Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/08/12
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]B.D. It seems immensely difficult to get this group to discuss photographs either as critic or how it affects or affected the individual. It is just easier to discuss something solid like lens performance or UV filters. We will talk about personal issues, witness the broad response to where we are from. So, below is my ramblings on images that profoundly affected me. Not in specific order but in stream of remembrance so probably significant. W E. Smith's Minimata image of the little girl being bathed. Far more impact to become green than Rachel Carson or the Sierra Club. Just think, one little picture if publicized could change many people re the impact people have on the environment. W.E. Smith's image of the Marines holding up the deformed discarded baby. Powerful anti-war image from the "Good" war. For me even more moving than the napalmed girl in Vietnam or the VC being executed also from Vietnam. W.E Smith again with his image of the Haitian insane asylum resident particularly the last one where you could see only the eyes. One image bringing up all the dark feelings inside, telling you where you will end up if you don't resist. Earnest Haas in "The Creation" the airplane shot of the migrating birds, a diagonal band of white against the earth. Beautiful as an abstract and beautiful as a metaphor for life. Ralph Gibson's half image of a girls face. Simply a wonderful image at every level. The one where the edge of the face acts as a divider between light and darkness with absolutely sharp eyelashes Ralph Gibson's "The Somnambulist" Every photographer should read this book. Robert Frank "The Americans" Risking a flaming, it's as if he was possessed, forced to produce some of the best photography of the 50's. Challenging America to rethink itself. Possibly allowed the Civil Rights movement to proceed by forcing a smug intelligentsia to look at what was really out in America. From an unknown to me photographer an image of an incinerated Iraqi soldier who in his last moments was trying to flee his burning truck. A very powerful image almost impossible to find in American journalism but shown fairly widely in Europe and I suppose the rest of the world. Avedon's "In the American West" for showing me how much can be revealed about the photographer in a portrait. Michael Kenna's Notre Gardens book. This book has absolutely wonderful images of the gardens surrounding the great French Chateau's. The perspective that they were taken from both uplifts as spiritual beauty but also instructs as a photographer. Last for this posting, the self portrait from that famous flower photographer where the top of a death's head cane is critically in focus with the upper torso of the photographer just out of focus. The calm acceptance of certain fate is instructive. Thanks for listening Don "Good taste" is a virtue of the keepers of museums. If you scorn bad taste, you will have neither palaces nor gardens." dorysrus@mindspring.com