Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/12/04

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Subject: [Leica] Re: highquailty porn
From: Jim Brick <jim@brick.org>
Date: Mon, 04 Dec 2000 17:15:53 -0800
References: <3A2C0ED0.FD5C588C@rabiner.cncoffice.com>

OK, I give up. You win.

Photographs cannot be made of things, only about things.

When I used to photograph Oral B toothbrushes for AD's in Sunset magazine,
8x10 Ektachrome, they were indeed about tooth decay and gingivitis. Not
merely photographs of toothbrushes.

And the photographs of chain link products for a catalog of same. 150
different bent interlocked wire products from conveyor belt (chain) to
chain link fence. It was meant to induce the use of the product rather than
just showing the product, even though it is just straight-on shots of a few
square inches of the product. This was the job that moved me out of
commercial photography, along with catalog photographs of transformers,
transistors, antennas, and ice machines.

Sorry about getting it wrong,

Jim


At 05:54 PM 12/4/00 -0500, Johnny Deadman wrote:
>
>
>Jim said very convincingly that you a photograph can be 'of' something and
>doesn't have to be 'about' something and I almost agreed for a moment
>because he said it so straightforwardly but in the end all photos are
>'about' something, even if it is simply Paul Strand's notion of 'the
>equivalent of what I saw and felt', which is certainly a dictum that Ansel
>Adams consciously endorsed (see THE NEGATIVE where he talks about this).
>
>-- 
>Johnny Deadman

In reply to: Message from Mark Rabiner <mark@rabiner.cncoffice.com> ([Leica] highquailty porn)