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Oct 13.71

During a depressing day yesterday I pulled out the Bellocq book "Storyville Portraits." How beautifully lucid and strong the pictures are. There are only 34 plates in the book and as I remember looking at them at Lees, only a little over 90 photos in all, in existance: the total surviving work of Bellocq. I was struck now in looking at the book how in just 34 pictures, so complete a world is rendered, an all encompassing wholeness. Each one of his photographs seems to contain the germ [of] all his work. If only one of his pictures existed (all the rest had been destroyed) you would still sense he was a great photographer, at least I get that feeling. So consistent and concisely clear is his vision.

[Word in right margin: Microchosm [sic.]]

I know part of this is the time in which the trial pictures were made. The choice of camera and material to work with was limited and this made for an overall unified rendering [word below: conformity] in photography of that time, in our age we have an array of choices in equipment and style in which to work. Bruce Davidson who seems to be a prime example of many of the confusions that exist today in photography goes from 35mm to 2 1/4 to view camera with ease. Yet he lacks the steading [sic.] personality that would carry carry him from [arrow to next line] one style to another. He travels with ease but without presence. Even though these unifying factors existed