Conscientious

Dr. Colberg,

I'm real happy to see you provide a link to the Winogrand article. I didn't expect you to spell his name correctly considering your disdain for "Street photography" Your line: "If you like street photography, take a walk down the street" is kinda funny, but makes me think about your qualifications to be a curator and arbiter of photographic taste. Taste is subjective of course, but when you consider just a handful of people who've practiced SP over the years, to dismiss their work as boring makes you look foolish. Robert Frank, Cartier-Bresson, William Klein, let alone Garry Winogrand and others like Lee Friedlander are too talented to be lumped into a category which does have a ton of bad photographs in it. The small camera has it's own magic and you're too smart to argue otherwise.

I'm not into classical music, but imagine if someone like me said that Mozart or Beethoven was boring. Would anyone pay any attention to someone like that? Would that person make a valuable contribution to the world of classical music?

I am comparing Robert Frank & HCB to them, and think that if you had said: "most street photography that I see today sucks", I'd agree with you 100%.

I forgot to mention Andre Kertesz who was "OK"

I guess it's time to repeat the mantra again, namely that it's all a matter of taste. Needless to say, whether the fact that I make selections based on my personal taste disqualifies me as a "curator and arbiter of photographic taste" is not quite clear since it contains a problem: If I am not allowed to let my own taste guide me as an "arbiter of photographic taste" (your words, not mine) then what is it that such an "arbiter" should use? A dice? A horoscope? Moon phases?

So if you don't agree with the selections that are based on my taste then that's too bad, but ultimately, it's just the way it works when people meet who have different tastes. You (and I) will have to live with that. You can always start your own blog and create your own personal selections.

PS: I do agree, though, that Beethoven and especially Mozart are amazingly boring. I prefer Penderecki or Shostakovich.

Hey Jorg,

I apologize for being an ass. I always say how subjective all this stuff is, and then go against that when I discover someone who's taste is the exact opposite of mine. Maybe I just couldn't imagine all of the photographers I named, being of no interest to you. I really thought that you'd make an exception for William Klein or Kertesz or someone, anyone. I was wrong.

Quick, if you were sitting in the library and had half an hour to kill, would you pick up a copy of "The Decisive Moment" or the New York Post?

Just kidding...

I thought it would be good to be clear about taste. Which of those photographers I like or not is a different issue (for example, I quite like a lot of Kertesz' work, albeit not his later - NY - stuff).