Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/06/12

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Re: Photos on the Web
From: Chandos Michael Brown <cmbrow@mail.wm.edu>
Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 01:23:57 -0400

As Voltaire said, Pascal, I should defend with my life your right to your
own opinion and your freedom to express it; but I won't subscribe to the
aesthetic neutrality you seem to support.  I make judgments every day about
what I like and don't like; I publish my ideas, and I accept the
consequences of their uttering.  I spent most of my adult life acquiring
the knowledge and experience that allows me to make such judgments.  If all
photographs are equally good, then why to we bother to talk about Capa, or
Duncan, or Steiglitz, or Bresson, or the folk whose work fundamentally
shapes our notion of what photography can do (and lest you see the above
examples as limiting, I could fill a screen with the names of photographers
whose work I, at least, admire)?  If all expression is equally good, then
why do some books survive centuries beyond their intended audience?  If a
person wants to spend 5K on an M6 and a Noctilux to take pictures of his
dog pissing against a tree or the first steps of his grandchild, I'm all
for it.  I just don't particularly want to look at it, and I don't feel any
especial obligation to take that person seriously as a photographer, for
he--in this example--fails to take photography itself as serious medium for
contemplative self-expression, or, rather I could say, the sensibility that
finds such expression serious is itself unworthy of serious consideration.
I may have mispoken when I employed the phrase "reportage."  What I meant,
really, is "snapshot."  I admire quality (oops, a qualitative judgment)
photojournalism enormously;  there isn't enough of it.  I just spent a week
studying -Requium-, a collection of images by photographers killed in
Vietnam.  Setting aside the content, which is difficult enough, I found the
experience humbling.

You seem to suggest, as Browning rendered ironically in his lovely line,
that "a common greyness silvers everything."  Cool.  I prefer something
different.

I want to add here that I've seen some wonderful stuff by LUG members.

Chandos

At 09:47 PM 6/12/98 +0200, you wrote:
>On 12-06-1998 05:59 Chandos Michael Brown wrote:
>
>>I've checked out, for intance, several sites, where photos captured w/
>>thousands of dollars worth of gear are indistinguishable from equivalent
>>images that one might have shot with a disposable camera: flat, banal, mere
>>reportage, which can be engaging if it reveals some sensibility, but, if
>>not, is nothing more than an Instamatic's glimpse into the rich world we
>>inhabit.
>
>Sorry Chandos, but your above mentioned statement is risking to be 
>understood as denigrating and snobbish.
>Where do you get the right to judge other's works in this way? What you 
>said are, of course, your own remarks and should be treated as such with 
>all respect, but I find nothing wrong with "mere reportage" type of 
>photographs as such. Different people take pictures for different 
>reasons, and who are we to critize each other's works in this respect? 
>What is fine for one person is not necessarily fine for an other one. Has 
>it occurred to you that some people might even like to simply use Leica 
>tools because of the tools and the fun that accompanies taking pictures 
>with such fine machinery, without necessarily wanting to deliver a 
>"message" with each of their pictures? Everybody is entitled to his/her 
>own opinion.
>Just a thought.
>
>Pascal
> 


Chandos Michael Brown
Assoc. Prof., History and American Studies
College of William and Mary 


http://www.resnet.wm.edu/~cmbrow/