RE: [Leica] Suzy Q, again

[Guy Bennett <guybnt@idt.net>]

arthur,

a little context would be nice.

by excerpting provocative statements such as these, with no
contextualization, you are pushing readers to react in a defensive, indeed
a negative way, as paul did. (and i don't mean to criticize you, paul,
yours was the appropriate [i.e. desired] response.)

to judge a book/writer on the tiny, discreet moments of their work with no
consideration for the larger thought behind it - whether or not we 'agree'
with the writer (as if that were a criteria for anything) -  demonstrates a
profound lack of good sense on our part.

for example, were we to judge plato based on alfred jarry's selective
excerpting in 'dr faustroll' (he quotes *only* words like: "thus," "and so
on," "etc.," "and so forth") we might conclude that plato was a man with
little to say, and few words to say the little he had to communicate.

guy



>I should think he was "snipping a lot of context"---like the whole rest of
>her book.  But I'd suggest that these thoughts are not "facile," and so
>rather than seize upon ways in which we may see them as "dismissive and
>contemptuous" or even "enraging," we should do better to give Ms. Sontag the
>benefit of the doubt and to consider ways in which what she took the trouble
>to write might make some perceptive sense (regardless of whether we come to
>agree with it).
>
>:-)
>
>Art Peterson
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From:	Paul Chefurka [mailto:Paul_Chefurka@pmc-sierra.com]
>Sent:	Tuesday, September 26, 2000 3:52 PM
>To:	'leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us'
>Subject:	RE: [Leica] Suzy Q, again
>
>I hope you're snipping a lot of context, Arthur, because if these quotes
>accurately reflect Ms. Sontag's impressions of the art, I truly despair.  In
>fact I find the thoughts you have quoted to be facile, dismissive and
>contemptuous.  If they really reflect her outlook, I may in fact never read
>the whole book, because my blood pressure wouldn't take it.  Just these bits
>are more enraging than a week-long thread on watches.
>
>If this stuff showed up on a usenet newsgroup, I'd call the post a troll.
>
>Paul
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: ARTHURWG@aol.com [mailto:ARTHURWG@aol.com]
>>Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2000 3:26 PM
>>To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
>>Subject: Re: [Leica] Suzy Q, again
>>
>>
>>"There is an agression implicit in every use of the Camera."
>>
>>"Recently, photography has become almost as widely practiced
>>an amusement as
>>sex and dancing..."
>>
>>"A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a
>>way of refusing
>>it-- by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by
>>converting
>>experience into an image, a souvenir."
>>
>>"it would not be wrong to speak of people having a ' compulsion' to
>>photograph: to turn experience itself into a way of seeing."
>>
>>"Needing to have reality confirmed and experienced enhanced by
>>photographs is
>>an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now adicted."
>>
>>
>>--Susan Sontag
>>Arthur
>>