A Salute to Garry Winogrand

[Rob C]

Been there already. Still don't agree. His stuff is sketchy. He jumps from one kind of feeling to another. Garry shot a lot of different subjects but the internal feeling was pretty consistent. It was the internal feeling I get from this picture.

Russ, you are far too kind.

;-)

Rob

[RSL]

Well, as you know, I hate to be insulting, Rob.

[Rob C]

Well, as you know, I hate to be insulting, Rob.

;-)

I was just reading again the introduction to the Interiors part of Leiter's two-volume book of black/white photographs. The essay is well written as essay, but as I happen to have been a Leiter fan since about '59 or '60, I take exception to the way the essay runs. It, in my opinion, is full of curator-speak and probably does more to confuse and misinform than would something totally straightforward. I find there's sometimes something really nasty about art-writing, where the writer tries to create a personality for his subject that is a creation, a fabrication or projected extention of the person. This seems to me to be the case here, where the few Leiter video interviews I have found would appear to reveal a man with a very less planned approach to his pictures than the writer suggests. From the horse's mouth, photographs were simply things seen, moments caught on the hop. He saw what was there. In fact, I get the distinct impression that Leiter's entire life was something that happened to him more than anything he planned. I didn't know anything of this when I first saw his work and fell in love with it, but he was still a young guy then, and so time hadn't played out its longer game. For either of us.

In fact, I go as far as to say that at least part of the later attraction I feel to his work is exactly because of his attitude, which, truth to tell (and as much as one can ever know of it from afar), pretty much mirrors my own, where planning has never been a big thing. Many of the good things have come to me by themselves, where many of those I chased so hard always eluded me.

The older I get the more I come to believe that what's for you will come to you and what's not never will. But, regardless, you still have to keep trying. Just like the lottery: you gotta be in it to win it.

Rob

[RSL]

I agree with you about "art writers," Rob. The thing most of them seem to miss is that the artist isn't the art, any more than the mother is the child.

I'm not as steeped in Leiter's work as you are, but I'm maybe a bit more than casually familiar with it. Leiter did a lot of street. There's no way in the world to "plan" street. You walk out with a camera and, as HCB said, "look." Looking is everything. Planning is a waste of time.

And, as you say, what you get in life and out of life is beyond your ability to plan for. But it's not beyond your ability to work for, even though what you get for your work may not be what you expected.

[Rob C]

I agree with you about "art writers," Rob. The thing most of them seem to miss is that the artist isn't the art, any more than the mother is the child.

I'm not as steeped in Leiter's work as you are, but I'm maybe a bit more than casually familiar with it. Leiter did a lot of street. There's no way in the world to "plan" street. You walk out with a camera and, as HCB said, "look." Looking is everything. Planning is a waste of time.

And, as you say, what you get in life and out of life is beyond your ability to plan for. But it's not beyond your ability to work for, even though what you get for your work may not be what you expected.

Why does wisdom only come with age?

If there's an answer, I'd suggest it's because we have, by then, had ample time to digest and - perhaps - diagnose our mistakes. As the saying goes, the man who never made mistakes never made anything.

;-)

Rob (VP Pensionista Society of Greater Elsewhere)

P.S. The Society welcomes newer old members. ¿?