These pictures are being exhibited in Birmingham, UK next week, I look forward to seeing them!

Rahm is actually hot looking. The condescending shoot the short guy from above angle is a cheapshot.

Irving Penn shot against white walls and got some interest into the photos. These make the characters look like cardboard cut-outs or dead bodies (the one of Harry Reid.)

Your insider comic was FANTASTIC, though.
b

We might think of photography competitive advantages as:

1. Access (this includes relationships)
2. Technical know-how
3. Creativity
4. Money (think traveling somewhere to shoot or being able to rent a helicopter or even afford that 40k camera)

Any others people want to add?

Of course, Nadav was chosen, I imagine based largely on his past work and demonstrated ability.

This is the first time I’ve ever been inspired to comment – and coming late to the conversation at that – but I just have to say that I love these portraits.

Here in DC I’ve been there way too often with no time and political animals who for the most part are not AT ALL wanting to reveal anything. So Kander and Ryan’s solution in the set-up was a perfect way to simplify it and concentrate on the subject and work fast.

I like the cool, hip, flatness of the lighting (to go with our new cool president) and the descriptive quality it brings. The framing allowed for enough body language to get some telling gestures. To me it really feels like he just let them be who they are.

Furthermore, this shoot is not about applying Kander’s creative whims to each subject. It is an historic record of Obamas People. Shooting them on white with ordinary light actually brings to light interesting similarities and differences between the subjects.

I think he picked a smart, timeless shooting and lighting style that allowed him to catch some really nice. telling subtleties. When you only have 10 minutes with a subject, and you HAVE to get a shot of each person, you need to be ready for anything.

My only complaint were some of the missed opportunities at image pairs:

“What’s up with the finger on his right hand…..Oh!”
Rahm Emanuel
Lawrence Summers

“I am going to burn a hole in you with lasers from my eyeballs” aka “oh my god I can’t believe he picked THAT one of me.”
Jackie Norris
Ellen Moran

“I am going to tear off your head and shit down your throat”:
Robert Gates
Jim Messina and/or Jack Reed

http://www.donaldgraham.com/

Ok Michael Seto,

its clear whats happening here.

Nadav Kander wasn’t at the right place, at the right time, with the right look.

As a photo editor with an NYT magazine staff arsenal its up to Kathy Ryan to create the “right place, right time” scenario. It’s not like Nadav was plucked off the street. His simple lighting is exactly what was needed to replicate Avdeon’s Regan Administration shoot. I bet if he had 4+ lights, you internet cynics would be up in arms about over compensation.

If i were Kathy Ryan, and I needed to photograph the 50+ most important people in America right now, I would be wise enough to understand that a photographer isn’t simply an over-paid button presser.

Nadav’s team has to be able to calmly and quickly troubleshoot and fix any problems that may come up while shooting (electrical issues, Profoto light failures, Camera issues, Computer crashes).

Michael, do you really think that a Phase one P45+ digital back (priced at $30,000 and up) a Hassleblad camera, appropriate lenses, MacPro computers with the applicable software (not G5, because PPC systems are older than Joe Biden)in addition to back-up equipment and having a trained technician who has the fix whatever issues occur within seconds because of extreme time-constraints, can all be considered accessible resources?

Yes “technically” anyone can do anything, but in reality, if you want to commission a daunting photo essay like this you need to hire people who have done this before and understand the process and intricacies of a professional photo shoot.

You obviously don’t understand a thing about magazine deadlines or image file delivery and security.

Seriously, you’re the guy at the Modern Museum of Art and says uneducated shit like “anyone can do that!”

yes Michael, anyone can ‘technically’ do anything , but please don’t be that resentful aging photo-nerd that refuses to acknowledge real talent.

The last one was the best! One of my oldest friends worked at MJ during the formative years and was also ME at quite a few mags. We worked together on a lot of shoots, some freelance, some for those he ran. Invariably someone would come in to the meetings without having read the story and start moving stuff around like they were a little kid playing jacks! I think, as a fellow photographer, that Kandar did a great job within the time constraints that I’m sure existed. You set up your lighting and then just shove people into the set as soon as they turn up. The sad part is that with the total move to digital, the time constraints seem to get shorter and shorter, no matter the stature of the people you are assigned to shoot.

Rolling Stone was a magazine that took risks (back then, not now) and the resulting Avedon images show that risk. By contrast, these images show a lack of risk and a lack of impact and result.

The lighting isn’t just a formal quality of the photograph, but it’s a good metaphor for the impact of the photos:
Avedon/RS = strong & directional
Nadav/NYT = flat & nondirectional

As a reader and subscriber to the NYTimes for untold years, and also as a professional photographer of 30 years, I was deeply offended by your photographic essay on “Obama’s People.” When Obama has been inspirational in bringing out the best in us, the NYTimes has chosen a photographer and a style that is unflattering at best, and degrading and humiliating at its very worst. The photographs say more about the style that was imposed than they say about the subjects depicted. The lighting used to photograph the subjects was analogous to placing people on the face of a Xerox copying machine. As a specialist in portraiture, I would never photograph people in such light, as it would impose an unnatural and undignified feel to every image made under these circumstances.
It is no secret that we as a nation are facing numerous simultaneous crises. Many nations and peoples of the world have their hopes riding on the success of this new team, and want them to succeed. Why would the NYTimes choose to deliberately and intentionally illustrate these accomplished people in literally such a bad light? A fine portrait photographer, of which there are many, would try to capture the real personality of their subjects with dignity, and not use their style in a form of ridiculing caricature. This certainly does not reflect well on the NYTimes.

“The subject matter is so much more important than the photographer.”

You have a lot of valid points with which I agree. I spoke before about the arrogance of a lot of PE’s and AD’s in their praise of certain photographers for the ‘artistic’ value of their work.

I’m not an art photographer, I’m a photojournalist. That means that the most important part of my image is its ability to convey a message to the viewer. Likewise, the NYT Mag is not an art magazine, it’s a journal geared to the average citizen.

Some will argue that these images have good artistic value. That may be the case by whatever standard one judges artistic value. The question however is how much journalistic value do they have? Will readers of the NYT Mag connect with the images and do they convey messages to the readers? The messages in this case, are the personalities of Obama’s people.

I tried an experiment and asked a few average citizens what they thought of the images. “I’m not impressed,” and “They didn’t do anything for me,” are microcosms of the overwhelming responses.

In some cases, artists make the worst critics of ‘art.’ This, in my opinion is one of those cases. I believe that the purpose of this project was to introduce the country and the world to the people who are charged with executing the policies and promises of the Obama administration. My own little experiment, combined with what I’ve read by other ‘citizen’ critics, indicates that the project was a miserable failure.

To some art collectors and AD’s, these images might possess overwhelming artistic value in the aesthetics. But to the average citizen, they seem to have no value at all.

Gawker story:

http://tinyurl.com/a4z8mq

“Portraits” of people that tell you more about the photographer than his/her subject became the rage in the 70s, and the NYT was a leader of the trend. Some of these are so bad they remind me of those shots made of a loved one lying in the coffin at a funeral, made because the next-of-kin had no good portrait of the deceased.

Getting all these high-profile folks to appear in the same setting would be akin to herding cats. These folks no doubt agreed to do this because the mighty New York Times invited them to. But you can only wonder what might have resulted had they then hired a real photographer – or more charitably, the right photographer for the job. Kander’s photos don’t even rise to the level of decent photography – these are more like (not PC) “Mexican Justice” photos – “put up against the wall and shoot ‘em.” Some of the published photos look like “outtakes” from some assignment, and others resemble something you’d expect from one of those photo kiosks, where you drop your money and take your chances.

This called for a journalism approach. Instead of letting this collection of remarkable individuals do their thing, giving us a glimpse or at least a hint of their personalities, the photographer has posed them, uncomfortably, against a white background posing in ways that tells you far more about himself than his subjects, trying perhaps for “art” and missing the point of the exercise.

The NYTMag text tells us he had help, which may be part of the problem since almost all the subjects appear to be looking somewhere other than at the camera.

The women seem especially uncomfortable, and don’t know what to do with their hands. It even appears that nobody was reminded to stand up straight. There is a sameness about the dreary pictures. They’re all verticals, but the framing isn’t even uniform – Samantha Power is a headshot plus her flowing red hair; other subjects are cropped at the knees.

Robert Bauer, indoors, still wears his coat and scarf. Melody Barnes is looking at something – a way to get out of the room, perhaps? Harry Reid seems to have his eyes closed (see paragraph 2 about coffin shots, above); Rahm Emanuel, a sharp cookie, looks as if he can’t believe he got himself suckered into this. Sen. Robert Casey, in suit and tie – and holding a basketball, looks as if his team just lost. Reggie Lowe has his sunglases clipped to the front of his shirt.

Several years ago I was quite literally startled by the cover of the NYT Mag because a black-and-white grimy-looking photo of “bag person” looked sort of like a down-on-his-luck Sondheim. Startled because it WAS Sondheim, who is reported to have torn the cover off the magazine and taped it to the door of a one of his current Broadway shows. He wrote ‘WILL WORK FOR MUSIC.” on it.

There is no music in these current NYTMag disasters – the photographer, I suspect, along with nearly everybody involved behind the camera in the project including some photo editor, on this one was tone deaf.

Of course not. Brits know nothing about the rest of the world as they rarely travel abroad or pay attention to other countries except to invade. Oh sorry I got them mixed up with Americans. The Brits travel abroad lots, mainly to get drunk and party though! ;-)
Actually out press covers American affairs in a lot of detail – we supposedly have a ‘special’ relationship, so we tend to know more about American politics/events than European affairs.
I also beleive ad photographers are allowed one hour a week out of their cage to read a newspaper. But only one with big pictures in and large text.

As for some US papers having foreign affairs, that is true and they are the ones you can buy in Europe uusally. But they are the minority. America is a quite parochial country compared to say European countries mainly as a result of geography and short holidays and I’m not talking through ignorance here as I have spent time in the US, have family there and my girlfriend’s company is American.

As for the we voted for…..line. How do you explain George W. Bush’s presidency? As it seems voting for candidates, didn’t actually have any effect in some places, assuming you were allowed to vote in first place.

This is all getting a bit OT for a photography blog, but at least this time the voters choice actually counted and got a decent man in.