Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/06/13
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 07:30 AM 6/13/98 -0700, you wrote: >i suggest that Ansel Adams managed the same (and others, etc etc). millions >of people a year visit Yosemite, trampling all over that beautiful landscape. >yet few, if any, manage to transform that landscape into a truly great >image with the skill and anticipation of the result that Adams achieved. People who don't have an in-depth understanding of the West (U.S.), and the rugged beauty, and the amazing complexity, vast landscapes and the wonderful sense of the primordial when tromping through the woods with nary another human for miles around, who have the hardest time with Ansel Adam's work I suspect. Not everyone mind you. I grew up in the mountains of Oregon. Fishing along pure streams I could drink straight out of (long time ago!), and sleeping under a lean-to of fir boughs with a fire crackling outside and light snow falling. And never with a camera in those days. I was there for "it," not for making pictures. Too, bad, but I guess it's paid off in some ways. That's the rugged outdoors that caused me to instantly understand Ansel Adams' work. Nobody can tell me that his work has no meaning, because I know from my own life what many of his pictures are about. Some I don't understand either. That's the way with photography. But Ansel knew the West as intimately as just about anyone who ever lived out there. I almost said here, but for now I'm stuck in the midwest U.S. with my refuge of AA books and my other photo - getaway - books. We can't blame people for not responding to his work if it's so alien to them they have no frame of reference to give them the same meanings we find in our hearts and memories. Photography is so personal a thing I can't imagine anyone being universally liked. Is there such a photographer? Certainly not Cartier-Bresson. Most universally disliked? (Joel Peter-Witkin?) - -- Eric Welch St. Joseph, MO http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch The distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, even if a stubborn one. - Albert Einstein