William Mortensen!

DominikDUK said:
. . . Mortensen's books deal with portraits and nudes done in a Studio environment whereas AA was an outdoor photographer . . .
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Not entirely. Consider his Outdoor Portraiture, (1940). Interesting to compare these with AA's few portraits. Also, "portraits and nudes" is a bit of an understatement when you look at Monsters and Madonnas.

Cheers,

R.
 
I was aware of his work and had read the apology from A.D. Coleman a few years ago., but I did not know of his contribution to the Zone System. It would seem that I have been solidly in Mortensen's camp with my digital collages and tree "grotesques" all these years. After being told by many over the years, including the Grande Dame of Paris photography, that my images were not photography, it would be nice to be past that kind of prejudice. Thanks Roger for the link. It seems the world my have taken an unexpected turn in my direction. I guess everything does come around.
 
kbg32 said:
In short, Adams and Newhall, who were best buddies, despised everything that Mortensen stood for, his vision, his technique, his tremendous ability as a photo technician. He invented many photo processes.
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And yet in any good book about Pictorialism towards the end Adams pictures will creep in. So I don't think it was about being best buddies with Newhall, but when Adams turned his back on Pictorialism he needed to be against it in order to move on and be seen as 'serious' in his new direction. All artists do it, they learn from the greats and when ready to part ways it is imperative that they look like moving onwards and upwards, so the teachers become reviled. That Newhall was also in on the zeitgeist of the new age simply cemented their bond. The thing is, would Adams have existed (in photographic history) if he hadn't had something to kick against, and to kick against a principle effectively you have to understand it, so no wonder Adams wanted to put some distance between him and anything that went before, it embarrassed him.

V
 
The Newhalls had tremendous influence in what was what back then. To have the Newhalls on your side meant you had exclusive entrance to many museums and exhibitions of the day.

The writings by Adams are totally contradictory to what he stood for. He might have been an influential teacher, but I find his work totally grandiose and devoid of human emotion. He produced many clones devoid of emotional content. Adams had a great publicist in those days. Aligning yourself with the Sierra Club was beneficial as well.

His family continues his legacy, but not in the most glowing of ways -

http://petapixel.com/2014/10/07/print-scam-meets-eye-ansel-adams-gallery/
 
Charlie Lemay said:
I was aware of his work and had read the apology from A.D. Coleman a few years ago., but I did not know of his contribution to the Zone System. It would seem that I have been solidly in Mortensen's camp with my digital collages and tree "grotesques" all these years. After being told by many over the years, including the Grande Dame of Paris photography, that my images were not photography, it would be nice to be past that kind of prejudice. Thanks Roger for the link. It seems the world my have taken an unexpected turn in my direction. I guess everything does come around.
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Dear Charlie,

Your "Polyphemus" appeared on the back page of AP 11th Oct...

Cheers,

R.
 
V-12 said:
And yet in any good book about Pictorialism towards the end Adams pictures will creep in. So I don't think it was about being best buddies with Newhall, but when Adams turned his back on Pictorialism he needed to be against it in order to move on and be seen as 'serious' in his new direction. All artists do it, they learn from the greats and when ready to part ways it is imperative that they look like moving onwards and upwards, so the teachers become reviled. That Newhall was also in on the zeitgeist of the new age simply cemented their bond. The thing is, would Adams have existed (in photographic history) if he hadn't had something to kick against, and to kick against a principle effectively you have to understand it, so no wonder Adams wanted to put some distance between him and anything that went before, it embarrassed him.

V
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Except that AA was arguably the ultimate pictorialist, but with a deeply dishonest approach. Taken as cynically as possible, "pictorialism" is "making pretty pictures via image manipulation". Um...

Apart from Sierra Club propaganda, and a generally sentimentalist view of pre-industrial California, what else are AA's best known pictures? At least Mortensen's pictures leave some room for interpretation, instead of being for the most part fantasies about prelapsarian wilderness.

Cheers,

R.
 
Not to defend the f64 point of view but it does show how we live in different times. Today we are comfortable with multiple approaches. Many, many points of view are seen as equally valid. The world, certainly the art world and photo world was different in the '30s and '40s. Roger is right, Adams, Weston, Minor White, all of their work was pictorial. We see the contradictions in their claims to purity where they did not. It is interesting that Adams never seemed to soften in his stance toward WM. Even late in life he refused to enter a gallery showing WM work, a gallery across the hall from one showing his own photographs. Such animus seems antithetical to the spirit of art.
 
AA wasn't the worst WM hater in the f64 group. AA and f64 didn't bring anything new to photography the exception being Imogen Cunnigham and sometimes E. Weston when he's gotten inspirations from other photographers.

AA photographic style is nothing but 19th century landscape photography as done by W.H. Jackson and many others. He was a great teacher though allthough I hate it that he gets all the credit for the Zone System while Fred Archer (a portrait photographer) is rarely mentioned.

The hate of f64 towards pictoralism is easily explained every "new art group" has to write a manifest against their predecessors. The pictoralist wrote one against the boring sharpness fanatics and pro photographers. Amateurs vs professionals.😀
 
Mortensen was a brilliant artist - but understand that some of the f64 backlash came from the ways that Mortensen's cohort had previously treated the younger generation of photographers. In other words, what goes around comes around.

Dante
 
Dante_Stella said:
Mortensen was a brilliant artist - but understand that some of the f64 backlash came from the ways that Mortensen's cohort had previously treated the younger generation of photographers. In other words, what goes around comes around.

Dante
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Dear Dante,

Including wishing someone dead?

No, that's crazy.

Cheers,

R.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Except that AA was arguably the ultimate pictorialist, but with a deeply dishonest approach. Taken as cynically as possible, "pictorialism" is "making pretty pictures via image manipulation". Um...

Apart from Sierra Club propaganda, and a generally sentimentalist view of pre-industrial California, what else are AA's best known pictures? At least Mortensen's pictures leave some room for interpretation, instead of being for the most part fantasies about prelapsarian wilderness.

Cheers,

R.
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I'm not defending Adams, but don't you think you are judging him by sitting back and seeing how things turned out, a luxury not even afforded to the most clairvoyant critic at the time? Adams believed in his mission with the Sierra Club which moves his photographs on from being just pretty to being pretty (and) useful as political weapons irrespective of your revisionism.

And it is revisionism that seems to encompass the whole of the Pictorial movement. I'm sure we all manipulate the world and make the occasional pretty picture by doing something as simple as editing with the frame, but of course that does not make us all Pictorialists. But to say the Pictorialists were only about making 'pretty pictures via manipulation' is very wide of the mark.

Why did the Pictorialists become Pictorialists for instance? It is because they wanted to embrace a similar narrative language as that available to other artists in different fields. A painter could paint a picture 'about something' where the meaning was deeper than the collection of things he'd painted. Symbolism plays a big part in the art of the century and it was this deeper language that the Pictorialist photographers craved. But whether or not you judge their photographs turned out 'pretty' the better practitioners at least made them about something, often expressing an overt feeling for landscape, the human condition, the glory of progress and technology, or yes, a syrupy nostalgia for the past.

So while you attack Pictorialist movement for being 'pretty' and manipulated what exactly are you defending with your mockery? The only thing I can see if I look in that direction is the vacuum of the modern digital age, where so often the only thing expressed is sharpness and colour sold to you by Mr Nikon.

V
 
V-12 said:
. . . Why did the Pictorialists become Pictorialists for instance? It is because they wanted to embraSo while you attack Pictorialist movement for being 'pretty' and manipulated what exactly are you defending with your mockery? . . .
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Sorry, I did not make myself anything like clear enough. I can see why you read it the way you did, and it's one of those things where once you've read it one way, it's hard to read it another. I fear it's a clear case of "I knew what I meant" on my side.

I had no intention of "mocking" pictorialism. I should have said something like, "Pictorialism at its worst is making pretty pictures via image manipulation". At which point, of course, AA's work often comes pretty close to pictorialism at its worst. It is of course perfectly possible to use "pretty pictures" for propaganda, so I don't think that aspect of the argument is important.

Actually, I'm a significantly greater fan of pictorialism (and symbolism) than of AA's pictures. I take it you don't subscribe to Amateur Photographer magazine, where a while back I addressed the specifically symbolist aspects of a Roger Fenton still life and where in the last issue (October 11th) I used Charlie Lemay's Polyphemus, which is sort of symbolist realism. I hope in a few months to use one of his much more symbolist digital images, but I don't like using the same photographer's work without a few months' separation.

So, my apologies for the lack of clarity. All I can say in my defence is that a quick reply in a forum like this is not the same as an article I may spend several hours writing and rewriting. I really do appreciate your point and am grateful to you for making it.

Cheers,

R.
 
Thank you Roger, I see what you meant to say in your explanation, and I think on this topic we can be in agreement, it is the vacuum we should worry about, not expression or ideas.

All the best

V
 
But Mortensen can't be considered a "pioneer of modern photography," as the article in the Guardian has it, because he doesn't apply any of the formal lessons of modernist photography that you see in Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans and even Ansel Adams. His rather undynamic framing and his sentimental subject matter is similar to 19th century academic painting – Puvis de Chavannes and the Pre Raphaelites - and perhaps to the reactionary contemporary painter John Currin.

Paul Outerbridge, who uses some of the same type of subject matter as Mortensen, but with more bite and wit, I think is a much more interesting photographer, and has enjoyed a sort of revival since the 1980s.

James
 
It is curious that you decide Walker Evans uses dynamic framing and lack of sentimental subject matter, considering the bulk of his really important work was for the FSA and about the sentimental loss of a way of life accentuated by a dispassionate framing style. Walker Evans was a political photographer, his images made to get across a message. I mean, James Agee and Steinbeck weren't feeding on and reciprocating in everything Bresson or Adams did in quite the same way (or at all), nor any other 'intellectuals' in the same period.

V
 
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