I’m perplexed by the claim to cinematographic concern on Wall’s part, because I don’t know of any cinematographer who uses, or would approve the use of by others, a visual strategy that invariably places the subject front and center in the frame, with no significant use of the edge of the frame, no selective depth of field, no activation of the foreground, no foreground-background relationships . . . it’s a banal and tedious POV, one of the first habits they get you to break in film school. Even the purists at [the Danish film collective] Dogme 95 gave themselves more latitude. […]
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World Press Photo was founded in the Netherlands in 1955 — not coincidentally, the year in which Edward Steichen’s extravaganza, “The Family of Man,” made its debut as a traveling exhibit and a catalogue. That enormously influential show and book undoubtedly exerted a considerable influence on the way that the WPP exhibitions took form when they began. That influence can still be felt today; the individual images for the most part reiterate the classic tropes of that era, the show itself collects and sorts its contents into little more than a yearly variation on the Steichen model. […] I’m not sure if anyone today expects press photography generally, or particular stories told in that form, to change the world; I certainly don’t. At the same time, because we become what we behold, I don’t think that anyone in the field doubts that press photography is a process of perception management, and thus shapes the world in important ways. Much of the decision-making is of course in the hands of management and capital. However, I find it hard to believe that photojournalists and their agencies and their editors are entirely hapless pawns in the hands of witless and/or malevolent but all-powerful publishing cartels. […] Even at his worst musically, Dylan has never proven less than instructive. These paintings teach us nothing about Asia, about painting, or about photography as source material for visual artists. They simply tell us that Dylan, in private, has worked hard at learning the craft of painting. That may be of interest to someone who, like me, finds it rewarding to track Dylan’s activities; but it’s not enough to sustain a public show at a high-profile venue. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |
Bob Dylan: The Painter and the Photograph (5)
I have the greatest respect for Gray as a Dylan scholar. I’ve actually read the print version of his hefty 2006 Bob Dylan Encyclopedia from cover to cover; it’s eccentric but, overall, brilliant. It also contains the following statement, on page 433: “Jazz musicians generally regarded the blues, too, as beneath them, and thereby disqualified themselves from playing any of it well.” This is one of the most deeply ignorant comments about jazz by a renowned writer on popular music that I have read in my entire life. […]