[Leica] the one-second test

[Lee Bacchus <lbacchus@home.com>]

First of all, Martin, I basically agree with you about my "Restroom" shot.
Atget's peopleless shots worked because they were foreshadowing the end of
an era as industrialization in Paris hit full stride. Walter Benjamin
described Atget's dawn street compositions as if "they were evidence at the
scene of a crime." 
My evidence is of nothing, really.
However I disagree with you about the criteria for a good photograph. HCB's
one-second test and Manos's "surprise" criterion, IMHO, are mistaken. To me,
this aesthetic is what partly has led to the commodification of the
photograph; that it exists to be consumed like so much eye candy. That is
has to sell itself. The one-second test, for me, leads to the one-second
memory, which ultimately leads to the advertisement and Anne Geddes. I
think photographs need to return to an era of contemplation (but not
pictorialism) and subtle, thoughtful complexity, when it was the spectator
who brought his experience and memory to help inform the photograph or the
work of art  (which existed in its own right and not simply to satisfy an
audience) and not vice-versa.
If one held to the one-second or surprise test, a lot of people would have
to ignore much of Strand, Kertesz, and (Oh, my God I'm going to say it!)
Eggleston.
Lee Bacchus
Vancouver.