I find the essayist's snoopy metaphor silly and demeaning. And while he admits to an Adams renaissance, t's clear that he doesn't understand the artistry of Adams' work and how he was able to bend light in the darkroom to idealize a scene. He seems dismissive of the zone system, a a way of working that redefined photographic excellence. The writer continues to demonstrate his lack of photographic knowledge in asserting that an f64 aperture results in both optimum depth of field and clarity. Depth of field, yes. Clarity, no.
Art takes many forms, and the elitists of every generation are always anxious to dismiss the heroes of a previous era. But Adams, like his literary siblings, Whitman and Thoreau, will still be revered when some of the pretentious crap that now passes for artful photography has long been forgotten. Paul On Sep 19, 2011, at 8:42 PM, Bruce Walker wrote: > Talk about Ansel Adams (see "A door to nowhere" thread) had me searching for > something about a repeated criticism of Ansel Adams that I've run across: > that he's the Normal Rockwell of photogs; that his output is kitsch rather > than art; that his belief in beauty above all rather then social relevance, > left him on the bottom rung of fine arts. > > So I located this excellent essay: > http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/ansel-adams-but-is-it-art-749574.html > > Criticism of AA seems to boil down to a fashion thing. It seems to be safe to > like Adams again. :) > > -bmw > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
