Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/10/31
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 11:15 PM 10/29/97 -0600, Eric Welch wrote: >At 03:06 PM, you wrote: > >>the textures of the rocks in many of his prints -- but, damn!=A0 The man= had >>only one aesthetic conception in his whole life. > >Look again. The evolution of his work over the years paralleled his life. >His work in the 40s and 50s were much more dark and moody (when his >personal life got rather strained). His work in the 70s and early 80s >became much more contrasty and brilliant. Smaller scenes. He did >portraits, closeups, grand landscapes, and even tried color.=20 > >I think you exaggerate? Perhaps I do exaggerate. But I have looked fairly closely at his work -- not only in a jillion photography collections, but also in his own books. I've read his autobiography and his Examples book, and I really do enjoy the latter, especially his 1968 photo of the Mision San Javier del Bac (which I have visited and like very much). I'm afraid I discount much of the work that isn't scenic. He was not a good portraitist -- his candids are good snapshooters' work, and his posed portraits are simply ugly and soulless, expressing nothing about the people he portrays. Look at Adams' portraiture. Then look at Eisenstaedt's. Adams seems autistic by= comparison. I confess that some of my negative impression here comes from reading Adams' words about his photographs and about himself. And about himself, and about himself. I came away from his autobiography not liking the man at all. Not a bit. He can't even resist getting in his little jibes at Weston, for example, at a time when the man had suffered from Parkinsonism for years and then died. But the landscapes are sublime, essentially defining that field so that everything that came afterwards for decades had to answer in some way to Adams' work; to mimic or resist its look. - -Patrick