http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/gedney/

outrageously good.

-- Travis koh (teckyy@hotmail.com), March 09, 2002

Answers

I've seen his work before, and was not overly impressed. Maybe it is just me, but IMO his photographs seem generally under-exposed and lacking in detail. Not to mention the fact that I don't think they say very much. I guess I just find them hard to look at -- or at least hard to see....

-- Jack Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), March 09, 2002.

erm, o..k..Jack ;)

-- Travis koh (teckyy@hotmail.com), March 09, 2002.

Boy, are we talking about the same person??? Maybe Jack's monitor needs adjusting. They're not loud, but they're perfect.

-- Michael Darnton (mdarnton@hotmail.com), March 09, 2002.

Gedney's work is incredible! I first saw his photos at a gallery last year. I recently purchased What Was True, which to my knowledge is the only published folio of this work. The book contains excerpts from his diaries, which IMHO offer some great insight into the artistic growth of a very talented and admired (at least by his professional peers) photographer.

-- JM Woo (wooismyid@deletethis.yahoo.com), March 09, 2002.

Travis--thanks for the fresh face! Someone I didn't know & worth the look. Jack's offbase here. Gedney exposed & printed to make a statement, not to emulate Ansel Adams or some other technical perfectionist. Gritty work...

-- Patrick (pg@patrickgarner.com), March 09, 2002.

Okay. After your comments I went to the site and looked around -- after all, maybe I had the guy confused with somebody else...

Not. Steller work?

I don't think so. But hey, diferent strokes for different folks!

;-),

-- Jack Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), March 09, 2002.

Jack, I think you picked a perfect example. It's visual, not content- oriented. The thing I noticed in all of his work, even in the thumbnails, is how absolutely perfectly laid out the composition is. I rarely have seen photo after photo so perfectly composed. Just squint a little and feel the balance and the layout. The composer portraits are the same--you don't really have to open the thumbs to see how perfectly placed everything is. To my eye, as far as composition, it's what Cartier-Bresson does so well, but not nearly as consistently. To me this is the exact opposite of what I see in a lot of contemporary street photography (or is it "street voyuerism"?), where the photographer's objective seems to grab and hold an image of some lame sort of a pretty girl looking pretty without getting slapped, never mind anything to do with composition.

-- Michael Darnton (mdarnton@hotmail.com), March 09, 2002.

Is there a copyright violation going on here, by the way?

-- Michael Darnton (mdarnton@hotmail.com), March 09, 2002.

Not very impressed either. Like third- or fourth-year student work from RIT. Kinda snapshotty. Indifferent printing.

Peter Hughes Photography

-- Peter Hughes (ravenart@pacbell.net), March 09, 2002.

Is there a copyright violation going on here, by the way?

Probably not, this would generally be considered "fair use."

I like Gedney's work, he has a great sense of composition and, as someone mentioned above, a "gritty" feel. It's real life, not some studio setup.

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), March 09, 2002.

Yeah, Jack's right. Gedney's photos are as crappy as this guy's:< br>
Walker something-or other. ; )
The Gedney Duke University site is a scholarly one. It's got everything the guy's done, including every napkin-sketch throwaway he's ever (probably) been embarassed about. Maybe his work is not your cup of tea. But give him a fair shake-- he's marvelous.

-- JM Woo (wooismyid@deletethis.yahoo.com), March 09, 2002.

Thanks for sharing the link, Travis. I haven't looked at all of the images, but I've bookmarked the site for return visits.

As to an opinion on the work, I'd have to say I like it overall. He did have an excellent sense of composition, I think, particularly if compared to much of the contemporary documentary photography. There's a good balance in the compositions, and you feel his connection with the subject matter.

I'd also have to say that some of the images I viewed seemed a bit muddy, although in keeping with the mood of the subject matter. It is impossible to tell, however, whether that is a function of his original printing, or less-than-perfect scans for the archive, combined with the inability of a computer screen to properly convey the tonal range of the original. To an extent, viewing work online would be akin to judging Ansel Adams based on Xerox copies of his prints - easy to come to innacurate conclusions.

-- Ralph Barker (rbarker@pacbell.net), March 09, 2002.

He was a great photographer, but died early. Needed a good editor to keep him on track. His work is good, but could have been much better.

-- Bill (bmitch@comcast.net), March 09, 2002.

I'll have to take a look at the Duke site. I've seen some of his India stuff which was excellent.

-- rob (rob@robertappleby.com), March 09, 2002.

wow. i must say...this guy has produced a lot of cool images. really good!

-- Dexter Legaspi (dalegaspi@hotmail.com), March 09, 2002.

Wow. His crosscountry series is better than Frank's The Americans. Great stuff. Thanks for the heads up.

-- Jay Bee (JBee193@aol.com), March 09, 2002.

The Composers has some very nice portraits. A lot of the rest doesn't do much for me...

-- Ronald Blachly (theblach@swbell.net), March 10, 2002.

Personally, I like Gedney's work. The problem with the website is that Duke has all all of Gedney's negatives and prints and the website editor didn't do a very good job in choosing which photos to post online. I highly recommend looking at the book, which is much tighter and more focused (plus, the photos look better in print than online). Besides the photos, the book tells Gedney's life story, which is very interesting reading.

-- Richard (rvle@yahoo.com), March 10, 2002.

I think these pictures are all great (sorry, Jack). I'm no real photograph myself, but I spend all my time just trying to get the linearity/left-rightedness/front-backness/heights/widths/depths/angles etc etc etc perfect. Lotta hard work. My lighting is often imperfect, but I can still end up surviving that.

-- Michael Kastner (kastner@zedat.fu-berlin.de), March 11, 2002.