Another thing I find interesting about this sort of issue is the role
of style. The personal style grows from the personality and, pace
Picasso and Stravinsky, most people's personalities stabilize
somewhere around mid-to-late teenage years.
What I see in most people's work is that stability - we look at a
Steve McCurry photograph and know who took it even if it's not one
we've seen before. We hear music by Shostakovich and, on a macro
level, it sounds like all the other music of Shostakovich we've ever
heard, not like Haydn or even Prokoviev.
Saliently, about this gallery of "inspiring" photographs, there's no
attribution - an example of appalling manners on the part of the
curator, incidentally - but more than that, they all look the same.
Do we feel that same loss of respect for the oeuvre when we look at a
whole book or gallery of it? Would one of those images inspire our
respect if it weren't accompanied by all the others? Is Saint Ansel
so respected because so few have ever seen anything except Moonrise,
Hernandez?
As photographers we know a lot of reasons to respect Adams. Just
solidifying the Zone system and making it so clearly workable would
be enough, even if he had not had a good sense of composition.
Setting standards for quality in landscape black and white is another
good reason to respect him. But respect and "liking" his work are
not the same. The person, like many on this forum, who instinctively
seeks out the eyes and not the rock faces, is not much going to be
attracted to Adams' work at all.
--
Emily L. Ferguson
mailto:elf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
508-563-6822
New England landscapes, wooden boats and races
http://www.landsedgephoto.com
http://e-and-s.instaproofs.com/
