Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/03/29

[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]

Subject: RE: [Leica] Re: Luc Delahaye's Camera
From: Jem Kime <jem.kime@cwcom.net>
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2001 18:42:17 +0100

Peter,
Eloquent post...
Especially loved the "gaping cloaca" bit, hadn't heard of that since 5th 
form biology days!
I can't imagine that you'd find anything much worth reading A.P. for. I use 
to say I bought it for the adverts but now I don't need to buy anything 
more I haven't stopped the subscription. And I can't work out whether 
having written an article for them recently makes it more or less 
acceptable!

regards,
Jem

- -----Original Message-----
From:	Peter Metelerkamp [SMTP:peter.metelerkamp@bristol.ac.uk]
Sent:	29 March 2001 14:33
To:	leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject:	[Leica] Re: Luc Delahaye's Camera

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