Joel Meyerowitz interview

[Vaughn]

I never had much "extra" cash to buy many books, but Cape Light is one that I bought. I have always felt that Meyerowitz uses color as part of the image...not just as something that happens to be in front of the camera. Brian, I think that is what can take a color photograph beyond the pretty postcard stage.

If I were to make color photographs on the same level as my B&W, I would have to do a bit of reading on color theory...actually that has been on my list of things to do for a long time, as I think a better understanding of color would also inform/benefit my B&W work.

Vaughn

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

By all means, lets keep doing the same old romantic landscape cliches.

C'mon Kirk, this is a cheap shot. What if I said, "yeah Kirk, move on to digital and keep doing the same old Wagnerian B&W shots you have been doing for the last 30 years,only just bigger" ? Not nice is it, I am surprised you posted this comment.

PViapiano posted he is surprised about the negativity, well I am also surprised about the negativity exhibited egainst someone who expresses his/her opinion. Perhaps Robert posted his opinion a bit too forcefully, but in the end it is his opinion and a matter of taste, his does not run in the same vein as many of you do.

I get where he comes from, Eggelston, Jeff Wall, Stephen Shore, etc, etc...are all photographers which I feel have elevated the mediocre to a from of worship, but this is just my opinion and I am told by the resident art experts I know nothing about photography. So what! It is my opinion and it is nothing to get so exited about.

Then again, Photohistorian posted "just show up in the morning and press the shutter", well, maybe this is why he is a photohistorian and not a photographer.....

[Kirk Gittings]

Jorge, as you know I appreciate both well done traditional work in well worn aesthetic veins (like yours and mine and Roberts) as well as good visionary new work, but I object to this straight jacket vision that tries to freeze aesthetics in some post-industrial romanticized nonsense.

What a bore photography would be if the aesthetics of the medium never bloomed beyond the vision of the pre 1960's

[paulr]

I wonder how many people here, if they met Meyerowitz at a dinner party, would tell him to his face that his work is "pure, unadulterated crap." No matter how little they liked it.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Jorge, as you know I appreciate both well done traditional work in well worn aesthetic veins (like yours and mine and Roberts) as well as good visionary new work, but I object to this straight jacket vision that tries to freeze aesthetics in some post-industrial romanticized nonsense.

What a bore photography would be if the aesthetics of the medium never bloomed beyond the vision of the pre 1960's

Fair enough Kirk, but on the other hand, is work that swings the pendulum enterily the other way all that good? I mean, a tricycle on a drive way?!? A wash cloth?!? And this is great and visionary work?

When someone states cathegorically that photographers like this are the most influential in the last xxxx years, I think some of us should be allowed to disagree or at least be able to say not to me they have not.

[paulr]

Calling someone's work influential doesn't mean it influenced everyone or that it influenced you.

Personally I don't care for Cindy Sherman's work from the '70s and '80s, and I certainly wasn't influenced by it. But I'd have to be blind to deny that it was hugely influential in the photography world and parts of the art world beyond it.

[Kirk Gittings]

Jorge,

Holding up as the "masters" of landscape photography, a very narrow group of people who all work in the same narrow vein with a 50 year old aesthetic relegates landscape photography to the attic of history.

Cape Light, with its faults which I have written about before on other threads, is a widely recognized masterpiece with a stature that none of the "masters" mentioned have even come vaguely close to.

[Mike Lopez]

....

When someone states cathegorically that photographers like this are the most influential in the last xxxx years, I think some of us should be allowed to disagree or at least be able to say not to me they have not.

When someone states categorically that a photographer's work is pure, unadulterated crap (and makes similar comments any time that photographer's name comes up), I think some of us should be allowed to disagree or at least be able to say "Not to me, it's not."

[Kirk Gittings]

What would traditional photographers do without the foil of contemporary photography?

[Kirk Keyes]

What would traditional photographers do without the foil of contemporary photography?

I don't think many traditionalists even really care about comtemporary photography. They just enjoy doing what they are doing.