Thursday, April 26, 2007

More hippies

I didn't know this when I wrote about Elaine Mayes's pictures of hippies , but we're warming up to the 40th anniversary of "the summer of love" (god help us). The way I know is that AP Photos sent me a lightbox (I'm a photo editor). Go here & click on the face-painted girl on June 21 to see their selection.

To my mind, the AP photos are worth looking at as history, but they're not much as images. It's an interesting question why these competent & newsworthy photos seem so distant & exotic to me , whereas Mayes's portraits seem so immediate & vital. Why is that?

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