Proposal: Photographers Who Are Not Adams Or Weston Month

[Capocheny]

This is almost a self parody, unintentional as it may be. Nicolai, you are the one talking about Adams and Weston. This is your thread. If you think this group talks about Adams and Weston too much and you don't like it, why the heck are you starting yet another thread about Adams and Weston?

If you don't like what other people are talking about, don't participate on those threads. Instead, start you own thread on a topic you are interested in. That's a technique called "leadership by example." But be forewarned. Just because you lead doesn't mean anyone is going to follow.

As they (used to) say on the basketball floor, "get up or go home."

Well stated Bruce.

Funny... someone who doesn't want to discuss a particular subject bringing up the very subject he doesn't want to discuss!

Cheers

[Daniel_Buck]

I don't know about anyone else, but to me Weston's images don't move me like Adams' do. I was just at the Getty this weekend where there were a few rooms full of Weston's photographs. A few I really enjoyed, but most I did not have taste for. Ansel's photos however, are very enticing to me! Probably because I am more a landscape shooter than a portrait or nude shooter. They are mentioned so often because their work is great!

Trumpet players will 'holy-ify' Louis Armstrong, Maynard Ferguson, Miles Davis and so on. Just as will any other type of art form, there are those who stand out (past or present!) and who are greatly looked up to and studied! I see no reason to stop mentioning them!

That's my thoughts anyway. Take them for what you will.

[Paul Metcalf]

See? Here we go again.

I'm smelling a troll...

[Nicolai Morrisson]

No, really. I'm actually not trolling. I meant that: it was a perfect example of how conversations about other things devolve into being about Adams and Weston, or Adams vs. Weston, and the original topic is derailed. I think it proves my point.

And I did not bring up Adams and Weston, except to say that it would be nice to talk about someone else for a change. This is different from bringing them up to discuss them; I brought them up to not discuss them.

I thought I made it perfectly clear in my original post that I have nothing against either of them, and that I recognized that they've made significant contributions and have had massive influence. I like both of their work, and Adams' Camera/Negative/Print books have taught me a great deal. All I'm saying is that there's a lot of other great work out there, too, and that the way in which these two are discussed often gets in the way of discussing anything else.

I, personally, would enjoy being able to discuss LF photography without most threads turning into the minutes of a meeting of the Ed & Ansel Fan Club and/or Appeal To Religious Figures To Settle All Arguments Department, for one month. I'm not asking for the other 91.6% of the year.

[Brian Ellis]

I care because whenever either of them come up, the conversation tends to devolve into a reenactment of the same old scene from a very old play, and whatever discussion may have been going on gets hijacked away. To me, it tends to be an interestingness extinguisher. It's not a matter of just skipping the Ansel & Ed messages and reading the rest, it's that once they're mentioned, there's usually no "rest" left to read.

To turn the question around, why should I care what you think of the "hey let's take a break from these guys for a bit" thread? For the same reason I think you should care about this: because it affects the community as a whole. We don't have an unlimited amount of time to talk about things, so to some degree, online discussion is zero-sum: more time talking about Group f/64 means less time talking about other things, and there's a lot more out there that I think is worthy of attention.

When a good number of conversations end up turning into the same thing over and over again, it makes a community a less interesting place to be, and there's less motivation to participate in it.

In other words, since you find these subjects uninteresting nobody else should find them interesting or wish to discuss them. Could you let us know what other subjects you find uninteresting so that we'll be sure not to bore you?

I also don't quite get the logic that says more time talking about Group f64 means less time talking about other things. That seems to imply that each of us has only a limited number of topics that we can raise for discussion, or that the forum has only a finite amount of space each day in which to post messages, neither of which is true.

[Chuck Pere]

Didn't Gomez Addams use a Weston meter?

Good one. Thanks for the laugh.

[MIke Sherck]

That seems to imply that each of us has only a limited number of topics that we can raise for discussion, or that the forum has only a finite amount of space each day in which to post messages...

I only read one post a day, but its perfect!

[John Kasaian]

Hey, it's nice to be appreciated I got a chuckle out of the Britney Spears comment!

[Nicolai Morrisson]

I also don't quite get the logic that says more time talking about Group f64 means less time talking about other things. That seems to imply that each of us has only a limited number of topics that we can raise for discussion, or that the forum has only a finite amount of space each day in which to post messages, neither of which is true.

Actually, they're both technically true and are not subject to debate--the server doesn't have a storage array of infinite capacity because such arrays do not exist, and each of us does have a finite number of topics we can raise because humans don't live forever--but that's not what I was getting at, and I think you know it. I said exactly what I meant, no more, and no less: "we don't have an unlimited amount of time to talk about things". If this is not true for you, please share your secret of immortality with the rest of us!

This is becoming a lot like arguing religion or politics: rather pointless, because faith exists beyond the grasp of reason. This discussion now seems to be about scoring points and cheering, regardless of whether the "scoring" statements are true or even make sense.

[Brian Ellis]

In which case Atget has certainly had more influence on photography as a whole and as a practice.

Adams and Weston may (possibly) have influenced more LF photographers (and, strangely enough, HEGR types)

I think we all realize that it's impossible to select a single photographer and say that he or she has been the most "influential." But these kinds of discussions can nevertheless be interesting and sometimes informative. So without intending to be argumentative, and with a genuine interest to understand, I wonder if you'd explain why you think Atget has had the most influence on the course, history, and practice of photography. If I had to pick the most influential photographer in that sense, and recognizing that the word "influential" itself leaves many open questions, and confining myself to influence in America (since I know little about what has influenced Euopean and Asian photography), Adams would probably have come to mind first, then maybe Walker Evans or Robert Frank.

Atget wouldn't have occurred to me. I say that mainly because he had zero influence while alive and would have died a complete unknown except that Berenice Abbott saved his negatives and began promoting his work. Which isn't to say that an artist can have no influence after death if he or she had none before, but simply that the various avenues by which someone aquires influence during his or her life were closed to Atget. I understand that since his death his work has attracted a lot of attention and critical acclaim and continues to do so today but I haven't thought of it as having the kind of influence on other photographers that Adams, Evans, and Frank's have had.

I've read Szarkowski's book about Atget, also the book "Eugene Atget and Berenice Abbott," so I know a little about Atget but not a great deal. So I'm just curious what I'm missing here. Again, this isn't intended to dispute your statement, just intersted in knowing its basis.