Re: Sharp plane of focus

I've not been conversing much on the list since returning from Italy
this past summer
but
I must agree with Judy re Avedon. In fact, if you look at the oeuvre
of Avedon it primarily
shows a pejorative stance toward people in general. I'm not there
myself, in my head/heart,
but I think his work is brilliant with a straightforward simplicity.
Richard very kindly called me
where I teach and asked for a group of our students only to come and
visit with him at the
Berkeley Museum of Art when his exhibit on the The American West was
hung, large and direct.
He was a most charming and sincere man and the students really
enjoyed that hour or two with
him. The work then, as were his earlier images of famous (did he do
much other than fame in
a way?) people such as Dwight Eisenhower, portrays a weirdness within
the human psyche.
In some ways I feel the same thing about humanity when we check out
Milosovich, Pol Pot,
Mao, Fidel, Stalin, Mugabwe and even what is occurring within our own
U.S. today. Greed is the
relevant issue of life's intercourse with destiny. Avedon knew that.

On Dec 27, 2005, at 10:09 AM, Judy Seigel wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, 26 Dec 2005, Dan wrote:
>> Now erase the battlefield from behind them. I don't think you
>> would take
>> away the pride and confidence from their face. That, personally,
>> is what I
>> see in Avedon's "West"--people standing forthrightly in front of
>> their
>> lives, as shown by their faces, their skin, their clothes.
>>
>> There's no battlefield, just white. But there doesn't have to be,
>> when you
>> can see what James Story has been doing all day, perhaps all his
>> life, just
>> by looking at his eyes.
>
>
> Silly me -- I always thought those portraits of "the American
> West" (or whatever they were called), far from showing "pride and
> confidence," dehumanized their subjects, making them look freakish
> or abject, which is to say, subhuman and degraded.
>
> As for scale -- most people see them in books, not the original, so
> if they see them as "grand," that's another proof of the power of
> suggestion... in this case perhaps by a teacher. (Although I don't
> think there's much doubt about Avedon's motive for museum scale to
> begin with.)
>
>> A teacher of mine, Rod Klukas, also reminded me a few weeks ago
>> about the
>> scale of Avedon's prints. Does it change the meaning of the piece to
>> present it at 40"x50" instead of, say, 8"x10"? At 50" tall from
>> torso to
>> head, they are now life-size or more--a slightly super-human
>> scale. This
>> could indicate considerable respect for the subject, a desire to
>> aggrandize
>> or celebrate them. Or maybe it's just an attempt to make a big
>> print for a
>> big museum space--or big ego?
>>
>> But this idea of scale is something one might consider in alternative
>> processes, where, many times, presentation size is limited to film
>> size (or
>> your computer printer's maximum transparency output size). I'm
>> not going to
>> be aggrandizing much of anything with my 4"x5" contact prints!
>>
>
> [Cut]
>
>> (John
>> Cremati (this thread) said "There is not a woman alive that wants her
>> portrait taken with a normal lens!")
>
> Silly me again, hanging out with so many dead women.... But let me
> point out that, male or female, when a person is seriously gorgeous
> (and photography reveals how many folks are) there's no point in
> futzing them up with so-called "soft focus." I don't recall,
> however (and this may be simply my lack of attention) that many of
> Avedon's subjects meant much besides "Awful Warnings."
>
> Judy
>
>
Received on Tue Dec 27 13:08:35 2005