I’m a photographer ... what’s a camera?

[RichC]

@RichC

I also think RFF is a bit full of gear talk, and to mitigate the issue, I tend to stick many photos in my posts. I invite you to do the same, and show us what is really important to you - perhaps you will make us richer this way.

Well, I don't often put photos in my posts - but you can see a couple of my projects on my website richcutler.co.uk.

As an aside, most of my "vanitas" images were taken with rangefinders - which I sold despite enjoying using them: shooting still lifes with rangefinders is not efficient, so I now use SLRs - soulless lumps of plastic and electronics that I don't enjoy at all but do allow me to capture the image I'm after fast and with precision...

 

[mfogiel]

@ RichC
Thanks for the link. I am not particularly fond of table top photography, especially in colour, but I have enjoyed the Digital Archeology concept. Stay tuned for a supply of M8's and M9's...
Perhaps, you might like this article by Bill Jay:
http://www.billjayonphotography.com/The Thing Itself.pdf

 

[Michael Markey]

Well, I don't often put photos in my posts - but you can see a couple of my projects on my website richcutler.co.uk.

Is there any reason why you don`t Rich ?
I`ve seen those projects some years ago ....very nice ... I wonder if you have any later stuff to illustrate the type of thing that you have in mind.

 

[farlymac]

I think that we are confusing what the art world defines things as, with what in reality they really are. Take the "artist" who painted a large, square canvas with white paint, and was lauded for such minimalist expression. It sold for an unseemly amount of money to a collector. In my opinion, if the"artist" had really wanted to creat a minimalist masterpiece, he should have taken a raw canvas, and put one dot of paint right in the center. The "artist" could have then created a series of these by putting the dot in different quandrants of the canvas, thereby mutiplying his income fivefold. And to make them really valueable, sold them to different buyers, so that one would have to spend a huge amount of money to collect them all. While not increasing his/her income directly from this ploy, he/she would definitely raise their standing in the art world, thereby increasing the intrinsic value of any future projects.

And that is why I think calling someone who sits at a computer, and screen grabs images that someone else has taken to call their own, a "photographer" demonstrates the utter hipocracy of the art world. Screw 'em! I say Google ought to sue the living daylights out of the supposed photographer, and anyone who has promoted his blatant image stealing.

Now, as for cameraless photography, I'm going to tape a roll of film to the wall for about an hour, develope it, and sell pieces of it as "Photo of a White Wall", and number the different pieces of film. Should be a hot series.

PF

 

[lxmike]

Where does art end and photograpghy begin, is a man or woman that has a camera collection and takes photos with them a collector or a photograpgher. i do not know, what I do know is that I am nearly 50 and I have been taking photographs since I was 12, along the way i have built up a collection of a few cameras, I like having them arround, I like talking about them with others, I like taking a few pictures with them, these things keep me happy, if I think deeper than that my head begins to hurt

 

[Jack Conrad]

Photographers are merely middlemen between the eye(camera) and the artiste'...
Nothing an animatronic device can't replace.

 

[Jack Conrad]

I think that we are confusing what the art world defines things as, with what in reality they really are. Take the "artist" who painted a large, square canvas with white paint, and was lauded for such minimalist expression. It sold for an unseemly amount of money to a collector. In my opinion, if the"artist" had really wanted to creat a minimalist masterpiece, he should have taken a raw canvas, and put one dot of paint right in the center. The "artist" could have then created a series of these by putting the dot in different quandrants of the canvas, thereby mutiplying his income fivefold. And to make them really valueable, sold them to different buyers, so that one would have to spend a huge amount of money to collect them all. While not increasing his/her income directly from this ploy, he/she would definitely raise their standing in the art world, thereby increasing the intrinsic value of any future projects.

And that is why I think calling someone who sits at a computer, and screen grabs images that someone else has taken to call their own, a "photographer" demonstrates the utter hipocracy of the art world. Screw 'em! I say Google ought to sue the living daylights out of the supposed photographer, and anyone who has promoted his blatant image stealing.

Now, as for cameraless photography, I'm going to tape a roll of film to the wall for about an hour, develope it, and sell pieces of it as "Photo of a White Wall", and number the different pieces of film. Should be a hot series.

PF

You just described the concept of reification. 🙂

 

[zauhar]

You just described the concept of reification. 🙂

Been years since I saw anyone use the word 'reification' - thanks!

Randy

 

[alistair.o]

Where does art end and photograpghy begin, is a man or woman that has a camera collection and takes photos with them a collector or a photograpgher. i do not know, what I do know is that I am nearly 50 and I have been taking photographs since I was 12, along the way i have built up a collection of a few cameras, I like having them arround, I like talking about them with others, I like taking a few pictures with them, these things keep me happy, if I think deeper than that my head begins to hurt

So, you can say that you are not an artist. How do I make that judgement? Becuase you are not driven - you are not at the point where you have to go on and can do no other - in other words your pursuit of The Picture is not in your thinking/psyche

It is, I believe, when this becomes your thinking, becomes you, that it really doesn't matter what you use or how you got it, or how much it cost you and certainly not how much can I get back on it! you do because you can do no other.

Happy and yet troubled is the person who arrives at this point.

 

[RichC]

Is there any reason why you don`t Rich ?
I`ve seen those projects some years ago ....very nice ... I wonder if you have any later stuff to illustrate the type of thing that you have in mind.

Well, the digital archaeology project is new, as are some of memento mori series ... I'm afraid I'm a pretty slow photographer!

I don't post photos because often they're not often relevant to a thread - nothing more than that, really. Also, web images are too small, and my photographs can't be seen properly - for example, the one below should be seen as an A2 (24 inch) high print, and at the size here, you simply can't see all that I want to show.

The series I'm working on at present is about fast food - in which I'm hoping to draw attention to its problematic aspects, such as its impact on health and the environment. I'm photographing items of food I find discarded in the street (burgers, kebabs,etc.), but which I light and arrange as if they were 18th-century Dutch still life paintings (I don't take the food to the studio - it's photographed still in the street, amongst the dirt and fag ends). The idea is that the viewer is struck by the incongruity of a seemingly beautiful picture that on closer inspection is crap covered in dirt and insects. Here's a rough test image that I took as "proof of concept" - it won't make the final cut.

 

[68degrees]

...And that is why I think calling someone who sits at a computer, and screen grabs images that someone else has taken to call their own, a "photographer" demonstrates the utter hipocracy of the art world. Screw 'em! I say Google ought to sue the living daylights out of the supposed photographer, and anyone who has promoted his blatant image stealing.

PF

...........go farly!

 

[furcafe]

Maybe I'm misreading you, but I think that, for the general population, the main reason for taking photographs is, & has been from the beginning, fundamentally documentary, not the desire to create art.

Can be an art, or not - depends on "why"... passport photos are undeniably photographs, but they're documents not art, which was, and remains, the main reason for taking photographs.

. . .

 

[alistair.o]

Maybe I'm misreading you, but I think that, for the general population, the main reason for taking photographs is, & has been from the beginning, fundamentally documentary, not the desire to create art.

Christopher: I do not disagree with your observation but what I would add is this:

Just as some people sketch and paint to relax and enjoy a hobby others find that their hobby releases within them a passion and a 'new life' - an altogether new art. I believe the same can happen with photography.

 

[DominikDUK]

Taking an image from Google streetview and putting it into the art context to criticize the constant surveillance and or presence of cameras doesn't make you a photographer but a critical artist. Using some other artists work like a photograph or a painting to put paint or something else on it is in my opinion disrespect towards the original creator/artist. I know plenty of artist who did and it's nothing new nor very innovative the worst are the chapman brothers in my opinion who painted penises all over a complete set of Goya graphics just to shock. That's not art that's mind wanking and nothing else.
The google streetview guy is an artist but not a photographer he works with the medium of photography but that doesn't make him/her a photographer imo. I like photographic equipment a lot but in the end as had been said numerous times it'S the image and the story the image and artist tell that matters not the tool

 

[citizen99]

I don't particularly consider myself to be a 'photographer'. I enjoy cameras, particularly ancient and classic models, as artefacts in their own right, and like to re-commission, as it were, and use them to produce images that I like. I find it more interesting to use the equipment to compose and produce the image, period (but allowing just a bit of cropping if necessary and colour adjustment after scanning). So I visit this sort of forum rather than art-orientated ones or the sort of camera clubs described by Michael Markey, others have different priorities.

BTW congratulations to the OP for initiating a thread to kick-off the debate 😉 .

 

[RichC]

Maybe I'm misreading you, but I think that, for the general population, the main reason for taking photographs is, & has been from the beginning, fundamentally documentary, not the desire to create art.

Absolutely - if that's not what I wrote, it's what I meant!

A couple of caveats, though:

(a) art or document is not germane to this thread - what one intends to do with a photograph doesn't impinge on my argument.
(b) creation of the photograph as art has been with photography since its inception. Staging and montage were accepted norms during the 19th century, with "straight" photograph only coming to dominance in the mid-20th century. The wheel turns, and staged and contrived photography is once more acceptable.

This thread is not about art vs documentary, staged vs documentary. Someone appropriating Google Street View images (and who doesn't know one end of a camera from the other) from a virtual street is arguably doing exactly the same as a photographer on a real street - using their skill and talent to capture images that tell a story.* If they both are presenting images as news and commentary, don't they both deserve to be called photojournalists?

After all, as the end product, the viewer simply sees a photograph.

[* Google Street View may exist as images - but the sheer size of that database means that much of it will remain unseen, so someone needs to wander through this virtual world. And we have the birth of a new kind of photographer...]

 

[hteasley]

Because of the fixation of RFF on gear, I visiting this forum less and less...

The name of the site indicates a gear bent to things.

I think you're running into the fallacy of focus: simply because there's a sort of ambient topic of conversation around gear doesn't mean that people are unconcerned or less concerned about other aspects of photography. It means that there's a conversation about gear. There are plenty of threads that don't dwell on gear (or films or chemistry or whatever) so much.

I don't talk about rangefinders in other photography forums, but I do here.

 

[Photo_Smith]

Someone appropriating Google Street View images (and who doesn't know one end of a camera from the other) from a virtual street is arguably doing exactly the same as a photographer on a real street - using their skill and talent to capture images that tell a story.* If they both are presenting images as news and commentary, don't they both deserve to be called photojournalists?

No one is a photographer the other is a derivative artist, not a photographer at all. No new type of photographer has been created just derivative art, not new at all.
Andy Warhol anyone?

 

[furcafe]

True, I would place myself in that category. However, I would guess that probably 75% of my photography is mainly documentary (mostly my own life) w/a side of art (i.e., using artistic techniques to capture my view of reality), w/the remainder being mainly art, but still documentary (e.g., a street scene that looks cool because of the light). I have little interest in any photography that's conceptual or involves setting things up, though I do engage in it periodically, usually when assisting friends, etc.

Christopher: I do not disagree with your observation but what I would add is this:

Just as some people sketch and paint to relax and enjoy a hobby others find that their hobby releases within them a passion and a 'new life' - an altogether new art. I believe the same can happen with photography.

 

[furcafe]

Yes, art v. document is not the issue you raised, but rather the nature & degree to which an artist must be responsible for the final image to be called a "photographer." The problem, or rather drawback, of calling someone like Schmid a photographer is similar to auteur theory in movies, i.e., is the director really the "author" of a movie in the same way as a novelist? I would say no. A movie director, of a Hollywood production anyway, has a great deal of creative input, perhaps the greatest of any individual, but there are too many other players (screenwriter, cinematographer, DP, SFX, etc.) involved in making the final product to call him/her the "author" (& using French doesn't make it any more true).

Obviously there's a continuum, not a bright line. Hypothetically, what if Avedon, for example, was rendered a quadriplegic in a horrible car accident at the height of his career & then resorted to directing other people to physically handle cameras/lighting to produce work that looked identical to his work before his accident? Would his directed work still be "true Avedon" shots? Probably. That's where I would place guys like Crewsdon & Wall, anyway. My view is that the more 1 person can be said to be responsible for the production of the final image, the more that person is what I would call a photographer. To go back to my cinema example, if 1 person writes, shoots, & lights the film, then the more he/she can be considered the author/auteur.

While I'm not sure I would consider Rickard a photographer because he leaves so many aesthetic choices to the Google Street View cameras/operators, I agree w/you that he is a preview of what many "photographers" of the near future will be, i.e., mostly an editor of a data stream. I predict that sooner than we may think most still imagery will come from edits from HD video cameras w/Lytro-type optics, i.e., most still photography will be mostly a form of post-processing. The difference between that & what Rickard does is that at least the photographer of the future will still have to decide when to turn the camera on, where to point it (even if it's in a drone), & when to hit "record."

Absolutely - if that's not what I wrote, it's what I meant!

A couple of caveats, though:

(a) art or document is not germane to this thread - what one intends to do with a photograph doesn't impinge on my argument.
(b) creation of the photograph as art has been with photography since its inception. Staging and montage were accepted norms during the 19th century, with "straight" photograph only coming to dominance in the mid-20th century. The wheel turns, and staged and contrived photography is once more acceptable.

This thread is not about art vs documentary, staged vs documentary. Someone appropriating Google Street View images (and who doesn't know one end of a camera from the other) from a virtual street is arguably doing exactly the same as a photographer on a real street - using their skill and talent to capture images that tell a story.* If they both are presenting images as news and commentary, don't they both deserve to be called photojournalists?

After all, as the end product, the viewer simply sees a photograph.

[* Google Street View may exist as images - but the sheer size of that database means that much of it will remain unseen, so someone needs to wander through this virtual world. And we have the birth of a new kind of photographer...]