Actually, Bill's feelings on Adams' work is pretty common among
photographers. Its fashionable in photo circles to say he sucks. His work,
like that of most photographers whose careers spread over many decades,
varies. Some is truly magnificent, some is mundane and boring, most is
neither. The portfolios of most famous photographers are carefully edited
down by museum curators for publication and exhibition, you don't see the
bad stuff...but it is there!
Adams published a lot of mundane, artistically uninspired stuff in his
'how-to' books because the photos allowed him to illustrate technical points
he was teaching in the texts. Because of the fact that many of those images
were widely published, they get included in museum exhibits of his work. I
suspect that his body of famous works would be much smaller and different if
he had just been an artist and not a writer about technical issues in
photography.
Of course, it might still be fashionable to bash him just because he is the
most famous fine art photographer in the United States, probably the only
one that nearly every person here knows by name.
--
Chris Crawford
Fine Art Photography
Fort Wayne, Indiana
260-747-5101
http://www.chriscrawfordphoto.com My portfolio
http://blog.chriscrawfordphoto.com My latest work!
On 5/28/09 6:11 AM, "Dawid Loubser" <dawidl@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi Bill. Blasphemy! (just kidding). Apart from myself, I think you are
> the only other
> person I've ever seen who does not elevate Adams to godly status. His
> work is technically
> great, yes, but so many of his shots are perfectly ordinary in my
> opinion.
>
> On 27 May 2009, at 5:51 PM, Sue Pearce wrote:
>
>> On the other hadd, I've seen prints of every size of
>> Ansel Adams work, and although technically perfect, I find them to
>> be cold.
>
> <snip>
--
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