Photo Fight Club #2: Bullock v. Adams

[ageorge]

Hyperbole Super Bowl: Wynn Bullock versus Ansel Adams

... and the winner is ... you decide


Wynn Bullock: Stark Tree



Ansel Adams: Tetons and Snake River

[Colin Graham]

Bullock rocks!

[Maris Rusis]

I voted for Wynn Bullock but it isn't a fair contest. A.A.'s body of work is greater and grander but the very first high quality reproduction of a perfect (!) large format landscape I ever saw was Wynn Bullock's "Horsetails and Log, 1957."

That was in 1962. I was a smart-alek kid interested in the arts and I was reading the big photo books in the Toowoomba Municipal Library. Turning the page brought up Horsetails and Log. I had no idea a photograph could be so good. It still gives me goosebumps to think of it.

[Walter Calahan]

Saint A is wonderful, and when his content and print quality merge he's great.

But there is an emotional quality of Wynn Bullock that goes much further.

[ageorge]

Adams and WTF are tied! How sad.

[Frank Bagbey]

Bullock was fantastic, especially his way with models like his daughter, if you know what I refer to...but to me it is like comparing apples and oranges. I love them both. Sometimes I feel like an apple and sometimes I feel like an orange. Both are pretty good.

[Merg Ross]

I see nothing to compare. They were two masters who used film and printed gelatin silver. Where is the fight?

[ageorge]

Frank says they are apples and oranges and Merg says they are the same, nothing to compare. Hummm, interesting.... I probably have more in common with Franks point of view. Their esthetics are very different in some fundamental ways, but they also have a lot in common. For one thing, they both employed hyperbole, Bullock's is more otherworldly, ethereal. Adams use is more theatrical in nature (ha ha). Anybody think there is a connection between the hyperbolic and modernism? Is hyperbole a modernist trait? Maybe. Would anybody say Crewdson is hyperbolic?

[Ross Chambers]

Ah, we're slowly reaching the keyword: "Hyperbole"

Shorter Oxford: excess, exaggeration
1 (Rhetoric) A figure of speech consisting of exaggerated statement, used to express strong feeling or to produce a strong impression, and not intended to be taken literally.
2 Excess, extravagance.

It's a tie! Not that I'd fold up the Wista and leave if a shot like either presented itself! Not that I could ever achieve the result!

But they are both packed to the gunwhales almost to sinking point.

Regards - Ross

[MIke Sherck]

After thinking about it, I can't see any basis for choosing one over the other: they're both outstanding images.

I suppose I'd be lousy on an exhibit jury...

Mike