Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/07/18
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Great discussion on PCness and galleries. PC is what you resort to when all else fails. As for galleries, I have this feeling that documentary pix really belong in a book. Yes, I've seen Salgado's entire Workers exhibit and it is wonderful and, no, there aren't many things I'd put on my wall as decoration. To me these pictures of Salgado's and Tina's (see Tina, now you can say you've been mentioned in the same breath as Sabastiao : `) ) belong in a book where all good stories belong. In a book things string together, becoming more than the parts, and a book can be taken places and appreciated time and again. Documentary pix belong in books, maybe occasionally in film (where the stills so overpower the moving images that I can't believe filmmaker haven't banned the occasional practice). Art galleries are for art where people have these creative epiphanies. They are valid, I guess, though having spent some time recently with an Eggleston (sp?) book, some people must have a very low epiphanic threshold. Exhibitions can be wonderful if they aren't about selling pictures. But books--those are for the people, for sharing, for being universal, down-to-earth. Tina, like a number of photographers on the LUG, is a storyteller. And that is the very highest compliment I can offer any photographer. Her stories are not for glorifying in some artificial environment, but for telling around the campfire where we touch the truth of myth. donal - -- __________ Donal Philby San Diego www.donalphilby.com