Just this: too many people spend too much time talking about artifice in
relation to their pictures and too little time thinking about the world,
their reaction to it, and how they might express that reaction by the
primary tool of the photographer, the -_selection_ of something that has
meaning, and the fixing of that meaning into _content_ by the expression of
an idea. The _recognition_ of something for what it is, and saying
something about it by the creation of _content_.
All else, I still maintain, is secondary.
Thanks for the warm discussion. I look forward to interesting responses,
not any ugliness.
--
Cheers from Godzone,
Michael Kopp
Wellington, New Zealand
Artists seldom talk about the meaning of their work. I would take
the opposite of your tack and say that those that do probably are the
bad ones. Leonardo's notebooks come to mind. They were all about
technique. Artists produce art and critics or academics talk about
them.
Well, now you have changed the argument from good photographers don't
talk about light(which is not true) to the idea that you have inside
knowledge of what Ansel Adams was thinking when he took his pictures
and which he omitted from his many books and lectures. Please. That
would not even make it in an essay for an introductory art
appreciation course.
Off the top of my head: Galen Rowell's "Rainbow over Potala Palace".
Interesting that it would fail without the light and seems to meet
that idea of transcendence. Evidently it means a great deal to those
who have paid the $10,000 price before the crash for a copy of it.
Since you seem to have contempt for Karsh how do you explain the
amazing portrait of Winston Churchill which has become an icon for
the 20th century?
As someone said in this thread, taste is individual. I hate Diane
Arbus' work, but she is considered to be one of the great
photographers of the late 20th century by the art establishment.
What art seems to be is consensus. To attempt to present your taste
as an overarching definition of art, or even worse, an universal
description of the artistic process seems to be sophomoric or
pedantic depending on which way you are facing in the class room.
--
Winsor Crosby
Long Beach, California
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