[Leica] Re: Leica Users digest V5 #3

[Alexey Merz <alexey@webcom.com>]

Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 13:03:36 -0800
From: Donal Philby <donalphilby@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [Leica] Best photography books

I recommend "Light on the Land" by Art Wolf.  All 35mm.  He shows what
is possible with landscape when light and content dominate.  Much of
book shot with 200-400 zoom--an unlikely landscape lens.  His latest
book on the Pac Northwest is a stunner too, but more of a pretty picture
travel book.  Light on the Land is a book of art, that will show you
just how much more there is to see.

I used to be a big Art Wolfe fan, until I read a piece by Kenneth Brower
in the _Atlantic Monthly_, which described some of the digital image 
manipulation techniques that he'd used to produce his book _Migrations_.
These were not interpretive changes as might be done in conventional
darkroom work, but significant alterations made in the content and form 
of the images - 'cloning' of zebras and the like. Wolfe was unrepentant, 
saying that he's bound by artistic standards and not journalistic ones. 

I say that an artist's job is the same as a journalist's: to tell
the truth as best he or she can. I can no longer look at Wolfe's 
work without wondering, and for me that means that I can no longer
look at his work with wonder.

- -Alexey
..........................................................................
Alexey Merz | URL: http://www.webcom.com/alexey | email: alexey@webcom.com
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            | Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the 
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            | strangers to kill again. 
            |                    -- TV listing for _The Wizard of Oz_, 
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