Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/02/24
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]>At 03:23 PM 2/24/97 -0600, Steven Blutter wrote: > >>and since as photographers, whom the art world neglects, are great >aetheticians, i'm >sure you will agree that prettier is better! (this goes >for tools too) > >I'm sorry, but this is gibberish. Are you trying to say that photographers >are aesthetes? None of my dictionaries list "aetheticians" as a word. > >Marc > > >msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 >Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir! You know what he means Marc, whatever your dictionaries say or don't say. Painters appreciate a really fine brush, and sculptors know a fine steel chisel when they work with one. Unfortunately, photographers can get sidetracked on the instruments of their craft that are supposed to be no more than a means to an end. That is, after all, what most of us are all doing here in the first place. (murmurmurmurmurmur) Just because you're a photographer doesn't make you an artist, no more than being a stone-cutter makes you the spiritual descendant of Michelangelo. One of the attitudes that has made the semi-knowledgable public suspicious of photography-as-art is the sort of mechanical fixation that sometimes afflicts us Leicaphiles. Weston, Strand, even the sanctified HCB, were very hardware-neutral workers. If it works, great. But you don't have to erect monuments to it. The excellence of the images produced by the instrument may or may not be coextensive with the image-maker's affection for the instrument itself. - -Robert