Hello,
As I said on my post of 07/17/2008 some of my first pictures, and my first “anthropological” pictures, were of Gypsies in the Brussels suburbs where my parents lived. Those pictures were taken with a Leica F III with an Elmar 3.5 lens. A wonderful camera, but what I miss most is the focusing lever, that allowed you to preset your distance and with experience have very little focusing to do.Then some “genius” came up with the idea of a focusing ring. Previous to the Leica I had taken some landscape pictures with my father´s Rolleyflex. Somehow around the Leica period I got to like jazz music. I still do, especially the period starting in 1941 at Minton´s Playhouse in Harlem where, under the influence of Coleman Hawkin´s playing, Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Christian and others gave jazz a new form that came to be known as bebop. The apogee came, at least to me, in the fifties, best ilustrated, perhaps, by the works of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. It lasted into the sixties when it morphed into soul (some great soul music, by the way). But I was talking about photography, wasn´t I? So I started photgraphing jazz musicians giving concerts in Brussels: Coleman Hawkins, Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, Dizzy, Miles Davis etc. The most emotional moment was in a night club after a concert when Bud Powell, completely doped, gave a marvelous version of Round about Midnight. Everybody had tears in their eyes. I never heard something that beautiful and emotional. Then I did a first and last experiment at spelunking, and the Leica found its way into the center of the Earth. My next camera was a Canonflex, the first Canon SLR I believe. A very interesting concept, but that will be for another day.
Jacques
February 25th, 2009 at 8:16 am Love to see the Brussels photos if you have them scanned.
March 11th, 2009 at 6:29 pm Matt, Sorry to be late in responding. Still learning how this blog works. I have the Brussels photos scanned with the discontinued amateur Olympus scanner, full of scratches. Maybe at a small resolution the scratches won´t show. I plan to introduce photographs in my blog as soon as I am satisfied with the workings of my website, which is in permanent construction. Yes, you will see the Gypsies some day, the jazz musicians too (Miles, Dizzy, Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Stitt etc). And yes, I think I remember having a picture of Bud Powell playing Round about Midnight, if I can locate the negative. I cannot do it right now, as I have much Photoshop work to do for my website, where I badly need to place new images. And I will soon be going on a trip, at least until the end of April. So please, be patient. Jacques