carstenw
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 p.177 #16 · Leica M/X/T/S/Q/CL/SL Picture Thread | |
denoir wrote:
Even if we just stick to his main body of work I think it is way too broad to be called a "project". He did street photography in France, like you can say that I do landscape photography in Sweden.
I think that isn't quite fair. Street photography in general is a huge area, as you imply, but his street photography was quite narrowly defined, almost always just one person doing something unusual (or usual!), at the just the right moment. And he did it for so long, and so well, that he pretty much defined the genre for a long time. One could say similar things about Ansel Adams. He did what he did so well, that today we have a hard time appreciating his work, since we suffer from a million copycats. Yes, HCB dabbled in a couple of other things, but we are probably talking less than 1% here. I think we should all be so focused!
Anyway, I have not attempted anything at collection level. My current photos are more intended to be viewed as standalone works and there is no real meaning on the collection level. It's not very unusual. Although thematic collections are common in photography, they are very rare in for instance paintings.
I am not so sure. Painting in general yes, but probably not painting as done by the masters. There again, we see quite tight focus in the body of their work (never all, but most). Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Picasso, Michelangelo, all had a unique and recognizable style in their prime, although they tried other things too. Of course, what a museum shows can be quite mixed. These things are expensive and few galleries/museums have decent budgets.
Which brings me to our original discussion - to bother or not to bother with exotic lenses. I'll draw an analogy to painting again. For some type of paintings the choice of brush and use of brush technique and oil paint isn't essential. The choice of brush technique and oil paint type was completely irrelevant for Kandinsky and it's quite obvious why. The strong point of his paintings is the geometry, strong color contrasts and the composition. The same goes for HCB and his 50mm.
I agree, and I also agree that it can be important. I think that for sustained project work, fringe rendering styles tend more to get in the way than help, but there will always be exceptions, of course. And note that I do most of my work at the moment with the 100MP, not exactly a neutral lens, so there are clearly limits to what I am trying to say. I draw the line somewhere between 100MP and Rokkor 58/1.2 (what are those worth, btw? I saw one today, but didn't know what it should be worth. Very nice condition, looked like this, on the far right: Rokkor 58/1.2).
The interesting question then is [...] had HCB's photos been better had he used a more diverse selection of lenses with interesting drawing styles. My answer to that is: absolutely.
Unsurprisingly, I disagree  On a few of his shots, I wish he had gotten the composition slightly better, but other than that, I really can't find flaws in his photos.
Edited on Feb 06, 2011 at 05:00 PM · View previous versions
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