Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/08/12
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 12:01 AM 08/12/2001 -0700, Adam Bridge <abridge@mac.com> wrote: >Composers paint with sound on time. >:) Adam, you may have said that tongue in cheek, but you have it exactly right! B.D. says: > >> but the styles of the two couldn't be more different...Smith > >> painted with shadows - Salgado paints with light. > >on 8/11/01 10:56 AM, Tim Atherton at tim@KairosPhoto.com thoughtfully wrote: > > Oh BD - be very careful - that is veering dangerously close to art-critic > > speak.... I think one problem creative people have is that people who don't do what they do often get to define the terms by which it is discussed. This can lead to some pretty absurd discussions where people start arguing about arguing about the terms, many of which have to do with the agenda or "reality tunnel" of the discussers, not the artist. When artists (often for publicity purposes, IMHO) start buying into that stuff, it can get really thick. Especially when postmodernism or politics get into the mix. For this reason, I think we have to be careful about what HCB and Salgado "mean." Both have become celebrities, and both use or have used their celebrity to further their work. This can sometimes mean spouting trendoid stuff that may or may not have much to do with their work or their intentions. HCB gave us the "decisive moment," but he also denies that his work is motivated by anything but composition, and he gave us the preciousness of people who think their art is pure if they show black borders around a full-frame print. Salgado is a darling of the cult of the Third World, Oppression, and the Downtrodden. This sometimes blinds viewers to the fact that he often magnifies simple tragic scenes of life into Wagnerian proportions that have nothing to do with the lives of the people he is portraying. He's got a perfect right to do this, both for artistic reasons, and to evoke well-deserved empathy for his subjects. But something about it sets off my internal critic that says, "careful, you're being manipulated." All this is not to say that sometimes the "non-artist term definers" don't have a point. And certainly a work of art often has a political point of view. But often, things degenerate into absurdity. For examples, there's the well-known story about science and science fiction author Isaac Asimov. One day Asimov was on a college campus to give a talk, and was walking the halls beforehand. Through an open door, he heard a class discussing one of his stories. The professor was going on and on about hidden meanings and metaphors and archetypes, and how this symbolized that, blah blah blah. Finally, Asimov could stand it no longer. He walked into the class, and said in effect, "I'm Isaac Asimov, and I wrote this story, and it doesn't mean any of the things you say it does. The prof shot back, "Just because you wrote it doesn't mean you know what it means!" If you want to see this sort of stuff in action, have a look at the "Social Text" page on the Duke University site. Then do a Google search on the string "Sokol Affair" - --Peter P.S. Anyone wanna dance about architecture?