RE: [Leica] Re: Adams, Weston, and... Welch?

[Alan Ball <AlanBall@csi.com>]

Eric,

You have a strange idea of European topography. Europe is not only 
concrete, 1936 popular front, cobblestones and urban intellectuals. Or do 
the Alps, the Pyrennea, the West Highlands and the Scandinvian fjords count 
as dwarfs explaining HCB's opinion?

Maybe the French Atlantic coastline, the forests of Germany or the curvy 
hills of Lombardy, or the sierras of central Spain are just insignificant 
vignettes that explain why European social photographers of the middle of 
the 20th century had a problem with Adams, Weston, and the like ?

Maybe our trees are not "long enough" ? ;-)

Alan



On lundi 22 mars 1999 0:00, Eric Welch [SMTP:ewelch@ponyexpress.net] wrote:
> At 09:20 PM 3/21/99 +0100, you wrote:
> >Well, first, I don't know what "equipped to appreciate" means.  I would 
say
>
> It means they haven't been there. Most of them anyway. And certainly not
> HCB. You have to be there to understand what the work of photographers 
the
> likes of Adams and Weston (and Bullock, and Weston, and Weston, and on 
and
> on right up to Art Wolfe and Jim Brandenburg...) is about. They have to 
be
> in the stands of trees over 300 feet tall to comprehend what they really
> are like. To sleep under the stars in the Sierra Nevadas, or the 
Cascades,
> or the Rockies or Tetons to know what Western U.S. mountains are about. 
It
> has nothing to do with people's equipment. It has to do with their 
experience.
>
> Calling the work of Ansel Adams clinical is just missing the point. 
Shoot,
> some people call him Wagnerian! How could that be?
>
> That's all. It's not a genetic failing, it's a lack of experience. 
Nothing
> wrong with that, until someone who doesn't know calls it "clinical" or of 
> less value than some other genre of photography. Not that you are, but 
many
> people do.
> his assessment.
>
> > When I think of HCB and the other French photographers of
> >his generation -- Boubat, Ronis, Isiz, Doisneau, Depardon, Charbonnier,
> >Lartique, Riboud, etc. -- I find their work simply irresistable.  It had 
a
> >human quality -- not an American quality or a European quality -- that 
is
> >unmatched, according to my taste, compared to the cold, barren, clinical
> >vistas of Adams or the beautiful art-class rock and nude exercises of
> >Weston -- when their work is considered as a whole.
>
> I find other names left out who easily match this group. Kertesz ( of
> course, he grew up photographically in Paris) and Ernst Haas, and Felix
> Mann, and Erich Solomon, and many, many others. I love that style of
> photography as well. But I don't thing it more "human." The world is so
> much more varied, and our place in it has to do with wilderness as well 
as
> the streets of ancient cities. I find many people don't value wilderness
> because they've never really been there. They're the ones who call us 
tree
> huggers,  when they don't know the difference between reasonable people 
and
> fanatics. Lack of experience. That's all.
>
> Eric Welch
> St. Joseph, MO
> http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch
>
> Always be on the lookout for conspicuousness (or, It's hard to tell if
> someone is inconspicuous).
>