"What you've got are not photographers....

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Sparrow said:
... Adams is the irrelevant climax to a pretty pointless genre of photography, and, by most accounts a petty, mean spirited sort of chap who took every opportunity to denigrate his contemporaries to boost his own overblown ego ...

... and the fact the he's your hero doesn't alter the validity of my opinion.
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This is essentially a side-show, though. What I'm querying is whether anyone can say, with certainty, that one group of photographers "aren't photographers" and (by implication) another group are. It would be equally pointless for someone else to say that AA "wasn't a photographer", as pointed out in my original post.

There are good and bad photographers, and popular and unpopular photographers, and photographers that you or I or semilog may like or dislike; but is any of us going to make the breathtaking statement that large swathes of them "aren't photographers"?

Cheers,

R.
 
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Big-P or little-p photographers? ;)

More seriously, I'm an inclusivist, so everyone from Harold Edgerton to Lucas Samaras to any kid with a cellphone camera is a photographer, so far as I'm concerned. Especially if they say they are one.
 
This is all kind of silly (but entertaining).
I'm sure lots of artists have said that others are not really artists. Garry Winogrand said that Ansel Adams was not a photographer. I'm also pretty sure that everyone understands the real meaning behind the hyperbole to be more like, "Their work just doesn't interest me".

What was the purpose of the original post except to take a dig at Adams?

Gary
 
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This has definitely been far more fun, and interesting, than the usual film verses digital stuff.

Here's hoping the mods don't feel the need to open up a special 'Adams verses Bresson and the Rest' forum where we can slug it out in safety! :D
 
Keith said:
This has definitely been far more fun, and interesting, than the usual film verses digital stuff.

Here's hoping the mods don't feel the need to open up a special 'Adams verses Bresson and the Rest' forum where we can slug it out in safety! :D
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Ain't it the truth! I leave town for two lousy days and look what happens!
 
Roger,

When the French Grand Dame in Arles asked me what made me think my photographic digital collages were photography I replied, "Because I'm a photographer, and they are made from my photographs." I agree the chimpanzees who's work they used to feature in Life Magazine years ago demonstrated that anyone who can press a shutter is a photographer. Whenever I fill out a form that asks for my religion, I always write photographer, unless it's a church group. Then I write Gnostic. I don't find the term limiting to me, but I do find that others often assume I do weddings.
 
gns said:
Garry Winogrand said that Ansel Adams was not a photographer.
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I didn't know that... I agree with him: Adams found his way out of photography, but using a camera... And yes, he was good at that... But all his work can't give me the pleasure one single image by others give me. What yet I don't understand is why in Adams' mind those were not photographers... Lack of format sharpness? Lack of dodging and burning to create visual interest? Did he fear them in any way?

Apart from personal preferences, if there's no limit in the word photography, a robot might end up being the best photographer ever... Or even a computer generating random pixels arrangements might end up after years of hard work, creating exactly the same images HCB did... If the final results are the same, why consider HCB a better photographer than the computer? Modern times.

Cheers,

Juan
 
well, not that i put much stock in becoming the next HCB or AA but threads like this, and the internet 'forum' as a whole, make me very guarded about what i say in interviews and when i lecture.
 
semilog said:
Mike Johnston:



Ah, the absolutist impulse. It's especially amusing that that picture is in every instance that I've seen printed with a black border, a darkroom manipulation that makes it appear to be printed full-frame. ;) (And yes, it's one of my five or six favorite photographs ever, and it should be cropped!)
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There is one youtube of HCB giving printing instructions to Voja Mitrovic. These instructions (while HCB views Proof Prints) include the darkening of areas or overall darkening or other adjustments that were needed beyond straight prints.

AA also reprinted much of his early work on modern papers he liked better than the stuff available when the photos were taken.
 
Not only HCB but lots of other straight prints photographers require a bit of help from darkroom sometimes (HCB's white birds on Matisse portraits come to mind), but that help is used by them, most of the times, to make prints that are close to reality, while other photographers prefer to create unreal things after capture, and to go far from reality to generate interest.

Not about better or worse, and not about authors' names or different fields in photography, just about there's a huge difference in generating interest reflecting reality or generating interest creating another reality, and all I say is photography that reflects reality shouldn't receive the same name as images that don't. Why call such different things the same way? Are we short of words? :D Let's make new ones if necessary...

Was Winogrand wrong when he talked about photography as a double act of honesty? "To use the camera to do what it does best: reflect reality, and to reflect that reality just as it is." (Or something really close to those words)

Definitely I will never consider anyone with a camera a photographer. Or any post processed image seriously far from reality, a photograph... And no doubt I'm not the only one. Just the people I studied with, and friends and teachers are thousands from all around the world... Maybe this opinion is shared by A LOT more forum members than some forum members would think... :D

So, isn't making great photographs without lots of post processing harder than trying to make them special with lots of post processing? We're all free to think of that.

Cheers,

Juan
 
Juan Valdenebro said:
Not only HCB but lots of other straight prints photographers require a bit of help from darkroom sometimes (HCB's white birds on Matisse portraits come to mind), but that help is used by them, most of the times, to make prints that are close to reality, while other photographers prefer to create unreal things after capture, and to go far from reality to generate interest.

Not about better or worse, and not about authors' names or different fields in photography, just about there's a huge difference in generating interest reflecting reality or generating interest creating another reality, and all I say is photography that reflects reality shouldn't receive the same name as images that don't. Why call such different things the same way? Are we short of words? :D Let's make new ones if necessary...

Was Winogrand wrong when he talked about photography as a double act of honesty? "To use the camera to do what it does best: reflect reality, and to reflect that reality just as it is." (Or something really close to those words)

Definitely I will never consider anyone with a camera a photographer. Or any post processed image seriously far from reality, a photograph... And no doubt I'm not the only one. Just the people I studied with, and friends and teachers are thousands from all around the world... Maybe this opinion is shared by A LOT more forum members than some forum members would think... :D

So, isn't making great photographs without lots of post processing harder than trying to make them special with lots of post processing? We're all free to think of that.

Cheers,

Juan
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Juan; if you relate all of this business to the way various painters have chosen to work on a canvas - brush to pallet knife to just tossing a bucket of paint in and area (Pollock), photographers should be free to use the media, light + materials, anyway they choose. Most artists have recognizable egos, some are bigger then others. As for your or my taste in art, that's a personal matter.

HCB certainly had an interest in how his prints looked. The same can be said for Adams. This goes for most of us, I would think. If you could speak to one of these people, you might find that they aren't hard and fast in their opinions of the medium.

I read that Adams had great things to say about Ernst Haas. Their work covers the edges of the spectrum of what many were doing in their time. 35mm vs LF, Color vs B+W, Negative material worked over in the darkroom vs a Kodachrome - with little room for adjustment, even in a die transfer print.
 
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So again, Juan, step up.

Name some photographers (other than HCB) whose images are pure enough that you are willing to call them photographers. Koudelka? Salgado? Certainly they have relied pretty heavily on the darkroom. Eugene Smith? Robert Frank? Them, too.

Are they not photographers? If not, then who? Who passes muster? Is Karsh a photographer? Is Avedon? Is Avedon's portrait of Lee Friedlander* a photograph, in your view?

As PKR says, painting covers a vast artistic territory. So does sculpture, drawing, printmaking, music, dance, theater, literature... why not photography?

*This might provide a clue.
 
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No one is "pure". It is an impossibility. We all instill our vision, thoughts, biases, etc., on everything we do.

BTW, Tony Ray-Jones, one of my favorite photographers, was also a horrible technician. Apparently his printer had a devilish time printing his imagery.
 
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Roger Hicks said:
No, I don't think I misundersood you, because I certainly didn't understand you to say that, and I apologize if I gave that impression. What I'm saying is that it is blinding to dismiss something as 'not photography' when it is at least as much photography as anything AA ever did.

The same applies to your subsequent post. There is no intellectual inconsistency. I'm not saying that AA "wasn't a photographer." He was, and a very good one. So were many of the FSA people. That was my point, really.

Cheers,


R.
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No need to apologize. I obviously took your response wrong. My apologies to you.

Love the debate you've started, though.

In my mind, AA is the 20th century equivalent of oscar Rejlander. Just another photographer who really wanted to be a painter.

In Shakespeare's words, "All sound and fury, signifying nothing."
 
Keith said:
This has definitely been far more fun, and interesting, than the usual film verses digital stuff.

Here's hoping the mods don't feel the need to open up a special 'Adams verses Bresson and the Rest' forum where we can slug it out in safety! :D
Click to expand...
I'll bet 10 to 1 on Adams
 
PKR said:
Juan; if you relate all of this business to the way various painters have chosen to work on a canvas - brush to pallet knife to just tossing a bucket of paint in and area (Pollock), photographers should be free to use the media, light + materials, anyway they choose. Most artists have recognizable egos, some are bigger then others. As for your or my taste in art, that's a personal matter.

HCB certainly had an interest in how his prints looked. The same can be said for Adams. This goes for most of us, I would think. If you could speak to one of these people, you might find that they aren't hard and fast in their opinions of the medium.

I read that Adams had great things to say about Ernst Haas. Their work covers the edges of the spectrum of what many were doing in their time. 35mm vs LF, Color vs B+W, Negative material worked over in the darkroom vs a Kodachrome - with little room for adjustment, even in a die transfer print.
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Hi PKR,

"Juan; if you relate all of this business to the way various painters have chosen to work on a canvas...":
That's not a fair comparison for a very simple reason: a camera reflects reality; a canvas and the process of painting on it don't... If a child shoots with a camera, reality comes to the print, but that doesn't happen if a child paints on a canvas... The process of painting has always been a creative one by definition... By definition photography reflects reality. Saying impressionism was interesting and full of beauty makes sense; saying Adams' or any other photographer's insistent dodging and burning are interesting, doesn't make sense... One is full of freedom and strength, the other one is trying to paint after a photograph.

"HCB certainly had an interest in how his prints looked. The same can be said for Adams. This goes for most of us, I would think. If you could speak to one of these people, you might find that they aren't hard and fast in their opinions of the medium.":
Every time I say how different their approaches to photography were, someone changes the subject and tells me things like "both were born in the earth" or "both used to eat every day." And they really had different and strong positions on what they considered a good photograph.

"I read that Adams had great things to say about Ernst Haas. Their work covers the edges of the spectrum of what many were doing in their time. 35mm vs LF, Color vs B+W, Negative material worked over in the darkroom vs a Kodachrome - with little room for adjustment, even in a die transfer print.":
On this thread we're talking about Adams saying a GROUP of photographers were not even photographers. That doesn't talk about them, but about Adams. I'm not sure Adams liked his photographs, but I'm sure he liked a lot his paintings done with enlargers on photographic paper.

No sense in trying to make Adams appear close to HCB or Winogrand or Frank or Atget as photographers: he was not. He couldn't, and he went another way. I have no problem with anyone liking or going that way. I just see those are very different ways.

Cheers,

Juan
 
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