I found Dave Hill's "portraits" interesting in a revolting sort of way.
They have the aesthetic quality of paintings on velvet. As individuals, the
subjects are caricatured rathered than portrayed. I suppose that's
understandable as it seems in the media these days only people who are
self-caricatures achieve stature. Part of what I find revolting is that I
suspect many of the subjects take this crap seriously.
I expect Mr. Hill has some fun doing this work, and makes lots of money.
Personally, I'd tire pretty quickly of work based on technical gimmickry and
a very restricted (everybody's a wannabe gangsta) aesthetic.
Maybe I'm just envious, but I don't think so.
John Poirier
PS. I recently saw a multimedia slide show made by a veteran PJ who
presented it as the future of photojournalism. It was feeble in a way that
I think is inherent in the nature of multimedia slide shows. Made me sad to
see a good talent wasted.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nick Wright" <[email protected]>
To: "Pentax-Discuss Mail List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, March 23, 2009 1:03 PM
Subject: Re: Directions of photography?
Believe it or not this is one reason I chose to leave the newspaper
photography business.
It's not just wedding photography. It's universal.
Everything right now is about the gimmicks.
The big thing in the pj world a couple years back was strobist. Or
it's multi-media slideshows.
The big thing in the portrait world right now is the "Dave Hill" look
(http://www.davehillphoto.com/). I used to somewhat enjoy looking
through Rangefinder magazine when it came in, now it's filled with
that stuff.
Good ole plain straight photography is boring.
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