of a plastic bin for their period charm, color palette and otherworldly nostalgia.

Some serious looking military naval hardware looming overhead makes this colorful on deck outing seem like a Cold War cover story. Is that Kevin Spacey hiding behind those shades?

Viola Davis' wardrobe from The Help might have been inspired by this old Kodachrome. I love the double-exposure on the already extra-wide lapels!

These two lettermen look like they could be standing on a movie set from an Irwin Allen-style Land of the Giants television series specially built to perspective to emphasize their size!

Happy Easter!

Enjoy!

william

Counting Crows

Today we visited an old cemetary in Belgrade.

The headstones were mostly pre-war, and were crowded together, and covered with the dust of a recent snowfall. But for every soul that was resting there, it felt like there was at least one corresponding black crow perched in the barren trees overhead, like harbingers or sentinels watching over the dead.

Their loud birdsongs filled the air, and suddenly they took flight, filling the twilight sky with their peregrinations. It felt like there were thousands of them, darkening us with their shade, even as darkness descended.

It was ominous, but also quite beautiful.

enjoy!

william

Down These Mean Streets

Growing up, before I ever traveled there in person, my formative impressions of the New York City of my imagination were shaped by three things: 

The gangs, graffiti, drugs and gunplay of movies like West Side Story, and later Superfly or Serpico; novels of the gritty urban experience of '60's ghetto life like "Down These Mean Streets" by Piri Thomas, who passed away just recently; and music by bards of the street like The Last Poets and Gil-Scott Heron who in spoken words and minimal harmonies described the dark core of the Big Apple.

Watching the massive march of a Halloween parade that passed by my apartment on its way up the Avenue of the Americas this Fall, and the lo-fi imagery I was able to capture with my Diana camera of these denizens of the dark, brought back nightmarish memories of this earlier era, when urban legends of LSD-laced candy and razor blades hidden in apples put the trick in trick-or-treat.

Could anything be scarier than....

...a gang of Smurfs?

Enjoy (sort of)!

william

Wildflower Therapy

Diego and I went to an exhibit of local indigenous wildflowers over Memorial Day weekend.

They seemed like appropriately relaxing images to serve up now as I am home recovering and trying to maintain that natural state of mind they say is beneficial to the healing process.

Maybe some of you botanically minded readers out there can identify these particular flora? Margie?

Enjoy!

William

Pictures At An Execution

I saw this drawing on a friend's Facebook page, and was immediately arrested by its almost Goya-like power to capture a moment of indelible horror in simple black and white lines on a page.

The executioners and the executed lined up in a row, and so close to each other you almost feel the gun barrels will touch their victims before the bullets do. 

What fearful imagination guided this artist's hand to conjure such a timeless vision?

Linked to the drawing was an almost identical image, made by a man we must also consider an artist, using not pen and paper but the documentary tool of a camera to record photographically a real life firing squad in an act of mass execution, perhaps the inspiration for the sketch.

The story behind the photo is quite interesting.

Jahangir Razmi was an Iranian who bore witness to a massacre of Kurdish militants in Iran in 1979. His photo was published locally and then republished around the world, but the identity of the photographer was kept anonymous for fear of reprisal.

The picture went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, the only time the award was ever bestowed on an anonymous source. It was not until 2006 that Razmi felt free to come forward and claim credit for the shot.

Think about today and the thousands of anonymous cell phone photographers whose images documented the recent violence in Iran, and the fear of reprisal that continues to drive witnesses underground.

What's past is prologue, and the Tempest still rages.

william

The Robert Capa of Children's Books

It is always nice when one of my blog posts opens a door to a connection and a discovery or further elaboration of a topic. Such was the case recently when I was contacted by Adam Randazzo from New York, who had read an old post here about the unusual children's photo books published back in the 1950's by husband-and-wife team Dale and Sally Rooks.

Hi William -

I found your name and blog while Googling for Dale Rooks. There isn't much information I can find about him online, but I have some pretty interesting photos he took during WWII. During that time, my grandfather was a medic in the coast guard. Dale was placed on my grandfather's ship and was a photographer for LOOK magazine at the time. My grandfather was given the duty of basically accompanying him wherever he wanted to go to while he was taking photographs. Their travels took them all over France, Italy, Iceland, and North Africa.

During the process, the two of them became extremely close friends. After the war was over, Dale travelled to my grandparents wedding and photographed it for them. As a wedding gift, he presented my grandfather with a large collection of photos that he had taken during the war. This collection is in a large book and contains over a hundred of photos that he took. My mother received the book after my grandfather  passed away at the age of 94 late last year.  I am currently in the process of scanning and digitizing the entire collection. When I am done with that, I will be putting up a website with all of the images as its a truly amazing collection.

You are correct that Dale died young. According to my grandfather, he lived fast and was completely fearless. Next time I see my grandmother, I will see if she can tell me more stories about him. I believe Dale died of lung cancer if I remember correctly - but I may be wrong. I will also try to find out what happened of his wife.

Anyways, after reading your blog, I felt that I would share this with you as you sound like someone who may really appreciate the history.

I have attached a couple of photos that Dale took. My grandfather is the medic in the one picture and it was in LOOK magazine.

Thanks again for making the blog post!

                                           Adam Randazzo / Western NY

Adam now has a great new blog up and is posting this collection of Dale Rook's war time photography.

It seems like a strange journey from being a Robert Capa to making books about Cute Bunnies and Puppies, but when you think about the myriad experiences of men at war struggling to come back to civilian life, perhaps not so odd after all.

Check it out!

william

B Movie

From the archives: I found this almost complete set of stills from the 1959 Miller-Consolidated Production of "The Amazing Transparent Man" starring Marguerite Chapman and Douglas Kennedy and directed by the amazing Edgar G. Ulmer.

If anyone ever asks you for the definition of a "B" movie, you can send them to this post, and let the pictures speak a thousand words.

This film was one of the last two films that Ulmer made in America, and among the last of a prolific career of ultra-low budget productions, including what many consider one of the greatest film noir movies ever made - "Detour".

"The Amazing Transparent Man" with a running time of only 57 minutes, was actually shot together with Ulmer's "Beyond The Time Barrier" - two feature films made on a two weeks total shooting schedule!

Ulmer started out as a set designer in German film before he emigrated to the United States, and even with no money and no time he always managed to make something interesting out of his mise-en-scene - check out the slanting lines of the corrugated tin roof of this "invisible zombie experiment lab" set!

Ulmer was born in 1904 so he was 55 years old when he directed "Transparent Man". His final film, "The Cavern" was made in Italy in 1964, and he passed away here in Woodland Hills, California in 1972.

When it comes to "B" movie imagery, even famous photographer Cindy Sherman must have learned a thing or two from this master!

Enjoy!

william 

 

Egyptian Vernacular

For the final post of my Egyptian adventure, I wanted to share with you some photographs not of my own taking, but vernacular photographs of people and scenes from the past, that I unearthed on my last day in Cairo at the famous Khan el-Khalili Market.

This souk dates back to 1382. 

Imagine the buyers and sellers and treasures that have changed hands in its twisting alleyways and assorted shops.

 

Today, so many of the stalls sell the same souvenirs and products, much of it sadly made in China. Looking for some piece of authentic Egypt to take back with me, I found a few vendors who had paper ephemera and photographs stashed away in the bottom of a bookcase. The price they were asking was surprisingly precious for a handful of these vernacular shots, but finally I found one seller willing to bargain with me, and I couldn't pass up this opportunity for the blog!

 

I love the kids all dressed up, and the color hand-tinted pose. The men in their fez evoke a Naguib Mahfouz novel.

And the final image feels like a tabula rosa onto which we could project almost any meaning, from familiarity to fear.

Almost a Rorschach test to challenge the stereotypes and preconceptions that we inevitably bring into any conversation today about US-Muslim relations, which was the starting point of my journey to Egypt for this conference. 

Vernacular photos are invitations to the imagination. What do you see?

william

 
 

 

Photographing Fallen Angels

Cleaning house the other day I came across a dusty box housing some old photographs. They looked like they were taken in 1947 on the set of some RKO movie directed by Fritz Lang. Turned out they were prints of pictures taken during the making of "Fallen Angels" - an anthology series of noir crime fiction I created and produced with Steve Golin and Lindsay Doran that ran on SHOWTIME for two seasons in the early 1990's.

(photo by Michael Tighe)

These hard-boiled stories by the likes of Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Jim Thompson, William Campbell Gault, Jonathon Craig and their ilk attracted some amazing talent in front of and behind the camera.

Discovering these beautiful black and white images gives me a chance to remember and acknowledge the star photographer talent that also came to play behind-the-scenes as well, bringing their 35mm film cameras in that pre-digital age of set photography.

(photo of Alan Rickman and Laura Dern from "Murder, Obliquely" by Max Aguilera Hellweg)

Gusmano Cesaretti, Frank W. Ockenfels 3, Michael Tighe, Max Aguilera Hellweg, Antonin Kratochvil, and James Fee were all brought together by my friend Deborah Rosen and contributed greatly to the class of the series and the enticing imagery we were able to put out into the world.

 

(photo of Gary Oldman from "Dead End For Delia" by Michael Tighe)

 

(photo of Bonnie Bedelia from"The Quiet Room" by Frank Ockenfels 3)

I'd always wanted a coffee table sized book of the collected set photos to be published contemporaneously with the broadcast of the show, but alas it was not to be. A book of the teleplays published by Grove Press still lurks around in the remainder bins of the vast internet bookstore, and contains a small sampling of the photos as an inset, but not in a size or quality to do them justice. I'll try to scan and share a few more of them here in the future!

Enjoy!

william

 
  

Vernacular Photos #3

 

Every picture tells a story. 

Each person's life is special in its own way. 

The digital age has made the capture and storage of media ubiquitous, but there is something about vernacular photography that feels distinctly analog - not just the nostalgia of kodachrome film or the square format, but something else more ephemeral or intangible, a sixth sense that the emulsion has captured not just the image, but a hint of the narrative as well.

william