Photograph by Steve Pyke

One of America’s great, maverick, film director’s Robert Altman died yesterday. Like many of you I’m sure, I remember his sprawling, epic visions of America, and the thrilling and unexpected sense of awakening that came with seeing Nashville and The Long Goodbye for the first time, fllms that prised open your ideas of visual storytelling.

But what also flashes up in my mind when I think of Altman is his portrait shot by photographer Steve Pyke.

There’s no reason to think that because someone lives by their creative ‘eye’, that their face would embody that, or express that. But Altman’s eyes in Steve’s photo are hypnotic, everything is sucked in by those eyes, it’s almost painful keep his gaze.

I sent Steve a quick mail asking whether he had any memories of shooting Altman and he wrote back,

“Robert Altman has always rated one of my favourite directors if only for California Split. I was asked to photograph him in London for Premiere. He reminded me of Robert E Lee the southern civil war general. He seemed to me to have a lot of those older southern qualities, polite and gracious but also with him was a protective distance honed from years behind the camera.”

Rest in peace Robert Altman.

 Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images

The London Times ran this photo on Saturday of Ségolène Royal the new Blair-like Socialist candidate for the Presidency in France. Shot by AFP’s Eric Feferberg in colour, The Times ran it large in black and white.

It’s a brilliant, dramatic news shot, visualizing Ségolène Royal as the rising star shaking up French political life, and highlighting the media intensity of politics, as microphones, video cameras and stills cameras lay siege.

Welcome Ségolène Royal to the world of ‘the Candidate’.

Feferberg’s image is like a Russian doll of framing, the image is composed of frames within frames, drawing attention to how we in the media ‘frame’ everything up.

There’s the outside frame, Feferberg’s own crop, inside that there’s frame of the foliage and photographers (media foliage!), and inside that the frame of the arch of the windows, and finally the frame of the door where Royal emerges. Like Snow White.

The elections next year will decide whether Royal really is the fairest of them all.