Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/03/29
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I read in the recent predictably vacuous review in (British) Amateur Photographer that he used an M6. Are those who have posted sure it was a G2 (not that it matters, really!)? For those who have not seen it, Winterreise is a sad comment on the state of photographic publishing - by as august an imprint as Phaidon, no less. The series of pictures accumulates by steady growth towards a great work for our dislocated times, as strong and operatic and deeply courageous and elegaic as anything being made in any art form. And this is not merely a matter of "topic" or subject-matter. Delahaye is, for example, (IMHO - of course!) a far more eloquent colourist (and composer/arranger) than Boris Michailov whose (also profound and admirable) work exploring the more Gorky-esque dimesions of that zone "Beyond the Fall" (Anthony Suau) recently won the Citibank prize, while his work is braver and more difficult than the lyrical formalism of Sarfati's sad depleted factories. But this huge effort is utterly traduced by being rendered consistently split across the spine of a miserable little book in trendy full-bleed; the designer/accountant responsible should be chained together and sent to Siberia, where they can offer the plea of "economic necessity" to the court of the indifferent winds, while vast and vulgar coffee-table tomes rain down upon them like anti-radar chaff from the gaping cloaca of our culture. - ---------------------- Peter Metelerkamp Programme Director MA in Film and Television Production University of Bristol peter.metelerkamp@bris.ac.uk