[Leica] Cartier-Bresson

[Mike Johnston <michaeljohnston@ameritech.net>]

Alistair: >>>you paraphrase original text to which I contributed, and to
which others took issue, very inaccurately.

You will see that acknowledgement is made of HCB's high competence, if
you
choose to read more carefully. What I object to is that we remain
fixated on
him. Apparently because he was first, we (the world, not the LUG) seem
to
accord his work much higher prices than that of other more (INVHO)
talented
photographers who came (some marginally) after<<<

High competence? That's damning with faint praise.*I'm* highly
competent. <g>

I'm not a full-time photography critic, but I've had criticism published
on three continents over two decades, and Cartier-Bresson is, in my
considered opinion, one of the most important and influential art
photographers of the 20th century. If you mean by "fixated" that we
still appreciate his work and submit it to delectation, then I guess
you're right; perhaps especially now that he is getting very aged and
many of his books are being reprinted. And as far as prices are
concerned, I confess I have no idea what it costs to buy a
Cartier-Bresson print, or how that amount might compare to, say, the
cost of a Carleton Watkins print (I saw one for $12,000 recently), or a
dye transfer of a bad snapshot by David Salle ($25,000), or a Tina
Barney, or a Galen Rowell, or a David Vestal print of Ansel Adams
driving his pickup truck into the mountains (that you could have
purchased for $60 from the Special Offer in my magazine a few issues
back) (shot with a Leica M2, to boot), or a Francesca Woodman ($75,000
for a suite of 7 small B&W prints of indifferent quality, made,
naturally, before she commtted suicide at the age of 22), or a fine
modern print of a Jacques Lartigue photograph (very reasonable at well
under $1,000, last I looked), or any of a long laundry-list of wildly
over- and under-valued photographers on the art market today.

Then again, I have every reason to expect that when Jackie Kennedy's
belongings were auctioned after her death and fetched record prices, it
didn't transpire that people had paid exorbitant sums of money for old
end-tables, hairbrushes, cigar humidors, threadbare evening dresses, and
the like, simply because they were really GOOD end-tables and
hairbrushes and so forth. At least part of the reason why anyone would
buy a Cartier-Bresson print is because it is...well, a Cartier-Bresson
print; and if you want to have a photograph on your wall that was taken
by one of the century's--and the medium's--most accomplished masters,
then it will not quite do to substitute a print by one of the LUGgers
whose talent you propose as being equal to his. Although it might be
equally nice to look at.

Sorry, I _am_ being a bit sardonic, and that is ungentlemanly. But
really, get _real_ here, Alistair.    :-(         :-/
:-|          :-)

- --Mike