> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of > Bruce Walker > > Certainly not to pick on you Frank, but with your words in mind have a > look at the work of this celebrated photog, Stephen Shore, who has won > more accolades and awards than the entire PDML population stacked end- > to-end ... > > http://www.masters-of-photography.com/S/shore/shore_yosemite_full.html > > A scattering of random people, too far away to connect with etc. >
They're not random. They're important elements of the composition. The compositions are much better than the examples that Larry showed. The people and other human elements in Shore's photographs are linked by their positions in the compositions. The pictures themselves are well composed and refer back to earlier artistic & photographic tradition, so they're taking part in some sort of dialogue with art history. > So what's the big deal? Or is Larry in fact the second coming of SS? In the article about Shore he talks about certainty when he takes the picture. He knows what he's doing and why he's doing it, he's not just popping shots out in the hope that something will be ok. Larry was asking, in effect, 'are these any good?'. If the photographer himself has to ask that question then he already knows the answer. In addition, Larry set them in the context of street photography, so that's the context in which we have evaluated them. Shore sets his pictures in a different context, so we should use different modes of criticism > Should he send his work to Steichen for purchase? > No harm in trying. > BTW: Stephen Shore once browsed Flickr and declared it all shit. So > that about wraps it up I guess. Good thing I've got some stuff over at > 500px. ;-) > > http://2point8.whileseated.org/2006/12/12/stephen-shore-on-certainty- > and-shit/ > he's right about flickr, of course. How could it be otherwise? That's what most of photography has always been. It's a democratic activity and it follows from the sheer numbers of people doing it that it will be almost exclusively shit (an infinite number of chimpanzees with cameras). Amongst all the shit there are sure to be some gems, just as there are among collections of old family snapshots found in attics, but most of it is necessarily crap. -- 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.
