Filmmaker and photographer Albert Maysles, owner of Maysles Films, New York, said when interviewed for the documentary Close Up Photographers at Work, created for the Ovation Channel, that “getting close to your subject doesn’t necessarily mean so many feet, but getting into the heart and mind of the person you are photographing.”
Director Rebecca Dreyfus, whose spotmaking home is Maysles Shorts, the commercial production division of Maysles Films, does just that in Close Up, which aired last month and is scheduled to run again in March. In addition to offering an intimate portrait of Albert Maysles in the documentary, Dreyfus offers a glimpse into the private world of photographers Timothy Greenfield Sanders, Sylvia Plachy, Gregory Crewdson and Andrew Moore. The documentary provides a look at their body of work, features interviews with the artists and shows them working during a shoot. Each segment ends with a look at photographs they took during those shoots.
“When Maysles Films came to me with this project, I was immediately drawn to the subject matter, and was excited to do it,” Dreyfus said. “It was a dream in a way to be able to make a wish list of world-class photographers to appear in a show like this–and to be able to approach them, and really get inside their heads–The other rewarding aspect of this job was the opportunity for me to work with Albert as both subject and collaborator.” (Maysles served as a DP on the project.)
This is not the first time that Dreyfus and Maysles have collaborated. He shot a lot of the footage in her film Stolen, which was about the world’s largest unsolved art heist. “We became very close working on that film,” Dreyfus explained. “His camera work is incredible. He has a certain kind of tenderness and intimacy about his shooting that is very rare.
“I am able to bring structure and direction to Al’s approach of not exercising any control. I feel like we perfected the balance of being able to set something up, get control of it in a way and then let something natural happen. This team of Al, editor Megan Brennan (of Company X) and I is something to offer advertisers who are interested in doing reality-based work. It’s something really special.”
Dreyfus reached out to Brennan after seeing her piece about cult painter Steve Keene. “Each portrait in Close Up is constructed around the aesthetic and personality of each photographer and Megan was wonderful in helping me to identify each one,” related Dreyfus. “For example, in Plachy’s portrait in just a short amount of time audiences are able to find out so much about where her motivation comes from for making photographs. She talks a lot about how she was born in Hungary and when she was a little girl she had to leave and a lot of her work has been about feeling displaced or having to leave her home country. Megan was wonderful about finding just the right amount of personal biographical information and bringing it in so you saw her photographs in a different context.”
Dreyfus admitted it was a bit challenging to get the photographers to open up. In fact, Plachy says in the documentary, “It’s very hard to talk about these things. That’s why I am a photographer, so I don’t have to.”
“Each photographer,” notaed Dreyfus, “had such a different personality so it wasn’t like you could come up with a formula for how to work with one and apply it to everyone. Each time it was a totally new deal.”
But she is proud of how she found the balance between making them feel comfortable and getting them to give her access to their world.
“What was exciting for me is I felt like it reached a new level for me,” she said. Based on the success of Close Up, she is developing a series of portraits that will include a broad variety of artists (poets, writers, painters etc.) and will present a survey of contemporary American culture.
She was also so happy with Plachy’s portrait that she got permission from the network to turn it into its own film and has started submitting it to festivals.
Apple and Google Face UK Investigation Into Mobile Browser Dominance
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More