Brain Power

[Bill Pierce]

Good journalism, documentary work, e.t.c. is showing up in museums, but not doing so well in the gallery world. People who go to art galleries want to hang ART on their walls, not all that real stuff that is out in the world. What’s hot in the photographic facet of the art world is conceptual photography, essentially photographs that spring out of the mind of the artist.

A few folks do this very well. David Hockney is as much photographer as he is painter. Jerry Uelsmann does with film and silver prints what most folks couldn’t do with digital even if they did have his vision. Francesca Woodman started photographing when she was 13. It was only 8 years later that she committed suicide. The loss to her family and friends must have been terrible. I will always wonder about the pictures she never took. The ones she did create were just that good.

But there are not too many of these folks around. There is a lot of conceptual photography around. But, after a few years, a lot of it is going to be worth a lot less than galleries sold it for initially. I don’t know what this says about photographers and their brains’ creative powers - probably that most of us should treasure hard work and fast reflexes more than brain power.

Your thoughts?

 

[Jamie Pillers]

Bill, I'm wondering where you might put Doug Rickard in this discussion? He's the guy that searches through Google Street View images and appropriates them for gallery display and sale. It seems like this idea can almost be a third leg of this discussion... its not old-fashioned photojournalism but exposes real life situations to a broad audience, and its not conceptual art... not obviously anyway.

It seems like good photographs will always find an audience and in the long run always appreciated somehow... in galleries, in books, on the web, or... ? Things are changing... or maybe not. 🙂

 

[charjohncarter]

I almost didn't respond because you are right and I really don't have much to add. I did see at an exhibit on all visual arts images of Yosemite that included a Hockney. It was a scene of Yosemite made by glueing many APX photos. How did he come up with that?

 

[charjohncarter]

Well, I've thought about it for a couple of hours. And again I agree with you; people will not buy pain full photographs of people suffering (is that a tautology?) to hang on their walls. They want an edge on their walls but not too much of an edge. Maybe Steven Shore is their deal.

As to the brain thing, well some people have it but may not be smart. Andy W. did not seem too smart but: one, he could read a market or two, he was a dumb genius in a way that we (or at least me) have yet to understand.