Elliott Erwitt - Rome ?? Is it me or...?

[exiled4979]

So, I was browsing through some photo books today at my local bookstore, and I found this book, Rome by Elliott Erwitt. I went through the entire book and I can't say I saw more than 2 really, really good shots. Sure, they're all printed in huge format, print is awesome, but photographs themselves are just ordinary snapshots, I bet 90% of all members here would return from 3-day-trip to Rome with better results.

Although I have great respect for his work, this is just total crap!

so, is it just me? am I expecting too much from respected authors?

It looks to me like someone just randomly picked selection of photographs from Rome over time and regardless of every possible criteria (except the author's name), put it in the book and wants to sell it for a nice premium, photos are seriously below average, even compared to just casual street shooters...

 

[helen.HH]

Well 'Rome' is my Least FAV of his Work...agreed about the Editing
New York is Stellar... Love that book from beginning to end

 

[Frank Petronio]

Well you could say that about most art, a lot of it looks like anyone reasonable craftsperson (or worse) could have made it. But Erwitt is subtle and witty and sometimes the jokes are missed.

 

[jsrockit]

...but photographs themselves are just ordinary snapshots, I bet 90% of all members here would return from 3-day-trip to Rome with better results.

I have not seen the book, but I bet this is a bit of overstatement.

 

[exiled4979]

Well you could say that about most art, a lot of it looks like anyone reasonable craftsperson (or worse) could have made it. But Erwitt is subtle and witty and sometimes the jokes are missed.

yeah, agreed about most visual art, modern and contemporary, but there is great difference between photography and hand-produced art. It's different if you're painting or drawing something by hand, or just pointing your camera set to P.
I understand that street shooting has a lot to do with being at the right place, at the right time, but those photos are simply ordinary, random street shots, absolutely any street photographer could reproduce those without any particular effort.

 

[exiled4979]

I have not seen the book, but I bet this is a bit of overstatement.

maybe I went a bit too far with the percentage, but I find it very hard to believe that those photos published required any particular knowledge and effort.

How many street photographers you know is able to take a photo of a statue, composed by rule-of-thirds?

 

[KenR]

I saw his show "Personal Best" at the ICP in NYC a week ago. Some of the photos are kind of pedestrian, but some are amazingly funny. It's kind of unusual for me to have my side hurt from laughing at a photo show. Almost all of the best (IMHO) were his animal photos. I am LOL just thinking about them.

 

[jsrockit]

I saw his show "Personal Best" at the ICP in NYC a week ago. Some of the photos are kind of pedestrian, but some are amazingly funny. It's kind of unusual for me to have my side hurt from laughing at a photo show. Almost all of the best (IMHO) were his animal photos. I am LOL just thinking about them.

That was a great show. I'll go out on a limb and say his "pedestrian" photos are better than most people's best. 😱

 

[Paul Luscher]

Well, much as I hate to diss an idol, I feel much the same way about a lot of Robert Capa's photos. I feel a lot of them are not particularly well-composed or interesting--that really, he just got lucky in happening to be at the right places at the right times, in the biggest event of the twentieth century.

But then he did come up with the fantastic shots from D-Day. (But even those were kind of an accident . The blurry look came from the film melting in an overheated drying cabinet...)

 

[jsrockit]

The blurry actually came from his hands shaking on the beach. He could hardly reload his cameras.

I believe he was right about the dryer...or at least that is the story. Per Wikipedia:

"His most famous work occurred on June 6, 1944 (D-Day) when he swam ashore with the second assault wave on Omaha Beach. He was armed with two Contax II cameras mounted with 50 mm lenses and several rolls of spare film. Capa took 106 pictures in the first couple of hours of the invasion. However, a staff member at Life in London made a mistake in the darkroom; he set the dryer too high and melted the emulsion in the negatives in three complete rolls and over half of a fourth roll. Only eight frames in total were recovered.[13] Capa never said a word to the London bureau chief about the loss of three and a half rolls of his D-Day landing film.[14]"

 

[Paul Luscher]

Hmmm...that's not the story I heard. I know that that's what Capa said when asked why his photos looked the way the did. But I have read that the "cabinet incident" occurred because when his film came back to England, the photo lab was put under tremendous pressure to get the film done--which resulted in one assistant cranking up the heat on the cabinet to speed up the drying process--which unfortunately resulted in the film melting--in fact most of the images Capa took on Omaha Beach were totally destroyed....

 

[dovi]

I saw his show "Personal Best" at the ICP in NYC a week ago. Some of the photos are kind of pedestrian, but some are amazingly funny. It's kind of unusual for me to have my side hurt from laughing at a photo show. Almost all of the best (IMHO) were his animal photos. I am LOL just thinking about them.

Craig Semetko 's work had me laughing out loud. Similar in many ways. I also find William Klein to be funny too.

To the OP: I find the Rome book hard to buy. It just does not pull me. Sometimes I will enjoy a book when I am in a certain mood but I have not had luck with that book. Each time I pick it up it does not appeal.

 

[jsrockit]

That makes sense too though... I don;t think I would have gotten off 1 shot before dropping my camera in the water.

 

[Steve M.]

"It's different if you're painting or drawing something by hand, or just pointing your camera set to P".

I used to think so too, until I got into B&W film photography. The degree of difficulty in getting the right subject/light/metering/composition/developing/print is harder than you think. It's sure harder than I had imagined, and when I need to relax I do some "art". When I try to make a good B&W print, well, you just don't put the camera on P and shoot it!

 

[exiled4979]

"It's different if you're painting or drawing something by hand, or just pointing your camera set to P".

I used to think so too, until I got into B&W film photography. The degree of difficulty in getting the right subject/light/metering/composition/developing/print is harder than you think. It's sure harder than I had imagined, and when I need to relax I do some "art". When I try to make a good B&W print, well, you just don't put the camera on P and shoot it!

I'm sorry, I just don't see the connection, being able to reproduce someone's painting or sculpture would take a lot more skill and effort to make it look right, than just pointing automated camera to a subject, and having negatives scanned and printed. Based on my own experience with BW film photography, I can't say it's difficult or that demanding, I used to shoot with Nikon F4 and F5, kept it at Aparture priority 99% of the time, switched to rangefinders, still was able to get perfectly good negatives from Bessa R3A at aparture priority, still followed in-camera metering, always did my own developing. It's hard to judge on ones ability, but I picked up on BW film photography very quickly, did my whole admission for the academy in like 1 month without any prior contact with BW film, and I came from digital background at the time. From time to time experience helped a lot to judge how to achieve something, but work shown in this particular book is not special nor demanding in any way, other than being there, I can't tell that any particular skill or experience that was needed to achieve those results, that's why I wrote that 90% of people here would get even better results.

 

[jsrockit]

but work shown in this particular book is not special nor demanding in any way, other than being there, I can't tell that any particular skill or experience that was needed to achieve those results, that's why I wrote that 90% of people here would get even better results.

Wow, I really need to see this book now... it must be really bad. 🙄

 

[heartattackandvine]

It is possible, exiled4979, that you just don't like the selection of photos in this book. That does happen. (BTW. according to this article, it could be understood that Erwitt did have something to do with the selection of the photos for this book, although it doesn't say that explicitly.)

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

Erwitt's hit and miss. I liked the Personal Best show, too. I admire his energy and his willingness to just put it all out there. His legacy would probably be better served by more rigor and judiciousness, though.

 

[gdmcclintock]

Erwitt's hit and miss. I liked the Personal Best show, too. I admire his energy and his willingness to just put it all out there. His legacy would probably be better served by more rigor and judiciousness, though.

One person's rigor is another person's mortis.

Marcel Proust's narrator compared literature to a pair of spectacles. If you cannot see clearly through one pair, try another! This analogy should extend to art in general.

 

[CK Dexter Haven]

I don't specifically remember Rome, but i'm sure i agree. I've seen it, and it's one of his books that i don't own. But, that happens with a lot of photographers. I bought Ralph Gibson's Deus Ex Machina and loved it. Then i started looking for his older books and bought a couple. But, the newer work? I don't even understand how it can be the same man behind the images. Granted, the book in Brazil was especially of interest, since i was spending a lot of time there. But, i got nothing from those pictures. Similarly, when i was in Rome, i shot more than i ever have in my life. There's something beautiful to capture at every step, in every direction. So, it was a surprise when someone with talent published something that doesn't move me.