Eliot Porter, Big Sur, and iconic images:
At what point does a copy of a famous image become visual plagiarism? Or does it?
posted 6-25-2011 - 6:45 pm

 
There are some images that make such a deep impression on us that they stay with us for the rest of our lives. Often, that persistent image may be of a historical event or where we were and what we saw at that moment. If you’re old enough, you probably remember where you were when you learned that JFK or Martin Luther King was shot, when Nixon resigned, when men walked on the moon, when the twin towers came crashing down in New York, or when the Challenger or Columbia space shuttles exploded. In every one of those instances, I have a specific image of the place that I was in and what my surroundings were like – a Policywonk's-eye view, if you will – and when I recall one of those events, it’s always the same image that comes to my mind’s eye first, unbidden.

An image can also become fixed in the mind because of the meaning it has to you personally. But sometimes, an image sticks with you simply because it so accurately sums up precisely what it represents that it becomes the definitive image for thousands, if not millions or billions, of people.

So it is for me with a photo of the Big Sur coastline by the late Eliot Porter: Mist on Coast, Big Sur, California, September 25, 1975. It is a view of the ragged, stepped coastline iced with layers of fog, looking south, as if pulled out of time, and it has become the definitive image of Big Sur, iconic because it sums up in a way that words fail the very essence of the place. From the very first moment I saw it, I fell in love with that image, both stark and soft, with its power and its subtlety, and with the place it represented. It conveyed meaning in ways that I cannot define and became indelible in my mind. There was something about it that simply pulled at me. It continues to do so even today.

Architecture: the face of a city
In Chicago, everybody has an opinion about which buildings matter
posted 9-17-2010 - 11:25 pm

 
It was inevitable that architecture would matter to me. I am the daughter of an architect (my mother) and the goddaughter of an architect (my mother's best friend). My father and nearly all my uncles were engineers; many of my parents' friends were architects or engineers. I grew up surrounded by art and architecture books: H.W. Janson's History of Art and the remarkable, now out-of-print book series on the Masters of Modern Architecture by publisher George Braziller were my wish books. Out-of-date Sweet's catalogs and spec samples were my playthings. I've been to more architecture lectures and tours than some people have movies.

I prefer Architectural Record (professional) to Architectural Digest (pretentious). I redesign rooms in my head all the time and have a project box full of floor plans and ideas for changing the place where I dwell, if ever I get the funds. And I have lived virtually all my life in Chicago, the city where modern architecture got its start and where the residents take a more than customary interest in buildings both modern and historic, and in how their city looks.

So of course, when Chicago magazine published its list of the top 40 buildings in Chicago, I had to read it. And formed opinions almost immediately, which led to comment. Unlike most people, however, I talk (and think) in paragraphs – so my comments are usually more than the customary few lines. That might bother me if I thought online editors should cater to readers with short attention spans, but I don't. I remain one of those people who still thinks the Internet is there to give you more context and background that you'd get in a newspaper's or magazine's tight news hole, not less. After all, if you decide you don't want that much, you're free to ignore it; but if you do want that much and the writer skimps instead, you're out of luck. Occasionally, it strikes me that there's no reason a longer comment of mine should go to waste by languishing at the end of someone else's article. And it is my comment, so I ought to be able to reproduce it here. Which I've done.

To Jolie, Or Not To Jolie:
The perils of bringing Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta to the screen
posted 8-12-2010 - 12:50 am

 
I love a good mystery. Always have. My affair with Agatha Christie novels began in sixth grade, right around the same time that I discovered Stan Getz records and James Bond films. Christie made Earle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason look simple and Mickey Spillane look rude and dumb. I favored Hercule Poirot over Miss Marple, but not by much.

It wasn’t long before I discovered Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and British mysteries on public television. It was all downhill from there; I became a mystery reader for life. In time, I ran across crime novelist Patricia Cornwell’s work and became an avid reader of that, too. And a fan of her character Kay Scarpetta, the fictional chief medical examiner of Virginia. It wasn’t hard to identify with her: when I began in journalism, I, too, was the rare woman in a man’s profession and just about as welcome (meaning: not very).

So when it was announced last February that Scarpetta might finally be brought to life on the big screen, naturally, I was interested. Until I learned that Angelina Jolie would probably get the role.

2010 Emmy slots: Just another beauty contest
posted 8-5-2010 - 11:23 pm

 
So: are we surprised and disappointed again this year by the nominations? Yup. You bet. And there will be much carping about who made it and who didn’t, and about the voting system itself. Again. And no effort made to fix and of the voting system’s flaws. Surprise.

I’m talking about the prime-time Emmy nominations (I don’t watch soap opera, so I couldn’t care less about the daytime awards. Sue me). Truly, if there’s a difference here between the Emmys and the Miss America pageant, it’s not much.

Yes, The Pacific leads in the number of nominations – congrats to powerhouse HBO yet again – yet all of The Pacific’s actors were snubbed. How the hell did THAT happen?? The actors and the writers are what made this ambitious, well executed miniseries fly. Partly at fault here is the fact that whereas the Emmy voting system has separate categories for best film and best miniseries, it lumps the two formats together when it comes to best actors/actresses and best supporting categories. Very unfair: the actors in a miniseries have to sustain a character over several episodes, whereas those in a film have to do it for an hour and a half to two hours. It's a different kettle of fish.

Live blogging the Oscars ... or not
posted 3-7-2010 - 11:23 pm

 
Wow. Never done this before (the live blogging, that is, except it's not quite: I'm writing in real time, but this will get posted the moment the show's over). Oh, well, we do what we can.

I've skipped Barbara Walters and most of the red carpet show on E! (just too much).

Here goes ...