Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2012/08/27
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I'll just take issue with the term "sensual" as it's being used here. If we take the somewhat Platonic idea that there exists an invisible, unknowable reality out there someplace that we can only know about through our senses, then it seems to me that lines, shapes and modeling are more fundamental than color; color is a pure abstraction without them. I can recognize the figure of a man through his outline, but show me his color without the form and I'm lost. Color blind people do surprisingly well in life, but those unfortunates who cannot recognize form are simply mad. Color is an attribute of the world of specific experience and less general than black and white which is more closely aligned to the world of thought. So .... I agree with Ted, but I prefer the term "ideational," (ie it's more like conceiving than experiencing) rather than "intellectual" because the kind of intellectualizing ruminations we do upon seeing any photograph figure in after going through the decoding process of identifying stuff and thinking about it. Intellectuals produce books like "Camera Lucida," photographers produce "The Pencil of Nature."