Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/02/13

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Is Photography Real...
From: Henry Ambrose <digphoto@telalink.net>
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 19:20:57 -0600

Martin Howard wrote:

>Tom Finnegan wrote, in part:
>
>> From what I remember, Jay and Hurn tend to label literal work as
>> 'photography', and non-literal or interpretive work is considered 'visual 
art
>> that uses the photographic medium'
>
>This, of course, is nonsense.  It all requires interpretation.  It is all a
>subset, a selection, of one or more aspects of the real world.  Ceci n'est
>pas un pipe, as Margritte put it.  Just because Jay and Hurn choose not to
>be aware of their interpretation for some subset of photographic work,
>doesn't mean that everyone else must do the same.  A photograph can be
>viewed in many different ways -- I can choose to see Cindy Sherman's work
>"Movie Stills" as just straight depictions of a woman in various poses, and
>I can choose to interpret BD's "A Day in Our Lives" as a reflection on
>social and family values in the early 21st century.  Neither is more or less
>valid than the other.  To arbitrairily select the dimension of "literalness"
>as a catagorisation basis and claim that it -- somehow -- carries greater
>epistemological validity than any other arbitrairily chosen dimension is
>just academic codswallop.
>
>M.

Interpretation, of course. It is ALL interpretation and filtered by the 
interpreter.
Feel free to choose how you see any of this but why tell us that someone 
elses interpretation is wrong. In your valueless interpretation how could 
you assign a bad value to someone elses interpretation?

Like what you like. Why tell others they have to do the same?

 codswallop?

What is codswallop anyway?

Henry Ambrose