doolittle
Well-known
I know threads don't have to a have a point, however this one is all over the place.
RichC started the thread as a spin-off of a previous thread, presumably to elaborate and prove a point from it.
To me it's the irony of being lectured by a pedant and berated for not being sufficiently open minded to accept the supposed heterodoxy on offer, which itself is just more orthodoxy wrapped in cliches and trite.
What gets to me is the message to embrace the new, be open minded - coupled with the intolerance of any opposing view, thus completely missing the point being made.
RichC started the thread as a spin-off of a previous thread, presumably to elaborate and prove a point from it.
To me it's the irony of being lectured by a pedant and berated for not being sufficiently open minded to accept the supposed heterodoxy on offer, which itself is just more orthodoxy wrapped in cliches and trite.
What gets to me is the message to embrace the new, be open minded - coupled with the intolerance of any opposing view, thus completely missing the point being made.
Sparrow
Veteran
... strictly speaking clichéd and trite are the same thing ... however I'm unsure about the accent
And speaking as a Commercial Designer I expect as out of fashion as I am (sorry about starting the sentence with a conjunction)
Aren't we talking about something different...different uses of photography?
One (Gursky) is a process the artist chooses to use in order to get to his final print... which is a photograph. You might not like his process because it is not traditional, but his training and schooling were most definitely in photography and his work is sold as photography.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_photographs
The second, your scenario, is a photograph of someone's work to document / promote the work. It does not replace the work becoming the work of that artist.
jfretless
Established
I come to RFF to get away from the gear driven drivel on, what seems, all other "photography" forums. I find that the content regarding photography outweighs the content on gear. A good balance of both. Learn something and get some camera p@rn, all in one place. Love it!
airfrogusmc
Veteran
What would Uelsmann be or John Paul Caponigro? And does it matter?
airfrogusmc
Veteran
Mixed media has been around for several decades now. Though usually in most cases the artist is the one that created all the pieces. I am pretty much a straight photographer in the way I approach the medium but I that doesn't mean I can't appreciate many other approaches.
Though this work Faking It I wouldn't considered mixed media it demonstrates the argument of what is and what isn't really shouldn't be an argument. Its just different ways people create. And I see Uelsmann has work in the exhibit and yes this was settled a long time ago.
Though this work Faking It I wouldn't considered mixed media it demonstrates the argument of what is and what isn't really shouldn't be an argument. Its just different ways people create. And I see Uelsmann has work in the exhibit and yes this was settled a long time ago.
Nescio
Well-known
Iman Wilkens already explained why Homers' sea never could have been blue in the first place...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Troy_Once_Stood
pgk
Well-known
Photography : drawing with light.
Photographer : someone who draws with light.
In the OP by the above definitions, two of the three people quoted are not undertaking photography. The other might be........
Artists maybe, but two aren't photographing in the examples.
Photographer : someone who draws with light.
In the OP by the above definitions, two of the three people quoted are not undertaking photography. The other might be........
Artists maybe, but two aren't photographing in the examples.
Sparrow
Veteran
RichC
Well-known
Something more to consider...
Photography represents a conversation with contemporary culture - it explores the here and now; and its outcome, photographs, end up showing us our history, what once happened in some other place.
For many years, the photograph was revered for what it is as much as for what it communicated. As Susan Sontag wrote in the 1970s: "Each still photograph is a privileged moment, turned into a slim object. "
Culture has changed in the half century since she wrote those words. Today, the medium - whether painting, literature or photography - is no longer revered. Today, the photograph is no longer Sontag's "slim object" but a symbol of our dialogue with culture; the photograph is no longer important for being an object but for its meaning as a code. Adherence to conventions that have become associated with photography - it's principles, rules, expectations - is seen as a restriction and regressive. Today, it can be impossible to label an object simply "a photograph" - it may perhaps be part sculpture, part painting, part photograph. Similarly, we can no longer pigeonhole "a photographer" easily either.
A recent photobook I bought is HG Wells's "The Time Machine" (by Andreas Schmidt). Wells's book was downloaded to a phone, and each "page" was photographed, so you can read the entire book in the photobook, one screen per page. As the book progresses, the table on which the phone lies becomes darker as twilight falls. This is a brilliant, witty commentary on culture, books, technology and photography ("time machine" is not only the title of the novel but describes a camera). But is this literature or photography? The answer is neither and both...
Jim Goldberg takes photographs, which he then writes on. Despite belonging to Magnum and being called a photographer, the objects he creates would lose their relevance if text and image were separated. So, his creations cannot be adequately defined as simply photographs, nor as literature.
Photographers who refuse to accept this paradigm shift will find themselves having a separate conversation about the past, increasingly irrelevant to the role of photography within our society.
If a photographer prefers to stay with tradition and convention, that's entirely their choice - and I certainly won't damn them for that. But I intend my own photography to be relevant to today’s culture, and if that - one day - results in my giving up the camera forever to create "photographs" in some other way with some other technology, so be it.
Photography represents a conversation with contemporary culture - it explores the here and now; and its outcome, photographs, end up showing us our history, what once happened in some other place.
For many years, the photograph was revered for what it is as much as for what it communicated. As Susan Sontag wrote in the 1970s: "Each still photograph is a privileged moment, turned into a slim object. "
Culture has changed in the half century since she wrote those words. Today, the medium - whether painting, literature or photography - is no longer revered. Today, the photograph is no longer Sontag's "slim object" but a symbol of our dialogue with culture; the photograph is no longer important for being an object but for its meaning as a code. Adherence to conventions that have become associated with photography - it's principles, rules, expectations - is seen as a restriction and regressive. Today, it can be impossible to label an object simply "a photograph" - it may perhaps be part sculpture, part painting, part photograph. Similarly, we can no longer pigeonhole "a photographer" easily either.
A recent photobook I bought is HG Wells's "The Time Machine" (by Andreas Schmidt). Wells's book was downloaded to a phone, and each "page" was photographed, so you can read the entire book in the photobook, one screen per page. As the book progresses, the table on which the phone lies becomes darker as twilight falls. This is a brilliant, witty commentary on culture, books, technology and photography ("time machine" is not only the title of the novel but describes a camera). But is this literature or photography? The answer is neither and both...
Jim Goldberg takes photographs, which he then writes on. Despite belonging to Magnum and being called a photographer, the objects he creates would lose their relevance if text and image were separated. So, his creations cannot be adequately defined as simply photographs, nor as literature.
Photographers who refuse to accept this paradigm shift will find themselves having a separate conversation about the past, increasingly irrelevant to the role of photography within our society.
If a photographer prefers to stay with tradition and convention, that's entirely their choice - and I certainly won't damn them for that. But I intend my own photography to be relevant to today’s culture, and if that - one day - results in my giving up the camera forever to create "photographs" in some other way with some other technology, so be it.
Paul Jenkin
Well-known
Similar positionings are used in all photographic forums - especially the film -v- digital ones where the end result is used to justify the means. Isn't it about what we prefer?
Some argue that the point of a journey is not to arrive; it's about the experience of the journey itself. Experiencing and loving a process - such as shooting with RFs is a very personal thing. The end result may, or may not, be what one intended. However, that need take noting away from the enjoyment of using the kit - if it's the kit that really interests you.
I've known "photographers" who shoot rolls of film and then never have them processed. For them, it's enough to take the photo. That's not for me - but who am I to criticise?
Reduced to its basics, a camera is no more than a tool. To others, it's a great piece of art and highly treasured. For most, it sits somewhere inbetween.
Some argue that the point of a journey is not to arrive; it's about the experience of the journey itself. Experiencing and loving a process - such as shooting with RFs is a very personal thing. The end result may, or may not, be what one intended. However, that need take noting away from the enjoyment of using the kit - if it's the kit that really interests you.
I've known "photographers" who shoot rolls of film and then never have them processed. For them, it's enough to take the photo. That's not for me - but who am I to criticise?
Reduced to its basics, a camera is no more than a tool. To others, it's a great piece of art and highly treasured. For most, it sits somewhere inbetween.
Jim Goldberg goes out with a camera and makes photographs... the writing, whether done by him or his subject, does not change the fact that he photographs and is a photographer. Rich and Poor is certainly a photography book... it is sold as such.
The problem is that RFF's collective definition of photography is antiquated.
Richard G
Veteran
Progress is an interesting notion in art. Glenn Gould in an essay on Richard Strauss questioned the notion of progress in music, citing the late flourish of Strauss's career in the late '30s early '40s which virtually ignored much of the progress of the 20th century. We look back at earlier painters and do not necessarily consider them superseded, although techniques have changed and some progress made in anatomy and optics etc. Brueghel speaks to us clearly over centuries. These visual artists called photographers who write on pictures, and other manipulations in a society with an art industry: they will be history, and history only, so soon. Picasso was so stunned by a picture he saw in Matisse's studio that he asked to borrow it, and kept it for days and weeks, marvelling at Matisse's genius. Matisse wrested it back with some difficulty. Would such an exchange ever occur with these things promoted in this thread?
doolittle
Well-known
I have to congratulate you RichC. Very few people really manage to get up my nose, but you have a knack for it! I readily admit the fault lies totally with myself - genuinely no insult intended. You certainly are getting a reaction.
To me this strikes of bandwangonism. Just because fashions change, doesn't make what has gone before irrelevant. Neither does the personal journey of each individual have to be the same. Atget continued to use dry plate photography long after it had become out of favour. People make daguerreotypes still today.
I guess I have a general dislike of the starry eyed wonder of the digital age where just because something is computerised makes it somehow totally different and novel to what has gone before. Somehow sticking the word virtual in there is meant to change everything. There is always an interface to the real world that has to be appreciated. Virtual photographer, virtual pilot, virtual sex.
If your teenagers joked that the view from the aeroplane looked like the view of a globe, it really wouldn't be much different than saying google earth. Things haven't really changed.
Just because some section of the art world lauds the google street view photographer and announces a paradigm shift, doesn't make it true in my book and strikes me as pretentious twaddle. Same with the semantics you are pushing of photographer/artist etc. It's like if we don't agree with your world view we become left in the stone age.
I am not closed off to the novel. I enjoy looking at avant garde art. It's just I like to make my own mind up about it, rather than being told what to think.
Anyway, taking my cue from a previous poster, I am going to play bull**** bingo with this thread.