Photography theory

David Hughes said:
Hi,

Yes, it was in Coe's book. I looked it up last night and ticked off another item on the loose ends list.

In many ways it was a good thing even though it was "wrong" as it kick started a lot, imo. A lot of pioneer's who got nowhere at the time were important for helping show the way to go and not go; although a lot only remember the winners and forget how much they relied on others' work.

Regards, David
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Dear David,

I'd suggest that it was unreservedly a good thing: happy accidents arising from mistakes, misconceptions and adventures have, I am sure, contributed the vast majority of human progress.

And yes, the "winner takes all" mentality is awful. As witness -- to go back to artistic "theory" -- Sontag. Because her writing is tendentious, opaque and pseudo-intellectual, and because few can be bothered to read it, she is a "winner" in the "theory of photography" stakes. Everyone has heard of her, and so she serves as a place-holder for everything they haven't read but wish/pretend they have.

Cheers,

R.
 
Roger Hicks said:
...And yes, the "winner takes all" mentality is awful. As witness -- to go back to artistic "theory" -- Sontag. Because her writing is tendentious, opaque and pseudo-intellectual, and because few can be bothered to read it, she is a "winner" in the "theory of photography" stakes. Everyone has heard of her, and so she serves as a place-holder for everything they haven't read but wish/pretend they have...
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Roger, your statement strikes me as more facile than tendentious. :D

Here is an article that I just came across, which puts things more in perspective — and saves me from making the argument myself, and it starts with Baudelaire: The Treacherous Medium: Why photography critics hate photographs.

—Mitch Alland/Potomac, MD
Looking for Baudelaire [WIP]
 
malland said:
Roger, your statement strikes me as more facile than tendentious. :D

Here is an article that I just came across, which puts things more in perspective — and saves me from making the argument myself, and it starts with Baudelaire: The Treacherous Medium: Why photography critics hate photographs.

—Mitch Alland/Potomac, MD
Looking for Baudelaire [WIP]
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... it struck me as a modern member of new-york's chatterarty basking in the afterglow of sontag's impenetrability ... I particularly didn't understand this paragtaph;

Susan Sontag’s On Photography was published in 1977, and it remains astonishingly incisive. It has been, rightly, immensely influential on other photography critics. And immensely influential, too, in setting the particularly reproachful tone of photography criticism. Look, for instance, at Sontag’s description of photography in the first chapter of the book, which establishes a voice, an attitude, an approach that is maintained throughout. Sontag describes photography as, among other things, “grandiose,” “treacherous,” “imperial,” “voyeuristic,” “predatory,” “addictive,” “reductive,” and “the most irresistible form of mental pollution.” A typical sentence reads, “The camera doesn’t rape, or even possess, though it may presume, intrude, trespass, distort, exploit, and, at the farthest reach of metaphor, assassinate—all activities that, unlike the sexual push and shove, can be conducted from a distance, and with some detachment.” Metaphor indeed! On Photography was written by a brilliant skeptic.​

... as it seems to be a critique of a critic and have bugger-all to do with photos :)
 
Sparrow said:
... it struck me as a modern member of new-york's chatterarty basking in the afterglow of sontag's impenetrability ... I particularly didn't understand this paragtaph;

Susan Sontag’s On Photography was published in 1977, and it remains astonishingly incisive. It has been, rightly, immensely influential on other photography critics. And immensely influential, too, in setting the particularly reproachful tone of photography criticism. Look, for instance, at Sontag’s description of photography in the first chapter of the book, which establishes a voice, an attitude, an approach that is maintained throughout. Sontag describes photography as, among other things, “grandiose,” “treacherous,” “imperial,” “voyeuristic,” “predatory,” “addictive,” “reductive,” and “the most irresistible form of mental pollution.” A typical sentence reads, “The camera doesn’t rape, or even possess, though it may presume, intrude, trespass, distort, exploit, and, at the farthest reach of metaphor, assassinate—all activities that, unlike the sexual push and shove, can be conducted from a distance, and with some detachment.” Metaphor indeed! On Photography was written by a brilliant skeptic.​

... as it seems to be a critique of a critic and have bugger-all to do with photos :)
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Right. Makes you wonder why photography is still legal.
 
pete hogan said:
Right. Makes you wonder why photography is still legal.
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... yes, and Ms Linfield thankfully didn't pick the bit about a modern camera being a phallic ray-gun and the act of photographing being akin to rape ... because I fancy even Ms Linfield probably thought that was a tad over metaphoric ... or as I like to think of it, a bit silly
 
actually, she appraised some photographers rather than bothering to analyse any real images.
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Temper, temper. :D

Just because Sontag and her admirers are living on a different planet is no reason to be rude about them.

Well, not too rude. :angel:
 
malland said:
Roger, your statement strikes me as more facile than tendentious. :D

Here is an article that I just came across, which puts things more in perspective — and saves me from making the argument myself, and it starts with Baudelaire: The Treacherous Medium: Why photography critics hate photographs.

—Mitch Alland/Potomac, MD
Looking for Baudelaire [WIP]
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Dear Mitch,

Thanks once again for an interesting link. Although I flatly disagree with some of what she says, the essay as a whole is one I will read again, more carefully, and then re-read.

A basic conflict in art criticism and art history (and indeed life in general) is between those who try to tell us how to think, and those who try to tell us what to think. There is also, I think, a conflict between those who want to talk about a picture, or some pictures (cf. Kozloff's Photography and Fascination) and those who have Grand Theories About Photography, based on... nothing very much, except the maunderings of other critics.

Increasingly I suspect that when it is stretched to (say) 2000 words, an essay such as this grows increasingly detached from reality and readability. But as I say, I'll re-read it.

Cheers,

R.
 
Sparrow said:
... it struck me as a modern member of new-york's chatterarty basking in the afterglow of sontag's impenetrability ... I particularly didn't understand this paragtaph;

Susan Sontag’s On Photography was published in 1977, and it remains astonishingly incisive. It has been, rightly, immensely influential on other photography critics. And immensely influential, too, in setting the particularly reproachful tone of photography criticism. Look, for instance, at Sontag’s description of photography in the first chapter of the book, which establishes a voice, an attitude, an approach that is maintained throughout. Sontag describes photography as, among other things, “grandiose,” “treacherous,” “imperial,” “voyeuristic,” “predatory,” “addictive,” “reductive,” and “the most irresistible form of mental pollution.” A typical sentence reads, “The camera doesn’t rape, or even possess, though it may presume, intrude, trespass, distort, exploit, and, at the farthest reach of metaphor, assassinate—all activities that, unlike the sexual push and shove, can be conducted from a distance, and with some detachment.” Metaphor indeed! On Photography was written by a brilliant skeptic.​

... as it seems to be a critique of a critic and have bugger-all to do with photos :)
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Sparrow said:
... actually, she appraised some photographers rather than bothering to analyse any real images :)
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I linked the essay because I found it raised interesting issues in the light of the pseudo-discussion in this thread, not knowing, however, anything about Susie Linfield. Googling her, I found this interesting Guardian article, which, among other things, shows she ain't no fan of Susan Sontag — it also shows that Linfield's book, discussed in the article, raises some of the issues raised by Ingrid Sischy's 1991 New Yorker article on Salgado.

MITCH ALLAND/Potomac, MD
Download links for book project pdf files
Chiang Tung Days
Tristes Tropiques
Bangkok Hysteria
Paris au rythme de Basquiat and Other Poems
 
malland said:
I linked the essay because I found it raised interesting issues in the light of the pseudo-discussion in this thread, not knowing, however, anything about Susie Linfield. Googling her, I found this interesting Guardian article, which, among other things, shows she ain't no fan of Susan Sontag — it also shows that Linfield's book, discussed in the article, raises some of the issues raised by Ingrid Sischy's 1991 New Yorker article on Salgado.

MITCH ALLAND/Potomac, MD
Download links for book project pdf files
Chiang Tung Days
Tristes Tropiques
Bangkok Hysteria
Paris au rythme de Basquiat and Other Poems
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I wasn't being personal Mitch ... it's this whole NY based pseudo-academic presumed artistic hegemony that I find objectionable ... bugger! that sounds as bad as their stuff.

Having made my career in this sort of field I understand how this impenetrable rhetoric comes about, in truth I've written some myself ... however I've always thought its more a mask for the authors ignorance than an affirmation of their knowledge. After all if they truly had an understanding that ran to two or three thousand words for an essay and the intellect to communicate it one would expect to be able to at least understand the thing ... :)
 
I only read the end.

"She calls Nachtwey "the Catastrophist" and it is not hard, when confronted by his photographs, to see why. It is difficult to look at many of these explicit images of contemporary warfare and suffering without being bewildered or even repulsed. And as photographs of political violence have become ever more explicit and shocking, our responses have become ever more muddled.

Linfield insists that we should look all the same and, in doing so, somehow learn to see more clearly the people in them. "If we want to construct a politics of human rights that isn't merely an abstraction, we need to look at these photographs of suffering, degradation and defeat," she said recently. "We need to think clearly not only about the relationships among these images, how they function and what they communicate in aggregate, but about the specific conditions each one depicts, no matter how disturbing, shaming and bewildering an experience that may be."


This is why I don't bother with it, it only appears to be about photography, but photography is just a hook or a tool for the critic to talk about something else they want to talk about, that they think is more interesting or important.

Fine, talk, BFD.
 
All I can see is that you haven't understood the article, which is not surprising if you read only the end of it.

Unfortunately, this represents the tenor of the discussion in this thread, which is why I've called it a "pseudo-discussion," by which I mean just an exposition by some people of their pre-conceptions or prejudices.

MITCH ALLAND/Potomac, MD
Download links for book project pdf files
Chiang Tung Days
Tristes Tropiques
Bangkok Hysteria
Paris au rythme de Basquiat and Other Poems
 
I blame the French and Germans. It's all their fault... [link]. And those lefties and in the 1960s! [another link]

Historically, art theory leans heavily towards the prose of Continental philosophy. Which is unfortunate because it doesn't sit well with Anglo-Saxon culture. I most definitely belong to the latter, and quite frankly the prose beloved of Derrida, Heidegger and their ilk makes me shudder. But I persevere in spite of their style of writing, not because of it -- there are pearls to be found, albeit sometimes disappointingly small considering the amount of verbiage within which they nestle.

Mentioning pearls brings to mind a rather apt Biblical quotation after reading some of the responses in this thread...
 
Sejanus.Aelianus said:
Yup! Put me down for a double helping of pre-conceptions with a side order of pseudo prejudice. Hold the discussion, though, it only spoils it. :angel:
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You have to draw the line somewhere, at the end of the day I just don't care what people say about photography. There's a reason people take pictures, and it isn't to talk about them. Don't you agree?
 
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