From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 08/28/02-11:15:00 PM Z
On Tue, 27 Aug 2002 jeffbuck@swcp.com wrote:
> .... "Don't worry about categories." Huh? How can I think and not
> "worry about categories"? I mean, I'm on board, I'm DOWN, but if I want
> to make pictures (as opposed to documents of some kind), then I'm
> engaged from the start with the question of what is pictorial, and
> "pictorial" is a category. "Worrying" about what fits or does not fit
> is the consequence of the fact that I'm not the first person that ever
> lived who cared to do this sort of thing. Also, it gives me something
> to do (in accordance with Tillman Crane's injunction to "just do
> something"). Anyway, I'd like to look at a tree or a boulder or a
> Firestone tire and see line and mass and color w/o any words flitting
> across my consciousness, and I'm really really going to try, I promise,
> but....
Jeff, I thought about your dilemma, or your perceived dilemma,several
times in the last day or so... and I found myself thinking I bet he's
using a view camera. Thousand pardons if I've put 2 & 2 together to make
6, but in my experience the view camera is EXTREMELY controlling, not to
mention limiting. Every shot is such a production, with a tripod probably,
has to be "right", makes you think in categories, look for mass and color,
work on your consciousness, justify every shutter push with a
philosophy... etc.
35 mm on the other hand is free as the breeze -- actually you've got 38
frames and GOTTA use them up ! This lets things happen on their own... or
that's my finding. I do not believe I EVER took a picture of
something I thought was "beautiful" & was happy with the result. What
succeeds for me is something that just popped up & the camera liked it. NO
telling in advance. I realize many of the great photographs of history
were planned & staged, but a smaller proportion after the Leica (IMO).
35 mm also lets you give ugly a chance... so many wonderful photographs
are of formerly ugly subjects, in fact I think there's an old Chinese
saying that if it doesn't have some ugly it isn't art.
cheers,
Judy
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