Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/07/14

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Subject: [Leica] The Barnack Award, or bubble gum photography!
From: pdzwig at summaventures.com (Peter Dzwig)
Date: Wed Jul 14 12:31:18 2004
References: <BD1AA751.7144%s.dimitrov@charter.net> <494AE011-D5C9-11D8-8926-0003936CAC22@sbcglobal.net>

The lack of discrimination in style seems to characterise Leica at present; 
some 
of the stuff that appears in Leica World or LFI is equally lacking in 
originality, if not worse.

Peter Dzwig

Matthew Powell wrote:

> On Jul 14, 2004, at 11:03 AM, Slobodan Dimitrov wrote:
> 
>> http://www.leica-camera.com/kultur/events/wettbewerbe/obp/index_e.html
>>
>> I kept mulling of what it reminded me of, when it dawned on me where I've
>> seen the like of it before. In this case, more like where I've heard it
>> before, as the term bubble gum popped into my brain.
>> I guess that this is their way of going after the youth market, by 
>> selecting
>> what is essentially 70's retro imagery. In other  words bubble gum
>> photography.
>> S. Dimitrov
> 
> 
> I can't see enough from the images on their website to comment on the 
> actual photos. It's only a little bit better than looking at a contact 
> sheet. Very disappointing of Leica (Hasselblad has the same problem with 
> their galleries, from what I remember).
> 
> The mention of trends and 'classical photography' reminds me of a John 
> Szarkowski interview in the spring Modern Painters -
> 
> NK - Do you think photographs always become more interesting with time?
> 
> JS - Most become more interesting with time. Naive photographers always 
> become more interesting with time. By naive I mean photographs that were 
> not made with high artistic ambition. On the other hand, if you take the 
> photographs that Stieglitz exhibited at the Albright Gallery in Buffalo 
> in 1910, those pictures have become much less interesting - and they 
> weren't very interesting to begin with because all they had was artistic 
> ambition. Whereas naive photographers almost always have something of 
> the world in them. Misdirected artistic ambition can turn into an effort 
> to squeeze the world out so that there is nothing left but aesthetics, 
> because then everybody can plainly see that it is art. It has to be art, 
> because there's nothing else there. Even good, serious photographers 
> like me can find themselves doing photographs that can be about very 
> little but the highly attenuated, photographic or artistic problem - and 
> then it doesn't have much to do with the world any more.
> 
> (typos surely mine)
> 
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> 



Replies: Reply from tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant) ([Leica] The Barnack Award, or bubble gum photography!)
In reply to: Message from s.dimitrov at charter.net (Slobodan Dimitrov) ([Leica] The Barnack Award, or bubble gum photography!)
Message from mlpowell at sbcglobal.net (Matthew Powell) ([Leica] The Barnack Award, or bubble gum photography!)