cyrus
2-Aug-2011, 09:06
I occasionally make interesting little discoveries pressed between the sheets of old photography books that I purchase and collect. Notes from long-ago workshops, course syllabi, newspaper or magazine clippings, even the occasional test strip. But this one was a particular gem: a 1975 edition of Photographers Forum (http://www.mediafire.com/?3bzkj8f6ccubc5j), typewritten, featuring the transcript of a debate about the meaning and purpose of photography between participants such as Ralph Gibson (http://www.ralphgibson.com/), Louis Stettner (http://www.loustettner.com/), Roy deCarava (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/arts/29decarava.html?pagewanted=all), Walter Rosenblum (http://www.rosenblumphoto.org/), Duane Michals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Michals) and Eva Rubinstein (http://www.horvatland.com/pages/entrevues/10-rubinstein-en_en.htm).
Incidentally, Stettner's point - that the "establishment" seeks to promote a certain type of photography that is self-indulgent and out of touch with "reality" - has a certain validity in retrospect. Frances Stonor Saunders, who wrote The Cultural Cold War, the CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Cold-War-World-Letters/dp/1565846648), documents how the CIA got MOMA to promote "non-figurative and politically silent" abstract expressionism as the antithesis to Soviet socialist realism. The CIA went as far as to orchestrate a Life magazine profile of Jackson Pollack as "the greatest living artist."
[PS: I'm not sure if this publication had any relationship to the extant Photographer's Forum (http://pfmagazine.com/), which was established in 1977.]
Incidentally, Stettner's point - that the "establishment" seeks to promote a certain type of photography that is self-indulgent and out of touch with "reality" - has a certain validity in retrospect. Frances Stonor Saunders, who wrote The Cultural Cold War, the CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Cold-War-World-Letters/dp/1565846648), documents how the CIA got MOMA to promote "non-figurative and politically silent" abstract expressionism as the antithesis to Soviet socialist realism. The CIA went as far as to orchestrate a Life magazine profile of Jackson Pollack as "the greatest living artist."
[PS: I'm not sure if this publication had any relationship to the extant Photographer's Forum (http://pfmagazine.com/), which was established in 1977.]