[Leica] Re: Disagreeing is how we learn

[Donna-Lee Phillips <dlp@pacific.net>]

Mark--

> Donna everyone including myself are takin by your breezy writing style
but I'm
> going to make an  "emperor with new clothes" point because in your
long post
> there is not one single point you made which i happen agree with.

My opinions are clearly marked, always, as "opinions" not facts, so that
you don't agree with a single point I made means only that we are very
different people.

I didn't suggest that everyone carrying a camera is using as a barrier,
although certainly nearly all of the students I had in more than a
decade of university-level classes started out that way. One
individual's concept of 'personal space' varies greatly from another's,
as do notions of privacy from one culture to another. I have always been
both an extremely private person, and one who exposes a great deal of
herself, but only on my terms. I have never been comfortable in front of
other people's cameras, and living in a world full of fellow
photographers, that is not an easy problem to resolve. I did. For me
asking was always more comfortable than taking without asking, except in
clearly journalist situations... and some people do practice more than
one kind of image-making.

Nor did I complain about my friend who is so eager to 'capture the
moment' that he often misses it, but rather used him as an illustration
of what is a fairly common malaise among camera-bearing tourists through
life. To suggest that my views are full of hot air, or not to be taken
seriously, because you disagree borders on rude... although perhaps not
in this group. I suppose a "breezy style", something I've never been
accused of before, could blow hot air...

And, while you can call my views weird twice in one post if you'd like,
I think to refer to another person's serious philosophical exercises as
"cute" is condescending. In my world, disagreeing is how we learn, so I
thank you for your thoughts. I have to confess that even though I have
appeared in more photographs than I can count--most of my friends being
street photographers in the early years--I never once wished I was
thinner or richer. Taller maybe.

I am interested in your point of view. But PLEASE DON'T CALL ME DONNA!
My name is Donna-Lee, or DL. A very well-known critic once told me that
the only sure routes to fame were having only initials (his choice) or a
hyphenated name. I'm reasonably sure my 15-minute window closed long
ago, but I'll keep my whole hyphenated name just in case.

Donna-Lee

PS: This confused me...

> And a causal look at the body of great photography will find half of
it of
> people unaware they are being photographed. Unposed.
> To find this an invasion of their private space is just plain weird is
my strong > opinion.

... until I realized that you meant "casual", not "causal". In order to
see if half of the corpus is of unposed people, we'd first have to
define what "great photography" is. That's a really long talk.