[Leica] A funny thing happened on my way to the museum

[Guy Bennett <gbennett@lainet.com>]

I was in San Francisco these past few days, and spent Monday shooting in
and around SFMOMA and the Yerba Buena Center for the Performing Arts.
Afterwards, I walked over to the Ansel Adams Friends of Photography Museum
to see the Annie Liebowitz show "Women." As I stepped up to the ticket
counter the young man working there looked at the black M6 around my neck
and asked: "Hey! Is that a Holga?" I fumbled for a moment and said, "Well
... kind of." He said: "Oh man, they are so cool!"

No lie.

Guy


P.S. The Liebowitz photos were huge ink jet prints of portraits from her
book. The size of the images was quite impressive: many were quite tall (up
to 6 feet, it seemed to me), and had to be created using more than one
sheet of paper, joined together like wallpaper. This in my opinion
definitely detracted from the quality of the prints. (Personally, I'd like
to be able to compare the ink jets to traditional prints, just to satisfy
my own curiosity - next time I see Annie, I'll ask her to arrange that for
me). At any rate, some of the portraits were rather compelling. Liebowitz
is not one of my favorite photographers, but I was definitely moved by what
she was able to capture - particularly in one portrait of three high
society ladies from Houston, lunching together - and some of the comments
she makes through the presentation of her subjects, such as a "before" and
"after" study of a Las Vegas Showgirl, all made up and in costume in one
shot, then, without the make-up and costume in another: on the one hand all
flash and glamor, on the other, a kind of simple homeliness, in both cases
a blank, unfeeling gaze. Chilling!