[Leica] Re: Photos and culture

[kididdoc at cox.net (Steve Barbour)]

absoilutely fascinating Larry...thank you. Steve

> More pontification:
>
> Discussions of photographic appeal tend to obscure the fact that  
> ALL photographs are abstract representations of an external world.  
> When Margaret Mead showed Tahitian natives black and white  
> photographs of themselves and their village, they rotated the  
> photos this way and that, shook their heads, and handed them back.  
> "Nice designs", they said, "but what are they?" Mead then realized  
> that photographs were such abstractions that only long experience  
> enables their interpretation.
>
> Closer to home, your dog or cat does not jump into the TV screen to  
> frolic in the fields shown in the Alpo commercials. Neither does it  
> growl or flee from the TV intruders in your household. The image on  
> TV is not the real world to the animal but a flickering pattern on  
> an illuminated tube. We see the image as a depiction of reality  
> because our intelligence and experience enables us infer the scene  
> from its abstract representation. The animal does not.
>
> Interpretation and appreciation of photographs is a learned skill.  
> Western conventions of art and photography are not universally  
> shared. We accept the concept of perspective, absent in old  
> European and Asian art as being the only natural way to represent  
> reality, size of an object decreasing as the apparent distance  
> increases. In older Indian art, distance and size are unrelated.  
> The size of an object depends on its social importance. Kings are  
> always shown as larger than their retainers, regardless of their  
> apparent distance. To the local eye, Western photographs are abnormal.
>
> I confess that I have somewhat the same feelings when viewing  
> photos made with extreme wide angle lenses. To me they seem  
> bizarre. Rather than being attention grabbers, they evoke a sense  
> of dismay. I want to turn the page as quick as possible.
>
> But then I learned to take pictures more than half a century ago an  
> I have not been properly acculturated to the modern photographic era.
>
> Larry Z
>
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information