Eh? Thanks, I'll pass. Anybody who takes "beautiful" pictures of Céline Dion is tapping into the unlimited reservoirs of revulsion I feel for her as a Québécois.
__________________ Using film since before it was hip.
Back on the bobo ethos thing: the book which Thebanana referred to pretty much sums it up. The Bourgeois-Bohème, also called Gauche Caviar in France, is this semi-fictious entity that synthesizes all the converging values of bourgeois capitalism with the socially concerned and authenticity-seeking romanticism of the Bohemia.
The ethos revolves around the ideas that we should be the most accomplished persons, but in the best and fairest possible manner to the weaker ones (the oppressed, the poor, the foreigners, etc). It strives for both pluralism, diversity, and strong communautarian spirit, rootedness. It wants to achieve new career summits while building at the same time a more harmonious self. It despises luxury but adores spending the price of a diamond on an antique woodstove. It refurbishes, renovates, redecorates, reclaims, revitalizes, re-empowers, and restores. It admires the strong, so profound authentic life of simple peasants in Tuscany, but only for the two weeks it spends there before returning to their Silicon Valley corporation.
It wants to have its cake and eat it too, admires all sorts of things but at the same time forgoes any sacrifice or stepping back from the pursuit of success.
The "bobo" is a kind of caricature, but it's a type that unites the kind of schizophrenic social-conscience-cum-consumerist approach that has acquired a lot of visibility since the nineties.
In relations to film photography, it would admire the authentic, picturesque tools of the craft, the long and patient work one must go through to master it, but couldn't care less about actually applying that knowledge to the mastery of their own Leica MP à la carte. The camera as decoration from the Pottery Barn just screams Bobo. The faux "Fine Art Prints" as well.
Eventually, I suppose everything can look Bobo, even if you stop at Starbucks just because they have coffee instead of Tim Horton mouthwash, not for the transcendental experience of communion with the honest folks who handpicked the fair trade brew of the day (it would be true Bobo in the latter case).
But it just goes on to say that I'm warning you that the barbarians are watching APUG and will find a way to redecorate their condos with a few Retinas here and there, and modern prints of HCB while waxing philosophical on the authentic virtues of film photography. When someone who is not a photographer starts to ask you about why you use film, run! Or jack up your prices...
__________________ Using film since before it was hip.
Last edited by Michel Hardy-Vallée; 08-04-2007 at 12:50 AM.
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Does not the bobo in effect subsidize those of us who adopt a more pick-'n'-mix approach to life? I don't drink coffee (except Greek/Turkish, very occasionally) and I can't stand Starbucks, but my wife goes there faute de mieux because she likes the coffee. Big-screen TVs? I don't even have a small-screen TV. Yes, I love wood-burning stoves, and am considering having my kitchen chimney lined so I can use one I swapped with a friend: he had a kitchen range he wasn't using, and I had a small room-heating Godin (50 euros at a vide-greniers) which he now uses to heat his sejour. But this is not, I think, a bobo approach, though I'd be easy enough to caricature as one (the 35-year-old Land Rover, the centuries-old house, the Leicas, etc.)
It strikes me that 'bobo' is yet another of those labels with just enough truth to make them interesting for a while, like 'yuppie' or 'DINKY', and that who is classified as a bobo is very much influenced by who is doing the classifying.
So will film become a bobo aspiration? Quite possibly. The question is: how long for? In 10 years' time it will have been replaced by some other fashion, though it might just be a little bit more secure and mainstream as a result. My own belief -- or perhaps I should say, hope -- is that more people will indeed take a step or two back from rabid consumerism, and live more simply: a higher quality of life, rather than a higher material standard of living. I'm certainly seeing more and more of that, though of course, a small, attractive, cheap village in France is exactly where you'd expect to see such people. All we need is a label: apres-consumerism, perhaps.
... The ethos revolves around the ideas that we should be the most accomplished persons, but in the best and fairest possible manner to the weaker ones (the oppressed, the poor, the foreigners, etc). It strives for both pluralism, diversity, and strong communautarian spirit, rootedness. It wants to achieve new career summits while building at the same time a more harmonious self. It despises luxury but adores spending the price of a diamond on an antique woodstove. It refurbishes, renovates, redecorates, reclaims, revitalizes, re-empowers, and restores. It admires the strong, so profound authentic life of simple peasants in Tuscany, but only for the two weeks it spends there before returning to their Silicon Valley corporation. ...
Overall, it sounds pretty good to me, with one major exception - The idea that it is so transient - sort of a disguise that one dons to be part of of a certain social group.
I am not sure, yet, whether or not it is socially acceptable to carry the title of "bobo". In reflection, I am reminded of us "Beatniks" - certainly a term that did not evoke an image of high status - AT THE TIME. Now, considering what has transpired since "those days", I would be more than proud to be considered in that "frame."
Would I spend the price of a diamond to buy a wood stove? Depends on the size (carat), cut, clarity, color, of the diamond - and the character of the stove. A "Pellet" stove" .... well, yes, within limits; after all, the price of my 'Blads" exceeded that of MANY diamonds I have seen.
Quote:
But it just goes on to say that I'm warning you that the barbarians are watching APUG and will find a way to redecorate their condos with a few Retinas here and there, and modern prints of HCB while waxing philosophical on the authentic virtues of film photography. When someone who is not a photographer starts to ask you about why you use film, run! Or jack up your prices...
I am glad that someone regards the participants of APUG as something other than barbarians. "Luddites", fine with me - "Us - NOT barbarians"; "Them - Unknown - with the distinct possibility that they may be."
Pottery Barn Lighting - I wonder if they make softboxes for those puppies? I suppose I *could* use the Dynalite heads with the modeling lamps... and wake up those involved in long, boring dicussions of "bobo" by occasionally firing the test button ... Hmmm.. wait!! I do not mean to infer that the discussion of the "bobo ethos" is boring here ... it is quite the opposite
- very interesting.
"When someone who is not a photographer ..." I'll add. "or is carrying one of those d*****l half cameras", asks...
I had no idea what Bobo meant, so bobo = modern day yuppie?
Sort of, but instead of snorting coke and living in the fast lane of their BMW, they go to socially conscious manifestation, eco-tourism, buy organic art from the Native tribes, and put terracotta back into fashion.
Bobo = BOurgeois BOhemian
__________________ Using film since before it was hip.
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