RE: [Leica] Pilgrimage

["Griffith, Lucian" <griffil1@anz.com>]

Alastair Firkin wrote:

>But in my mind the final question was why so little youth. 
>Was HCB  sent out by Magnum to capture on celluloid the dials of 
>famous people before they shuffled off this mortal coil and made 
>their own pilgrimage, or is the artist aware that a portrait is the 
>image of the person, and a person is unfinished as a youth. Old man's 
>club or lively insight -- I would like to the think the latter.

Thanks Alastair - a _nice_ post. :)  I saw the HCB exhibition when it was in
Bendigo and had similar thoughts.  If I recall there was a portrait of HCB's
daughter as a girl but that was the only portrait focussed on a single
youth.  I don't get as much from his portrait work as from street and
reportage photos, though.  It's great to see good quality prints up close,
but I imagine that HCB wouldn't have been thinking of blowing them up so
large when he was taking some of these shots back in the 1930s - 40s etc.
Having said that it was often impressive the quality of the prints given
they'd been blown up so big from 35mm taken sometimes 60 years ago.  An
inspiration.

Just as an aside - your encounter with the semi-trailers on the way up -
sounds like a good oportunity for a windscreen shot.  I've got a whole
series of photographs taken through various windscreens over a number of
years; and a couple of semi trailers in the driving rain through a ravine
would be a great shot to add!  (although, easier to take if you're not
behind the wheel...)  Possibly all stemmed from a Winogrand shot of a
collapsing cow taken through the windscreen which particularly took my fancy
about eight years ago.

cheers,
Lucian G.