Juan; if you relate all of this business to the way various painters have chosen to work on a canvas - brush to pallet knife to just tossing a bucket of paint in and area (Pollock), photographers should be free to use the media, light + materials, anyway they choose. Most artists have recognizable egos, some are bigger then others. As for your or my taste in art, that's a personal matter.
HCB certainly had an interest in how his prints looked. The same can be said for Adams. This goes for most of us, I would think. If you could speak to one of these people, you might find that they aren't hard and fast in their opinions of the medium.
I read that Adams had great things to say about Ernst Haas. Their work covers the edges of the spectrum of what many were doing in their time. 35mm vs LF, Color vs B+W, Negative material worked over in the darkroom vs a Kodachrome - with little room for adjustment, even in a die transfer print.
Hi PKR,
"Juan; if you relate all of this business to the way various painters have chosen to work on a canvas...":
That's not a fair comparison for a very simple reason: a camera reflects reality; a canvas and the process of painting on it don't... If a child shoots with a camera, reality comes to the print, but that doesn't happen if a child paints on a canvas... The process of painting has always been a creative one by definition... By definition photography reflects reality. Saying impressionism was interesting and full of beauty makes sense; saying Adams' or any other photographer's insistent dodging and burning are interesting, doesn't make sense... One is full of freedom and strength, the other one is trying to paint after a photograph.
"HCB certainly had an interest in how his prints looked. The same can be said for Adams. This goes for most of us, I would think. If you could speak to one of these people, you might find that they aren't hard and fast in their opinions of the medium.":
Every time I say how different their approaches to photography were, someone changes the subject and tells me things like "both were born in the earth" or "both used to eat every day." And they really had different and strong positions on what they considered a good photograph.
"I read that Adams had great things to say about Ernst Haas. Their work covers the edges of the spectrum of what many were doing in their time. 35mm vs LF, Color vs B+W, Negative material worked over in the darkroom vs a Kodachrome - with little room for adjustment, even in a die transfer print.":
On this thread we're talking about Adams saying a GROUP of photographers were not even photographers. That doesn't talk about them, but about Adams. I'm not sure Adams liked his photographs, but I'm sure he liked a lot his paintings done with enlargers on photographic paper.
No sense in trying to make Adams appear close to HCB or Winogrand or Frank or Atget as photographers: he was not. He couldn't, and he went another way. I have no problem with anyone liking or going that way. I just see those are very different ways.
Cheers,
Juan
