From: Halvor (halvorb@mac.com)
Date: 04/15/02-11:00:33 PM Z
Bill
Sorry for jumping a bit back here, can't adress everything at once, and this
got me thinking too.
> For instance, the vantage point from which Ansel Adams took "Clearing
> Winter Storm, Yosemite Valley," is now a parking lot, which may as well
> have a sign up that says "Put Tripod Here." Not much room for the
> blinding flash of discovery. When I was there last, I and four other
> photographers lined up with our big cameras pointed at Ansel's picture
> (ridiculous for us to do that anyway), while in the parking lot behind
> us a bus-full of tourists pulled up and were snapping away with their
> point-and-shoots, laughing and taking pictures of each other, the bus,
> us, the valley, themselves posed in front of the valley. I turned from
> what I was doing and watched them, and guess what: THEY were the
> picture! They were the most interesting thing to look at and photograph
> in that place at that moment, so I did. The few shots I had taken of
> the valley (which was enjoying a rare snowfall at the time) absolutely sucked.
That situation sounds absurd !
I have never thought of the idea of going to make a copy of a famous
photograph. (Althoug copying can be a good learning process, at least in
painting). (As long as one is avare that one is copying).
It does add a new dimension to the "originality of art" (in the age of
mechanical reproduction),though. "Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite Valley,"
signed by you and with the current date, would be a piece of modern art in
itself.
Factories
I know Albert Renger-Patzsch's work, which is good (art), have probably seen
Westons too but the pictures does not imedeatly pop up in my mind. Would
like to add Shinichiro Kobayashi to this list, you might find it
interesting, there excist two books "Ruins" and "Deathtopia", saw the last
one available on Photoeye. Basically abandoned factories and buildings
around Japan, maybe a bit more documentary. It does certainly satisfy the
search for the "Sublime Ugly".
Halvor
(The ability to make a link between ketchup and vegetables, does prove the
excistence of imagination (an artistic quality) :)
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