Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/09/03
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]In a message dated 9/3/03 7:50:53 PM, eric@jphotog.com writes: << A touch harsh? Maybe, but what do you say about someone who arrogantly tells people about their profession when she has not walked in our shoes. She's a dilettante. She pretends to have something to offer when she doesn't. Maybe not a hack, but a phony. >> Well, for that matter most non-fiction writers are hacks ot phonies. And how many people dare to speak for others anyway? How many photojournalists are starving, but take photos that supposedly tell the story of a starving people? How many employed people lecture unemployed about how easy it is to pull oneself up by the bootstraps. How many civilians run the defense department and tell the military how it should "really" be done? Susan Sontag is a critic, or perhaps a polemist, but since when is critical thought (except when criticizing the Bush administration) considered so difficult or dangerous for folks to engage in? So far I haven't heard specifics about what folks disagree with Sontag on, just that she's a hack, and she's sticking her nose in the "pro's" biz, and yada yada yada. Personally I'd have far more respect for criticism of her if the critiques were a bit more than sweeping, nebulous generalisations that seem to border on anti-intellectualism. Susan used to be based in NYC, maybe she still is. From what I understand a number of photographers were her friends, one even, reportedly, intimately. So I suspect she knows something about what a photographer's life is about. Is there any photographic critic that you guys like or is an intellectual discussion of the art verboten? kim - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html