Second Band volume coming from Elliott Landy

Almost exactly nine years ago I wrote about Elliott Landy's Kickstarter project to produce a book of his photographs of The Band, that bunch of Candian musicans who also,famously, backed Bob Dylan for a while. [Read the original post.]

That volume contained 200 photos chosen from the thousands that Elliott shot while in their company. Choosing a set is a difficult task, and lots of great shots are always left behind. So he has decided that it's time for a Volume Two! And he makes these pages because Elliott Landy included infrared film in his toolkit and, just as there were some IR shots in the first book, there will be some infrared images in the new one; shot using 35mm Infrared Ektachrome.

Here's one of the infrared images from the first book to whet your appetite ...

You should visit the Kickstarter page of course, and decide whether you want to join in.

Richard Mosse - Incoming

Having produced some highly successful images using medium-format false-colour infrared film, Richard Mosse turned his hand to thermal imaging. Taking artistic thermal images is difficult. This is partly any equipment capable of producing images with anything like a pleasing resolution is extremely expensive and often militarily sensitive, but the way objects give off thermal wavelengths can appear to be unpredictable and somewhat messy.

In recent years, thermal cameras have appeared with resolutions comparable with HD TV, and the BBC Natural History Unit shot some fascinating night-time sequences with such a camera. I'm sure military applications have achieved even higher resolution.

Richard Mosse's book 'Incoming', published last year (and apologies for being slow to pick up on this) ventures into military territory with a combination of high resolution and a very long lens. The military have used long lenses with near-infrared photography since the second world war, making use of NIR's capability to cut through haze over long distances, over 100 miles under the right conditions. Such photos were taken with the equivalent of a telescope as the lens. (There are examples of long distance infrared photos taken using astronomical telescopes, notably at Lick Observatory in the early 1920s.) Now thermal imaging technology allows hyper-long-distance shots using far-infrared radiation, and Richard Mosse got his hands on such a device, with the intention of shooting a movie illustrating the plight of refugees. The results are, in turn, illustrated in the 'Incoming' book.

With this level of detail, and a straight monochromatic palette, the results are a surreal version of conventional photography; just slightly out of phase with our usual perception. The down-side is that the camera, with its power-pack, weighed about the same as a person and was mounted in a Steadicam designed for 'old fashioned' 35mm movies. Even then, it lacked anything like conventional controls and had to be operated using an X-Box controller.

Some of the shots are from a great distance, and exhibit extreme telephoto effects. Some are much more naturalistic, with the high resolution exposing folds of clothing and perspiration on skin. Some are tight crops. Some, in the book, may not be true thermal images. Can you take a thermal image of the moon? I'm not sure, but to be honest in this context I don't care. This camera is designed for remote surveillance and is described as allowing us "to see the way missiles see" so it may even be a hybrid.

Incoming's form factor is also unusual. It's around 7-inches square, over an inch thick, with black edges. Everything is full-bleed with a prevalence of black, and the ink has both a metallic sheen and a slightly oily smell. You don't so much read it as become immersed in it. Almost all pages are images, with two essays at the end one entitles "Biopolitics and the rights of man", byGiorgio Agamben, the other by Mosse himself documenting the process he and his team undertook.

More info can be found on the Mack web site, from which you can order the book as well.

Incoming by Richard Mosse
Published by Mack
576 pages
280 tritone plates
17.5 cm x 19.7 cm
€40.00 £35.00 $45.00

From Wimbledon to the remote Pacific

Two online news stories caught my eye recently.

The BBC web site has a short video montage showing photographs taken by Belgian photographer Sanne de Wilde on the Pacific island of Pingelap. This island is notable because a disproportionate number of the inhabitants are totally colour blind, a condition called achromatopsia. They basically have no functioning cones in their eyes. The cones are what provide us with detailed colour vision, while the rods are more sensitive but only register brightness and at a lower resolution. Our brains combine the two and while we think we see everything in sharp colour, this is not actually the case and only the centre of our vision is actually sharp and colourful. There is another difference between the two parts of our vision, which is that we process the rod images faster than the cone ones. The result of this is that if you look at a bank of TV screens, all showing the same programme, and watch for cuts between shots the screens you are not looking at will seem to cut first.

The colour blindness on Pingelap results from a genetic bottleneck, when most of the population were killed by a tsunami in the 18th century. One of the survivors happened to have the colour blindness and since the population was so small the genetic defect became more prevalent. Neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote about the island in his 1997 book The Island of the Colorblind.

Sanne de Wilde has also produced a book with this title but in her case she has uses faux-colour infrared photography as a way of looking at the islanders' condition and has produced some striking images. A 10 minute film was also shown at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival and a book is available (which has a UV-sensitive cover!). Check out the web site at www.sannedewilde.com and those of the book's publishers, Kehrer Verlag and Uitgeverij Kanibaal.

You probably know that Wimbledon fortnight has just finished and, with it, the 2017 tennis championships. The Guardian's sports photographer, Tom Jenkins, decided to take some faux-colour infrared shots at the championships and you can see the results on this web page. My only niggle is that whoever wrote the captions is confused between near-infrared and thermal imaging because these photographs are not thermal images and do not show heat. Nevertheless they are fascinating, partly because Tom has sometimes used selective focus to increase the otherworldliness of the scenes, making them take on the appearance of models.

Unseen book launch in London on Thursday

Ed Thompson's fascinating book, The Unseen, which I recently wrote up, is being launched this week. Unusually, the do is an open house and might provide an opportunity for an infrared get-together ... I certainly plan to go.

The place is the Photographers Gallery Bookshop, 16-18 Ramillies St, London W1F 7LW. You might know this as that street with steps at the end leading down from Oxford Street. Timing is between 1800 and 2000 on Thursday 27th October. Ed says ...

"I will be holding a free raffle and giving away prints, original spreads from the book when it was printed and other cool rare stuff to do with the project."

Coincidentally, last time I went to the Photographers Gallery was to see some of Richard Mosse's infrareds from the Congo ... but in that case the book was unobtainable.

Edward Thompson: The Unseen

This hardback book isn't your usual photographic monograph. For a start it's just over 260 pages long and then every image is taken using some of the last-remaining rolls of Kodak's colour infrared film. As the back-cover blurb says, this is the swan song of a particular kind of film, and of the particular kinds of images it was destined to take.

Ed Thompson is a documentary photographer, and for the past few years he has been exploring his photographic fascination with the different view of the world that this film provides. He has chosen some of the hundreds of potential applications to produce a series of smaller projects which, taken together, make up this book. Superficially, this may lead you into thinking that the book is disjointed, jumping between anatomical specimens, dystopian landscapes, portraits, an operating theatre, the sky at night and even images of paintings. Follow the interstitial text, however, and it will become clear.

The photographs look beneath the surface of the subjects, in some cases literally (that is, the medical poses and an Icelandic glacier). Infrared photography, both monochromatic and false-colour, has been used for remote sensing of plant health in agriculture, haze-penetration, imaging veins and other things just below the skin, and layers of artworks below their 'skin'. Whereas once infrared was thought of as a branch of astronomy - the 'new astronomy' as it was called - now it dominates the field. Ed's astronomical photographs are perhaps the weakest in the set but they deserve to be included ... and the Orion Nebula always amazes.

I think the book is called an atlas because the twelve chapters document an exploration, although you will find no diagrams showing oceans and mountains. You may, however, find a dragon or two, in the shape of photographs from the dead zone surrounding the Chernobyl power station. For me, these are the most poignant images: using one form of radiation that we can't see to suggest the other, more dangerous, invisible radiation all around.

If I have a technical quibble, it's that building a book from images where the predominant tone is saturated red is a printer's nightmare. Print lives in the land of CMYK, not RGB. I started off thinking some of the images were a bit dull, but they actually need quite a lot of light to bring them to life. Persevere, and you will be rewarded.

I've collected quite a few books of infrared photography and The Unseen is part of a tiny group specialising in false-colour infrared. It definitely deserves its place in a photographic library and in the history of the medium: whatever your reason for liking infrared photography, there will be images here to amaze you.

The Unseen: Atlas of Infrared Plates by Edward Thompson
Published by Schilt Publishing, Amsterdam
266 pages
ISBN 9789053308639
€45

Ed Thompson Kickstarts Book

Ed Thompson is running a Kickstarter campaign (is that what you call them?) for his book 'The Unseen'. If you're interested in Ed's thoughtful takes on false-colour infrared photography then you should have a look.

It's highly unlikely anyone will produce any more colour infrared film, so there's something rather wistful about looking through this book, knowing that the images represent the last ones to be captured using this idiosyncratic stock. It started life during the second world war as a means of detecting camouflage and was used extensively for remote sensing and medical photography. The Unseen takes a sideways look at the historic uses for the film with subjects like Chernobyl, bees and even a haunted village (Simon Marsden would have been proud).

The book is expected in June. My full disclosure is that I've helped Ed in a small way with some of the text.

URL: www.kickstarter.com/projects/1092524383/the-unseen-an-atlas-of-infrared-plates

Laurie Klein Artistic Techniques Book

Following on rapidly from her excellent book Photographing the Female Form with Digital Infrared, Laurie Klein has joined forces with her son Kyle for a more general coverage of infrared photography.

Basically (and simplifying somewhat) Kyle discusses the subject from a technical perspective while Laurie discusses the art and technique. As I noted in the review for Female Form, Laurie studied with Ansel Adams and his fingerprints can occasionally be found in her work. This book even mentions the Zone system, in the context of using the camera's histogram display. For infrared photography, where the captured images often have a restricted palette, the histogram is even more useful than in conventional photography.

There's a lot to glean from this book. Personally I find more to learn in Laurie's contributions but that's not to denigrate what Kyle wrote, just where I'm coming from with my research into the subject. What I really like is that post-processing, which is undoubtedly an essential part of digital IR, is placed in a reasonable perspective. The book leads you through the workflow of making the image with the camera and then adjusting it to match the vision. I'm particularly interested in the section on emulating the old Kodak film halation and will be exploring that before long.

Infrared Photography: Artistic Techniques for Brilliant Images by Laurie Klein and Kyle Klein is published at $37.95 by Amherst Media. I note that Amherst have really upped their game with the printing in their recent books: no complaints on that score. The format fits the usual Amherst US-Letter size, perfect bound.

I've also been sent a copy of Karen Dórame's Mastering Infrared Photography by Amherst, which I'll be looking at before long.

New Books for a New Year

I've been notified of three photographic books that may be of interest, coming out over the next few weeks (or May in one case).

Ed Thompson's The Unseen: An Atlas of Infrared Plates has a May 2016 publication date from Schilt Publishing and a cost of €45. More information on their web site.

I love the idea that this is somehow an old-fashioned atlas of hitherto unknown territory ... down the spectrum with gun and camera (without the gun) in the manner of a Victorian explorer. One thing I would take issue with is the publisher's quote that "Thompson has created a swan song to the medium of infrared photography" since the technique is alive and well. What this is a swan song to is infrared film of course, and especially the false-colour infrared film that Kodak used to produce, and of which Ed is an accomplished exponent.

I've mentioned Laurie Klein, and her book Photographing the Female Form with Digital Infrared, before. Her follow-up is almost with us, co-written with her son Kyle Klein, and published by Amherst on January 12th 2016 at $37.95 (list).

I haven't seen the book on paper as yet, but there's a comprehensive preview on Amazon and it will also be available from other stores who stock Amherst's books..

Finally, a quick note to say that Elliott Landy's Kickstarted book of The Band Photographs (Big Pink etc) is now available in various enhanced formats from his web site ... and going fast ... (there's a preview there as well as on Amazon) and from book stores. Prices range from $45 to $500 and Elliott's web site is offering the first edition print of the book. I mention this because, although they are in a minority, there is a section of infrared photos amongst this set. I wrote more about this almost exactly a year ago.

More on Ed Thompson 'Unseen'

I made it over to Bethnal Green yesterday to see Ed Thompson's 'Unseen' exhibition and, as I expected, found the images fascinating. There are only two days left but I do recommend that you get over to the Four Corners Gallery if you can. Ed very kindly gave me a print, and we chatted. I was impressed that he made such good use of this difficult film stock ... even more so since he found that he didn't need to bracket.

One thing that struck me was the silvery skin tone in the Vein series. I've been trying to figure out what might cause it: the illumination was flash and the images are almost always straight what was recorded on the film. I'll leave you with my favourite out of the Vein shots and a final note that Ed plans a book sometime soon. Details yet to be announced.

Photographing the Female Form with Digital Infrared

It's been a while since Amherst Media published a slew of infrared photography books, including Joe Paduano's seminal The Art of Infrared Photography. Those are still in their catalogue, now joined by a fascinating book from Laurie Klein [Laurie's web site] with one of those 'exactly what it says on the tin' titles.

Near infrared light penetrates skin to a depth of a few millimetres. This tends to give skin a milky appearance as you're not seeing the surface (some moral there perhaps) but can also show up veins and make some marks, especially tattoos, stand out starkly. There can also be a spooky effect on eyes, making them look like dark pools. So combining infrared photography and skin can be 'interesting'.

Laurie Klein studied with Ansel Adams and spent some of her professional life as a landscape photographer, moving on to people and weddings. Her approach to people photography brings an appreciation of landscape; both the person in the landscape and the person as landscape. Almost all the images in the book are taken with a modified DSLR and shown in black and white. There is one example of 'good old' HIE 35mm film, which doesn't stand out as being that different from the digital shots, and one faux-colour shot ... of a woman in a wine-dark river ... which definitely benefits from the splash of colour. The models are all (or look to be) white; so my only wish would be to have seen what Laurie could do with darker skin tones. Having said that, the tonal differences at infrared wavelengths are not as pronounced as they are in visible light. In Laurie's photos, one interesting effect of the infrared is that the models' nipples render white as well. It's a very alabaster and sculptural look.

Incidentally I am impressed with the quality of the printing. In the past I have sometimes found Amherst's infrared images to be over-contrasty, but not here.

Alongside the photographs, Laurie explains how and why she posed the models as she did, and includes alternative 'takes' from the session. The train of thought is interesting, sometimes making me see the landscape photographer within being able to move those mountains to get the shot required. Here are nudes, props and landscape ... especially rocks and foliage ... arranged to taste.

As I said, it's a fascinating book, with lessons for all photographers and for any subject, and Laurie exploits the artistic possibilities of infrared light brilliantly.

[$27.95, 7.5x10 inches, 128 pages 180 photographs
ISBN-13: 978-1-60895-719-4]

Elliott Landy's Band photobook includes infrared shots

You may recall photographer Elliott Landy and the iconic colour infrared photograph of his, showing Bob Dylan, that was included in the Infrared 100 exhibition.

Elliott has a distinguished portfolio of music-related material and has recently decided to pull together the best shots he took of The Band to produce a fine art photo book that he is funding via KickStarter. Actually I should say 'has funded' as he finally raised $193,626.

I was a much younger person when I shelled out pocket money for a copy of Rag Mama Rag by the Band. They were Canadians who famously accompanied Dylan on the Basement Tapes and then became a key recording act in their own right. Their roots approach to music was matched by their image, and this was captured by Landy on over eight thousand frames of film. Only about 30 ever got widely published, some as album covers and posters, and he considers this his best body of work. His relationship with the band is rare for a photographer. The only other notable long-term collaboration I can recall is U2 and Anton Corbijn.

The music occupied a hinterland between rock, country and folk; bringing an acoustic sound that became synonymous with Woodstock in up-state New York. For such a small place it has managed to carve a deep furrow in American musical history, and Vanity Fair calls Landy "the ultimate keeper of the Woodstock flame".

This photo of Levon Helm is one of the infrared shots (Kodak E4 stock in this case) which are included in the set. As with the Dylan shot, Landy didn't use infrared to exploit its characteristics (something I'm often guilty of) but more for what it could bring to the image.

This is the KickStarter page ... now reached its target ... and this is Elliott Landy's own web site, which you can explore for more of his images.

[Amended 30 Jan 2014 to give final Kickstarter figure.]

Russia: A World Apart (Simon Marsden and Duncan McLaren)

It's very sad that Simon Marsden's refrigerated and dwindling stock of Kodak HIE outlasted him. He was, to my mind, the finest and most consistent user of that idiosyncratic film stock with its haloed highlights and exaggerated grain. That's not to understate his abilities in the darkroom, but it's the classic HIE look that I will remember him by.

With its distinctive look, many people have thought of infrared film as showing something supernatural. When he loaned us a print of Moydrum Castle for the Infrared 100 exhibition, Simon wrote to me saying ...

The goal of my work has essentially always been the same: to demonstrate that magic is real or that reality is magic. I have used infrared film for its ethereal quality, day is turned into night and nothing in this twilight world is quite as it seems. The unusual texture of the film's grain produces a timeless feature that lies somewhere between an etching and a photograph.

The trail that began with ruined Irish castles has finished with an eerie collection of Russian landscapes in the book Russia: A World Apart. Some are unkempt ruins, which always lend themselves to the increased contrast that infrared brings. I sometimes think that our ruins here in England are too neat: should a derelict monastery be set in manicured grounds? Not all the places visited are ruined: the Winter Palace in St Petersberg is not, but stands under a brooding cloudy sky while the sun fails to break out from behind the Alexander Column. Backlighting is another hallmark of much of Simon's work.

Chernyshev Estate, Yaroplets, Moscow Region

I should not forget the text. Duncan McLaren, who collaborated on those Irish Ruins (indeed he instigated that first project) and a post-USSR venture beyond 'the wall', accompanies the photographs and photographer again. He tells the stories of not only the artefacts' past but often what is happening now; the people he and Simon met on their journey.

Russia: A World Apart is an atmospheric book; in keeping with the best of Simon Marsden's work. Infrared photography is a genre that you either love or just don't get. This book demonstrates one aspect of it at its best.

[Published by Mudds & Stoke at £25 ISBN 978-0-9573795-0-3]

Nikon Owner article on Simon Marsden

The latest issue of Nikon Owner features Simon Marsden and his atmospheric 'ghosthunter' images, often taken using Kodak infrared film. Gray Levett's article The Dark Knight Rises: Sir Simon Marsden is also available as a PDF on the Marsden Archive web site.

Simon's photos are well worth studying if you're into infrared photography. His technique of shooting into the sun with buildings usually silhouetted and haloed as a result is an interesting alternative to the bright foliage we usually strive for. It took me a long time to get what he was doing.

Simon was very helpful with the RPS infrared centenary in 2010 and I am really sorry that we never got the chance to meet.

Simon Weir: Web, book and lecture

I was recently reminded of Simon Weir, whose landscape infrared photos are always worth a look.

He's now used Blurb to produce a book. Blub is one of those online book-production facilities and in this case use Indigo printers (of which I am extremely fond and which we use for our own calendars). There is an online preview of Simon's book, which is called Beyond Visible Light and I recommend using the full-screen preview to check out the photos. Whether you then buy a copy is up to you.

Also, if you're a member of the London Nikon Owners Group, Simon will be talking about his infrared photography, and infrared in general, on Friday evening (27th April) in sunny South Kensington. (More info on their blog.)

Richard Mosse exhibition and book

One of the more popular posts in this blog was the one last May discussing Richard Mosse's medium-format colour infrared reportage shots. The extra resolution brought to what is basically the discontinued infrared Ektachrome by moving from 35mm to larger formats is extraordinary. (I omitted to ask Richard whether he processed the film AR5 or E6 since Kodak admitted there would be a significant difference in saturation.)

If you're in New York you have a chance to see an exhibition of the photos from this project of Richard's, called Infra, at the Aperture Gallery at 547 W. 27th St. (On the 4th floor.) More information here.

Those of us who can't get to W27th Street can make do with the book, published by Aperture with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

The legendary Abe Frajndlich, no slouch when it comes to infrared himself (one of his infrared photos was in the Infrared 100 exhibition), tells me he found the prints on show 'stunning' when he visited an earlier incarnation of this exhibition. As I've said before, good colour film infrared photography is a rare animal, and Richard is a great exponent of this. You should also check out his web site and that of the guy who provides him with his film stock, Dean Bennici who has an amazing collection of colour infrareds on his web site.

Although this time it's not infrared I should also point you at Abe Frajndlich's latest book, which is the culmination of a long-running project to photograph photographers. Check out this from the New York Times and don't forget to click on the article link at the lower right.

Swords, ploughshares and calendars

Chris Lavers' Swords into Ploughshares Science-Art exhibition is at Topsham Library in Devon until November 7th. The blurb says

His theme looks at transfer of military technologies into civilian applications and provides interesting insights into everyday items: from microwave ovens and the Swiss Army knife to Geostationary satellites!

They should add infrared/thermal imaging of course.

If you're looking for an infrared photography calendar for 2011, since I don't produce one, then you should check out Simon Marsden's Haunted Realm and Poetry of the Dark calendars. More information on his web site www.marsdenarchive.com.

I should also mention that Simon will be giving a talk called The Twilight Hour, and promoting his latest book, at Waterstones in Canterbury next Thursday (November 3rd) at 1830. It costs £3 to see him but that is refunded if you buy the book.

Enquiries: 01227 – 456343 or manager@canterbury.waterstones.co.uk

Simon Marsen's Vampires

You are probably aware of Simon Marsden's atmospheric infrared photographs of ruins and other settings with a supernatural ambience. He uses Kodak HIE infrared film, with its characteristic grain and halation, and usually photographs with strong back-light to increase the day-for-night effect.

Simon has just circulated an email about his next book, due to be published in the UK and USA in October, entitled Vampires: The Twilight World and published by Palazzo Editions. I have to say the cover is stunning, and Whitby Abbey is one of those places of which I've always wanted to take an infrared photograph.

Signed copies will be available (signed by Simon I should add ... in case you've been watching too much Twilight) from Simon Marsden’s website from 1st October 2011: www.simonmarsden.co.uk.