Re: [Leica] Ted Grant: Kodachrome Blues

[Ted Grant <tedgrant@islandnet.com>]

Ted Grant wrote:
<<<<Besides, in reality guys and gals, are any of the pictures we shoot
today going to be of any "real importance" 70-100 years down the line?
Maybe so if you're shooting the world political scene and or other world
interest subjects.>>

Pretty stupid isn't it!

Gentlemen I stand corrected and humbled before you. The above comment, from
someone who through my lectures, champions the value of our work for future
historians, couldn't have been more off base than anything I've written in
the past.  And, as you know, I've written a few stupid things! :)

I have read your rebuttals making me realise how dumb the comments are, I
must confess, I can't imagine what got into to me.

The point is, each and everyone of us are the recorders of our times,
whether that be our families or the world, we in fact have an unwritten
responsibility to make sure our images last for as long as it is feasible.

Here I am about to make myself look even stupider, if that's possible.

Ken Wilcox writes:

<<<<I don't make any pretensions that my photo are great works of art, but then
neither are many of the very old family photos I now have.>>>>>

Ken,
Last year for my Leica seminar one of the presentations was "The Family
Album" and it's value to the ongoing family. Yep you guessed it! We used
colour slide copies of age old sepia prints during the opening and closing
with E6 & Kodachromes of our families of yesterday and grandchildren of
today.

Some of the old prints we copied must have been well on the way to 100
years old, even some of the old fart here as a baby and I'm now ready for
71!

Marc James Small writes:

<<<And family members will care, deeply, about even the most simple of happy
snaps, while ethnologists love nothing better than finding a trove of
local-color pictures from a century back.>>>>

Marc,
As usual, you're right! I can attest how much fun we had going through the
old family albums looking for the photos in the lecture.

The archivists I know from the National Archives of Canada, where an
extensive file of my negatives, slides and prints are stored, gave me a
tour of their recently opened storage vaults containing the National Photo
Collection of Canada.

To see this awesome historical collection which includes the complete works
of Yousuf Karsh and many other famous and not so famous Canadian
photographers, instilled in me a  greater meaning for the value of what we
take pictures of, no matter what the subject, as each and everyone of them
is a record of the times.

And George Pyle who wrote:

<<<<and I, too, seriously doubt that anything I shoot today will be of any
interest to anyone outside of my immediate family even if I did shoot it
with a Leica.>>>>>

George,
The interesting thing from an archivist point of view is, the simplest of
photography can be far more revealing of a society than that of the "big
name" photographer who specialises is one subject.

<<<< I've used Kodachrome for nearly 40 years as my father, who also used a
>Leica, did before me.  He is nearly 90 years old and has left me with
>moments in time from his and my mother's life and from my own childhood that
>still shine forth beautifully from old Kodachrome slides.>>>>>

Apropos the above:

When a couple of my grandsons, cousins, were young boys maybe 4 or 5, they
had a squabble over some toys. As usual grandpa was doing the happy snap
routine. (on Kodachrome.) :) and captured the face making, a bit of shoving
and crying.

Last year, now ten years after the "rumble," I showed the two of them the
"Family Album" slide presentation to which the younger of the two who "lost
the toy battle" came out with.."Now I've got evidence on film I'm going to
get even, not mad.":)

Anyway gentlemen you must really wonder what the hell I was thinking on the
original post.

Humbled and humiliated. I trust I've exonorated myself. Will I quickly
return to  Kodachrome again?  Can't honestly commit to it despite all I've
said. :)

ted

Ted Grant
This is Our Work. The Legacy of Sir William Osler.
http://www.islandnet.com/~tedgrant