Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/12/07

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Subject: RE: [Leica] Art Galleries!!!
From: Tim Atherton <tim@KairosPhoto.com>
Date: Sun, 07 Dec 2003 14:27:36 -0700

> known better.  How can I continue to be taken in by the art
> community!!  I
> need an immunization shot of some kind.

Yes, and of course it's all in the eye of the beholder (and I know there are
plenty here who will gag on some of these...  :-)  ) but here is a small
list of (living) artists whose work I personally feel worth looking at, that
perhaps challenges either what we understand when we call something
photography or what we understand of the world around us.

Nathan I agree with your last three they are generally really just gimmicks

>preferably tilt the camera, mis-focus and the more garish the colors,
>the better

But the first one I'm not so sure about

>It seemsthat to be an Artist in our medium you must photograph totally
uninteresting
>objects

An awful lot of the world around us seems to be made up of what, at first
glance, appears to be uninteresting objects or places - it's probably what
makes up 95% of our daily lives for most of us. Does that mean we shouldn't
photograph it? Only looking for the wonderful light or the dynamic
geometrics or the "decisive moment"? If so it leaves out an awful lot of the
real. What it seems to me is that many photographers do who "photograph
totally uninteresting objects"  draw our attention to those things that we
might otherwise simply fail to pay attention to, things we overlook and
consider boring - Blake put it best;

"The tree that moves some to tears of joy
Is in the Eyes of the others only a green thing
that stands in the way."

I often feel that a photograph that gives me everything at fist glance is
really rather unsatisfying - a sort of visual premature ejaculation. Much
better a photograph that you have to languish a bit more time and effort on.

Anyway - a few photographers who are artists (or artists who are
photographers) - completely in exhaustive (and mostly working in the area
that especially interests me - social landscape)-

The Bechers, Basilico, Geoffrey James, Lynne Cohen, Thomas Struth, Candida
Hoefer, Sally Mann, Jeff Wall, Arni Harraldson, Eggleston, Misrach,
Sternfeld, Shore, Beahan & McPhee, Jim Cooke, Sugimoto (I defy anyone to go
see his 2xinfinity architectural photographs and say a] it's just a gimmick
and b] they had no effect on you...), Elger Essers and plenty more...

tim



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Replies: Reply from Nathan Wajsman <n.wajsman@chello.nl> (Re: [Leica] Art Galleries!!!)