film info slot (the real purpose of)

My favorite punching bag, A. D. Coleman, gave Karsh this review

 

A D Coleman in "Shows We've Seen" Popular Photography 1973-08

 

Yousuf Karsh, at the Albright-Knox Museum,

Buffalo, N.Y. (March 27-May 6).

 

Since the work of Yousuf Karsh has evidenced neither change nor growth over the past quarter-century, a retrospective exhibit like this-whose usual function is to demonstrate the development of an artist's lines of inquiry-only serves to point up the limitation arid monotony of Karsh's

uninventive style. The triviality of his body of work is manifest in the fact that there is little to be said about it now that could not easily have been said 20 years ago. Karsh seems to me perhaps the most overrated photographer of our century, one whose reputation is based on an entirely sterile, repetitive, and banal accumulation of images. His output reminds me of nothing so much as the countless changes rung by those hack painters who frequent summertime outdoor art festivals on the theme of the sad-eyed kitten or the clown on velvet. Overstylized, stilted, utterly without life or insight, Karsh's portraits apparently fill some continuing cultural need for kitsch caricatures of the world's superstars. Karsh, as a cultural phenomenon incarnate, functions as an equalizer of sorts, reducing everyone who comes before his lens to a depersonalized gargoyle. The resulting grotesqueries display-I presume unintentionally-Karsh's inability to relegate his acclaimed lighting technique to its proper place. Its total domination of virtually every image in this show points up just how much a slave Karsh is to his style and his equipment-a sad and sorry sight.

The only reason, in fact, that I bother to write about this exhibit at all is that it is the largest photographic show mounted at the prestigious Albright-Knox since that institution's courageous presentation of a controversial Photo-Secession exhibit back in 1910. Granted, the Albright-Knox has coasted on that early venturesomeness far too long. Nevertheless, to mar that unblemished record by making this ghastly travesty of photography its second major plunge into the medium was, from an historical and esthetic standpoint, the very worst kind of curatorial irresponsibility.

 

This seemed another good reason (aside from his championing of Mortensen) for not respecting Coleman all that much.

:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek: Holy hate-bombs, Batman! I wonder what Karsh did to Coleman to trigger such a torrent of barely coherent rage. Decline to photograph him, perhaps?

For those who own Konica FT's or others (I did but someone here now has them), I found the slot very handy for writing down the ASA offset to make the meter accurate with hearing aid batteries, though after a while I remembered it anyway (-2/3 by the way).

Coleman you say? Never heard of him...

 

A slightly different version, venue-wise--of the traditional corner bar pundit. And about as relevant or important.

 

Next ride at the fair!

A slightly different version, venue-wise--of the traditional corner bar pundit

In a far safer venue!