Sparrow
Veteran
I don't think I dismissed anyone, you are the one tossing other names about, I simply gave my opinion on Adams' standing internationally in much the same way he gave his opinion on the Farm Security Administration's photographers ... it may have escaped your atention, but this thread is specifically about that opinion
Juan Valdenebro
Truth is beauty
This just occurred to me:
There seems to be a fair amount of members/street photographers (Juan?) for whom depicting the emotion of the human subject seems to be most important.
How can this ever succeed ? We never know what somebody else feels.
Instead, for me, a successful photograph, street, portrait, landscape or otherwise, communicates the emotion, vision, etc., of the photographer. I interpret and "like" photographs based on this assumption. On top of my list of favorites are Adams and Franck, BTW.
As a side note: Moonrise over half dome was actually taken with two lensesMy favorite Adams is “Tetons and the Snake River”. Almost impossible to not see the photographers emotion, dedication, vision, and effort in preparation it took for the successful making of this print. In my opinion.
Roland.
Hi Roland,
No, it's not about that (at least what I've been talking about...): It's not about landscape or street or vision or passion... It would be the same if done by a street photographer: if a street photographer (say Frank) used the printing procedures Adams used, Frank's images would have that "special" wild (far from reality) internal contrast too, just like Adams' images, and for sure some naive viewers would consider images like those "especially good"... BUT: Frank didn't need to add special and complex 20-steps plans on dodging and burning to his already wonderful images.
That's what this is about. Frank was a marvelous photographer, and he couldn't be happy adding internal contrast to his prints, because what he considered photography, couldn't be superior if internal contrast was added while printing.
Cheers,
Juan
semilog
curmudgeonly optimist
That's the funniest and most absurd thing I've read in this entire thread. Juan, have you even looked at Frank's prints?
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semilog
curmudgeonly optimist
Actually you dismissed an entire suite of approaches to photography. In essence, you said that anyone in the 1930s who wasn't doing socially relevant photojournalism with a small camera was irrelevant to the history of photography, a view which I think is absolutely blinkered.
You also implied that no Americans were doing that sort of work ("Perhaps in the 1930's US, Adams really was the best you had, in Europe the new breed of photojournalists with their miniature cameras and roll-film were laying the foundations of most of modern photography"), an implication that is of course counterfactual.
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Juan Valdenebro
Truth is beauty
Hi semilog,
I think you tend to mix others' words and then assume they've said what only you imagined... I don't say it just from this post of yours, but from a few others, and in agreement with other forum members' comments... I really respect people, and I really respect valid arguments, and I really put to trash invalid ones, so I'll try to comment your points:
About your point 1: I don't misrepresent Adams' work, and I know very well his photographic conception... Indeed I learned to be a photographer from his three books, for many many years. Great books, by the way... Then, for many more years, while cursing my career in photography, I studied Adams' works and style, and we even had to practice the zone system, his ways of composing, and obviously his ways of printing, with complex plans on dodging and burning: images call attention after doing it, but honestly they're not better photographs because of that... There are very few images from Adams I really like, but I'd like them without the dodging and burning and without the LF sharpness just the same, because what I like in those is composition. Anyway, they're far from moving me a lot inside... I'd never include Adams in a list of the best photographers, or any of his images in a list of the best photographs... They're far from human emotions and very light to me... I like nature a lot, but almost no landscape photograph with a pompous feeling... Although my knowledge on Adams isn't precisely small, I bet lots of other forum members, after 25+ years of love for photography, for sure know about Adams' previsualization, or about his books... I guess I've also heard him talking in every available interview... Believe me: I liked a lot his work 20 or 15 years ago, but little by little, it became cold to me... If you have a much superior knowledge on Adams, you could tech us here on RFF: I'd be glad to add to what I know, any grain of sand ( or castle
) kindly coming from you.About your point 2: it has an inner contradiction... The two concepts you talk about, pre and post, shouldn't be compared that way as if pre included manipulation or transformation... It's just post the one that in general include manipulation and transformation. And no, I'm not talking about the validity of pre vs. post: I'm saying what the word “photography” has meant historically... When images receive a good amount of post-processing that really implies the images change, those should be considered a post-processing creative game, but there's no need to consider them the same game people printing normally play. That's all I've said: both things are different. But don't take it personal: you're free to like or do whatever.
About a. Of course every lens takes 3D to 2D: no news here. And both AA and HCB used lenses and got to 2D: they're just the same until there... But just one of them required highest sharpness and loads of dodging and burning to make people look at his images. And just one of them required to go far from visual reality.
About b. Of course films and developers define tonal range. Both AA and HCB knew that, but just one of them didn't feel the tonal range on his negatives would allow his images to be great. Just one of them needed to avoid using his negatives just as they were done. Just one of them behaved as a painter.
About points c and d: It seems to me they're not relevant to this thread, and in any case, as in points a and b, both AA and HCB knew about those technical aspects of photography, so there's no difference there.
About the things you say after the points: You're very wrong:... Not every photograph involves a complex series of transformations after capture. There, you're being plain false: ask other people. Ask other RFF members if you want... Most film photography is close to a direct print: at least very far from Adams' “painted” prints...
About the photographers I admire, I'm not too original... I like those considered the best ones, like Frank, Bresson, Winogrand, Atget...
But semilog, please don't consider this personal, or about any author, because it's just about photography... Photography doesn't require too much post-processing, and the reason is photography is a game that basically ends when you hit the shutter.
Cheers,
Juan
kbg32
neo-romanticist
ALL IMAGERY IS MANIPULATED IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. This is why I always thought Adams' hatred of Mortensen seemed so ridiculous and why I brought it up in my previous post.
An interesting read by Robert Jones -
http://www.robertjonesphoto.com/anseladams.html
"The Adams mystique is no accident: Since early on in his career, Adams hired a high-rolling public relations firm to market him as the greatest master of photography. Further, he held a deep and abiding personal resentment for photographers whose work he disliked or those he felt were nudging onto his territory.
Consider the strange case of pictorialist William Mortensen: For the f/64 Group, spearheaded by Adams and Museum of Modern Art curators Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, it was not enough merely to disagree philosophically with Mortensen. Granted, the pictorialist school had pretty much run its course, and purists in the mold of Adams and Edward Weston did indeed usher in an exciting new era in photography.
Had they respectfully disagreed, it would have been unlikely that Mortensen would have been forgotten and ignored so during his own lifetime and after his death, for he was something more than just another painterly salon photographer: Mortensen’s compositions were steeped in Gothic and Romantic traditions, his subject matter often whimsical, often bizarre, his style a strange combination of Lorenzo de Bernini, Edgar Allan Poe, Man Ray, Salvador Dali and Maxfield Parrish.
In his essay, “Beyond Recall,” photographer A.D. Coleman -- who is quite sympathetic to the Adams aesthetic -- presents a scathing indictment of Adams and the Newhalls, and their active campaign to completely shut out Mortensen from the elite artistic inner circles. Adams in particular launched a smear campaign to destroy Mortensen’s reputation. He couldn’t even bring himself to call him by his rightful name; in conversation, Adams called Mortensen “the Anti-Christ.” Mortensen died a broken man.
Even after Mortensen's death, Adams tried to prevent Mortensen's work from being archived at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. Fortunately for posterity, curator James Enyeart (who, though a friend of Adams) remained objective, and was instrumental in finding a permanent home for Mortensen's artistic legacy.
Because of Adams’ spiteful behaviour, little remains of Mortensen’s artistic output: Most of his negatives are missing, whereabouts unknown. He also left few notes or letters. No conclusions can be drawn, but it can be strongly inferred that by the time he died, Mortensen felt so irrelevant to the history of photography that he never bothered to leave much behind.
This almost total annihilation of the career and reputation of another photographic artist was carried out ruthlessly and consciously by a man revered by his
followers as “Saint Ansel.”
Ansel Adams did not like photo-journalists -
"Strangely, Adams once penned the following:
In the past photography has been largely plagued by imitation, apology, and pompous defensiveness. The “salonist” continues the sham of the turn of the century. The photo-journalists (some, not all!) are “non-art” people, turning to the factual experiences of life as their anchor to reality. The advanced subjectivists reject the world and develop inner awareness — of their inner beings….But there are, fortunately, a growing number of men and women who practice photography at a fully adult level."
An interesting read by Robert Jones -
http://www.robertjonesphoto.com/anseladams.html
"The Adams mystique is no accident: Since early on in his career, Adams hired a high-rolling public relations firm to market him as the greatest master of photography. Further, he held a deep and abiding personal resentment for photographers whose work he disliked or those he felt were nudging onto his territory.
Consider the strange case of pictorialist William Mortensen: For the f/64 Group, spearheaded by Adams and Museum of Modern Art curators Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, it was not enough merely to disagree philosophically with Mortensen. Granted, the pictorialist school had pretty much run its course, and purists in the mold of Adams and Edward Weston did indeed usher in an exciting new era in photography.
Had they respectfully disagreed, it would have been unlikely that Mortensen would have been forgotten and ignored so during his own lifetime and after his death, for he was something more than just another painterly salon photographer: Mortensen’s compositions were steeped in Gothic and Romantic traditions, his subject matter often whimsical, often bizarre, his style a strange combination of Lorenzo de Bernini, Edgar Allan Poe, Man Ray, Salvador Dali and Maxfield Parrish.
In his essay, “Beyond Recall,” photographer A.D. Coleman -- who is quite sympathetic to the Adams aesthetic -- presents a scathing indictment of Adams and the Newhalls, and their active campaign to completely shut out Mortensen from the elite artistic inner circles. Adams in particular launched a smear campaign to destroy Mortensen’s reputation. He couldn’t even bring himself to call him by his rightful name; in conversation, Adams called Mortensen “the Anti-Christ.” Mortensen died a broken man.
Even after Mortensen's death, Adams tried to prevent Mortensen's work from being archived at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. Fortunately for posterity, curator James Enyeart (who, though a friend of Adams) remained objective, and was instrumental in finding a permanent home for Mortensen's artistic legacy.
Because of Adams’ spiteful behaviour, little remains of Mortensen’s artistic output: Most of his negatives are missing, whereabouts unknown. He also left few notes or letters. No conclusions can be drawn, but it can be strongly inferred that by the time he died, Mortensen felt so irrelevant to the history of photography that he never bothered to leave much behind.
This almost total annihilation of the career and reputation of another photographic artist was carried out ruthlessly and consciously by a man revered by his
followers as “Saint Ansel.”
Ansel Adams did not like photo-journalists -
"Strangely, Adams once penned the following:
In the past photography has been largely plagued by imitation, apology, and pompous defensiveness. The “salonist” continues the sham of the turn of the century. The photo-journalists (some, not all!) are “non-art” people, turning to the factual experiences of life as their anchor to reality. The advanced subjectivists reject the world and develop inner awareness — of their inner beings….But there are, fortunately, a growing number of men and women who practice photography at a fully adult level."
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semilog
curmudgeonly optimist
I'm a scientist and I do quantitative imaging as part of my work. I can assure you that I am not wrong on this point. The fact that you don't notice it doesn't mean that it's not happening. The other scientists and engineers on this forum will most likely agree with me.
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semilog
curmudgeonly optimist
Which one?
robklurfield
eclipse
is there only one way to make a photograph? only one way to read one?
come on guys, play nice. argue all you want, but no hitting below the belt. and, smile while you're swinging.
come on guys, play nice. argue all you want, but no hitting below the belt. and, smile while you're swinging.
Jamie123
Veteran
Juan, no offense but... Firstly, "photography" is a very open term. "Photography" comes from the greek words "photos" (light) and "graphein" (writing, drawing) so basically it means drawing with light. So actually both exposing the negative and exposing the paper are technically photography. There's photography that doesn't really include a lens or camera like x-ray photography and I would even go so far as to say that images like Wolfgang Tillmans' abstracts and Hiroshi Sugimotos Lighting Fields are also photography.
Your attempt to define photography historically is also highly flawed. Firstly, photography didn't start with Daguerre's or Fox-Talbots invention. They figured out how to fix images, not how to expose light sensitive material. The actual ''drawing with light'' part goes back much, much further. And as it goes back a long time, it will go on for much more time so it makes no sense at all to take a random moment in the middle of the 20th century and define photography by what it was at that time.
As for AA vs. HCB I really don't care much for either as they both bore me. HCB bores me a bit less, though. Correct me if I'm wrong, but reading some of your posts in this and other threads it seems to me like you firmly believe that there's one sort of 'pure' photography and then there's a hole lot of other stuff that uses photography. I guess it's fine if you think that but it's just very hard a position to defend.
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semilog
curmudgeonly optimist
Fascinating and troubling. Of course, feuds happen in all fields and it may be a bit much to attribute all of Mortensen's troubles, and the disappearance of his archives, solely to Adams and the Newhalls.
The politics appear to be deep and nasty and perhaps morbidly fascinating. Here is one of Coleman's own accounts, and I think he does a pretty good job of declaring his position and disclosing what conflicts he may have -- an essential prerequisite if one is to honorably wade into such a mess. And it is immediately evident that this is, without question, a mess.
sanmich
Veteran
Trying to answer the original question (who cares? ):
Maybe AA thought that there is no place for a GROUP of photographers to pursue a common goal/ project, specially when this has been set by a government?, that as a group, no meaningful/personal output can be achieved.
We know NOW that this "bunch of..." was successful, but maybe the idea could seem quite idiotic at the time?
(And believe me or not, with all due respect, AA is not really my cup of tea...)
):Maybe AA thought that there is no place for a GROUP of photographers to pursue a common goal/ project, specially when this has been set by a government?, that as a group, no meaningful/personal output can be achieved.
We know NOW that this "bunch of..." was successful, but maybe the idea could seem quite idiotic at the time?
(And believe me or not, with all due respect, AA is not really my cup of tea...)
Charlie Lemay
Well-known
Thanks kbg32 for the information regarding Mortensen and Adams. I will definitely seek out Mortensens images, and consider them highly recommended. To paraphrase an old axiom: You can judge a man by his friends, but if you really want to know the man, judge him by his enemies.
Roger Hicks
Veteran
No, I don't think I misundersood you, because I certainly didn't understand you to say that, and I apologize if I gave that impression. What I'm saying is that it is blinding to dismiss something as 'not photography' when it is at least as much photography as anything AA ever did.
The same applies to your subsequent post. There is no intellectual inconsistency. I'm not saying that AA "wasn't a photographer." He was, and a very good one. So were many of the FSA people. That was my point, really.
Cheers,
R.
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Roger Hicks
Veteran
Roger Hicks
Veteran
semilog
curmudgeonly optimist
I'm not saying you're wrong, Roger, but I'd want to see more than that to know what Adams actually thought.
Sparrow
Veteran
Adams is the irrelevant climax to a pretty pointless genre of photography, and, by most accounts a petty, mean spirited sort of chap who took every opportunity to denigrate his contemporaries to boost his own overblown ego ...
... and the fact the he's your hero doesn't alter the validity of my opinion.
... and the fact the he's your hero doesn't alter the validity of my opinion.
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robklurfield
eclipse
we're all just lowly taxonomists at heart.
semilog
curmudgeonly optimist
What a bizarre thing to write.
Since you didn't ask: the photographers I personally admire the most are: Andre Kertesz, Imogen Cunningham, Paul Strand, Robert Frank, Josef Koudelka, Giles Peress, Rhagubir Singh, Chuck Close, and Susan Meiselas.
Adams is not in my top 10. He probably is in my (personal) top 25, though not near the top of that list. But I am capable of separating my personal preferences from my assessments of the historical importance of these photographers. Et tu?
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