SHOOTING UP FILM IN SANTA FE

SHOOTING UP FILM IN SANTA FE Story and photography by Eric Anderson
	Lisl should know. She's one of the best-known travel photographers in the business, and alone or in conjunction with Landt has written 10 books on photography yet still has to fight to get her point accepted that travel photography has lost its reality.
It's become, she feels, an illusion perpetuated by the tourist industries and travel magazines that haven't changed with the times. She'd be used by the travel magazines more if she was more conventional. But she won't go that route. Her forte is the detailed graphic close up and what she calls the environmental portrait, a wide angle shot of persons in their habitat surrounded by the items that give the viewer a sense of place.
	The next day starts with a historical review of travel photography in the last hundred years. Dennis points out that travel photography started as an exploration medium and somehow continued as a descriptive recording field and not as an interpretive field. "We're going to change that," says Dennis. "In coming here you've given me carte blanche to make your pictures unpublishable!" The class, an unusual one because eight have actually sold at least one photograph, smiles knowing she's joking -- they're aware how successful she's been. Lisl warms up to one of her themes: We allow photographic opportunities to pass because of inertia. She shows slides she nearly didn't take because an inner voice said it wasn't right.


	For example, a close up of men holding hands in North Yemen -- "I took it," she says, "once I realized it didn't mean the same as in San Francisco." Another, a close-up of a native's beard in India -- "I realized the man accepted my presence twelve inches from his face because living in a crowded land he had no sense of personal space," she says. Pictures of chairs upside down on a restaurant table -- "I was tired, I thought I'd take it later, but of course later the table would be in use and the chairs gone," she says. "Get your pictures. We are creators of the world every time we take a snapshot."

Another slide shows a dull street scene. She ponders for a moment then says, "This picture lacks a story. The whatness is missing." She goes on to the next slide then clicks back to the previous one. "You know," she says, "there's nothing wrong with not taking a picture." She smiles gently at the crestfallen novice. "It was a pretty picture of a boring subject," she exclaims. And another-"Fill the frame with the two faces," she says, "remember Robert Capa's advice, 'If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough.'"