Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/06/11

[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]

Subject: RE: [Leica] Snapshots vs 'art'
From: "Clive Moss" <chmphoto@sbcglobal.net>
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 23:59:04 -0500

So, tell us what you really think :-)
Is this the kind of snapshot you mean?
http://www.fotolog.net/chmoss/?photo_id=219449
(beware -- Canon G3 picture -- purists need not look)
- -- 
Clive
http://clive.moss.net

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us 
> [mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us] On Behalf Of 
> Dante Stella
> Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 9:56 PM
> To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
> Subject: Re: [Leica] Snapshots vs 'art'
> 
> 
> Snapshots have a lot of potential to have meaning to the subject and 
> even to other viewers.  They are unposed, unarranged, poorly lit, 
> ragged, wrinkled, and sometimes even tired, but they capture 
> the moment.
> 
> What does not capture the moment or have any affective potential is 
> 99.99% of what calls itself "fine-art" photography or "professional 
> photography."  I am always amazed at how people who photograph for a 
> living bill themselves.  It seems that the more mediocre the 
> photography, the worse the hyperbole (hope I'm not appropriating any 
> real trademarks, but you get the idea):
> 
> "Captured beauty"
> 
> "Intimate moments"
> 
> "Stopped time."
> 
> Blah blah blah bullsh*t.  It's like reading Robert Frost.
> 
> What's worse, the worse the photographer, the more extravagant the 
> title.  Has anyone ever noticed that the world's most famous 
> paintings 
> carry titles which are simple, elegant, and descriptive?  Or has  the 
> world of professional photography gotten so bad that it believes that 
> Platonic nominalism can bail it out?
> 
> What's the excuse?  People pay you (if you are good enough to sell 
> stuff), you write the equipment off your taxes, you charge the 
> materials to the customers, and if you have the cajones, you can make 
> them do any type of portrait YOU want.  So what explains the complete 
> lack of creativity?  Is it that you are not really an artist? 
>  Are you 
> a technician?
> 
> If you want overproduced portraits that are technically perfect and 
> emotionally absent, check into some Baroque painting sometime.
> 
> If you want to see people as they are, as they look and as they feel, 
> look in some amateur's photo album.  Sure, the pages are that sticky 
> kind, and there is that nasty cellophane that supposedly interferes 
> with viewing.  Maybe some of the little square 126 prints are already 
> turning red.  But it is much, much more genuine than the 
> Olan-Mills-style pablum coming out of most studios.  Housepainters, 
> mostly.
> 
> NO ARCHIVE
> 
> ____________
> Dante Stella
> http://www.dantestella.com
> 
> --
> To unsubscribe, see 
> http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-> users/unsub.html
> 

- --
To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html

Replies: Reply from tripspud <tripspud@transbay.net> (Re: [Leica] Snapshots vs 'art')