From: Katharine Thayer (kthayer@pacifier.com)
Date: 12/31/02-04:31:02 AM Z
Jack Fulton wrote:
>
> What I forgot to mention is that the women were nameless. this is often the
> case.
> > Read the Bible . . Noah had a wife as did his
> > sons Shem, Japeth and Ham and the wives begat and begat.
Oh come on, Jack. The Bible is full of named women. Sarah, Rebeckah,
Ruth, Esther, Naomi, Rachel, Leah, Mary, Elizabeth, Martha.... That's
just off the top of my head; if I were to actually find a Bible (not
something on my regular reading list) I'm sure I could come up with a
lot more. .
And while we're on the subject of the Bible, it occurs to me that the
second commandment prohibits icons ("Thou shalt make no graven images")
and I think that's probably really good advice. You set up icons,
realizing in the beginning that they are only metaphors that facilitate
academic discussion but are irrelevant to anything outside the academy,
but sooner or later you start bowing to them, and eventually you have
people like the guy who dominated the recent thread on landscape
photography, (a perfect illustration of the rule that a little knowledge
is a dangerous thing) insisting that everyone should bow to them, and
that only a landscape that resembles the icon can even be CALLED a
landscape, which of course is arrant nonsense. This is from a thread of
a week ago that I've since deleted, but I've been thinking about
iconography off and on ever since. I find it quite interesting that the
very people who have rejected the "ideals" of modern photography have
these "icons" which are nothing but idealized images, which when
followed two closely, become simply cliches.
Back to seclusion,
Katharine
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : 01/31/03-09:31:26 AM Z CST