civilized ku # 382 ~ damn it - a clarification

Flowers arrangement ~ Montreal, CA • click to embiggenYesterday's entry, damn it raised a couple responses, not the least of which was the wife's admonition to "don't even think about it" which was followed by some vague notions re: finding an apartment uptown and the sanctity of marriage. But, Anil Rao was far less confrontational in his comments. Re: comment # 1:

1) Why not "exquisite BW pictures" or even just "exquisite pictures?" Would those pictures have been less worthy if they were not made using Hasselblad gear?

To be clear, I used the phrase "Exquisite BW Hasselblad Pictures!" because, within a nano-second or less of seeing the pictures (through the gallery window), I knew without a doubt that the pictures had been made with a Hasselblad camera. I knew this for a fact by drawing upon years of experience of viewing "Exquisite BW Hasselblad Pictures", during which time I became quite familiar with the "signature look" of a Hasselblad picture. And, have no misgivings about it, there is a signature Hasselblad look.

Now, it's is probably more accurate to state that it is actually the signature look of Carl Zeiss optical glass than it is of the Hasselblad camera body/mechanics. Much has been written about the legendary Zeiss lenses, some of it fan-boy ravings but most of it quite accurate and justified. The lens, especially when mated to a two-and-a-quarter negative, deliver a print quality - clarity, sharpness, luminescence, smoothness, tonality - that is unmatched in the picture making world.

That said, my descriptive phrasing re: the pictures in question, was a reaction not so much to the picture's intellectual / emotional expressive qualities but rather to their look and feel as tactile objets d'art - the print, in and of itself, as a thing, a physical object. To wit, an object of great beauty. And, from my experience with such things, it was obvious to me that their tactile beauty was inexorably linked to their Hasselblad-ness.

However, let me be clear on one point. I am certain that the picture maker would have / could have achieved the same degree of intellectual / emotional expression - such as it is to be found in her pictures - by any number of other camera-based means. And, depending upon one's POV vis-a-vis her expression (re: her I/E POV), one might be inclined to describe the pictures as just "exquisite pictures".