Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/12/19

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Winogrand/blind shooting
From: Eric Welch <ewelch@ponyexpress.net>
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 1997 23:55:24 -0600

At 11:23 PM 12/19/97 -0500, you wrote:

>Sorry folks I'm getting out of hand again, as I find this a very touchy
>technique topic and challenges the way many of us have worked in
>documenting life in our own and foreign countries.  Some of us have been
>able to do it without the sneaky pointie-shootie method described by some
>who still don't have the fortitude to face their subjects eye to eye in the
>Leica viewfinder!

Ted, 

No need to get worked up about it. Considering there's an artist out there
who cans his feces and sells them for $12,000 a can (where else but L.A.?)
I don't find what they are doing offensive. I just don't think it's an
issue of cowardice, just a way to take pictures. Shallow, maybe, but not
evil. There are child molesters out there. Get mad about that. :-)

It seems to me if it's art, why not? I remember having a friend who had a
photo essay called frame 37. Seems like he always winds on the film of his
camera (so I guess it should be called "frame 0, go figure, it's art) it's
pointed in all sorts of odd directions. And some times it actually makes an
interesting image. So when he gets a good one, he keeps it, and saves it
for his show. Fine, what's the difference between that and many modern
painters other than being based on reality? Photography is for fun as well
as work.

But when the pretension gets so think that you need a shovel to get out of
the room, that's when we should get on our high horses and point them out
for the phonies they are. 

Journalists shoot with their eyes. Artists shoot with their
____________(you fill in the blank.)
==========

Eric Welch
St. Joseph, MO
http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch

Maintenance-free: When it breaks, it can't be fixed