Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/09/11

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Subject: Vs: [Leica] Re: LUGPhoto Quotes To Brighten Your Day
From: "Raimo Korhonen" <raimo.korhonen@pp2.inet.fi>
Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 18:26:11 +0200

Now you are inventing history - or perhaps you are inventing Susan Sontag. But of course a quote that needs a couple of pages of explanation is profound, or is it the other way round?
All the best!
Raimo
photos at http://personal.inet.fi/private/raimo.korhonen

- -----Alkuperäinen viesti-----
Lähettäjä: Chandos Michael Brown <cmbrow@wm.edu>
Vastaanottaja: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Päivä: 08. syyskuuta 2000 18:35
Aihe: RE: [Leica] Re: LUGPhoto Quotes To Brighten Your Day


>I speak as no especial admirer of Sontag and as a reasonably well-regarded 
>professional historian of some twenty years.  Your criticism makes sense 
>only if one assumes the most naive position of regarding the "past" as 
>everything that chronologically precedes the 'now," which is patently not 
>Sontag's meaning.  We do "invent" the past in that it contains no implicit 
>narrative--we construct narratives in our attempts to describe or interpret 
>a body of evidence that is otherwise inchoate.  The literature on this, 
>across the broadest possible range of political ideologies, is vast, and it 
>would mere pedantry to recite it here.
>
>Historians of American historians will provide numerous examples of 
>misprision, misrepresentation, and outright falsehood that ought make us 
>blush when we claim immunity from ideology--from Smith's invention of the 
>Pocahontas episode in 1607--to the treatment of slavery in America, to such 
>contemporary historical "biographies" as -Dutch-.
>
>Many on the LUG love to relate the use of their Leica gear as impromptu 
>weapons in securing a favored position to document an event.  Why, one 
>might ask, if not to lay claim to an 'authorative' representation of the 
>moment?  If such a photo were to become emblematic, to appear, for 
>instance, as an illustration in a college history textbook, would we 
>dismiss the photographer's aggressive shaping of the image as 
>inconsequential to its content?  I doubt it.
>
>Chandos
>
>
>At 02:57 PM 9/8/2000 +0100, you wrote:
>>It sucks of 'psuedo speak', something which sounds profound but is in fact
>>merely a cleverly phrased set of superficial words.
>
>
>
>Chandos Michael Brown
>Assoc. Prof., History and American Studies
>College of William and Mary
>
>http://www.wm.edu/CAS/ASP/faculty/brown
>