[the Chinese people... they’re baffled by the foreigner who will rush to take a picture of an old, battered, peeling farmhouse door.
They don’t have our idea of the “picturesque.”
I what way did you find it twaddle, Sparrow?
I thought it made some sense (at least what was written in the articles. I have not read 'on photography.')
"... that they all capture a precise present and register its conversion into an irretrievable past"
... when I look around and see the zillions of images swirling around in my view (everything from flickr to the annoying neighborhood billboard adverts), I can easily get depressed
.... I can easily get depressed by this thought: What's the point of making another image? Its probably already been done, and what's the meaning of it anyway?? ... etc.
However, if I ignore all that, including my own depressing thoughts, and hold onto Gary Winogrand's thesis (which went something like: "I make photographs to see what something looks like photographed.") then I can happily continue pursuing this tantalizing craft with pleasure. This is what I'd call the 'small picture' view... the personal view of photography......