Re: Leicaphilia

[ted grant <75501.3002@CompuServe.COM>]

Oddman wrote:

<<<<Real prints are more beautiful, but also more exclusive and often more
expensive. >>>>>

Hi Oddman,

I agree with the above, however when I see the amount of money spent for
original prints at auctions or purchasing from a gallery, the only way I look at
it is, "Damn I wish that was me getting $30,000.00 for a print or in other cases
a few thousand."

Sure I can appreciate fine art photography hanging in galleries, at one time I
decried much of it as garbage and why should thousands of dollars be paid for
some rock and fern, peeling paint picture.  Then I began to learn about and
understand a discipline of photography which I really had no knowledge: "Fine
Art Photography".

I had my eyes opened through daily contact for 13 months in the National
Photography Gallery in Canada,  where I began to see the beauty in some of it,
in the same manner as I see beauty as "art forms within photojournalism".
Sometimes I saw work that was completely off the wall, but there was pure magic
in what the photographer had created, rather than just capturing it on film.

But I still prefer books to look at in the quiet of my home, allowing me the joy
of having not just one Cartier-Bresson on the wall, but a collection of his work
in a fine art produced book with prints generally in the size of 11X14.  This
allows me the time to sit and study many of the photographer's images and learn
from them rather than the joy of a single print.

<<<<There are pictures everywhere, and a lot of "pollution". We live in a
picture world with a lot of stereotype and senseless images. Well, there is a
kind of sense, of course...brain washing us and making "good" consumers out of
us.>>>>

Pollution yes. Much of it created by manipulators of the picture taking machines
rather than emotionally creative talented photographers. Many of these
manipulator exposers of film are truly "copy artists", not in the sense of
directly copying an image, but trying to shoot it the same way, as they believe
it will give them a great picture like so & so. When in reality they only expose
film with garbage, despite what they may think they have captured. 

<<<I am not sure if I agree with Ted Grant saying that "It almost doesn't
matter what the subject is, it is just get out there with that damn camera and
start shooting everything and anything that moves or doesn't>>

Oddman I believe you misinterpreted what my comment meant.  I merely used that
phrase in relation to "enthusiasm of taking action after being motivated by the
book, "75 Years of Leica Photography".  I have looked through this collection
and become so wound-up to go out and search for magical moments with a
completely open mind, looking for something to turn me on to shoot, so as to
alleviate the burning desire derived from the many pictures I have just
completed viewing.

This doesn't mean to rush out and expose film of nothing, but to expose film on
subjects that excite my minds eye, therefore maybe capturing a truly great
Cartier-Bresson moment. Or in the commercial vernacular phrase these days, "A
Kodak Moment!" :) 

<<<<<If you don't have a clear idea and don't know what to select according to
your idea, you never make good pictures, or just by miracle. And you end up
contributing to the image pollution.>>>>>>>>

I don't quite agree with you here if I'm understanding you correctly in that
"you have an idea of what you are going to shoot before you go out." Is that
correct?  If it is, then I don't agree, as I feel one should have a totally open
mind, as that allows you to see the world with a clear head and eyes and not
constricted to a fixed position.

<<<<The problem is that you get tired of these nice, licked, well composed
images. There are no message in them. No deeper universal identity. There are
only emptiness.>>>>>

Not so at all, unless you are looking at different books than I have in my
family library! I have the work of Donald McCullin, Cartier-Bresson,
Eisenstaedt, Yousf Karsh, David Douglas Duncan, Eugene Smith, Lewis Hine Robert
Vishniak, Alfred Stieglitz, Marc Riboud, Robert Capa, Doisneau, 
and Andre Kertesz.  And that names only a few, with many others of lesser
stature and they all have messages, excitement and you name it! 

And every time I go back and look at them it is a refreshing breath of
inspirational air at the beauty and imagination displayed, that in turn creates
a burning desire to be better a photographer.

<<<If you try to make such images yourself, you will be starving and you will
have to fight as hell to publish the fruit of your efforts. If you are honest
and straight, it is almost an impossible mission.>>>>>>

Part of the problem in getting ones work published in book form is, "It wont
sell to the masses!"  Publishers do books to make money, not to be kind and
benevolent to a nice person photographer who has this collection of images with
a psychological bent to them.  

If you have approached the right publishing house and if they see it will sell,
make money for them and the photographer, they will turn it into a book. And it
doesn't matter how good you think your work is, and it may well be the greatest
in your eyes, if it doesn't have a hope of making a profit, forget it.

Final solution? Get money and publish your own book! Then you only have yourself
to blame if you loose your money because no one buys it! Quite frankly it is a
great eye opener when you have had several books published and they don't have
people jumping off buildings to buy them.

In the real world of publishing there are some "art publishers" who will wing a
book and if it looks like it is on a roll for sales once out on the street,
they'll print more. But these peole do very few non-profit making publications,
they don't do it out of the goodnss of their hearts, despite sometimes we think
they should publish because, "Damn my work is the most beautiful photography in
the World!" :)

So much for my humble opinion in relation to why I have over 300 books in my
collection purely for quiet moment pleasure of reading and viewing.

ted
Victoria, Canada
http://www.islandnet.com/~tedgrant