Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/12/02
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]so i went to the weegee opening friday, expecting i'd see a few of my photo buddies, maybe some of the PLUG, some shooters from the papers, but i didn't.. in a show devoted to a news photographer, there were no photographers (who i recognized). who did turn out in droves was the highbrow philly art scene (the people in black suits with no neckties and nametags announcing they were "$5,000 doners" or "$10,000 doners") i saw a bunch of gallery owners and the sorts of people you see leaving their black lincoln's for valet at the academy of music and it really stuck me, especially in the wake of all this cindy sherman bashing ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H discussion -- that the art world and the photo world meet only tangentally, the intersection of those sets is very small. even when you have someone like Cindy Sherman who is, ostensibly a "photographer" because she uses a camera, photography is not really her world. she doesn't really care a wit about photography, it's the means to her end, which is artistic, rather than technical, or even "photographic". same with anna gaskill or any of the other current "in" crowd. they have cameras, they use film, but their mindset is so far removed from what we on the lug typically think of as "photographer". what was really sad about weegee is that he saw this other world, this art world, and saw that it was embracing him and so he tried consciously to please it and it's obvious that he knows nothing about art -- the work he did in his last years with prisms and whatnot was not art (well, it was bad art) and it wasn't weegee. he was clearly in a world out of his league -- he tasted it and he wanted more, but he was incapable of understanding it. he was a hard boiled crime photographer and it was for his excellent eye that he got recognized. had he the distain to simply ignore the art crowd, or tip his grubby hat and say "thanks folks, nice party, now i gotta get back to work", he would have continuted doing what he did best until the end of his days but i think he died a bewildered man producing false work. just my two pea, take it for what it's worth. kc - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html