At 09:46 AM 9/30/1998 +0100, Susan you wrote:
>
>Just wanted to let you know that there are women on this list, but
>perhaps we don't participate as actively. I have noticed, however, that
>there do seem to be more men inclined toward Olympus which is curious
>since it is a relatively small camera (how about that for a
>stereotype?). Perhaps its because the equipment seems to be exquisitely
>crafted? I just re-entered using Olympus after a fifteen year Nikon
>hiatus and love both camera systems albeit they are very different in
>handling and results.
>
>I teach Art History in an Art Department at a University in Colorado and
>have been pondering the right brainedness of photography lately. Since
>I am both an academic and an "artist" I seem to be caught in a strange,
>somewhat unacceptable to academia, middle-ground and it seems that my
>brain is somewhere in between as well. After twenty years of
>photography and teaching, I tend to "see" more often than "ponder" and
>at times, in teaching, for example, it's difficult to conjure up the
>appropriate words for the images in my head or on the screen. That's
>also what's holding me back from producing a book with photographs
>(though I've written "academic" articles). Any suggestions?
>
>Susan Peirce
>
Hi Susan,
Thanks for unlurking. I understand completely the quandary about
right-left-brainedness. I have a friend who is a psycho-acoustician (it's a
research specialization in psychology, not a New Age thing as it sounds)
and he contends the dichotomy is not real, or is at least over-simplified
in general usage. Oh well. Even within a metaphor of right/left
polarization, I find myself similarly questioning which side dominates in
me. I like many of the "figuring out" or calculating aspects of both music
and photography; they seem to provide a ritualistic or gaming pleasure,
and an evenness, which offsets the aesthetic rush of creation with its
thrills and disappoitively practiced the Zone System, even
though he rejected it as involving too much math to be useful on the fly.
I have taught courses in which I have had to "explain" Hamlet or Homer, and
I can do that acceptably. However, one of my johat dramatic work
which lives in me, changing me, and which colors the way I have seen things
and will see them. I can't explain anyone else into grasping the actual
meaning of a masterpiece, or even one of my middling photographs.
I don'tnts more dimensions of expression
than we seem allowed to have. There ought to be a point at which even the
best teacher in the world is sublimely speechless. And our duty and
sometimes our joy is to keep crashing into that singular limitation, as
often and as profoundly as possible.
Joel
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