Re: [Leica] Re: Lenswork Magazine

[DFangon@aol.com]

Hi Jim.

Thank you very much for your post.  You may have solved the puzzle for me.  
Everybody simply assumed that Dorothea Lange's advice was from the point of 
view of the photographer - when taking the picture - perhaps even Gibson did. 
 What you are saying is that the "point of departure" is in the photograph 
itself, perhaps even from the viewer's point of view, not the photographer's.

But, and this is a big but, how do you reconcile your thesis with Ms. Lange's 
own explanation of what she meant by "point of departure?"  In the Lenswork 
Gibson interview, he asked Ms. Lange what she meant and her cryptic answer 
was: "  Well, if you go down to the drugstore to buy toothpaste, the 
possibility of encountering a serious event is far greater than if you just 
stand on the street corner waiting for something to happen."

Dante



In a message dated 11/11/02 4:56:55 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
Jim@hemenway.com writes:

<< I've been reading this thread and differ with most.
 
 I think that she meant that the photographer didn't have a good place in
 his photograph(s) for the viewer to begin looking at the picture in
 hand.
 
 Look at any great photo or painting and find the element that draws your
 eye first.  Then let your eyes travel around the picture until you've
 finished seeing everything.  You should end up at the first element.
 
 Now, find some pictures, (we all have a few) which don't seem to "look
 right." I submit that in pictures with a poor composition, that there
 isn't a single element which draws your eye first... a point of
 departure for the viewer to use to look at the rest of the picture. I
 see a lot of split compositions in some folk's PAWS, and because of the
 split, one doesn't have a good point of departure.
 
 Also, another common problem is the one where because of a "loose"
 composition, the viewer's eyes don't complete the circuit and instead
 exit the picture at one of the edges without returning to the the
 starting element, that is, the point of departure. >>
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