>... to infer that someone who wishes to achieve the best technically has no
>creative ability or even intent is illogical...
very good. the "dean of students" [don't remember his name, think that was
his title] at San Francisco Art Institute said to me "If you were a better
photographer, you wouldn't need to make such beautiful prints." The
implication, which the context of the conversation bore out, being that all
technically skilled photography sucked.
We had a saying at the Associated Press darkroom: *You can't polish a turd.*
(or with a turd- hence the need to distinguish shit from Shinola)
Some work requires masterful technique to carry the image forth, some
doesn't. doesn't make one kind "better."
It does mean some work gets "priveleged" when viewed casually or through
reproduction, especially crummy reproduction.
Victor Burgin said the contempory "museum" is a corkboard and pushpins, and
the museum of the future a computer monitor (this was a while back, i spose
he means now). He felt that the sooner we got rid of all the "preciousness"
in art, which makes it a tool of Capitalistic somethingorother, the
better... . Well, there's something to that, but dere's a baby in dat
bathwater, dude.
The zone system, or any other system, allows one to "codify" and make
results repeatable and calculable (?). But Adams was adjusting his exposures
and developing technique to suit the image long befor using a zone system...
By limiting himself to a few cameras, lenses, films, developers, (and
shooting conditions), and mastering their capabilities, Weston could work
without a light meter, keeping the lens open for as long as his brain and
experience felt he should. Some of us like that idea.
It's kinda like going off into the wilderness. You can dispense with miles
(or kilometers) and hours, and think merely in terms of an abstract "get
*there* before *dark*- sorta eliminating the middleman... and if you've ever
ben alone in the wilderness for an extended period of time, you know how
wierd it is when you return and first need to *speak language* rather than
just thinking...
-------------------------
Plywood and Rhetoric
graphic design from both sides of the brain
plyboy@teleport.com
http://www.teleport.com/~plyboy
"Momma DID raise a fool"