From: Carl Weese (cweese@earthlink.net)
Date: 08/29/02-10:32:36 PM Z
> Carl, let me suggest that when you say you "know" what the small camera
> "is for," you err. I don't think in fact ANYONE knows what ANY camera
> "is for." That's what the excitement is about.
Of course some genius may come along and invent something really and truly
new to do with a camera of any size. I'm waiting. I'll steal from her right
away. And then make it my own.
>
> As for invisibility... That's a lot harder for a man than for a woman.
That's actually a matter of craft--the invisibility. But that's not the
right word. My former point was the lack of threatening presence:
invisibility is literally impossible but practically you can do an amazingly
good imitation. It's a learned technique. As you know, I'm not exactly
small. But my partner has pointed out that at particular times when I was
totally immersed in a small camera project, I'd gotten so into the manner of
my shooting 24/7 that she'd lose me at the grocery store. Couldn't find me,
while looking right there. How many other six foot four people was I hiding
among?....Tina just came and looked over my shoulder at the computer screen,
and said, "yes, it used to drive me crazy the way you'd disappear at the
supermarket in west philly" (that would be 1971). It was a craft skill that
I'd carefully practiced for years. It helps you make good pictures. Snapping
away in a crowd is, I suppose, a way to be invisible, but what will you get?
Snaps of a crowd.
I spent my entire adolescence, which would be the decade of the sixties,
taking pictures in NYC nearly every minute I wasn't in school. Times Square,
The Village, whatever. As I grew out of adolescence I realized how boring
all that was, even though the pix were selling like hotcakes (and for about
that much money) as stock through Black Star. Strange to take a psychology
class as an undergrad and find the textbook illustrated with some of your
own pictures. Hey, I got forty bucks for that! You have to move on. When I
realized I was making good pictures, pictures that would not sell as stock,
I knew I'd grown up, at least a little, as an artist.
---Carl
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