Roger Eberhard made pictures of long passed-by places. I wrote about
his series of pictures published in a book called “Wilted Country”.
Now Mr. Eberhard has been kind to give one of the book’s signature
images for the Eastman House Benefit Auction. It depicts an abandoned
sign for GAS, barely visible in the artist’s construction and an apt
notion of an increasingly faint source of energy.

Roger Eberhard, Untitled (“Gas), 2007, from the series and publication “Wilted Country”

Wind and other elements, sand and weed, snow and rain, seed and other
living things, do pass freely now through the abandoned
locations. But people do not pass by very often. Perhaps on occasion,
I wrote. If they pass, and if they look, perhaps they wonder. Maybe
someone who recognizes potential, who has a feeling for history and
appreciation for redemption stops and considers.

Eberhard did. He stopped and produced some haunting images. And we
now, his audience, we stop in fascination.Through the artist’s vision
these abandoned places are transformed. The sign remains in Eberhard’s
picture. Maybe the GAS sign has disappeared out there on the prairie.

The photographer has left his sign too and in some ways just as
fugitively. His images, burnt out by a rural sun, occupy just a faint
edge of perception. But it is enough for our appreciation and
memorialization. And we are grateful to offer it in our October 3
auction.

It’s festival week here at Eastman House, as the 360 | 365 George Eastman House Film Festival takes to the Dryden Theatre and other Rochester screens April 27 through May 2, showcasing 105 films from 21 countries.

Buddy Squires on location

Among those being honored are Oscar®-nominated and Emmy®-winning cinematographer Buddy Squires, who has been called “the visual poet.” He will receive the inaugural Golden Lens Award for Cinematography presented by Kodak and the festival, at 6:45 p.m. Thursday, April 28. Our evening with Buddy Squires will feature clips of his work and a talk with the audience

Of the amazing festival schedule the high point for me – truly a highest point – is a chance to be with Buddy Squires. He is a leading filmmaker and it will be a rare honor for us to be with him here.

Yes, he is best known for photographing the films of Ken Burns and is a founding member of Florentine Films. Buddy’s films with Ken Burns are preserved at George Eastman House, which houses the Florentine Films archive. Burns and his writing partner Geoffrey Ward were at Eastman House last August and when we honored them each with the George Eastman Medal of Honor.

Buddy has earned several Oscar® nominations and Emmy® awards for cinematography, as well as for producing and directing, plus several additional leading cinematography honors, including two previous awards from Kodak. A Kodak colleague, Lauren Lung, calls Buddy “a master of cinematic art” and his work “iconic and timeless.”

The festival’s film roster includes a screening of Strangers No More (2010), the current Oscar® winner for Best Short Documentary, for which Buddy served as cinematographer.

The 360 | 365 George Eastman House Film, which celebrates its 10^th anniversary in 2011, is the only contemporary film festival in the United States aligned with a major motion picture archive.

"Jazzmania" (1923), restored by Eastman House.

The festival lineup features three screenings from the Eastman House archives, including a recent restoration, Jazzmania (1923), accompanied by live jazz band The Djangoners, a rare nitrate screening of Gone to Earth (1950), and A Matter of Life & Death (aka Stairway to Heaven, 1946), which was photographed by Jack Cardiff, and will follow a screening of a new documentary titled Cameraman about the famed cinematographer.

We screen premieres as well as restored films daily in our Dryden Theatre, and the 360 | 365 George Eastman House Film Festival provides an additional platform to present archival films and our work as a world leader in film preservation

This festival is a rich blend of our film history with the newest film releases, selected by an exceptional programming team, comprised of an award-winning filmmaker, a nationally celebrated film critic, and Eastman’s House’s experienced film programmer.

A full schedule can be found at www.film360365.com.

See you at the movies!

For more about Graham Nash’s visit:

Listen In to a podcast of his Dryden Theatre talk.

See highlights from his George Eastman Honorary Scholar award ceremony on our You Tube Channel.

Browse our Facebook Photo Album.

View ‘Graham Nash Becomes Eastman House Honorary Scholar’ video clip on Rochester YNN.

I saw parts of the Eastman House in different ways this past weekend, as photographer and musician Graham Nash shared with me what he was seeing throughout the mansion and museum, through his keen and creative photographer’s eye. He was intrigued by Eastman House, from the architecture to the collections, engaging with our conservators and archivists to learn more about daguerreotypes and photograph conservation.

Graham Nash with the framed art awarded to him upon receiving the title of George Eastman Honorary Scholar, presented by Tony Bannon, the Ron and Donna Fielding Director of George Eastman House, and Lisa Brubaker, an officer of the Easmtan House Board of Trustees.

Graham joined us, accompanied by his son, Will, to receive the title of George Eastman Honorary Scholar, for his contribution to photography as an artist and innovator.

He told the sold-out audience, “To be standing here today at George Eastman House is totally, totally amazing. This is an incredible honor. I’ve been a photographer longer than I’ve been a musician and my first passion is photography.”

Director Tony Bannon introduces Graham Nash before the press conference in the “Taking Aim” gallery.

If it were only through Graham’s music – his lyrics, his arrangements, his compositions –we might say and agree he has made an important part of the culture of our time. But let’s add to that an estimable career as a photographer, one who has imaged the music scene but also the totality of life around us.

While best known for his legendary music career with Crosby, Stills, and Nash as well as The Hollies, for which he has been inducted twice into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Graham has been taking pictures for more than 50 years and collecting photographs since the 1970s. His visit to Eastman House was timed to coincide with the museum’s current display of the “Taking Aim” rock-photo exhibition he curated.

In the photography archives at Eastman House, Graham and Will experienced the earliest daguerreotype of Daguerre himself (1844) and a daguerreotype of an American cemetery in Shimoda, Japan, believed to be the earliest photographic image of Japan (1855). In the Kay R. Whitmore Conservation Lab, they witnessed a demonstration of a device that detects and maps an image formed on a daguerreotype 170 years ago, even though the original image has long since faded away.

Moved by these experiences, Nash was outspoken at both a press conference and the audience in encouraging support for Eastman House, calling the museum “a complete jewel that is preserving our collective physical and visual memory.”

Graham’s passion for fine-art photography led him to establish Nash Editions, a pioneering and celebrated printmaking studio that produces state-of-the art digital images for a long list of master photographers and artists. Eastman House created and debuted the world premiere of Nash Editions’ “Digital Frontiers” exhibition in 1998. Eastman House toured the exhibition, curated by Therese Mulligan, internationally for five years.

For this pioneering work in photography, The Smithsonian Institution cited Nash Editions for its role in the invention of digital fine-art printing upon acquiring the company’s original equipment and ephemera in 2005. And for services to music and charitable activities, the British-born superstar was named in 2010 an Officer of the Order of the British Empire by the Queen of England.

This is a high spot of the year – a nice tradition I enjoy: Just before New Year’s John and Susan Edwards Harvith visit Eastman House to present gifts from their extraordinary collection of photographs and ephemera related to Karl Struss. Today we did the paperwork to receive to the museum’s collection four pictures Struss made as a still photographer on Hollywood movie sets early in the 20th century. Three of the pictures feature Gloria Swanson and the other is a set piece from Cecile B. De Mille’s “Male and Female” (1919). I’m a huge fan of Struss’ work.  Is anyone else reading this a fan, too? I’m curious to learn what you enjoy about Struss’ career. Here’s  link to a fabulous blog on Struss by the great cinematographer (and good friend of the Eastman House) John Bailey.

Here I am (center) with John and Susan Edwards Harvith.

The Harvith’s gifts this year are stills of Swanson and Elliott Dexter from De Mille’s “Something to Think About” (1920),Swanson laying on an elaborate daybed in De Mille’s “Male and Female,” Swanson on the set of De Mille’s “The Affair’s of Anatol” (1921), and the set piece from “Male and Female.” I wish I could post the images, but copyright restrictions prohibit that.  Struss was associated with Alfred Stieglitz and Clarence White in New York City as part of the early century movement advocating the fine art of photography.  After World War I, Struss relocated to Hollywood, working at first as a still photographer with De Mille and later as one of the great cinematographer in film history, his credits including many classic titles, notably such as his collaboration with Charles Rosher on the F.W. Murnau masterpiece, “Sunrise” (See John Bailey blog and his interpretation of the film on the DVD available commercially). Struss’ film career evolved over time into tricky and dazzling special effects and 3-D, but he kept on working, well into the second part of the century.  He died at 95 in 1981.

John and Susan Harvith have made huge contributions to the understanding of Struss’ accomplishments.  John is the Senior Associate Vice Chancellor of University News and Magazines at the University of Pittsburgh.  Susan is a professor of film history at Oasis, associated with SUNY in Syracuse.  Together they interviewed Struss beginning in 1974 and organized in 1977, a touring exhibition of Struss’ forgotten still photography and films.  Thanks to the Harvith’s and others through the years, Eastman House has a solid collection of Struss’ work as a fine art photographer, as a movie still photographer and as a cinematographer. The House archive of De Mille’s films and materials is a mighty resource for Struss work, and our technology collection has the lenses that Struss developed, together with the materials he used to market them.  That is one of the pleasures of the Eastman House collection – that it is so often one stop shopping, so to speak, with its representation of careers that stretch through several disciplines – as with Struss, in photography, film, technology and manuscripts.  I’m eager to hear your appreciation of Struss – either here, or when you come to The House for a visit.

Today I am in Doha, Qatar, with museum leaders from around the world for the gala opening tonight of a new Arab Museum of Modern Art.

Qatar Museum Authority has done fabulous cultural work in recent years, and Roger Mandle, a good friend and former president of Rhode Island School of Design, is leading the Authority in its amazing development.

Eastman House and the Qatar museum are working on plans for a collaborative program in photograph conservation. Everything is fine, except there is a sandstorm in Doha today!

The Arab Museum of Modern Art will celebrate its public opening on December 30th.