Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/11/16
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]B. D. Colen offered: Subject: RE: [Leica] Re: Leica war photos > You are absolutely correct about the overall quality of the war > photography that this war has produced. Although - I wonder if our > reaction does have something to do with the images being in color, > rather than in black and white. Hi B.D., I'm sure the fact that it's all being done in colour is a shame. Or these days can flip colour to B&W with a mouse click. But the colour detracts from situations of death and the basic horror of it all. It's too bad some news media aren't running B&W, might make for some interesting picture play and re-actions. Whatever happened in the past conflicts wasn't any different than this situation. But the look of the dragged out soldiers, the dead, dying and that gaunt spaced out look of war weary soldiers just gone through hell just isn't there in colour! Example: Even though in the movies. "The Longest Day" movie, B&W. And "Saving Private Ryan." Colour. The Longest Day for me has more impact than Private Ryan, even though TLDay has the "soft grainless look of a Hollywood creation" it still has a kind of visual effect Private Ryan doesn't have in colour. SPRyan cinematography is extremely dramatic, certainly the special effects through out and on the D-Day beach scenes of soldiers being blown apart and wounded, ( some of those scenes particularly on the individual soldier I'd be interested in knowing how the effects were created, without actually killing someone.) But I think the same cinematography style with a harsher B&W look could have made SPRyan an all time best war movie ever and much better than it was. Colour just takes away from the grit and grime of death and destruction in war. > There have been some very strong images, but they have been very few and > far between. Of course if we were to go back and look at the bulk of the > images from Vietnam from about 1961 to 1975, I doubt you'd be much more > impressed than you are by the bulk of the coverage from this war.<<<<< But after Vietnam wasn't there some kind of Pentagon and Administration order about keeping media completely under control in the future so they couldn't go wherever we wanted, as was the case in Vietnam? Grenada and Panama being two previous exercises where only certain media were taken along and under military control. And not allowed to be foot loose and fancy free to roam and shoot on their own time and choice without military guides and permission. Remember Gulf 1 and how the media were completely controlled every where and kept under control by threat of arrest if they wandered out on their own, rather than staying completely under the watchful eyes of the Pentagon folks to stay in designated areas. The "embedded people" was nothing more than keep those GD media people out of the way so we can do our job without them showing everything back home on the 6 o'clock news as it was from Vietnam. ERGO: There wasn't much of individual photographers roaming on their own doing the kind of independent type photography from WW2 etc. where the photog had the opportunity to shoot the dead and dying right in the face drama of previous conflicts. Bad news having the media show what war is like. IE: CNN TV the other evening and shooting of a wounded Iraqi. > The reality is that most photojournalism - like most journalism, medical > practice, engineering, fiction writing, cooking, etc. etc. etc. - is > mediocre at best. Average is average. The reason we remember Capa, Larry > Burrows, Henri Huet, David Douglas Duncan, is because their war > photography was so clearly better than most. ;-)<<<<<<,, I suppose this all comes down to "Not the time for B&W as it shows the home town folks the harsh gritty in your face reality of "war content". But in colour, it's viewed like it's a "war movie" and all the dead will be back in a different programme to-morrow. And if you don't think so, take the time to view some of the WW2 on the scene movie material shot by all kinds of cinematographers. We all have pretty well seen the best B&W still photography and certainly nothing from the past year is any where close to it in colour. Now given I had the good fortune "not to go to Gulf 1" I am only repeating that situation as reported on TV newscasts and situations explained one on one by my wire service buddies who were there. And quite frankly I'd much rather be having a discussion about who took the best flower pictures in B&W or colour with which Leica glass!! ted