Re: [Leica] If I Can't Understand It, It Is Garbage!

["Mike Gardner" <mikeg@neca.com>]

Buzz "Wings of Mercury" Hausner was saying: [;-)

> Sorry, Mike, but just who has, "...a sneaking suspicion that an awful  lot
> of this theory stuff is just so much flatulence!"?  Gee, it sure sounds to
> me like a kinetic streak of anti-intellectualism on the LUG.  I am as
guilty
> as anyone of the assumption that anything I cannot understand is
> incomprehensible.  Nonetheless, this is a position I strive to avoid.
While
> its density in stretches exceeds that of spent uranium, I have gotten a
lot
> out of Susan Sontag's prose after working with it for a while.

 I was guilty of not changing the header.  I was speaking more to Guy's
disappointment with the resistance to intellectual discussion on the LUG
than to Sontag's work.
In any event, personally knowing a number of dedicated and active
photographers, they seem to fall into two camps.  Some, perhaps like me,
simply don't feel the need for intellectual discussion about the theories of
the work of others because I'd rather devote my thought to my own work or
spend time studying the photographic work of others and simply being moved
or not.
I've spent several hours recently studying and absorbing the photos in
William Albert Allard's book 'Vanishing Breed'.  I would not , however,
spend five minutes intellectualizing and ascribing theories of photography
to this work.  Just don't feel the need.

A few, for sure,  take the option B: If I can't understand it, it's garbage!
Mike Gardner