Re: Mortensen
To answer Christina's question as to what she thought Mr. Van Dykes' fear was.... Well - other than the VanDyke outburst provoked by my question AS to whether Van Dyke had changed his opinion of Mortensen's work.... my opinion is based on historical knowledge.... Group ƒ64 promoted photography as a fine art on its own terms- sharp rectilinear lenses, large depth of focus- crisp blacks and whites of realistic true-rendered subjects... They fought the pretentious art crowd that saw photography as a lesser art- and why did they judge photography so- it was the newest art and depended on technology. Drawing and painting and sculpture still needed the direct application of the human hand- but not photography.... BTW- the harpsicord and clarinet were considered less artistic instruments at first due to their mechanical nature... but were as we know eventually accepted.... So - Mortensen comes along and prints paper negatives and even dares to do pencil work on them. Its not drawing- its not photography- its photo illustration- but not to sell beer and wristwatches- but for purely artistic purposes. In fact- only now with photoshop can one duplicate the sort of thing he was doing- well without following his techniques of paper negatives. I ran across Mortensen's Monsters and Madonnas in 1977 and could not figure out what it was- I though the work was pure pencil illustration misfiled in the photo book section. I thought - no wayyy is this photography... Yes- Ansel Adams had been nearly successful in killing the memory of this man's work... but there were too many old books of his techniques lying around to erase his legacy. In my humble opinion - Mr. Van Dyke saw Mortensen as a traitor to photography- which they saw the true vestal flame of which to be in the straight category. his fear- and the root of his hatred- stems from thinking that Mortensen was muddying the waters of pure photography and would have it devalued as a fine art form. VanDyke may have seen Mortensen as a freak- perhaps to be placed in either the world of the fine arts of drawing, painting and mixed media- BUT NOT as a photographer. I think Mortensen is even today greatly underappreciated... it has been noted that Ansel Adams tried to track down and destroy all of his work in any significant photo collections. Mortensen was greatly invested in the nude female figure- which has long been a prime subject of fine art- but not so much with the slightly more prudish members of the ƒ64 group. Also - Mortensen used the nude as a drawing card for his ( mostly male students ) in his photo classes. I have been told that over 20K students went through his classes over the years he taught. Mortensens own justification for all the female figure work was that it was the underlying structure under all clothed peoples compostions. Sort of why docs study the skeleton in anatomy... Here I will also make a direct defense for his use of the female nude- they simply in general have more artistic bodies than men- A survey a few years ago found that even female photogs most often specialize in the female form. BTW- I saw the inscription on a 1935 Mortensen book on nudes that read something like "to Frank from Lauren"- a gift from a very understanding wife? A gift from Frank's model and lover? or perhaps a gift from a sister in a very progressive open artistic family.... yes when it comes to anything concerning the nude - even in the case of fine art- there is still the obvious titillation factor. ( no pun intended ) On Nov 9, 2008, at 10:56 AM, Christina Z. Anderson wrote: Oh what a wonderful story, Richard!!! When someone reacts so
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