Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "met.graphix"
<metgraphix@...> wrote:
>
> <djon43@> wrote:
> >
> > Interesting...I found Basilico's work an empty, cynical pose that
> > fastidiously ignored the fundamental character of the region, which is
> > human in more complexity than any other place on earth. 
> 
> Silicon Valley is human in more complexity than any other place on 
> earth ???? Is this spoken in jest? Really what's so human, or 
> distinctive, or richly complex about Mc. Mansions, Office buildings, 
> strip malls and whatever else makes up contemporary suburbia?

Silicon Valley suggests McMansions only for one who destructively
seeks them out, avoiding the fine elegant and humble homes and offices
that are more typical.

Silicon Valley is, more than anything else, a place full of creative
individuals and large families, for recent decades especially from
India, China, and Vietnam. Basilico's shallow.  

Friedlander sees people, Basilico sees himself (so his gender doesn't
matter)... and he sees people he can rip-off, such as the museum
committee that paid him to produce hack real-estate snaps.

 
> I agree about Basilico's coming across as cynic at times (btw he's a 
> He: Gabriele is a male name in Italian) but many consider it a sign of 
> honesty, true to the nature of the place photographed. Similar to the 
> lack of sentimentality exhibited by Friedlander next door in many of 
> his images of the same subject btw. 


Freedlander sometimes sees others the way he sees himself (his self
portraits). He doesn't always like humanity, but does intensely love
it sometimes: see his nudes, visually new and beautiful. Freedlander
can be attracted to the most raw beauty ("Stems"), is not frozen in
cynicism. 

Freedlander can be intentionally cynical, or recognize corn-ball
trivia: Photographing Half Dome through a tangle of brush made a
"statement" something like Basilico's, but with honesty. 

Basilico intends to degrade viewers by attributing significance to
inferior commercial architecture. He ignores the beautiful
architecture, the homes, schools, public and commercial buildings and
parks that have been been built so consistently ever since Silicon
Valley was populated by immigrants (eg. the Gold Rush). Not only did
he ignore Stanford University and Sand Hill Road, he missed Hanger
One, which has dominated much of the landscape for sixty years:
http://www.savehangarone.org/

>The main difference being a 
> quintessential American sensibility versus a European one. 

Basilico's "sensibility" is fascist or soviet, grey, oppressive: He
represents East Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Gorky. 

There is no "European sensibility" in any sweeping sense, nor
"American." The very idea brings Dick Cheney to mind. 

IMO, of course :-)