From: Shannon Stoney (sstoney@pdq.net)
Date: 09/28/02-08:53:27 AM Z
There's also a review in the New Yorker about this show. The
reviewer gets into some of the issues we were discussing about
photographing poor people too, as Avedon's portraits of people in the
American West were criticized for being "exploitative." I never
thought they were, and neither does Anthony Lane.
--shannon
>A passage in today's review by Michael Kimmelman of the Avedon show at the
>Metropolitan had echoes of last week's discussion of "photography" ...
>plus a nice anecdote:
>
>"[T]he Duke and Duchess of Windsor...look ravaged and sad. Mr. Avedon said
>that when he started to photograph them, they put on their royal faces,
>beaming and cooing. He was desperate. So he told them a lie, He said his
>taxi had just run over a dog. Their faces fell. 'Because they loved dogs
>-- a lot more than they loved Jews,' Mr. Avedon added.
>
>"What do we see, then? Is it a revelation of their true character or
>ordinary fleeting sympathy about a dead pet? Both or neither. We read
>into this photograph what we want as we do into all portraits, painted,
>sculptured or snapped by a camera.... [A]rt doesn't have an obligation to
>be fair or true, just good."
>
>
>JS.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : 10/01/02-03:47:10 PM Z CST