The Genius of Photography 摄影演义后传- 12 atG中国英语学习网
In the course of our 170 year relationship, photography has delighted us, served us, moved us, outraged us and occasionally disappointed us. But mainly, it has intrigued us by showing the secret strangeness that lies beneath the world of appearances. And that is photography's true genius. atG中国英语学习网
“We’re not quite sure from where it's been taken. There’s no sense of scale and no reference to anything that we’ll really be familiar with. We are up, perhaps above clouds, we are looking at some bleak terrain. But it's been offered to us as something between an artwork and a document. If it's an artwork, it's haunted by the idea of the document; if it's a document, it's haunted by the idea of the artwork.”atG中国英语学习网
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In 1926, the surrealist and the maker of documents met---an encounter between photography's past and present, which would have a profound influence on its future.atG中国英语学习网
atG中国英语学习网
“Man Ray is the person who discovers Eugène Atget. They lived in the same street, so he didn't have far to go to find this old man who was, um, then in his late 60s. Man Ray bought about 50 of Atget's photographs and sparked something of a fashion for Atget's work in avant-garde circles in Paris.”atG中国英语学习网
atG中国英语学习网
“The surrealists were interested in the idea of found objects. A found object was something that you would come across any sort of everyday objects, um, whether it was mysterious or very familiar, and taken out of context, found out of context, it would somehow appear very strange and could disrupt your mental state or your psychic state, and thereby sort of project you into another consciousness or another understanding. Old photographs were terrific found objects for the surrealists, full of people and things that nobody knew about, nobody knew what they were or who they were.”atG中国英语学习网
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Atget himself, with his archaic equipment and techniques, was a kind of living, breathing found object, which was how Bernice Abbott, a young American photographer and one of Man Ray's many assistants, pictured him when she took his portrait in 1927.atG中国英语学习网
atG中国英语学习网
“He came unusually elegant, compared to what she was used to see him. And he had a big coat. And so there is one portrait when he's standing, one when he is seated, er, in front of her, and then one in profile. This one is the one in profile, and that's the one she preferred. I think that er, in a way, she er, liked it, because he looked like an old man and for me that's part of the myth that she has built a little bit, er, that Atget was a, you know, an old poor photographer who's selling his pictures for nothing.”atG中国英语学习网
atG中国英语学习网
“I guess part of the greatness of Atget is his utility to all kinds of photographers. He's capable of recognizing the great broth of details that the world offers at any given moment, the hard fact of it and yet the elusive nature of details.”atG中国英语学习网
atG中国英语学习网
Vocabulary:atG中国英语学习网
atG中国英语学习网
avant-garde: avant-garde music, literature etc is extremely modern and often seems strange or slightly shockingatG中国英语学习网
an avant-garde playatG中国英语学习网
atG中国英语学习网 |
