zpuskas
Well-known
Interesting article on the "future" of photography in general...though I'm not one to put much faith in "futurists" (still waiting for half the stuff exhibited at the 1964 World's Fair to become reality)
To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site,
go to http://www.guardian.co.uk and select ARTS...
MOVERS AND FAKERS
How can the new generation of art photographers make their mark when
almost anyone with the latest equipment can take excellent pictures?
William A Ewing, who has been seeking stars of the future across the
world, identifies the new directions
William A Ewing
Saturday August 13 2005
The Guardian
Digitalisation is changing everything to do with photography. It alters
the way we - amateurs and professionals alike - take pictures and the
way we look at them. It changes how we pose for them, how we edit them,
manipulate them, archive them - even the degree to which we are willing
to place our trust in them. It's a quantum leap. Witness the dire
straits of once-great corporations such as Kodak, virtually the bedrock
of photography for generations, now struggling to stay afloat.
The digital revolution is implicitly democratic, levelling the playing
field and blurring the line between amateur and professional. The
cheapest camera on the market advises, questions, scolds, adjusts,
corrects. The little electronic genie within tells us when we can do
what we want, and when we can't. It makes a mockery of the expert.
("Shoot, don't think," is the clever, and apt, Sony slogan.)
Photojournalists now find themselves upstaged by amateurs, who just
happen to be on the spot of some catastrophic event and are eager to
share "breaking news" with millions. Even those of us with
bottom-of-the-line digital cameras (or mobile phones) are achieving
images of satisfactory quality. Amateurs with artistic pretensions may
soon be buying aesthetic software, inserting a Cartier-Bresson chip to
guarantee that shots come out as "decisive moments", or a Bill Brandt
chip to ensure moody, contrasty nudes.
For observers of photography, it seems like a turning point full of
crazy, creative promise. But for serious young photographers about to
embark on careers as artists, such widespread democracy poses a threat.
What room in this everyone-is-a-photographer-world, they may ask, can
there possibly be for me? And assuming there are a substantial number
of committed, curious young people willing to take up the challenge of
photography in this moment of breathtaking change, how do we go about
finding them?
One obvious route is through good schools, where aspiring artists are
not only taught about aesthetic and theoretical issues, but also how to
penetrate the thicket of galleries, museums, art fairs, magazines and
publishing houses. When I and my colleagues at the Musée de l'Elysée
in Lausanne, Switzerland, began looking for our 50 "photographers of
tomorrow", the schools provided the reservoir of talent. More than 60
schools were selected worldwide, and each was asked to propose 10
candidates - students, or very recent graduates. We then selected the
most accomplished and original.
Before we started, we wondered what we would find. Realists or
idealists? Conformists or rebels? Escapist or engaged tendencies? A
wholehearted embrace of the electronic era? New regions of the world
throwing up talent? Youngsters who considered themselves artists,
photojournalists, commercial photographers? Who would they claim as
mentors?
There were common threads, but also strong individual voices that
confound generalisation. European and North American photographers did
dominate (we refused to adhere to a quota system, and hid the
photographer's name, nationality and school during the process).
Digital photography was fast becoming a fundamental tool, but the
embrace wasn't uncritical - far from it: photographers used film where
appropriate, and the computer when necessary to achieve certain
effects. By and large, these photographers considered themselves
artists, although there were a few strong photojournalists and
documentary photographers. Their heroes turned out to be theorists
rather than photographers: Sontag, Barthes and Derrida were cited far
more often than Man Ray, Friedlander or Arbus.
Today's students are more attuned to the importance of getting their
work before the public, and far more sophisticated in their means of
doing so. The contemporary art world showed many photographers that
their presentation skills were poor in comparison, and this new
awareness has translated into scale: gone are the delicate 11 x 14 inch
prints in thin metal frames. Now the scale is billboard, glossy and
seductive as high-end advertising.
Colour photography is by far the preferred medium. Again, this is
partly the influence of contemporary art, in which black-and-white
photography has always been suspect, a peripheral practice like etching
or engraving. But partly it is a necessary correction in the evolution
of photography: for decades, "serious" photographers disdained colour
photography which, because it was expensive and required laboratory
processing, was considered the domain of commerce. Curators excluded
colour prints from their collections because of their impermanence. But
by 1980 the situation was beginning to change; various ways of making
prints permanent had won grudging acceptance, and seminal exhibitions
such as William Eggleston's Guide at New York's Museum of Modern Art in
1976 (the first all-colour one-man show) demonstrated that colour was
not just about capturing sunsets and the primary hues of quaint Greek
villages. For the current generation, black-and-white photography seems
an anachronism.
Despite their experiments with computer manipulation, the subject
matter chosen by the new generation demonstrates an ongoing curiosity
about the world, as well as an understanding that it takes ingenuity to
penetrate some of its most private places - ambassador Paul Bremer's
office in Iraq, heavily-guarded nuclear shelters, hospital operating
rooms, corporations suspicious of intruders with cameras, the inner
sanctum of a Haitian senator.
Then there are those who prefer to construct realities. Fictions
abound. Marla Rutherford's Abandoned Housewife, Josef Schulz's Form No
7 - both are false, both are true. It's this line between reality and
fiction that intrigues many of the emerging generation. Schulz's
disquieting structure has a basis in reality: he begins by
photographing a real structure on film, but then transforms it with the
computer, erasing signs of specificity. Conversely, photographs that
look staged often turn out not to be: Miklos Gaál's photographs of
children at a swimming pool strike the eye as maquettes, complete with
miniature figures, but the illusion is merely the result of his use of
a bird's-eye view and selective focus.
The traditional genres that have dominated art photography for a
century are now largely passé. The nude, the classical portrait, the
sublime natural landscape - all have been largely dismissed, or are
fading away as meaningful categories. The nude - traditionally almost
always female, youthful and inert - was entirely absent from the
portfolios we looked at, and portraits in the classic sense (claiming
to reveal the soul, or otherwise valorising the individual) have given
way to studies of types: faces have been replaced by facades. As for
landscape, young photographers see only degradation and menace - the
brutal hand of man. Edward Weston's nudes, Ansel Adams' mountain ranges
and Yousuf Karsh's portraits are aeons away from the concerns of the
young.
So, too, are Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moments". Today's
photographers design and build up their images, and what they don't
like they alter or edit away. We now have vibrant, clever, polished
images which hold their own against the most spectacular commercial
photography, as well as the slick products of contemporary art. But
spontaneity, surely one of the great natural attributes of the medium
(cameras really can capture things the eye cannot see), is in short
supply. For better or worse, the photographer as hunter has given way
to the sedentary farmer
· reGeneration: 50 Photographers Of Tomorrow is published on
August 22 by Thames & Hudson at £18.95.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site,
go to http://www.guardian.co.uk and select ARTS...
MOVERS AND FAKERS
How can the new generation of art photographers make their mark when
almost anyone with the latest equipment can take excellent pictures?
William A Ewing, who has been seeking stars of the future across the
world, identifies the new directions
William A Ewing
Saturday August 13 2005
The Guardian
Digitalisation is changing everything to do with photography. It alters
the way we - amateurs and professionals alike - take pictures and the
way we look at them. It changes how we pose for them, how we edit them,
manipulate them, archive them - even the degree to which we are willing
to place our trust in them. It's a quantum leap. Witness the dire
straits of once-great corporations such as Kodak, virtually the bedrock
of photography for generations, now struggling to stay afloat.
The digital revolution is implicitly democratic, levelling the playing
field and blurring the line between amateur and professional. The
cheapest camera on the market advises, questions, scolds, adjusts,
corrects. The little electronic genie within tells us when we can do
what we want, and when we can't. It makes a mockery of the expert.
("Shoot, don't think," is the clever, and apt, Sony slogan.)
Photojournalists now find themselves upstaged by amateurs, who just
happen to be on the spot of some catastrophic event and are eager to
share "breaking news" with millions. Even those of us with
bottom-of-the-line digital cameras (or mobile phones) are achieving
images of satisfactory quality. Amateurs with artistic pretensions may
soon be buying aesthetic software, inserting a Cartier-Bresson chip to
guarantee that shots come out as "decisive moments", or a Bill Brandt
chip to ensure moody, contrasty nudes.
For observers of photography, it seems like a turning point full of
crazy, creative promise. But for serious young photographers about to
embark on careers as artists, such widespread democracy poses a threat.
What room in this everyone-is-a-photographer-world, they may ask, can
there possibly be for me? And assuming there are a substantial number
of committed, curious young people willing to take up the challenge of
photography in this moment of breathtaking change, how do we go about
finding them?
One obvious route is through good schools, where aspiring artists are
not only taught about aesthetic and theoretical issues, but also how to
penetrate the thicket of galleries, museums, art fairs, magazines and
publishing houses. When I and my colleagues at the Musée de l'Elysée
in Lausanne, Switzerland, began looking for our 50 "photographers of
tomorrow", the schools provided the reservoir of talent. More than 60
schools were selected worldwide, and each was asked to propose 10
candidates - students, or very recent graduates. We then selected the
most accomplished and original.
Before we started, we wondered what we would find. Realists or
idealists? Conformists or rebels? Escapist or engaged tendencies? A
wholehearted embrace of the electronic era? New regions of the world
throwing up talent? Youngsters who considered themselves artists,
photojournalists, commercial photographers? Who would they claim as
mentors?
There were common threads, but also strong individual voices that
confound generalisation. European and North American photographers did
dominate (we refused to adhere to a quota system, and hid the
photographer's name, nationality and school during the process).
Digital photography was fast becoming a fundamental tool, but the
embrace wasn't uncritical - far from it: photographers used film where
appropriate, and the computer when necessary to achieve certain
effects. By and large, these photographers considered themselves
artists, although there were a few strong photojournalists and
documentary photographers. Their heroes turned out to be theorists
rather than photographers: Sontag, Barthes and Derrida were cited far
more often than Man Ray, Friedlander or Arbus.
Today's students are more attuned to the importance of getting their
work before the public, and far more sophisticated in their means of
doing so. The contemporary art world showed many photographers that
their presentation skills were poor in comparison, and this new
awareness has translated into scale: gone are the delicate 11 x 14 inch
prints in thin metal frames. Now the scale is billboard, glossy and
seductive as high-end advertising.
Colour photography is by far the preferred medium. Again, this is
partly the influence of contemporary art, in which black-and-white
photography has always been suspect, a peripheral practice like etching
or engraving. But partly it is a necessary correction in the evolution
of photography: for decades, "serious" photographers disdained colour
photography which, because it was expensive and required laboratory
processing, was considered the domain of commerce. Curators excluded
colour prints from their collections because of their impermanence. But
by 1980 the situation was beginning to change; various ways of making
prints permanent had won grudging acceptance, and seminal exhibitions
such as William Eggleston's Guide at New York's Museum of Modern Art in
1976 (the first all-colour one-man show) demonstrated that colour was
not just about capturing sunsets and the primary hues of quaint Greek
villages. For the current generation, black-and-white photography seems
an anachronism.
Despite their experiments with computer manipulation, the subject
matter chosen by the new generation demonstrates an ongoing curiosity
about the world, as well as an understanding that it takes ingenuity to
penetrate some of its most private places - ambassador Paul Bremer's
office in Iraq, heavily-guarded nuclear shelters, hospital operating
rooms, corporations suspicious of intruders with cameras, the inner
sanctum of a Haitian senator.
Then there are those who prefer to construct realities. Fictions
abound. Marla Rutherford's Abandoned Housewife, Josef Schulz's Form No
7 - both are false, both are true. It's this line between reality and
fiction that intrigues many of the emerging generation. Schulz's
disquieting structure has a basis in reality: he begins by
photographing a real structure on film, but then transforms it with the
computer, erasing signs of specificity. Conversely, photographs that
look staged often turn out not to be: Miklos Gaál's photographs of
children at a swimming pool strike the eye as maquettes, complete with
miniature figures, but the illusion is merely the result of his use of
a bird's-eye view and selective focus.
The traditional genres that have dominated art photography for a
century are now largely passé. The nude, the classical portrait, the
sublime natural landscape - all have been largely dismissed, or are
fading away as meaningful categories. The nude - traditionally almost
always female, youthful and inert - was entirely absent from the
portfolios we looked at, and portraits in the classic sense (claiming
to reveal the soul, or otherwise valorising the individual) have given
way to studies of types: faces have been replaced by facades. As for
landscape, young photographers see only degradation and menace - the
brutal hand of man. Edward Weston's nudes, Ansel Adams' mountain ranges
and Yousuf Karsh's portraits are aeons away from the concerns of the
young.
So, too, are Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moments". Today's
photographers design and build up their images, and what they don't
like they alter or edit away. We now have vibrant, clever, polished
images which hold their own against the most spectacular commercial
photography, as well as the slick products of contemporary art. But
spontaneity, surely one of the great natural attributes of the medium
(cameras really can capture things the eye cannot see), is in short
supply. For better or worse, the photographer as hunter has given way
to the sedentary farmer
· reGeneration: 50 Photographers Of Tomorrow is published on
August 22 by Thames & Hudson at £18.95.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
