Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/09/26
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]on 26/9/00 4:32 pm, B. D. Colen at bdcolen@earthlink.net wrote: [quoting sontag] > "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." > > Now THAT is really an interesting observation. For the camera most > definitely provides distance and protection in uncomfortable situations. It > distances the photographer from the action, even if he or she is in the > midst of it. I know that when I came back from Somalia in '93, and wrote a > "reporters notebook" column for Newsday about my experiences, one of the > things I wrote about was the phenomenon of observing the starvation and > abject poverty through my viewfinder, and therefore NOT having to truly > experience it, or respond to it on a direct, personal level. But for others looking through the vf is a way of intensifying the seeing experience, or seeing things that one could not see in any other way. That's why people get mad at her, because she doesn't acknowledge there are alternative practices. For her photography is a reductive and isolationist activity. And we all know it doesn't have to be. > "Needing to have reality confirmed and experienced enhanced by photographs > is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted." > > Come on...This one is so obvious as to be a "Duh!" Why do 10s of millions > of tourists have their photo taken by 10s of millions of other tourists in > front of the Eiffel Tower and the Grand Canyon? To show that they were > there. Certainly their friends have seen - BETTER - photos of those places. > But the photo of Art and Alice in front of the tourist attraction allows > them to "consume" it and show it off. But not all photographs 'confirm' reality or 'enhance' experience. She is describing a very limited form of photography. It's like saying all bread is white bread, so stay off it. > Don't get me wrong - I don't agree with everything she writes, and think > some of it is downright horse shit. But I think that she is an extremely > bright, insightful intellectual prig who makes some brilliant observations > that she probably wouldn't have made were she a photographer Probably true. But she's a bit like a stopped clock which is right once every 24 hours. - -- John Brownlow http://www.pinkheadedbug.com