Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/09/10
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At 10:00 AM 9/10/99 -0400, Photovilla@aol.com wrote:
>While I am as Leica crazy as anyone...didn't the Speedgraphic make pj
>possible? Remember Arthur <Weegee> Felig. ;-)
>
>I would say that the Leica made photographers like HCB and Winogrand
>possible...but that isn't really photojournalism as much as "street
>photography" perhaps.
Note my qualification in my message. The speed graphic was there to produce
"newspaper" photography. Something the late Cliff Edom, a friend of mine,
rebelled against when he started the very first photojournalism program in
the world at the University of Missouri. Shoot, he was in the room when the
word was coined!
Photojournalism up to the time when the Leica gave it life was stilted,
posed with a big flash bulb blinding the subjects. More likely lined up and
shaking hands or some such swill. That's not photojournalism. But it was
more the limitations of the camera. The Rollei kind of helped things along
some. But the kind of photography that Andre Kertesz pioneered (and really
took off with when the Leica came to be) and HCB and others followed was
not possible until the Leica. Dynamic slices of life. Weegee is okay I
guess, but he's not my idea of a photojournalist. I find his pictures
rather voyeuristic, uninspiring.
W. Eugene Smith is a photojournalist. And Steichen, and lots of others put
the Leica, and then Contax Canon and Nikon rangefinders to work, creating a
tradition of what is the best of photojournalism even today.
And Cliff Edom instilled that kind of photojournalism in the program at
Missouri. His students had more influence over the way National Geographic
did photojournalism than any other source, by far. David Allen Harvey, Jodi
Cobb, Bill Epperige (Robert Kennedy assassination, etc.) Sam Abell, and the
list goes on and on.
Cliff's favorite saying was "Show truth with a camera." That can obviously
be debated on the technical merits of the statement, but the sentiment was
real. Tell truthful stories with pictures made in available light with
small format cameras and fast lenses. That tradition is carried on at the
Missouri Photo Workshop that still runs today (in fact this month). That's
photojournalism. That's my profession.
Eric Welch
St. Joseph, MO
http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch
.one sees the glass half full, another, the glass half
empty. The engineer sees the glass twice as big as it has to be.