How Relevant Are We?

[Ducky]

The idea that man(kind) has figured out a system where light can pass through a few pieces of glass and react with chemicals which, when treated with additional chemicals, can create an image so fine you can count the hairs on a person's head leaves me in awe. And the fact that I can do it too is even more exciting. I find that relevant.

 

[ferider]

I look at one of my keepers and see what I remember I saw.

Somebody else looks at it, comments that (s)he sees what I saw, too.

Very, very cool.

Back to boat building ....

 

[Fred Burton]

What does it matter if photography is relevant to anyone but yourself? Look at Winogrand. He had some greatest hits. But the majority of his photos have never been seen by anyone and will never be seen by anyone. You've got to shoot for yourself (unless you are a pro and then creating what the client wants is the only relevance), if other people think it's crap, so what? Too much angst.

 

[Carlsen Highway]

Fred,

You are entirely correct of course, you have to do it for yourself. (unless your paid to do it for someone else...)
But what Im getting at, is that while that it is understood as for as the nuts and bolts of performing the activity, is that unless there is an audience - or you perceive there might one day be an audience, no matter how small, it becomes a

 

[MickH]

I started doing it because it was the easiest way I could find to make a living without really working. It was a way to do a bit of traveling and meet people. It was saleable, or it made me saleable anyway, because I had to produce what others would pay money for. Most of what I've shot over the years I consider crap, but it satisfied the editor or art director. I think that a lot of photographers get to the point where they're being praised for photographs that were crap when they were shot decades ago, but now they either conjure up nostalgia for a bygone era in the viewer's brain or are photographs of famous people or events. One thing that makes a photo of a well known person more valuable is if it was made very early in their career, long before they'd achieved fame. Another type of photography is documentation of a way of life that no longer exists. The historical value trumps whether or not it's a great photo. Save all your negatives. You never know...

Dear Mr Kaplan, I applaud your honesty. If only all artists were this candid.

 

[Nh3]

I'm not an artist and I would never be one. Why I'm photographing is to have a say and express myself with my photos... Its like writing on a dairy and not expecting anyone to read it and even if they read it, their reaction is not important.

 

[Al Kaplan]

MickH, a lot of my best photos were shot while shooting for one particular editor, Jim Kukar, through his career with a series of papers and magazines that he edited over the years. We met when we were 26 and this year we turned 66. He's no longer in a position to be buying photography although he still works part time as a copy editor and headline writer. We still meet for lunch a time or two each month.

He knew what I could do, how I saw the world, and would send me out on a shoot with no instructions beyond maybe a "I'm thinking of a four column horizontal to run below the fold" and from there it was my call. He was a big believer in what he called "wild art", a photo I'd just happen to run across in my travels, maybe kids playing or an interesting play of light and shadows on a local church. I got names when possible.

I hated politics with a passion. He assigned me to cover city council meetings and local elections. Somehow or another he got the two of us floor passes to both the Democratic and Republican national conventions in 1972, when they were both held in Miami Beach. There were photographers from national publications that had less access. He then got out of the editing business for a few years and managed a succesful election campaign for Bill Lehman who was running for congress. He ran the congressman's office for a few years. That led me to other political clients. That led to other non-political clients as well.

Jim Kukar took a twenty-something shy photographer and thrust him into the exciting new world of the power structure. He also had the disconcerting habit of telling me that the reporter would meet me at the location. He rarely did. I'd get back to the office and Jim would tell me to leave some notes so the guy could write the story in the morning. I'd sit down and just pound out the copy, double spaced of course, on the old Underwood. It just seemed easier that way. A couple of years ago Jim and I were gettting together for lunch and I asked him why didn't he just fire that reporter all those years ago. The one who never showed up. He told me that he thought I wrote better copy, and he'd never assigned anybody to cover those stories.

James Mitchell remarked to me a few years ago that the unique thing about my photography career was how varied it was, from rock stars to presidential canidates, neighborhood kids to black power leaders to prostitutes in the ghetto, and all done within about a fifteen mile radius of where I'm sitting right now. Mostly shot on black and white film run through Leicas. No, I never hasd any problems being the only white guy around, and for a couple of years I was the "token honkey" for a black publication.

While my photographer friends were roaming the world I was helping raise my two kids while my wife was finishing college, attending medical school, and doing her residency. I found that you can find a lot of things to photograph within that fifteen mile radius, and make money doing it.

 

[hawkeye]

Carlsen

We live in a world awash in photographic images. Billions of images, covering our walls, filling our magazines and crowding out the space on our computer monitors. We add to this deluge, our little band of photojournalists, hobbyists and idlers away of time.

Do you understand that simply by being 'serious' about making photographs you have stepped outside of that normal middle class world? On this forum we all share a strange mania, an obsessive need to make images and a compulsion to play with our "cameras obscura."

That we are different is central here. That some part of our beings wants to do this "photography" is what is important. Relevance is relative but it is the passion that matters.

It keeps you alive.

Hawkeye

 

[imajypsee]

Whadya mean? very few people will ever see them?

Whadya mean? very few people will ever see them?

... snippage...
Why are we working in a medium which is about being seen by people, which is about comuunication, when we must admit that very few people indeed will eveer see them? Surely this must affect the success of teh work as a piece of art? ..snippage...

If you mean that very few people will ever see your PRINTS, that's perhaps a reason to suffer whatever angst you're suffering regarding relevance. But, since we have at our disposal online galleries, there's little reason for suffering from lack of viewers. I have over 4000 photos on my main site and 350 on Flickr. My stuff is viewed many times every day. if I were to hang it in a gallery some place (and I have done that) the experience wouldn't be the same and the number of views wouldn't compare.

As for "relevance," I can say that I find my work relevant and others must agree since they keep looking at it and, on occasion, they buy it.

Mary in SW Florida

 

[Fred Burton]

"I have over 4000 photos on my main site and 350 on Flickr."

Picasso, when he died, it is said, left over 90,000 pieces of completed art work. How many have any of us seen? In that sense, the Internet would have given him much more exposure. But most of this art clearly did not rise to the top of his greatist hits, so would posting them on the web (had it existed) have simply buried his talent in the noise of his prodigious output?

I vacillate about whether the exposure of the web is really a good thing.

 

[Spider67]

When I was doing Comedy (not quite right .In Austria we call it "Kabarett" and it is rather a mix betwenn comedy and political satire) I had to learn that writing and performing is the fun part, to get it to the stage and into the papers was work.
So perhaps being an artist somehow means 20% Art 80% work. Of course that seems to be just at the beginning like that until you find some kind of agent.
I am also asking myself if exposure on the web in communities is such a good thing ("you scratch my back, I scratch yours").
Perhaps your products -stories, photographs wharever- are becoming art when you climb on the soap box and are ready for a beating.....or worse for being ignored. And you become an artist if you have done that so often until you succeeded to get from the soapbox on the stage or ina gallery (not to mention a museum.
And of course there is Lartigue who was an amateur and raised interest in his photographs when he was 60+.

 

[eric rose]

I think it's quite erroneous to make those assumptions about your co-workers. You might be surprised to find out what gives them pleasure once they are out of the office. It seems what you are saying is that they are lacking in culture. Some of the most "cultured" people I have met work at very tedious non glamorous jobs. Al's words are also so true and should be an inspiration to the younger photogs out there.

 

[imajypsee]

tell me how exposure on the web is a bad thing?

tell me how exposure on the web is a bad thing?

leaving aside your analogy about whether or not Picasso's finished pieces were worth a look, how can exposure on the web not be a good thing? Is there some downfall to having lots of eyes on one's output/art/work/use your own word here...?

I vacillate about whether the exposure of the web is really a good
thing.

BTW, I don't think everything I put up is necessarily worth a look, but who am I to judge?😛 I do it because I can.

 

[dave lackey]

Dear Fred,

Nothing has much to do with artists. We back to the old quote, "Genius does what it must; talent does what it can."

Cheers,

R.

Ahhh...Lord Lytton. The one man who coined the phrase that I remember most from reading briefs in law school: "It was a dark and stormy night..."

Roger, you are bringing back memories of things almost forgotten.😛

 

[Papa Smurf]

Relevancy is a relevant issue

Relevancy is a relevant issue

After spending more that 45 years in daily contact with the public or colleagues, it is my observation that, as the saying goes, "most people are on the world, not apart of it." Whatever crisis they are dealing with at any moment is relevant and everything else is not. Whether any of us will change the World or even leave some small mark upon it is questionable. True genius is typically not recognized until long after the poor guy or gal is long dead. And often as not, it (the genius) was accidental. Did Da Vinci set out to create one of the greatest paintings ever when he started the Mona Lisa, I doubt it. Just take your pictures for whatever reason you choose, enjoy them, and let the "public", well just let them be as they will be.

 

[Al Kaplan]

Seventeen thousand people came and saw my recent photography exhibit, but I'm saying "AND SAW", not "TO SEE". I was showing at a local art gallery. The owner, Mario Folores, was asked to curate an exhibit by local artists the North Miami Public Library, and he included a dozen of my prints.. The library was chosen as one of the sites used for early voting in the recent election. People were lined up for a couple of blocks, waiting in the rain and in the sun, and when they finally got inside the line slowly went past the wall where my photos were displayed. It was either look at them or stare at the back of the head in front of you.

A few days later I was at a city council meeting and the head librarian said "It's official, Al. Over seventeen thousand people saw your photo exhibit!"

Most of them, of course, didn't have a clue in hell as to who I was. Still, over the next few days I had people I barely knew tell me they saw the pictures. It was good for the ego. I shot some pictures of the line outside, the cars parked helter skelter wherever they could, and the people in front of that wall of my photographs. I really should develop that film and post them on my blog.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Seventeen thousand people came and saw my recent photography exhibit, but I'm saying "AND SAW", not "TO SEE". I was showing at a local art gallery. The owner, Mario Folores, was asked to curate an exhibit by local artists the North Miami Public Library, and he included a dozen of my prints.. The library was chosen as one of the sites used for early voting in the recent election. People were lined up for a couple of blocks, waiting in the rain and in the sun, and when they finally got inside the line slowly went past the wall where my photos were displayed. It was either look at them or stare at the back of the head in front of you.

A few days later I was at a city council meeting and the head librarian said "It's official, Al. Over seventeen thousand people saw your photo exhibit!"

Most of them, of course, didn't have a clue in hell as to who I was. Still, over the next few days I had people I barely knew tell me they saw the pictures. It was good for the ego. I shot some pictures of the line outside, the cars parked helter skelter wherever they could, and the people in front of that wall of my photographs. I really should develop that film and post them on my blog.

Dear Al,

Your pictures can't possibly have been any good because you're not an Artist. At least, I don't recall your claiming that exalted status; my apologies if I am misremembering. You're just a (holds nose, grimaces) photographer.

Art-with-a-capital-A seems to me to be increasingly like economics: a grand set of theories, more and more rigorously analyzed, and ever more detached from the real world. Personally, I've usually enjoyed the work of photographers more than I've enjoyed the work of Photographic Artists.

Also, of course, some of the best photography I've ever seen comes from unknowns, just as happens with painting, though I'm not so sure about sculpture.

Cheers,

Roger

 

[bottley1]

Photography permeates all aspects of modern life, in that respect its relevent to all. Maybe people take photography for granted, being bombarded by images all day and night.Familiarity breeds contempt?

 

[hawkeye]

At the outset Carlsen posed the question is photography relevant to people especially compared to something like cinema. He was also asking about whether it mattered that he took photographs.

It wasn't about art or the web but a more existential question about being and purpose. That's not too many steps from Sartre or Camus writing about meaning. For them meaning came from commitment and doing.

Sure we live in a world of images and there's Art photography and there's exposure on the web but what I think matters is doing something with passion. Doing it when no one else cares that you do it and when you are not doing it for reward.

I'm a working pro and I shoot for magazines and have done a few books. My images are easily seen by something like maybe 100,000 people or more a month just in print--god knows who sees what on the web.

But you know what? Ultimately what gives me satisfaction is being out there taking pictures and once in a while taking out my box personal pictures to share with a few friends and other photographers.

That's me craziness and what me likes to do best.

Hawkeye

 

[RayPA]

What does it matter if photography is relevant to anyone but yourself? Look at Winogrand. He had some greatest hits. But the majority of his photos have never been seen by anyone and will never be seen by anyone. You've got to shoot for yourself (unless you are a pro and then creating what the client wants is the only relevance), if other people think it's crap, so what? Too much angst.

+1.

There's only one audience. Shoot for yourself and no one else.


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