Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/11/26
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]budcook@ibm.net wrote: > > The only person I have to satisfy is myself and I'm still trying to do it. Bud, you are right. Even as a pro, the best stuff, the stuff I care about has been done in amateur status: self assignment or just out looking. Most great pix have been taken in amateur state of mind--doing it because we enjoy it. This afternoon I have been reading/viewing the book Ernst Haas Color Photography. In it is a letter to John Morris, then director of Magnum: "I for myself don't even think I am a photographer. I am not even proud to be one if it means what it means now. "If it means that one is able to do what one is assigned to, I am not a photographer and I am not even interested to be one. It is a pity, but for what I want to be we don't even have a name yet. Call it a subjective interpreter, call it all kinds of names and you won't find the right one. I am also not interested in finding a name. The great mistake we do is trying to compete with the others... "You know as well that nobody can be imaginative without being inspired. That nobody can touch with pictures without being touched by himself taking them. I can only do a good job if I am full of enthusiasm--if this last important word is missing I am so "bad" as a so-cAlled photographer, that I even don't need a competition to know it." - -- Donal Philby San Diego www.donalphilby.com