4.5.09

Eric Holubow


The work of Eric Holubow takes you into some fabulous locations. Prisons, abandoned hospitals, power plants and the like. Wonderful locations, wonderful subject matter, superb composition, in fact the images are perfect. But my followers few, thats the problem I have with pretty much all of these images. Theres so much retouching going on here that it has sapped any mood and atmosphere that was once there. Take the image here for example. That old knackered chair looks like its been scrubbed with soap and water and then blow dried, the surrounding desaturated backdrop becoming flat and lifeless.
I tire of this kind of technique heavily in use these days. This kind of image is not selling a product, so just let it go I say.
I also tire of people telling me they use large format and then kill it by making it overly digital. The whole point in using a big fat slow bulky camera is because the pay off is in the quality of the neg.. (I get the impression a lot of the time that people say things like this to get a bit of artistic credit).
I really do think Eric Holubow's images are quite marvelous which may seem a bit of a contradiction but I am pretty sure the 'originals' would of blown me away, whereas these just blow the curtains..

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