Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/04/05

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Subject: RE: [Leica] Show images
From: "bdcolen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>
Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2003 11:50:16 -0500

Thanks very much, Gilbert. No, no captions.;-) (Although I am still
struggling with what to do when I hang them.) What I really found both
fascinating and instructive as I went from a total of probably about
1000 scanned images, to my "favorite 193," to 24, was that there were
images I really wanted to include because I knew the "back story" that
went with them. But when other people - including my daughter, who can
be a tough, informed critic - looked at those same images she'd say they
were good, but that I clearly had better, and needed to separate myself
from what I knew about the images. The best example of that is that the
photo of 'three men and a baby' comes from a series I shot on Cape Cod
of family gathered for the first time with a new grandchild -
grandmother and grandfather, his three kids, the newborn child of one,
the father of the baby, and a few friends of the kids. The only family
member missing? The one daughter the gm and gf had had together - who
had been brutally murdered nine months earlier.  So as I went through
the images I was emotionally overloaded with the 'back story,' aware of
the meaning of the gathering; the specialness, if you will, of the
arrival of this first grandchild; the gaping hole in the family. But no
one else viewing the photos of grandma holding the baby, as grandfather
leans forward to touch the baby's cheek, etc. etc., is aware of that. So
the one image from the group that made it is the 'three men and a baby,'
and Alicia's (my daughter) argument for that one, aside from any
compositional qualities the image may have, is that it is unusual to see
a photo like that with a group of males, rather than females, where a
baby is clearly the happy center of attention.

B. D.

- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
[mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us] On Behalf Of J. Gilbert
Plantinga
Sent: Saturday, April 05, 2003 10:50 AM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: Re: [Leica] Show images


What, no captions!? :-)

Two points:

1. Not one of these photos requires that we know anything beyond what 
is in the photo itself.

2. It's really good to see an undiluted portfolio. It's not a 
documentary (though I  believe that I've seen some of these in the 
documentary series from which they came). But taken out of their 
textual  context, the pictures work in and of themselves simply as 
pictures - see point one above.

So B. D., it is very good to see you practicing what you preach. Very 
nice work.

Gilbert

On Saturday, April 5, 2003, at 10:01  AM, bdcolen wrote:

> I have posted the 24 images from my MIT, a good number of which many 
> of you have seen before over the past couple of years, some of which 
> you may not have seen yet, at 
> http://www.leica-gallery.net/bdcolen/folder-4390.html

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