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Thread: New Book Discovery

  1. #21

    New Book Discovery

    Mr. Waite: On the day after Thanksgiving I earnestly wrote about 300 words in response to your last post. After re-reading it for about the forth time, I have come to the conclusion that having a reasonable dialogue with you would be impossible.

    Why is that you ask? Simply this. Your ideas and your credibility just went into the trash bin when you made that comment on how the film "A River Runs Through It"..."ruined fishing in the west". I think this comment is symbolic of your other ideas in this thread. It's NUT'S!

    Being an avid fly fisherman, and owning an Avon river raft and almost a dozen Winston and Sage fly rods, I can say with confidence that fishing in the west has never been better in Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. Two of my Montana photography students read your comment, and after they finished laughing, I finally decided to just end this madness in attempting to reply to your whacko ideas. That fishing comment scuttled your credibility Mr. Waite. I'll bring a copy of your post to the next Trout Unlimited meeting next month. I'm sure my fishing buddies will enjoy it.

    Rave on Mr. Waite....Hell ain't half full, yet!

    This thread is over and dead....like your ideas.

  2. #22

    New Book Discovery

    QED.

  3. #23
    Founder QT Luong's Avatar
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    New Book Discovery

    Mr Waite has articulated his ideas in a fairly detailed posting where he demonstrates some familiarity about Galen Rowell's work and writings, and makes some interesting general philosophical points. To dismiss all his ideas as "nuts" and "dead" because of one illustrative example he uses, however wrong it seems to you, sounds to me somehow cavalier, especially on the part of someone who has just discovered Galen Rowell's work. As someone who owns many volumes of Galen Rowell's books, I can tell you that indeed his tone in writing about big cameras has always irritated me.

  4. #24
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    New Book Discovery

    Sorry QT, but what grates most about Mr. Waite's screed is that it drips with condescension and disdain for someone else's approach to photography because it doesn't conform to his arbitrary and narrow view of the medium's purpose.

    It's also got more than a whiff of a sentiment I find really irritating in Adams' writing as well, that the masses should know their place, and stay away from the glorious wilderness so that his superior esthetic and philosophical sensibilities won't get bruised. That his equally pretentious elevation of "the human element, the human presence, the historical context and change, and the painful and poignant ruin of a place" to a moral principle of photography renders the whole argument incoherent makes the accusation of dishonesty on Rowell's part all the richer.

    The nonsense about composition is yet another instance of overblown theory running away from reality. Plowden's a fine photographer, but just because he said something that sounds deep doesn't mean it is. The most obvious difference between Rowell and Plowden is that one shot 35mm, and the other primarily 6x6. Did you ever wonder why Hassy shooters worry about foregrounds? Did you ever try shooting in a square format? D'oh...

    No, I'm not a Rowell fan - in fact, LF B&W contact prints are more my thing. But he did what he wanted to do with his photography and his life. More power to him. On the other hand, if he, too, was intent on building elaborate structures of philosophical hot air to justify an intense disdain for ways of exploring the world photographically that were different from his own, then he and Mr. Waite deserve each other.

  5. #25

    New Book Discovery

    I'd ignored this thread after the first few posts, thinking it was just comparisons of finds on bargain book tables. Looking in today, I found the critical analysis of Rowell's work quite interesting, and Davis Waite's argument on the matter articulate and well-read. It is sad that these arguments sometimes turn personal; this was one of the more clearly stated and detailed philosophical takes on two major and, perhaps, opposing approaches to photography.

    Mr. Waite, I hope to have the privledge of arguing with you over some aesthetic issue myself someday!

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