HCB booted from flickr

[ray_g]

This is a HILARIOUS follow-up to his critique post.

http://theonlinephotographer.blogspot.com/2006/06/cartier-bresson-booted-from-flickr.html

 

[jlw]

Yes, it's hilarious, but I wonder if some of the thumbs-down voters weren't being deliberately naive, either to make a point or to go along with the gag.

Still... I remember reading several years ago about a successful screenwriter who wanted to test his feeling that it was getting harder and harder to sell scripts that deviated from a few well-tested formulas. He took the original screenplay of "Casablanca," retitled it "Everybody Comes to Rick's," and shopped it around to various studios. Nobody displayed any interest. Only a couple even recognized it.

 

[ghost]

it's not so bad that they deleted the pic, because they delete every pic. it's those god awful "crits". ugh! that's just ugh!

 

[James Brannan]

I agree. What's really hilarious is so many folks put so much stock in what an anonymous group of strangers think to begin with. People in general are so insecure. I guess we shouldn't expect their online persona's to be that much different. Man is just wired that way I guess. Not that long ago a person might see only a hundred people in their entire lifetime. The approval of the group wasn't just some hindrance but an actual life or death skill pretty much. Now I can type this message and possible thousands of folks see it in a short time. We have the freedom to quit our jobs, divorce, and even relocate to another continent at will. The nature that drives us is still in play though.

 

[MinorTones]

I like a lot of Bresson's images. This one is no different. If you imagine how this photographer worked you can see he was walking down the stairs or waiting there for something to happen.

Its not a perfect "pristine" photo for sure, but it is certainly worth seeing. If someone sees a photo and remembers it I figure it is succesfull.

If this image were posted on RFF, if none of the viewers knew its origin, what do you think would happen? Probably not the Flickr comments, but it might be completely looked over.

For many eyes it might go unseen in this day as just another snapshot. Just one man's opinion.

-Mitch

 

[MinorTones]

I'm 25 and since I was born I have been bombarded from images on the TV screen, on the highway billboards. A photograph of this man blurring by on his bike is just a snapshot to anyone who hasnt studied photography's history. Anyone can make this composition, any one of us reading this thread can do this.

This photo is probably the weakest example of HCB's work. There are other photographs that given the same situation none of us would have captured, but this one I think anyone could take it.

All in all I love so many of Bresson's images, but posting this one of Flickr was asking for negative comments.

 

[pmu]

What's really hilarious is so many folks put so much stock in what an anonymous group of strangers think to begin with. People in general are so insecure.

Exactly! That is hilarious. Another thing that keeps amazing me is for example people who stare at ratings in different forums -- there are people all the time bitching about too low or too high ratings. I really do not get it -- what the hell does it matter if someone likes or does not like some photo (even if it is HCB's photo)? There are few legendary photographers whose photos I would vote "delete" if I saw one (and if I would in generally vote, or even go at flickr site).

 

[Fedzilla_Bob]

That is hillarious.

I'm not trying to be a jerk but this is the first time I've actually enjoyed one of our HCB threads.

I think Mssr. Bresson is having a laugh, from the void, at all critics.

 

[MinorTones]

Yeah it's all subjective. You see it and you take a second look and photograph it or you don't.

Then you put it out there for all to see, and maybe they like. It's the chance you take.

HCB put his books out for all to see whether they like it or not. It's published and all comments are fair game. Just because some (inculding me) think he is a master doesn't mean all his sh*t turns to gold.

Henri Cartier Bresson made some comment about Edward Weston's work posted as a quote in another thread. It was something about Weston's work being academic cliches. So he made his critiques as well, why not critique him.

I'm playing devil's advocate though. HCB was/is a huge influence on me, but he is human and not infallible. Minor White and all of the Weston's are also huge influences.

-Mitch

 

[Fedzilla_Bob]

Henri Cartier Bresson made some comment about Edward Weston's work posted as a quote in another thread. It was something about Weston's work being academic cliches. So he made his critiques as well, why not critique him.

These two are giants, titans even. I don't think either photographer would have committed a critique without something behind it.

The Flickr "delete me" thread had quite a few comments that seemed frivolous.

Frankly, I wouldn't have been able to identify that as a Bresson photo. I would have appreciated it for its lines and the cyclist punctuating the end of the stairs. It makes me wonder if he heard the cyclist coming.

There were a couple of people fanning the flames (aside from the poster who created the hoax). But there seemed to be many more who were ready to jump right into the feeding frenzy.

Good stuff.

 

[Buze]

Bah, I like that image /even without the bike/. It was a great shot for the geometry of the stair and the street behind. The bike and it's position makes it 10 times better.

On the other hand, someone on the comments there quoted Cartier-Bresson saying "Sharpness is so bourgeois" surely it was a jest; I can't think of a more bourgeois family than "Cartier-Bresson" !

 

[varjag]

Mitch, problem is "the biker is blurry" and "there is grain" is not any remote form of art critique.

 

[lubitel]

Reading that thread was kind of sad. Sure, there is nothing wrong with that when someone critiques works of famous photographers or artists. But I think most comments there were definitely far from what one would call real "critique".

Once in a while I meet with a very good, professional painter, whose work I really admire and we talk (mostly about painting and art). He knows nothing about history of photography, but when he saw a book of HCB's work he said that each of his photographs is like a carefully composed painting.

 

[ghost]

lubitel hit it right on the head.

 

[telenous]

Most of Bresson's photos stand out even if you see them in isolation from the rest of his work. My feeling is that the photo under discussion is not really one of them. It accumulates strength by association, that is, the relation it has to the entirety of HCB's work. There are a few more photos in Bresson's portfolio like that: good photos but perhaps slightly unremarkable at the first instance. Placing them within Bresson's theory of the Decisive Moment and his appreciation of the perfect geometry of composition is what elevates them to the artistic stratosphere.

Incidentally, I believe there's a similar photo in RFF gallery by our very own Beniliam, that actually builds upon and perfects the snapshot of the grand maitre.

As for the Delete Me group, I am not so much concerned about people critisizing and ultimately rebutting the merits of great photos but rather by the rudeness they do so, no doubt afforded by their relative cyber-anonymity.

 

[Harry Lime]

What I really find amusing are many of the reasons WHY its not a good photo:

- He should have used fill flash
- It's grainy
- His lens is very soft
- He should have used a higher shutter speed to freeze the action.
- He didn't follow the ABC's of studio/commercial photography to turn this in to another cookie cutter photo like you see in stock footge libraries.
- it's in black and white

Notice how few of the comments have to do with the artistic reasons why this may or may not be a good picture.

That's the pathetic part. There are far too many gearheads in this field. If people spent as much time thinking about making better pictures, as they do about lens testing, we would have hundereds of HCB's ;-)

 

[JoeFriday]

I was a member of DM for a few months.. it was very enlightening.. the vast majority of the comments were of a technical nature, mostly, I think, because that's all that most flickr members can express.. artistic feelings and artistic merit elude them

and because it's a dynamic group (different people joining and leaving constantly) they refer mostly to technical skills.. eventually, I left the group because it offered nothing new for me.. I learned the concept of composition and technical competence, which is what that group concentrates on.. to them, the epitome of great photography is mastering the art of 'fill flash'

 

[jan normandale]

So are you better at fill flash now Brett?? ;- )

 

[DougK]

I was a member of DM for a few months.. it was very enlightening.. the vast majority of the comments were of a technical nature, mostly, I think, because that's all that most flickr members can express.. artistic feelings and artistic merit elude them

and because it's a dynamic group (different people joining and leaving constantly) they refer mostly to technical skills.. eventually, I left the group because it offered nothing new for me.. I learned the concept of composition and technical competence, which is what that group concentrates on.. to them, the epitome of great photography is mastering the art of 'fill flash'

Don't forget cropping... many of the folks want you to crop in tightly on the subject and totally ignore using empty space to balance the shot or including a bit of the environment to tell a better story or set the place. Meh.

 

[jlw]

I'm 25 and since I was born I have been bombarded from images on the TV screen, on the highway billboards.

Newsflash: Both television and billboards were invented more than 25 years ago, so being 25 doesn't make you anything special in terms of being saturated by images.

A photograph of this man blurring by on his bike is just a snapshot to anyone who hasnt studied photography's history.

That's the thing that bemused me: That apparently so few people recognized it. (It points to a very healthy future for the plagiarism industry: "Hey, wanna buy this great shot I just snapped of some soldiers raising a flag during a battle?")

I'd agree that except from an art-history point of view, it's not all that sizzling as an individual image. Of course, I'm one of the people who has said here before that I find much of HCB's signature work to be cold, manipulative, and depersonalizing of his subjects (just like that John Malcom Brinnan essay said) and I take a lot of flack for it, so I'm hoping all you HCB admirers will just write me off as incorrigible rather than trying to straighten me out again...