Polaroid Selfie #13

Melinda Camber Porter purchased a Polaroid camera in 1981. She was fascinated by the fact one was able to get instant feedback with a Polaroid camera and not wait days or weeks to get one’s traditional photography developed. She could now take pictures of herself and see if it showed what she was thinking. Today, of course, we call this a ‘Selfie.’

My Polaroid Selfies 1981 now available in hardcover and ebook at Amazon

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Polaroid Selfie #12

Melinda Camber Porter purchased a Polaroid camera in 1981. She was fascinated by the fact one was able to get instant feedback with a Polaroid camera and not wait days or weeks to get one’s traditional photography developed. She could now take pictures of herself and see if it showed what she was thinking. Today, of course, we call this a ‘Selfie.’

My Polaroid Selfies 1981 now available in hardcover and ebook at Amazon

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Polaroid Selfie #11

Melinda Camber Porter purchased a Polaroid camera in 1981. She was fascinated by the fact one was able to get instant feedback with a Polaroid camera and not wait days or weeks to get one’s traditional photography developed. She could now take pictures of herself and see if it showed what she was thinking. Today, of course, we call this a ‘Selfie.’

My Polaroid Selfies 1981 now available in hardcover and ebook at Amazon

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Polaroid Selfie #10

Melinda Camber Porter purchased a Polaroid camera in 1981. She was fascinated by the fact one was able to get instant feedback with a Polaroid camera and not wait days or weeks to get one’s traditional photography developed. She could now take pictures of herself and see if it showed what she was thinking. Today, of course, we call this a ‘Selfie.’

My Polaroid Selfies 1981 now available in hardcover and ebook at Amazon

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Melinda in conversation with Joan Didion

Joan Didion (1934 - ) is an American novelist and literary journalist.

“I'm not even sure of the importance of books, or of my books to people. However, I'd like to do something practical. I'd like people to pay more attention, and I don't mean have more readers or sell more copies. It seems to me that I'm always bringing something horrible to the attention of my readers and nobody does anything about it. So I sometimes think, well, perhaps I should stop expecting people to do something and get up and do it myself.”

Didion's sense of her own lack of importance springs from a sense of humility which is apparent in her self-questioning stance. It is perhaps what makes her unflinching criticism of American society so convincing and ultimately sympathetic. Though she appears to underplay her own success as a writer, she is true to herself and her themes in seeing alienation even in the relationship between herself and her readers.

from "Reported lost, looking for America." Excerpted from: The Times [London]: 22 January, 1993.

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Polaroid Selfie #9

Melinda Camber Porter purchased a Polaroid camera in 1981. She was fascinated by the fact one was able to get instant feedback with a Polaroid camera and not wait days or weeks to get one’s traditional photography developed. She could now take pictures of herself and see if it showed what she was thinking. Today, of course, we call this a ‘Selfie.’

My Polaroid Selfies 1981 now available in hardcover and ebook at Amazon

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Polaroid Selfie #8

Melinda Camber Porter purchased a Polaroid camera in 1981. She was fascinated by the fact one was able to get instant feedback with a Polaroid camera and not wait days or weeks to get one’s traditional photography developed. She could now take pictures of herself and see if it showed what she was thinking. Today, of course, we call this a ‘Selfie.’

My Polaroid Selfies 1981 now available in hardcover and ebook at Amazon

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Polaroid Selfie #7

Melinda Camber Porter purchased a Polaroid camera in 1981. She was fascinated by the fact one was able to get instant feedback with a Polaroid camera and not wait days or weeks to get one’s traditional photography developed. She could now take pictures of herself and see if it showed what she was thinking. Today, of course, we call this a ‘Selfie.’

My Polaroid Selfies 1981 now available in hardcover and ebook at Amazon

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Polaroid Selfie #6

Melinda Camber Porter purchased a Polaroid camera in 1981. She was fascinated by the fact one was able to get instant feedback with a Polaroid camera and not wait days or weeks to get one’s traditional photography developed. She could now take pictures of herself and see if it showed what she was thinking. Today, of course, we call this a ‘Selfie.’

My Polaroid Selfies 1981 now available in hardcover and ebook at Amazon

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Polaroid Selfie #5

Melinda Camber Porter purchased a Polaroid camera in 1981. She was fascinated by the fact one was able to get instant feedback with a Polaroid camera and not wait days or weeks to get one’s traditional photography developed. She could now take pictures of herself and see if it showed what she was thinking. Today, of course, we call this a ‘Selfie.’

My Polaroid Selfies 1981 now available in hardcover and ebook at Amazon

MelindaCamberPorter.com

See You in Florence!

Joe Flicek, Director of the MCPA, will be a panel speaker at The European Union and the Politicization of Europe in Florence in December.

His paper, Please Do Not Forget Eugenio Montale!, will be part of the "Populism, Nationalism and Right-Leaning Parties in Europe" panel

Abstract of Please Do Not Forget Eugenio Montale!

Eugenio Montale sits as a quiet memory in Europe today. Time is now to reexamine Eugenio Montale’s art, journalism and poetry. While for most of his career in Italy, Eugenio Montale was an active journalist, until the Fascists came to power. The Fascists demanded he write what they wanted, whether true or false or for societies actually needs. He would not comprise his journalism with lies, resulting in his firing and having no job in Italian journalism. In some ways this may have been a blessing to Eugenio Montale and all. He turned to his lifelong interests of art and poetry. He retreated from current affairs and journalism to quietly focus himself to writing his poetry and drawing his landscapes and portraits in seclusion mostly. 

His poetry become meaningful and prolific to the world for a time. His art remains almost completely hidden behind his poetry and his journalism forgotten. In Italian American neighborhoods like New York City today and elsewhere in America, Italian passport holders seldom recognize or even know the name, Eugenio Montale, or his place to stand against the winds of Fascism long ago.

Please do not forget Eugenio Montale, the 1976 winner of Nobel Prize in Literature, for his brilliant poetry and much more. In the new publication, Melinda Camber Porter in Conversation with Eugenio Montale in Milan in 1976 (Blake Press), we are able to look back at our actions in the past and will we learn to apply them in politics today. Great insight is present for all to see in Eugenio Montale’s Nobel Prize Lecture in 1976, presented in both English and Italian in this new book, along with his conversation with Melinda Camber Porter on art, journalism, politics, poetry and Society. 

MelindaCamberPorter.com

“My Polaroid Selfies 1981 Book 1 is a lovely little book that mixes both Polaroid​ production history and Camber Porter's biographical content brilliantly. It gave such an interesting spin on a topic, manufacturing and production, that I usually find boring. I recommend this book and author.” 

—Georgia Grantham, Media Reviewer

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Polaroid Selfie #4

Melinda Camber Porter purchased a Polaroid camera in 1981. She was fascinated by the fact one was able to get instant feedback with a Polaroid camera and not wait days or weeks to get one’s traditional photography developed. She could now take pictures of herself and see if it showed what she was thinking. Today, of course, we call this a ‘Selfie.’

My Polaroid Selfies 1981 now available in hardcover and ebook at Amazon

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Polaroid Selfie #3

Melinda Camber Porter purchased a Polaroid camera in 1981. She was fascinated by the fact one was able to get instant feedback with a Polaroid camera and not wait days or weeks to get one’s traditional photography developed. She could now take pictures of herself and see if it showed what she was thinking. Today, of course, we call this a ‘Selfie.’

My Polaroid Selfies 1981 now available in hardcover and ebook at Amazon

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Polaroid Selfie #2

Melinda Camber Porter purchased a Polaroid camera in 1981. She was fascinated by the fact one was able to get instant feedback with a Polaroid camera and not wait days or weeks to get one’s traditional photography developed. She could now take pictures of herself and see if it showed what she was thinking. Today, of course, we call this a ‘Selfie.’

My Polaroid Selfies 1981 now available in hardcover and ebook at Amazon

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Happy Birthday Eugenio Montale

"Direct statement is contrary to the nature of poetry,” Eugenio Montale tells Melinda Camber Porter during her 1976 interview with him for The Times of London, “…after all, why would one write poetry if it was merely to make oneself understood?"

Click the cover to look inside

Melinda Camber Porter in Conversation 

with Eugenio Montale

now available in hardcover and Kindle ebook editions on Amazon

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Lichtenstein at Tate Liverpool

Tate Liverpool Presents Roy Lichtenstein in Focus

Explore more than 20 works charting Roy Lichtenstein’s (1923–1997) early interest in landscape to his iconic pop paintings influenced by comic strips and advertising imagery. The free display also presents Lichtenstein’s three-screen installation, his only work with film, which was made after spending two weeks at Universal Studios in 1969.

A conversation between Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) and Melinda Camber Porter (1953- 2008) took place on December 18, 1983, when Roy Lichtenstein’s Greene Street Mural drew crowds to Leo Castelli’s landmark SoHo Greene Street Gallery in downtown New York. Roy Lichtenstein describes to Melinda Camber Porter the many influences on his art from the Renaissance painters to Japanese art in terms of his brush strokes, perspective, and styles. 

The conversation, published as Melinda Camber Porter in Conversation with Roy Lichtenstein, is now available on Amazon in both hardcover and ebook.

click the cover to see inside

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Polaroid Selfie #1

Melinda Camber Porter purchased a Polaroid camera in 1981. She was fascinated by the fact one was able to get instant feedback with a Polaroid camera and not wait days or weeks to get one’s traditional photography developed. She could now take pictures of herself and see if it showed what she was thinking. Today, of course, we call this a ‘Selfie.’

My Polaroid Selfies 1981 now available in hardcover and ebook at Amazon

MelindaCamberPorter.com

New Book by Melinda Camber Porter Available Now

New from Blake Press: Melinda Camber Porter in Conversation with Joyce Carol Oates is now available in hardcover and as Kindle at amazon.com

Joyce Carol Oates has taken the American critics by surprise with her concise and inspired volume On Boxing. “I can't imagine putting one's whole life on the line, all that you are up to that moment, and stepping into the ring and more than I can imagine stepping into oblivion,” she says. “Maybe it's partly because I'm a woman. But it is one of the reasons why I am fascinated by boxing.”

Click the cover to preview the book

See more at MelindaCamberPorter.com

Melinda in conversation with Françoise Sagan

Françoise Sagan (1935 - 2004) real name Françoise Quoirez – was a French playwright, novelist, and screenwriter.

An excerpt from Through Parisian Eyes:


Sagan talks quietly. She responds to questions with a momentary look of deep reflection, then looks straight  at you as she rushes through her thoughts. She rarely disappears into a reverie or a monologue. And she does not lose herself in her thoughts. She constantly tried to find out my responses to all the issues we discussed.m not as a way of avoiding being interviewed but rather out of curiosity. She is extremely considerate and thought she had just come in from a dentist's appointment, it was hard to tell that she was in pain. Her liveliness radiates out of her very thin frame and gives her an ethereal quality. Yet her voice is deep and earthy.

Read the full article here.

Coming Soon

Instant Stories: Wim Wenders' Polaroids—coming to The Photographers Gallery in London—offers a rare opportunity to see the personal and previously unseen Polaroid work of Oscar-nominated filmmaker, Wim Wenders (b.1945, Germany) and provides a singular insight into the artist’s thought processes, preoccupations and aesthetic inspirations.

While you have Polaroid on the mind, head to MelindaCamberPorter.com and look inside My Polaroid Selfies, 1981.

Melinda Camber Porter purchased a Polaroid camera in 1981. She was fascinated by the fact one was able to get instant feedback with a Polaroid camera and not wait days or weeks to get one’s traditional photography developed. She could now take pictures of herself and see if it showed what she was thinking. Today, of course, we call this a ‘Selfie.’

From 1981 to 1983 Melinda Camber Porter took approximately one-hundred-and-fifty Polaroid Selfies. She placed each of her Polaroid Selfies in chronological order into a three-inch thick, three ringed photobook. She was obviously fascinated with, and had deep interest in, what ‘Selfies’ showed about her state of mind. Melinda Camber Porter averaged one Polaroid photo selfie per week for three years, 1981–83, creating a ‘photo diary.’

With this new Polaroid camera, Melinda Camber Porter now had the ability to take a photo of herself in many different emotional states to see if she could capture the emotional state of her mind with each selfie.

NEW book, NEW Polariod

Photography fans rejoice! On Wednesday, the new Polaroid, Impossible Project, made a BIG announcement.

For first time in a decade, a new $99 Polaroid OneStep2 instant camera will be available for purchase on October 16, 2017.

Yes, you read it right. The original is back.

Melinda Camber Porter purchased a Polaroid camera in 1981. She was fascinated by the fact one was able to get instant feedback with a Polaroid camera and not wait days or weeks to get one’s traditional photography developed. She could now take pictures of herself and see if it showed what she was thinking. Today, of course, we call this a ‘Selfie.’

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Remembering Sam Shepard via Paris, Texas

Sam Shepard's 1982 genre-bending book, Motel Chronicles, served as the basis, not only for Shepard's own play, Superstitions, but also for Wim Wenders' 1984 film, Paris, Texas. 

Melinda: Sam Shepard and you wrote the screenplay together. I mean, did you write it long distance, over the phone, or did you write just the first draft together...

Wenders: We more or less worked on it together. The idea was that Sam was going to finish it to the end... We were both always aware of the fact that this movie would undergo changes as it was being shot. And I always hoped that Sam would be with us and he hoped that too. But we had to postpone the shooting several times, and finally we started three months later than we initially wanted. By that time Sam had a commitment for a movie as an actor and he’s now in Country with Jessica Lange. So he's shooting in Iowa and we're having phone conferences in the evening and I tell him what’s happening and I send him stuff, and changes, and he dictates dialogue over the phone, or he did last week. I mean it was also getting so complicated with the structure, to keep it all kind of together, that I asked Kit [Carson] if he would come in and help me.

Click the cover to preview Melinda's conversation with Wenders on the set of the iconic movie. Listen to Wenders, on set, below.

                                                     MelindaCamberPorter.com

Look Through Parisian Eyes for Bastille Day

While Western leaders meet with French president Emmanuel Marcon to celebrate la fête du 14-juillet this year, why not celebrate while getting to know some powerhouses of French art and thought?

As she interviewed her subjects between 1975 and 1985, Melinda Camber Porter set out to reveal the people behind the highly cerebral and complex ideas endemic to France and, through her interviews, to test the authenticity of their views and to oblige the "speakers" to make their thoughts and theories accessible to a general audience.


Visit MelindaCamberPorter.com for an exclusive look inside.



From Truffaut to Sagan, Ionesco to Duras, Revel to Malraux, Through Parisian Eyes brings together the rich and varied voices that placed Paris at the cutting edge of European cultural and intellectual life.

Wim Wenders on how Europeans installed abuses in America

On the set of Paris, Texas , 1983

See more videos of Wenders, and more, here

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Wim Wenders on filmmaking as intuition

On the set of Paris, Texas , 1983

"When I think of a movie, I don't initially think much of actors. I think I work much more from a certain flow of images or a certain connection of ideas and images. And then the actors come in and they're always a big disturbance in this beautiful unity of ideas that existed before. And usually it turns out that they just disturb this order enough to make it interesting. So, usually in the course of a movie I get very interested in the actors. Usually they help me to forget the ideas that I had before. And if they don't, something is wrong. If I find myself sticking to preconceived ideas, then it's because the actors just didn't interest me enough."

See more videos of Wenders, and more, here

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Wim Wenders on what men expect of women

On the set of Paris, Texas, 1983

Melinda Camber Porter asked Wim Wenders: “When you say men have certain expectations of women, what exactly do you mean? Wenders explains, “We still have to find out what we mean by that, because ‘the character’ hasn’t really understood that yet [in shooting the film, Paris Texas]. The character is getting ready to confront the issue. I do not work so a film is laid out and people can spell it out. I work much more on intuition … Sometimes film making is very much based on very subconscious choices or intuitions.”

See more videos of Wenders, and more, here

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Melinda in conversation with Michael Lonsdale

Michael Lonsdale (1931 - ) is a French actor.

"Michael Lonsdale, one of the most protean and familiar French actors of the screen and stage, had  just completed working in English on Joseph Losey's latest film, Mr. Klein, when I met him in London."

So begins Melinda Camber Porter's reflection on her conversation, one of over 30 included in her book Through Parisian Eyes, with Mr. Lonsdale.

Excerpt from Through Parisian Eyes [PDF]

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Melinda speaks with Peter Metthiessen

Peter Matthiessen (1927 - 2014) was an America novelist, naturalist, nature writer, and CIA agent.

"The wilderness itself is full of beauty and also a great mystery and a great silence, a very healing silence. I find it exhilarating, and sometimes it pushes me to the edge of depression. But most of us don't know what to do with it, so we build roads and airstrips into it," said Peter Matthiessen, whose life-long attraction to wilderness has led him on expeditions to South America, Africa, New Guinea, Nepal, and the Sudan, and has brought him into contact with peoples whose way of life precariously awaits the encroachment of modern life, and the threat of annihilation. 

Matthiessen sees the frontier as the place where the American way was forged, and feels that the weaknesses and qualities of the frontier character operate long after the wilderness has been cleared. Matthiessen was keen to talk of the novel he is currently writing on this theme. "I'm interested in the violence of the American frontier and how the frontier developed. I hope the novel is a kind of reflection of ...the frontier mind, how it works, where it goes wrong and why this country goes so easily into violence. For we have a lot of violence."

Read the full interview here.  |  MelindaCamberPorter.com

Melinda talks to Jean-Francois Revel

Jean-François Revel (1924 - 2006) was a French journalist, author, and philosopher.

Revel does not confine his analysis to France. And he also gives warning to the West about the fragility of democracies. Nor does he feel that living in France has made him more sensitive to these issues. He speaks as a European. "I have always said that democracy is an abnormal political system. It's an exception. In Europe, people have always found it difficult to maintain a democracy."

Excerpt from Through Parisian Eye [PDF]

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Jean-Paul Aron interview from 1976

Jean-Paul Aron (27 May 1925 - 20 August 1988) was a French writer, philosopher and journalist.

In 1976 Melinda sat down with Mr. Aron in Paris. Their conversation was included in her book Through Parisian Eyes, in which in the French writer, journalist, and philosopher had a lot to say:

On the search for novelty that has invaded art and literature: "I am not against modernity, and I know that each epoch produces its own new truth. But I am against these impostures of modernity, that's to say, these 'new' systems of thought, which become like commodities...People say that America produces literary works like commodities. But it's true of France. At the moment we have new products, or books, that glut the market, each one destorying the validity of the previous 'new' book."

On structuralism: "People take to these systems of thought when they want to avoid living, meaning, and feelings. There's a curious taste for objectivity...What I mean is that people are under the illusion that you can transcribe a so-called objective view of the world...so you don't have to actually experience life."

Read the full text from Through Parisian Eyes [PDF]

MelindaCamberPorter.com

Melinda and Bertrand Tavernier in conversation

Bertrand Tavernier (1941 - ) is a French director, screenwriter, actor and producer.

Bertrand Tavernier, who has directed such varied films as Death Watch and A Sunday in the Country, chooese to explore diverse subjects partly becuase he is afraid of his natural tendency to return to the same themese and characters. On the set, Tavernier has caught himself repeating certain sequences from previous films. But he feels that despite his decision to explore different epochs and varied worlds, his central theme remains the same: "Most of the characters that interest me are people who are preoccupied by the problems of communicating, and they are always people in crisis."

Read the full excerpt here.     |     MelindaCamberPorter.com

Bron Today: Delphine Seyrig

from Through Parisian Eyes by Melinda Camber Porter:

Delphine Seyrig made her name by incarnating, as she puts it, “a sophisticated, inaccessible woman, a dream who is not the true ideal because she doesn’t do the washing up.”

Outside her spacious living room one can the laughter and chatter of the women who participate in her feminist activities. She launches into an explanation of feminism which, when she discovered it, was a catalyst that gave her the confidence to express all the she had intuited and bottled up.

“It starts off when you’re a little girl. You are almost born angry. You notice the difference between little boys and girls. At school, you learn that everything has been created and invented by men. I knew I had to smile, be mischievous and pretty. People had a low opinion of my intelligence. When I tried to speak about things that were important to me I was told it was nonsense. So I became superficial in order to please. I saw a choice before me, although I couldn’t formulate it: to rebel right from the start, or to say to myself, ‘In order to survive, I must become what others want me to be. Otherwise I will be crushed. It’s evident that people aren’t interested in me, so to be recognized I will exist for others. In myself I am nothing.’ I chose the latter course and succeeded in giving the image that men wanted, always with a nagging feeling of disquiet.”

Read the full excerpt from Through Parisian Eye

Melinda speaks to Eugene Ionseco at Oxford in 1974

Eugene Ionesco (1909 - 1994) was a Romanian-French playwright, and one the foremost figures of the French avant-garde theater.



Ionesco was born in 1912 in Romania of a French mother and Romanian father; his formative years were spent in France. In 1925 he returned to Romania when he learnt the “native” language. He subsequently taught French. Does a perfect knowledge of two languages enrich one’s appreciation of language in general?

“Bilingualism involves a sort of intellectual acrobatics. I think that it is indispensable for my work as a writer. But I don’t believe that different languages represent totally different visions of life, nor that nationality is an isolating factor. From my experience as a bilingual speaker, I would say that there can be an exact translation from on language to another, because there is a commonly shared structure which is permanent and universal. Although children learn a different language depending on where they were born, nevertheless the process is the same in all cases. For we all have the same anxieties and ask the same questions; and nationality, like politics, is secondary to the central problem of man’s existential condition.”

MelindaCamberPorter.com