Mark Steinmetz

Image copyright Mark Steinmetz

Found the work of Mark Steinmetz over on Conscientious . Joerg says that some of the work is "outstanding" which I whole heatedly agree with. He also says "As much as I wish it was in colour" Which makes me want to know why? None of the work as far as I can tell is about colour so why use it? I think it would do nothing for the work at all. In fact there are a few images on the site that are in colour, are they better, stronger, is anything gained? What is this obsession (not necessarily yours JC, just in general) with colour for colour's sake?

There's a great quote here by Tod Papageorge

"I’m more interested in photographers than photographs. In other words, I respond more to a photographer’s total oeuvre, and what it demonstrates about his mind and creative understanding, than I do to particular pictures. By this standard, it’s difficult for me to call any color photographer in the history of the medium great, although I admire, for example, the early work of Bill Eggleston and Philip-Lorca DiCorcia. I want to forget the color when I look at a photograph, rather than being made unpleasantly aware of how it pulls at me for attention by being saturated or too full of contrast or jarring in its combination of hues.

It’s the operatic form of photography, you could say; in other words, more often than not, there’s an uneasy tension between its virtually unavoidable pictorial seizures and the poetic intimacy that I love about photography. But, just as many of the greatest works in music are operas (Mozart!), so are there many great color photographs. That success, however, is not built into the practice: the color photographer, like any artist, has to work against almost impossible odds to achieve something that’s finally persuasive, and, in my judgment, there are few such color photographers who’ve managed to do that through a life’s body of work."

Quote found on Foto8