Thanks, Rob. I finally got enough time this morning to spend some of it with Gibson’s work. I like it better the more I look at it. He understands what street photography is all about. There’s plenty of ambiguity in a lot of those pictures, and ambiguity is part of what makes both good street photography and good poetry work.
I certainly agree about Leiter, though my all-time favorites are HCB, of course, and beyond him, Walker Evans, Winogrand, and above all, Robert Frank. I think I’d like to have known Elliott Erwitt, because his sense of humor strikes a particular bell with me.
Of course people think success is in the camera. They’re told that at every turn. There doesn’t seem to be even one photo magazine any longer that deals with photographs -- with the kind of criticism I remember Pop Photo giving The Americans. The criticism was wrong, but it was a discussion of what matters: the photographs. Then there’s this morning’s ad from Panasonic about a camera “built for camera enthusiasts.” Yeah. They actually admitted the thing is for people interested in gadgetry.
