RE: Re(2): [Leica] Untitled Magazine ?7

["B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net>]

Come on, Mary - This is where we drift off into the Leica mythology. The
camera is not going to give them either vision or sophistication. It is a
tool, albeit a superb tool. It also happens to be a tool that demands more,
rather than less, sophistication and vision from the photographer than the
auto-everything which most photographers seem to use. We can certainly agree
to disagree about the quality of the photos, but the other? I don't know.

But let's consider the photos, because I'm beginning to feel like a bit of a
curmudgeon here. A perfect example of what I mean is the photo entitled
"Kahallid Muhammad leads his supporters along 118th Street." All that photo
shows is a crowd of people in a small street. KM may be there, but he
certainly isn't a center of interest in the photo, and he doesn't appear to
be leading anything.

Another photo I noticed is "The real gang is the gang in blue." What do we
see? Menacing cops in riot gear? Snarling dogs? No. We see a black young man
walking in the foreground and three cops, one laughing, one smiling, in
summer short-sleeve uniforms, leaning casually against a wall in the
background.

Let me go out on a limb here:

I think what this photo story may be an example of is what can happen when
the video generation meets the still camera. The photographers are kids,
young adults, raised on video in general and music videos in particular.
They see in terms of a combination of motion, sound, etc. They don't think
and visualize in static terms. If you step back from the photos in this
"photo story," and think about what the scene was probably like, you can
understand how the photographers probably were seeing and experiencing what
is described in their captions, and when they see their own still photos,
all that sensory experience returns - to them. But for me, not having been
there, these are instants in time that don't capture the experience.

Again, I applaud the attempt. And I think the website execution is terrific.
But the photographers need to throw out their VCRs and start looking at
books of great photojournalism.

B. D.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> [mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of Mary & Stan
> Kephart
> Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 1998 3:24 PM
> To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us; leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> Subject: Re: Re(2): [Leica] Untitled Magazine ?7
>
>
>
> Hi Francisco,
>
> I am an amateur too, and proud of it.  The word, as you probably know, is
> derived from the Latin verb amare, "to love."  So the word means that
> amateurs do what they do because they love it, and does not necessarily
> connote that they do not know what they are doing.
>
> I liked the untitledmagazine 7.  Without reading the bios of the
> photographers, it hit home to me that the photographers are young and
> idealisic.  I particularly liked the shot of the boy looking through the
> eye of the large sculpture.  The other shots showed some interesting
> camera angles, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  To keep on topic--one wonders
> how these folks would do if they had a Leica in their hands!
>
> Mary K
>
>
>
> >I don't agree with BD on his critics to this site.
> >
> >I think that this one of the best sites I've visited recently.
> Beautifully
> >done, sober, easy to use and with a great bunch of pics.
> >
> >I don't think that the pictures are meaningless. Try to browse the past
> >issues of the magazine and you'll found really good pictures (eg issue
> >#2). Maybe not every single one are technically perfect (bu
> whats's that,
> >anyway), but good because the photographer has been able to
> reflect on an
> >image what he was seeing.
> >
> >But I'm only an amateur.
> >Francisco
>