civilized ku # 493 ~ Ansel Adams nonsense
Monday, May 10, 2010 at 03:31PM 
Between storms ~ In the Adirondack PARK - Wilmington, NY • click to embiggenThe more I read about what Elliott Erwitt had to say about things Ansel Adams, the more Iam inclined to believe that Elliott doesn't hold Adams or his work in very high regard.
Quality doesn't mean deep blacks and whatever tonal range. That's not quality, that's a kind of quality. The pictures of Robert Frank might strike someone as being sloppy--the tone range isn't right and things like that--but they're far superior to the pictures of Ansel Adams with regard to quality, because the quality of Ansel Adams, if I may say so, is essentially the quality of a postcard. But the quality of Robert Frank is a quality that has something to do with what he's doing, what his mind is. It's not balancing out the sky to the sand and so forth. It's got to do with intention. ~ Elliott Erwitt
Good photography is not about 'Zone Printing' or any other Ansel Adams nonsense. It's just about seeing. You either see, or you don't see. The rest is academic. Photography is simply a function of noticing things. Nothing more. ~ Elliott Erwitt
Reader Comments (7)
That's probably, "doesn't hold Adams...". Elliott ain't dead yet. With any luck, not for a long time to come, at that.
Mark I ave been following your blog for three years, I am 62 yoa, with no formal photography training. All I know is what I learned in kindergarten, a couple of mags from the 70's like Camera 35 and I owned and read the whole Time Life Photography shabang.
So I want to know, who says "who sees it" and who doesn't?
Like I said before 6 guys standing side by side will see something different, yes or no?
Who says which shmuck got the "right" picture?
Now as I fall off my soapbox I must say this, I have learned more here from you and your followers and by reading links you provide then anywhere else.
Thanks, it is time for my meds.
Don
Been thinking about this for a while, and my state is surprisingly similar to Don's. Maybe a couple of people have said I have a "good eye" but I really don't understand the concept fully, and honestly the majority of my photographs are pretty woeful, or at least "average."
I wrote a few weeks back asking about "ku." I presume you felt it was a "troll" inquiry and never answered. But I think it has something to do with putting yourself into a (receptive?) state of mind.... possibly enabling you to "see" in a certain way.
So could you perhaps expand on this a bit? It seems to me that the way one sees at any given time can be highly dependent on one's state of mind, and that different states of mind can lead to differing levels of "seeing." So how do you control all of this and put it all together?
If I were to attend your Chautauqua as proposed in a previous message, I think I'd want to discuss this in some detail....
By the by, c'mon, fess up - you sparked up the pedestrian crossing sign a bit, didn't you?
Ansel Adams had technique. Robert Frank had soul. The distance that separates them is immense. I once attended an Ansel Adams workshop at Mono Lake. It was on B&W digital printing. It felt very odd to me. Technique was the deal, not seeing. I recall there was a grainy 35mm panorama of Mono Lake on the wall outside of the room where our computers were. It was by far my favorite photo of the whole week.
Photography is about the thing photographed - period. There is no right or wrong way to photograph things, but I find all photographs boring unless they depict something that interests me. That said, there are a few perfect photographs that one can admire highly just because of their stunning beauty - typically made by so called photographer's photographers. It's a kind of appreciation that is also common in the world of music, when a performance literally outperforms the composition. Glenn Gould's playing of Bach's three part inventions comes to mind...
The toning in this image is odd - bordering on HDR?