[Leica] worth remembering

[Summicron1@aol.com]

I've been trying to keep a low profile lately, but noticed the following on a 
recent collection of LUG chat and thought I could give you guys a little 
perspective:


Refering to books by Selgado and other documentarians of the human tragedy, 
one LUGer said: If that's the only photos worth remembering in the long term 
history of 

mankind, then I say the quicker we pop a bomb and destroy the whole mess of 

shit the better for everything on this planet. 

My response -- actually, you are taking too close a look at the issue. Step 
back, ask yourself what pictures people, REAL people want to remember and not 
just the ones that are commercial successes or gain popular fame. Fame is 
fleeting and tastes change, and 100 years from now nobody will care about 
some miserable war in Boznia, just as they don't care about the 
Franco-Prussian War now.

What do they care about, and what will they care about?

Go to a place where a house is burning down. Watch the woman of the family as 
she hurridly shoves the kids out the door and then, in the last 5 seconds in 
her flaming home, has one chance to grab something. What does she grab? -- 
and as a news reporter I can tell you this is invariably the case?

The family photo albums, that's what.

Mom at the zoo. billy at the grand canyon. the dog barfing, the baby's first 
step, grandpa staring at the TV, Easter and Christmas ad nausium, gawd knows 
what else. And they'll pass up a framed, certified, guaranteed, signed Karsch 
portrait of churchill over the mantle piece to grab them, too.

Why? commercial and monetary worth are one thing but these are the pictures 
that really mean something to them as people, the images that will be handed 
down for generations and admired and laughed over, just like the wedding 
photo of my grandparents hanging in my hall right now.

Shoot 'em with a Leica, or shoot e'm with a Brownie (and my albums are full 
of both) it doesn't matter. It's the images and what they represent that 
count.

Charlie Trentelman
Ogden
it's home
Utah