[Leica] a short story

[Harvey.Arche at jp2hs.org (Arche, Harvey)]

A short story:

 

This happened around 1980, when I was an undergrad at U of Florida.
Jerry Uelsmann's presence on the faculty brought many notable
photographers to campus, where they always gave a public talk and slide
presentation. I remember seeing Ralph Gibson, Lee Friedlander, and
Robert Heineken (who chain-smoked Kools at the lectern); but by far the
best visiting artist was Duane Michaels. If any of you have ever been in
the same room with him, you'll know what I mean about his not only being
a gifted speaker on the subject of art and photography, but an extremely
warm, humorous, and humane individual as well.

 

Mr. Michaels had finished his presentation and was taking questions from
the audience when a guy got up and asked a question to the effect of
what kind of film had he used to get a certain shot, and how had he
developed it? This fellow was later described to me as being a
'photo-weenie' by someone who was a photo-weenie himself. The
description: a photo-weenie is the guy who thinks the art is all in the
technical work, who always believes that there is a camera or a lens or
a film or miracle of chemistry that he simply hasn't found out about yet
that will, like a magic wand, when applied to his own lame images
transform them into visions.

 

For the first time in the evening Mr. Michaels showed a brief bit of
impatience. He simply didn't want to talk about the mechanics, and said
it wasn't something that he worried a whole lot about. He was only
concerned about knowing what he needed to know to get the pictures he
saw in his head; he didn't worry about trying to make pictures he didn't
know how to make, or else he would figure how to get them out when he
needed to. In short, his imagination wasn't limited by the technical
skills he had or lacked, and his art wasn't about what he could do in
the darkroom. This is where he started to turn it into a joke. "Look,
I'm not one of those guys who spend a whole lot of time trying to make
things happen in the darkroom". Then he kind of hunched his shoulders,
got a gleam in his eye and held his hands out as if he were an
over-eager shop clerk trying to convince us these were the real goods:
"I'm not the kind of guy who says 'don't you like this print? (offering
the imaginary print) isn't it a wonderful print? I spent three hours
making this print!'".

 

Of course we all cracked up. Most of the crowd realized that Mr.
Michaels had turned his commentary into a chance to poke a bit of fun at
Uelsman, who was present and laughing himself.