Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/01/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Thanks Bill. The role of tradition and past accomplishments in a craft can never be underscored enough. I originally started with the intention of trying to replicate the shooting style of our turn of the century photographers. As I progressed with the essay, about 90+ portraits to date, I came to realize that there is a visual syntax which we all seem to share in. The documentary mannerism of the past is constantly with us, I feel, through the individuals who are still alive, the books, or works, of those before them, and the tools they used. In particular the tools, or instruments, that have survived are the closest we come to having an individual connection with that past. I'm sure that when we bring that leica, contax, rollei to our eyes that there isn't one among us who hasn't thought at one of those moments of a past connection. The welder wearing the mandil, is part of a project called "apronstrings." I tried shooting 300 portraits over less than a year's time with no budget. I managed to do 120, 90% handheld, before getting tapped out. I don't know yet if I will return to it. I had submitted a piece on Ironworkers retrofitting the longest suspension bridge in Las Angeles, which was shoot with my leicas, with a 24mm, 35mm, and a 90mm. It didn't make the final cut. I guess leica negs, as good as they are, couldn't match 4x5's monumentalism. Best Slobodan Dimitrov Bill Harting wrote: > > Slobodan, > > The laweekly.com are beautiful, Sanderesque. It looks like a case where the > tool made a real difference in the final product of your vision. Now I have > to try it (or was that another thread). > > bill