© Jaime Permuth, 2025
I spent last week with a group of fifteen talented and precocious teenagers at NYFA Photography.
We had an amazing workshop in and out of the studio. Participants had a chance to try their hand at street portraiture, street photography, urban landscapes and studio lighting.
Here’s a portrait of Briana by Marygrace using a single, continuous light source. I’ll definitely be missing these young men and women.
This enigmatic image has always been my favorite William Wegman photograph. I knew that it was taken in the early days of his career, back in the 1970s. And I knew that it was part of a larger body of works he undertook, which somehow managed to both lampoon and embody the principles of conceptual art.
Yesterday, Bill told the story himself: how he was coming from his painting studio to a party in LA; that when he went to pick up a slice of cotto salami he saw the little circles he had drawn on his hand earlier that day; the little circles perfectly matched and dissolved with those in the rounds of cotto salami; how he left the party with some salami in his pocket and went straight back to the studio and made this photograph. His first photograph and my all-time fave.
Thank you Nancy Burson and New York Film Academy for setting up the talk. It was truly wonderful and it helped clear up a mystery or two along the way.
"I like Ralph Gibson and psychedelic rock and roll from the 60s. Oh, and I only shoot film".
This is how fifteen-year-old Mark, from Hong Kong introduced himself to me at the New York Film Academy. NYFA had asked me to mentor him one-on-one for a week. I agreed without really knowing what to expect.
As Mark was taking out a Nikon FM2 from his backpack, I asked him for the title of his favorite Gibson book. Without skipping a beat he replied: The Somnambulist.
Our whole exchange reminded me of that short story from the "Book of Sand" where a young Borges has a conversation with an aging stranger on a park bench overlooking the Charles River.
The stranger turns out to be his older self, sitting next to him across time.
David Choi and Kana Beisekeyev recently graduated from New York Film Academy where I teach. They visited me in Harlem to talk photography and this is a short clip from our conversation. David and Kana have combined their talents and are publishing a new online photography magazine: Serazard. Word to the wise: keep an eye out for these two!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1L4xGh1Gi0&feature=youtu.be
This week I borrowed an instructor D800 from New York Film Academy (where I teach) and did a bit of testing with it. This shot was taken at f/2.8 using a Nikon 24-70mm zoom. Normally I prefer to shoot with a prime lens, but we have yet to get some of those in our equipment cage. Overall, I'm really happy with what I've seen: the files are incredibly sharp and I've had no issues with digital aberrations. I'm seriously considering upgrading from my current camera, the D700.
