This post originally appeared on November 28, 2009 at 3:07PM.
This picture from The Dark Knight brings up two pieces of advice.
First, it is very important that you look at the Joker when he talks to you. Do not forget.
Second, you must accept that sometimes a thing is a foregone conclusion. Friend, he is wearing an apron fashioned of a garbage bag. There is no scenario in which this ends well for you.
Questions for discussion:
This post orginally appeared in a less illustrated and much rant-freer form on December 2, 2009 at 9:46 am.
Today I am thinking about Sam, but still pretty upset to find out he was dead. So I thought I’d use this below shot of him and Leni Riefenstahl as a springboard to discussing a little bit about propaganda (obviously entire books and brilliant essays are devoted to this topic, I just want to think out loud a bit). So. Sam and Leni. They were not any type of friends, but they of course knew one another, because of the international stature both held as artists.
This picture with Leni was taken in Munich in the early 70’s. We were serving on the jury for a photographic competition organised by Der Spiegel. A friendly argument developed during a break in the judging activities. Postal sacks filled with the competition entries swamped the corridors leaving little room for chairs. (“Leni Riefenstahl,” Sam’s blog, entry dated 3/15/07)
Still from Leni’s Olympia, 1938. She was a brilliant, bold pioneering female photographer who had a keen instinct for shapes and the human body — and she was a National Socialist in Hitler’s Germany.
Leni Riefenstahl is a divisive and problematic figure for me to wrap my brain around: while her career has been largely brilliant, and I suppose each piece of art ought be considered an entity unto itself? — ought it? a debate for a different day maybe? — she is a photographer and cinematographer from whom for me it is difficult to separate the facts of her life and her art. See, her body of work is great, but besides such feats of human architecture as Olympia, that body of work also contains within it The Triumph of the Will, a handy piece of pure propaganda which launched her to forever-infamy and helped sway many to the National Socialist way of thinking.
Leni Riefenstahl with Heinrich Himmler at Nuremberg, 1934.
Yeah, that’s Heinrich Himmler and her at Nuremberg, 1934, setting up a cozy little scene for the camera. It’s significant and somewhat ironic to me and, you likely too, because, of course, she and Himmler and Joseph Goebbels, spinmeister, were busy here trying to launch some Nazi ships of popularity, and ultimately the career of many a Nazi ended there, eleven years later at the trials. Riefenstahl was arrested after World War II, but was not tried at Nuremberg, nor ever convicted of any crimes. Fair or unfair?
It has recently become popular to exonerate Leni Riefenstahl for her part in Goebbels’ games on either a) the strength of her large body of striking and unique work or b) the reasoning that she did what she must during a time when a lot of people swallowed their true opinion to avoid persecution by the National Socialist party.
Leni with some asshole.
I do not believe there is any way of ever knowing for certain about (b). I simply think people are shoehorning their own opinions in to those years of her life so that they can excuse loving her later work. In fact, I have got to say that fearfully holding one’s tongue to avoid losing a job as a bank teller when one’s boss rants against Jews, versus being an artist of international stature who can reasonably leave a country and travel to another with little fear of detention — and then maybe even announce her repatriation to a place where they do not abduct and murkily displace citizens based on religion, a course chosen by many artists and scientists during this time — but not doing that and instead turning around and shooting The Triumph of the frigging Will, thank you very much, are two totally different situations, pressure-and-force-wise.
l to r: Joseph Goebbels, Leni Riefenstahl, and Adolf Hitler.
So the lukewarmly advanced “oh, but she had to do it” part of the argument is fishsticks in my book, I’m sorry. Bull-fucking-shit. Until I see hardcore documents that Leni was told something like, I don’t know, that her mother was being held and she would be whipped and her teeth would be pulled from her head and force-fed back to her every day unless Leni continued churning out propaganda, oh, and that P.S., all the anti-Semitic things she said and did in the 1920s and early 30s before the Third Reich had seized power and employed her at her own request were just for funsies, because she is totally not a hater!, then I will not ever, ever support that specious (b) argument.
Leni and crew filming those all-important ’36 Olympics.
There’s keeping your frightened mouth shut and half-heartedly going along with a thing with a constant eye to getting away, and then there is willful participation in that same thing in order to benefit socially, artistically, and financially. Painting Leni with that brush of reluctance is shameful and disgraces the good people who were placed by circumstance and fear for their loved ones in that hellish and untenable position, which they no doubt regretted to the end of their days. I say again: it is shameful and disgraceful to humanity to claim Leni belongs in that camp. Period.
“Sielspringen.” Jumpropers. Leni Riefenstahl. Not sure of the date.
I tried to be neutral but I got worked up even attempting to sound nice about it. Whoops. Blarg, it’s all slipping away from me, I get so nuts about WWII. I’m sorry.
So … this was supposed to be about propaganda, both the first time and on this retread. I wanted to figure out what I think about art and propaganda, and it would seem that I think some pretty angry shit, but is that necessarily right or well-reasoned? Like, okay, Leni was arrested but not tried for her participation in the National Socialist campaign to conquer — you know … the globe. Leni won 50 cases of libel against her from people who said she had knowledge of war crimes like the concentration camps — which is weird, because if she was so innocent of this knowledge then I wonder why, when she was asked why she went along with the propaganda plans, she claimed it was out of her fear of being sent to a camp … a camp that she did not know existed. fascinating, yes? — and also claimed she would lament forever that people would associate her with Nazism. Can’t think why. But enough ranting, god, the main thing is: she was let go. So she never got a trial or did time. Ought she have?
via peternicholson, Leni was shooting establishing-shot footage for a rally documentary and was caught by a friendly cameraman on the ground beneath one of her striking set designs in front of which a horribly real not-a-play-at-all went on.
Question for discussion: is propaganda a crime? A con of the highest order, making it a physical and emotionally abusive crime of course, as any manipulative act must be, but also, and perhaps more strangely, a crime against art itself? A violation of its core function? If the purpose of art is to express yourself, and we see that for some being provocative is how they do it (I do not believe the work of shock artists violates or upheaves what I’ve just advanced as the core purpose of art; I believe their work still falls beneath the aegis of self-expression, whether they understand that or not), then is propaganda a gross perversion of the core purpose, forcing a perspective on the viewer rather than expressing one’s own, muscling and manipulating and violating the relationship between seer and seen?
Olympia series by Leni Riefenstahl, 1938, via bodypixel. Do check the piece out.
We talked about what happens when art imitates life, and when art imitates art, but what about when life imitates art because art influences life? What would Leni’s dear friend Goebbels, great-grandfather of the spin and the catchy slogan, answer, if he had not been killed himself rather than face trial (or death at the hands of Dönitz) in the liberated Germany? What are the implications of how art as propaganda was used politically, with our historical understanding, when we look now at modern instances of using art to increase the popularity of a product or idea, from advertising of food and beverages and clothing to much more volatile and animate subjects such as people and philosophies and lifestyles?
Golden Globe and Academy Award winner Charlize Theron for Christian Dior, “J’Adore” parfum.
Or am I all backward. Is the opposite so? Is all art propaganda of some kind? One of my favorite movies, The Cradle Will Rock, written and directed by Tim Robbins, which is set during the 1930’s, draws consistent symbolic parallels between artists and whores, and even has a line where William Randolph Hearst says, not sneeringly, but simply with a practical confidence, “And artists are whores — like the rest of us.” Has the relationship between art and advertising and commercialism and pop cultural consciousness come so far that there is no way to ever go back? And, fuck, what do I know, like is that so wrong?
“Tommy Hilfiger Celebrates Sam Haskins.”
“We have burnt our bridges. We cannot go back, but neither do we want to go back. We are forced to extremes and therefore resolved to proceed to extremes.” (Joseph Goebbels, 1943)
I do not have answers. I’m frustrated and bummed and totally confusing myself. I quit! I’ll regroup and come back to this a different day.
Photographed by William Figge.
Kelly prefers making most of her natatorial plunges in the neighbors’ back-yard pool. “Besides the pool, they own two darling dogs,” she explains. “One’s a $700 pedigreed toy poodle named Suzie; the other’s a mongrel puppy that they rescued from the local dog pound for only five dollars. He’s named Toy Tiger and, needless to say, I’m in love with the mutt.”
(“Freckle-Face.” Playboy, June 1966.)
Good choice!
I’m an across-the-board mutt guy from Way Back: dogs, cats — men. Actually, I think I’m genuinely allergic to so-called “well-bred” dudes without debt. I’ve tried to date them and their leather car coats and confident wine-awareness makes my skin crawl. On the other hand, if you got a busted grill and drive a ’92 Honda Prelude with one broken headlight that won’t raise, know the difference between a single- and a double-wide, and front a ZZ Top cover band? I’m all yours.
Actual example: my friend J-Mys once tried to set me up on a double date with her and her boyfriend and a mortgage broker Senor R knew from Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Polly Wolly Doodle All Day. J-Mys and Senor R cut out early and I was stuck with the mortgage broker, who was clearly not in to me either but was still talking some kind of folklore about variable rates and baloney sauce that I was not at all listening to because I was watching Clue in my head due to my crushing boredom, when I got up to get another pint of beer.
At the bar, this guy in a very dated No Fear t-shirt and battered, unironic John Deere ballcap saw I had actual folding money and asked me for change for the jukebox. We picked out a couple songs — I believe we went with Tom Waits, the Beatles, and “Thriller,” for novelty shits and giggles — and I told the boring mortgage broker that I was planning on going to the bathroom and going home.
I insisted we split the bill because I felt a few compunctions of guilt for wasting the early part of his Friday evening, even if I had in no way lead him to think the night had any kind of sexytimes in its future. Then I made sure the broker actually left, slipped out of the bathroom, and bullshitted with the ballcap guy on the porch about Quantum Leap and camping ’til my beer was done. Went home much happier than I’d been an hour earlier. Sneaky I guess but so much better.
As for the rest of the purple prose in that excerpt, I got hung up on “natatorial.” Really? Natatorial? Come on. That is some rich fertilizer right there. Talk about a needless fifty dollar word.
natatorial: (adj.) of, characterized by, or adapted for swimming.
Aww. Seems that some low-paid Playboy scribbler had a crush on his thesaurus.
That shot is freaking awesome. Hats off to Mr. Figge. “Natatorial” photography at its best? The reflection, the symmetry, the attention to every tile of the composition (rule of thirds) having something interesting in it — awesome sauce. Bill Figge is the shit.
As a medical buyer for one of California’s largest pharmaceutical cooperatives, Miss June has spent the past three years helping to supervise the selection of drugs destined to become shelf stock in hospitals and pharmacies throughout the Greater Glendale area.
(Ibid.)
Another stunning composition. The light-play is brilliant.
“My job can be fairly cut and dried one minute,” says the 21-year-old brunette, “and then, in typical Ben Casey fashion, a nearby hospital phones in an emergency order and I’m suddenly off and running all over the place to find the required medicines.”
(Ibid.)
The Ben Casey to which Ms. Burke refers was a popular television series which ran from the early- to mid-1960’s. The Bing Crosby-produced medical drama was filmed at Desilu Studios and starred Vince Edwards (Space Raiders, Return to Horror High*) as the titular surgeon Dr. Benjamin Casey. The opening sequence is famous for its serious, ominous overtones: this deep voice says, “Man — woman — birth — death — infinity.” Heavy shit, right?
*Yes, I deliberately picked the cheesiest, schlockiest, campiest of Edwards’ many legitimate credits to use as his two paranthetical citations, like those obscure B flicks would somehow make you say, “Oh, him!” I wanted to be funny. Vince Edwards is actually a talented and well-recognized actor who was very popular in his time: I am just a goofy rake.
Kelly now sports her own 1965 Oldsmobile convertible, in which she commutes daily from her new bachelorette bungalow in suburban Sylmar.
(Ibid.)
Just five months after Ms. Burke’s gatefold appearance, the Loop Fire wiped out huge swaths of the boundary between her new hometown of Sylmar and the Angeles Forest. The fatally unpredictable Loop Fire is still covered in firefighting course textbooks today as an example of the necessity for developing strong communication strategy to contain a dry canyon fire affected by high winds.
The Loop Fire began on November 1, 1966, at 5:19 am, on the edge of the Angeles National Forest. The El Cariso Interregional Fire Crew, which consisted of city and county firefighters, along with the El Cariso “Hot Shots,” a USDA-Forest crew of firefighters, sprang in to action to contain the blaze.
Tragically, a flare-up jumped from the forest to a canyon at the outer edges of Sylmar and created a wall of flame around it. A group from the Hot Shots crew was trapped inside, cut off from the rest of the firemen in a narrow and dry canyon of steep rock walls which, despite having no natural accelerants to move the fire along, still increases the energy of the fire because it functions as a “natural chimney,” creating tremendous heat and pressure.
Ten firefighters burned to death on site within minutes, while twelve others were injured, one critically. Helicopter Pilot Troy Cook began rescue operations within 10 minutes after the men were burned. The diamond shaped area was still surrounded by fire when Pilot Cook hovered and picked up the first survivor.
(THE LOOP FIRE DISASTER – ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST – CALIFORNIA REGION: “A BRIEF OF THE REPORT OF THE GROUP ASSIGNED TO ANALYZE THE LOOP FIRE ACCIDENT.” US. Dept. of Agriculture, Forest Service. 1967: Washington, D.C.)
Pilot Roland Barton and his helicopter soon joined him and rescue operations continued with great courage and skill until all of the injured men were evacuated to the Los Angeles County Command Post on the Pacoima. From there the injured men were taken by auto to the hospital.
(Ibid.)
One of these injured men died at the LA County General Hospital November 6, but the rest survived thanks to the rescue efforts of the rest of the interregional team. A committee was formed by the Forest Service in conjunction with firefighting officials to use the tragic Loop Fire to improve fire prediction and containment methods, along with task force recommendations for the strengthening of safety and communication regulations.
The highly localized decisions and actions which resulted in the tragedy points to the need of:
(Ibid.)
(Ibid.)
The El Cariso Regional Park on Hubbard in Sylmar is a memorial to the aforementioned El Cariso “Hot Shots,” the local United States Department of Agriculture – Forestry boys who were killed during their battle to keep the flames from entering the town.
That was kind of bummer stuff, so sorry, but an interesting slice of history. Wildfires in California are far more devastating than the earthquakes with which the rest of the country generally associates the state, and as a result, fire science in California is often at the cutting edge of research and methods for saving lives in the future.
But back to sunny Ms. Burke.
“I’ve become a real flower bug,” she reports, “since Mom and Dad bought a retail nursery in Yucaipa last year. Each time I visit them, I load up the back seat of the Olds with so much greenery before heading home that it winds up looking just like some sort of window box on wheels.”
(Ibid.)
That’s cute. Weekends, June’s bantam (5′) beauty heads for the sun-drenched beaches of Santa Monica, equipped with an over-sized straw hat and nylon sailing parka. “My freckles still show no matter what I try!”
a) Yay for little lookers! Rock on with your pocket rocket self.
b) Why do freckled people always desire to hide them? Freckles are so unbelievably cute. I don’t get it.
c) It looks like she is Thumbelina laying in an orange peel. What the what is that stuff?
PEOPLE I ADMIRE: Albert Einstein, Dr. John Rock and Dr. Francis Kelsey, beause of their outstanding medical contributions.
MY IDEAL EVENING: Have cocktails and dinner, take in a movie, and then have a pizza.
(Playmate data sheet.)
Right on to Einstein, pizza, mutts, and having a serious job while attending Cal Poly Pomona during her appearance as a Playmate. Ms. Burke is the exception and not the rule of pretentious brandy-snifter marlarkey we went over earlier this week. Fun final fact: her sister-in-law, Allison Parks, was the 1966 Playmate of the Year.
Oh, and I guess a really fun final fact is that Ms. Burke was pregnant during this shoot. BOMBSHELL! Maybe that is why she is so adorably radiant. As you probably noticed, it’s another Cowboy Kate-influenced cover, I assume to reflect the “Girls of Texas” story. R.I.P., Sam Haskins.
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I water’d it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with my smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,
And into my garden stole
When the night had veil’d the pole:
In the morning, glad I see
My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree.
(William Blake, “A Poison Tree.”)
(I was concerned that the photo credits would break up the rhythm and impact of the poem, so I’m putting them down here.)
top: Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin, Don Juan ou Si Don Juan était une femme…, aka Female Don Juan, aka If Don Juan Was A Woman (Roger Vadim, 1973).
second from top: Jacqueline Sassard and Stéphane Audran, Les Biches (Claude Chabrol, 1968). Spoiler: one is about to stab the other in the back. Interpret freely and watch for yourself.
third: “Grand Apple Face” by patron saint Sam Haskins. In-camera photo montage before the age of photoshop. Amazing. RIP.
last: “Poisoned with love” by miss- alienation on the d.a.
“November Under Light.” Sam Haskins, November Girl (1966).
I sat there singing her
Songs in the dark.
She said,
“I do not understand
The words.”
I said,
“There are
No words.”
— Langston Hughes, “Songs.”
A beautiful and true sentiment.
“Truth is always the first casualty of war.” — Aeschylus.
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”
— Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928).
“It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.” –Joseph Goebbels.
“[In] Democratic societies … the state can’t control behavior by force. It can to some extent, but it’s much more limited in its capacity to control by force. Therefore, it has to control what you think.” — Noam Chomsky, Chronicles of Dissent, 1992.
“Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.” — Adolf Hitler.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. ” — Joseph Goebbels.
“Propaganda must confine itself to very few points, and repeat them endlessly.” — Adolf Hitler.
“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.” — George W. Bush.
“The intelligent, like the unintelligent, are responsive to propaganda.” — H.L. Mencken.
“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.” — Chomsky.
“Intellectual activity is a danger to the building of character … Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the state can play.” — Goebbels.
“[The propaganda system] recognizes that the public will not support the actual policies. Therefore it is important to prevent any knowledge or understanding of them.” — Chomsky.
“The truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” — Goebbels.
“Propaganda must never serve the truth, especially not insofar as it might bring out something favorable for the opponent.” — Hitler.
“One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and other forms of propaganda.” — Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
“We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.” — John F. Kennedy.
Is that so? I think I disagree, but I’ve debated this before, during Sam Haskins month, when I went off on Leni Riefenstahl. It is a damned tangled web, and the propaganda flows from all sides.
Some of those posters are by Cliff Chiang and some by Joe Carroney, and some by unknown others; see, the sources from which I gathered all these images were kind of slipshod in their own sourcing so if you know specifics please do shoot them my way because I am dissatisfied with the low-class credit attribution job I’m turning in on this one so far.
“Mood swings,” 2006.
This picture actually juxtaposes the covers of Sam’s books Haskins Posters (1972) and November Girl (1966). He put it together a few years ago for a different book. The images as a single unit have become a very popular print.
I feel like I should mention I’ve been putting these up out of sequence so I don’t totally spoil the plot for you. Don’t forget to add Sam’s Cowboy Kate and Other Stories, the Director’s Cut to your Christmas wish list. You can get it from Powell’s Books, Amazon, or get on a mailing list with Dashwood to see when they get another copy.
Sam basically discovered Gill. She was one of his favorite models, and I think it’s reflected in the work they put out together. This series of shots comes again from Five Girls.
Click the pic to see it big.
Gill was an art student in Johannesburg in the early sixties. Not a professional model, she just walked into the studio one day and was a total natural in front of the camera.
There were stories of Vietnam soldiers taking copies of Five Girls (often gifted to them by their wives or girlfriends) to war, so Gill was also a Vietnam pinup. The fan mail generated by Five Girls in the 60s included letters from both men and women. (Sam Haskins’ blog, entry dated 21 April 2008)
Sorry I skipped Day 13. Part of the day I was spending time with my daughter and the aforementioned estrange(st-people-on-earth)ed husband, and before that I was at church, you godless heathen. It happens! That’s right, I hella believe in something bigger than the frequently mucksucking shithole (it has its moments, though, I admit) that we’ve made of this Earth. Sue me.
To make up for yesterday’s lackage, I will post up more images than usual and cut the commentary.
“Gill,” the cover of Five Girls. This image has become somewhat iconic.
“Flutter,” 1972.
“The Apprentice.”
That last one, “The Apprentice,” features Ginny, who, like Gill, wound up figuring in a lot of Sam’s work. I haven’t gotten around to talking about her yet, but I will. I like the navel contemplation. She has a kind of interested but pleased look on her face. Good modeling, good shot.
Technically, the telling has more in common with a slick ballet sequence from a well directed film than with the conventional picture story. It flows and it tingles. It has continuity and superb presentation. It is made up of an agreeable mixture of fun and hyperbole, extravagance and restraint. Nothing is just plain statement, so that the reader has the pleasure of exercising his own powers of interpretation.(Norman Hall, review of Cowboy Kate)
Spiritually, it is a song of praise for the loveliness of woman and it has a lyrical fragrance which harks back to Spenser or Ben Jonson. In all there is a pervading sense of fun.
One of the things Sam Haskins is known for is his in-camera montages, which made him highly sought after for advertisement and design layouts. “Big Apple Face,” directly below, is an example from his official site.
Haskins achieved amazing effects well before the advent of the computer software used today to digitally reach the same look. He explains the composition of another famous piece, which shows a model seemingly embedded in rose fabric, in one of his blog entries:
Here is a 1970’s reminder of a pre-Photoshop montage world. This image is to be included in my new book. Its a single exposure with the model viewed through optical glass at 45º and the fabric positioned to the side.
Lindy Mirrored RosesAt the time there was zero retouching after the event. Now of course I have the luxury of scanning the transparency to clean and refine the image in Photoshop – God bless its digital socks. (Sam’s blog.)
“God bless its digital socks.” He’s so funny. Was. That’s depressing. This whole suicide thing really shocks me. It just didn’t jive with what I’d always read and heard about him, and his high-humored sense of fun. But his son said his stroke changed his personality. I guess it was very frustrating to him and he considered it very limiting. I just don’t know how I feel about the whole thing.
“Dance.” From his 1966 book November Girl. He also included it in 2009’s collection Fashion Etcetera. I’ll go in to that one a different day.
November Girl, like most of Sam’s books, is out of print. Still, it’s not as though all copies were burnt by papal decree and Illuminati appointment in all parts of the world at the precisely same hour it quit being printed, enforced by guards with muskets and sabres and saltpeter; it’s a photography book with boobies in it, not a worldwide conspiracy or any kind of forbidden-treasure-map.
You can pretty easily, though expensively, find November Girl online from rare booksellers and nudity-fans (those poor, brave pariahs who actually find the naked human body of interest — ugh, I cannot imagine what their lives are even like, they should really have their own charity) of all stripe if you got the cash for that kind of thing.
Perhaps one good thing to come from his recent death will be that demand might increase for his books and they will go back in to circulation.
“Fair and gentle nymph,” Sam Haskins, 1980.
The graphic experiments first seen in Haskins Posters (1972) and related exhibitions at London’s Photographer’s Gallery and National Theatre resulted in a book called Photo Graphics (1980). The title of the book coined a new term in photography that has since become widely used. (the wiki)
Oh, she was a lovely cowboy.
What a great and playful statement, and a beautiful and widely imitated shot.
“Gill, the art student with ribbons in her hair.”
Click to see larger.
“…images from my book Five Girls. The model, photographer and in this case the Rolleiflex camera are all comfortably anchored flat on the floor.” (Sam’s blog, April 13, 2008)
All five of the models in Five Girls, like Sam, are from South Africa. That’s where he shot the book. I’ll see what else I can dig up on the girls.
Five Girls represents many things to me.
A serious project that served as a clearing house for graphic ideas which were floating around in the back of my mind.
A fun project which was a relief from highly disciplined advertising illustration.
An opportunity to control the full cycle of an undertaking, from the first conception of the idea and choice of approach, through the photographic processes and selection of pictures, to the final detailed layout and design.
I do not like to dream up explanations for my work.. That is why this book is, quite simply, me – thinking pictures. (Sam Haskins, forward to Five Girls, 1962)
Many of the pictures from Five Girls, along with other prints of Sam’s work, are available as “signed, museum quality photographic prints;” hit up his official site’s order form to learn more.
The Thought Experiment 