On 11-09-20 2:11 PM, Bob W wrote:
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
Paul Stenquist
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.
I think you're misreading the article. I think Bruce is right about it being
a fashion thing, but I think his characterisation of the critics of AA is a
strawman, not what they actually claim.
Well, perhaps not words as strong as kitsch, but there's this remark
from no less than HCB himself:
William Turnage: Well, he and Edward Weston ...were both criticized
because they weren't photographing the social crisis of the 1930s, and
Cartier-Bresson said that, "The world is going to pieces and Adams and
Weston are photographing rocks and trees...."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/ansel/filmmore/pt.html
[Vicki Goldberg] "In the 1960s, art lost faith in beauty too, preferring
Campbell's soup cans and rows of bricks to sunsets," Goldberg writes.
"At the same time, people were becoming aware that the land Adams found
so achingly beautiful scarcely existed outside his photographs any
longer." She repeats this notion later on: "In fact, a good part of the
wilderness that is left exists mainly in Ansel Adams's photographs,
which is what most people see anyway—landscapes not of earth but of
emulsion."
Kenneth Brower does an admirable and thorough job of fending off all of
Adam's critics, including an accidental critic: John Szarkowski ...
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2002/07/brower.htm
I read the article as pointing out the mainstream thinking among the
chattering classes about Adams, then going on to give a different
perspective by placing him squarely in the American tradition of sublime
landscape painting and writing.
As for Darren's comment in a different reply about critics, this is exactly
their function - to explain the works, suggest where they belong in whatever
tradition, and then perhaps to give a personal comment about the work, one
that's informed by a broad knowledge about the subject.
Seemed like a fairly reasonable article to me, given that it was just a
review for a newspaper. The thing about f/64 isn't important - it's not a
technical article for photographers.
B
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
-bmw
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