Pablito
coco frío
yeah, the piece is rhetorically flawed.
Pablito
coco frío
But the article was not about whether photography is art. That is not the debate that is presented...
doolittle
Well-known
'Tis true. I always wonder if there are painter forums where they discuss different easels and brushes.
I was in Paris recently on vacation. I didn't get to take too many photos, but I did manage to bring the family along to a Diane Arbus exhibition in the Jeu de Paume. They had a huge body of her work on display and it was sublime.
I also managed to get a good look at two Albrecht Dürer engravings at the Petit Palais, it was inspirational too.
I feel lucky to have been able to see both these wonders.
If this forum was about painting, and I was a painter, I'd be mixing my own paints.
http://larrybatesstudio.blogspot.com/2010/11/mixing-your-own-pure-pigment-oil-paint.html
And Planar vs Sonnar would get replaced by egg tempura vs oil vs Tessars -I mean Water Color.
http://www.renaissanceconnection.org/lesson_art_oil.html
TOP posts a lot of articles. While he was writing "Why I hate Infrared" in the early 90s, I had Kodak make a Digital IR camera. The article is what it is: opinion, and does not hold true for everyone.
On the article about Art Photography, the bottom line seems to be based on the observation that people pay more for paintings than for photographs.
http://larrybatesstudio.blogspot.com/2010/11/mixing-your-own-pure-pigment-oil-paint.html
And Planar vs Sonnar would get replaced by egg tempura vs oil vs Tessars -I mean Water Color.
http://www.renaissanceconnection.org/lesson_art_oil.html
TOP posts a lot of articles. While he was writing "Why I hate Infrared" in the early 90s, I had Kodak make a Digital IR camera. The article is what it is: opinion, and does not hold true for everyone.
On the article about Art Photography, the bottom line seems to be based on the observation that people pay more for paintings than for photographs.
Pablito
coco frío
.....great to mix your own paints, grind your own pigments, but you have to be super careful as some pigments (cadmiums, lead...) very toxic.
....the difference between Planar and Sonnar cannot really be compared to the difference between egg tempera and oil. The difference between the two painting mediums is FAR greater than the difference between the two optics.
ColSebastianMoran
( IRL Richard Karash )
Bill, I appreciate your point of view, and glad that you post here.
I didn't like this article. He says, "If a photo is going to be art, then it must of of a unique moment..." He seems to be saying that it can only be art if a work is unique and no similar piece could be produced in the future. Sorry, but I just don't buy that, and I don't think it applies to most of what we respect as art. I studied with people who were really serious about their photographic art, and they have my respect.
As for photos we'll remember in 100 years, I can think of many that might qualify.
(Chris, you speak in a different voice, also much appreciated. About this article, I agree with you.)
This is surprising to me; MJ has certainly published a lot of great material, and I usually appreciate his site.
I didn't like this article. He says, "If a photo is going to be art, then it must of of a unique moment..." He seems to be saying that it can only be art if a work is unique and no similar piece could be produced in the future. Sorry, but I just don't buy that, and I don't think it applies to most of what we respect as art. I studied with people who were really serious about their photographic art, and they have my respect.
As for photos we'll remember in 100 years, I can think of many that might qualify.
(Chris, you speak in a different voice, also much appreciated. About this article, I agree with you.)
This is surprising to me; MJ has certainly published a lot of great material, and I usually appreciate his site.
Tell that to the optical engineer that designed the two different optics, and they would disagree with you. Completely different design philosophy, and very different results in the image. So once again, opinions that do not apply to everyone. Certainly not to me.
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Chriscrawfordphoto
Real Men Shoot Film.
Chriscrawfordphoto
Real Men Shoot Film.
Yes, there are, and yes painters talk about stuff like this. I laugh everytime some photographer trots out that tired old argument.
I spent my years in art school listening to professors, several of them with national reputations, talking about the differences between different brush types (eg. sable, nylon, hog bristle), different brands, etc. Many watercolorists won't touch anything but a Windsor-Newton Series 7 brush, and those brushes are EXPENSIVE. I remember we were only allowed to use certain paint brands because some are made for professionals, while others are 'student grade'. We were not allowed to use student grade paint. The professors made it clear that we were learning to be professionals and needed to use professional paint, brushes, canvas, etc. I still have my set of Windsor-Newton professional watercolor paints, which cost me about $300 back then!
Steve M.
Veteran
At some point (pretty quickly) all the intellectual time wasting and ego shoving doesn't go anywhere. There are people that create, and people that critique. An image works, or it doesn't. Really, it's a visual thing, not a verbal thing. There's nothing to figure out, and has nothing to do w/ the medium. Trust me, people that actually care about the creating of "art", and there is no definition of that, aren't sitting around talking about it. They're busy doing it, and if someone likes it or dismisses it, it's of no concern.
Carlsen Highway
Well-known
art
art
The great strength of a painting is that is it not tied to reality. It begins with an internal visualisation. It is also its great weakness.
(for example, the artists that were sent to the front in World War One came back and made paintings that do not capture the experience nearly as well as the simplest of amateur photographs have done.)
Photography is tied to reality, and starts with what is in front of the camera; in attempts to create an internal visualization such as in painting, reality must be circumvented in a studio, but is still tied to what light is reflected off real objects. At every stage you are stuck with the real world.
This is the weakness of it. Many people cannot express much of anything with photography. The real world sits in front of them and is not malleable, like a pyrimid in the desert, and they can't get any poetry out of it. It is truly a difficult form.
But reality is its great strength: the whole point when it is successful; the art is built on actuality. (Hence the disappointment when people discover that Doisneau's Kiss outside the Hotel was staged by friends, or Capa's Spanish soldier is a fake. The pictures are still exactly the same.) This is what he means when he says that the photographic art that will last is based on documentary photography - documentary pictures that transcend thier immediate subject or purpose. Photographic art is art because the viewer knows that it was composed or taken from the real world and it is an essential component of its success, not in spite of it.
Whereas an essential component of painting appreciation is the knowledge that there is nothing there but coloured liquids the artist smeared and pushed across a canvas. The entire thing is a creation.
Both forms are quite different in the way they succeed as art.
Regarding the article and as to a matter of value, I think he is right, paintings will always go for more money as art objects. A peice of art created from nothing - just paint on canvas - can create a form of awe in the veiwer. I am thinking of DaVinci's Virgin of the Rocks, for example or Gericault's Raft of the Medusa. A great photograph engages the mind and emotion, but the artistic achievement is still perceived to be lessor. And the reproducablity of a negative dilutes it further.
Photography I think of as a humble and even fleeting art form. I doubt much of it will be hanging in art galleries 200 years from now.
These are my own opinions on the matter.
art
The great strength of a painting is that is it not tied to reality. It begins with an internal visualisation. It is also its great weakness.
(for example, the artists that were sent to the front in World War One came back and made paintings that do not capture the experience nearly as well as the simplest of amateur photographs have done.)
Photography is tied to reality, and starts with what is in front of the camera; in attempts to create an internal visualization such as in painting, reality must be circumvented in a studio, but is still tied to what light is reflected off real objects. At every stage you are stuck with the real world.
This is the weakness of it. Many people cannot express much of anything with photography. The real world sits in front of them and is not malleable, like a pyrimid in the desert, and they can't get any poetry out of it. It is truly a difficult form.
But reality is its great strength: the whole point when it is successful; the art is built on actuality. (Hence the disappointment when people discover that Doisneau's Kiss outside the Hotel was staged by friends, or Capa's Spanish soldier is a fake. The pictures are still exactly the same.) This is what he means when he says that the photographic art that will last is based on documentary photography - documentary pictures that transcend thier immediate subject or purpose. Photographic art is art because the viewer knows that it was composed or taken from the real world and it is an essential component of its success, not in spite of it.
Whereas an essential component of painting appreciation is the knowledge that there is nothing there but coloured liquids the artist smeared and pushed across a canvas. The entire thing is a creation.
Both forms are quite different in the way they succeed as art.
Regarding the article and as to a matter of value, I think he is right, paintings will always go for more money as art objects. A peice of art created from nothing - just paint on canvas - can create a form of awe in the veiwer. I am thinking of DaVinci's Virgin of the Rocks, for example or Gericault's Raft of the Medusa. A great photograph engages the mind and emotion, but the artistic achievement is still perceived to be lessor. And the reproducablity of a negative dilutes it further.
Photography I think of as a humble and even fleeting art form. I doubt much of it will be hanging in art galleries 200 years from now.
These are my own opinions on the matter.
ndnik
Established
"The problem, from an artistic point of view, is that photography starts with an external point—a subject—and a mechanical capture, from which it can't escape.
Painting starts with an internal, artistic response, from which it can't escape, but which is considered the nexus of all real art."
This seems to me to be the central premise of the article. This is factually wrong and in my mind irrelevant to the quality of art.
It is wrong because photography starts with an internal vision just as often as painting does, and painting starts with an external vision just as often as a photograph does. The case in point is the Mapplethorpe flower arrangement: he must have seen it in his mind before arranging the flowers for this photograph. He did not walk the streets and suddenly saw the flower arrangement in a shop window and took a snap ...
The reason I think the above is utterly irrelevant is because it is artist-centric. An essentially romantic view of art. But what the artist thought when creating the work of art is totally irrelevant. What matters (and matters only) is what the work of (visual in our case) art invokes in the viewer. The artist's state of mind is long removed from the scene. If you are with me on this latter point, the distinction between painting and photography comes down to a choice of medium, not more. Only the final image matters, not how it got to be.
- N.
Painting starts with an internal, artistic response, from which it can't escape, but which is considered the nexus of all real art."
This seems to me to be the central premise of the article. This is factually wrong and in my mind irrelevant to the quality of art.
It is wrong because photography starts with an internal vision just as often as painting does, and painting starts with an external vision just as often as a photograph does. The case in point is the Mapplethorpe flower arrangement: he must have seen it in his mind before arranging the flowers for this photograph. He did not walk the streets and suddenly saw the flower arrangement in a shop window and took a snap ...
The reason I think the above is utterly irrelevant is because it is artist-centric. An essentially romantic view of art. But what the artist thought when creating the work of art is totally irrelevant. What matters (and matters only) is what the work of (visual in our case) art invokes in the viewer. The artist's state of mind is long removed from the scene. If you are with me on this latter point, the distinction between painting and photography comes down to a choice of medium, not more. Only the final image matters, not how it got to be.
- N.
uhoh7
Veteran
I don't presume to know what is art and what is not.
However one thing that strikes me in the article concerned:
The guy claims Capa will outlive Mapplethorpe-- I wonder. Mapplethorpe's images--some of them anyway are fully self-contained. You don't need to know about Nazis.
A thousand years from now the salient event of the 20th century is more likely to be carbon pollution than WW2. Capa's shots will blend into millions of war photos. Mapplethorpe might however have at least created some images that will make a future human wonder: what the hell is that about?
The photos from members here which inspire me are those that challange my visual perception in some way. I'm a lowly landscape shooter, but maybe some day I'll shoot some that that do the same to others.
Its a very old argument, F64 and all that, and the essay is a simple get off my lawn reaction to 'Ort'. He may have done alot of thinking, but it seems mostly that was thinking of how to put his pre-concieved notions into words.
Just my take on a first skim.
However one thing that strikes me in the article concerned:
The guy claims Capa will outlive Mapplethorpe-- I wonder. Mapplethorpe's images--some of them anyway are fully self-contained. You don't need to know about Nazis.
A thousand years from now the salient event of the 20th century is more likely to be carbon pollution than WW2. Capa's shots will blend into millions of war photos. Mapplethorpe might however have at least created some images that will make a future human wonder: what the hell is that about?
The photos from members here which inspire me are those that challange my visual perception in some way. I'm a lowly landscape shooter, but maybe some day I'll shoot some that that do the same to others.
Its a very old argument, F64 and all that, and the essay is a simple get off my lawn reaction to 'Ort'. He may have done alot of thinking, but it seems mostly that was thinking of how to put his pre-concieved notions into words.
Just my take on a first skim.
mackigator
Well-known
I liked the article, but all it makes me think of is "time to get back to work." By that I mean that the analysis doesn't seem to bear any fruit for the person trying to make either a painting or a photo.
gdmcclintock
Well-known
So one is not supposed to challenge one's teachers?
paulfish4570
Veteran
i thought the title of this thread was "no bs." 
Juan Valdenebro
Truth is beauty
Photography is different from art 99.99% of the times, including 99.99% of the times the words "fine art photography" are used, no matter if galleries say it's art, and no matter if public says it's art, and no matter if photographers are called artists by others or by themselves... Yes, a lot of people think close to nothing... Bill Pierce referred to that situation when he talked (I don't remember the precise words) about big photographs, galleries, then it's art...
The linked article is deeply clever... We photographers (no matter if we can be artists in other fields, or convert photography in a "white canvas" media that's close to painting's freedom) indeed play a game that's not present in any other art: it's not us who -in a certain way- produce the work, but a machine, and it's not inside us where the work is born, but outside... We don't create, but select, reflect... We deal with reality, not with fantasy... Our vision or perception of a fragment of reality can be close to that of a viewer seeing our photograph in the future, but that's just because of the viewer, not because we placed our emotions inside our photograph... We were indeed "the viewer"...
This peculiar craft has puzzled most sensitive spirits and minds since it was born (Baudelaire comes to mind) until this thread... But even if it's as respectable and moving as any art, it doesn't move in the waters art moves.
Cheers,
Juan
The linked article is deeply clever... We photographers (no matter if we can be artists in other fields, or convert photography in a "white canvas" media that's close to painting's freedom) indeed play a game that's not present in any other art: it's not us who -in a certain way- produce the work, but a machine, and it's not inside us where the work is born, but outside... We don't create, but select, reflect... We deal with reality, not with fantasy... Our vision or perception of a fragment of reality can be close to that of a viewer seeing our photograph in the future, but that's just because of the viewer, not because we placed our emotions inside our photograph... We were indeed "the viewer"...
This peculiar craft has puzzled most sensitive spirits and minds since it was born (Baudelaire comes to mind) until this thread... But even if it's as respectable and moving as any art, it doesn't move in the waters art moves.
Cheers,
Juan
SciAggie
Well-known
"The problem, from an artistic point of view, is that photography starts with an external point—a subject—and a mechanical capture, from which it can't escape.
Painting starts with an internal, artistic response, from which it can't escape, but which is considered the nexus of all real art."
I don't consider myself an expert in these matters but I do have an opinion. I these two points at least I believe the author is mistaken. I think good paintings or good fine art photographs reveal some internal, artistic response - they reveal something that the artist brings forth.
I'm probably going to say this badly, so please bare with me. There are many horrid paintings I'm sure, but I think it is fair to suggest that some painters with good technical skills get praised for their "art". People praise them because they recognize the "talent" needed to complete the work - the hand/ eye coordination and dexterity that one needs to possess to draw well. The work itself may not really reveal any "internal" response to the world.
Photography is different. It is much easier to produce work that displays competent technical skills. That is part of the reason it is valued less by many - they think anyone can be a photographer while not just anyone can "paint/draw". As far as that reasoning goes they may be correct but in my opinion the logic is flawed.
The paintings that I enjoy, as well as the photographs, reveal something - some internal, artistic message that the artist saw in their mind and expressed in their work. It may not be profound, but it is more than just a recording.
I told my wife this weekend that photography was much like teaching. A reasonably intelligent human can buy a camera, learn some technical skills and create an image. Similarly, many reasonably intelligent humans can attend the necessary classes and pass the necessary tests to be certified as a teacher. These folks can stand in front of students and dispense information. It is an completely different thing to have the ability to help students construct knowledge that will inform their lives.
Here on RFF some once wrote that when we look at a photo we must ask "What is the subject, and what does the photo say about?" Since I read that, I have at least found that all the photos I like have something that they say in some way. For me, that is enough to make it art - or at least interesting. I judge paintings the same way.
Painting starts with an internal, artistic response, from which it can't escape, but which is considered the nexus of all real art."
I don't consider myself an expert in these matters but I do have an opinion. I these two points at least I believe the author is mistaken. I think good paintings or good fine art photographs reveal some internal, artistic response - they reveal something that the artist brings forth.
I'm probably going to say this badly, so please bare with me. There are many horrid paintings I'm sure, but I think it is fair to suggest that some painters with good technical skills get praised for their "art". People praise them because they recognize the "talent" needed to complete the work - the hand/ eye coordination and dexterity that one needs to possess to draw well. The work itself may not really reveal any "internal" response to the world.
Photography is different. It is much easier to produce work that displays competent technical skills. That is part of the reason it is valued less by many - they think anyone can be a photographer while not just anyone can "paint/draw". As far as that reasoning goes they may be correct but in my opinion the logic is flawed.
The paintings that I enjoy, as well as the photographs, reveal something - some internal, artistic message that the artist saw in their mind and expressed in their work. It may not be profound, but it is more than just a recording.
I told my wife this weekend that photography was much like teaching. A reasonably intelligent human can buy a camera, learn some technical skills and create an image. Similarly, many reasonably intelligent humans can attend the necessary classes and pass the necessary tests to be certified as a teacher. These folks can stand in front of students and dispense information. It is an completely different thing to have the ability to help students construct knowledge that will inform their lives.
Here on RFF some once wrote that when we look at a photo we must ask "What is the subject, and what does the photo say about?" Since I read that, I have at least found that all the photos I like have something that they say in some way. For me, that is enough to make it art - or at least interesting. I judge paintings the same way.
Tompas
Wannabe Künstler
A bad painting is just a bad painting. It's worthless, in all regards, except probably to the painter.
A bad photograph can still have some documentary value, to me, to some, or to mankind.
Does this mean anything?
A bad photograph can still have some documentary value, to me, to some, or to mankind.
Does this mean anything?