From: Katharine Thayer (kthayer@pacifier.com)
Date: 12/14/02-11:13:09 AM Z
I got sidetracked thinking about why it is I find Robert Adams readable
and interesting on photography, even though I disagree with some of his
ideas, and Susan Sontag not worth the effort, and forgot to finish my
train of thought, which I will do now for whatever it's worth. Although
I haven't found "On Photography" particularly readable, persuasive, or
relevant to my own work, then or now, I have enjoyed some of Sontag's
other writings, and actually found lots to think about in the current
article under discussion on war photography. I was especially intrigued
by her inclusion of the lynching photograph in the illustrations and
discussion.
kt
Katharine Thayer wrote:
>
> Jonathan Bailey wrote:
> >
>
> > But, I'd like to ask: at what point did it become necessary for artists to
> > also be intellectuals??
>
> According to an article in the New Yorker several months ago about a
> crisis in the Harvard studio art program, artists started getting more
> intellectual when more of them started getting academic degrees, and
> it's my personal opinion (and as I recall it was also the opinion of the
> writer of the article, and no, it wasn't Jed Perl) that this
> intellectualism hasn't served art very well.
>
> But I'm an intellectual myself, and although I mostly keep art separate
> from my intellectual interests, as I've written before, I do have Sontag
> in my studio library, and after reading the current article on war
> photography, went out into a wild storm to retrieve her so I could see
> what the fuss was all about, since I couldn't remember anything about
> what she had to say in her essays one way or another. (In contrast, my
> copies of Robert Adams' books of essays are worn and written all over
> from many sessions of re-reading and writing comments in the margins,
> and I could quote at least half a dozen passages sight unseen.)
>
> But try as I might, I couldn't stay interested long enough to read even
> one essay all the way through.
>
> I think the crucial difference between Sontag and Robert Adams, for me,
> is that Adams is a working photographer, as is/was? Szarkowski, and
> that's what makes their writing worth reading.
>
> Katharine Thayer
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