Salgado's Genesis and "Subjective" photography.

mfogiel

mfogiel

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This is not the first time, that I have this feeling, when looking at some art masterpiece: the thought that comes up is - "There is no way, that I could ever do it better, or even equal it, this pretty much exhausts this domain."

I am a B&W photography aficionado, and I do landscapes every now and then, but after flipping through Salgado's "Genesis" I simply know that a certain "straight" photographic B&W landscape has been defined in this work. Salgado has had the idea to do it, the passion, the technique, the means, the time, the perseverance, you name it...

This in a way, simplifies my photographic urges, and directs me more into what I would call "Subjective" style of landscape photography, and photography in general. It even feels somewhat liberating.

To illustrate the point, I feel freer to substitute this:


MF20091303 by mfogiel, on Flickr

with this:


MF20110310 by mfogiel, on Flickr


What do you think?
 
Salgado has had the idea to do it, the passion, the technique, the means, the time, the perseverance, you name it...
Click to expand...

I think that this is what is meant by the so-called "50,000 hours rule". It's an extension of the much older maxim that "practice makes perfect". There's no doubt in my mind that those who spend much effort at anything achieve more consistency in their outcomes than those who have made less effort.

However, it's also my conviction that anyone can be successful, especially beginners.

I once went to a bowling alley, as part of a team building evening from a company I was working with. My first two balls both were "strikes", all ten pins down at once. It was clear to all present that I was a natural. Alas, all present were quite incorrect. I barely knocked down a pin for the rest of the evening and was awarded the "worst bowler of the evening" prize. In retrospect, I believe that I could be a consistently good bowler, if I spent enough time practicing, which I really have no interest in doing.

The point being, we're all capable of great things and shouldn't be overly impressed by the work of those who spend all their effort on something we see as a hobby, a relief from our main occupation.

I like that first picture a lot. :)
 
Nice pictures. I like both of them, but prefer the style of the second picture. I find it more abstract - in the sense that it departs from my usual way of looking at this kind of scene. I find the picture a bit misterious, and this inspires my curiosity and interest.
 
I agree withe Sejanus.Aelianus. But you are right about Genesis. If I was a dedicated landscape photographer it might have made me take up billiards. I still remember a photo of yours with the Nokton on a bridge, and one of a lady at table with the Canon 1.2. Too soon for you to take the cue out of the rack, to reverse the usual analogy. Meanwhile, I suspect with landscapes you can only follow your instincts. Even Salgado can't take all your good light.
 
The first image looks like photographer take it from air although second image is also perfect and beautiful like first image.Photographer have a very creative and looks professional.Thanks for sharing it here
 
IMO, the greatest challenge in photography is not reaching a higher level of brilliance than a pack of established, amazing photographers you are in competition with. It is to reach the best possible standard in an area where you have identified no direct competition, whether that be in approach/subject/style/philosophy etc. How many well known photographers will not 'technically' be bettered in time?

There are many, many extremely 'good' photographers wearing out the tripod holes of the pioneers, but where does such work go, even when their images could arguably be described as better? Its too late. This is why I really enjoy looking at the work of people doing something very personal, or different, or just enjoying honest exploration, far more than those who are emulating or trying to out-do a great who got there first.

I think you are right; Salgado has blended a number of genres with Genesis and created something unlike anything before at anywhere close to his standard. Trying to compete would be about as rewarding as buying a 10x8 and trying to be St Ansel II. Creating images you love, personally, is a different matter, where being in a great name's shadow is less of an issue.

Its usually pretty clear when people are 'doing their own thing' regardless of the standard and with it comes a little window into the person taking the photos. To emulate is to admit that you have nothing personal to put forward and I sometimes wonder if its about the photos or the people.

While I greatly respect the competence of Peter Turnley's work, personally (and I know many feel differently), I cannot get excited by it, because it feels like a carbon copy of HCB's work, only quite a few decades later. I can't help but feel he is doing what the OP would be doing were he to go out and 'do more Genesis'. He's successful, no doubt and maybe its me being narrow minded. Personally, I'd feel like there was a gag in my mouth while composing my shots and the 'quality' of the output would do nothing to remove it. Please recognise this as a personal opinion in direct relation to the OP's topic, not an unprovoked and personal attack on the man, before I'm lynched. Please take it in the spirit intended
 
I like the way Turtle thinking :) and love the 2 shots above as well.
Shoot with a brain and a heart and it will show in your photos. Now it's all about finding that magic light right :D
 
Turtle:

While you, the OP and I see something dramatically new in Genesis, some critics/reviewers have negatively asserted that Salgado had nothing new to show us as compared to others who got the shots first.

In my personal opinion, there's a vast gulf, nay an abyss, between landscape photographers "wearing out the tripod holes of the pioneers" to reproduce classic photos and jounalist/document photographers continuing to make photos of the ever-changing world of people, their interactions and events. Comparable selections of tools and subjects do not of themselves make a later practioner a carbon copy of an earlier one. Your opinion that Turnley's work is just a carbon copy of HCB's is makes as little sense to me as opining that Rembrandt's work is just a carbon copy of Titian's or that National Geographic decisively pre-empted Salgado's effort.

--- Mike
 
I think that this is what is meant by the so-called "50,000 hours rule". It's an extension of the much older maxim that "practice makes perfect". There's no doubt in my mind that those who spend much effort at anything achieve more consistency in their outcomes than those who have made less effort.

However, it's also my conviction that anyone can be successful, especially beginners.

[...]

The point being, we're all capable of great things and shouldn't be overly impressed by the work of those who spend all their effort on something we see as a hobby, a relief from our main occupation.
Click to expand...

Wise words.
 
I'm with Mfogiel and Turtle.

What's the point of taking re-taking photographs others have done? Save your time and money, and buy a postcard (or a Salgado book)! And I don't get 99% of street photographs: I'm told they show us life - yes, but it's typically the same type of life, happening, scene, whatever photographed again and again and again; a different place and person are not enough to say something new!

When deciding to take a photograph, I ask myself two questions: "Will I communicate something interesting to me and the viewer?" "Will I be original?"

If the answer to either is "no", then what's the point?

Photography is a means of communication like writing - but if someone copied, say, the style of John Steinbeck or ripped off his story of "Cannery Row" (even if they set it some place else with different characters), and you read their book, you'd rightly moan about poor writing and lack of originality. Yet people treat photographers differently, and pale imitations of HCB or Ansel Adams are praised.

Stop with the unoriginal, pointless photographs!
 
The thing with originality is it depends on the target audience. Most originality is undetected plagiarism not much is truly new or original.

Often someone can take an old idea and bring it to a new audience, I see this in music, art, literature etc.

Not everyone wants or aspires to communication or originality recording a moment in time can be enough.
 
An interesting thread, with lots of good input.

Does the history of photography develop along the same lines as painting, where you see movements and counter movements? Is it the thought that one can not improve or add to a style of photography, or that no more meaningful progress can result in pursuing the same direction, cause experimentation and new styles to emerge. Or is the medium itself self-limiting in what it can depict. Has digital altered that?
 
Photo_Smith said:
Most originality is undetected plagiarism not much is truly new or original.

Often someone can take an old idea and bring it to a new audience, I see this in music, art, literature etc.
Click to expand...

I doubt whether there is much originality.
I am suspicious of anyone bold enough to make such a claim.
Re interpretation can be just as valuable if it provides further insight.
 
doolittle said:
Does the history of photography develop along the same lines as painting, where you see movements and counter movements? ... Has digital altered that?
Click to expand...
Photography is no different to any other medium - whether painting, writing, sculpture or anything else. So, its uses, aesthetics and style will evolve and change over time, reflecting changes in culture. Like all mediums, photography has many uses, from the prosaic (e.g. as documentation, like passport photographs) to fine art, and the only constraint on photography is the human imagination.

Your phrasing implies a fine art perspective, which is my interest too... Like much contemporary art, contemporary photography requires some appreciation of how art developed over the 20th century, i.e. Modernism and Postmodernism.

In a nutshell, photography started off emulating paintings - and so we start with pictorialism: all those hackneyed Victorian tableaux, picturesque ruins, etc.

Modernist artists wanted a way to show the modern world in all its fast-evolving complexity, whether political or technological. Take the invention of the motor car: painting it traditionally won't work - a car's about speed, so painting it as if it were a horse and cart makes it look slow. And so new styles painting evolved, like Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase" - which shows an idea, movement, the verb "descending", rather than an object.

Modernists decided that the old ways of doing things were no longer useful and should be discarded. They hated pictorialism! To them, photography should play to the strengths of the medium only - tone, form, the frozen moment, the frame. John Szarkowsk wrote a famous book on this in 1966 called "The Photographers Eye". Cartier-Bresson is a typical Modernist photographer, blending tone, form and time in a way that you can't successfully do in another medium - part of HCB's endurance is the fact that a photograph is an imprint of reality, a property only a photograph has (you can't paint a decisive moment - you can try, but it turns into something else). Another property peculiar to photography is its ability to make the everyday appear significant. This is what makes William Eggleston's photographs special. OK, I know many of you probably won't like his stuff, but use Google Images to search for his photographs - I guarantee that you'll find one photograph of a seemingly mundane scene that will resonate with you, even if you can't say why.

Unfortunately, Modernism went up its own arse, and we ended up with art for art's sake that even artists had difficulty relating to, let alone the non-artist. Your typical art-establishment artist was now a chin-stroking elitist. Take painting: Modernists deemed that as a painting was two dimensional, you shouldn't emulate three dimensions - that is, paint abstracts, never realistic scenes; and the more "cutting edge", "visionary" or avant garde, the better. (I like abstracts - but not to the exclusion of everything else.) As I said, art for art's sake. If late-period Modernism were a chair, not only would it be impossible to sit on, you wouldn't even realise it was a chair!

So, that's Modernism. Let's look briefly at Postmodernist - contemporary - photography. Postmodernist artists basically decided enough was enough, and to cut out the elitism - you want to make art that looks like comic books, fine ("Whaam!" by Roy Lichtenstein), or graffiti (Banksy).

Postmodernists also don't like restrictions - so nuts to, say, not being "allowed" to make realistic paintings using the good old-fashioned rules of perspective.

And Postmodernist photography? Contemporary photographers do what they like: they like to mix things up, avoid being pigeon-holed. Some use only film, others embrace digital, none worry about the "death" of photography, and we all welcome digital, Facebook, Google, changing ideas about copyright with open arms - it's all grist to the mill!

Doug Rickard is a typical contemporary photographer. His "A New American Picture" project borrows from the past but look to the present - he's taken HCB's decisive moment into cyberspace by wandering the virtual world of Google Streetview and instead of raising a Leica to his eye, photographs his computer screen, then makes traditional C-type silver prints! His project asks lots of questions, not least what is a photograph and a photographer. A couple of things to bear in mind:

• There's millions of images in Google Streetview, all taken automatically - if Rickard didn't "photograph" them, most would likely never be seen by anyone. Presumably they'd be deleted one day and be gone forever. So, is capturing scenes from a virtual world as valid as photographing the real world, considering that the scenes captured in both will have never been seen and if not recorded both would be lost forever.

• Some say Rickard isn't a photographer. Why not? He can take a mean "traditional" photograph of "real life". In "A New American Picture" the images are initially photographs taken by a Google camera, then photographed by Rickard on his computer screen. He uses a camera and his images are pretty much unmanipulated, so surely that means he's a photographer not a "digital artist" as some have suggested?

I'm not writing this to convince you that Eggleston's an important photographer, or that Rickard is a photographer, or even doing something interesting - your opinion, mine or anyone else's doesn't matter because they have already influenced the evolution of photography by some degree. My point is that photography is a complex, evolving medium without limits, and digital technology makes photography richer, not poorer.

Don't copy but instead develop your own voice as a photographer, and have something to say.

So, Doolittle, photography as a medium isn't self-limiting (a photographer may be!), and digital is not a threat (whether through the shear number of snapshots people now take, or through the falling use of film - film will always be around, though you will doubtless have to be more determined to use it) but is rather the opposite, opening up new vistas and opportunities.
 
It's a waste of time and energy to be preoccupied with originality. Just do your work and it will take care of itself.
 
To be preoccupied with originality isn't very original, regurgitation of photos taken by others isn't original either.
Just see the world as you see it, if you can try to use the filter of your own life experiences.

Taking pictures of other peoples images off a screen doesn't make you a photographer its just plagiarism dressed up as 'art' and has nothing to do with "taking HCB's decisive moment into cyberspace' or whatever that means apart from being 'art speak' or bollox as I like to call it.

The guy is taking pictures from Google images/Map/street view he wasn't even the first to do that.
 
This thread starts with an unquestioned admiration for Salgado. Years ago, when I first saw a Salgado exhibition, I was blown away by the B&W tones of his pictures but, the more I looked at them subsequently, the less interesting I found them below the surface. With a great photographer perhaps it should be the other way round. That is not to say that I don't appreciate or admire some of his work and his intent and accomplishment. However, there has been much discussion about Salgado and some strong criticism. On another forum Geoffrey James, a reasonably well-known photographer wrote, "The late Raghubir Singh, a fine photographer, once described Salgado to me as 'the Ansel Adams of poverty', which pretty much sums it up for me. Of course, there will be some for whom that would be a compliment."

The strongest and, some would say the harshest, criticism of Salgado is this New Yorker article by Ingrid Sischy, which can be downloaded here as a pdf file. I've linked this before in another thread elsewhere, but thought it could be of interest for the discussion here. The link comes from a web page for a photography course that states some of the issues surrounding Salgado: here.

—Mitch/Paris
Tristes Tropiques [WIP]
 
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