Julius Schulman tells it like it is (crap)

[tim atherton]

At a new book launch for "Looking at Los Angeles" (see below - edited by Ben Stiller among others...) Julius Schulman announces "...I think this book is crap".

"Mr. Shulman prefaced his answer by saying, "Democracy is a precious thing..." and the crowd, eager for nuggets of wisdom from this legend, sort of eased back to hear what was shaping up to be a lecture of sorts as he spoke of the forces that came together to put this book of photography together. They were jolted forward in their seats with, "But I think this book is crap." I heard the gasp go through the audience, but the panelists stayed silent and poker-faced. I looked around the room and the look on everyone's face told me we were wondering the same thing - what did he just say? Did he just say this book is crap?... "more below

Nice to see he remains feisty in his 90's :-)

http://5thandspring.blogspot.com/2005/06/saturday-with-julius.html

http://www.photoeye.com/templates/mShowDetailsbyCat.cfm?Catalog=DP126

[Donald Brewster]

Well, Mr. Shulman ought to know it when he sees it at his age. Good for him. Sounds like a priceless moment. To think, an event of pretentious twaddle in LA . . . . .

[tim atherton]

BTW - I see Joerg has popped up on this list - his weblog on photography is worth checkign out regularly - found this gem on there.

http://www.jmcolberg.com/weblog/

(also, why so few images these days? was there a problem with running hotlinks? Objections?)

[Eric Biggerstaff]

This breaks me up! Way to go Mr. Shulman! I also like the cracks at Ben Stiller!

[Stan. Laurenson-Batten]

A great delivery from an established free thinker, all the better that the venue was LA!!!!

[John Cook]

Reminds me of the time a Ross Perot-type Texas billionaire was touring the big new clothespin factory in rural Maine. The little town’s pride and joy.

When the general manager asked him his opinion of their new factory, the Texan boasted, “Son, in Texas we have outhouses bigger than this”.

The manager replied, “Well, by golly, I bet you must need them”.

[Daniel Geiger]

This whole episode boils down to a he-said-she-said type of polemic. I only checked out the first link, but the reported statements on all sides lack stubstance. Editorial concept? What about it? What are the flaws? Printing quality (questioned in one of the comments) can be objectively assessed. But the quality of the photographs? Isn't that a matter of taste? Do you like Cindy Sherman? Is Rothko art? Whatever, folks. If you like it, you like it, otherwise not.

Now to JS. He does not like the editorial side, but has images in the book??? Did he not bother to check the editorial concept being such a photoheavyweight? If you don't like the project, you pull your images. Period. He seems to have a bone to pick, yes, makes good marketing hype for his next book. Ahh, don't you love LA? "Nothing is what it seems", Al Pachino said. How true.

[Mark Sawyer]

All in all, sounds more like show biz than art. On all sides.

[Jim Rice]

Too damn funny, Tim. I'm certain it was a hoot in person.

[celia]

it was a hoot in person! i hadn't planned on taking notes during the panel discussion, so i was scrambling to find paper and pen and trying to suppress my laughter the entire time.

to be clear, shulman didn't have anything negative to say about the quality of the photographs within the book (except for one, but in the context of shulman questioning why stiller included it as one of his favorite photographs), just that he thought it was a hodgepodge of pictures, unbalanced, grouped without following a certain sequence of execution, and unable to contribute to a single well-defined task - which was to be representative of a book titled "looking at los angeles". take a look at the book and see if you don't feel the same disappointment. i can understand shulman's disappointment in having the editorial vision explained to him one way, agreeing to have his photographs included, then to see it executed so poorly.