Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/10/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 20:10 05/10/97 -0400, you wrote: >To connect this to photography - I attended an major exhibition of >photographs that fit Calvin's description of Art - totally incomprehensible. >Huge enlargements, showing film edges, etc., out of focus, muddy (probably >made with plastic cameras) - but with complex Artist's Statements >accompanying each one. At the same exhibit was a small showing of beautiful >photographs by Mexican women photographers - correctly exposed, in focus and >beautifully presented - possible even made with Leicas! When I mentioned to >someone working at the gallery that I much preferred the Mexican >photographers, she said, "Well, they are more "accessible" to most people." >I assume that is ArtSpeak for "you are too stupid to understand the more >complex photographs." As far as I'm concerned, photography is meaningless >unless it communicates something to me. I know everyone on the list has >seen photographs like the ones I am describing. Please either confirm my >feelings or explain to me how blind I am being! How can intelligent gallery >owners fall for such pretension? TIA for your opinions. Tina One answer to the above exhibition would be to print large Ilfochromes from the half-exposed film ends that get sent back with mounted slides and ask them to exhibit them. Sprocket holes should be included to prove that the pictures are art. Paragraphs chosen at random from the writings of any German philosopher should be printed as captions. Names for these images can be selected from a Thesaurus after clicking on words such as empty, nothing, void, nowhere, meaningless, etc. You may become rich, of course, if enough people are fooled, but then, it would definitely be art. ;-) Joe Berenbaum