Re: Mortensen Kitsch-A-tone

Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Sat, 8 Jun 1996 02:47:28 -0400 (EDT)

On Fri, 7 Jun 1996, Jim Spiri wrote:
>
> Also in Goldberg's anthology is a lecture Paul Strand gave in 1923. It is a
> demand for purism, and sounds exactly like Clement Greenberg in the 1960s.

Paul Strand said it first. I expect it will come to me where I filed it,
but I have a Strand quote about "the purity/nature of the medium" written
about 1917. Greenberg could have lifted it verbatim.

> "It [print manipulation] merely has nothing to do with photography, nothing
> to do with painting, and is a product of a misconception of both. For this
> is what these processes and materials do--oil and gum introduce a paint
> feeling, a thing even more alien to photography than colour is in an
> etching, and lord knows a coloured etching is enough of an abomination."

There's a fulminating quote from Lincoln Kirstein circa 1932 (in a MoMA
catalog) that shows him equally (and also very colorfully) wrought up
about gum printing. But whether or not we find Mortensen's kitsch worse
than Adams's kitsch (and I do), Mortensen was by far the better writer --
clear and lively. If you compare Mortensen on the Negative with Adams on
the negative, it's no contest (tho present edition of Adams has been
cleaned up, edited).

Judy