From: Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Date: 09/20/02-12:25:09 AM Z
On Thu, 19 Sep 2002, Carl Weese wrote:
> The only snaps I dismiss as crowd photographs are
photographs of crowds.
> I've spent hundreds of times as many hours "street shooting" as you have, so
> as my grandmother used to say, don't try to teach your grandmother how to
> suck eggs.
Dear Grandmother,
Speaking of frivolous debate, you're answering what I didn't say:
I was addressing the previously stated notion that a photograph is
superficial if not based on a relationship between photographer and
subject. Someone -- in this frivolous debate, I don't remember who -- had
made that strange claim. Thus I mentioned several photographs generally
considered to be profound, or sufficiently profound for everyday purposes,
in which there was NO relationship.
Of course a word could be put in, if it weren't already so late, for crowd
scenes generally, as in Peter Breughel, but maybe photography isn't really
real art?
> Burk Uzzle's entire body of work in this vein (he also used to shoot annual
> reports to pay the rent, maybe still does, and now teaches at Bard) was
> based on total immersion, never the drive-by shooting.
I doubt he ever spoke to or knew the name of anyone in his most famous
photograph.
> The Strand Wall Street picture is of course not street shooting at all: it's
> shot from a second or third story window across the street, hardly rubbing
> shoulders with the unwashed masses. The figures in the picture (it would be
What does "rubbing shoulders with the unwashed masses" have to do with my
point above? Or washed masses either, since this is Wall St.
> ... It isn't a choice of stolen vs. posed or arranged.
> There's a huge area between the two extremes. The point here is that to be
> "invisible" is not the ideal, actually not the least bit desireable. The
> stolen picture made with a right angle prism or false lens to deceive the
> subject is one extreme, the Avedonesque directed session (portfolio samples
> presented as Art) is the other. Between the two lies a huge range of
> undirected but 'un-snuck' photographic strategies.
Of course it's entirely possible that I lack your intellect. I don't
follow your argument above. What's "invisible" got to do with anything?
Who is invisible? What are you proving?
> For pictures that are convincingly true to life but not "sneaked" by an
> "invisible" or hidden photographer, Uzzle is one of many excellent examples.
> The fact that many icons of "candid" photography weren't in fact candid
> shouldn't be surprising. As Nick Nixon is so fond of saying, "all
> photographs are fiction". Just how the fiction was arrived at can be quite
> opaque when viewing the picture. Many people think that Nixon's own work, or
> Sally Mann's or Jock Sturges' is candid when of course they all engage in
> massive direction and arrangement. Everyone can tell that Joel-Peter
> Witkin's pictures are directed and arranged. Does that make them more
> honest? Gene Smith arranged some of his most famous 'documentary' images.
> Like Mann, he did it very well.
Ditto my question above. Except PS: The most UNLIFELIKE photographs in the
history of silver gelatin are Jock Sturges.
Judy
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