[rollei_list] Re: speaking of war photography

  • From: Marc James Small <marcsmall@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 01:21:00 -0400

At 01:00 AM 10/23/2007, dpurdy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>Did anyone else sit through all 14 or so hours of the recent Ken Burns
>film on Public Broadcasting "War"?  I think that was the title.  Showing
>WW2 through the eyes and memories of the common soldiers and their
>families.
>
>The photography was amazing.  As black and white real WW2 footage always
>is.  It is hard to imagine what the photographers were going through and
>still producing that work.  How they were able to get through the mud and
>snow and water, crawling and running and hiding in holes.  How do you keep
>the mud or rain or ocean out of your camera to change film with bullets
>flying everywhere?
>
>An amazing amount of movie footage as well in impossible circumstances.
>Watching real WW2 stuff makes me fall in love with black and white
>photography all over again.  Almost makes me want a leica.  But I will
>stick with the more civilized Rollei.

No, I didn't watch this, though I am an active WWII student. I watched two episodes of Burns' CIVIL WAR and one episode of his series on baseball, and had enough of Ken Burns to last me a lifetime. I just do not like his approach or his work. Others obviously love him and he is very successful. Taste is just a matter of taste, and there is no argument over it: my mother loved murder mysteries and suspense stories but disliked Alfred Hitchcock's work. Go figure.

Several points:

First, there is a huge archive of wartime photography, especially in the holdings of the British, USians, and Italians. Much of it really hasn't been watched since it was shot. Burns is to be commended for having gone through a lot of the holdings in the US Archives, though by his own admission, he barely scraped the surface of what is there.

Second, we all know that color is for happy-snaps of the family and black & white is for art. <he grins> I am enough of a snob to use schwarz-weiss as my default choice. Besides, black & white is more fun to print.

Third, all of the various Armies in the Second World War regularly took color footage. A lot of this has faded and is best shown today in black & white. The Germans tended to use Agfacolor, which has not held up well, while the Allies tended to use Kodachrome which is a lot more resistant to decay. I still have the shots made by my father of the unit he commanded, G/260th CA (AA), in Alaska in 1942 - 1943. (I recently offered to bring this to a unit reunion to show them, only to be reminded that the last veteran from that time had died in January of this year.)

Fourth, I own a bunch of Rollei gear but I also own a bunch of Leica gear. I use both for both color and black & white work: in the end, most of my color work is probably done either with my M6 Wetzlar or with my Hasselblad SWC.

I really admire combat photographers but have not the slightest desire to join their ranks!

Marc


msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!

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