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Post your three desert island photographs

logan2z

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I thought it would be fun to see everyone's picks for their three desert island photographs - the three photographs you would absolutely have to have with you if you were stuck on a desert island and had access to no other photographs.

Note: The photos should be ones taken by photographers other than yourself

I'll kick it off...

Robert Frank
'Butte Montana' (1956)


Lee Friedlander
R.O. Blechman, New York City (1968)


William Klein
Harlem, 1955
 
Photos by someone who prints really big on canvas so I can make a tent.
 
Yep, but it did not answer your question. I like your choices -- especially if I wanted to be reminded of life off the island. The first image that did come to mind was of the running albino deer. The image has enough mystery to keep me occupied on the island for awhile. Perhaps the image of the nude in the box by Ruth B. It might drive me nuts eventually, but it sort of speaks to being isolated. And third...probably a photo of a President holding some sort of religious symbol...to remind me why I am on a deserted island in the first place.
 
What could have been an interesting thread seems to have died on the vine, yet the Bath Ducks thread is up to two pages long. What is happening to Photrio?
 
What could have been an interesting thread seems to have died on the vine, yet the Bath Ducks thread is up to two pages long. What is happening to Photrio?
Bath Ducks has been going for over two weeks. But perhaps desert islands are not all what they quack up to be.
 
Henry Cartier-Bresson,
Hyères, France, 1932




Philippe Halsman jump photo
 
Stephen Shore - Holden Street, North Adams, Mass.


Brett Weston - Mendenhall Glacier


Neil Leifer - Ali vs. Liston II
 
Another vote for HCB's Hyères, France, 1932, and:
Ana Mendieta, Creek, 1974


and I'll have to think of a 3rd one
 
https://www.wikiart.org/en/george-seeley/firefly-1907
There are no good online presentation of this photo since the camera work media doesn't work so nice on a copy stand or scanner, but it's stunning in person.. I like pictorialism. I like the composition, the imagination that makes the firefly, and George Seeley was an awesome photographer. I bought one of these.

https://www.artic.edu/artworks/120704/gloucester-53a
If on an island, I like to think the material around me are all I need to see compositions. That's what I do now, and that's what Aaron Siskind did. I live near and explore and photograph a granite shoreline, so this reminds me of home, even though Gloucester is in another state. I look for compositions in nature in ways Siskind and Eliot Porter both would do. If I were on an island, it would remind me of home.

Not sure what for #3.. Maybe an Edward S Curtis portrait
or one of Lartigue's photo of a racing car with the bent wheel from the slow focal plane shutter, since I could hoon vicariously.
 
This is the first "really good" photograph I ever saw. That was nearly sixty years ago but it set me on my photographic journey.

Wynn Bullock "Log and Horsetails, 1957"

First "stunning" portrait.

Edward Weston "Rose Roland de Covarrubia, 1926"

First "drop dead gorgeous" landscape.

Ansel Adams "Tenaya Creek, Dogwood, Rain"
In the years that followed these original inspirations I have acquired only one of these photographs. It is "Tenaya Creek" which
hangs on the wall just above the computer where I type this. It remains an absolute joy to look at.
 

Thanks for sharing, I wasn't familiar with any of these. I'm not typically an Ansel Adams fan but I really like 'Tenaya Creek'. Beautiful shot.
 
The Enigma of Isadore Ducasse, The kiss, Dust Rising ( Man Ray ). They can be crappy ink jet prints too doesnt matter to me.
 
Flatiron Building, by Steichen
Faithful Unto Death, by Bob Carlos Clarke
The Steerage, by Stieglitz.