U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: Books

Re: Books




In a message dated 5/4/07 4:31:43 PM, jseigel@panix.com writes:


Finally, I can't resist mentioning that listing "Ansel Adams" among
favorites is... who did that?  Don't want to make a young person cry.
But REALLY .... um (muffled explanation, and fighting back words sounding
like "sucky"... But now back to my needle & thread, have to go to wedding
tomorrow in Wash DC, need to sew a dress.... putting on my grandmother's
old lace.  Anybody got the arsenic?)

Judy


Well...I mentioned the book "Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs" and I'm stickin' by it.

As I said, it deals with the image in its planning and assessment stage, at the time of exposure and during the development and printing stages.  It has more about the process of AA's work and it puts the technical stuff in perspective.  As the old saying goes, "Even Ansel Adams had to work for a living" and it's very clear just how hard he worked.  I really don't care if his work is to anyone's taste or not but he did lay out a technical approach that one can follow, build on, variate on or reject and that's valuable in any case. 

And one of my favorite photos of all is in that book: Georgia O'Keefe and Orville Cox, Canyon de Chelly National Monument, 1937.  Taken with a 35mm Contax (and I have used and still use my old Contax so it's got me on that basic level alone) and not large format...a photo about a moment between two people and not some Wagnerian Landscape.  The Anti-Ansel photograph if one believes the AA myth.  I like that...

Best

john gronkowski



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