Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/12/31
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]"Alan Hull" <hull@vaggeryd.mail.telia.com> typed: >Från: Khoffberg wrote: >> Ansel's relationships with >> folks like Stieglitz, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Paul Strand, >> and all the rest. - - -------------------------- >I am puzzled why modern photographers revere these old names of the >distant past. Their images for the most part are second rate when >compared to the awesome results produced by many current, known and >unknown, photographers today. What planet did *you* come from? 1. These photographers did NOT produce second rate images. I have in the last year had the opportunity to view original prints from all of the above listed artists, and they may be compared to the best work that I have seen from contemporary workers. Edward Weston and Paul Strand's prints speak for themselves. And by the time her work began to be known, Imogen Cunningham had forgotten more about photographic technique than most contemproary photogarphers ever learn during their whole lives. Do not forget that she took her B.S. in chemistry from U. Washington, then a masters in photographic emulsion chemistry with one of the preeminent inorganic chemists in Germany. Artistically she was on par with Strand, Adams, Steiglitz, Weston. Steiglitz's work is technically the weakest of this bunch but his rea importance was at least as much due to his deep influence on his contemporaries as to his photography. Remember that it was Steiglitz who first showed Strand's negatives to Adams. That was a pivotal event in Adams's artictic development. Steiglitz was a remakably catalytic personality. 2. We revere these workers because they came first. Yes they often worked under difficult conditions ina technical sense, but far more significantly, they *created* the visual vernacular that we now take for granted. The images that are now cliches had never been made before. There *are* contemporary photographers who are important and significant. But would you suggest that we demote Michelangelo because Monet and Picasso came later? That seems to be the gist of your argument. .......................................................................... Alexey Merz | URL: http://www.webcom.com/alexey | email: alexey@webcom.com | PGP public key: http://pgp5.ai.mit.edu/ | voice:503/494-6840 | ...A democracy becomes hopelessly weak. and the general good | suffers accordingly, if its higher officials, bred up to | despise it, and necessarily drawn from those very classes | the dominance of which it is pledged to destroy, serve it | only half-heartedly.... - Marc Bloch, 1940