[Leica] Re: chip wrappings & ultimately meaningless photos

["Doug Richardson" <doug@meditor.demon.co.uk>]

B.D. wrote:
>I will now proceed to piss off many of my fellow LUGers and say that
in
>terms of the long haul, in terms of the history of mankind, the only
>photographers whose work will be worth remembering are the
> Nachtwey's Capas,
>Salgados, Evans, etc. etc....and I certainly put some members of
>this group
>in  that catagory. Photos of mountains, grandchildren,
>seascapes, etc., are
>very nice, but ultimately meaningless.

Oh well, I have no children or grandchildren, but given than I'm only
a decade away from the age when my father died, until the day I
personally become ultimately meaningless by assuming room temperature
I'll just keep having fun taking pictures of mountains, seascapes, my
wife, my dog, etc. (Venice this fall.) As I once heard a sub-editor
tell a well-known editor - "Relax - it's only chip wrappings!"

History will decide which photos were worth remembering. We're
probably too close in time to make that sort of judgement - the
Victorians regarded Stainer as the English Beethoven, but how many of
us can whistle or hum a bar or two of Stainer? Who knows - that photo
I took in 1977 of a rogue missile twisting and turning out of control
in the sky has long since been used as chip wrappings, but maybe in 70
years from now it will have become an icon of the Cold War era...

(For the benefit of non-UK Lugnuts,  in this part of the world, potato
chips - what you may think of as 'French fries' - bought from a chip
shop were traditionally wrapped in a layer of greaseproof paper, then
an outer layer of old newspaper.)

Regards,

Doug Richardson
(who is ready to be flamed by all the Stainer fans on the LUG)