Re: [Leica] the difference between photography and art (and weegee!)

["Mike Durling" <durling@widomaker.com>]

I guess the Art world has adopted Weegee.  At one point in his career he WAS
able to laugh at the crowd that has embraced him.  Look at "The Critic"
http://www.icp.org/weegee/weegee09.html

I saw the exhibit when it was in Norfolk.  Since I have been a fan of
Weegee's for a long time I didn't see much new.  It was a nice exhibit tho.
Maybe the photo crowd didn't feel the need to show up, at least for the
grand opening, since he has always been part of them.  The gala openings
belong to the art crowd.  The true devotees will come later.

Mike D

- ----- Original Message -----
From: "kyle cassidy" <kcassidy@asc.upenn.edu>
To: <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2001 1:23 PM
Subject: [Leica] the difference between photography and art (and weegee!)


> 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
>
>
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