From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 08/17/02-11:36:21 PM Z
On Sat, 17 Aug 2002, Bob and Carla wrote:
> ferrics, albumen, or whatever. EW used pre-coated platinum paper,
> similar to Suras at North American Platinotype, but it was the
> discontinuation of that factory-ready paper that helped move him to
> the silver-gelatin, factory-made papers. But also, as a photographer
> and a printmaker, he was also in the middle of a move from the
> Photo-secessionist/pictorialist approach toward the so-called, f/64 charter.
Really Bob, Shannon -- sitting here on the right hand coast, I must say I
find the "Weston" legacy stifling in the extreme... To describe my
objections would take more time and energy than I have left in this world,
but briefly,
f64 only touches the surface of what camera can do
Seagull turds and peppers have BEEN DONE.... ! Or to quote last paragraph
of my own article on the Mortensen-Weston battle in PF #3 (page 10)...
"Sigismund Blumann, one of the anti-purists who found Edward Weston's
photography trivial, awarded him honors for 'the highest achievement in
portraiture of gourds and peppers.' The embattled Mortensen...observed
icily that Edward Weston 'feels no limitations in the medium that he uses.
Glossy prints and small apertures best express the static patterns that he
finds most significant.'"
I don't even mention Weston's photographs of women -- most of whom appear
with their legs spread, face-down naked in the sand, screamingly
post- or pre-coital, or Tina Modotti-ish weeping. Thanks a bunch.
To quote Henry Holmes Smith, antidote to Weston, inspiration and teacher
for the rule breakers who came along & overthrew the tyranny of f64 & all
that: Photography's customary "assignment in the arts" was "an excessive
naturalism," and,
"The general body of photography is bland, dealing complacently with
nature and treating our preconceptions as insights." (P-F #4, p. 16).
Weston himself can't be accused of this, because whether or not we want to
go there, he was doing things that hadn't been done, but that wheel is
invented, the "insight" given.
Still and however, I don't know why Shannon feels "guilty" of all things
for liking the senusal pleasure she finds in the work, as she describes
with some feeling. Ye gods -- we don't need permission to like what we
like... Surely looking for ratification of one's own aesthetic in
consensus is self-defeating. In fact aside from noting that you both
misinterpret "post-modernism" beyond redemption, I add that the
post-modern attitude would be very helpful here... PM says, if you go
against the grain, FLAUNT IT !
J.
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