The Art of Talking Art

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This is not a thread about whether photography is art, but whether conceptual artists are invading photography.

It was with disappointment that I looked up to see the results of the Aperture (the publishers) ‘Portfolio Prize’ photography competition (http://www.aperture.org/apertureprize/) and found that every single photographer featured on the site as a winner/runner up, seemed to be of a similar ilk (although styles and technique varied, they all seemed to be more about concept than photo. Its not that I don't respect some of those featured - some I thought pretty good as conceptual artists - but about whether images could truly stand alone). The publisher's comments on the artists were extremely ‘artistic’ and thus I concluded:

  • It is not about the images alone. It is primarily about the words/conceptual espousing/artist statement that goes with them. the words validate the image.
  • You can produce images that on their own would leave viewers entirely disinterested, as long as you have a concept with at least a few words not commonly used in conversation.
  • Photography is often used merely as a tool to reinforce the conceptual piece. The images are not the art, but merely an anchor for artistic statements.
  • The title can be an entirely random collection of words that bear no relation to anything in the portfolio
  • Your photography has to be a 'study of something removed from the work itself', or a 'metaphor for something' or a 'representation of something conceptual.' It cannot just 'be''
  • You must have a fine art photography or visual arts degree to win that particular competition.

Even Photojournalism is not immune. See this artist statement (from a PJ):

"My work is an attempt at a repurposing of classical photographic dogma by its intersection with art history and semiotics: the images, which are taken in conflict situations with photojournalistic tools function both as a photographic representation of an event and as a photographic representation of photojournalism. The final objective is always substantiation of theoretical conjectures, for example, the validity of the decisive instant or whether using codes which challenge the viewer intellectually to generate an emotional reaction is more valid than forcing an emotional link to generate an intellectual reaction."

Another thing that struck me is that the greatest photographers (as in the ones generally regarded by history as such) don't tend to talk this way. Many are remarkably unpretentious when it comes to their work and stop short of even calling it art. Many seem to let the viewer decide what their work is to them without feeling the need to guide them.

In the above competition there was absolutely no representation of straight up landscape, documentary, portrait or still life work. If there had, I suspect a lot of words would have accompanied them and a great effort would have been made by the photographer (and certainly the editorial staff) to make it 'about something else.' Crikey, just read some of those editorial statements!

Is this a problem? Does it matter? Does it bother you? Am I just a tired, ignorant traditionalist (I am not yet 35) who has missed the 'artistic revolution' within the photographic medium?

Is photography, the bit that is about an image that people look at and find interesting/moving/compelling or just plain beautiful, being forced onto its knees by people more accustomed to ‘art installations?’ Are art critic types hunting for new territory? Would Weston, Salgado, AA, HCB, Don McCullin, or even Cunningham have had a chance in that competition? How will history treat this verbose genre of photographers with their many degrees? How many greats had degrees in 'art?' Do degrees in fine art photography truly encourage novel thinking/great work or simply stimulate more productive/successful activity within paradigms laid down in the teaching staff? I certainly feel that there is something incredibly conformist about what is happening here. Thoughts?

What happens when the conceptual bubble surrounding some ordinary photography comes full circle. Do you end up back to ordinary photography or does that bubble somehow continue to validate the ordinary nature of the work? For example, if as a career you shoot what appears to be generic PJ work and then say that your work is, "taken in conflict situations with photojournalistic tools function both as a photographic representation of an event and as a photographic representation of photojournalism" is your work somehow something more than generic PJ work? If so how, when without the words we would not be able to differentiate the two?
 
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It doesnt matter and, at least for me, dont need someone to "validate" my work. You wont find"straight up" landscape in Aperture. Its not what they're about. Your're right AFAIK many of the greats are unpretentious.
 
Ive always disliked (laughed at) artist/critic speak. A photograph either catches my attention, draws me into staring at it for some reason, or does not. Don't always have a reason for liking it, don't usually need one, it just does. I usually avoid the captions, interpretations, more than likely will make me dislike the piece if I do.. This goes for all types of art. I dont pay attention to all of it, I just like what i like I guess. They are probably trying to convince collectors to spend their money on a new medium..
But, then again, no fancy art interpretation/metaphor would make my crap photos any better, so who am I to talk..
:)
 
Bill, interesting. I was somewhat familiar with some Aperture books (of well known photographers) but was unaware that this was not representative of what they are about.
 
One must be careful not to underestimate the juxtaposition of opposing views in a post modernist society. The ramifications of the pseudo-non-intelligentsia parallels a stronger anti art movement than expected, even by the likes of Rauschenberg's contemporaries and their non aligned followers. Still, barring a tour de force from the proletariat image-de jours of Koons, Johns, Beuys, et all, the groundwork for a promised contemporary and contemporaneous showing from the adherents to Man Ray (sic) and Colonel Sanders brings a climax to the group.

Ya just gotta know how to talk the talk. I didn't spend most of my life in the crappy art world for nothing. At least I learned how to talk endlessly w/o saying anything. Which, of course, is what most post Warhol art is about. People who can make beautiful work that has absolutely nothing to say. Unless you really like animals that are cut in half and pickled. If the 60's/70's were the high point of modern art in America and the world, then these here times are so low as to not even register.

Picked up an Art News or Art in America lately? Man, it's sad. There is still some valid work being done in parts of the world, but you have to seek it out.
 
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Wow, you really threw me with the first paragraph. I thought someone had slipped me a micky
 
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In most cases degrees are pure B.S., and not just in art and photography. I can hold my own as a municipal advisory board member dealing in city planning and building and zoning issues. One day I attended a board meeting after being someplace else where I had to be wearing suit and tie. North Miami's director of planning said "Oh Mr. Kaplan, I didn't realize that you were an attorney!" which I'm not. Before I spent the last six years on the Board of Adjustment I served a dozen years as vice chair of North Miami's Planning Commission.

People with advanced degrees tend to know an awful lot, but it's all just in a narrow area. Photography degrees don't prepare you for dealing with and feeling comfortable with people. You can't expect to only be photographing subjects that want to discuss photography. On the rare occasion that I get asked about my formal education it's usually along the lines of where did I get my masters? or what was my major? Nobody expects you to have majored in photography unless perhaps you're seeking a teaching job. Some courses in sociology, cultural anthropology, and psychology would be much more useful in the everyday life of a photojournalist.

Image does count, however. A good fitting conservativly cut suit, a silk (they knot better) tie, and leather shoes has gotten me a lot of jobs in both local and national political circles and photographing corporate executives.

The real world has very little room for arty photography. I don't talk art.
 
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Ok, I have given up trying to make sense of that "artists statement". Something tells me I am going to wake up in a cold sweat tonight with the words circling above me, taunting. "you're not smart enough to figure it out".

I have good friends who are very deep in the Jeff Wall world. In absolute honesty a lot of it is lost on me. I have wandered Contact, the halls of McGill and seen the year end shows at Emily Carr and more often than not I am left scratching my head. In the end though I conclude that it is a process of exploration and once in a while, a very rare and fleeting while, a Burtynski appears out of it all (or a Soth) and I can stomach it for a few more years.
 
I was never a big purveyor of the HUGE print gig but I was up in Ottawa trying to wrangle an entry visa and swung buy the national gallery and saw the Scott MacFarland show... I am now a convert!
 
Bill: Yep. But I'd go a bit easy on them: leave the brass knuckles at home. ;)

Al: You said a lot with an economy of words...which, of course, it the polar opposite of what we're dealing with here. In fact, I'm trying to figure out the approximate point in time where the art world at large felt obliged to bury itself in ten- and twenty-cent words. Sometimes you need elaboration to make a point about a piece of work, but too much of this and I start cracking up like i did when I first read the liner notes to Simon & Garfunkel's The Sounds of Silence. (Si & Garf probably groaned to themselves at that.)

Back to the beating-up thing: I wouldn't slag the Aperture gang too much. They're reaching a bit here, to say the least, but that's more-or-less in their mission-statement. To paraphrase something I said in the "Bad Photographers" thread, if they don't muff something once in a while, I might get the feeling that they're not trying too hard, not stretching quite enough.

Art is...complicated. But sometimes easy. And infuriating. And, on a good day, delightful like almost nothing else.


- Barrett
 
In her words, “... I try to undermine any documentary authority [photography] may possess as a medium .... For me, a photograph functions more like a memory, in that it's a singular perspective of a split second in time, entirely subjective and impressionable.”


Therein lies the rub.

Mike
 
It doesn't bother me much at all. I really enjoy seeing artsy or conceptualized photography.

As far as all the "art speak", the editorial comments or the artist statements that accompany the submissions are really the justification for the submission. The photographers have to submit more than one image, so the photographs have to be cohesive and they have to show some kind of artistic and conceptual intent. Sometimes the statements are true and are actually preconceived, other times they aren't and the photographer puts it all together afterwards. You can read the statements and sometimes discern whether the idea was preconceived or concocted afterwards. The winning submission feels like the latter, but really it doesn't matter. It's a interesting idea and the photos work.

A lot of non-artsy/amateur/RFF-type photographers do photo projects (e.g., thematic or location-based projects, etc.). This is really no different except that it's on a higher more serious level and the photographer has a willing audience that understands and speaks the same language. So, instead of verbalizing something like, "I'm going to do a photo project where I photograph my neighborhood for one week in the summer," (and not have an audience for it) they do something like this (and win competitions):

"the project began as part of a larger portrayal of spectators at various events, including auto races, but became increasingly focused on those few moments in which the event and the landscape in which it take place come into direct and violent contact, for all intents and purposes eliding the spectator from the scene almost entirely. Car race or apocalyptic collision, the true nature of these events is never fully disclosed. Behind the scrim of kicked up particulate matter, however, it’s evident that there is something afoot. The few discernable figures raise their arms—in victory, or perhaps to call out in distress; eyes are covered or screened for a better view. The work is remarkable for its use of restraint as a strategy to immerse the viewer in an indecipherable yet tangible Sturm und Drang."

I agree that art speak can get extreme and ridiculous (I went to film school in the 80's when semiotics was all the rage!!), but this feels pretty harmless in comparison to that.

/
 
Perhaps this quote from Todd Papageorge is worth a thought:

RW Are the mistakes that your students are prone to now the same mistakes that students were prone to when you were teaching back in the late ‘60s?

TP No. I think now that, in general—and this includes a lot of what I see in Chelsea even more than what I see from students at Yale—there’s a failure to understand how much richer in surprise and creative possibility the world is for photographers in comparison to their imagination. This is an understanding that an earlier generation of students, and photographers, accepted as a first principle. Now ideas are paramount, and the computer and Photoshop are seen as the engines to stage and digitally coax those ideas into a physical form—typically a very large form. This process is synthetic, and the results, for me, are often emotionally synthetic too. Sure, things have to change, but photography-as-illustration, even sublime illustration, seems to me an uninteresting direction for the medium to be tracking now, particularly at such a difficult time in the general American culture. All in all, I think that there’s as much real discovery and excitement in the digital videos that my students at Yale are making as there is in the still photography I see either there or in New York, perhaps because the video camera, like the 35 mm camera 30 years ago, can be carried everywhere, and locks onto the shifting contradictions and beauties of the world more directly and unselfconsciously than many photographers now seem to feel still photography can, or should, do.


From Bomb magazine in 2004 here#

Mike
 
I’ve been collecting this sort of twaddle for years, years back one could only find it in glossy brochures from the more pretentious galleries of Mayfair here or Chelsea and Soho in NY. These days it’s getting everywhere.

Check out the work of American artist Nat Tate, if you want a really good laugh at their expense.

Having said that, some of the stuff written about Leica can be as bad, I collect that too
 
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