[Leica] Dutch tilt - new photos

[bdcolen at comcast.net (B. D. Colen)]

To answer your questions about the T shots, Arche, yes - but my axing and
yours are two different things; I've had a former Magnum editor go through
the, and the curator of a major photo collection - but more about that
later. And that's gotten them to where they are. ;-)

I would never, by the way, suggest that someone post to elicit criticism and
then decide what should be kept and what should be discarded. All that's
doing is seeing what those who pass by happen to like, and we know that
those who pass by consider Kincade a great painter, and that woman who turns
babies into vegetables perhaps the world's greatest photographer.

Note that Winnogrand didn't put those negatives on public display and ask
which ones people thought should be printed - he simply gave himself some
distance. I'd suggest that the only people whose judgment matters in terms
of selection are the artist, and that handful of people whose judgment the
artist trusts.

B. D.


On 6/20/06 3:00 PM, "Arche, Harvey" <Harvey.Arche@jp2hs.org> wrote:

> B.D. wrote:
> Edit, edit, edit. I'm struck by how good some of your street stuff is John 
> -
> really strong images that either amuse, bemuse, or confuse. But then they
> are surrounded by far too many images that are simply photos of people on
> the street. Any one doing serious street photography is going to have 
> dozens
> and dozens of those throw aways for each gem; the trick is to throw them
> away. :-)
> 
> B. D.
> 
> 
> On 6/20/06 11:17 AM, "John Beeching" <johnbeeching@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Dear All,
>> 
>> Some photos from my recent visit to Amsterdam.
>> http://staff.bath.ac.uk/bssjrb/Photographic/dutch/dutch.htm
>> 
>> Mostly 28mm Elmarit, one 35mm Summicron, one 90mm Elmarit.  All Tri-X
>> in Xtol 1+3.
>> 
>> Comments and criticisms welcome, as always.
>> 
>> Thanks for looking,
>> 
>> John
> 
> A couple of things. Great pictures, John, but overall not as powerful as 
> your
> recent 'May' posting, so in a way I'm in agreement with B.D.. Some really
> terrific stuff scattered in there.
> On the other hand, I tend to view what goes on here as a consensual working
> space. Yesterday, and earlier this morning, I was thinking a lot about how
> much crap I had building up in my galleries. I tend to post a lot more junk
> than I might, in the clear light of reason, actually want to be publically
> associated with. I think many of us do. And I will continue do so (B.D., 
> have
> you taken an axe to the 'T-shots' yet? ;^)) because just airing the damn
> things gives me a degree of perspective, or at least psychological 
> distance,
> that I wouldn't get letting them sit cluttering up my desktop. I don't even
> need to get any feedback, its simply knowing the stuff is getting tracked 
> up
> by other people's eyes.
> Winogrand, and apparently Henry Wessel, let their negs sit for a year 
> before
> looking at them in order to get that distance. Jeez, I wish I had the time 
> and
> their organizational ability (not to mention eyes, insight, and artistry).
> Meanwhile I've got a diaperload generating heat in Brian's servers. And 
> that's
> just wrong (even as imagery). What to do about it? I decided this morning:
> Binge-Purge. Go about the business of posting and eliciting criticism 
> (next: a
> day at the dragstrip). But come December, and the winding-down of '06, I'm
> going to streamline the year's postings down to the, say, 10% of stuff I 
> still
> think of as 'keepers'.
> Does this mean I'm advocating an indiscrimate, scatter-gun approach to
> selecting what gets posted? Of course not. In that, the forum is like the
> marketplace: after a while nobody even looks at a product that sucks.
> Generally speaking, even if I put up a bunch of images in a given post, 
> there
> are probably fewer than 8% of the total from the shoot that make that first
> cut. I'm willing to bet that John shot 10x as many images in Amsterdam as
> we're seeing.
> So, 'edit, edit, edit'? Yes, of course, but after - not before - taking
> advantage of the tool that best helps me do it.
> GOYA & Shoot,
> Arche
> 
> 
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