Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/11/23

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Squares and sabotage
From: Eric Welch <ewelch@neteze.com>
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 07:37:49 -0800

At 12:32 AM 11/23/1999 -0800, Bill Larsen wrote:
>I think you need to think a little bit about what a portrait is.  Perhaps you
>have picked up too many shiboleths at Missouri.
Shibboleth to you, fact to many people.

Maybe you, and not I, needs to understand what the difference between a 
documentary photographer and a portrait photographer is. There's a reason 
we use both terms to distinguish two types of photographers.

As for Dorthea Lang, she is a great documentary photographer, but she also 
posed a lot of her photos, such as Migrant Mother. But that was long before 
the ethical standards of photojournalism had been thought of. Documentary 
is made up of candid photos, portraits, landscapes, interiors, what have 
you. But you don't call a landscape candid any more than you do a portrait.

Candid portrait is like saying a Leica lens is "clear." People know what 
you mean, but it's not a good way to put it. To me, being a professional 
for quite a while now, when I do a portrait, it means I've stopped doing 
candid photography. That's how my colleagues use the term. You can stretch 
the term portrait to mean so many things that is has no meaning at all. 
Such is the oxymoronic term "candid portrait."

Eric Welch
Carlsbad, CA

http://www.neteze.com/ewelch

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