Theory: December 2006 Archives

Great interview with John Szarkowski in LA Weekly.

Some photographers think the idea is enough. I told a good story in my Getty talk, a beautiful story, to the point: Ducasse says to his friend Mallarmé — I think this is a true story — he says, “You know, I’ve got a lot of good ideas for poems, but the poems are never very good.” Mallarmé says, “Of course, you don’t make poems out of ideas, you make poems out of words.” Really good, huh? Really true. So, photographers who aren’t so good think that you make photographs out of ideas. And they generally get only about halfway to the photograph and think that they’re done.

(via MAN)

Over the past few weeks, the Guardian's arts blog has been accepting suggestions for the 50 greatest art works of all time. They've posted the results thus far (not entirely sure how this works, but whatever) and after a quick glance I see photography is completely unrepresented. Granted, the other media have a heckuva head start, but still...