Photographic art and camera formats

[QT Luong]

Saw in the great blog 5B4 the following comment about Bruce Davidson's Circus:

"The descriptive differences apparent in this book made me think about a conversation I had with an older photographer who challenged me to name a great contemporary artist working in 35mm today. Admittedly I was stumped for an answer as most working artists today are utilizing at least medium format if not large format cameras."

http://5b4.blogspot.com/2007/08/circus-by-bruce-davidson_11.html

I'd add another challenge: digital ?

[z_photo]

William Neill is not a hack. last places i saw his work were the Weston Gallery, Carmel and the Ansel Adams Gallery at yosemite. daily double

[BradS]

well, I would say Galen Rowell as one who recently worked in 35mm...

[BarryS]

Sebastião Salgado and Steve McCurry are two that come to mind. Both are still working and shoot 35mm. Both are great artists. The Magnum photographers are uniformly brilliant and I think most shoot 35mm or digital these days. I believe Alex Majoli at Magnum shoots digital. So, it's probably more photographers involved in reportage and social photography, although I believe the best work transcends reportage and is art. I think Nan Goldin is still shooting. I don't like him at all, but he's an art world darling--Wolfgang Tillmans. I think he uses a digital point n' shoot.

The trend in art photography over the last 10-15 years has been gigantic prints--preferably Diasec or similarly mounted and it takes a big camera to shoot that style, so 8x10 is popular with the photographers that studied in Dusseldorf with the Bechers and their many followers.

[Michael Alpert]

8x10 is popular with the photographers that studied in Dusseldorf with the Bechers and their many followers.

That is true. Still, the Bechers used 13x18cm cameras.

To respond to the original question, Costa Manos (member of Magnum) is now doing fine color work with a Leica digital camera.

[Gordon Moat]

Thomas D. Mangelsen (http://www.mangelsen.com/)
Stefan May (http://www.stefanmay.com/), who uses the pseudonym Lance Lensfield (http://lensfield.com/) for his 35mm work.

Likely many more too. I think the average internet photographer (blog or not) would rip on Robert Capa's images, unless he recognized them. There is substantially more to photography than using specific gear.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography (http://www.gordonmoat.com)