From: William Marsh (redcloud54@earthlink.net)
Date: 08/30/02-12:58:14 AM Z
Has anyone seen Nicholas Nixon's fairly early work, taking people
pictures with an 8x10? They were "candid" and in close. Also amazing.
Bill
Carl Weese wrote:
>
> > 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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : 09/19/02-11:02:51 AM Z CST