Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/10/26
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]> From: "Alan Hull" <hull@telia.com> > Subject: Re: [Leica] Eddie Adams Photo/ Jim Nachtwey in Israel > To paraphrase Landor. A still photograph of a single moment in time is > like a single note in music that means nothing without the notes that > come before and the notes that come after. > > A movie sequence can be compared to a symphany. A still photograph to > a toot on a car horn. Good grief Alan, what a dreadful metaphor! And one I totally disagree with. Certainly motion pictures have a *different* effect on me than do still photographs, but neither medium is exclusively *better* than the other, it all depends on the quality of the footage at our disposal. Famous images like Eisenstadt's V-Day shot, the Buddhist monk on fire, the Iwo Jima flag-raising, the napalmed little girl, and the aforementioned Vietnamese street execution are all IMHO more powerful as still images than motion pictures (and unless I'm mistaken I seem to recall that in each of these instances there is motion picture footage to compare against). Obviously motion pictures can provide more information than still images -- when I want to see last night's game-winning touchdown, admittedly I prefer motion pictures to still photos. But I don't have to rewind still images. Great photographs possess incredible power, we can linger upon them for hours if we want and they become archetypal images that burn into our brains and stay there the rest of our lives. Cheers, Dave - ------------------------------------------------------ http://home.golden.net/~tekapo