Re: [Leica] Re: Adams, Weston, and... Welch?

[Eric Welch <ewelch@ponyexpress.net>]

At 09:20 PM 3/21/99 +0100, you wrote:
>Well, first, I don't know what "equipped to appreciate" means.  I would say

It means they haven't been there. Most of them anyway. And certainly not 
HCB. You have to be there to understand what the work of photographers the 
likes of Adams and Weston (and Bullock, and Weston, and Weston, and on and 
on right up to Art Wolfe and Jim Brandenburg...) is about. They have to be 
in the stands of trees over 300 feet tall to comprehend what they really 
are like. To sleep under the stars in the Sierra Nevadas, or the Cascades, 
or the Rockies or Tetons to know what Western U.S. mountains are about. It 
has nothing to do with people's equipment. It has to do with their experience.

Calling the work of Ansel Adams clinical is just missing the point. Shoot, 
some people call him Wagnerian! How could that be?

That's all. It's not a genetic failing, it's a lack of experience. Nothing 
wrong with that, until someone who doesn't know calls it "clinical" or of 
less value than some other genre of photography. Not that you are, but many 
people do.
his assessment.

> When I think of HCB and the other French photographers of
>his generation -- Boubat, Ronis, Isiz, Doisneau, Depardon, Charbonnier,
>Lartique, Riboud, etc. -- I find their work simply irresistable.  It had a
>human quality -- not an American quality or a European quality -- that is
>unmatched, according to my taste, compared to the cold, barren, clinical
>vistas of Adams or the beautiful art-class rock and nude exercises of
>Weston -- when their work is considered as a whole.

I find other names left out who easily match this group. Kertesz ( of 
course, he grew up photographically in Paris) and Ernst Haas, and Felix 
Mann, and Erich Solomon, and many, many others. I love that style of 
photography as well. But I don't thing it more "human." The world is so 
much more varied, and our place in it has to do with wilderness as well as 
the streets of ancient cities. I find many people don't value wilderness 
because they've never really been there. They're the ones who call us tree 
huggers,  when they don't know the difference between reasonable people and 
fanatics. Lack of experience. That's all.

Eric Welch
St. Joseph, MO
http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch

Always be on the lookout for conspicuousness (or, It's hard to tell if 
someone is inconspicuous).