Re: [Leica] ELEKTRONIX

["Steve Barbour" <kididdoc@home.com>]

Don and BD....   thank you both.....Don,  for your initial selection of
these images and your comments... then  BD, for your  additional insightful
remarks about them... as important as anything I have ever read on this
list...Steve           (? all under the subject***ELEKTRONIX...duh)

> Don Dory wrote:
> >
> > B.D.
> >
>
> > 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.
>
> Amazing image. And now at the center of yet another storm of controversy
> as Aileen Smith has given all rights to the image to the child's
> parents, and they in turn have asked that it never again be
> displayed...in any form...
> >
> > 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.
>
> Don't know as I'd go as far as the last line, but it is a powerful
> reminder of who the real victims of modern warfare are.
> >
> > 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.
>
> Yes...But....This image raises all the usual questions about Smith and
> his darkroom manipulations. The original image is pretty mundane. This
> one was, in essence, created in the darkroom as he burned and burned and
> burned to eliminate everything but that partial face.....Still a
> powerful, scary image...
>
> And speaking of that one....it is the cover illustration on the jacket
> of a newly released novel...with NO photographer's credit...and if
> someone can do that with one of W. Eugene Smith's iconic images, what
> does that tell you about the chances the rest of us ultimately have to
> protect our rights...
> >
> > 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.
> >
>
> Beautiful
>
>
> > 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
>
> Don't know this one or the next....:-(
> >
> > 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.
>
> Terrific body of work...Don't think however that it had a damn thing to
> do with the civil rights movement...The civil rights movement was about
> American blacks - and later sympathetic whites working with them -
> risking their lives by saying ENOUGH! and having the "audacity" to
> demand to right to vote, go to decent schools, and when all is said and
> done, be treated like Americans, rathern than like black South Africans.
> Didn't have a damn thing to do with a Swiss photographer, who may have
> had great impact on the photo and art world, but that's a pretty insular
> world....
> >
> > >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.
>
> Amazing shot..
> >
> > Avedon's "In the American West" for showing me how much can be revealed
> > about the photographer in a portrait.
>
> Very good point...I'm not big on the work at all, but you are absolutely
> right about what it says about the photographer...
> >
> > 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.
>
> See Gibson comment.;-)
> >
> > 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.
> >
> Could it be Maplethorp?
>
>
> > 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