Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/12/04

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Ansel Adams/John Wimberley WAS Mapplethorpe, highquailty porn
From: Johnny Deadman <john@pinkheadedbug.com>
Date: Mon, 04 Dec 2000 15:35:29 -0500

on 4/12/00 2:12 pm, Mark Rabiner at mark@rabiner.cncoffice.com wrote:

> Jeeze!! does " Ansel Adams" and "pornography" belong in the same paragraph?
> Let's ask Susan Sontag!!
> For me the answer would be… let me see… NO!!!!!!!  NON!!!

I love your ambiguity, Mark...

> I don't catch the repetitiousness and unfeelingfullness of Ansels work.
> These qualities elude me.

I think there are some really boring photos in, for example (!), the
Examples book. The surf from above... boy, that does NOTHING for me.

> Some if it is grandiose but it's GOOD grandiose and hell the think what he was
> shooting WAS grandiose and what the hell is wrong with grandiose???!!!!
> Ansel goes for the big effect. He's not into boring subtlety You WILL look at
> his images for more than one second. This does set him up for employment with
> Larry Flynt.

No, nothing wrong with grandiose at all. I love that operatic stuff. I just
don't think he was a great artist. I think he was John Singer Sergeant, not
Turner. Wordsworth not Coleridge (that was Weston).

This all reflects a personal taste... the landscape photography that moves
me is somewhat mystical. Your image of laterelle falls, Mark, that has an
edge of the sublime that I don't get in AA. There, can I be forgiven?

- -- 
Johnny Deadman

http://www.pinkheadedbug.com