Oppenheim Arts & Letters

Other Artists, Other Rooms

An Inner Silence: The Portraits of Henri Cartier-Bresson

Among others:

Christian Dior

Alberto Giacometti

Arthur Honegger

Jawaharial Nehru

Colette

Ezra Pound

Andre Breton

Marcel Duchamp

Roberto Rosselini

Alexander Calder

William Faulkner

Carson McCullers

Arthur Miller

Martin Luther King

Pablo Neruda

Robert Oppenheimer

Jean Genet

Jean-Paul Sartre

Albert Camus

Alain Robbe-Grillet

Simone de Beauvoir

Joan Miro

Saul Steinberg

Alfred Stieglitz

Susan Sontag

Truman Capote

Marc Chagall

Edith Piaf

Igor Stravinsky

Coco Chanel

Henri Matisse

Carl Gustave Jung

Alexy Brodovich

John Huston

Marilyn Monroe

George Brazue

Samuel Beckett

The photographer needs no introduction. 

The photographs selected, and quite a few more personalities than listed here have been presented, represent the first exhibition launched by Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson (January 18 to April 9, 2006).

The cultures of the open societies nurture always a thin but potent strand of artists and intellectuals, entertainers and philosophers, and however much they may bicker individually, they roam through time as a pack.  Bresson's first exhibition book features the pick of that pack, oftentimes delightfully as they were in their youth.

Turn the page, and you may meet a lank, t-shirt wearing, full-head-o'-hair Truman Capote seated on a park bench, one arm behind the iron filigree of the back rest, the other elbow pressed tight to his ribs, the curled hand tentatively forward like a cat's paw.  Truly, he looks about 20 years old.

Similarly vital, young, glowing from the inside out and flamboyant with a wool coat draped over her shoulders, her legs crossed, her left hand crossed over her right wrist, the hand comfortably, familiarly holding a lit cigarette: Susan Sontag, her characteristic patch of gray like a broad feather on the right side of her layered shock of a haircut.

Never to grow old and seldom seen so prim beneath her black hair net, her blond eyebrows arched, her eyes averted, wistful: Marilyn.

The others, among so many names I may not recognized, are the many I have and have listed.  They were and may always be remembered as leaders of the intelligentsia of their day: Carl Jung, Igor Stravinsky, Albert Camus, Alfred Stieglitz, Simone de Beauvoir (also portrayed still young, possibly her 30's), Jean-Paul Sartre, and so on.

Were you raised in cosmopolitan and genteel post-WWII fashion with books in the house and good museums within reasonable driving distance, or if you otherwise made the journey to any of the several great culture and art centers of the world, you came to know these people through their works.  Seeing them in photographs, and many I have seen many times elsewhere, seems always like spending a few moments with old friends.

It's good to see the artist, philosopher, musician, writer, politician just as he or she was back in the day and with such as Capote and Sontag, perhaps even a day or two earlier than that.

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Writers by Nancy Crampton

Nancy Crampton may need a little bit of an introduction.  Her publisher, Quantuck Lane Press, bills her as the "official photographer of the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y." [3]  From the duo-tone opener of an ever dapper Isaac Bashevis Singer to the animated, lively dozen of an end with Studs Terkel, Writers puts a face, often a familiar one--Crampton has carved out a niche providing authors' photographs for book jackets , on familiar company.

In Writers, the portraits are far less obtuse than the Cartier-Bresson consciously unselfconscious candids.  Albert Murray looks at you right through the camera's lens and smiles.

Then again, John Updike doesn't look at your or look away.  He sits at his typing table and types--a framed portrait of the writer and his daughter provides the face.

Alfred Kazin, Anne Sexton, and Maurice Sendak, however, do look right at the lens and express themselves through their eyes, not every shot, but most.  They're accessible.

If you're a reader in the not so old 19th and 20th Century traditions--i.e., someone who likes a good book and has or takes the time to read at length--you know their names.  About 140 literary personalities grace this volume, and would there were prints, frames, and wall space enough in every library for all of them.  Lacking that, the book will have to do.

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1. Cartier-Bresson, Henri.  An Inner Silence: The Portraits of Henri Cartier-Bresson.  Agnes Sire, Foreword; Jean-Luc Nancy, Introduction.  New York: Thames & Hudson, 2006.

2. Crampton, Nancy.  Writers.  Foreword by Mark Strand.  First Edition.  New York: The Quantuck Lane Press, 2005.

3. "Writers: Nancy Crampton."  The Quantuck Lane Press.

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Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim

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Oppenheim Library: Photography

The effort to organize a home library of some thousands of hard and softcover books as well as collection of periodicals proves no small feat.  With this sectons, however, and with the help of a package of 3x5 index cards, one may expect this section to grow on paper relatively quickly: coffee table books are both expensive as well as easily gathered from the shelves.  I may own a dozen, possibly two dozen if I've been blessed.

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Araki, Nobuyoshi.  Self - Life - Death.  New York: Phaedon Press Limited, 2005.

Cartier-Bresson, Henri.  An Inner Silence: The Portraits of Henri Cartier-Bresson.  Agnes Sire, Foreward; Jean-Luc Nancy, Introduction.  New York: Thames & Hudson, 2006.

Crampton, Nancy.  Writers.  Foreward by Mark Strand.  First Edition.  New York: The Quantuck Lane Press, 2005.

Saudek, Jan.  Saudek.  Daniela Mrazkova--concept, composition, and introduction; Jan Heller, Editor; Zdenek Ziegler, graphic design; Adrian Dean, translator.  Hohenzollernring, Germany: Taschen, 2006.

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Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim

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Oppenheim Library: Anthropology, Culture, History, and Warfare

I don't know whether to separate read from on-deck reading in any of these bibliographies.  There was a day when I could say that I had read 90 percent of what I had shelved, but between the acquisition of good books cheap (thrift hunting), inheritance, and some profligate spending in the arena, that's no longer true.  Moreover, if I have read it past a couple of years, memory has done much to let it go, although I may note that I have found the opening of Malraux's Man's Fate a familiar scene (because I had read it long ago, and it must have made quite an impression).

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Anthropology, Culture, History, and Warfare

Nonfiction

Bageant, Joe.  Deer Hunting with Jesus.  New York: Crown Publishing Group, Random House, 2007.

Demaris, Ovid.  Brothers in Blood: The International Terrorist Network. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1977.

Hirsi Ali, Ayaan.  Infidel.  New York: Free Press, Simon & Schuster, 2007.

Hitchens, Christopher.  God is Not Great.  New York: Twelve, Hachette Book Group USA, 2007.

Keegan, John.  A History of Warfare.  First American Edition.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. 

Laqueur, Walter.  Guerrilla: A historical and critical study.  First Edition.  Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1976.

Patai, Raphael.  The Arab Mind.  New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973.

Watson, Paul. Where War Lives. Toronto, Ontario: McClelland & Stewart, Ltd., 2007.

Fiction

Haddawy, Husain, Translator; Mahdi, Muhsin, Editor. The Arabian Nights.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.

Hosseini, Khaled.  A Thousand Splendid Suns.  New York: Riverhead Books (Penguin Group), 2007.

Hosseini, Khaled.  The Kite Runner.  New York: Penguin Group, 2003.

Malraux, Andre.  Man's Fate.  Haakon M. Chevalier, Translator; Madeline Sorel, Illustrator; foreward by John Leonard.  Originally published by Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1934.  New York: Random House, 1984.

Matar, Hisham.  In the Country of Men.  New York: The Dial Press (Division of Random House), 2006.

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Last Update: 070918-1620

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Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim

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Oppenheim Library: Introduction

The "Oppenheim Library" may turn out a perpetual work in progress.

Thanks to the proximity in Laurel, the old location, to a Value Village thrift shop selling off donated libraries for a nickel on the dollar--e.g., $1.90 for a first edition of The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (Knopf)--I've been able to build a strong hardcover library in various subjects.  In the softcover or paperback categories, I have been accumulating books for about 35 years and have only once returned a box to market.

The "Oppenheim Library" (assuming my brothers have not gone in for anything like it) would seem a small, 19th Century technology.  As other personal library owners may, I am wrestling with space and shelving issues (also the matter of retiring or throwing away old magazines), but the joys far outweigh the headaches. 

Why I consider my home library a critical asset:

• Once owned, a book has neither an expiration or return date--it may be read at leisure, read again at will, or loaned out for someone else's mission (however, note: I'm terrible at returning and have lost a volume or two the same way);
• The collection covers the basics in the arts and humanities, offers much reference for interests in natural science, and, of course, maintains its share of technical reference, certainly for photography, which means to make some money around here, but also cooking, gardening, home maintenance and repair, and other such guidance.
• While the Internet provides a great deal of material to inform both creative writing and journalism, the library supports the basic literary experience--the adventure out of self, the dreaming, the hours engaged in the remarkable minds and worlds of terrific authors, and that, whatever else a few dollars may buy, makes for one of life's more extraordinary and prized possessions.

On February 3, 2006 at 11:30 a.m., a fire broke out in a neighbor's apartment, completely destroyed it and took the habitability of the building with it. 

Anne and I got out the valuable papers, the computer, and camera gear plus, I must say, the perfect sweater and jacket and shoes for the emergency right away. 

About three weeks later, the insurance company's contractor showed up with a crew and truck, and for five days packed every item in the apartment as it was found.

If you're an obsessive-compulsive type, as I have been, do not try this ever.  (Truly, I hope such a disaster never visits your family or home).

The contents of the place went into some 300 packing boxes, the boxes into storage for about five months, and then, all 8,000 pounds of it, made its way here to Hagerstown.  In advance, I cobbled together about 14 pressboard-type bookshelves and hoped that would do it for shelving. 

It did not. 

It has not.

To make way, I am slowly repacking personal papers and throwing away magazines.

I have also started the tedious chore of listing the contents of the library.  I am going to start with the volumes in history and warfare but expect that effort to follow piecemeal my reading as it evolves from my 52nd year.

The old library had an internal and rather fun sort of organization.  I'd marry, say, a collection of Hemingway books with a few by Kawabata. 

Those who know, understand.

In the wake of the fire, however, organization of that sort has vanished.

Also, adding to the complexity of this job, I inherited my father's library, which featured a small but potent collection of academic and Book-of-the-Month club volumes, so while I haven't read them, I now own middling classics like Wendt's In Search of Adam and Robert Ardrey's The Territorial Imperative.

I cannot read through the library I've accumulated. 

Still, it is my hope to get it into a house, to have guests in that house, and to offer my guests their choice in books as well as time and atmosphere for making their way through a volume or two.

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Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim

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