[Leica] Leica cameras and toy pictures

[Martin Howard <howard.390@osu.edu>]

I've been thinking about quality of cameras and quality of photography since
Kyle posted his message about the Toy Camera people.  First off, I don't
think that it's necessary to justify the purchase of a Leica anymore than
the purchase of anything else.  We live in a consumer society.  If you want
one, buy one.  If you don't, don't.  Who cares what pictures you take with
it, or if it only sits on a shelf and collects admiring looks from jealous
acquaintances?  Some people buy a $4000 camera rig to take close-ups of
blooming flowers, a genre of pictures that bores the living daylights out of
me, but I don't feel that I have the right to judge their expenditure of
money.  Everyone has a different reason and arguing that one is more noble
or worthy than another is like arguing that people with red hair make better
citizens because they eat less peanut butter than fat kids:  It doesn't make
sense.

So, having summarily dismissed that point, I'll engage in the long standing
and well respected scientific methodology of egocentric naval-introspection
and subsequent generalization to whole populations.

I think that one of the most fundamental differences between good
photography and bad photography (or indifferent photography, which may or
may not be the same thing) is whether or not the photographer cared for the
subject they were taking a picture of.  Most of my pictures are booring and
mundane, because I couldn't really give a sh*t about most of the stuff
infront of the lens.  I'm more interested in the gear than the subjects.
Occasionally this is not true, mostly for people as subjects, but the
interesting thing about that is that the people I care most about are the
ones it is hardest to take pictures of.

It's a tricky equation.  On the one hand, you need to take pictures to
exercise the mechanics of taking pictures, so that you are ready when there
is something you really want to take a picture of.  On the other hand, most
of those pictures are not of things or people which you really, *really*
care about.  I think that what the toy camera people have going for them is
that they care more about their subjects than they do about their gear.
When I pocket the Agfa Clack, Moskva-5, or Canonet to go out and take
pictures, the gear is so ridiculously unworthy of care and fuss that I have
no choice but to focus on my subjects.  Not so for the Leica.  I can sit of
half an hour at home and just fondle the M3 with the DR 'cron on it, with no
film in the camera, and just rejoice in the wonderful, silky-smooth
mechanics of the thing.

I don't know what the answer is (short of selling all your possessions and
travelling the world taking pictures of people in plight to inform conceited
Western audiences in an attempt to educate them of the reality outside the
range of MasterCard, but that would mean having to drop the PhD studies and
I wouldn't be able to get that six figure income job in California that I'm
hoping for in a year's time) but my way of tackling it is to set myself
photographic assignments.  Some get carried out, some don't, but it focusses
my photographic efforts.  Caring for the subjects then follows as a
secondary reaction as you are forced beyond the first five rolls to start
looking at things properly and thinking about how you might portray them.

So (and this is where we break from our previously formulated
epistemological efforts), how do *you* deal with this?

M.

(Archive THIS, baby)

- -- 
Martin Howard                     |
Visiting Scholar, CSEL, OSU       | People don't like to be parameters
email: howard.390@osu.edu         | in an equation.
www: http://mvhoward.i.am/        +---------------------------------------