Blog About Photography

Liz shared this with me on Google Reader. Thank God.

Bill Poplack, 1982

My Grand­fa­ther, William J. Poplack, died yes­ter­day at around 4:45 in the after­noon. He was incred­i­bly car­ing and gen­er­ous human being, and, at 88, he’d lost absolutely none of the wit that made him so much fun to spend time with. Grandpa stayed with us through more than 10 years of his declin­ing health  he was also a fighter with an iron will. He sur­vived a Nazi P.O.W. camp after his plane was shot down over occu­pied Hol­land dur­ing World War II, and then, forty years later, bested a gun­shot to the heart dur­ing a mug­ging right here in New York City. When his time finally came, he was sur­rounded by fam­ily in Birm­ing­ham, MI, the place he lived all his life. Every one who knew him and was close to him will cer­tainly miss him very much.

Richard Ave­don

Some­time not so long ago (2001?), Richard Ave­don became the first staff pho­tog­ra­pher for the New Yorker, a job he held until his death in 2004. The newest issue of the New Yorker arrived today, it being Tues­day. I hap­pened to flip it open up to page 51 and see a famil­iar image: a par­tic­u­larly ethe­real por­trait of Jacob Israel Ave­don made dur­ing his finals days by his son in 1972. It accom­pa­nies an arti­cle by Atul Gwande about aging. I would like to hear other opin­ions on this, but I feel like the pho­to­graph far out­shines the piece, which seems far too iconic for an edi­to­r­ial con­text. Thoughts?