... greater than its parts?

I think art, especially in the case of Arbus and Woodman, shows that their work was an honest expression of how they saw the world and their work is as White suggested self portraits and is witness to their personal truths thus they were working form a place that is real and not confined to rules and regulations but their own life's experiences.
 
gns said:
I answered your original question.

Do you want to answer mine...the one you just quoted?
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... if I looked at a new photo that I didn't know was by Diane Arbus I think it would get a more balanced appraisal, I would be looking for freaks otherwise

... but that's what happens when you argue the particular instead of the general concept
 
One can have a look at the Japanese photographer, Masahisa Fukase. He was quite well know and published a few photo books about his family. Primarily about his first and send wives. After his second wife left him, he entered a very dark period and began to drink. While traveling, he began to notice and begin to photograph ravens. His book, "The Solitude of Ravens", probably stands for his one of best works, overshadowing everything before.
 
Not sure that's what he was arguing. A poor Bernini is still a poor Bernini, but when comparing Bernini w/another sculptor (or Caravaggio w/another painter), one could rationally choose to look at their respective bodies of work to say that Bernini is a greater, or lesser, artist than the other guy/gal. In other words, is the poor Bernini representative of his work or is it an outlier? Or to bring things back to photography, did Bernini have a higher "hit ratio" than other sculptors?

The notion of "hit ratio" gets at the reason why I think people may refer to bodies of work more frequently with respect to photography, at least in reference to genres like documentary (or street, etc.) where the photographer is not in complete control of the environment: you look at the body of work to weed out the results of luck/chance because any schmo can luck out now & then w/a nice snap, but only the "greats" can consistently produce great images.

Sparrow said:
Chris,

So a poor Bernini is improved in some way simply because of its provenance?

... and how about Caravaggio, only about eighty canvasses and many of those are 'reprints'?
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Keith there are some that think Liebovitz's most powerful work was when she was documenting Sontag's fight with cancer because it was so close to her and so honest. I would agree.
 
Of course even "greats" produce crap. But to me (& of course this is all subjective) the key question is does their good stuff significantly outweigh the crap?

I'm not saying that a crap photo by Cartier-Bresson, Frank, or whoever you think is great magically becomes a great photo, just that it is not irrational to give him/her the benefit of the doubt when judging their abilities as a photographer.

kbg32 said:
Not always true. I used to work in a photo gallery many years ago. Even the "greats" gotta s**t. No one is immune.
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Hopefully anyone's good stuff should outweigh the crap. What we see in gallery is usually the best. It should be. I got a chance to look at whole collections, work prints, etc, purchased by people of well known photographers, and they, anyone does the same kind of images - family, pets, cars, misses. That is what was so interesting about Magnum publishing contact sheets that contained well known images.
 
I think a better way of stating this question is: "Is the influence of this artist greater than the sum of his/her individual works?"
 
In any art you will have one hit wonders. The acid test is whether they produce along a long body of work. Or are they lucky and favored by the curators and art world for some reason no one can understand.

Plenty of photog produced massive bodies of work composed of mostly garbage. So if they deserve a prize it is for sheer mass, not lots of fine individual work.

Of course, all this is a matter of taste. What I find garbage you may swoon over and vice versa. You can never argue taste in art.
 
airfrogusmc said:
Art in its purest form is a reflection of what the artist is honestly going through in life and a must do for the artist.
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No, that's entirely untrue, and only your opinion. Le Artiste can be honest, dishonest, or whatever else. Honesty is often pretty boring, to be honest. Your quoting other people to back up your view is called a bandwagon fallacy. Try to find another way.

"The Bandwagon Fallacy is committed whenever one argues for an idea based upon an irrelevant appeal to its popularity."

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/bandwagn.html
 
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