Rankin : Fashion Photographer

[david b]

The artist at work. Cool music. Skinny blonde woman and a lot of polaroid film.

See it here

(how the hell do you you embed a youtube video?)

 

[MikeSeb]

I'd like to know how to macGuyver a polaroid back on the RB/RZ to shoot Fuji pack film.

She was indeed slender. And blonde.

Looks like a fun day job, photographing naked women in a distillery.

 

[wildbill]

There was also a post on this here when it came out last year: (there was a url link here which no longer exists)
Mike, what do you mean? Fuji pack film is the same size as polaroid pack film and will work just fine in your rz polaroid back.

 

[Hamster]

How many assistants were there? He needed someone to pull the polaroid for him? Poser?

 

[Maris]

I worry about people like Rankin. In what sense are they actually photographers?

I see camera work being done at the front end of the process and Rankin is doing it. At the other end of the enterprise, the end-product phase, there are no photographs. Instead a rotary press generates industrial quantities of printed illustration. Rankin is not there. When did he drop out? What did he do beside point, focus, click, and schmoose the model?

Were photographic materials merely a nuisance that had to be consumed (and ultimately discarded) as a way of carrying an image from the back of a camera to the plate setter at the print shop?

There are plenty of wonderful photographers in APUG who actually merit that status because they make photographs. The source of Rankin's fame seems to lie elsewhere.

 

[Alex M]

? What did he do beside point, focus, click, and schmoose the model?

What did Avedon do more ?

 

[tim_walls]

I worry about people like Rankin. In what sense are they actually photographers?

I see camera work being done at the front end of the process and Rankin is doing it. At the other end of the enterprise, the end-product phase, there are no photographs. Instead a rotary press generates industrial quantities of printed illustration. Rankin is not there. When did he drop out? What did he do beside point, focus, click, and schmoose the model?

Were photographic materials merely a nuisance that had to be consumed (and ultimately discarded) as a way of carrying an image from the back of a camera to the plate setter at the print shop?

There are plenty of wonderful photographers in APUG who actually merit that status because they make photographs. The source of Rankin's fame seems to lie elsewhere.

It seems to me your issue is more with editorial photography versus 'art' photography than anything to do with Rankin per se.

In which case, was it not ever thus?

 

[mabman]

When I first saw this series my first thought was "Surely he could have afforded to buy an old packfilm Land Camera and use the WHOLE FRAME!" As a proofing tool, I'm sure his setup is quite useful, but as the end result, this really bothers me.

Not sure why, exactly - it just seems like such a waste of such unique (and typically more expensive) film. As for content - to each their own, but nudes and booze seems like a tired subject. Or maybe I just watch too much TV