On 6/27/06, Bob W <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The pretentious statement categories, of course! > > Pretentious statements seem to be applied, not necessarily by the > photographer, most often to 'street' photographs and to 'art' > photographs. Examples abound.
I have to admit, my question was rather rhetorical. I know what my feelings are WRT hearing such questions. Usually I feel like something of an idiot, because invariably my answer is "I dunno." I feel stupid because I feel like I ~should~ have an answer, but usually it would be "Well, it is what it is; it was there and I took it. Either you like it or you don't. I liked it, and chose to share it. If you don't like it, I can't see how knowing 'what I was trying to say' will affect the pleasure or emotion you derive from viewing it." I don't know much about art and art theory, and I'm sure that many of you will recall that I can be rather vehement in stating that I'm no artist. I've always thought that one of the things that define art is whether the viewer perceives it as such, not whether "the artist" intends it as art, and I always wonder why a viewer would question the motives or "power of communication" (for lack of a better term) of a photographer if the viewer "doesn't get it". I suppose I also feel some frustration that (as Bob points out) some types of photographs get "the question" and others don't. Not to pick on sunsets or landscape or nature photographs, but I haven't heard one person say ask of the photographer of a bird on a branch, "What were you trying to say?" Yet, one hears it all the time of abstracts, semi-abstracts, "street" photographs and other such genres, and I wonder why. cheers, frank -- "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." -Henri Cartier-Bresson -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
