[Leica] M magazine

[buzz.hausner at verizon.net (Buzz Hausner)]

I am not sure what if any point is made by this rant, especially from
one who hasn't seen the publication under discussion.  I am particularly
confused by his throwing Cary Grant, Harvard University, and Harvard's
various graduate actors and musicians into a discussion of photography.
Certainly this must be due to my own short sightedness and ignorance.
The author does prove by his own example that Harvard makes admissions
errors.

I for one prefer to judge artists by their art, not by their friends or
by apocryphal stories I have heard about their personalities.

Buzz Hausner


-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces+buzz.hausner=verizon.net@leica-users.org
[mailto:lug-bounces+buzz.hausner=verizon.net@leica-users.org] On Behalf
Of Scott McLoughlin
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 4:52 PM
To: Leica Users Group
Subject: Re: [Leica] M magazine

It's a good point made that Capa was hip. HCB hung around
with the most pretentious, self-consciously navel-gazing art
crowd you can imagine, Andre Breton and the surrealists,
and did his first commercial work, IIRC, for one of Breton's
surrealist/communist (go figure on that mix!) publications
in the 30's.

But anyway, whatever their work product or public persona, it
shouldn't surprise folks that artists are typically, well, artists! You
know, the self-consciously artsy, elite hipster types :-)  The
public product and private person don't have to match up.

Weird examples (not photogs): quintisentially "American idol"
Cary Grant was a bisexual Brit who liked halucinagenic drugs;
real "down home" country musician Bonnie Raitt grew up in
New York and went to Harvard (my alma matter).  Here's
another really weird one. "Dukes of Hazard" Boss Hog went
to Harvard too. Yup!  In real life, he was a "Dunster House Tea
at 5:00" type of guy.

You get the idea. Have fun, add your own examples. It's not
very hard!

So back to M and photogs, even if they do-or-have-done photo
journalism work that we all adore, it doesn't mean that they
themselves necessarily view that work as their best. Maybe, but
maybe not.  Maybe that just pays the bills. Maybe they like to
travel. Of course, maybe some do view their journalism work
as their highest calling. 

But we shouldn't necessarily assume so. Just as likely, I'd wager
that some, maybe many (no, not all!!!) really, really elite photogs
are a bunch of somewhat "artsy fartsy" types who might have
gone to nice schools, have a yearning desire to "do something
new with the medium" and so on and so forth. What do you
want? They're artists.

But I haven't seen "M", so I'm not claiming it doesn't totally
suck :-)

Scott