[Leica] Re: Ansel Adams/John Wimberley WAS Mapplethorpe, highquailty porn

[Jim Brick <jim_brick@agilent.com>]

Johnny,

What are your thoughts about  John Sexton?

Jim


At 10:52 AM 12/4/00 -0500, Johnny Deadman wrote:
>
>Well, I happen to think you're exactly right about Ansel Adams. I am full of
>respect for the old bugger because technically he has all the answers, and
>he had an enormous heart, I'm sure of that. But to me there is a complete
>emptiness at the heart of many (not all) of his pictures. All those
>photographs of half dome... again and again... and churches and receding
>mountain vistas... there definitely IS something of pornography in it... in
>the sense of repetitious exploitation of subject matter. Most people
>remember half a dozen of Ansel Adams' pictures... clearing winter storm, the
>famous desert pic, black sun, moonrise over hernandez, the 1927 el capitan
>picture...and some of those are indeed great and (somewhat) moving images.
>BUT the great majority of his work simply does not get anywhere near these
>standards. He is a photographic wordsworth in many ways... a man who
>attempted to penetrate the sublime and occasionally did but who more often
>fell victim to his own prosaic limits, without ever really celebrating them.
>
>-- 
>Johnny Deadman