No BS

[paulfish4570]

the lens is the brush, the film/sensor is the pallete. go make some art.

 

[gdmcclintock]

...

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

Juan,

In what waters exactly does photography move? Is photography to be only, as Baudelaire put it in 1859, the "humble servant" of art?

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Art is in the eye of the beholder?

There are lots of articles that I cannot comprehend, that does not make the Author of the article and people that promote it "dumb". I would probably be smarter to read the article, understand the author's points, and then formulate my own opinions using this knowledge to either agree or disagree with the author's position.

In this example, I would compare a photographer with an architect and not a painter. The photographer observes reality and uses the mechanisms at hand to project it to their conceived representation, their "mental image". Sometimes that means just pushing the button, sometimes it means making a new device such as a lens or filter. An image architect, not a painter. No one questions that an architect is an artist, and their work is among the man-made wonders of the world.

And most people pay more money for their houses than the art hanging in it. Which seems to be the primary metric used in the article.

I've also been in meetings where PhD physicists call each other "Stupid". I have no respect when the only argument raised against an opinion is to label the person as "stupid".

 

[SciAggie]

Image architect - I like that. I may start using that. I have something I can really use from this thread now.

 

[willie_901]

An interesting aspect of the photography is or isn't art and what sort of artistic expression is best suited to photography is the resurgence of Pictorialism.

While I believe phtography's artistic strength is capturing the moment, digital manipulation has become an inexpensive and popular means of artistic expression. The Pictorialists were the first photographers ( c.a. 1885 - 1914) to challenge the assertion that photography is not art. The first Pictorialists had to invest a great deal of time and effort to manipulate and synthesize images. Today anyone with an iPhone and a couple of Apps can practice Pictorialism. Then there's the genre of hand-painted photographs.

As long as people create... that's good.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

There are lots of articles that I cannot comprehend, that does not make the Author of the article and people that promote it "dumb".

(...)

I've also been in meetings where PhD physicists call each other "Stupid". I have no respect when the only argument raised against an opinion is to label the person as "stupid".

There is much existential irony in the dumbing-down of the word "dumb" and "stupid". Too mentally-lazy to say "it is unintelligible to me" and "I don't agree with you".


People just don't have the time to think, of course. It's far easier to raise voices, yell, and engage in pseudo-religious wars.

Today's industrialized societies are extremely specialized, and too pressed for precious time. When that specialization seems threatened, of course people are going to have violent reactions. Dismissive, at best. It's a time-saver.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

As long as people create... that's good.

That is the key. People argue against photography "being art" because much of it isn't nowadays, and much of what is passed as "art" is really contaminated by lots of pretentiousness out there. It's as short-sighted as saying that writing isn't an art because much of what is written isn't literature (i.e. shopping lists, class notes).

The worst thing is that their deep-held convictions leave no room for discussion. The lowest form of this is seen in politics. The highest, in many self-help seminars. The quiet (by comparison) voices of reason have much to get through.

 

[paulfish4570]

well said, sir, well said.

 

[SciAggie]

Some of the best responses that could be made to this thread are, in my opinion, being made in the Gursky thread. http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=112779

There is a strong temptation to claim "I could have done that", when of course, they didn't. To me, that's the essense of the argument in this thread. When we look at the Gursky image, we do see something that we may in fact have had the technical skill to produce; we dismiss the fact that we didn't have the original vision to produce the image. When we look at a fine painting most of us never say to ourselves "I could have done that" because we lack the technical skill to produce the work. It never occurs to us that a great painting is special because of something more than its technical merits.

My two cents worth. Reading both threads has caused a good discussion.

Now I have to go find the "Things I never worried about" thread and admit I didn't really know who Gursky was before today...:bang:

 

[ian]

In the "world of art" people cannot even agree on what IS or ISN'T art so how can we expect anything different in regards to photography and "art"? If it isn't, will we all stop photographing out of creative despair? I hope that what we do we do out of love (at least non commercially) and for ourselves, not to prove we are artists or creative. Proving is really just asking others to agree with us and looking outside ourselves for acceptance or validation. These pronouncements and views are subjective and often change with the times. In the final analysis it does not really matter and is just an intellectual exercise - fun but not relevant as to who we are or what we do.

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

Juan,

In what waters exactly does photography move? Is photography to be only, as Baudelaire put it in 1859, the "humble servant" of art?

Photography moves NATURALLY in the waters of reality reflection.

When its nature is someway crushed, as when someone creates a new reality (theater) to photograph it, or as when the captured image is varied physically or digitally, photography's real nature is BY FORCE made closer to painting nature, where it's a creator's fantasy (inspired on reality or not) what will become the work.

When artists (and other people) started to see those very strange things called photographs on the 19th century, they never considered them art: it's obvious, as they were reality, not creation or fantasy.

Some of those artists considered photography (reality) -with reason- a servant of art... Servant in the same visual sense a model posing (still) can be a servant of art...

When one of the greatest photographers of all time, Eugene Atget, did his photographs, he felt he was able to -first in front of reality, and then in front of his images- dream of lyric and metaphors, as in front of paintings, so he started to call his "suspicious" photographs "documents for artists" and that's exactly how he offered them to artists in Paris: wonderful photographs he considered humble servants of art... They're no doubt superb, but they're different from art... They're completely based in reality, but tell other things...

So, if someone wants to be a true artist in photography, a good idea is having a visual style or a limited range of themes: a recognizable finger print, and to create scenes to communicate feelings, to induce emotions... Joel Peter-Witkin is a photographer I don't enjoy, but I consider him an artist.

And the photographers I like the most are those who reflect reality in ways that strangely mix too different words like humble, intelligent, clear, sensitive, lyric, realistic, surprising, metaphoric, surreal, but based -always- on plain reality, and that's very hard to do in my opinion: a lot harder than creating a new scene and being an artist by photographing it...

Those (art/painting, and photography) are two very different waters. All of us are free to like each of them as much as we decide to, but they're clearly different...

The act of the photographer is a lot closer to the act of the viewer: both enjoy, suffer or dream in front of reality... The photographer was the viewer already... In the case of the artist/painter, there's a much bigger gap between the viewer and the creator.

When photography tries to swim in painting (creation) waters, I wonder, "why not paint then?" I see it close to a painter writing words or poems on canvas, instead of being a writer... If the idea is writing, a canvas mixing painting and words is a weaker medium for writing than books... In the same sense, for real art, visual creation and metaphors, photography is a weaker medium than painting...

When a painting swims or used to swim in "reality reproduction" waters (without extra lyric adding by the painter) it was never as respected as paintings that were able to communicate more than pure reality...

Should photography be judged the same way painting has been judged for centuries? Should photography be considered better if it reproduces a new, just staged -or varied- reality instead of reproducing plain reality? Do photographers need to be called artists? Do painting/art, and photography, move in the same waters? I don't think so...

Cheers,

Juan

 

[Benjamin Marks]

Risking a cross-post, here is my comment from TOP:

"I think that the photograph of the Earth hanging like a delicate spherical island alone in space probably altered more perceptions, and more quickly, more radically, than the Mona Lisa ever did. But that photograph isn't really Art -- I mean, it wasn't created with artistic intent, any more than the photographs on the documentary list above were. I recognize the urge to compare photography and painting, because they both result in two-dimensional images. But the comparison really ends there, doesn't it? No one compares photography to dance."

In a sense, the posts above this one are trying to answer the question: "what is photography for?" Well, sometimes it is for documenting things that were happening in the blink of an eye, sometimes it is for "showing something wonderful" (which is great shorthand for the example I picked in my TOP comment, and many others) and sometimes it is for creating "hints and allegations" or a new reality (Unselman, Meatyard). I think discussing who will be remembered in 100 years or 500 years is fun beer-talk, but I am compelled by pure practicality to observe that the resolution of that issue is comfortably out of our hands.

Ben

 

[claacct]

Paintings need a context and a setting to work, photography is immune to this. For example of you take Mona Lisa from its place in Louvre and put it in some side street Gallery, people seeing it would automatically assume its a cheap fake. The same applies to all paintings, for paintings and sculptures to work they need their setting, the museum, which is a sort of shrine.

You put a photo that has become famous anywhere and people automatically know which picture it is and they don't care where or how its shown. The Afghan Girl portrait for example.

The other good thing about photography is that a photo is always greater than its photographer, unlike paintings where too much of the painter is in the painting. Mona Lisa is too much a testament of the genius that was da Vinci than an autonomous work of art.

 

[kbb]

"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 simply is not true of either medium. how many magnificent portrait paintings hang in museums that were commissioned by the subject(s)? tons, and not one of them started from an internal, artistic response. most likely they started with the sound of a pen scratching out a check. take HCB's photo of the man leaping across the puddle. hcb was in position because of an internal, artistic response to the lighting, framing, etc. then the man leaped, completing the photo. it would not have been made without that original internal, artistic response to the scene ...

Right, Paulfish...this is the most important point to make: Absolute, fully generalized statements about the artist's "conception" or "intention" or lack thereof are as worthless as all the endless articles in Free Inquiry magazine where the atheist authors debate which of various religious authors are Deists or Theists. I gotta go vacuum the house now.