He buys one of the maybe 200 different fucking photo books on New York City that you could find in Barnes & Noble (yes, they still exist). The putz could just surf the Net and see zillions of static photos of the fabulous buildings and bridges. But he needs MORE CLUTTER because he's such a greedy stupid pig.
The hundreds of books on New York City that you could find in Barnes & Noble include big coffee table BARGAINS. There's no shortage of remaindered photo books, and most of them ARE remaindered after a year or two.
So why did this idiot lug THIS particular book all the way back to Merkelville, and then wait to open the shrinkwrap ON camera?
The gimmick of this book by Jeff Chow Fon is that he used a wide lens to take "panorama" pictures.
Which does tend to lose something when most pages have TWO to a page. That's like watching a Cinerama movie in letterbox format on a cellphone.
OOF. As for the full size pix, there IS a problem.
As we ALL know there is something basically FUCKED UP about what is technically called the "double truck" page. That's where one photo is splashed over TWO sheets of paper. The middle crease means that the middle of the photo is distorted. You have to crack the fucking binding of the book in order to really see it as it was photographed.
I don't know why daft art directors INSIST on doing this in so many books. It's annoying.
It's even annoying in a magazine, where you can usually lay the pictures a lot flatter. It's still not flattering. There's still a distraction caused by the pages not lying flat. Just think about the Playboy centerfolds, where a hot woman had creases here and here. In addition to the one THERE.
Meanwhile this stuffed cabbage, who barely can ooze any words out of his swollen gullet, offers up his tedious commentary as he flips through the pages while his blurry fish-eye camcorder takes it all in.
Usually Amazon and other sites give you the chance to "look inside" most every book, so WHY go to GOOTUBE and hunt for somebody's photo book to see if it's worth buying? PS, you can go to a fucking bookstore and browse for yourself. PPS, this one is NOT worth buying. The rice-dick who snapped the pictures did nothing special. There's no big trick to owning an expensive camera that does all the work, and snapping shots of BUILDINGS THAT DON'T MOVE. The angles, the angle of sunlight, NONE of it is inspired.
Lange sits this book in his lap, and probably started getting an erection. He had to stop the camera so he could finish rubbing the book against his little schvantz. The only thing that gets him harder are those concentration camp photos of naked, skeletal Jews (male or female).
Go to the bookstore (there are still a few) and thumb through any books of architecture, or guides to various cities. They all look the same. They're all boring. You do better snapping pictures yourself as a tourist. If you didn't visit these places, why get something that will warp and bend your bookshelf? Look at 'em online, on your giant computer screen. That's good enough.
How many photo books, other than nudes, really grab your attention page after page? There are maybe a few good compilations of "once in a lifetime" action shots, historical shots, or even funny shots (there's a book collection all the novelty photos that appeared on the back page of LIFE, one oddball shot a week, year after year).
As for individual photographers, forget about Jeff Chow Fon. He and other cheap-shots who go around taking "composed" pictures of buildings or shrubbery are all dullards.
You can even get bored with Diane Arbus and her scowling freaks. As great as Karsh was, you have to admit that he was a one-trick pony. All he did was aim his camera FULL-FACE at famous people, and capture every fuckin' wrinkle. Avedon was a one-trick pony, too. Look, if you spend a half hour or an hour or MORE talking to somebody while they sit in a fucking chair, and snap away several rolls of film, ONE shot is gonna turn out "genius." That doesn't mean YOU are a genius.
As annoying as the cunt is who took the infamous John Lennon as naked monkey shot for Rolling Stone, at least she didn't just do a standard portrait. She did something that actually captured the dynamic of that relationship. SHE is a photographer. An overrated cunt, but yes, a very good photographer just the same. She benefitted from already having the famous name of the magazine behind her. Your subject is going to be a LOT more cooperative knowing you're shooting a cover. You say you want something special, and you want half a day, or a WHOLE day to get to know the subject, pick out wardrobe, etc. etc. and knock around ideas...and you just might get something memorable. Or weird. Nothing in that Jeff Chow Fon book is remotely memorable or unique.
A real genius was a guy like Weegee, who rushed to the squalid, disgusting scene of a crime, had only a few minutes before the jumper jumped, the fire got too hot, or the coroner hauled the body off the sidewalk. He managed to not only get a good clear shot (with maybe only ONE click, or at best, a few) the picture was often artistic, and the palette of black, white and gray astonishing.
He didn't have the luxury of Photoshop, and usually only had a few hours in the darkroom before he had to turn over the photo to the newspaper or magazine. Yes, a darkroom...cramped, eerie, and stinking of chemicals. In those days, it was REALLY dark, too. By the 70's, you could work in a darkroom where you could actually see pretty well, using an orange light. In Weegee's day, it was vital to keep things as dark as possible, from taking the film out of the camera and putting it in the developer, to sliding the negative and creating a print.
But is Matthias Shit-for-Brains Lange showing off an interesting photo book? Of course not.
He's 300 pounds of sauerkraut stuffed into a sheep bladder condom, with hair and glasses added, and he's more impressed with some hack's "panorama" shots of buildings in a city he hopefully will NEVER visit again.
But let's have an expert opinion.
"What a pile of shit," says Cilla Blackledge.
She was referring to the book of photos AND to Herr Lange.
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