Originally Posted by
paulr
szarkowski once suggested that american photography could be seen as existing between the poles of walker evans and edward weston .. walker's work being about ideas, and weston's work about pleasure. basically a cerebral/sensual dichotomy.
it's the one large point of his that really confused me, though, as i find great sensual pleasure in evans' work, and lifetime worth of ideas in weston's ... and i feel that each has taken some individual pictures that could be mistaken as work of the other.
i assume he wrote this before he'd seen (or been forced to accept) the more purely consceptual work of the 80s and 90s, which can sometimes make evans look like a hedonist.
at any rate, i'd agree there are people who are heavily biased towards or against work with a cerebral component. but i know people who love work that's built almost purely on sensual and esthetic foundations who have problems with work that's merely pretty. there's a difference between work that deeply explores formal or other esthetic concerns, and work that shows us nothing but familiar and superficial versions of prettiness. this is one of the things that ansel clones get accused of, and what some accuse ansel himself of, concerning work he did at some points in his life.
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