" Above all , look at the things around you , the immediate world around you . If you are alive , it will mean something to you, and if you care enough about photography, and if you know how to use it, you will want to photograph that meaningfulness. If you let other people's vision get between the world and your own , you will achieve that extremely common and worthless thing, a pictorial photograph. But if you keep your vision clear , you may make something which is at least a photograph, which has a life of it's own , as a tree or a matchbox has a life of it's own"- Paul Strand British Journal of Photography, Oct 5, 1923
Larry , Larry ... You are too smart for me , I am just a car salesman
Here is what Mortensen said in 1938 , which I thought was a jab
" Glossy stock is apt to be associated in the mind with very crass and crude commercial work. But it has definite pictorial uses. Glossy paper is demanded , for example , by certain sorts of crisp and brilliant material - such material as that exploited by "F-64" group and other so-called photographic "purist".
This whole period should be more known , I wish someone could recommend a book that would go in depth of this public battle...It is fascinating to me , because I do and love both of this styles...
This whole period should be more known , I wish someone could recommend a book that would go in depth of this public battle...It is fascinating to me , because I do and love both of this styles...
ILYA
al, et Ilya,
Too bad I ain't gonna need a car anytime soon. I'd buy it from you! There was a shop out back of our building in the lawless town of Edison, WA, where a couple of Russian guys were building muscle cars to send to Russia to support mom, who still lived there. Lots of activity at night cars coming in and going out. hmmm. the guy who owned the property, their landlord, referred to them as "the commies". I really don't think they were commies.
We need to remember, I think, that well, which of us ever agrees with the other? Which member of your family is "normal" - I ask this and the answer most often received is "me". Difference is really the norm. Each of us has our opinions, as much as we'd like to be able to hold ourselves up as objective. We're not. It's a matter of definition, of what we are if we succeed in stripping away even a few of the illusions. There are more than 6.8 billion of us on this planet right now, and each of us thinks ourself the center of the universe. Is it any wonder that Bill Mortensen, St. Paul Strand, and Anselmo Adams, et al could not agree? And who are we to judge them? Aren't we just as focused on our own limited screens as they were? It's enough to make you just take pics of birdies, like Elliott Porter did. Hey, hey oughta my way!
I just hope that in my mad rush to control the world, that I can step back and laugh at myself sometimes. Art ideologies were really in, back in their time. Ansel's manifesto was not titled as such, and Clement Greenberg took over that function for the AbEx bunch, but that level of Manifest Destiny in the arts wasn't done by the time the f/64 guys and Mortensen locked horns. By god, it was SERIOUS!!! It mattered, whatever your philosophy. It was as important as anything. As Good vs. Evil. They were that identified. We could look at ourselves. Are we? What is it that we care that much about?
As much as I've read in the forums or seen in the world around me now, I just don't see it. I don't see that kind of commitment to your being wrong, or my being right, like they had then. If we consider the moral weights of the various ideas of what is aesthetically correct or incorrect, it seems to me that the idea itself is in grave danger of losing its grip. The weights are light, the battles halfhearted. At the moment, there seem to be very few marker buoys and a lot of swimmers.
I wonder how you all deal with this. So many people doing it. So little that hasn't been done. So many avenues. No way to cope with the million or so dimensions. Mortensen, Adams, et al couldn't agree, which really seems pretty natural; but at least they had an idea what the argument was about. It was so much simpler then. It was possible to believe in something without affectation, to believe in a way that seemed more like certainty and without having to force it as we see in fundamentalist religionists who want certainty so bad they will die for it. Then, you could just say it, and although someone might not agree with you, at least they would take you seriously without your blowing yourself up.
It was possible to photograph your garden and not title the picture "sorry, another flower".
"By god, it was SERIOUS!!! It mattered, whatever your philosophy. It was as important as anything. As Good vs.. Evil. They were that identified. We could look at ourselves. Are we? What is it that we care that much about?"
_______________
I don't know , I have been a by-stander in some heated and strong discussions about analog vs.. digital and even now here if you ask a technical question about digital it seem to be a taboo, or you get - " we do not discuss it here " and you get directed to another website
The difference, I think , is that there is no strong figures representing those camps , the trend seem to be moved more by manufacturers rather then artists...
The difference, I think , is that there is no strong figures representing those camps , the trend seem to be moved more by manufacturers rather then artists...
ILYA
I think you are right. Commercial domination of what has always been in the province of philosophy, with its extensions into all aspects of human life is disgusting. That's me speaking. On our part, as humans, our allowing this to happen is unconscionable. It amounts to giving up on being human, succumbing to the lowest common denominator, to living as beasts. If you look at it on the largest scale, the reduction of the planet to the ravages of exploitation on the one hand and as a waste dump, on the other, we have left humanity behind and have joined the rodents in fouling our own nest.
As much as I might deplore the behavior of individuals in the dispute that broke photography apart in the 20th C. I have to believe that they were better than what we see now. They cared, and what they cared about had some significance beyond base pettiness.
Well, digital vs analog aside, the Leica does feel good in the hand.
have not touched anything but 8x10 in the last 5 years myself , between 1500- 2000 negs a year ... it's been a strange trip indeed...i have a stack of prints that would blow you away...
have not touched anything but 8x10 in the last 5 years myself , between 1500- 2000 negs a year ... it's been a strange trip indeed...i have a stack of prints that would blow you away...
have not touched anything but 8x10 in the last 5 years myself , between 1500- 2000 negs a year ... it's been a strange trip indeed...i have a stack of prints that would blow you away...
I'd better get a job selling cars, if that's what it takes to do that!
I need your help!
I am trying to upload an image , I have scanned 5 times and every time it is telling me my size is too big, first time someone told me that,
I finally , I think found a proper setting , but now it's telling me my que is full with five images allowed a day , how do I remove them from there so i could try again ...
Linear Mode
