>.> they equally valid and do they overlap? Just bought a nice copy of
>Avedon's
>> 'In the American West' - 10"x8" portraits of working people in West
>Texas -
>> because it moved me. Rips the heart but is it art? Friend and family can't
>> work out why I'd spend that much (US$70ish) on a book of pictures of
>mostly
>> ugly people. Nice scene in the otherwise ordinary film 'The Truth about
>.
>
>Nor can I, Andrew. I remain amazed that the Amon Carter, an otherwise
>competent and respected museum, commissioned that has-been New York fashion
>photographer to make "a definitive statement" about people of the West - a
>commission which he used to commit assault with a camera on a great many
>unsuspecting people, not just in West Texas, but across the entire Western
>United States. Pure elitist crap! To top it off, he insisted that the
>prints (which he had no hand in printing) be mounted on inch thick titanium
>blocks for exhibition! Avedon is a man whose talent for self-promotion
>vastly outweighs his very minor remaining talent. No, it is not art. It is
>the work of a man who wants you to be convinced that he is not just "an"
>artist, but The Artist. He fails miserably because he has no soul.
>Uh, nothing personal, Andrew.
>Gary Edwards
Strong response! Can't agree. I don't think that it was his fashion work
that got the commission - although I saw the pic of the model with
elephants redone recently rather poorly. Reminded me of how good the
original was (why copy if you can't do better?) He had a history of making
celebrity portraits using the same style - white background, large format,
no cropping - and the switch to rural people was interesting. After all,
there isn't much ordinary about them.
Of the celebrity portraits, the one of Edward and Mrs Simpson, exiled,
elderly and decaying, is engraved into my mind. It is quite disturbing,
horrifyingly unsympathetic. However, I find the Western photographs mostly
very sympathetic and very revealing of a people who probably think of
themselves as ordinary but are as alien as Martians to me. I see the grime
and horror of their daily grind, their hopelessness and their hope, their
pride in what they do have - I found it intensely moving in the way that
photographs of industrial workers in the north of England (my own original
context) also engaged me many years ago. I don't feel, hear or see any
laughter, contempt or even pity in the portraits.
So he didn't print them and used several assistants - nothing unusual in
the ranks of the 'masters' and the vision was still his. I could interpret
his insistance on a difficult and expensive mounting as a demand for
respect for his subjects. :)
I once saw a book (and would love to 'refind' it) of portraits done by
someone on a US ghetto street corner - large format, where people were
invited to come along and present themselves to the camera as they wished.
Work clothes, Sunday best, whatever. It may have been more politically
correct in approach but the portraits were no less moving or revealing than
Avedon's. Would you prefer that?
It's certainly 'art' to me in its artifice and function - whether he lacks
soul invites a serious metaphysical digression but he certainly 'connected'
with his subjects. For the 'Beekeeper', he painted the subject with bee
pheronomes to get the pattern of bees on the body that he wanted - they
both got stung. I can't read empathy between photography and subject in the
photographs, but he was certainly involved with his subjects in some sense,
even if only to present them to us for our own response. Was Dorothea
Lange's 'Migrant Mother' and the other dustbowl photographs an "assault' on
those people?
Oh, when I said 'ugly' I was describing the response of those around me!
AndrewF
(who is no oil painting - check TOPE 1)
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