Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/06/29

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Subject: Re: [Leica] worth remembering
From: Doug Herr <telyt560@cswebmail.com>
Date: 29 Jun 2000 19:53:23 -0700

On Thu, 29 June 2000, Harrison McClary wrote:

> 
> >
> >What do they care about, and what will they care about?
> >
> >Go to a place where a house is burning down. Watch the woman of the family as
> >she hurridly shoves the kids out the door and then, in the last 5 seconds in
> >her flaming home, has one chance to grab something. What does she grab? --
> >and as a news reporter I can tell you this is invariably the case?
> >
> >The family photo albums, that's what.
> 
> Charlie is onto something here, I think.  I have spent much of my 
> career as a news-photographer and have in recent years realized that 
> the photos people look back on to and hold in their memories are not 
> those momentums images that are part of the "public" conscious such 
> as the Eddie Adams photo or others. The photos people look at are the 
> old shots of their cities, town and home area.  The photos of their 
> relatives as kids, the photos that show the common person in his/her 
> element, after all we all consider ourselves common, normal, part of 
> the status quo.  Very few are part of international events and in the 
> great scheme of living our daily lives those major events fade into 
> white noise that, while important, pale in comparison to our child's 
> first steps, words, the struggle of earning our daily bread, the 
> simple process of living.
> 
> I have photos of Presidents, winners of Supper Bowls, World Series's, 
> Master's golf,  a photo of the three pitchers who pitched the first 
> ever combined no hitter in the National League baseball division, yet 
> of far more import to me are the photos of my daughter I have made 
> over the past few years.
> 
> Photos such as Natchwey, Salgado, Chris Morris and others make are 
> very important and need to be made to inform and appal, and remind us 
> that such things do happen, but other kinds of photographs are 
> equally important and should not be discounted for lack of 
> news/social change value.
> 
> To document life on has to go no further than what lies in front of 
> him.  The Leica M is probably the best tool for documentary 
> photography made, use it and do not sweat the "import" of the photos 
> you are making.  File them, id them and your great great grand kids 
> will enjoy looking at them.
> -- 
> Harrison McClary
> http://www.mcclary.net

There's a very simple reason I use Kodachrome.  So the photos of my kids will be around for their grandchildren to enjoy.

Doug Herr
Sacramento
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/telyt
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