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Previously Unreleased Photographs Of Roald Dahl

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A photographer has spoken exclusively about the moment he came face to face with one of the world’s best-loved authors – Roald Dahl.

John Stewart Farrier, who has captured many illustrious faces on film including Margaret Thatcher, Sir Cliff Richard and John Lennon, has released some previously unseen images of [Roald Dahl].

from Kent Online’s report:

Mr Farrier describes the moment they met: “It was raining heavily on the day I arrived at Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire – the home of Roald Dahl – author, fighter pilot and screenwriter.

“I was looking forward to this photographic session, especially when my daughter Sarah was one of his greatest fans.

“I tapped on the front door – it suddenly opened and there was Roald greeting me saying ‘I don’t like people with beards, they have something to hide’.”

He says that there was tension as he entered Roald’s hallway and he thought it would be a quick, abrupt session with little conversation, but it wasn’t long before the ball started rolling and the chat started flowing.

Mr Farrier said: “Roald said ‘thank god we are not talking about my books and I certainly don’t want to be photographed in my garden hut. Everyone does that’.

“I said it suited me fine and told him to just lounge around on the sofa. He said he was going to have a cigarette while we chatted. I asked him ‘have you always been such a grumpy old man?’ as I hid behind my Nikon camera waiting for an immediate reply asking me to leave… but it never happened.

“We both began to laugh and thereafter it was just magic – the ice had broken.”

Two further photos of Dahl via Roald Dahl photographer John Stewart Farrier describes day he spent with the great children's author.

The best children’s books for February

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The best children’s books for February, as chosen by the Washington Post:

From inauspicious beginnings, Gordon Parks (1912-2006) became a pioneering photographer and filmmaker as well as a novelist, composer and poet. In this picture-book biography, Caldecott honoree Carole Boston Weatherford focuses on Parks’s photographic career, particularly the images he took in Washington in the late 1930s and early ’40s. Parks’s accomplishments are especially remarkable given the limited choices he faced as a young African American male. (A teacher in his Kansas elementary school told Parks and his classmates, “You’ll all wind up porters and waiters.”) But after working as a piano player, porter and waiter, he bought a camera, taught himself to take pictures and transformed his life. As a government photographer assigned to Washington, he documented the segregation of the city — and with a single photograph of a cleaning woman named Ella Watson, got the world to take notice. Weatherford’s succinct text and Jamey Christoph’s stylized, muted-color illustrations convey Parks’s vibrant talent while delivering an enlightening perspective on the past.

— Abby McGanney Nolan

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-best-childrens-books-for-february/2015/02/03/8010da62-a236-11e4-b146-577832eafcb4_story.html

Jane Bown: turning the lens on Britain’s shyest photographer

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Jane prefers silence to talking – her mantra has always been, “photographers should neither be seen nor heard”. Her slight stature made it easy for her to blend into the surroundings, always vigilant and observing from the periphery. And all the time her eyes are scanning, darting here and there like those of a small bird.

via Jane Bown: turning the lens on Britain’s shyest photographer | Art and design | The Guardian.

Looking for Light: Jane Bown is out this week. The DVD is out on 26 May. An exhibition of Bown’s work runs at Kings Place, London N1, until 31 May.

The truth behind Margaret Mahy’s last book

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Tale of a Tail, Margaret Mahy’s final novel, published posthumously next month (with illustrations by Tony Ross), was apparently commissioned privately by the Polish photographer, Tomasz Gudzowaty.

The Sunday Star Times has learned Mahy’s final book, scheduled for first release here on Tuesday, was a commission from a world famous photographer and the son of one of Poland’s richest men.

Tomasz Gudzowaty said he negotiated the book with Mahy because he was "seeking a way to share that feeling, that experience" of his friendship with his dog Naykee. "When the thought about the book crossed my mind for the first time, Naykee was in perfect health, and it might seem that our friendship – I think it’s a proper word for our relationship – would last forever," Gudzowaty said.

…

Gudzowaty wouldn’t reveal the cost of his commission – originally conceived as a series of loosely connected stories and later revised to become a short novel – and said the only copyright Mahy had transferred to him related to any future Polish editions.

“The negotiations, whatever that may mean, focused on convincing Margaret that Naykee’s story was worth being told, that it might be enjoyed by readers . . . I felt obliged to offer a fair amount of money, adequate to Margaret’s rank in literature and she found my proposal fair and adequate.”

via The truth behind Margaret Mahy's last book | Stuff.co.nz.

Saul Leiter, Photographer: Obituary

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Saul Leiter, who has died aged 89, was one of the quiet men of American photography.

A pioneer of colour, he remained relatively unsung until he was rediscovered by curators and critics in his early 80s. Even then, Leiter was reluctant to accept the belated praise heaped upon him. “What makes anyone think that I’m any good?” he asked Tomas Leach, who directed the feature-length documentary In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons in Life With Saul Leiter (2012). “I’m not carried away by the greatness of Mr Leiter.”

Saul Leiter, photographer, born 3 December 1923; died 26 November 2013

via Saul Leiter obituary | Art and design | The Guardian.

French court bans Yan Morvan’s latest photobook – British Journal of Photography

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A French court has ordered photographer Yan Morvan to withdraw his photobook Gangs Story from bookstores and to pay a €5000 fine after it found that he had breached one of his subjects’ right to control his own image

via French court bans Yan Morvan’s latest photobook – British Journal of Photography.

“Basically, in this case, two opposing rights were pitted against one another – the right to control your own image and the right to inform,” Morvan told BJP in a phone interview. “In this case, the right to control your own image, which was introduced by French minister Elisabeth Guigou in 2000, won over the right to inform. There are 250 images in this book, what this sentence means is that 250 people could sue me. In essence, this sentence is a ban on a photographer’s right to work.”

Wayne Miller obituary – Guardian

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The American photographer Wayne Miller, who has died aged 94, once said his mission was “to photograph mankind and explain man to man”. To this end, he created memorable images of American soldiers in combat during the second world war, the devastation of Hiroshima just after the detonation of the atom bomb, and the black community in the south side of Chicago in the 1940s.

Miller was also a key figure in establishing photojournalism as an important medium, co-curating the monumental Family of Man exhibition with the photographer Edward Steichen in 1955. With subjects grouped thematically under headings such as love, death and children, the show included 503 images taken by 273 photographers across the world. After opening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, it toured for eight years, drawing huge crowds. Meanwhile, Miller served as president of both the American Society of Magazine Photographers and of Magnum Photos, from 1962 until 1968.

via Wayne Miller obituary | Art and design | The Guardian.