Russian-born Nina Leen was one of the first female photographers to shoot for LIFE magazine, which, fortunately for us, means there’s a ton of her work available on the Google LIFE photo archives. While mostly known for her work with animals (including a dog named Lucky that she adopted and apparently put hats on), it’s Leen’s photographs of women that I find most fascinating. Admittedly, to some extent the period of time in which she was working for LIFE — the late 40s through the 1950s — dictated that bizarre style of “it’s totally not posed, I swear, I just stand this awkwardly and grin with a box of kitchen supplies all the time, not to mention we are all white and very happy all the time” photography. (The original “woman laughing alone with salad?”)
But when juxtaposed with her more candid shots (a girl falling down at a skating rink, a woman on the phone in an office, women trying on shoes, cleaning their living rooms, browsing stores) they provide a surprising amount of insight into the expectations versus reality of being a young woman in that era. Exposé photoessays on the work of housewives or of young working girls (like we know from Mad Men, most of them are either secretaries or models) ran in contrast to Upper East Side socialites walking their dogs or glamorous women in evening gowns posed like mannequins. Intentionally or otherwise, her work as a whole provides an interesting study on idealized femininity and the public versus private lives of women and the world, separate from that of men, in which they were forced to exist.
More photos after the jump.
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I can’t get over the absolute goldmine that is Self Service’s new online archive — I think I saved half a dozen images from every issue posted to my hard drive and Pinterest today. I wish I could take all my damn outfit photos on a disposable camera, complete with date stamp and requisite lens-viewfinder parallax-induced decapitation due to double lens reflex. Also maybe I need to wear only one hoop earring and frosted lipstick at all times from here on out, yes? I swear that photo above just suddenly made me get the whole Chloe Sevigny thing for basically the first time ever.
Most of it just speaks for itself — more after the jump, but it’s totally worth dedicating an hour to browse the whole collection as well.
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Loving basically everything about this ed from, of all places, Stylecaster by photographer Bon Duke — the makeup! (green eyeshadow in the inner corners?! THOSE EYEBROWS!) the hair! the layers and the mix of 90s punk tomboy streetwear and then the slick red, black, white, and leopard! all that stuff from Bess, I will never get tired of stylists putting something from Bess into every shoot they do! the heavy-handed cross-process filter, everything, everything blue and yellow all of the time! Jumping around in Chinatown! Unnecessary headphones in shots in case we didn’t get that it was “edgy” even though it’s really just product placement! All that Givenchy! $19,821 outfits that I can recreate with pocket change on St Marks! All of these things! I like all of these things! Rest after the jump.
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You know, just when I go blogging about how I’m so tired of Hedi Slimane style photos and of studs on everything for the past three years, these show up, and I have to eat my words. [from Hedi Slimane diary via CBD]
More after the jump.
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How wonderful are these photos of Brooklyn in the summer of 1974, from photographer Danny Lyon? For the unacquainted, as always: Lyon, along somewhat more widely acclaimed contemporaries Mary Ellen Mark, Robert Frank, and Larry Clark, was among the photojournalists known for their focus on imperfect reality and on the photographers’ involvement with their subjects’ lives, rather than striving for well-composed, technically perfect images from a physical and emotional distance.
Lyon’s deliberate choice to embrace imperfections — most of these photos are ill-exposed, crooked, blurred, or interrupted by a too-close body or object — belies his empathetic intent: the heat and energy and constant buzz of the city comes through here in ways that “better” photographs don’t permit. The images here call to mind Helen Levitt, Walker Evans, and a grittier, less “fashionable” version of Bruce Davidson’s Brooklyn Gang. Also: restraining myself from gushing again about the warmth and grain and depth of fields of old film photography but that horse has been dead for ages so I’m only going to passive aggressively mention it in passing (o see what i did thar?)
Plenty more of these after the jump, but also worth noting are Lyon’s images of Chicago motorcycle gangs in The Bikeriders, which put LIFE magazine’s documentation of motorcycle gangs sorely to shame.
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