[Leica] Photo show dissent

[chris at chriscrawfordphoto.com (Chris Crawford)]

Larry, that?s a bigoted and historically unsupportable view. Photographers
have combined images to make totally conceptual scenes since the 19th
century, most famously by Jerry Uelsmann starting in the 1960s and
continuing to the present day. Ansel Adams famously stated that the
negative was like a musical score, a starting point that the artist uses
to produce the final performance (the print).

Art and photography are most certainly NOT two different media.
Photography is an art media, one of many, including painting, sculpture,
ceramics, drawing, and graphic printmaking (eg. Etching, lithography).
There is a lot of overlap, these are not absolutely separate art forms.
The painter, sculptor and printmaker incorporate drawing into their work.
The printmaker can transfer photos to the etching plate. Photographers can
paint and draw on the photo, or manipulate it on the computer, and
computer graphics can be purely drawing without using photos.

-- 
Chris Crawford
Fine Art Photography
Fort Wayne, Indiana
260-437-8990

http://www.chriscrawfordphoto.com  My portfolio

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Christopher-Crawford/48229272798
Become a fan on Facebook



On 3/22/15, 4:39 PM, "Larry Zeitlin via LUG" <lug at leica-users.org> wrote:

>       I just came back from the Westchester Photo Show where four of my 
> older
>photographs were hung. They stood out like sore thumbs. Not because they
>were inferior but because they were different. All of mine were street
>photos or pseudo street photos, slices of life taken in my usual
>adventitious manner. Several were in my LUG gallery and were taken on
>film. I'd be the first to admit that they are not great pictures but they
>were a sample of my photographic endeavors.
>http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Larry+Z/Cook.jpeg.html
>http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Larry+Z/Coppersmith.jpg.html
>http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Larry+Z/The+valve+room.jpg.html
>       Most of the other pictures exhibited were carefully posed, highly
>processed images which tried to emulate fine art. I've always believed,
>as have most Luggers, that art and photography are two different media,
>each with its advantages and disadvantages. An artist can take time to
>pose the subject appropriately, choose colors, and accentuate what he or
>she chooses. It is a contemplative and imaginative medium. Photography,
>on the other hand, is ideal for catching slices of life which may vanish
>in a fraction of a second.?It is a realistic and immediate medium.
>       What was most interesting is that several exhibiting photographers
>maintained that the original image was not the end in itself but merely
>the starting point for intensive manipulation in Photoshop. Indeed, some
>of the pictures were so significantly altered that they bore little
>resemblence to the actual scene. Colors were changed, portions of the
>image were accentuated or eliminated. The worst case, in my opinion, was
>a photograph which combined several individual photos in one displayed
>image. Just like the Russian Mayday podium pictures.
>       I'm coming to believe that exhibited photos should bear a warning 
> label,
>like foodstuffs, noting if any artificial ingredients were used in the
>presentation.
>       Larry Z
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Leica Users Group.
>See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information