[Leica] Beware HCB Wannabes

[passaro.vince at gmail.com (Vince Passaro)]

Thank you Steve. I'm at my best when avoiding my work.
V

On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 11:55 PM, Steve Barbour <steve.barbour at 
gmail.com>wrote:

>
> On Mar 18, 2010, at 8:10 PM, Vince Passaro wrote:
>
> > I don't who "you" is here Jeffery but my point was that the least safe
> and
> > comforting the artist, the better the artist. The great artists who've
> been
> > in practice and at home obnoxious and worse are legion, and I do believe
> > there is a correlation between their vision and the barbed wire they seem
> to
> > be wearing as jock straps. Being nice doesn't get the job done, most of
> the
> > time. There are of course exceptions. Many. Still, if you want to use
> > "obnoxious" as the measuring term, you've lost most of us; it's a school
> > marm's word, an accountant's word, a ticket collector's word, and efforts
> > not to be obnoxious while likely good for the smooth operation of polite
> > society (and all its hidden crimes) are not interesting or important to
> us.
> > Sometimes the best technique is  'silence, exile and cunning' which I
> think
> > is what you really mean, outside the ninth grade geography teacher vocab
> of
> > 'obnoxious'; and sometimes it's not and the artist has to become
> something
> > of a terrorist.  Sometimes we have to INTERRUPT.  There is no way really
> to
> > be discreet taking people's photos on the street and indeed one of the
> > complaints was not that he was up in people's faces but that he was
> trying
> > to be discreet: far away with telephoto lenses -- ie, "creepy."
> >
> > As far as his work goes (I'm about to go look at it), we should all keep
> in
> > mind that art of the second order makes art of the first order possible.
> And
> > on down the line. So Rabs is quite right: he is us, period.
>
>
> hi Vince,
>
> you may be at least provocative at times, and I don't always agree wth you,
>
> God forbid,
>
> but you are brilliant as a writer, a thinker, and a provocateur,
>
>
> Steve
>
>
>
>
> Steve
>
>
> >
> > Vince
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 9:34 PM, Jeffery Smith <jsmith342 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> You agree that the more obnoxious the photographer, the better the
> >> photographer, as long as he's doing whatever he wants? Cool.
> >>
> >> On Mar 18, 2010, at 8:04 PM, Vince Passaro wrote:
> >>
> >>> I agree with Rabs. Of course. And a further thought: I remember one day
> >> not
> >>> long ago -- within the last decade that means, to us oldies -- seeing a
> >>> photographer with a Leica 35mm camera on Fifth Ave near the corner of
> >> 57th
> >>> or 58th St I think (possibley a few blocks osouth of there) standing in
> >> the
> >>> flow of the crowd just whirling right and left and all the way around
> >> taking
> >>> pictures of people only .7 meters from their faces in many cases, or
> >>> sometimes a bit further. He was like a dervish: to watch him was to see
> a
> >>> man who was completely lost in what he was doing, the faces in the
> crowd,
> >>> images momentarily clarified within a blur, him catching them probably
> >> not
> >>> in full focus most of hte time, taking pictures (and manually advancing
> >> the
> >>> film) as fast as I've ever seen anyone with that kind of equipment
> work.
> >> I
> >>> deeply admired him. He looked insane. He was frightening people. Some
> >>> people, that is. It was New York after all and many just made their way
> >>> around him and kept on without a backward glance.
> >>>
> >>> Here's a very short, famous, Eastern-ish poem for street photographer's
> >>> everywhere. The title is "In a Station of the Metro" - it's only two
> >> lines
> >>> long:
> >>>
> >>> The apparition of these faces in a crowd;
> >>> Petals on a wet black bough.
> >>>
> >>> it's like a Capa picture double exposed onto an Ansel Adams....
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 8:37 PM, Mark Rabiner <mark at 
> >>> rabinergroup.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>> I think the size of his cannon...er....Canon..is what is making him
> so
> >>>>> conspicuous and is what is unnerving his subjects. My reference to
> the
> >>>> Leica
> >>>>> RF is not so he can be like HCB, but so he might be less conspicuous.
> >>>> Robert
> >>>>> Capa's Contax would be fine too. Using a big SLR with a telephoto to
> >> get
> >>>>> pictures of young ladies is paparazzi-ish, not streetphotography-ish.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Jeffery
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> I think he can set up an 8x10 view camera if he feels like it if he's
> >> not
> >>>> blocking the sidewalk too much.
> >>>>
> >>>> [Rabs]
> >>>> Mark William Rabiner
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> Leica Users Group.
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> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Leica Users Group.
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> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >>
> >
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>
>
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