RE: [Leica] human landscape WAS week four

["Tim Atherton" <tim@KairosPhoto.com>]

I LOVE the Shipping Forecast - amazing book.

I remember his early stuff shooting for the Salvation Army - great
documentary, but this stuff is in a class of it's own

Tim

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> [mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of Johnny
> Deadman
> Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2001 4:00 PM
> To: LUG
> Subject: Re: [Leica] human landscape WAS week four
>
>
> on 1/25/01 5:00 PM, julianthomas.terra.es at julianthomas@terra.es wrote:
>
> > This has just been mentioned on the SP list. Considering my
> current project,
> > I'm thinking about whether I can exclude the actual human
> presence. If you
> > think about Atget, Evans, Friedlander, Brassai, Kertesz, Hass,
> they all, at
> > times, portrayed cities without the people being there. The
> sign 'is' the
> > human presence. It all depends what you are trying to
> accomplish. I've got
> > loads of negs of graffitti, streetsigns, door numbers, which
> together could
> > be used to tell a story about the places the signs are from.
>
> I've been trying to shoot my city (toronto) in this way with very little
> success. But at xmas I went back to Lincoln in England, and shot
> a few rolls
> that are among the best 'human landscape' that I've ever done. Will post
> them when I get a moment. So the answer is: you can shoot
> whatever you want,
> of course, but the human landscape without the human figure is a
> remarkable
> challenge. It sounds like it should be easy but it's stunningly hard. The
> only thing easy about it is that it's easy to make boring,
> sterile pictures.
>
> We've talked about this before, but the best human landscape
> stuff I've seen
> really is mark powers' THE SHIPPING FORECAST, which has a lot of human
> figures in it, I know.
> --
> John Brownlow
>
> http://www.pinkheadedbug.com
>