Sharpness is a bourgeois concept?

Dali · Jan 21, 2016

I would not say that sharpness is a bourgeois concept. Looking at this video (I did not watch it entirely though) I would say that sharpness is less part if the photographic experience. After all, why not as long as taking "sharp" pictures is not against the law...

Dali · Jan 21, 2016

Ko.Fe. said:
HCB was bourgeois himself. Like many with left, socialist declarations without living to it by themselves. We did our part in USSR, while bourgeois like HCB where wealthy from childhood.

Sorry but I don't see the contradiction.

Sirius Glass · Jan 21, 2016

Ko.Fe. said:
HCB was bourgeois himself. Like many with left, socialist declarations without living to it by themselves. We did our part in USSR, while bourgeois like HCB where wealthy from childhood.

Dali said:
Sorry but I don't see the contradiction.

Logic is not a requirement on the internet.

DREW WILEY · Jan 21, 2016

It always amazes me that when most people try to revive some antique look or methodology in order to be new and creative, it just comes out looking like an antique wannabee instead of anything fresh and exciting. A bourgeois mentality is assuming that any of this has to do
with alternative equipment choices to begin with. Just get a Smartphone with a "Pretentious" app built into it, and be done with it.

Sirius Glass · Jan 21, 2016

alanrockwood · Jan 22, 2016

What I want to know is what's so wrong with bourgeois?

MattKing · Jan 22, 2016

alanrockwood said:
What I want to know is what's so wrong with bourgeois?

I don't know, isn't there there a certain discreet charm about the concept?

Tony Egan · Jan 22, 2016

Making excuses for that Truman Capote photo?

Sirius Glass · Jan 22, 2016

alanrockwood said:
What I want to know is what's so wrong with bourgeois?

MattKing said:
I don't know, isn't there there a certain discreet charm about the concept?

Yes

dplaton · Jan 21, 2018

nothing wrong with the bourgeois.
I think there is an opposition between artist aesthetic and the common one.
As a pro you must deliver sharp postcard images, in the real world there is not such an artificial sharpness.
I only know the HCB photos that are made with no commercial intention.

RalphLambrecht · Jan 21, 2018

gzhuang said:
Henri Cartier Bresson ... Enjoy

[video=youtube;8TiAsvYgyqU]

perfection is the enemy of good-enough.

guangong · Jan 21, 2018

Firstly, the HCB comment is nonsensical, as it was probably intended.
If you enjoy photography more than digital capture who cares what pictures cell phones can produce. As amateurs were have the freedom to pursue what we like to do, which includes the whole process from loading film to printing and mounting. It’s the whole process that’s enjoyable.

removed account4 · Jan 21, 2018

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeoisie

i think more people than city dwellers like sharp photographs.
i live in a place where you can travel 3 minutes outside of any of the big cities
and you are in the countryside and most people i run into while i wander the back roads
well, they like sharp photographs and they like to know what they are looking at.
and even though we have one of the best art schools in the country in our backyard .
most people don't "get art" whether it is a soft photograph or some sort of conceptual piece
like a clothesline with fresh clothes strung across a polluted river entitled "clean clothes dirty river"
what i think is funny, is that HCB decided for everyone else what was and was not "good"
just like ansel adams ( nothing worse than a fuzzy photograph of a sharp subject or whatever it was )
and people love to do what famous+successful people say, whether they are city dwellers or country folk.
the whole idea that x photography is terrible or lame because of how its made or there has to be
some sort of over arching group to determine what is good and what is not i find to be kind of wacky at best
personally speaking/regarding "photographic art" (whatever that is), i couldn't care less what HCB or ansel adams said, and it is too bad people
are so rigid that they don't allow themselves to wander off the trail a little bit. they might learn about photography and themselves.

chip j · Jan 21, 2018

I think brothels are a bourgeois concept, but HCB went to them often.

Jim Jones · Jan 21, 2018

If Lomography pleases the Lomographer, good for him. If the photographer respects the subject, and does not inflict artistic pretensions upon the viewer, good for us.

faberryman · Jan 21, 2018

For most post war lenses, sharpness, in the true sense of the word, is not a bourgeois concept, it is a given, and the maxim is an anachronism. Invoking "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept" is usually just an excuse for posting missed focus images on forums. The is a long one over at RFF where there are all sorts of mediocre images. Looking at those images, the thread title should be "Out of focus is a bourgeois concept" or "Camera shake is a bourgeois concept". HCB would hardly praise most of the examples.

Lee Rust · Jan 21, 2018

Aesthetics aside, we live in a scorekeeping culture where line pairs per millimeter or MTF curves are easily tallied and compared. High numbers are winners, low numbers are losers. For many people, that's all they need to know.

MartinCrabtree · Jan 21, 2018

I wouldn't say bourgeois. Currently over emphasized is more accurate. Would you use a soft focus lens for macro work? perhaps a long macro for portrait? Horses for courses.

Sirius Glass · Jan 21, 2018

Karl Marx gave bourgeois a bad name.

Kodachromeguy · Jan 21, 2018

Lee Rust said:
Aesthetics aside, we live in a scorekeeping culture where line pairs per millimeter or MTF curves are easily tallied and compared. High numbers are winners, low numbers are losers. For many people, that's all they need to know.

Certainly for the "photographers" (I should have used a more rude term) who fester on forums like Dpreview, scorekeeping results are all-important. That is why there is such immediate hatred of any mention of film photography, although I am always baffled why they are the least bit intimidated by inferior, low-dynamic-range, grainy, expensive, clumsy, outdated chemical-imaging film.

Alan Johnson · Jan 21, 2018

I know my place.

cliveh · Jan 21, 2018

gzhuang said:
video

chip j said:
I think brothels are a bourgeois concept, but HCB went to them often.

On what evidence do you base your knowledge of HCB's sexual habits?

Arklatexian · Jan 21, 2018

Sirius Glass said:
Karl Marx gave bourgeois a bad name.

Me bourgeois? Why hell yes I am. For that matter many people, at the time, might have considered old Karl, himself, as bourgeois. By the way, what took the place of religion as the "opiate of the masses"? Sports maybe? Certainly not film based photography. Didn't HCB quit photography and take up painting which is not as "bourgeois" in many people's opinion?......Regards!

Sirius Glass · Jan 21, 2018

Me too.

chip j · Jan 21, 2018

cliveh said:
On what evidence do you base your knowledge of HCB's sexual habits?

It's there in plain view if you read enough about him. Read his bio or pick up a copy his "Early Work" (I don't know if the reference is in there or not, but it's a Great book).

Sharpness is a bourgeois concept?

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