Re: [Leica] Salgado - Simply The Best?? Talk amongst yourselves

["Mike Durling" <durling@widomaker.com>]

Words and pictures just convey a different sort of reality.  Sometimes a
picture succeeds precisely because it ignores the context and forces you to
deal with just what is in the frame.

You can take a masterpiece like Gene and Aileen Smith's Minamata where words
and pictures combine for a devastating effect:  both the context and the
'being there'.  Yet the individual image, "Tomoko in her bath", from the
same work succeeds on a different level.

I think Salgado's and others works succeed because they show something
universal beyond the specific context they were taken in.  In the same way
Vietnam war photos show us war and people quite apart from the details of
who was fighting and why.

Mike D

- ----- Original Message -----
From: "B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>
To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Sent: Thursday, August 02, 2001 7:28 PM
Subject: Re: [Leica] Salgado - Simply The Best?? Talk amongst yourselves


> Aw, come on, Bob....Jokes, novels, and movies aside, the good ones do
> NOT do it from the hotel bar. The hacks do it from the hotel bars.
>
> Read A Bright Shining Lie....and it will tell you far far more about
> what we call the Vietnam War than all the photos laid end to end....and
> believe me, I am an ardent admirer of many of those photos and the folks
> who shot them - many of whom lost their lives doing so - AND I wouldn't
> argue for a minute with the proposition that it was the photos, and the
> t.v. images, that forced an end to the war, and not the words....
>
> Similarly, read "We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed
> Along With Out Families" - hope I've got the title right...and it will
> tell you far far more than all the grisly, moving, disturbing,
> important, photos of Rwanda - the photos certainly convey the disgusting
> inhumanity and brutality of that situation, but they provide virtually
> NO context or explanation for it.
>
> B. D.
>
> Bob Walkden wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > > And while you are right about the power and perceived accuracy of
photo
> > > reportage - and its impact and believability - good written journalism
> > > can and often does convey a far fuller, far far more accurate
"picture"
> > > of a situation or event than photography, with its nanoseconds out of
> > > context, can ever hope to convey.
> >
> > yes, it often can, but I think that photography wins hands down
> > because the photographer has to be there. The writer can do it from
> > the hotel bar! Guess they're the smart ones :o)
> >
> > ---
> >
> >  Bob
> >
> > mailto:bob@web-options.com
>