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Originally Posted by I B Hankering
Did Mortensen’s depiction of nudes have anything to do with the artistic differences, since Adams is known primarily for his landscapes? Some of Mortensen’s work is eerily similar to Goya’s.
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I think Adams also did people, at least some portraits, but not sure about nudes. Adams and his followers (known as the f64 group) were "purists", or at least presented themselves as such, discouraging manipulation of photos or using them for anything other than "realism". There are still those who claim film is the only "true" photography. A few years ago an old geezer at the bar in El Paso got all over my case for switching to digital, he bragged that Adams had allowed him to use his mobile dark room once etc.
It's interesting, in my very limited readings on art, that the "impressionist" movement started in order to try to differentiate painting from the new fangeled photography that was quickly taking over the "realist" role in imaging. They even "cropped" their paintings analogous to the way a camera crops a scene. Then you have Mortensen, trying to take it the other way by making photos more like drawings or paintings.
Adams "won" because he's probably the most widely known photographer in the world today and succeeded in convincing most publications and galleries to boycott Mortensen. But digital manipulation is now at least as common, if not more so than "pure" photography, with people doing things Mortensen could only dream about.
The simple fact is that both made great contributions, it' s too bad professional politics suppressed the Mortensen school for so long. Art, like many things in art isn't (or shouldn't be) "all or nothing".
I've enjoyed photography as a hobby for a few decades now, but I have to say I also love playing on the computer after the fact. Photoshop is Phunn!
Pictorlism
