Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/06/13

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Re: Photos on the Web (longish)
From: Chandos Michael Brown <cmbrow@mail.wm.edu>
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 00:49:30 -0400

I don't mean to be provocative, but *how* long is "awhile?"  I've purged
megabytes of LUG stuff from my system, and I don't, as others seem to,
decline to read messages from folks whose opinions I don't care to hear.

I can't at all see how you can construct my comments as an attempt to
'"dictate" the contents of this group, a role, as dannyg has pointed out,
that is in any event already assigned to others. I don't much care whether
I get an answer to a question, but I suppose that I'm old-fashioned enough
to relish a certain civility of discourse, no matter how muscular, and to
want to eschew the ad hominum as an argumentative strategy (from which I
would exclude you, Eric).  There's a wonderful old novel that invents the
rhetorical device of "argumentum ad tripodium," which is to say that men,
as it were, have a third leg to stand upon.  Here we might create a new
trope: "argumentum ad longus Leicium" (pardon the dog latin), where tenure
on the list determines the hierarchies of expressible opinion.

You take my interest in a question that I've posed to a unique community,
in all seriousness, and with good will and genuine interest as a premature
interloping.  What's so threatening about the conversation?  *I* could do a
"Leica bug" schtick (all of which I've quite enjoyed), but the truth is
that the camera, so long as it does what *I* want it to do, is of secondary
importance to other considerations.  Leicas, in a curious way, taught me
how to *see,* if I know how to see.  I'm not sure why that's the case. My
first camera (at 16) was a Nikon F, but within a year I had a IIIc, and
since then (I'm 43), I've never been without IIIfs or one or more of the
Ms.  I use Contax Gs a lot now, but I carry a IIIf in my bag daily.  Things
don't quite look *real* to me through an SLR.  I can't explain why this is
the case, which in part gives rise to the query I posed to the LUG.

Chandos 



At 10:07 PM 6/13/98 -0500, you wrote:
>At 04:26 PM 6/13/98 -0400, you wrote:
>
>>For raising this consideration, I am condemned as a "snob," "elitist," the
>>arrogator of "rights" of interpretation that I am unlicensed to claim.
>
>Maybe you just need to hang out for a while and get a feel for how things
>are done around here before jumping in with both feet and telling what we
>DON'T talk about. We talk about a lot of things. Technology, great lenses,
>favorite films, trips we took, people we've met. photographers we admire,
>and we get around, some times, to talking about what you want. Be patient,
>it will come.
>
>No one has a right to dictate what the content of discussion is (besides
>the owner of the list) and so maybe a better approach isn't to criticize
>because it isn't going the way you want. Just start a discussion on the
>topic you're interested in as an alternative.
>--
>
>Eric Welch
>St. Joseph, MO
>http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch
>
>Drug kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes...died from nine hours of
>liposuction and plastic surgery -- or, as it's commonly known here in
>Beverly Hills, natural causes.
>
>Bill Maher
> 


Chandos Michael Brown
Assoc. Prof., History and American Studies
College of William and Mary 


http://www.resnet.wm.edu/~cmbrow/