From: Katharine Thayer (kthayer@pacifier.com)
Date: 12/21/02-03:02:48 PM Z
Jon wrote:
>
>
> > and I'm afraid I have little interest in academic arguments
> > about what is or isn't a "true" landscape photograph.
>
> You should, if you make the statement that your images are such, you need
> to be able to qualify that statement. It is like somebody saying "I'm a
> republican" or "I'm a Democrat" and never really knowing what the party
> stands for.
No, actually that's not what this is like at all, from where I sit. (In
continuing your example here I'm going to change the term Democrat to
"liberal," because I'm really hard pressed to guess what the Democratic
party thinks it stands for at this moment in time and it wouldn't be
right to pretend I knew, but I still do know what liberals stand for, so
feel more comfortable using that word as an example.) What it's like
is, it's like being a lifelong liberal and knowing exactly what liberal
means, and having Rush Limbaugh insist that only his biased definition
of liberal is the right definition and I must adopt it for my own. You
don't like the way I talk about landscape photography but there is no
reason in the world why I should adopt your "classifiction" just because
you think I should. (I'm assuming Kerik invented that word
inadvertently, but whether intentional or inadvertent, it's a great
word, classifiction.) There is no reason why a person who identifies
him/herself as a landscape photographer should accept as the definition
of his/her art what someone else has decided it should be, what
landscape photography was in one small part of the world 100 years ago,
or how some art historian described landscape photography somewhere
along the line. Landscape photography is not an extinct art of a bygone
era that can be dissected and defined for all time; instead it is a
living and growing organism, and every photographer who photographs the
landscape in a way it's never been photographed before adds another
layer or dimension to our understanding of what it is. That's the way I
see it. It's clear you see it differently, but as respectful colleagues
we must simply agree to disagree; you don't get to insist that I have to
see it your way, that's not how it works here. By the way, as far as
that goes, you have yet to enlighten us as to what your definition of a
landscape photograph IS exactly, except for vague hints such as: it's
what Ansel Adams did, it's defined by what it contains not by how it's
done, and it's difficult to achieve in the midwest or with a telephoto
lens. Is it bigger than a breadbox? Sorry, that was flippant, but the
truth is I'm with Kerik, the Grand Dagor of the Landscape, on this one:
blah, blah, blah who cares?
Katharine Thayer
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