Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/07/14

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Subject: [Leica] The Barnack Award, or bubble gum photography!
From: timatherton at theedge.ca (Tim Atherton)
Date: Wed Jul 14 13:30:18 2004

> This "trendy" way of shooting casually - boring and everyday uninteresting
> images with not much artistic contents has been sweeping over Europe for
> many years now followed be a crowd of pleasers telling everbody
> this is the
> new art photography

It's not exactly new - and it's also really more of a N. American movement
in photography with it's roots as far back as Walker Evans (who was of
course overwhelmingly influenced by Atget - so much so that for years he
denied the influence...)through the likes of Frank and "The Americans" (ok -
that's two Europeans influencing it all early on) and through into the late
60's and 70's and the New Topographics folks with Adams etc (the other
Adams) and then into colour with Eggleston on to Sternfeld, Meyerowitz,
Christenberry etc and especially Shore. Shore was a huge influence on the
likes of Gursky and Struth and others in Europe.

I just got the re-issue of Shore's "Uncommon Places" - not only could huge
chunks of it have been taken today - but most of what he photographed has
become even more mundane and ugly (yet for many, still intriguing) - though
the both photographically and in person it's very easy to be overcome by
strip-mall, tract housing and suburban kitsch fatigue in any journey across
N America.


tim


In reply to: Message from ruben at rhodos.dk (Ruben) ([Leica] The Barnack Award, or bubble gum photography!)