Who are your artistic influences?

[jano]

This is just weird. I had always thought, perhaps arrogantly, my style was my own, probably developed through all the photographic books I've read through in the last several years.

Boy was I wrong. Back when I was a wee lad in the early 1980's, me mum was into painting. She did simple landscapes and still lifes for fun. I've been printing some infrared photos shot during my recent trip to Bodie, when I noticed a striking resemblance in the composition between the photo and one of mom's paintings. I then went back and looked at some of my flower macros, still lifes, etc.. all have a variety of elements very similar to her paintings! Just a fun curiosity. See attached photo of her painting (sorry it's blurry, I was too lazy to put camera on tripod) and my IR shot from Bodie. Now to figure out how to use this to improve my stuff 🙂

So who are your artistic influences, whether conscious or subconsious? If you can, please provide examples!

 

[RML]

Rembrandt, van Gogh, Renoir, Pissaro, Picasso, etc.

Eggleston, Winogrand, Jacob Olie, Brassai, Salgado, etc.

Influences are everywhere. Some you select consciously, others influence you uncosciously.

 

[sebastel]

paul cezanne, giorgio de chirico, jackson pollock
herbert list
alberto giacometti
thelonious monk, john coltrane

but this does not mean that my own style resembles any of these ... and, no, i do not play any instruments; but influence and inspiration for my photography come from everywhere, not only from pictorial art.

 

[doitashimash1te]

Ed van der Elsken

 

[Ash]

All the familiar names 🙂


I loved my art course, the head of the department was amazing - he only ever showed us his portfolio of graphic design pieces so he's not the same kind of influence, more of a motivational figure. The same for my mum's artwork and photography, but I can't remember enough of her photo's without digging them out, so I guess I can't lay claim to too many visual influences from her work.

Although you have all those artists like you name, the familiar faces, there are so many more. And my list has the likes of Hirst on it. I won't name all the artists I enjoy, but it's more the eccentric feel I get from them that makes me want to take my photo's. Right now every photo I have taken is mediocre compared to what's stored in my head for the opportunities that lay ahead. 🙂

I think that's the best artistic influence, a drive, not just a style. Course, you guys currently take much better photo's than me, so I may be wrong! 😀

 

[Sparrow]

Ash I think you have the best attitude there, if you can pull it off, being influenced by someone isn’t the same as emulating, an influence is a creative itch that you cant help scratching and part of a learning process, simply to emulate someone else’s work is a lack of creativity just a barren pastiche, going nowhere in the end
Stay confident, regards

 

[Jamie123]

Ash I think you have the best attitude there, if you can pull it off, being influenced by someone isn’t the same as emulating, an influence is a creative itch that you cant help scratching and part of a learning process, simply to emulate someone else’s work is a lack of creativity just a barren pastiche, going nowhere in the end
Stay confident, regards

I try to emulate other people's style all the time but I never quite succeed! 😉


To be honest I have no idea what my influences are although I'm sure there are a lot. Other than photographers I think I also get lots of influence from movies.


I think it's quite hard nowadays to do something in photography that hasn't been done before. Not impossible, just hard.

 

[Sparrow]

I try to emulate other people's style all the time but I never quite succeed! 😉


To be honest I have no idea what my influences are although I'm sure there are a lot. Other than photographers I think I also get lots of influence from movies.


I think it's quite hard nowadays to do something in photography that hasn't been done before. Not impossible, just hard.

I don't see it that way, Iwent through Bradford College of art a couple of years after David Hockney the staff were on a roll at the time and we were “encouraged” to have a school look to our work, I started out trying not to be too influenced I think in response to that.

 

[jano]

Hmm... I think I may have been misunderstood. Oh, well. *shrug*

 

[Photog9001]

jano, - both your mom's painting and your ir shot from bodie are quite "classical", i'd say it's a safe bet to assume that you have come across similar compos about a million times after you wathced your mother paint... (ehh,.. though i can't namedrop too much at the moment, to support my theory, but i seem to recall a certain robert frank photo, landscape with a road centered in the composition, too lazy to find it on the net)...

it got me thinking though, to how much a degree am i (sub)cosiously influenced by my parents, - and now i'm only thinking photo-wise...


, )

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

I never shoot under the influence 😉

 

[Jocko]

Classical art training always began with copying, precise replication of a master's style being understood as a the process through which one developed complete control over technique as the essential preliminary to developing a genuinely individual vision.

This has largely been forgotten by art educators, with obvious results. We tend to view "influence" as a bad thing and are all effectively self-taught now - to our ultimate loss. Not long ago I was assured by a distinguished art professor that the general degree of technical incompetence amongst students was now at an almost miraculous level. The end product is work that may please the artist's ego and extract fawning praise from self-interested admirers, but which fails to communicate anything at all beyond its own mediocrity.

So, for my money, you can't have enough influences, aiming not at the direct emulation of form or content, but as building on and drawing from a wider tradition - in Newton's words, "standing on the shoulders of giants" and thus being enabled to see clearly for oneself.

Cheers, Ian

 

[John Camp]

<snip>... when I noticed a striking resemblance in the composition between the photo and one of mom's paintings. I then went back and looked at some of my flower macros, still lifes, etc.. all have a variety of elements very similar to her paintings!

The road shot is a frequent motif going back at least to the renaissance; there are all kinds of compositional theories about using something like a road (or a stream, or a branch, or some other natural line) to lead your eye into a picture, automatically providing depth. I think perhaps half of Pissarro's impressionists paintings do this. There are other compositional theories about placing main subjects at "thirds," and your mum seems to have been doing this, either through training or instinct. So...it's composition, it what it is. 🙂

JC

 

[Ash]

Classical art training always began with copying, precise replication of a master's style being understood as a the process through which one developed complete control over technique as the essential preliminary to developing a genuinely individual vision.

This has largely been forgotten by art educators, with obvious results. We tend to view "influence" as a bad thing and are all effectively self-taught now - to our ultimate loss.

In fact for the art course I was doing, although AVCE (so effectively foundation), we had just that. On one of the first few days we were asked "who here has actually been taught HOW to paint?" This was followed by about 4 weeks or more of learning everything from colour matching to chiaroscuro. We had to closely study two to three artists for each technique and write a factfile on them with example images, and draw from real subjects matching the techniques (again anything from plants to dolls, carrots and masks hanging from thread with only one light source). In this way it's a compromise. The work was our own, but we HAD to learn how to properly define and use each technique. We also had to critically assess our own work for the sketchbooks.

If we couldn't match the techniques, explain AND assess our work to show our own progression, we didn't get high grades.

I agree though, the balance is lost in most places. A lot of people have to directly copy an artist and learn nothing, and some people just, well, satisfy their ego and learn nothing.

Leaving with a BC for the course (as two a-levels) I hope I satisfied my ego AND learnt 😀

 

[lushd]

When I was being taught photography, we spent a lot of time copying (especially lighting set ups) and sometimes used to just look at pictures and were asked to describe the lighting set up. A lot of my course encouraged us to think of styles and pastiche. Our tutors didn't have a lot of time for romantic types who were suffering from inner visions but were quite keen for us to understand and use the ways photographs communicate ideas. This meant that I felt that I never really acquired a style of my own until years after I left college. The biggest influences on my pictures are not photographers - my stuff comes out of a book by Andre Breton called "Nadja" and Louis Aragon's "Paris Peasant". These are both books about wandering the city aimlessly and waiting for chance encounters to reveal a hidden reality. There's an excellent book called "Le Flaneur" that recreates the same sense of wandering and wondering in more modern times. For this reason I like some of the photographers mentioned - Eggleston especially, but also Winogrand, Friedlander and Atget.

 

[peter_n]

Whenever you catch me that would be the last art or photo book I've read. Right now it is David Hockney and Ragnar Axelsson.

 

[Andrew L]

Don't know about influences, but a really inspiring book I've bought recently is Early Color by Saul Leiter. Heartily recommended.

 

[IGMeanwell]

W. Eugene Smith

Portraiture: my influence is heavy on William Claxton

Many of my candids are characteristic of Dennis Stock

edit: Did I miss the point of this thread? Well if its more abstract rather than who... women, love, fear, hope, women, and probably small depressions

 

[sf]

artistic influences:

culture
architecture
light
sound
women
beautiful or horrible otherness.