Through his lens: A Dallas photographer uses social media to document his cancer battle

Through his lens: A Dallas photographer uses social media to document his cancer battle
This selfie became my first social media post when I let friends know I have Stage 4 esophageal cancer.
It was Sept. 9, 2016, outside Texas Oncology-Baylor Charles A. Sammons Cancer Center, which became my second home.
I'd been having difficulty swallowing on vacation that July and went to a gastrointestinal specialist after getting home. An endoscopy found the tumor.

9/9/2016 — This selfie became my first social media post when I let friends know I have stage 4 esophageal cancer.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

Stage 4 simply means it has already spread. The secondary tumor is in my liver and was the size of my fist. The primary tumor is blocking about half my esophagus at the juncture with the stomach.
Chemotherapy began about a month after the diagnosis, on Sept. 22, 2016.
Along the way I’ve documented on Instagram my days during doctor visits in Dallas and Houston, in waiting rooms, labs, infusion clinic and radiology. A few times I asked others to make a snap.

12/22/16 — What I usually get from [my son] Drew. #nopicturesplease

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

Taking pictures is as much a part of me as it has been since high school. It’s not just my job. It’s an obsession and now so easy with a phone. It serves as an escape and a coping mechanism. Using my phone at arm’s length is very limiting but also challenging.

Late-stage kidney cancer should have killed me. Thanks to these Dallas doctors, I have a chance

9/19/16 — Cancer cells grow faster and show more "heat" than normal. White hot is bad. The circle near the spinal cord is the tumor in my esophagus. The mass at left is in my liver.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

Sharing my images and a bit of my story online just seemed natural in today's instant communication, narcissistic atmosphere. I'll plead guilty to that.
My initial prognosis was not good. I was told that if chemo didn't work, then I'd be kicked into clinical trials. If no strong response followed, then I would have six months to live. The size of the liver tumor made surgery impossible.
I love images, especially the color shot from the endoscopy that shows what’s invisible to the naked eye. It’s fascinating to see what’s inside one’s body. The primary tumor is ugly and beautiful at the same time.
Fast-forward to early December 2017: Being bombarded with four poisons has been really easy and I continue to work most days with only minor side effects.

1/25/18 — Today I'm officially tired. Radiation at 9:15; Meals on Wheels at 10; labs at 10:45; Dr. Paulson at 11:30; chemo at 1:45. Up at 4:33 after 4 hrs 41 minutes of sleep (Fitbit knows) gotta get home for nap.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

Other than fatigue, I can’t complain. I sleep a lot. I put all my weight back on (plus some) within three months, a really good sign. Blood work shows improvement every visit. I feel rather guilty that chemo has been easy given what I’ve read and been told about how debilitating it can be for others.
After nearly two years of chemotherapy, the big bad one in my liver has seen a "complete metabolic response": It's gone.
Today, the primary tumor is still active and I have some swallowing issues but overall I’m doing quite well. Surgery may now be an option to remove it, since the bad boy is gone. It’s a high-risk surgery because of its location, but we’ll see.
The chemo’s working; the battle continues.
Guy Reynolds has been a photographer and photo editor at The Dallas Morning News since 1996. An exhibit of his film-based photography titled "Not Dead Yet, (and neither is film)" will be at the Tammy Cromer Gallery in Dallas, opening Oct. 13. For more information, go to tammycromergallery.com.

Editor’s note: Below are 30 of Guy Reynolds' #cancerchroniclesguy Instagram posts presented in chronological order. You can find him on Instagram @reyguy

9/9/16 -- Contrast material I had to drink for the PET scan.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

9/11/16 — 179 pounds I believe I maxed out at about 230 in Baton Rouge in 1990 or so. I haven't been under 190 since '91. Haven't been under 180 since jr year of college when I was selling my blood plasma in order to buy my next meal.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

9/15/16 — Notes I made during the first consultation with my oncologist. Cancer in two places. Surgery is not an option. Secondary tumor covers 3/4 of the liver. Need to get a port. Begin chemo next week.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

9/19/16 — IV time before port installation procedure. A tad difficult to shoot my ownself so Nancy was pressed into duty.

(Nancy Visser/Staff )

9/19/16 — This one had to be in color. PET scans show the heat profile of cells. Cancer cells grow faster and show more "heat" than normal. White hot is bad. The circle near the spinal cord is the tumor in my esophagus. The mass at left is my liver. The good news is the cancer isn't anywhere else. Chemo begins Thursday. Game on!

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

9/22/16 — Lab work. First order of the day. I have good veins. I even sold my plasma several times in college when I was desperately poor. Now I'm rich beyond my wildest dreams in so many ways.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

9/22/16 — [My wife] Nancy [Visser] the notetaker.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

9/22/16 — Dr. Scott Paulson. My oncologist.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

9/9/16 — I've had a mental illness a whole lot longer than this physical ailment. In 1991 I had my first of many bouts of depression and was diagnosed as bipolar. It's been a struggle to find a balance with different meds and a roller coaster ride isn't easy for me and it's even tougher for Nancy, who has to put up with me and my swings. The point of the image: Cancer may beat me, but depression won't. I refuse to get down about this.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

9/22/16 — Getting hooked up for the first day of chemotherapy.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

9/28/16 — According to Nancy there's a thing known as chemo brain. This may be an example. Put the skillet on the back burner on the range, Canadian bacon piece in, turned it on and went upstairs to wake up Drew only to find the packaging melting on the front burner when I came back down. Or it was just stupidity.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

10/20/16 — Other cancer patients visit and work a jigsaw puzzle in the chemotherapy waiting area.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

11/3/16 —  The results were positive, according to Dr. P. Things are going well for now.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

11/3/16 — Lab work with Carlos again. Door code wrist band. Dr. P said labs were improved again.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

11/3/16 — Irwin visited and brought me Schlotzsky's and a Cinnabon for lunch. Awesome.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

12/1/16 — Another one getting labs done.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

12/12/16 — Getting ready to go to M.D. Anderson for the first time. Cancer is Funny was sent to me by Courtney Perry.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

12/12/16 — Meeting Dr. Ajani at M.D. Anderson in Houston for a second opinion about these pesky tumors in my esophagus and liver. My brain is mush so Nancy does the listening and questioning. Good to have The Rock in the room.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

12/13/16 — PET scanner. 30 minutes on my back moving to and fro in that massive machine with my arms above my head. Had a terrible headache at the start and kept falling asleep during the scan. They had to wake me when it was over and the headache was gone. Karma.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

12/15/16 — Last post from the first trip to Houston and @mdandersoncancercenter to see Jaffer Ajani, the top esophageal cancer doc around. Here we sit Thursday late afternoon in his exam room waiting for the news about what Tuesday's PET scan showed. A while later we were really smiling, not forcing it. The forest is thick and I'm far from being out of the woods but some trees have fallen from my path. Both tumors have shrunk. Big nasty in the liver considerably so. Doc says do four more chemotherapy sessions in Dallas and return for further imaging and he'll present my case to the group to discuss next step. Radiation? Surgery? We'll see.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

12/12/16 — Therapy dog in the chemotherapy waiting room.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

1/19/17 — Elvis has left the elevator. Time for chemotherapy #9. 16-mile bike ride this morning. Trying to get more regular exercise to combat the fatigue that follows the infusion of poisons.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

1/19/17 — Ugh. This thing takes hours. Now I wish I'd declined to be in the study but hopefully some good will come of it.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

1/19/17 — That bike ride did me some good. Wyatt McSpadden told me the key to cancer fighting is chilling and I'm so chill I oughta be asleep with a BP this low. Lisinopril helps too.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

3/24/17 — Now just doing one poison for 90 minutes instead of 4 for 4 hours. Now if those mail-order pills will just get here I can get on a much easier regimen. I was really hoping to lose my hair so I'd have an excuse for the burgeoning bald spot. Oh well.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

3/28/17 — Capecitabine tablets arrived yesterday when I'd gone home to leave a note on the door for Mallory to call when he was in the neighborhood. I can get home in about 8 minutes and the package had to be signed for. Why? Because a 2-week supply costs $3,800. That's right. And if the pkg is stolen off the porch I owe for it. How can 84 pills cost that much? I'm taking six a day for two weeks and then a week off with the next infusion at the end. So every three weeks instead of every other will be better. If I tolerate the side effects of the pills. They're replacing the 5-FU pump I have been wearing for 46 hours after each treatment.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

4/14/17 — Waiting for a chest X-ray before chemotherapy. I'm tired. Always it seems. Hoping to get through this pill side effects issue and continue on them since it makes the infusions less frequent and no pump to wear afterward. Back on the pills for a week so we'll see soon enough.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

1/26/18 — Last of 15 radiology appointments today. I surprised Ramona and Rob, the super zapping duo, with a big smile. Courtney Perry suggested I draw a smiley face when she saw a previous post showing the alignment tattoos. The little dot in the center of the nose is permanent. The rest I did this morning. I know it's pretty bad because my great artist son wouldn't do it for me.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

1/30/18 — The last dose of capecitabine a.k.a. Xeloda (oral poison) for this week. I take six a day for seven days beginning the day of chemotherapy infusion. Then two weeks without. Then do it again. I will likely do chemo until I die. They don't think I'll ever be cancer-free. Living the dream.

(Guy Reynolds/Staff Photographer)

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Jessie Casson's photography shows Kiwi teens then, and now

Emma Page   Sep 30 2018

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Jessie Casson

In 2004, photographer Jessie Casson was travelling the world and taking portrait shots of teenagers she randomly met. New Zealand was supposed to be a stopover, but she stayed. Almost 15 years (and three kids) later, she's still here, the teenagers she shot are adults and she's made a documentary about them.

 

On a Thursday evening earlier this month, photographer Jessie Casson held an informal launch party for her new documentary What Becomes of Me at the open plan office space she shares with fellow creatives in Auckland's Grey Lynn. We meet there early on the morning of the party, the white-walled space productively humming.

She makes us tea in the communal kitchen, giving the almond milk from the fridge a sniff before pouring it into the mugs. She is talking about buying bubbles for tonight's party, a celebration with friends and family that she is playfully calling "an almost red carpet event".

Her three children – Dylan, Otis and Iris aged 12, 8 and 6 respectively – are coming. They have all been intrigued by the project – Otis asked about it every night before bed.

Jessie Casson

"Alice was a really sweet, quite naive girl with lots of ambition. She hoped to run and own dairy farms. I met her in Glenorchy at a bar and arranged to photograph her at dawn the next day. I would never have imagined that she’d get into heroin. In fact, she was already into heroin at this point, at 18. She was trying to get off, that’s why she was in Glenorchy."

"You kind of want to celebrate and share these things with your family," she says, her subtle English accent rounding out the vowels.

"Because they don't happen very often."

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Casson is known for her distinct dynamic and honest portrait style. Her work, colourful and compelling, appears in publications around the globe and her portfolio is an album of some of our most well-known faces including Sir Ed, Karen Walker, Anika Moa and Buck Shelford. A portrait, she says, is all about relationship and she always wants to hear people's stories.

Jessie Casson

"Alice has had a huge amount thrown at her over the past 15 years. A drug addiction, breast cancer at 27. She has a 10-year-old son who lives with her half the time. I could have made the whole doco about her. She’s phenomenal."

"If the person doesn't feel comfortable and is not willing to give you themselves, then it's not going to be a good shot."

This kind of rapport is the backbone of What Becomes of Me, a short and moving documentary, made in association with The Wireless and freely available to view online. For just over nine minutes, the camera follows Casson as she tracks down and reconnects with four New Zealanders she photographed nearly 15 years ago while holidaying in Aotearoa.

It was 2004, Casson was 27 years old and partway through a year-long, round-the-world honeymoon with her husband, Matt Hockey. The four documentary subjects – Alice, John, Matt, and Shane – were freshfaced teenagers she had randomly met. Casson had an established and burgeoning photography career in London and was using the backpacking trip as a vehicle for a personal series she named The Teenage Project. While travelling, through North, Central and South America from Mexico down to Argentina and then on to New Zealand, she would spot young people of interest, approach them and ask to take their picture. It was, she says, like going hunting.

"It felt like hunting… I would say to Matt, 'We probably should go and shoot a teenager.' We'd just walk around and see someone and I'd go, 'I reckon they might be quite good'."

Jessie Casson

"It must have been a Sunday. John was 19 and he was standing outside a church in Ponsonby. He wanted to be a minister – that was his dream."

Her opening line?

"I've got a slightly strange request."

Intrigued and perhaps disarmed by her open, honest manner, everyone she asked said yes – the four New Zealanders and 29 other young people dotted across the Americas. What followed was an intense interaction usually lasting no longer than an hour. Casson, who can speak and understand basic Spanish, would ask the teenager a set of nine questions, always the same ones, delving into their future hopes and dreams – "big life-changing questions which young people are much better at answering than adults".

Jessie Casson

"When I came back to try and find John again, all I had was the church. I sent the reverend there a photograph and he said, ‘Yes, he still comes to church with his family.’ John has three children now. He’s had a very serious accident where he fell off the back of a truck – he had a 50 per cent chance of survival. He feels very lucky to still be alive."

She recorded their answers on a dictaphone, later transcribing the answers by hand, answers she still has safely stored in her home office alongside the negatives of the portraits she shot on her hefty Hasselblad, medium-format camera. It was before the digital revolution and the heavy camera needed a tripod and lighting gear. She got 12 shots per roll of film and only ever shot two rolls per person. Each shot counted. She would then befriend fellow British tourists, and if she trusted them, give them the film, the only copy of her work, to take back to the UK, where it went to a lab for developing.

"I didn't see the pictures until eight months later," she explains.

"All of them at once. That's like Christmas."

Jessie Casson

"I met Shane on Waipu Cove beach. We were stopping at a campground and he was fishing on the beach. (He still remembers that he didn’t catch anything.) He was 18. He admitted that he was stoned when I first met him."

Now, nearly a decade and a half later, the resulting doco where she meets the four New Zealand subjects again and – literally dusting off the Hasselblad – retakes their portrait, is a moving reflection on how youthful aspirations survive the often perilous journey into adulthood. The still images are spectacular: two side-by-side photographs, encapsulating a then and now moment, taken on the same camera in the same style with only the march of time between them.

The documentary has been well received and next year Casson plans to repeat the process, only on a much grander scale. In September 2019, she will pack up the Hasselblad and along with Matt and the kids board a plane to Mexico where they will spend four months retracing their 15-year-old steps in search of the 29 teenagers, all now in their 30s. So far she has tracked down five of them.

"I always said, 'We'll go back and find these people'."

Jessie Casson

"Shane also revealed that he was stoned during the second shoot,15 years later, in Whangarei. He seems like someone still waiting to find his way.”

Adventurous and always ready with a self-made project, Casson is not so intrepid that she can completely override the internal voices of doubt, the "what if this happens" on repeat, related to taking young children on such a trip.

"There is part of me that is terrified," she admits.

But she believes the memories and the experience will make it worthwhile.

"And the other voice in my head goes, 'It will be fine, it will be absolutely fine.'"

Jessie Casson

“Matt was skateboarding in Wanaka. When I met him 15 years later he had a photo of me and Matt (my husband) that he’d taken himself."

Casson grew up in North East England "in the middle of nowhere". Her mother was a yoga teacher, her father a consultant and an enthusiastic amateur photographer who had a darkroom. Casson got her first pinhole camera when she was 9. She loved it immediately. There was no television in the house, play was outside and they ate a vegetarian diet. She felt different to everyone else.

"I do wonder if having to find a way to deal with difference is what gives me the strength to go out and just pursue my own ideas regardless. If I believe in it, then it's going to work."

She laughs, letting the next sentence hang happily incomplete in the air: "Sometimes they don't work but…"

Jessie Casson

"Matt's led quite a privileged life and he recognises that. He’s had emotional and financial support which maybe some of the others haven’t. He’s a pilot who flies for Air New Zealand; he’s married. I think his journey has been less rebellious than I thought it would be.”

These days Auckland is home. She never did complete that round-the-world honeymoon. The plan stalled in New Zealand back in 2004 when the newlyweds fell for both the landscape – "the South Island is like Scotland on steroids" – and the friendly, open people who inhabit it. They bought a car for $500, drove around, liked what they saw, applied for residency and, helped along by the fact that Hockey, a commercial leasing agent, worked in an occupation that featured on the skill shortage list, got it and never left.

"We weren't ready to go home", says Casson.

"We wanted to carry on our adventure and the more I live here the more I think we've hit the jackpot."

These Amazing Photos, On Display At The Freer/Sackler, Tell The Story Of A Dramatic Century In Japan

by Pat Padua in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 28, 2018 11:53 am

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"Yokosuka, Kanagawa" by Tomatsu Shomei (Image courtesy of Freer/Sackler)

 

The period from around 1860-1960 was pivotal in Japan's history; it was a time of civil war, new technology and the influence of Western values, a major earthquake, and nuclear devastation. The effect of this volatile timeline can be seen gradually, but dramatically, in the photography and prints created during that era, in a pair of exhibitions at the Freer/Sackler galleries.
For Japan Modern: Photography from the Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck Collection, Carol Huh, associate curator of contemporary Asian art at the Freer/Sackler, chose some 80 images from a collection of 400 photos acquired in late 2017. These selections are a concise and eye-opening crash course in the development of Japanese photography.
Katz and Huyck's love of photography comes from their shared cinematic sensibilities. The two co-wrote the screenplay for American Graffiti with George Lucas and directed the low-budget horror film Messiah of Evil. In Views of Japan, their book about their collection, they write about visiting director Akira Kurosawa on the set of his late-career film Kagemusha: "Passing through shabby industrial towns, we wondered how Kurosawa could shoot a 16th century samurai epic in what resembled a dreary day in Jersey City."
That tension between the traditional landscape and drab modernity fueled their eye as collectors. Assembled chronologically, the exhibit begins with soft-focus landscapes that reflect a perhaps deceptively smooth transition from conventional, traditional Japanese art.
But with the advent of vest-pocket cameras and the growth of camera clubs in turn-of-the-20th century Japan, the visual aesthetic developed into a raw documentary form that chronicled the horrors of Nagasaki. By the 1950s, street photographers such as Tomatsu Shomei observed the increasing influence of the West.
Huh notes that the Katz and Huyck collection features images of iconic Mount Fuji that are a far cry from the way it's traditionally presented. This symbol of Japan appears several times—and in very different iterations—across the two companion exhibitions in the galleries. The images serve as a good jumping off point for exploring traditional Japanese printmaking, the rise of photography, and the sometimes conflicted relationship between the two.
Two smaller galleries house the exhibition, Japan Modern: Prints in the Age of Photography. While works in this collection may seem closer to the traditional pictorial works we are accustomed to from Japan, these artists were also responding to technology and photography. For example, Kawase Hasui's 1926 print "Shin-Ohashi" recalls Edward Steichen's 1904 image of New York's Flatiron Building.
Frank Feltens, the Japan Foundation assistant curator of Japanese art, remarks that the Washington area is a particularly apt location in which to explore the relationship between Japan and the West. It was from ports in Norfolk, Virginia, that Commodore Matthew Perry set sail, bound for Edo Bay in 1853 to persuade the Japanese government into opening their ports for international trade, "which played its part in instigating Japan's modernity," says Feltens.
Photography ultimately put an end to the nation's print industry. But as Feltens explains, Japanese print artists took one of two paths in their attempt to keep the medium alive. Much as Washington's souvenir vendors cater to the local tourist trade, some Japanese print makers leaned into a romanticized vision of their nation that was marketed for visitors from the West. On the other hand, artists embraced what Feltens calls an "artistic immediacy," working from design to inking to printing on boldly colored and increasingly abstract compositions that were a stark departure from traditional printmaking.
The conflict between tradition and modernity is one of the great themes of art in any medium. Through photography and print-making, these two exhibits scratch the surface of a fraught cultural divide—with beautiful and enduring results.
Japan Modern: Photography from the Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck Collection and Japan Modern: Prints in the Age of Photography are on view from September 29, 2018-January 21, 2019 at the Freer/Sackler.

Never had it so good: Film printing in the digital age

Sponsored by Intrepid Camera Co.

Brighton-based camera manufacturer Intrepid Camera Co. has teamed up with British Journal of Photography to launch the Intrepid Enlarger. The Kickstarter campaign for the new Intrepid Enlarger will go live for 30 days beginning 04 October at the opening of the Intrepid Film Photography Awards pop-up exhibition.
This editorial explores the changing attitudes towards analogue camera equipment and reveals why Maxim Grew, founder of Intrepid, felt now was the right time to release the enlarger.
In Greek mythology, the word nostos refers to the homecoming of an epic war hero: think of Homer journeying back from Troy by sea or Odysseus’ return to Ithaca. In 1688, Swiss medical student Johannes Hofer combined nostos with algos, the Greek word for pain, to describe symptoms such as fainting or pining, which were prevalent in Swiss mercenaries returning from battle. In doing so, the word nostalgia was born.
Fast forward half a millennium and nostalgia is no longer used to delineate a medical disease, but rather to describe a sentimental longing or yearning for something past. A quick Google of the word today brings up a plethora of polemics along the lines of “why are millennials the most nostalgic ever?” and “why can’t Generation Z stop living in the past?” While these may seem like clickbait titles, we cannot ignore the fact that there is a renewed love for all things retro, particularly amongst the youth of today. Gadgets that do not connect to wifi – such as film cameras, brick phones, classic iPods and vinyl records – are back by popular demand. In today’s fast-paced, digital world, the desire for something physical is paramount.

© Intrepid Camera Co. www.intrepidcamera.co.uk

Introduced to photography via his grandfather’s 35mm – an Olympus OM1 Maxim Grew immediately fell in love with shooting film, admiring how it made him a more thoughtful photographer. “I started off taking pictures of friends – mostly portraits on holidays. From there I became increasingly interested in landscape photography and that is also when I got into large format,” he says.
This, combined with a natural knack for “making things” and a degree in Product Design, led to Grew founding the Intrepid Camera Co. back in 2014. The Intrepid Enlarger, its latest venture, has been designed to break down what Grew describes as “the barriers around experimenting with printing in the darkroom.” After a few sessions in the darkroom, he decided that he wanted to find a way to “get everyone into it.”

© Intrepid Camera Co.

High costs, a lack of awareness about the process and the amount of time it takes to go and scan prints are just some of the reasons why photographers are intimidated by the darkroom today. Intrepid’s enlarger is designed to eliminate some of these hurdles. The portable, inexpensive device easily clips onto the back of any 4×5 camera just like a film holder, enabling photographers to create prints efficiently using the camera as an enlarger. The team have been working hard testing and tweaking the design for over two years and, from the 04 October will be launching a Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund for the product. Grew hopes that the enlarger will “get people who want to print or haven’t even thought about it before, printing in spaces that they already have, such as bathrooms or sheds.”
Confronted with what can only be described as a bombardment of images every day – 95 million photos are uploaded to Instagram daily – even the selfie generation have a hankering for an analogue past. This extends beyond a yearning for something they used to have and into the realm of they never had at all: for items, aesthetics and experiences that belong to the baby boomers of the postwar era.

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Words: Alice Finney
Look out for the launch of the Intrepid Enlarger Kickstarter on 04 October here! Pledgers will be given a reward of their choice, and will be able to purchase the enlarger at a special price, before the release date.
The pop-up exhibition, which marks the launch of the Kickstarter, will be open to the public at BJP’s east London gallery space at Import House, 2 Clove Crescent, E14 2BE, from 05 October to 18 October 2o18 between 9:30 am and 7:00 pm, Monday to Friday. Many thanks to Ilford Photo and The Newspaper Club for their support.

© Intrepid Camera Co.

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The Intrepid Film Photography Awards is supported by British Journal of Photography. Please click here for more information on sponsored content funding at British Journal of Photography.

Just When you Thought You'd Never See Film Again, Kodak Pulls a Fast One

Photographers and filmmakers everywhere rejoice! Kodak's EKTACHROME Film line, the "choice for generations of filmmakers", is making a comeback.

On Sept 25 Eastman Kodak Company and Kodak Alaris announced that the KODAK PROFESSIONAL EKTACHROME Film E100 and the KODAK EKTACHROME 7294 Color Reversal Film in the Super 8 format, 2 of Kodak's most beloved film fan favs, are being resurrected.

As of this week, the EKTACHROME Film E100 is already on its way to distributors and stock house dealers across the world. The EKTACHROME 7294 Color Reversal Film will be available starting Oct 1 and even more products within the line in the 16mm format are coming over the next couple months. Fans of old-school film are already tweeting their excitement.

The success of the KODAK PROFESSIONAL T-MAX P3200 Film – which was re-released in March of this year – inspired the companies to continue making retro into reality. The well-received large-grained, black and white finish led to the classic EKTACHROME resurrection, whose beta test images on social media are already flourishing – and winning contests.

According to Kodak, both these EKTACHROME films "are daylight balances colour positive films, featuring clean, vibrant colours, a neutral tone scale, and extremely fine grain" that flatter a variety of subjects from nature and landscapes to fashion and product photography.

Film is being warmly welcomed back into the world by seasoned professionals and amateur hobbyists alike. In the generation of social media and digital imaging, the popularity of film is unexpected, nostalgic, and captures what could be considered a more authentic beauty. – AFP Relaxnews

HISTORY-MAKER: Frank B. Jones

BORN: Mar. 26, 1914 | DIED: Feb. 20, 1975

 If a picture is worth a thousand words, Frank Jones may be Forsyth County’s most prolific “author. ”

By the time he was hired as a photographer for the Winston-Salem Journal at the tender age of 23, he’d been working with cameras and developing his own film for 10 years. When he passed away, he willed his extensive collection of pictures to the Wachovia Historical Society so the community could enjoy them. The collection, which filled more than 100 boxes, contains not only his own work but images he gathered by other photographers—all of which help document the life and growth of Winston-Salem.

As the only child of salesman Frank Jones, Sr. and Carrie Keith, Franklin B. Jones, Jr., was born in his grandparents’ house on Brookstown Avenue.

Throughout his life, Jones never lived more than a few miles from the place he was born. He graduated from Reynolds High School in 1932 and worked at Barber Photo Supply until being hired by the Winston-Salem Journal and its sister paper, The Twin City Sentinel. In addition to taking
photos for the papers, Jones also penned a column called “Through the Lens,” which highlighted news related to photography and film. He spent the rest of his life working at the newspaper, passing at the age of 60 while on the job.

Jones didn’t just take pictures, he shared his experiences and knowledge with others liberally. He formed Winston-Salem’s first camera club in 1938 and later taught classes related to the profession and techniques. When the U.S. entered WWII, the military took full advantage of his camera skills, appointing him as a photographer with the Navy and asking him to make combat-training films.

Jones was acutely aware of the role photographs play in documenting the history of an area. He aggressively sought images that would tell the stories of his hometown—both the “important” and the mundane—and he never left home without at least one camera at hand. After his death, the Wachovia Historical Society placed his lifetime collection on permanent loan with the Forsyth County Library, where it’s now archived and displayed. Many of the collection’s 16,000 images can be viewed by visiting DigitalForsyth.or


 By Kate Rauhauser Smith

 

The Biggest Camera News from the World’s Biggest Photography Show (So Far)

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September 26, 2018 Tech : Cameras By Tucker Bowe

Year in and year out, the photo industry’s biggest trade show is Photokina. It annually takes place in Cologne, Germany, and it’s basically like CES but just focused solely on photography. Pretty much all the big camera companies have presences there, and this year’s show – running from September 26 to 29 – is no different. Since it’s taking place in Europe, you can be forgiven if you’re in the States and a little behind the news cycle. Here’s a quick primer to get you caught up to speed.

Ricoh GR III

Ricoh officially announced that it was developing the next-generation of its GRII camera, which many photographers have had a soft spot for for years. The new and upcoming Ricoh GRIII APS-C camera will have a 24-megapixel image sensor, which is a significantly higher resolution than the GII’s 16-megapixel image sensor. The overall design of the GRIII won’t look that much different than its predecessor, but it’ll have a three-inch LCD touchscreen and feature a USB-C port for faster video output.

Learn More: Here

Panasonic’s First Full-Frame Mirrorless Cameras, the Lumix S1 and S1R

Panasonic announced its first full-frame mirrorless cameras – the 47-megapixel Lumix S1 and 24-megapixel S1R – to rival Nikon’s Z6/Z7, Canon’s EOS R and, of course, Sony’s a7III and a7RIII. The Panasonic Lumix S1 and S1R will be unique, howeverm because they’ll use Leica’s full-frame-L mount SL system. Essentially, they’ll be able to utilize Leica’s pretty robust offerings of SL lenses and adapters that are already available. As for the actual cameras, the Lumix S1 is the high-end option while the S1R is the less pricey alternative. And aside from having the same lens mounting system, the two cameras share a lot of other features, including built-in image stabilization, high-resolution electronic viewfinder and a three-axis tilt LCD screen. Both cameras will be perfectly adept at video, too, able to film 4K at 60fps, 10-bit 4:2:2 video. The Lumix S1 with its larger, high-resolution sensor will be a more enticing – and expensive – option for serious photography. The cameras are expected to be released “sometime in 2019.”

Learn More: Here

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Kodak Ektachrome is Now Shipping

Back in 2017, Kodak announced it was going to bring back its Ektachrome color reversal film back – and over a year later, it’s finally happening. Kodak revealed this week that its Ektachrome will start shipping distributors soon. For analog photographers, the Ektachrome Film E100 (initially in 135/36x) will be available almost immediately, while Ektachrome 7294 for Super 8 movie film will be available in October. Kodak also stated that film for its “Ektachrome products in the 16mm format will follow later this year.”

Learn More: Here

Sigma Announces Five New Lenses

Sigma already announced five new lenses at Photokina. There most significant is probably the Sigma 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3 DG OS HSM, which is a behemoth for sports photographers; it’s actually the world’s first 10x optical telephoto zoom lens with a tele end of 600mm. Then there’s its large-aperture telephoto zoom lens, the Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 DG OS HSM, that’s designed for sports photography. There are two art lenses: the Sigma 28mm f/1.4 DG HSM, which is a wide-angle prime lens, and the Sigma 40mm f/1.4 DG HSM, which is a low-light lens with maximum aperture. And finally there’s its portrait lens, the Sigma 56mm f/1.4 DC DN, that specializes in bokeh and taking super sharp photos.

Learn More: Here

Fujifilm GFX 50R

The Fujifilm GFX 50R is a rangefinder-style, medium format mirrorless camera with a 50-megapixel image senor. It’s pretty exciting camera as it essentially takes what is best from the GFX 50S and packs it into smaller (albeit, no much) and more affordable camera – after some first impressions, The Verge‘s Vlad Savov called it the “biggest and baddest street camera yet.”

Learn More: Here

Leica S3, Its New 64MP Medium-Format DSLR

Leica has unveiled the successor to its S2 medium-format DSLR – the new S3. It has a huge 64-megapixel sensor, compared to the S2’s 37-megapixel senor, and will ultize Leica’s S lens system. Additionally, the new S3 will feature 3fps burst shooting and it’ll be able to shoot 4K video.

Lewis Khan photographs a lesser-known side of London

Sponsored by Intrepid Camera Co.

From the series "Effra: A River in a Tube". London. September 2018. © Lewis Khan
In 2017 BJP partnered up with Brighton-based camera manufacturer Intrepid Camera Co. to launch the Intrepid Film Photography Awards.
The three winning photographers each received a limited edition Intrepid 4×5 camera and  Ilford Photo film, with which they have spent the past year creating new bodies of work. These will be showcased in a pop-up exhibition, at which Intrepid will be launching a Kickstarter for the new Intrepid Enlarger. Here, in the last of the three features profiling the winning photographers’ work, Lewis Khan discusses his love for London, the city that provides the backdrop to his latest series.
Following a highly publicised series on the NHS entitled Love Time, Lewis Khan has turned his lens onto the people and places that intersect with the River Effra. Running from Crystal Palace, through to Norwood, Brixton and eventually Vauxhall Bridge, the river oscillates between locations and memories that are of great significance to the native south Londoner. Khan has been photographing his local area since the age of 15 when he began experimenting with his dad’s SLR film camera. Part social documentary and part autobiographical diary, Effra: A River in a Tube feels like an ode to the place he calls home.
“I have never been anywhere like London,” he muses. “You are exposed to so many different types of people and cultures.” London – and its salmagundi of nationalities, religions, races and classes all living as one melting pot – is deftly illustrated through this project. Combining a mixture of portraiture and landscape photography, Khan captures the fleeting and often overlooked elements of urban life.
His eye for the unseen is also evident in Effra: A River in a Tube. Since the 19th century, the Effra has been lost from sight, covered over with brick and mortar in the mid-1800s when it became a sewer. Today the river exists as a subterranean passage, running deep beneath the city streets and occasionally emerging in places along its trajectory from source to mouth. It is this idea of trammelled freedom that sparked the idea for Khan’s series.
Over a two week period, commencing next Friday, Khan’s work will be on display at British Journal of Photography’s east London exhibition space alongside the projects produced by Sarah Christianson and Michael Novotny. Below, Khan shares how he executed the project and why he chose the mysterious River Effra as his subject.

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Untitled. From the series “Effra: A River in a Tube”. London. September 2018. © Lewis Khan

How does London inspire and inform your approach?
Whenever I’ve gone anywhere else in the world, the main thing I miss about London is just how mixed it is and how many different nationalities and cultures there are living side by side. I’ve never seen anything quite like that level of integration except in London. It educates you about other people and also sparks interest; it raises questions about things you don’t know. That’s invaluable.
When I was 19 I was in between doing a photography course at London College of Communication and going to university, and I went to live in Paris for a bit. It took me so long to find fresh coriander. I’d been living there for four months and it took me so long! Stuff like that makes you suddenly realise how different London is because in London that’s just so normal. It’s a small thing but it’s true.
What appeals to you so much about taking people’s portraits?
I guess part of what I enjoy with photography is the bit before the actual portrait. The portrait will be the end result of a big process. I enjoy getting to know people in a way that I didn’t know before – having a kind of relationship with, or understanding of someone, in a different way.

Untitled. From the series “Effra: A River in a Tube”. London. September 2018. © Lewis Khan

Did this inspire your short film with George [Georgetown]?
George is someone who used to live on my street. I didn’t know him but would see him around and, on a casual level, say ‘hello’ on the street. Slowly, I got to know him a bit more. The camera becomes a way of exploring questions you have or allowing a relationship to develop. Without being able to say “let’s make this film” or “take some pictures”, the relationship wouldn’t have grown in the same way. It’s a tool [the camera] that allows for that.
Where did your idea for Effra: A River in a Tube come from?
I’m from south London. I grew up in Peckham and Vauxhall and spent lots of my life in and around those places. I found out about this river – it’s called the River Effra – that runs underground through south London and comes out in the Thames in Vauxhall. It starts in Norwood, in a little hilly area, and it’s like a tubed river that runs underground. I thought this was interesting so I checked the route and noticed that it runs through loads of the places that are very personal to me. It begins in a place where my goddaughter lives, runs through where I went to primary school, across a cemetery that my friend is buried in, and past where George lives. It comes out where I grew up in Vauxhall. So I decided to trace this river, starting from the beginning in Norwood and walking along it overground and taking photographs along the way.

Untitled. From the series “Effra: A River in a Tube”. London. September 2018. © Lewis Khan

Over the past year, conversations around masculinity and mental health have opened up which has been reflected in the photography industry. What do you hope your photographs contribute to the growing conversation? 
I’m always interested in trying to uncover something – from a subject to a strength, to a fragility, or a moment of transition. And especially when dealing with a label such as masculinity – which has such weighted connotations and prescribed sets of values. I think it’s especially interesting to delve beneath that.

Untitled. From the series “Effra: A River in a Tube”. London. September 2018. © Lewis Khan

Untitled. From the series “Effra: A River in a Tube”. London. September 2018. © Lewis Khan

Words: Alice Finney
The Intrepid Film Photography Awards pop-up exhibition, supported by Ilford Photo, will be open to the public at BJP’s east London gallery space at Import House, 9th Floor, 2 Clove Street, E14 2BE, from 05 October to 18 October 2o18 between 9:30 am and 7:00 pm, Monday to Friday. Look out for more information about the launch in our next editorial.

 

Fujifilm’s Instax Square SQ20 can print photos and shoot video

Yeah, why not?

By Jacob Kastrenakes

Fujifilm is introducing its second hybrid instant camera, and it comes with a feature that might sound very out of place on its Instax line: video recording. The new model, the Instax Square SQ20, is able to capture video clips of up to 15 seconds. While you’re able to store those on an SD card, that isn’t really the point. Instead, the SQ20 uses those video clips to create new photo effects, which you can then edit and print out directly from the camera.

The SQ20’s “motion mode” will let you scrub through a video to find the frame you think is best, and then print that exact moment. Another option will create a fake long exposure, blurring the motion captured in the video. There’s also, uh, a fake 35mm film strip border that can be applied to pictures captured in this mode.

The sensor is smaller, but it’s otherwise nearly the same camera

Those are largely the only new features here. Unfortunately, the camera also includes a downgrade: a smaller sensor, from 1/4-inch on the SQ10 to 1/5-inch on the SQ20. The lens seems to be the same, with an f/2.4 aperture, but the smaller sensor means it’s not capturing as wide a field of view as before, going from a 28.5mm equivalent to 33.4mm.

Fujifilm is playing into that a bit, though, by adding a digital zoom function, letting you punch in by 4x. It’s the first zoom feature ever to make it onto an Instax camera, though all but one of the others weren’t digital.

Otherwise, this is very much the same camera as the SQ10, which was announced in April last year. It’s essentially a point-and-shoot digital camera with a photo printer built-in, allowing you some of the benefits of both approaches. There’s the immediate printing, but you also aren’t stuck printing out a bad shot if you missed your moment.

My colleague Sean O’Kane said there were things to like about the SQ10 when he reviewed it last year, but he ultimately said the camera wouldn’t be as fun or useful as it could be without any wireless technology to get its photos over to your phone. The SQ20 doesn’t change that; it just gives you another way to capture what you’re seeing.

The camera will go on sale on October 20th. Pricing hasn’t been announced yet. The SQ10 initially launched for $280, but it’s now available for under $200. You’ll also need to buy plenty of square instant film packs, which cost $15 for 10 sheets.

What is a Rangefinder Camera?

by Harry Guinness

If you’ve spent any time reading about photography, you’ve probably come across reverential mentions of Leica cameras and other “rangefinders” used by a lot of great street photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson in the mid-20th century. I know I was confused when I first heard about them since they aren’t really around anymore, so here’s what they are.

The Original Mirrorless Cameras

Rangefinders are the original mirrorless cameras. They were popular with street photographers because they were a lot smaller and more unobtrusive than the bulky film SLR cameras available at the time. They used the same 35mm film as SLRs, but they had a different focusing method that didn’t need a mirror.
RELATED: What Are Mirrorless Cameras, and Are They Better than Normal DSLRs?
You probably have a rough idea how SLRs work if you’ve ever picked one up, but here’s a refresher. To manually focus an SLR (or DSLR), you look through the viewfinder. Light enters through the lens, and the camera’s mirror system reflects it into your eye. You then adjust the focus of the lens until everything is sharp. When you press the shutter button, the mirror lifts up, and the light hits the film instead, taking a picture. What you saw through the lens is pretty much exactly the picture you get.
Rangefinders use a different focusing method called, appropriately enough, a rangefinder. Instead of looking directly through the lens via a mirror, a rangefinder’s viewfinder is an entirely separate visual system mounted as close as possible to the lens. It shows two overlapping images of the subject. By aligning the images, the distance—or range—to the subject can be calculated (thanks to the parallax effect) and you can focus the lens.

The image on the left shows the view through a rangefinder when it’s out of focus. The image on the right shows the view through a rangefinder when it’s in focus.

The earliest rangefinder cameras required the photographer to focus the lens and find the range as two separate actions, but most of the popular models used by the likes of Cartier-Bresson paired the lens focus to the rangefinder mechanism.
One big problem with rangefinders is that what the photographer saw when they looked through the viewfinder didn’t exactly match the final photo because they were separate systems—it’s the same effect you get from a disposable camera. This didn’t really matter for street photography where size and portability were vital, but for other fields of photography, it was an insurmountable drawback.
This drawback, along with the fact that zoom lenses and telephoto lenses are next to impossible to design for a rangefinder camera, meant that they never really had a chance against SLRs and later DSLRs.
Leica—the manufacturer of the most famous and prestigious rangefinders—sells an insanely expensive digital rangefinder, but they’re the only one. It’s a beautiful camera and an excellent piece of technology, but there’s a reason that professional photographers don’t use it day to day.

Mirrorless cameras, however, are the spiritual successors to rangefinders. They have the same size and weight advantages over DSLRs but overcome the drawbacks of rangefinders with electronic viewfinders and live view screens.

Women Built London’s Waterloo Bridge, But It Took These Photos to Prove It

Uncovering evidence of a long-forgotten history.

by Anika Burgess

September 21, 2018

 

 

For more than half a century, it was just a rumor. As London’s river boat pilots passed by Waterloo Bridge (“The Ladies’ Bridge,” as some of them called it) they’d tell a story about the women who had built the bridge during World War II. But the idea that women had been largely involved in building Waterloo Bridge wasn’t included in any official history of the structure, or detailed in any records. During the new bridge’s opening ceremony, on December 10, 1945, then-Deputy Prime Minister Herbert Morrison had declared that “the men that built Waterloo Bridge are fortunate men.” It wasn’t until 2015 that the hard work of these women could be confirmed, by the historian Christine Wall, thanks to a series of photographs she found.

Eight years prior to her discovery, Wall had collaborated with the filmmaker Karen Livesey on a documentary called The Ladies Bridge. It explores the stories of women working on Waterloo Bridge and records first-hand the experiences of a variety of wartime workers who were women. “There was jobs galore. There was absolutely jobs galore. You could go anywhere,” recounts one woman in the film.

But as Wall notes in the film, despite well-documented accounts of women working in munitions factories, or on the railway, stories of women who worked in construction during the war are quite rare. According to Wall, nearly 25,000 women were working in the British construction industry by 1944. (Some things don’t change: she also notes that wartime women construction workers were paid far less money than their male counterparts). Wall did manage to find photographs in the Imperial War Museum’s archive of women construction workers during the war —but nothing relating to the bridge.

Rebuilding Waterloo Bridge was a crucial project. The first Waterloo Bridge opened in 1817, but in 1923, London County Council realized the bridge had structural problems and, two years later, added a temporary framework. Eventually, the government decided it was best to tear the whole thing down and replace it, a process that began in 1934. By the time war broke out in 1939, 500 men were reportedly working on the bridge; by 1941, that number had dropped to 50. And so, as with other wartime labor shortages, the contractor, Peter Lind & Company, drafted in women to do the work. According to the U.K.-based Women’s Engineering Society, around 350 women worked on Waterloo Bridge.

Peter Lind & Company was liquidated in the 1980s, and the firm’s employment records have long since vanished. But Betty Lind Jaeger, the daughter of Peter Lind, did emerge during Wall’s research. In the documentary, she recounts visiting the bridge and seeing women construction workers. Still, Wall needed irrefutable evidence.

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And in 2015, she finally found it, while searching online in the Bradford Museum of Film and Television archives. It was a series of photographs, taken in 1944 by a photographer for The Daily Herald newspaper, that show women welders dismantling the old Waterloo Bridge. Because of Wall’s discovery, Historic England, the British government’s official historic preservation body, finally incorporated this history into its record of the bridge as a heritage site.