Paul Stenquist wrote: >I think some of Vivian Meyers images are nice, but many are very ordinary. >I think she got a lot of attention in part because it was a garage find. >A trove of unknown work from a mysterious source.
Even assuming your statement is true, that would be precisely the point: That even ordinary images can be of great interest or historical importance (or even simple "popularity" - there's nothing wrong with that) long after the fact. We can't judge now what future generations will deem significant. No one could have guessed at the time it was taken that that snapshot of Anne Frank (which is even more banal than anything Vivian Meyers took) would have become one of the icons of the 20th century. Countless other examples exist of photographs turning up of important people taken before they became famous, from Abraham Lincoln to John Lennon. Things, places or events that became significant after they were captured in banal snapshots (the Titanic). Even critical evidence about important events has turned up retrospectively in what were thought to be throwaway images. Someone may yet discover an old shoebox of photos with one that shows the second gunman on the Grassy Knoll (or a photo of JFK's assassination that clearly shows there *wasn't* anyone on the Grassy Knoll). I don't see anyone or anything being harmed by people archiving their mediocre images. One of them may contain the 3rd grade portrait of the guy who discovered the cure for Aids in the year 2050. And if it doesn't? No skin off my nose. -- Mark Roberts - Photography & Multimedia www.robertstech.com -- 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.
