Chapter on Dogs
Just got this email from Andres. The last sentence made me laugh outloud.
hey e! you know, its rare to find a photographer that is passionate, and eloquent when talking about their photography. especially photojournalists. i dont know why that is. i guess because we live through images, maybe somewhere something is lost, or cant be translated, of course, in art. ive been thinking a lot about this recently. talking about art.
i guess in the case of ashley gilbertson vs. paolo pellegrin, i think photojournalists should at least be able to talk about there subject matter, and paolo couldnt do that. he's italian, maybe that had something to do with it.. most photojournalists have a grab and go mentality, rarely take the time to absorb and reflect, and i think thats more the problem. i much more enjoy talking to writers than photojournalists. my conversations with photojournalists always end up being about form, or tools. bores the shit out of me.. i dont know ashley gilbertson, but he seems like one of those few photojournalists that can talk about what they do.. ill check out the link.
the photographer that has inspired me more than any through words is robert adams, a landscape photographer who has been committed to the american west for 30 years, who is also an english professor, and a mcarther genius. read "why people photograph", as a writer and photographer, you will really love it.. my favorite chapter : "Dogs".
1 comment:
Thanks for the recommendation! That last line alone would have sold me on it. :)
I noticed the other day (at that law school formal in the art museum) that I look at art differently, and I think it is because I have been taking more pictures this past year and learning more about photography. For example, I noticed a subject was placed oddly in this one picture I liked (a painting I had seen before). Or the shadows and light in another picture. Or the way this one painting was 3/4 sky and 1/4 fishing village in the foreground.
It was nice for me, as someone who's only tried to figure out larger abstract meaning in pictures to notice these more technical details and ask why the artist might have chosen to paint them this way. It seems like the photographers at the conference you mentioned might suffer from the opposite problem.
And I'm starting to understand why the ones who create might also turn out to be the best interpreters.
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