That's Exactly What I Thought

[ABERS]

I've just been reading a review of the early black and white images of William Eggleston, and, whilst sipping my Earl Grey I began to form an opinion, which was echoed by the reviewer just a few lines on.

‘Eggleston portrays the site of our youth undisguised by design or nostalgia, scrubbed clean by a gaze that blends ruthless snobbery with cultural despair. We recognised this hopeless gaze and shared it.’

Took the words right out of my mouth!

Jeeves agrees as well.

[GeoffWessex]

If that's you endorsing that opinion, ABERS, I'll have to agree to disagree.... but I think you're of the same view as me..... 'Emperor's New Clothes'.

I know many people think the sun shines out of his, er, aperture. I don't.... though, strangely enough, I like the work of Martin Parr (even though Parr's work doesn't yet have that extra 'patina' that old pictures seem to gain....a.k.a. 'nostalgia').

Walker Evans is another I just 'don't get'.... along with several other post-war photographers who were given gallery space in New York.... I think the 'scene' in NY at the time just wanted to move on quickly from pictorialism.

[ABERS]

Originally Posted by GeoffWessex

If that's you endorsing that opinion, ABERS, I'll have to agree to disagree.... but I think you're of the same view as me.....

I would endorse it or otherwise Geoff, if I knew what it meant!

It's common PR practise to bamboozle the reader with unintelligble mumbo jumbo in order to make the reader, or in this case the viewer, feel somewhat inadequate and naive, provoking a reaction of nodding in agreement not wanting to appear inadequate and naive.

But there again I'm just cynical

[KeithT]

Apparently Eggleston was influenced by HCB, his black and white stuff taken right at the beginning of his career. It doesn't show, does it? I personally cannot connect with his work, and find it all too mundane and pointless. They have the snapshot feel of a five year old let loose with a kodak throw-away camera, in fact my eleven year old granddaughter has more idea about composition than he ever did. Money talks I guess.

Writers never use good, solid, truncated sentences when there is nothing good or solid to say.

[GeoffWessex]

Zackkly!

And here's another one from a local gallery here in Kingston, Ontario....

"The exhibition is titled after a passage from Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers, eliciting the poetry, passion and entropy found in Oliveira’s multifaceted fictional landscapes. Her simulated garden exaggerates the unnatural quality of most gardens and green spaces, drawing our attention to the increasingly manufactured environments that we occupy and their effect on the commodification of our desires, both real and imagined".