Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/11/23
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 12:32 AM 11/23/1999 -0800, Bill Larsen wrote: >I think you need to think a little bit about what a portrait is. Perhaps you >have picked up too many shiboleths at Missouri. Shibboleth to you, fact to many people. Maybe you, and not I, needs to understand what the difference between a documentary photographer and a portrait photographer is. There's a reason we use both terms to distinguish two types of photographers. As for Dorthea Lang, she is a great documentary photographer, but she also posed a lot of her photos, such as Migrant Mother. But that was long before the ethical standards of photojournalism had been thought of. Documentary is made up of candid photos, portraits, landscapes, interiors, what have you. But you don't call a landscape candid any more than you do a portrait. Candid portrait is like saying a Leica lens is "clear." People know what you mean, but it's not a good way to put it. To me, being a professional for quite a while now, when I do a portrait, it means I've stopped doing candid photography. That's how my colleagues use the term. You can stretch the term portrait to mean so many things that is has no meaning at all. Such is the oxymoronic term "candid portrait." Eric Welch Carlsbad, CA http://www.neteze.com/ewelch Error, no keyboard - press F1 to continue