Well, I am now officially a card carrying member of the International Center of Photography.
That's not actually as exciting as it might sound. It just means I can stroll the gallery whenever I want for free, and I get 10% off coffee at their cafe downstairs. Sometimes I might get invited to a party or two.
The current main exhibit is "Capa in Color". It's a collection of Robert Capa's work in color photography. Robert Capa is much more widely known for his black and white war zone work -- particularly the ones from Omaha Beach on D-Day. The D-Day stuff is rather blurry, but I am amazed by the idea of him jumping out of an amphibious transport under heavy fire, slogging through the surf, and taking pictures with a Contax rangefinder of some sort, with manual focus and manual exposure.
Anyway, the color stuff has kind of a "downtime" feel to them to me. Though some of them are still war-related, but for the most part, the restored Kodachrome brings blue to clear skies and bright colors to womens' dresses. It's more casual, and a lot of it is of people just hanging out. One of my favorites is "Woman Wearing Dior", of a model in a pink Dior dress standing with a fisherman by the Seine River, with the Eiffel Tower visible in the background.
There's another of Pablo Picasso at the beach in the water with his son Claude. I guess he was never one to worry about getting salt water in his camera.
A fantastic job was done restoring the color in the photos -- they're as sharp as the day they were shot, and the colors look better than Instagram at its best. It's definitely worth the $15 admission fee. Most of them were shot either on a medium format Rolleiflex or on what I'd guess to be a 35 or 50mm lens on 35mm film -- basically, Capa was always right in the middle of everything, and his photos will bring you there.
Robert Capa died in 1954 during the first Indochina War while he was on assignment from Life Magazine with a French regiment. He jumped out of his jeep to run down the road under fire to get a better shot, and stepped on a landmine.
His brother, Cornell Capa, founded the ICP in 1974.
While I was there, I exercised my new member discount at the gift shop and bought this Kikkerland Cable Photo Holder. I've been trying to put more photos I've taken up in my room (there are some taken by others mixed in). Many of them may not actually ever be seen by anyone else. At first I thought it was a rather narcissistic thing to do, putting my own work up in my own house, but they are there only so I can be confronted with them every day and be reminded to do even better, so I can have new things to put up for myself.
Every time I see one of my photos, I think, "What if I had been 2 inches to the side?"
It doesn't sound like it would make much of a difference, but in bowling, that's the difference between a strike and a spare.
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