Eric - you wrote: "I often think about what we owe our photographic forebears. Not forgetting them is the most basic, I think."
You're right. And they knew it, too. Each autumn, I have the extraordinary privilege of taking my Study Abroad students to visit Lacock Abbey, where Fox Talbot lived and worked. On the wall of the small, but lovely museum there, they have this quote from him:
"... I do not profess to have perfected an Art, but to have commenced one; the limits of which it is not possible at present exactly to ascertain.
lonly claim to have based this new Art upon a secure foundation: it will be for more skilful hands than mine to rear the superstructure."
H. Fox Talbot, 2 February 1839
All that we do is in service to the initial impetus to record what we see and feel.
Thanks, Jeff. What a great opportunity to actually visit the place where Fox Talbot lived and worked. And the quote seems to suggest that he had some intimation of what the future of photography might be. What troubles me are two things. So many of my fellow photographers have so little knowledge of the history of our art. I was so lucky, nearly 50 years ago now, to have taken a course in the history of photography from Beaumont Newhall. Newhall had just left Eastman House and come to the University of New Mexico, where he taught for a few years prior to his death. The course left me with a clear sense that I wasn't working alone, but was stepping into an ongoing river of art and craft. The other thing I worry about is that some folks seem to get stuck back in the past. It's odd to see so many photographers parked in the little parking lot where Ansel Adams made the Moonlight Hernandez photo, trying it seems to make the same photo. Anyway, how we react with our history seems to be an ongoing process.
Woah... a photo history class with Newhall - so very very cool. Your statement: "The course left me with a clear sense that I wasn't working alone, but was stepping into an ongoing river of art and craft." is exactly it.
Heraclitus (I think) said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” I think the problem you're articulating (and that I agree with wholeheartedly) is that with a lot of folks is that they haven't made the connection between self and subject - they can only reiterate what has come before - imitation vs. inspiration.
Thanks for sharing that interesting analysis and comparison between those works!!
Hey Brennan - Thanks for the kind words! Hope all is well in academia.
Eric - you wrote: "I often think about what we owe our photographic forebears. Not forgetting them is the most basic, I think."
You're right. And they knew it, too. Each autumn, I have the extraordinary privilege of taking my Study Abroad students to visit Lacock Abbey, where Fox Talbot lived and worked. On the wall of the small, but lovely museum there, they have this quote from him:
"... I do not profess to have perfected an Art, but to have commenced one; the limits of which it is not possible at present exactly to ascertain.
lonly claim to have based this new Art upon a secure foundation: it will be for more skilful hands than mine to rear the superstructure."
H. Fox Talbot, 2 February 1839
All that we do is in service to the initial impetus to record what we see and feel.
Thanks, Jeff. What a great opportunity to actually visit the place where Fox Talbot lived and worked. And the quote seems to suggest that he had some intimation of what the future of photography might be. What troubles me are two things. So many of my fellow photographers have so little knowledge of the history of our art. I was so lucky, nearly 50 years ago now, to have taken a course in the history of photography from Beaumont Newhall. Newhall had just left Eastman House and come to the University of New Mexico, where he taught for a few years prior to his death. The course left me with a clear sense that I wasn't working alone, but was stepping into an ongoing river of art and craft. The other thing I worry about is that some folks seem to get stuck back in the past. It's odd to see so many photographers parked in the little parking lot where Ansel Adams made the Moonlight Hernandez photo, trying it seems to make the same photo. Anyway, how we react with our history seems to be an ongoing process.
Woah... a photo history class with Newhall - so very very cool. Your statement: "The course left me with a clear sense that I wasn't working alone, but was stepping into an ongoing river of art and craft." is exactly it.
Heraclitus (I think) said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” I think the problem you're articulating (and that I agree with wholeheartedly) is that with a lot of folks is that they haven't made the connection between self and subject - they can only reiterate what has come before - imitation vs. inspiration.