Re: Jose Ortiz E.

s carl king (sanking@hubcap.clemson.edu)
Mon, 22 Apr 1996 18:21:12 -0400 (EDT)

> Touuuche'! Being responsible for a State-controlled auto and airplane
> manufacturing industry (with 25,000 employees) under General Franco's
> regime is likely to give you a label indeed. I am convinced that this is
> why Gernsheim ignored him completely in his _History...._ He sure did know
> about Echague as I talked to him about Echague during a dinner in Arles,
> France, just a couple of days before going to Madrid to meet Echague, ca.
> late 70s. >>
>

> I think that being a Pictorialist at a time that Gernsheim thought was many
> years too late was probably more important. Gernsheim felt he had been
> pretty shabbily treated by the RPS - as you no doubt know - because of its
> pictorialist emphasis. This must have confirmed his already low regard for
> latter-day Pictorialism.
>
What you say may have been true for Gernsheim, but in Spain Pictorialism
is held in low regard (though increasingly less so in many circles as it becomes
more and more obvious that the aesthetics of pictorialism are really veryu
close to those of much photograph practiced today) because of its
association with the post civil war period and the Franco regime.

> round to writing one he probably won't be either unless the publisher lets
> me run to several volumes!
>
Well, Peter, if you ever do get around to doing your history I will
consider it remarkably incomplete if you don't devote space to the
pictorialists, and most certainly Echague. Why can not our so-called
histories of photography at least acknowledge the importance that
the late pictorialists like Echague, L. Missone, A. Keigley, even
Mortensen, had on the photography of their period?

Sandy King
Sanking@hubcap.clemson.edu

Sandy King
Sanking@hubcap.clemson.edu
> On Fresson, UK readers probably already know that there is currently an
> exhibition of Fresson prints in the Photographers Gallery. The colour in
> some is nice, although the work isn't to my taste, and being displayed
> behind glass loses much of the surface quality of the print. Rives by
> Dolores Marat consists of largely unsharp and grainy pictures taken mainly
> on the Paris Metro and other poorly lit places. Occasionally they have a
> dream (or nightmarish) quality. They actually look better in the book than
> on the gallery wall (not unusual in photography.)
>
> Peter Marshall
>
> Family Album/Gay Pride - http://www.dragonfire.net/~gallery/index.html
> Also on Fixing Shadows: ----------- http://fermi.clas.virginia.edu/~ds8s
> Future Press and elsewhere... E-Mail: petermarshall@cix.compulink.co.uk
>