Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/02/11
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Well, since it's beat-up-on-Allan-Wafkowski-nite, I won't. I don't want to be crotchety at my young age, but... I don't care about Salgado's politics. He shoots editorial pictures for Rolling Stone for goodness sake. And NG. The first one's viewpoint is fairly clear. If the second one has a viewpoint, no one has read the articles to find out what it is. As a preliminary issue, I find it hilarious that people went nuts about Leni Reifenshtal because her message was inseparable from her photography, but when there is some question about what Salgado is encoding in his pictures, his work is politically neutral and completely meritorious. People complained that Leni ripped off other photographers. Ok. Well, so did Salgado. Either it is with both Salgado and her, or with neither. But people have built up to the same kind of idolatry for Salgado that makes them worship 50 year old cameras. But wait -- Leica uses his work to sell 50-year old cameras. That ties it all together. I really don't care for Leni or Sebastiao. But that's neither here nor there. The reason why I don't care for Salgado is his recent work, especially as I saw it in Madrid. First, the compositional element of Exodus suggested the point of view of a video camera and not a person. None of the direct contact or human interest of Gene Smith, rather a Zaccheus-from-the-tree viewpoint. There were a couple of strong pictures: a window light portrait in Bosnia, some men pulling a boat in Vietnam (or was it the Philippines), but even those did not engage the subject. But in the majority, there are no events - it seems that every shot is a frame from a movie. That does not convey the human condition, except that a line of humans are as ants on a hill or part of a landscape. In fact, I thought that for this reason, a fair number of the shots were de-humanizing. Second, not everyone likes TMZ shot at f/1.0. It is hard on the eyes, the tonality is lacking (well, you get at least 6 shades of gray) and when exhibited on a grand scale, it looks like a dot-matrix printer did it. Finally, Children of the Exodus was very contrived. Child after child in front of the same background, same dodge-by-fist printing technique. What is this, the Olan Mills of West Africa? This last one is probably his lab assistant's fault, but he certainly had something to say about it: The use of huge exhibition prints underwhelms me. In the Circle of Fine Arts you could not back up enough to view one of the prints without tripping over someone or hitting the other wall. Perhaps worse, the use of large and overwhelming prints reminds me of something I heard when I was eight: any picture looks good blown up, but very few look good on a contact sheet. I don't have a problem with giving Salgado his due as a great journalist photographer, but I do not think he is on a par with Smith, DDD, Cartier-Bresson and on. Dante > Please, let's not get into speculation about Salgado's politics based on our > interpretations of the contents of his images. I really don't think that's the > point > at all. > > For me, he's simply one of the great documentary photographers, and I find it > exciting to be alive at the same time that he's still working. > > Emanuel Lowi > Montreal > -- > To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html - ------------ Dante Stella http://www.dantestella.com - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html