Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before
- Thread starter Al Kaplan
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dave61
Established
-Yeah, people I worked with used to kid me, said I was an 'artiste', that my wiring was so good because I had an art degree...
I've worked for upper-class families. They're not like you and me. The wealthiest 0.5% of americans control 95% of the wealth in this country. They think everyone's like them and want us to share their values (FWIW, I think this country would be better off if it was a lot more like Norway).
Having a college education doesn't change a person's socio-economic status (if only this were true). It might make someone more employable-if it's a useful degree. Fine Arts don't count.
It's naive to think that because someone went to college, they're a member of the upper class. A college education is everyone's right.
I've worked for upper-class families. They're not like you and me. The wealthiest 0.5% of americans control 95% of the wealth in this country. They think everyone's like them and want us to share their values (FWIW, I think this country would be better off if it was a lot more like Norway).
Having a college education doesn't change a person's socio-economic status (if only this were true). It might make someone more employable-if it's a useful degree. Fine Arts don't count.
It's naive to think that because someone went to college, they're a member of the upper class. A college education is everyone's right.
larmarv916
Well-known
Well this "subject" comes around to the core issue which is centered with the self elevated "art intellectual" and gallery owners who are the tick living on the back of the photographers everywhere. And making sure to educate buyers on the what or why the photographer is creating images. Of course again only the experts...can only render "valid" judgments on who is or is not a important photographer or next artistic genius. This really is root of the problem. "Only Big Brother" knows what is or is not important.
Can you imagine what would happen if directors had no authority in the choice of what photos were displayed? Or did not have the authority for decisions for purchases of images in official collections of a museum ? These people make decisions are so subjective in process in what is really personal bias based. The internet is to a great degree chopping away at that power base. Just not fast enough. RFF is part of that process. Galleries and Museums are in reality trying to mold the artistic views of the unsuspecting public..as to hold up only "validated" examples of imagery..in a passive agressive manner. This is what you should aspire to mimick !
Photography has been trapped by this behavior....held hostage by the those who are deriving wealth from this abusive exploitation of photographers.
Who defines who is edcuated or not edcuated...to make the politically correct validation of what is or is not behind the imagery and it's creator.
No one needs these charlitons to guide us or define our creative products.
So only if we allow unknow others to force personal bias, about us, on our creative process and end product can these clowns exist. But in the end for the "tick's"that ride the back of any creative culture..is really is only "all" about money...and of course ego's stroked by those seeking to be validated.
Oh and my first job paid..2.32 dollars per hour. While in college.
All the best...Laurance
Can you imagine what would happen if directors had no authority in the choice of what photos were displayed? Or did not have the authority for decisions for purchases of images in official collections of a museum ? These people make decisions are so subjective in process in what is really personal bias based. The internet is to a great degree chopping away at that power base. Just not fast enough. RFF is part of that process. Galleries and Museums are in reality trying to mold the artistic views of the unsuspecting public..as to hold up only "validated" examples of imagery..in a passive agressive manner. This is what you should aspire to mimick !
Photography has been trapped by this behavior....held hostage by the those who are deriving wealth from this abusive exploitation of photographers.
Who defines who is edcuated or not edcuated...to make the politically correct validation of what is or is not behind the imagery and it's creator.
No one needs these charlitons to guide us or define our creative products.
So only if we allow unknow others to force personal bias, about us, on our creative process and end product can these clowns exist. But in the end for the "tick's"that ride the back of any creative culture..is really is only "all" about money...and of course ego's stroked by those seeking to be validated.
Oh and my first job paid..2.32 dollars per hour. While in college.
All the best...Laurance
Al Kaplan
Veteran
I've gotten to the point where I don't give a hoot about what others think of my photography. In retrospect I've had too many other interests over the years that took up my time, and just maybe I never did really give a hoot. What photography has done or me is let me pay the bills "without really working" and it's been kind of neat to associate with and hang out with all of the folks I've run into over the years that I never would have met otherwise.
As for higher education, it's main function in a capitalist economy is two-fold. It provides employment for teachers and the school's support staff and keeps tens of thousands of other people out of the job market for another four years or longer. The reality is that apprenticeship programs and/or self study will teach you more and faster. Higher education grooms people to fit in a given field but they don't know squat about anything else.
Municipal planners don't study about how the cultural differences of various ethnic groups and religions affect housing patterns for instance. Our educational system stinks, all the way from grade school teachers who can't relate to students from another socio-economic level to the specialist medical doctors it produces who feel threatened when a new patient already has figured out what the diagnosis is, and why, and which drug or course of treatment would be best, but needs the "expert" to write the script.
As for higher education, it's main function in a capitalist economy is two-fold. It provides employment for teachers and the school's support staff and keeps tens of thousands of other people out of the job market for another four years or longer. The reality is that apprenticeship programs and/or self study will teach you more and faster. Higher education grooms people to fit in a given field but they don't know squat about anything else.
Municipal planners don't study about how the cultural differences of various ethnic groups and religions affect housing patterns for instance. Our educational system stinks, all the way from grade school teachers who can't relate to students from another socio-economic level to the specialist medical doctors it produces who feel threatened when a new patient already has figured out what the diagnosis is, and why, and which drug or course of treatment would be best, but needs the "expert" to write the script.
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Sparrow
Veteran
Don't worry Al, art ultimately is what the plebs say it is, the cultural elite are, by necessity, reactionary and therefore, ultimately, irrelevant.
The "Artist" will out, without subsidy, in the face of any critic and even the governing establishment.
Some of us understand the difference between artist and artiest, some do not.
Banksy
Bristol show
The "Artist" will out, without subsidy, in the face of any critic and even the governing establishment.
Some of us understand the difference between artist and artiest, some do not.
Banksy
Bristol show
rolleistef
Well-known
Is photograhy an Art?
What is art?
Whose answer will be first?
What is art?
Whose answer will be first?
gdi
Veteran
mfunnell
Shaken, so blurred
gdi
Veteran
LOL!
While I don't have Harvard MBA, and I'm sure many key players in the business side of the debacle had them (and at least one VERY key political contributor!), I would wager that what they did had little to do with what is taught at Harvard Business. More like plain and simple greed, mixed with generous doses of political lunacy!
But I'm willing to be surpirised, maybe they do teach those things at Harvard these days 😱
Al Kaplan
Veteran
A college degree is only a means of skipping to the head of the line. It doesn't do much for letting you stay there.
MickH
Well-known
So what are you saying, that Mac vs PC threads are equal to education bashing in an art-oriented photography thread?
I beg to differ. Mac vs PC threads can't hold a candle to this type of thing. They were mostly written by (as you say) 'teens in the 1990's who were wasting their parent's hard-earned in college courses obtaining useless arts degrees and becoming know all artists/critics, or landing a finance related qualification and dropping us all in the plop now!
I beg to differ. Mac vs PC threads can't hold a candle to this type of thing. They were mostly written by (as you say) 'teens in the 1990's who were wasting their parent's hard-earned in college courses obtaining useless arts degrees and becoming know all artists/critics, or landing a finance related qualification and dropping us all in the plop now!
Al Kaplan
Veteran
I'm not against education. Knowledge is important, and maybe our educational system is working well enough to keep society from collapsing, but it's set up in such a way as to discourage people from thinking "outside of the box".
Al Kaplan
Veteran
Perhaps I phrased it wrong when I said "outside the box". Plenty of people can think outside the box, that's a given. What few people have is a broad enough knowledge in enough fields to be able to see the connections between the contents of one "box" with the contents of another. Even a "liberal" arts degree doesn't seem too succesful in teaching the concept, and very few people bother to expand their knowlege in a multiplicity of directions. Too much trouble!
Liberal arts programs main functions are to put a couple of letters after their name, keep them off of the job market for a few more years, and make their mommies proud.
Liberal arts programs main functions are to put a couple of letters after their name, keep them off of the job market for a few more years, and make their mommies proud.
antiquark
Derek Ross
Maybe during the renaissance, people could learn everything about everything. There just wasn't that much knowledge back then.
These days, there's so much information, you have to pigeonhole yourself by necessity. Otherwise you won't learn enough to be useful in your field.
For example, in the 1800's, you could go to university to learn "engineering". That mean anything and everything that engineers did back then.
These days there's civil engineering, electrical, computer, biosystems, mechanical, aeronautical engineering, etc. One department is enough to fill the average human brain. And forget about learning latin, art, music, and philosophy on the side!
I think the days of the "Leonardo Da Vinci" type character are mostly long gone.
Al Kaplan
Veteran
These days nobody would hire Leonardo.
I didn't mean that somebody needed to know all that there is to know in every possible field, but I constantly run into people who just don't see the relationship between things that they do know.
I didn't mean that somebody needed to know all that there is to know in every possible field, but I constantly run into people who just don't see the relationship between things that they do know.
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M4cr0s
Back In Black
I'm starting to understand your way of thinking now. To my experience, knowledge, about almost anything, ads to the pool and gives you a better ability to comprehend the multitude of connections between various subjects and the big picture. It's simply about understanding more of how things fit togheter. There's always some connection, and there's always ways to use knowledge you've got in one field, in other areas. Unfortunately many people don't quite get this and almost avoid learning things that's not directly connected to their profession or liking. "It's not important."
Then again, I am probably very colored by my background in, and passion for the social sciences and history myself. After all, these disciplines be pretty much about seeing patterns and connections, to explain why and how things came to be and are the way they are.
/Mac
RichC
Well-known
Know what you mean... I think this is symptomatic of a greater malaise in western society.
I'm a scientist by education and inclination - I like to know how things work: I can tell you exactly what the molecules in your developer are doing, and explain how digital sensors, using quantum mechanics.
However, I’m also interested in the arts, and, despite my science degree, I’m actually a graphic designer!
Half the people I hang around with have a background in science, the other half don’t. What I have noticed is that the two are like oil and water, and spectacularly uninterested, by and large, of the other’s interests.
The non-scientists are the worse. Mention anything vaguely technical, and they get that glazed look... or act if their IQ has plummeted to 10! And they come out with the most facetious things like “I never eat anything with E numbers” (right <sarcasm> - even though the most poisonous substances known are “organic”, like ricin!) or “genetic engineering is wrong” (err - what do you think we’ve been doing to corn and chickens for thousands of years!?). Of course some E numbers are bad and some genetic engineering is well iffy, but people just don’t want to think outside their niche.
And you scientists shouldn’t be feeling smug either! Most I know are experts in their fields but couldn’t tell you why Nietzsche is famous, what a Doric column is or how to use semicolon properly!
What I have noticed is that people in today’s society seem to lack curiosity these days ... their minds are the mental equivalent of coach potatoes! They want information relevant only to the task in hand, and that has to easily digestible or they won’t bother (note how modern books are flashy, full of short bulleted lists and pictures - unlike the comprehensive textbooks of old?)
Yes, human knowledge is so vast that we need to specialise if we want to know an area well, but that is not the reason for the disconnect that Al mentions...
Al Kaplan
Veteran
M4cr0s and RichC, so far that makes three of us that can see THAT connection. Depending on my mood of the moment, and with whom I'm chatting my reply to "...and what do you do?" varies: photographer, writer, reporter, municipal planner, cultural anthropologist, to an off-hand "I never finished med school" or "I never took the bar". When my first wife was in med school I read all of her books and checked her papers for grammar. My daughter sent me all her law shool text books as she finished them "Daddy, you're the only parent I know that will read them!"
About twenty-five years ago the city attorney and I rewrote the city charter to bring it into accordance with then current state and federal law. I was on the Charter Review Board at the time and I asked her why she gave ME the stack of law books to research the update. "Because you're the only one on the board that understands this crap!"
I've run a number of succesful election campaigns, I joined the local congressman for Sunday breakfast for about twenty-five years whenever he wasn't in DC. He died a few years ago.
Finally I got tired of being on municipal advisory boards and other things, and using my mother's death as my excuse, resigned from everything, including the boards of several not-for-profits, put away the suits and ties, said goodby to my hair stylist, and gave a go at being a fishing guide, my other big passion. I already had the captains license. I started dressing the part. Then about ten years ago a much younger friend got elected to the city council and insisted that I let him appoint me to the city's Board of Adjustment. I said "Fine, but I'm not going to cut my hair, shave my beard, or wear a suit and tie!" During my ten or twelve year hiatus city staff had changed, a new city attorney, a new director of planning etc. I get into long conversations with the planning director about what this city or that city is doing to address a similar situation, discuss case law with the city attorney and how a particular court decision might affect one of our proposed ordinances. When I did show up one day to a board meeting, freshly cut hair, suit and tie, the planning director greeted me with an "Oh, Mr. Kaplan, I didn't realize that you were an attorney!"
On the medical side a lot of doctors don't like a patient who can describe the symptoms, knows the probable cause, suggests a particular medicine, but warns the doc that there's a possibility that it might cause a reaction because of a different drug that you're taking.
Being a photographer for all these years has allowed me to meet and befriend a wide variety of people, and there's more to life than "Which lens has better bokeh at medium apertures" (and I can always ask Raid).
So just what is my formal educational background? I maintained a 4.0 average all the way through the single three credit hour course I took in physical anthropology. I never felt a need to keep myself out of the job market for four years or more.
http://thepriceofsilver.blogspot.com
About twenty-five years ago the city attorney and I rewrote the city charter to bring it into accordance with then current state and federal law. I was on the Charter Review Board at the time and I asked her why she gave ME the stack of law books to research the update. "Because you're the only one on the board that understands this crap!"
I've run a number of succesful election campaigns, I joined the local congressman for Sunday breakfast for about twenty-five years whenever he wasn't in DC. He died a few years ago.
Finally I got tired of being on municipal advisory boards and other things, and using my mother's death as my excuse, resigned from everything, including the boards of several not-for-profits, put away the suits and ties, said goodby to my hair stylist, and gave a go at being a fishing guide, my other big passion. I already had the captains license. I started dressing the part. Then about ten years ago a much younger friend got elected to the city council and insisted that I let him appoint me to the city's Board of Adjustment. I said "Fine, but I'm not going to cut my hair, shave my beard, or wear a suit and tie!" During my ten or twelve year hiatus city staff had changed, a new city attorney, a new director of planning etc. I get into long conversations with the planning director about what this city or that city is doing to address a similar situation, discuss case law with the city attorney and how a particular court decision might affect one of our proposed ordinances. When I did show up one day to a board meeting, freshly cut hair, suit and tie, the planning director greeted me with an "Oh, Mr. Kaplan, I didn't realize that you were an attorney!"
On the medical side a lot of doctors don't like a patient who can describe the symptoms, knows the probable cause, suggests a particular medicine, but warns the doc that there's a possibility that it might cause a reaction because of a different drug that you're taking.
Being a photographer for all these years has allowed me to meet and befriend a wide variety of people, and there's more to life than "Which lens has better bokeh at medium apertures" (and I can always ask Raid).
So just what is my formal educational background? I maintained a 4.0 average all the way through the single three credit hour course I took in physical anthropology. I never felt a need to keep myself out of the job market for four years or more.
http://thepriceofsilver.blogspot.com
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