Re: Adams

["Dan Post" <dwpost@email.msn.com>]

HAving seen and admired Adams' work since I started wasting film 30 odd
years ago, I have been 'lurking' through this thread. I remember debating
the nature of art with a professor many years ago; I was trained as
sociologist/psychologist and seemed to seek generic qualities about
humankind. It always seemed to me that art was above all, evocative. It
invokes some type of viceral, emotional response. This unfortunately
includes art that generates revulsion, but if you start to define 'good' art
from 'bad' art, then you throw a goodly number of intervening variables into
the mix. IMHO, good photographic art has at least some aesthetic qualities-
it is pleasing to the eye. I have to be honest in that I find that much of
Adams' work, as well as O'keefe's, Stieglitz', Henri Cartier-Bresson's,
Ernst Haas', and innumerable other's to be both evocative and pleasing to
look at, and if not exactly pleasant- attractive, in that it invites you to
study the captured moment. I can still gaze at "Moonrise over Hernandez" and
it fascinates me. I think good art survives the test of time- it doesn't
please one vogue. It has 'meaning' over generations because it plucks that
common thread that connects us to our past, and (hopefully) ties us to our
future. Well, that's my $0.02.
Dan