[Leica] Being a fly on the wall

[passaro.vince at gmail.com (Vince Passaro)]

When I said his work strikes me as contemplative, I wasn't thinking at all
of his affect while taking pictures.  I was thinking only about the mood of
the final images: they're almost religious -- or, more precisely,
sacramental -- in the exactness of their observation, their deep loyalty to
substance and texture and form. I have no doubt he had a spirited way of
working and I have absolutely not a shred of doubt that technically speaking
he could do anything that was possible with the cameras of his day. As I'm
sure many of you know, he gave up photography in favor of drawing, saying
that photography had always been for him a replacement for drawing, a
quicker way of drawing.  Nobody thinks his drawings are that good apparently
yet they make him happy. The man was a supreme artist. There are artists of
the 20th century -- Glenn Gould or Mark Rothko or Flannery O'Connor or TS
Eliot or Miles Davis or Samuel Beckett (these happen to be my favorites
anyway) -- whose intensity and distinctiveness of vision changes the way
people --  even people who don' t specifically know the works -- see the
world. They change how the world looks and sounds. He was one of those I
think.

MoMA's having a big show on him again, starting in April, I saw today. They
convinced me to join again though I'm broke, cause they're giving 15 months
for the price of 12 on a membership.... .



On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 5:06 PM, Mark Rabiner <mark at rabinergroup.com> 
wrote:

> > I watched a film doc with Henri shooting, and maybe he was showing off
> for
> > the camera, but he was hardly acting contemplative in his shooting; I was
> > impressed at how he was able to shoot the LTM camera, quickly wind the
> film
> > with an extended finger and shoot again.  It was almost like he was
> shooting
> > with a motor drive.
> >
> > --
> > Regards,
> >
> > Sonny
>
> I saw him shooting in a film too he looked like the film was sped up.
> Keystone cops. But it was real time.
>
> [Rabs]
> Mark William Rabiner
>
>
>
>
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