[Leica] Are we anal puddle jumpers or what?

[kanner at acm.org (Herbert Kanner)]

Just trying to make a friendly suggestion: After typing a long essay 
such as the one below, immeasurable improvements will occur if you 
then read what you have written and break it up into appropriate 
paragraphs.

Herb


>I've been reading this thread and have a couple thoughts:
>1. Equipment: Of course equipment is important, it was important to HCB,
>it's important to all of us today. It is not, however, the be all and end
>all many endless discussions of micro contrast, glass, and pixels would lead
>one to believe. Someone yesterday or today made the comment that today's
>photographers keep upgrading their equipment, and need to, if they are
>serious about their craft. Well, yes, but what isn't mentioned is that
>today's camera body is not simply the light-tight box bodies were 20 years
>ago, but it is the box AND the film. That is, today a photographer is
>required to upgrade equipment with some frequency because digital sensors
>are still evolving, just as film evolved over a period of many decades. So
>in order to be able to meet client and publishing standards, a photographer
>is required to upgrade. But the photographer who bought a pair of M3s in the
>1950s, did NOT have to upgrade his bodies - EVER - if he didn't beat them to
>death. The photographer did, however, upgrade her film.  But the Nikon or
>Canon glass from 20 years ago is plenty good to shoot with it today. So, for
>that matter, are Leica's first generation aspheric lenses plenty good today.
>If someone wants the latest $7k Summicron, good for them. But there is no
>NEED to make that upgrade.
>2. Analism: Anal is as anal does. HCB was not the film era equivalent of a
>pixel peeper. He did not wear a loupe around his neck for counting
>eyelashes. He was an artist who cared most about composition, and the ways
>in which visual elements came together and played off each other. Counting
>facial hairs is not photography, and really has little to do with
>photography. Does a particular lens effectively suppress veiling flare when
>shooting with strong backlighting? That is important to a photographer,
>because it effects her ability to successful capture a given image. But
>being able to examine a pimple on the face of the man in the moon in a night
>shot of lower Manhattan? Not so much.
>3. HCB and how many times he pushed the shutter release: Yes, HCB shot
>thousands of frames we have and will never seen. But don't kid yourselves
>that this somehow means that he, or similar 'giants' weren't as good as
>we've been lead to believe. The question is not, did he shoot thousands of
>frames he discarded? Rather, it is how good are his keepers, how to they
>compare to everyone else's keepers, and how many of them are there? We all,
>in our life times of shooting, may come up with one or two HCB-like images.
>What we will never come up with are the hundreds he produced.
>4. Was the Puddle Jumper posed, and does it matter: As I said before, and I
>gather various people's searches have indicated I am correct, that image was
>an unposed one-off. But some people have suggested over the last couple of
>days that it's the outcome that matters, 'art is art,' and we shouldn't care
>if it was posed. I vehemently disagree. Because if that, or other supposedly
>unposed images were posed, it tells us that HCB was a completely different
>kind of artist from what we thought he was. Philippe Halsman, a wonderful
>Magnum Photographer, made jumping his gimmick. He produced terrific images
>of everyone from Richard Nixon to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor jumping on
>command. But Philippe Halsman was not HCB. He was not a chronicler of the
>"decisive moment." He is not noted for creating incredibly composed images
>of moments in real life and real time; HCB is. If it turns out that HCB
>posed images - and I am NOT suggesting, nor do I believe, that he posed
>anything other than some portraits, then he simply was not the photographer
>we thought he was and his work needs to be reconsidered. (When Bruce
>Davidson's Outside Inside came out, I went to hear him speak at Boston
>University. During a rambling discourse he said that he ALWAYS asked
>permission before photographing his subjects. IF that is true, I think his
>work needs to be reconsidered. He still is a brilliant photographer, but IF
>that's true, he is more a brilliant fashion-type photographer, than the
>documentarian he has been thought to be. (I must note here that I have heard
>from a number of sources I trust, and concluded myself from listen to him,
>that age has really caught up with Davidson's mental faculties, and I would
>NOT take his saying he always  asked permission as reliable testimony.)
>5. The Decisive Moment: For all the talk about the Decisive Moment, and the
>idea many have that HCB saw these special moments flash before his eye and
>grabbed them,  I would contend that the true decisive moment is that instant
>in which he - or anyone - saw or sees the photographic possibilities in a
>scene, a situation, and THEN begins to work that scene, until all the
>compositional elements come together. With the anal puddle jumper, the
>decisive moment would have been that instant when HCB saw the hole in the
>fence, realized what was going on, and started shooting. All of which to say
>that the fulfillment of genius requires hard work.
>Back to anal puddle jumping. :-)
>
>
>
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-- 
Herbert Kanner
kanner at acm.org
650-326-8204

Question authority and the authorities will question you.