Is Magnum going to do anything to honor Robert Capa’s 100th birthday in October?

so when a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, it does make a sound…interesting

http://www.oculi.com.au

I haven’t started Suttree yet; it’s summer here and I’ve been busy working on the property getting it all ship-shape. We are moving a school building onto it in about a month’s time for my partner to use as her art studio. Changes…… :-)

I’m sure MW just like me defines success by creating top notch personally satisfying work. The kind of image which hangs in our dinning room wall which never tires me and I feel personally satisfied emotionally and technically.
BTW how did Suttree turn out? Was it a success?

As for the Pelligrini discussion, what I found most notable for me personally was that when I viewed his winning portfolio, I intellectually recognized each photo as good, yet it all struck me as boring. In my own opinion, this is because the larger world of photojournalism has become conditioned to think that in order for work to be truly deserving, it must be oh so grim and speak almost solely to the misery and injustice of this world. It is certainly important these miseries and injustices be documenting, but when it all begins to look cliche’, even when done by the best photographers, maybe it is overplayed to the point of losing effectiveness.

On the other discussion of success, I will add my worthless two cents as well. I think a photographer must aim for success. If one does not want to succeed at something, why bother? But to rely on cliche myself, cliche often being true, it just all comes down to the definition of success. At the end of something, a photographer might have a different definition of what success is than what s/he envisioned at the beginning.

I could give some personal examples, but I believe I have spouted enough for this weekly visit. Now I will see if I can think of something to say about the current essay, which seems to have left the Burn audience largely speechless.

I’m happy to see Eva-Maria, i think i didn’t see her face/smile this way in other pics before.

Hugs!

me I am in this space http://www.etrouko.com/imants.html

I suppose I should post some pics…. I’ve been following Burn but haven’t commented too much; just been shooting. I still seem to be getting drawn to the local punk scene as well as ticking over a few other ideas…

Here’s a link to some of last Saturday night’s gig pics…
https://picasaweb.google.com/115095641233118226708/Gig?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCKqfq4TVye61gwE&feat=directlink

For me it’s never been about a body of work, I solely search for single image. I spent too many years in the school art room concentrating and painting on one canvas at a time.
About being famous I share your worries. I take photos because it’s a necessity or an urge, I’m sorry my motives are pretty selfish. If fame suddenly appeared in my life I’d damn well welcome the extra income but everything else which comes included with fame would surely be a pain in the ass.

And the crux of the article is “if you want to be famous.” Personally, I tend to start more from the “if you want to be good” construction. Fame certainly has its uses, far beyond just the social enjoyability of being famous (which some, myself included, would find nightmarish). It opens doors to all kinds of access and provides income. And then there’s the question of legacy, of lasting fame, of being revered after we’ve passed on. Personally, I care nothing for that, at least outside any possibility that my heirs would profit. And there is no reliable cause and effect or mutual exclusivity to these questions of being famous vs being good vs being immortal. I always think of Gauguin and Van Gogh struggling, or unable, to sell their timeless masterpieces while the great majority of successful, famous in their time, painters are largely forgotten. But not all. Many have been successful in their time and achieved lasting esteem. Still, I’m guessing most of the acknowledged greats in every endeavor were more with the “if you want to be good” way of thinking than the “if you want to be famous.”

I’m not really up on the Pellegrin controversy, although I was surprised that image one first prize. I can come up with five or six more interesting images Pellegrin shot this year which are far more memorable than the assistant with weapon photo.
BTW talking of iconic or memorable images here’s a great post by the one and only brilliant Mike Johnston on The Online Photographer on the same subject…
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2013/02/so-you-want-to-be-famous-heres-how.html

But back to iconic type photos, yea, now that I think about it I’m not all that into it. Perhaps I feel that style has been too much appropriated by the advertising ethic? I’ve seen way too many commercial photographers’ work that employed painstaking artifice to recreate the look and feel of traditionally iconic documentary photography images. And now it seems to be working in reverse as well. Look at Pellegrin’s now famous images of his assistant with the gun. How different is his flow from actually hiring a model? Not very. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen similar photos in ad campaigns for jeans. And since following burn and having some idea of how the photo was created, I think of David’s iconic type image of the red haired farm boy in North Dakota. I don’t equate that with commercial photography or Pellegrinism. It was a real farm boy on his real farm and he no doubt runs around in the very location he was photographed. It’s an honest picture brilliantly executed the old fashioned way. Still, it’s not farfetched to imagine an ad campaign using a large crew and a model to come up with a similar photo to sell genetically modified wheat or DKNY jeans. I think maybe our definition of what an iconic photo looks like might have to change somewhat.