• Welcome to Photrio!
    Registration is fast and free. Join today to unlock search, see fewer ads, and access all forum features.
    Click here to sign up

Photographer's fantasy Dinner Party

cliveh

Subscriber
Allowing Ads
Joined
Oct 9, 2010
Messages
7,777
Format
35mm RF
If you could hold your ideal photographers’ dinners party with 10 guests, living or dead, who would you invite? Who would you like to sit next to? And what would you ask them?

I would invite Eugene Atget, Henri Cartier-Bresson (like to sit between the two), Arthur Fellig, Dorothea Lange, Fox Talbot, Louis-Jacques Daguerre, André Kertész (who would have to sit next to HCB), Elizabeth Fulhame (who would have to sit next to Fox Talbot), Robert Capa and Julia Margaret Cameron. We would need plenty of wine and I would hope the conversations would flow on into the early hours.
 
OP
OP

cliveh

Subscriber
Allowing Ads
Joined
Oct 9, 2010
Messages
7,777
Format
35mm RF
Actually it would be interesting to write a short film script for such a dinner party, but perhaps such a niche endever that the general public wouldn't understand?
 

nikos79

Member
Allowing Ads
Joined
Mar 9, 2025
Messages
1,052
Location
Lausanne
Format
35mm
Wow what a thread!
I would put Henri-Cartier Bresson and Andre Kertesz next to each other as you also did. They would spend half the dinner arguing over who truly invented the decisive moment (each politely insisting it was the other), while secretly trying to out-charm each other.
I would also put Eugene Atget and Walker Evans next to each other too, for sure they would also have a lot to talk about who came first and who came second

Then I would put John Szarkowsky in the middle to orchestrate the conversation from derailing.

On the other side, Louis Stettner and Garry Winogrand would be nailing witty one-liners all night, keeping the dinner lively and unpredictable.
In the end next to me I would put Julia Margaret Cameron and Sabine Weiss. I’d be taking furious notes, hoping to absorb just a fraction of their vision and maybe asking them to explain why my own photos never quite look that magical.

And of course, in a small kid’s chair somewhere, I’d have a young Jacques Henri Lartigue reminding us all to be humble with his early, astonishing photographs he took as a child

P.S. Interestingly Julia Margaret-Cameron is holding a Rolleiflex in the image
P.S. 2: I would call it "The Decisive Dinner"
 

Attachments

  • dinner_party_with_masters.jpg
    469.7 KB · Views: 35
Last edited:

CMoore

Member
Joined
Aug 23, 2015
Messages
6,288
Location
USA CA
Format
35mm
Ask them what cameras they own.
Then discuss some of the photos they have seen (maybe taken) over the years

Leo Fender
Muhammad Ali
Angela Davis
Malcolm Young
Janis Joplin
Mario Andretti
Malcolm X
Joan Blondell
Roger Waters
Max Blumenthal
 

jeffreyg

Subscriber
Allowing Ads
Joined
Jun 12, 2008
Messages
2,764
Location
florida
Format
Medium Format
Some years ago when he was eighty I spent a day one on one with Alfred Eisenstaedt. We went to a botanical garden and to a garden shop for him to get some solution for one of his houseplants. Afterwards I brought him to our house where he collected some small air plants and just visited with us. That evening we sat with him at a dinner in his honour. I do have a picture someone took of us. He didn’t have a camera and didn’t really speak much about photography but rather conversation about what ever people were talking about. He was a pleasure to be with.
 

GregY

Member
Allowing Ads
Joined
Apr 12, 2005
Messages
3,980
Location
Alberta
Format
Large Format
I'd start with 2 photographers i had dinner with when they were alive.... Bradford Washburn, & Jay Dusard..& 2 live ones... my friend Jim Herrington from Nashville, & Eddy van Wessel from Sweden...
then i'd add Vittorio Sella, Robert Doisneau, George Tairraz from Chamonix, Imogen Cunningham, Lee Miller (likely to be the life of the party...), & Paul Strand
lots of fine wine & good food & let the conversation develop.
 
Last edited:

MattKing

Moderator
Moderator
Allowing Ads
Joined
Apr 24, 2005
Messages
55,061
Location
Delta, BC Canada
Format
Medium Format
I don't really want to eat dinner with dead people I'm afraid!
cowanw said:
Yousef Karsh and John Garo and friends
Click to expand...

I'd agree with that, although I believe it is Yousuf Karsh.
I would enjoy having real, face to face contact with all the Photrio Moderators + @Sean - other than @Andrew O'Neill , I've never actually met any of the other active moderators, and @jdcallow isn't around much, if ever.
I'm fortunate though - I do get together reasonably regularly with a bunch of different people who are very talented photographers, and they are good fun as well.
This thread's subject is a good one, but I'm afraid it reminds me of a very funny article I read way back when I was an undergraduate science student at university. The article's premise was what would happen if several great writers - think William Shakespeare and the like - were all members of the same writing club.
The hilarity came from the subjects of the discussions referred to:
- the quality of the snacks;
- whose turn it was to clean the outhouse, and complaints about the last time it was done;
- grousing about the fireplace smoking;
- how poor the wine was - especially this!
There would be a real chance that a modern version that involved photographers would devolve into grumbling about publishers, agents, gallery curators and owners, equipment and/or film and processing, plus the cost of food and drink.
And of course, the quality of the snacks and whether the wine was to their taste!
 

nikos79

Member
Allowing Ads
Joined
Mar 9, 2025
Messages
1,052
Location
Lausanne
Format
35mm
Some potential dialogues:

Lartigue: "I photographed the cat jumping onto the table!!! Uncle Henri Is that a decisive moment?”

HCB: "Yes, Jacques… but only if the cat lands with perfect geometry and you press the shutter just a moment before touching the table and freeze the time”

Winogrand: "Forget geometry the cat is eating the damn cheese"

Eugene Atget: Can you really photograph that fast?

Andre Kertesz: I managed to take a photo of the cat's shadow

Evans: I managed to photograph the label of the cheese it writes "Perkins Cheese & Sons"

Stettner: "Where is humanistic photography in that? Do we need to photograph animals now?"

Cameron: "Can you hold the cat still for 15 minutes?"

Sabine Weiss: "Young Jacques I just photographed you and your smile"

Sxarkowsky: "I will give you all some exposition named the family of cat"
 
Last edited:

Don_ih

Member
Allowing Ads
Joined
Jan 24, 2021
Messages
8,544
Location
Ontario
Format
35mm RF
MattKing said:
whose turn it was to clean the outhouse
Click to expand...

So, you went to university before there was indoor plumbing? Wow, Matt.

I'd likely want Walker Evans and Gene Smith. Maybe Stieglitz and Steichen (so they could fight about women). Gertrude Kasebier could also sit in and admonish Stieglitz. Maybe she could be a +1. I'd want Irving Penn and Margaret Bourke White. I'd want Philippe Halsmann there, too. People don't seem aware how amazing that guy was. And Josef Sudek. Am I running out of names? Julia Margaret Cameron and William Mortensen would get along. I'd want Edward Weston there sitting by himself.
 

Andrew O'Neill

Moderator
Moderator
Allowing Ads
Joined
Jan 16, 2004
Messages
12,869
Location
Coquitlam,BC Canada
Format
Multi Format
I would love to have over for dinner, all the members of group f.64, and William Mortensen. Now THAT would be interesting...FOOD FIGHT!
 

MurrayMinchin

Membership Council
Subscriber
Allowing Ads
Joined
Jan 9, 2005
Messages
5,600
Location
North Coast BC Canada
Format
Hybrid
Talbot, Niepce and Daguerre.
 

thinkbrown

Member
Joined
Mar 7, 2025
Messages
313
Location
Boston MA
Format
Multi Format
I'd fill mine with engineers and chemists that made it all possible. Folks like Grant Haist, Edwin Land, Meroe Morse, our own Ron Mowrey (whose posts continue to be an invaluable resource to me today), etc.
 

MattKing

Moderator
Moderator
Allowing Ads
Joined
Apr 24, 2005
Messages
55,061
Location
Delta, BC Canada
Format
Medium Format
Don_ih said:
So, you went to university before there was indoor plumbing? Wow, Matt.
Click to expand...

No, but any meeting attended by William Shakespeare certainly didn't benefit by that most valued modern invention!
 

MattKing

Moderator
Moderator
Allowing Ads
Joined
Apr 24, 2005
Messages
55,061
Location
Delta, BC Canada
Format
Medium Format
thinkbrown said:
I'd fill mine with engineers and chemists that made it all possible. Folks like Grant Haist, Edwin Land, Meroe Morse, our own Ron Mowrey (whose posts continue to be an invaluable resource to me today), etc.
Click to expand...

If Ron was there, they probably would talk about science fiction
 

Franklee

Member
Joined
Dec 12, 2025
Messages
15
Location
Sonoma County, California
Format
35mm
I think most of these famous photographers had big egos would end up fighting, which would be hilarious.

Capa and Weston would be off rutting in the corner (not with each other) while making sure to run out on the tab.

The tips would be miniscule.
 

Alex Benjamin

Subscriber
Allowing Ads
Joined
Aug 8, 2018
Messages
2,940
Location
Montreal
Format
Multi Format
Gordon Parks, Roy DeCarava, Santu Mofokeng, Ernest Cole, Dawoud Bey, LaToya Ruby Frazer, Anthony Barboza, Malik Sidibé, Carrie Mae Weems, Louis Draper, Ming Smith, Tyler Mitchell, Deana Lawson, Seydou Keïta.

I'm cooking, as usual.

I know you said 10 and I got 14, but I have a huge back yard.
 
OP
OP

cliveh

Subscriber
Allowing Ads
Joined
Oct 9, 2010
Messages
7,777
Format
35mm RF

I am pleased that this thread has created such imaginative responses and this response by nikos79 made me laugh.
 

Kino

Subscriber
Allowing Ads
Joined
Jan 20, 2006
Messages
7,942
Location
Orange, Virginia
Format
Multi Format
Andrew O'Neill said:
I would love to have over for dinner, all the members of group f.64, and William Mortensen. Now THAT would be interesting...FOOD FIGHT!
Click to expand...

I was going to say Ansel Adams and William Mortensen with Weegee to document the outcome...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register