""Sie sollten diesen Mist nicht mehr aufleben lassen''. Marginalien zu G.B.Shaw's Fototexten ('You must not revive this rubbish'. Marginal notes on Shaw's photographic texts)

The author discloses an old correspondence (1939), between Lucia
Moholy and Bernard Shaw, regarding the consent to citate from a
1883 book of Shaw. Shaw forbids the citation asked for. Some of
the correspondence is disclosed by Lucia Moholy as a 'Letter to
the Editor' in the 1951 British Photographic Journal, as a
reaction to an earlier article by Gernsheim on Shaw's
photographic notions. The essence seems to be the relation
between photography and art (and especially painting), and the
debate 'Naturalism' versus 'Realism' in photographic practice at
the end of the 19th century. In the 'asked-for citation' the
leading charactre states the ""superfluousness of some 90% of
all art, and their replacement by photographic (colour) images
of 'tableaus-vivants'''. Some ten year later, Shaw himself
adhered to Pictorialism, but as an art critic maintained his
position. It is still not clear why he called his 1883-criticism
as 'rubish'. (German)


Citaten:
Gernsheim