Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/09/03

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Subject: Re: [Leica] New photos/Arbus/Sontag
From: Teresa299@aol.com
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2003 00:23:35 EDT

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
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