"What you've got are not photographers....

[semilog]

Of course, not everyone, even at the time, appreciated AA's approach to photography. It was HCB who said around the start of WWII "the world is going to hell, and Adams and Weston are taking pictures of rocks." I'm sure the FSA hands would have voiced similar sentiments. You can't please everybody.

HCB was a hell of a photographer, but he was also a pompous ass. So much so that he thought his own drawings were more important than his photographs. History has not been kind to that judgement.

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

What for some Adams' fans means "quality photography", is not even photography to other people... Instead of discussing, we should accept different people have different definitions on what a photographer can do to share interesting photographs or to be considered a great photographer... To me, photography is a lot of things Adams was not interested in for most of his photography, and I can't find what photography means to me in most (or any!) of his best known photographs... I appreciated his work more when I was a student, but I don't consider photography a primarily creative / compositional / tricky printing field anymore, but a primarily reflective / human / social / realistic & emotive field...

Cheers,

Juan

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

HCB was a hell of a photographer, but he was also a pompous ass. So much so that he thought his own drawings were more important than his photographs. History has not been kind to that judgement.

Hi semilog,

I haven't heard HCB say that... Do you have any link to an interview, or the literal words he used? Thanks!

Cheers,

Juan

 

[Charlie Lemay]

I did not expect many to agree with me, but saying my observations are flat wrong is like arguing that whose subjective observations are most objective.

1. & 3. I said Adams appropriated the "limited edtion" print model, not that he invented it. His punching holes in negatives was the symbolic act thwt received wide publicity and may have been the tipping point in the market. Wether he later regreted it or not is irrelevant, but I'm glad he did. Some MFA candidate might consiger a digital reconstruction of the punched images and what they reveal for a thesis.

2. Saying Adams saturated the market actually proves my point. With limited space available each year in magazines and with few photo books being published, Adams' pervasive images squeezed out, from wide public view, the work of many more vsionary photographers. Ironically, today Adams has to compete with multitudes of others who have as much or even more presence on the internet, which is finally truly democratic. Adams may have won history, but the future is wide open.

 

[semilog]

What you wrote was that

Adams is responsible for the "limited edition" print model being appropriated as the prime commercial model for photography in the fine art world.

That's a wild overstatement that ignores what many others including Steiglitz and Steichen and yes, Weston were doing earlier and contemporaneously.

"Saying Adams saturated the market actually proves my point." I just re-read what you originally posted, and all I can say is that if that's proof of your point, you're capable of remarkable interpretive flexibility. Oh, and I didn't say that he saturated the market. You did.

 

[semilog]

Hi semilog,

I haven't heard HCB say that... Do you have any link to an interview, or the literal words he used? Thanks!

I paraphrased, not accurately enough and probably too harshly. Here's one of a few quotations that I've seen:

He began more formally retiring from photography in the early 1970s, and by 1975 no longer took pictures other than shooting an occasional private portrait. He said he kept his camera in a safe at his house and rarely took it out, preferring instead to indulge in his rekindled love of the brush and pen. After a lifetime of developing his artistic vision through his legendary photography, he would eventually say:

"All I care about these days is painting - photography has never been more than a way into painting, a sort of instant drawing.”

He held his first exhibition of drawings at the Carlton Gallery in New York in 1975, but his body of photographic work would never become superseded by his artwork in the public’s affection.

 

[Charlie Lemay]

semilog,

I'm not trying to convert anyone. My take on this is just being presented. You are free to be as flexible or inflexible as you wish.

 

[semilog]

That's cool, Charlie. Me too.

 

[semilog]

Tom Kobayashi, Landscape, Manzanar Relocation Center, California | Photograph by Ansel Adams.

Note: this image is part of the U.S. Library of Congress collection. It is not copyrighted and there are no restrictions on its use.

 

[semilog]

See also: Manzanar.

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

I paraphrased, not accurately enough and probably too harshly. Here's one of a few quotations that I've seen:

I'm sorry: I couldn't find anything even remotely close to what you wrote...

I heard him say -answering "why did you stop shooting?"- he did it because he wanted to have a life, as he was so dedicated to photography for decades, he didn't have a life before he left it... About his drawing, all his comments I remember were humble and related to personal joy, and never in hope of any kind of recognition... He was so humble he even said -about his photography- he would have liked to do it better...

Cheers,

Juan

 

[jljohn]

I did not expect many to agree with me, but saying my observations are flat wrong is like arguing that whose subjective observations are most objective.

1. & 3. I said Adams appropriated the "limited edtion" print model, not that he invented it.

If you are going to quote yourself, please at least do so accurately. What you wrote was, "Adams is responsible for the "limited edition" print model being appropriated as the prime commercial model for phography in the fine art world."

You would have a might hard time objectively demonstrating this to be the case, especially when he was committed to keeping most of his images as open editions, and he set up the SEP program, which still puts top-quality prints into folks hands for a fraction of the cost of top-tier fine art prints.

 

[Charlie Lemay]

Sorry, but it looks like a snapshot to me. I would prefer anything by Josef Koudelka or Ralph Gibson. We'll have to agree to disagree. I think there is more relating to humanity in the "Mount Williwms" image than in any of his people images. This landscpe captures something very primal about our relationship to the Earth as mother to all of us. I've seem many Adams originals over the years and this is the only one that I truly resonate with. That probably says more about me than Adams.

 

[x-ray]

I had the good fortune to study with Ansel for two weeks in the mid 70's. I got to know him quite well in that time and can say he was not self absorbed and had very little ego. He was a person that would invite you into his house and mix a drink for you and talk all day if he was not pressed for time. there was nothing in his photo experience and knowledge the he would not share with you.

Ansel commented one day that out of the nearly 40,000 negatives he had only 600-800 that he felt were good enough to publish. This is certainly not a man with ego.

Ansel didn't come from poverty by any means but many years of his career were spent shooting commercial jobs just to keep his family going while his wife Virginia took care of her families gift shop in Yosemite. It was only in later years after hiring a rep did Ansel make real money. When I met Ansel the first time he was quite wealth but still drove a Ford LTD while his rep drove a new Ferrari. Ansel did have quite a nice house in Carmel but for years he and his family lived behind the gift shop in Yosemite.

Ansel did sell thousands of prints later in his career but most were in the last decade or so. In the 60's I purchased 4 signed prints for almost nothing and another in the early 70's that was signed and numbered. The most I paid for a print was $275 and that was one of the prints he punch the neg for. In the mid 70's most of his images sold for a whopping $250-500. Don't you wish you had a few at that price? Just a side note I talked with Cole Weston in 1971 and Edward's signed prints sold for $50 through much of the 60's.

I love his work personally but beyond that I have to credit him with introducing the average guy to photography as an art. Up to that point photography to the average Joe was family snaps and images in the news paper or magazines.

 

[semilog]

I think there is more relating to humanity in the "Mount Williwms" image than in any of his people images.

I posted that photo not as an example of his best work, but rather to note that Adams had, without question, engaged in "sociology with a camera" -- the original topic of this thread. I don't think that for him that description was pejorative at all.

 

[Joe AC]

Adams was a great photographer but more than that he was a "technician" in the dark room. That in my opinion is where he truly shined. Also, I must say that as much as I liked his landscapes, I think that his portrait of Georgia O' Keeffe and Orville Cox is one of his best works.

Joe

 

[Tompas]

HCB was a hell of a photographer, but he was also a pompous ass. (...)

I'm not familiar with Cartier-Bresson, the man, but I got a completely different impression from an interview with him that I once saw (via YouTube, I think). He seemed like a very modest, even humble old man.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Interesting where this has gone. I started it because I'd just encountered the quote in the first post, in a book of FSA pictures, and I couldn't believe it. Never mind Manzanar: a lot of AA's early commercial work was very good too. It was the idea that some things (including the whole FSA output) were 'not photography' that surprised me. I can only assume that he said it without thinking too much. That led me on to querying who had more influence on photography.

AA's quote was silly. So was the one I made up. Sure, this is reheating an argument of 60-70 years ago, and the world has moved on. I think Jamie123 summed it up perfectly as (I paraphrase) "Anyone is a _______ with a camera." But the arguments it has sparked are intriguing. I recall that at Arles a couple of years ago, someone reviewed Charlie's portfolio wwith "This is not photography." Also nonsense, of course. I'm just intrigued as to what different people think 'is' or 'isn't' photography.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Graham Line]

Is this quote confirmed, or not? I'm reserving statements til I know.

That said, either are valid. Not worse or better, just different goals and differing methods. Not everyone can be a social crusader and not everyone can be a fine artist; a healthy society has both.

Agreed. One-liners can be very misleading when taken out of context. Other photographers are on record sniffing at Adams and Weston making nature/landscape photos in the midst of WW2, but that doesn't necessarily mean the various parties lacked respect for each other in the wider view.

 

[semilog]

I think that I should say that I spoke out of turn on HCB. I love his work and he's done crucial things for the field (notably: co-founding Magnum, and being an early supporter of both Josef Koudelka and Ragubhir Singh's work). I've also heard that he could be a bit of a jerk in person, but if this thread has one message it's that people (perhaps especially great artists) are not one-dimensional : everyone has bad days, and ultimately HCB and Adams need to be judged on their contributions to photography, which are in both cases vast.