Re: [Leica] Photos and Art

[Dave Myers <myers@bluelake.org>]

Hello George,

Thanks for bringing that particular picture to our attention.  Very well
written, but you missed the best part.  In the text accompanying the photo, we
find that the photographer Barbara Pollack gets between $1,500 and $6,000 per
portrait.  Maybe we should all start shaking our cameras like hell.

Dave


George Huczek wrote:

> Good one.  Sounds like art to me.  Enough bafflegab here to con a few
> gullable souls.
>
> Here's another.  You'd have to look on p. 19 of the Mar/Apr issue of
> American Photo to see the actual result. (Some great _photographs_ in the
> issue, by the way, outlining the history of women photographers).  Anyway,
> the one in question may have been done something like this.  Start with
> daylight film and use tungsten lighting (not inherently bad, just
> different). Move in really close for a tight head shot of a person.  Focus,
> then rack the lens way out of focus.  Use a very slow shutter speed and
> shake the camera like hell when exposing the film, and voila ... you have
> art!  Looks like one of my rejects that immediately gets tossed. And this
> is in the same issue as timeless classics like "Migrant Mother, Nipomo,
> California" by Dorothea Lange, "American girl in Italy" by Ruth Orkin,
> "Beatrice" by Julia Margaret Cameron, or "Wind tunnel construction, Fort
> Peck Dam, Montana" by Margaret Bourke-White.  The artsy stuff just doesn't
> cut it when you compare it to really good photographs.  Put them
> side-by-side and the really good photographs just blow the other stuff away.
>
> -GH