[Leica] Musings on the role of photography and a question about what you shoot and why

[Alexey Merz <alexey@webcom.com>]

Kevin Hoffberg wrote:
>As I'm writing this, I have on my coffee table (silly name 
>for a low table) a copy of a book of Ansel Adam's photos 
>and another by Eugene Smith which strikes this same juxtaposition.
>Hard to know which is the greater force but they're both moving 
>in very different ways.

Yes, absolutely.

>All of this leads me to a question.  When you grab your Leica 
>(or whatever) and go out to take pictures for yourself, do you 
>go in search of beauty or with the purpose of telling a story, 
>righting a wrong, illuminating the absurdity of the human 
>condition, or something else entirely?

Yes! I don't think it's at all inconsistent to take inspiration
from Adams and Smith and Imogen Cunningham and Larry Burroughs 
and Margaret Bourke-White and Francesca Woodman and Andreas
Feninger and Robert Frank and Sebastiao Salgado and Gordon Parks
and Bill Allard... 

Ansel Adams took pictures for himself, in search of beauty, and
to tell a story. And yet, his photographs have probably done
more to further the cause of wilderness preservation than the
images of any other artist, with the exception of Roger Tory 
Peterson (who I view as one of the three most important figures 
in the history of American conservation - the other two being 
Aldo Leopold and John Muir).

Despite Walker Evans's oft-quoted comment that no really good
photographs are taken at the beach, these aims are not nesessarily
at odds. Indeed, I think that I could argue persuasively that Adams's
art has had more lasting political impact than Evans's and Gene 
Smith's combined. 

Perhaps ironically, this does *not* mean that Adams was a better artist
than Evans or Smith, or that either mode of seeing is more valid. Just
that a largely aesthetic vision is not necessarily a limitation, 
provided that the artist is following his or her own vision as 
truthfully as possible.

That's my opinion, anyway.


Regards,

Alexey
..........................................................................
Alexey Merz | URL: http://www.webcom.com/alexey | email: alexey@webcom.com
            | PGP public key: http://pgp5.ai.mit.edu/ | voice:503/494-6840
            | ...A democracy becomes hopelessly weak. and the general good
            | suffers accordingly, if its higher officials, bred up to
            | despise it, and necessarily drawn from those very classes 
            | the dominance of which it is pledged to destroy, serve it
            | only half-heartedly....     - Marc Bloch, 1940