[Leica] Re: Ansel Adams

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant)]

Re: Subject:[Leica] Re: Ansel Adams

OK so maybe in defense of my comments, hopefully I explain myself without
increasing the fire.

 

I don't have a problem with the work of Ansel Adams. There's no question he
was a master without peer!

 

I did say:  

>>>58 years ago when I first seriously began my photographer fun thing, his

work was hot stuff in all the photo magazines. I thought .. "gee this guy is

real good at taking pictures of mountains and stuff in parks, I better learn

everything I can about how he does it!" That was it, the more I read about

him and his "ZONE system" the less interested I became! <<<<<

 

And without question I did read everything and anything about the man and
his photography. But the more I read the more disinterested I became because
we were on different paths. He was shooting in sheet film and predominantly
what seemed mountains, National Parks and basically still things where it
was possible to shoot and re-shoot to attain the perfect negative and
perfect print. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.

 

I on the other hand was predominately a "life of people and action
photographer."  Still am after all these years. However, what many of you
don't know is.. Many of my rock and fern and scenics have sold often through
an art gallery here in town. And many of them form part of the National
Archives of Canada, ted grant photo collection.

 

You see "my rock and fern stuff, and I do have a few neat "Peeling paint as
well!" ;-)  It's  always been a private down home thing with me. It's my R&R
after the damn shit has stopped flying during an assignment where sometimes
you've had to keep your head down and ass hopefully there when it's over.

 

It's when I can lie on my belly in the garden or by the sea side and do my
"Ansel Adams thing." That I appreciate the relaxing feelings he must have
felt while doing his of mountains. But I did mine on roll film, with a
Hasselblad and Leica's, a roll at a time.

 

And as much as I've read and re-read about the ZONE system, there isn't a
hope in hell the zone system works 36 frames at a time as it does, one sheet
of film at a time for exposure and development.

 

I spent quite sometime in London UK taking in an Ansel Adams exhibition, the
first time I'd seen his prints up close and in my face! To say the least I
was completely blown away with the print quality beyond anything the likes
I'd ever seen. Obviously they were made from larger sheet film and not 35 mm
tri-x at 400 or 800! 

 

The content however didn't excite me, much along the lines of Karsh
portraits of the high and mighty folks. Fantastic qualities by both
photographers of image content and print quality. 

 

But for a better way of putting it. "it's just not my thing!" That doesn't
mean I don't admire the quality, one would be a fool if they didn't see the
talents of these photographers in doing their thing!

 

I'm an alive person, I like to be involved with what ever the living subject
is, to learn about it, feel it, see it and cry over it, or with them! And
yet not be there.  

 

I've shot people and places constantly over a half century career and if I
make a comment that AA's photography/content doesn't turn my crank, that has
absolutely nothing to do with the exposure and print quality, nor the
Masters ability.  But the subjects/content sit there and so? 

That isn't any kind of put down of the Master Photographer himself as a
human being.. 

 

Hell he may well have looked at mine and it might leave him in a similar
fashion. We'll never know. However, KARSH along with his brother Malak Karsh
did see my work on occasions in Ottawa usually with what might be called,
admiring affection. So I can quietly live with that.

 

And I will stick with what I said:

>> But then I get big goose bumps of admiration over the photography of

Eisenstaedt, Ralph Morse, George Silk and the others of the early years of

LIFE! Now they were real photographers and masters of the photographic

moments!<<<

 

It is a difference of subject material. And for anyone not to understand
that, then they have a problem, not I.

ted