Russ
Well-known
sitemistic said:
Sitemistic
Another very good one, is "On Being A Photographer" by David Hurn & Bill Jay. You can also order it from www.lenswork.com
Russ
Attachments
Rafael
Mandlerian
Rafael
Mandlerian
John, I like that illustration. Do you (or anyone else) think that art can ever reflect common opinion? Or does it, by nature, necessarily challenge comfortable and accepted ideas of the world?
Russ
Well-known
M C H
Member
I love this website.
With threads like this, who couldn't?
A couple of things come to mind. The idea of "defining" art, or determining who gets to identify what is art and what is not, is a metaphysical question related more to social theory than what an artist actually does.
Ultimately, art is an expression of the comingling of the artist and the culture in which the artist exists. The one shapes the other and in return is shaped by it. Rather than suggesting society determines what is or is not art, might it not be more useful to say that society reflects the relative power of the artist?
Viewed in this way, one can allow space for the private artist as an artist, while still recognizing the importance of the public artist. And while "power" is a laden term, I use it here to suggest the ability of an artist to shape society. Yet power in this sense is not strictly artistic.
It can be political. Think of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a work of fiction which, while certainly successful artistically, had a power far beyond it's aesthetic merits. No Shakespeare, Harriet Beecher Stowe - and still it is arguable that her novel, which Lincoln once described as being the cause of the Civil War, exceeded the political impact of any single work by Shakespeare. (Certainly it was an exaggeration by Lincoln to have said so, but the book's success - second only to the Bible in the 19th century, bespeaks the truth behind the lie.)
Or it can be social. I read once of a photographer, whose name now unfortunately escapes me, who had a significant impact on the development of modernist photography. I remember photos of industrial buildings, looming large in the composition, and the shadows of tiny men marching to work stretching ominously toward the viewer. (It pains me that I've forgotten his name! Could it have been Man Ray?) Contrast this with the work of Robert Doisneau, whose street photography is more traditional - always close to his subjects, capturing them in the highs and lows of life in pre- and post-war Paris. I remember particularly a photograph of a middle aged woman, living in the rubble of a tiny attic room, with less furniture than I had in college, and the weariness in the rubble of her expression.
Beyond the almost incidental differences in equipment needed to physically capture the shots these two photographers produced, there is little to distinguish between the two of them technically. They are both experts in obtaining the results they want from the equipment used. And though both examples are of street photography, the results could hardly be more different! The former example almost defies our expectations of street photography, so far from us are the working men, their faces totally obscured in distance and shadow. In fact, they are obscured by the appendages of an industrial "kulture," they are dwarfed by the scale of it, as they march in desultory fashion to fashion it's construction. This is the photographers vision - to show us his view of man's relationship to society in a single photograph, and the measure of his success in expressing that vision is in the choices made, to view the workers at such a distance, veiled in the darkness of these massive, formidable structures which transcends shadow.
This measure of success is aesthetic, and unlike a artist's vision, can be measured, analyzed. An artist's vision can resonate, but cannot be argued. The industrial, modernist photography described above is equal to Doisneau's aesthetically, despite Doisneau's essential romanticism, his vastly different vision.
To me, it is here that Bayles' and Orland's exhortation to get up every morning and work has it's strength. Vision is borne of our humanity, but aesthetics of diligence.
Sorry for the long post!
With threads like this, who couldn't?
A couple of things come to mind. The idea of "defining" art, or determining who gets to identify what is art and what is not, is a metaphysical question related more to social theory than what an artist actually does.
Ultimately, art is an expression of the comingling of the artist and the culture in which the artist exists. The one shapes the other and in return is shaped by it. Rather than suggesting society determines what is or is not art, might it not be more useful to say that society reflects the relative power of the artist?
Viewed in this way, one can allow space for the private artist as an artist, while still recognizing the importance of the public artist. And while "power" is a laden term, I use it here to suggest the ability of an artist to shape society. Yet power in this sense is not strictly artistic.
It can be political. Think of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a work of fiction which, while certainly successful artistically, had a power far beyond it's aesthetic merits. No Shakespeare, Harriet Beecher Stowe - and still it is arguable that her novel, which Lincoln once described as being the cause of the Civil War, exceeded the political impact of any single work by Shakespeare. (Certainly it was an exaggeration by Lincoln to have said so, but the book's success - second only to the Bible in the 19th century, bespeaks the truth behind the lie.)
Or it can be social. I read once of a photographer, whose name now unfortunately escapes me, who had a significant impact on the development of modernist photography. I remember photos of industrial buildings, looming large in the composition, and the shadows of tiny men marching to work stretching ominously toward the viewer. (It pains me that I've forgotten his name! Could it have been Man Ray?) Contrast this with the work of Robert Doisneau, whose street photography is more traditional - always close to his subjects, capturing them in the highs and lows of life in pre- and post-war Paris. I remember particularly a photograph of a middle aged woman, living in the rubble of a tiny attic room, with less furniture than I had in college, and the weariness in the rubble of her expression.
Beyond the almost incidental differences in equipment needed to physically capture the shots these two photographers produced, there is little to distinguish between the two of them technically. They are both experts in obtaining the results they want from the equipment used. And though both examples are of street photography, the results could hardly be more different! The former example almost defies our expectations of street photography, so far from us are the working men, their faces totally obscured in distance and shadow. In fact, they are obscured by the appendages of an industrial "kulture," they are dwarfed by the scale of it, as they march in desultory fashion to fashion it's construction. This is the photographers vision - to show us his view of man's relationship to society in a single photograph, and the measure of his success in expressing that vision is in the choices made, to view the workers at such a distance, veiled in the darkness of these massive, formidable structures which transcends shadow.
This measure of success is aesthetic, and unlike a artist's vision, can be measured, analyzed. An artist's vision can resonate, but cannot be argued. The industrial, modernist photography described above is equal to Doisneau's aesthetically, despite Doisneau's essential romanticism, his vastly different vision.
To me, it is here that Bayles' and Orland's exhortation to get up every morning and work has it's strength. Vision is borne of our humanity, but aesthetics of diligence.
Sorry for the long post!
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