ku # 490 ~ Grace
Thursday, October 25, 2007 at 08:48AM 
Muted autumn sunset • click to embiggenRobert Adams also mentions 'grace' as a quality found in good/great pictures. By grace he means that a picture that can be "measured by the apparent ease of its execution".
He goes on to say that, "An Artwork should not appear to have been hard work." Adams mentions an emphasis on 'appear' because certainly no artwork is easy to make." He notes that much photography suggests an "embarrassing strain: odd angles, extreme lenses, eccentric darkroom technique (ed. - and today's Photoshoping) [which] reveal a struggle to substitute shock and technique for sight."
He suggests that the pictures of great photographers (and merely 'good' ones also) are marked by an economy of means, an apparently everyday relationship with their subject matter." Even though this apparent 'ease of execution' and 'everyday relationship' are deceptions (of a sort), he goes on to state that "only pictures that look as if they have been easily made can convincingly suggest that Beauty is commonplace."
Once again, I agree.
Reader Comments (1)
Amen!