Dith Pran, Photo: The New York Times

Like many, I knew of Dith Pran through the Oscar award winning movie, The Killing Fields.  The movie came out in 1984 and was still fresh in the cultural landscape when I began working as a staff photographer in New York City late in the fall of 1985.

I had just graduated college the prior spring and this was my first full-time photographer job.  As a staffer at Wagner International Photos my work consisted of running all over the five boroughs doing corporate and public relations photography.  The pace could be intense, 3-4-5 assignments per day, and the work varied from the frivolous (photographing a large orange being rolled across the Brooklyn Bridge to announce that Orange Crush was coming to New York) to the somewhat newsworthy (covering Gov. Mario Cuomo’s visit to the newly built Javits Center and its first exhibition).

The work often brought me in contact with news photographers, folks from the New York Times, the Daily News and the Post.  Many of them were of the same breed, jaded and just trying to get through the day.  Dith Pran was different.  I had the honor of working along side of him a number of times.  He didn’t complain like the others, he didn’t question the value of what was being covered and he always seemed to be concentrating on the work.  He also didn’t have any airs about him, something you might expect if a feature film documenting your life had come out a year or two earlier.

He wouldn’t know me at all but for a newbie, knowing his history, just to be in his presence and watch him work was a thrill.  I did help him one day when the rewind knob on his Nikon FM2 broke and we both tried to figure out a work-around.

It’s always interesting how history can call on individuals to act and to survive.  Dith Pran responded to that call in a way few others would and did what he could to turn his life experience into a force for good in the world.

Dith Pran – Wikipedia

New York Times Obituary

Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project

The Sheepfold, Moonlight, Jean-Francois Millet, 1856-1860

In the Forest of Fontainebleau, is a new exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.  It runs through June 8th.  I was able to see the show last weekend and it is just wonderful.  It presents the work of painters and photographers who gravitated to Fontainebleau region in France in the mid-nineteenth century, spawning what would become the Barbizon School of painting and fostering painting styles that would eventually become impressionism.

The paintings are glorious.  What was interesting was how much the photography pales in comparison.  Where the paintings give a sense of the mood of the environment and the mood of the artist, the photography feels crude and inexpressive.  Photography was still in its infancy at this time and the photographers working in Fontainbleau used paper negatives.  The resulting prints are high contrast, dark and have the feel of bad faxes.  The few standouts are the portraits which were taken in softer light and do not try to encompass the same field of view as the painters.

My favorite painting is above, it’s Jean-Francois Millet’s The Sheepfold, Moonlight.  The reproduction here doesn’t begin to capture the painting’s ability to show the light and the moment.

National Gallery of Art site

NGA micro site about the exhibition

The Walters Art Museum (Baltimore) on The Sheepfold, Moonlight

On a silly note, I had taken 20th Century Art History in college, it began just after this period with the Impressionists.  So, it was interesting to learn the true history of the Barbizon School.  I guess it really didn’t start as a school for modeling that used run commercials on TV when I was as a kid…

It’s always great to see someone do well and break the mold at the same time.  Last week Joshua Micah Marshall, founder of TalkingPointsMemo.com, won a Polk Award for legal reporting on his coverage of the US Attorney firing scandal.  Over the years, Josh has taken his blog and grown it into a news organization. Here is a New York Times article on Josh, the award and his operation.

I photographed Josh in 2006 for the National Journal.  As is often the case with this type of editorial assignment, the location and feel of the photos would be determined once I met the subject and saw the options on hand for backgrounds.  Josh and I had discussed some ideas for the photos. We assumed the shots would be outside but the weather was not great.  Josh didn’t seem to think his apartment would have any possibilities but once I saw it I thought it was perfect. It had some interesting furniture and some nice items, like strings of lights, to put out of focus in the background. The yellow floor lamp on the bottom right made for a good counterpoint to the blue in the window and in the reflection on the tv screen behind him.  It all worked together to create an intimate portrait that told the story of a blogger who could work from anywhere.

This past fall I was commissioned by Princeton University to photograph the cupola on Nassau Hall.  To Princeton students and alumni this is the source of all things Princeton.  If you are not familiar with Nassau Hall it was constructed in 1754 and in 1783 it was for a brief few months the capital of the United States.

As is often the case, a simple looking shot like this involves more work than is apparent.  For this image the viewing angle was scouted, the sun’s location plotted and the weather forecast consulted to create an image that would be bold and graphic.  On the technical front, I knew the image would be printed very large so it was captured in three pieces and then assembled in Photoshop.

The end result is an image which has become one of the centerpieces in Princeton University’s Aspire launch, a campaign to raise $1.75 Billion in five years.

Concurrent with the launch of this blog I’ve updated my web site, JonRoemer.com.  There are four new galleries and one gallery has been expanded with recent images.

Here’s the run down:

Expanded People Gallery

New Personal Work Gallery

Architecture Recent Work

Architecture Whitman

Architecture Waterloo