Movers and fakers

[tim atherton]

An article from the Guardian (thanks to Joerg's "Conscientious" blog):

"How can the new generation of art photographers make their mark when almost anyone with the latest equipment can take excellent pictures? William A Ewing (of the Musée de l'Elysée - opne of the world premier photography museums), who has been seeking stars of the future across the world, identifies the new directions":

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1548026,00.html

As Joerg notes "The basic assumption of the article is wrong, though. Just because you can buy the latest equipment doesn't mean that you can take excellent pictures. It still takes a good photographer to take a good photo."

[Greg Miller]

Reminds me of many Camera Clubs and their participants. Their images are technically very good but artistically stale and boring (IMHO a result of rigid judging rules). New technology assists in the technical aspect of our craft but does not imbue us with artistic skills - those still need to be mastered the old fashioned way.

[John Kasaian]

True enough. Most beginners can expertly focus and nail the exposure soon into the learning process, even with 19th century view cameras. The content of the photograph is another matter. Consider the test pattern on your television screen---it's flawless, but not much for entertainment(unless you're my Bride's late basset hound---that was her favorite program!) It is amazing that the Director of an esteemed museum would say such a thing while sober. I can only hope the statement was taken out of context for sensationalism (which wouldn't be the first time for the Manchester Guardian.)

[Nick Morris]

Hello Tim,

My point is simple - you put paint in front of me, and you get your living room painted, and maybe not so well; you put paint in front of Monet, you get something that shakes your soul to its core. I think its safe to say that the paint isn't the the difference.

In the history of image making it has been the image that "made" the image maker. Generally, the images exhibited a necessary degree of creativity, craft, and the ability to communicate to a viewer, to "connect", with an appreciative audience. Even in this time of mass, high-tech image making, I believe it will still come down to that basic premise. There will be the best, and there will be the rest.

Now, everybody laugh.

[paulr]

i think this is a nice answer ..

"You know, photography has had a very interesting history. The technological and market impulse is to make photography more and more available, since the beginning. When it was discovered, it was rather arcane and only experts could make photographs, people who were somewhat expert in physics or chemistry. But, the evolution of it has been to make it a more and more public medium. So there's more and more photographs, so I see the future of photography as being greater in terms of quantity. But, the quality of photography, the number of photographs that are interesting or personal, or visually exciting, or innovative -- or characteristic, even -- is pretty constant. So, I don't see photography as changing in quality, I see it changing in technique and availability."

--Dr. Sandra S. Phillips
Curator of Photography, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco

[John Cook]

Thank you Tim. A very interesting article. A lot of truth, but not the whole story.

When I first began my career, a major portion of this business was based on the professional photographer’s ability to manage f-stops and shutter speeds, a light meter, exposure and development. All big mysteries to lay people.

That whole segment of professional photography has disappeared with the advent of digital photography which can be perfectly (technically) accomplished without skill or thought.

I would also add that resolution on a computer screen is so poor that there becomes no detectable technical difference between a print by AA and a simple vacation happy-snap off your kid’s CD. All the majesty of LF is eaten by the little pixels.

But where the article really comes up short is in the fact that great photographs are made out in front of the camera. Not inside it.

Pictures such as flat-art copy jobs or (virtual) photocopies of 3-D scenes can now be easily be made by novices. Putting lots of small-town photographers out of work forever.

But anything requiring balanced composition, tasteful lighting, model direction, set decoration or educated action anticipation (as in journalism) are still safely the domain of the professional.

Talent, education and experience in the root field of the photographic subject are also critical.

I was once embarrassed by an equestrian accessories catalogue shot by a NYC photographer who had before seen a horse. The agency learned their lesson and moved production out west. Permanently.

Can you imagine a sensitive French wine connoisseur designing a down-and-dirty beer commercial which would appeal to Texans in pick-ups?

Or a San Antonio studio doing delicate wine photography for the sophisticated esoteric Paris market?

Or a cookbook illustrated by someone who can’t cook? All good chefs and food photographers jiggle a little.

As long as that sort of photography is still in demand, I think we are safe. No matter how the results of the pro are captured.

What did they used to say about not selling the steak, but instead selling the sizzle?

[John Kasaian]

Perhaps this is a by-product of society in general. A colleague pointed out that society has become less stimulated intellectually and more stimulated by sensory MTV-oid input. This could be part of why LF is so interesting---to see a photograph where just the texture of moss or bark or peeling paint is enough to warrant a "wow!" from the viewer. This can be achieved adnauseum, especially with digis if the advertisements are accurate. But great photos I've seen have more to them than that. An abstract for might lean heavily on texture, but there is always more to the photograph than that---an intellectual element(like "it looks so familiar, but what the heck is it?) FWIW, the texture of snow is an important (and ellusive) element in some of my attempts, but texture is only one element, albeit an important one, for what I'm attempting to achieve.

Like motordrives on SLRs, you could burn up enough film to where you'd eventually get an interesting photo shotgun style (accidentally? shot gun accidents are baaaad!)---like the story of one hundred chimpanzees with typewriters eventually knockng out all the words contained in a shakespearean play. Such work, IMHO, would take the" art" out of "artistry." But I could be wrong.

Cheers!

[Eric Biggerstaff]

I read the article then took the link to the book about the "50" up and coming photographers.

Some of the article I agree with and some I think is art speak jabber that I can't stand.

However, I do agree that many of the one time "in" areas such as landscape, the nude, etc. are for sure "out" at the moment. And that color is "in" while B&W is "out". But these things run in cycles and sure enough, before you know it the old is new again.

I also agree that many young photographers are better marketers than in days past and are in a rush to get their work into the public. Sadly, I think, most of this work is not very good. It takes time to build a style, a voice all your own, and have something to say. Most of the work I see in books today or on the net or in many galleries leaves me cold and bored. There is very little soul in much of this work.

Like others have said on this thread, technology can create a picture but it takes soul to create art.

[paulr]

"But where the article really comes up short is in the fact that great photographs are made out in front of the camera. Not inside it."

Which is why any claims that some new tool/process/material/trend has the power to either raise or lower the bar has always just been a lot of noise.

[paulr]

For me the most unconvincing premise of the article is the idea that digital photography is revolutionary and not just evolutionary.

"The digital revolution is implicitly democratic, levelling the playing field and blurring the line between amateur and professional."

Which sounds a bit like a continuation of the path the medum has been on since the beginning ... the move to dry plates, then film, the invention of the Brownie (the first real democratizer .. "you take the picture, we do the rest"), 35mm, the light meter, polaroid, etc etc ...

"The cheapest camera on the market advises, questions, scolds, adjusts, corrects. The little electronic genie within tells us when we can do what we want, and when we can't. It makes a mockery of the expert. ("Shoot, don't think," is the clever, and apt, Sony slogan.)"

But hasn't this been going on since the advent of the point 'n shoot, or really since they started putting program modes in 35mm cameras?

[John Flavell]

This harkens back to the days when desktop computers became available to the masses and the media jumped on desktop publishing. That's when we found the phrase, "garbage in, garbage out".

And, the digital revolution is over. The evolution phase will weed them all out.

[John_4185]

John Cook "Can you imagine a sensitive French wine connoisseur designing a down-and-dirty beer commercial which would appeal to Texans in pick-ups? "

Ironically, that might be a great script idea for a comical Budweiser commercial.

[Jim Ewins]

Computers and word processors are changing everthing to do with journalism. It alters the way we write stories and the way we look at them. It changes how we...manipulate them (note some NY Times retractions). The Newspaper industry is, ...now struggling to stay afloat.

Ptty the poor fellow who typed this, he possibly didn't know how to use a pen.

[paulr]

It's a bit bizarre to suggest that newspapers are struggling because of the word processor.

I think the word processor is actually an excellent example, though. It has radically changed the process of writing for a lot of people, but it has had no influence on the standards of good writing. People still read the same way, regardless of the tool used to edit the words.

[Bruce Wehman]

I don’t think that it is coincidence or a matter of aesthetic merit that the work of Weston, Adams and Karsh is “aeons” away from the young. Which category of work requires discipline and hard work and which favors ease and accessibility?

[Jim_3565]

"Computers and word processors are changing everthing to do with journalism."

No they're not. They've been standard equipment in newsrooms now for decades. It's the advent of cyberspace that is changing everything to do with journalism.

[John D Gerndt]

What has changed is the speed of imagery, speed in acquisition and in publishing and thus of course, of disposal. Who has time to study an image and is one on a screen or in a magazine worth the contemplation? Who can count the number of images we process in a single day?

The gift in photography, especially large format photography, is in taking the time to DO the work, to look hard at things and maybe later in sharing the results. I find very few like-minded people with whom I can share the details of what moves me in an image. If I find a woman who shares that I might propose! It is going to be a very select few who don’t flow with the now faster moving traffic. Who has faith that the point is the journey and not in collecting the greatest number of mile markers?

Cheers,

[paulr]

"I don’t think that it is coincidence or a matter of aesthetic merit that the work of Weston, Adams and Karsh is “aeons” away from the young. Which category of work requires discipline and hard work and which favors ease and accessibility?"

I'm not sure how the point I think you're implying would account for the thousands of photographers from Weston's and Adams' era that history has forgotten because their work wasn't any good (in spite of the discipline and hard work required to make it). Or the thousands of young photographers working today whose work we simply don't know yet, or don't even know how to look at yet.

And by the way, among the young photographers I know, there are ones working in just about every imaginable process, from odd digital concoctions to daguerrotypes. Be careful how you generalize a whole generation.

[dan otranto]

Anyone is able to make a great picture. Plenty of people who were no where near to calling themselves 'artists' have made arresting, interesting, beautiful pictures. The idea that digital cameras democrotize the art world for everyone is pretty ludicrous in my mind...the most important thing an artist does (especially ones who use photography) is use the medium to make a relevant, cohesive statement or transmit an interesting concept. Being able to make a beautiful picture does not make you a good artist in the contemporary sense. The bulk of the work must be done with the brain and not with the camera. Didnt harry callahan or minor white or one of those guys say theres nothing worse than a sharp picture with a fuzzy concept?

[John Berry ( Roadkill )]

I believe it wa A.A., that said there is nothing worse than a technically perfect fuzzy concept.

[John Kasaian]

John D. Gerndt:

G.K.Chesterton said something like "only a living thing can swim against the current" or something like that (as long as we're bringing up qoutes here)

Cheers!

[Darin Boville]

So, let me see, the new generation of "art photographers" are setting themselves apart in the face of "implicitly democractic" digital technology by:

1) By going to "good schools" (note that this is not a result of the search for future talent--the search was limited only to "good schools")

2) Their "heros" are "Sontag, Barthes and Derrida" rather than photographers

3) They work in color

4) They print their images very large

5) They make use of their school's social networks to advance their career

Hmm. Sounds to me more like a flock of trendoid sheep than the vanguards of future cultural achievement.

The flaw in the article isn't its premise that digital photography makes things easy. It does. It is in the idea that cutting edge thinking and achievement in photography can be found only within art schools. That premise was weak all along--digital technology and the Internet make it obsolete.

Twenty years ago a kid in the middle of Kansas would have been hard-pressed to have a discussion about "Sontag, Barthes and Derrida." Today he can order all of their books (in and out of print) in whatever language he chooses, watch the documentaries, see panel discussions on television and on the Internet--he is limited more by his interest level than his geography. Likewise for this kid's art--he can respond to a whole host of influences and forces, worldwide, including interacting with other artists scattered across the globe. Indeed, he can reject "Sontag, Barthes and Derrida" for reasons other than lack of exposure or understanding.

All that remains out of his reach is the social contacts and market access provided by the art schools. Maybe that will change, too, although it is hard to tell.

--Darin

www.darinboville.com

[paulr]

"Their "heros" are "Sontag, Barthes and Derrida" rather than photographers"

this can hardly be the description of a new generation ... this sounds like 1980s postmodernism. Not that it's completely run its course, but I'd think a "new" generation would have to at least come up with something new (even if isn't any better).

[Bruce Watson]

Does this mean that if I buy the right guitar, I can be Jimi Hendrix?

Won't my momma be surprised!

[John_4185]

I'm very surprised to see comments like Darin's here. Of course, Darin is right. There are Art Schools that train their students in 'the discourse of art', and teach them early-on not to get into discussions with 'the uninformed', lest they find out the truth of the matter is the students' education is so narrow in scope that they are hapless in the larger world and cannot handle the more rooted, passionate, better informed individuals who perform from their hearts, intellect, and greater experience rather than sucking on the regime of the doctored mentors they hired at Daddy's ennormous expense to make them 'artists and critics'.

Thanks for the jump-start, Darin. I have even more to say, but this is enough for now.

--
jj - who works in academe, floating his little boat over the schools of self-obsessed slippery schools of fish who have never practiced the foci of their critiques but who impose upon The Rest Of Us.

[Brian Vuillemenot]

No, Bruce, if you buy the right guitar, you can't be Hendrix, but if you buy the right saxophone, you can be Kenny G. :)

[Jim Ewins]

And I thought these bright guys were up for some satire. guess not

[Michael Gordon]

If you buy a camera, you are a photographer. If you buy a flute, you own a flute.
~ Bob Kolbrener

[Struan Gray]

A couple of reflections.

How does a bedrock stay afloat at all? Why should we be surprised that it is struggling?

The fifty photographers were selected by art school grandees from a pool of over six hundred who had already been through selection to get into art school in the first place. What do you know? The 'best' are those that reflect the styles, concerns and influences of the currrent set of art school grandees! What an amazing coincidence!

OK. Three.

I think technology has made it easy for anyone to take a good picture, and I think that's a good thing. I am always surprised at how often photographers disparage the successful artist who knows nothing about their cameras or film. Are you a photographer or a camera operator? DP, or grip?

In general, I like all that 80s postmodern fluff. It has irony, humour and on the surface at least doesn't take itself too seriously. It is easy to consume, digest and move on - and deliberately so.

But. It's not the only thing I like, and it's not what I love. As anyone who has worked in a chocolate factory can tell you, after a while the easy sweetness makes you sick, and you start to long for salt and sour. It'll happen in photography too. If you want to be thought innovative and original, the last thing you'll do is go trailing after this bunch.

[paulr]

" It is easy to consume, digest and move on - and deliberately so."

This is true, and some of it I enjoy. But what bugs me is when artists forget the "move on" part. Marcel Duchamp got it right--he understood the value of commenting on art and culture with his "readymades" like the urinal and the snow shovel. He also knew that he could do it once, and that was it. Time to move on. His postmodern followers miss that last detail and try the equivalent of making whole careers out of snow shovels hung from the ceiling. Sherry Levine was a classic example, with her tongue-in-cheek series of rephotographed masterpieces. It was funny--she made her point. And then she made it again, and again, and again, long past it being funny, clever, or relevent. She was one of many.

My suspicion is that postmodern conceptualism lingers because it's easy to teach. It's verbal, idea-based, and intellectual in ways accessible to educated people. This kind of work philosophy allows you to turn an idea into a factory, and churn out variation after variation on the same concept. Great for business. And, once the students get their MFAs, the most likely job prospect is ... teaching. So the cycle continues. And I think it will continue until something comes along that's capable of breaking the inertia.

The good news is (at least it seems to me) that the programs and students aren't as homogenous as they were 10 years ago, which is when I was considering getting an MFA. I see more different kinds of work being done by students now, including some traditional work that was seen as hopelessly outdated not that long ago.

[Jonathan_5775]

I'm very new to this site - and I don't want to speak out of turn or seem prematurely critical, but I have to say I'm quite disappointed to see this sort of maligning going on. Yes, I guess it's the usual thing - attacking something you don't understand by picking on the weakest of it's species. And hell, yes... I'm an art school grad. BFA. Or Big F___ all as we used to call it. Anyway - as for the whole CULTURE of artspeak and writing - well, there are those who don't do it well - as in all fields. But, like anything - it's a TOOL. A tool. A way to effectively communicate with others with a similar background. But not to others outside of that. Which, I suppose, is why it is attacked. Exclusion - perceived or otherwise. It allows people to talk about what goes on with images in an effective way. We could use a bit more of that around here instead of talking so much about gear, don't you think?

[Struan Gray]

I think any orthodoxy is easy to teach. Ambling through a canon of Whig-history 'greats' is arguably the easiest of all.

The problem I have with postmodernism is that it pretends to have no standards of judgement. Of course, you have to cut down on the amount of material somehow, and you end up with fads, guru-worship and nepotism. I suspect that this is why so many of the 'concepts' are so trivial and banal.

I would also quibble with your use of 'intellectual', as most postmodern art that I have met explicitly rejects the sort of questioning, self-critical enquiry that I associate with the word.

Were I a gentleman of leisure (or a tenured art don), one thing that excites me about current imaging technology is that is has a different relationship to time. A DSLR with adjustable ISO frees you from the tyranny of reciprocity - at least, much more than swapping film speeds does. Post-processing of video and serial-frame still scenes opens up all sorts of options, and slow-scan techniques using scanning backs or by stitching images also distort the time axis in ways that were mostly closed to traditional photography. Give me a Sinar back and a travel grant and I'd be a happy sand fly.

[Struan Gray]

Jonathan, I can only speak for myself, but I wasn't bashing art schools as such, merely commenting that it was unremarkable to find an orthodoxy flourishing in a closed system. I took care to say that I found parts of that orthodoxy valuable.

[John_4185]

Reiterating Paul's comment regarding Duchamp's urinal piece - indeed, it was a comment concerning nonjurried shows. We still have the occasional student who will submit some kind of arbitrary junk such as 35mm film-ends from the trash for an assignment, and they get a failing grade because the assignment is jurried/judged and they were taught that first.

For those who have read a lot about Marcel Duchamp, there's a relatively new addition to the literature in here: understandingduchamp.com (http://understandingduchamp.com). It shows certain things about The Large Glass that have not been evinced before.

[John_4185]

Jonathan: [...] A tool. A way to effectively communicate with others with a similar background. But not to others outside of that.

Precisely! Academe's art culture is its own realm and attempts to remain exclusive from the rest of the culture with vigorous gatekeepers who use tactics that were born of the medieval period and carried on to the point that their literature is exhausted of originality.

We could use a bit more of that around here instead of talking so much about gear, don't you think?

We are doing exactly that herein, Jonathan. Do I detect some resentment that we don't honor the tired world of academic discourse which is very much the same as weary hardware discussions, but just more sophist-icated.

Perhaps practicing photographers are speaking to a different space. I hope so.

[Erik Sherman]

I see a few problems wtih the author's assumptions. Yes, anyone with a digital camera has the chance to capture an interesting image, but who wants to wait for accident? Experienced photographers take the shots they do because of who they are. What comes across in the end is the substantiation of personal vision. the use of b&w among art photographers was not because they considered color the domain of commerce so much as silver-based chemistry was something that could be readily achieved at home, giving the photographer control that would otherwise be impracical, and the tonal range far exceeded that of color, giving the opportunity to investigate the interplay of light and shadow. As for trends, they are all well and good, but I think ultimately an artistic eye does what it must, not what provides easier introduction to galleries.

[John_4185]

Eric: IMHO, black-and-white IS color - color without hue. I'm not being a smart-ass and playing with terms. I really mean it. The translation, interpretation of color to B&W is what it is all about.

Most students think B&W is just an arbitrary assignment of shades of intensity. Ain't so. We know that, but they are just learning it.

Using Photoshop (for example) to show students various interpretations of their color digimages has been a good short-cut to illustrate exactly that. Then the peak experience comes when they try the same using film. :) They realize it's really different from PS, difficult to see and then render what they think they see in B&W film.

[Mark_3899]

I think ultimately an artistic eye does what it must, not what provides easier introduction to galleries.

A perfect statement.

[tim atherton]

"What comes across in the end is the substantiation of personal vision. the use of b&w among art photographers was not because they considered color the domain of commerce so much as silver-based chemistry was something that could be readily achieved at home, giving the photographer control that would otherwise be impracical, and the tonal range far exceeded that of color, giving the opportunity to investigate the interplay of light and shadow. "

On the contrary, for the longest period of time colour wasn't really considered "serious" it was either the domain of the commercial photographer or the amateur (and "snapshot" was a derogetory term in that context).

Even today there is more than a lingering echo of the "colour photography shows the clothes but black and white shows the soul" bias which goes back aeons. And of course is close to being back to front.

[Brian C. Miller]

William A. Ewing, reGeneration: 50 Photographers of Tomorrow (http://www.thamesandhudson.com/en/1/0500285829.mxs?1aa07e841d3832c70ddabbda55c63fb4&0&0&0), excerpted in Guardian Unlimited (http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1548026,00.html)

But spontaneity, surely one of the great natural attributes of the medium (cameras really can capture things the eye cannot see), is in short supply. For better or worse, the photographer as hunter has given way to the sedentary farmer

Did everybody miss the last paragraph in that excerpt? They have no spontaneity! No soul, no rhythm, no funk, no jive! That horse is dead in the starting gate!

What does it matter if the graduates are more savvy at marketing? Does the giant glossy image really matter when it takes a hold of the viewer's soul like moldy Jello?

I have seen a lot of images which initially arrest my eyes, but I wouldn't want them on my walls under any circumstance. The images that I want to produce are the one which don't need pages of artspeak gobbletygook to sell the image. I want the image to immediately resonate with the viewer, and to hang where its seen again and again, and be appreciated again and again.

[paulr]

"Anyway - as for the whole CULTURE of artspeak and writing - well, there are those who don't do it well - as in all fields. But, like anything - it's a TOOL. A tool. A way to effectively communicate with others with a similar background. But not to others outside of that. Which, I suppose, is why it is attacked. Exclusion - perceived or otherwise."

I agree with this, however I think the exclusive nature of artspeak (or any jargon) often comes about unintentionally, and is a symptom of bad writing or fuzzy thinking. As evidence of this I take the best of the critics/philosophers of the medium, like John Szarkowski and Robert Adams, who can communicate ideas that are both profound to insiders and accessible to outsiders. When the exclusivity of language is deliberate, I think it's an example of the arrogance and detachment that the art world is so often accused of. It makes me crazy to see people simultaneously working towards exclusivity and complaining about the results (attacks on the NEA, a public that's hostile to the arts, etc.).

"It allows people to talk about what goes on with images in an effective way. We could use a bit more of that around here instead of talking so much about gear, don't you think?"

This i agree with. It's a little tiring using words i learned in 7th great english lit class and being accused of speaking in art-speak, psycho-babble, or nonsense verse! It's not with everyone, but in general I think a lot of photo communities have a lot more sophistication toward gear than toward photographs.

[dan otranto]

sorry if im not up to speed on all this (i go to art school)

but wasnt it harry callahan who came up with the basic formula for teaching photography at the colligiate level thats whats been practiced for the majority of schools?

As a photography student- the notion that photographing a concept rather than something that peaks visual intrest is true to a degree, and sometimes I see this way of working as just being something necessary that galleries require to stick your stuff on the wall and have some BS to write about in brochures or whatever and charge big bucks (here im thinking of people like andreas gursky and jeff wall). But when the idea being photographed is good, it makes the pictures work so much better it would be foolish not to try and work this way all the time (here im thinking about someone like alec soth or joel sternfeld)...but there is definite frustration if you want to say photograph a group of plants because you like the way they look- thats not acceptable. oh, i want to photograph those same group of plants because theyre referencing some old painting, thats brilliant! that kinda stuff gets on my nerves.

From my observations as a young photographer:

concept heavy stuff is pretty out of fashion right now anyway, a big fad right now is taking pictures of your personal life as a young adult and all the fun stuff that is with a cheap 35mm or digital camera, maybe this is what the article writer was thinking about. Documentary stuff seems to be coming back...from what Ive heard it used to be 99% black and white rangefinder stuff in the 60s and 70s. No one really commits to more than water cooler talk on people like sontag.

[tim atherton]

"I have seen a lot of images which initially arrest my eyes, but I wouldn't want them on my walls under any circumstance. The images that I want to produce are the one which don't need pages of artspeak gobbletygook to sell the image. I want the image to immediately resonate with the viewer, and to hang where its seen again and again, and be appreciated again and again."

I feel the key is often this distinction between "initially arresting" the eye vs. "resonating" with the viewer (if I had a bit more time I would probably chose slightly different terms.

Many photographs catch the eye, but have little substance. The best, most meaningful photographs often resonate in some way on first view - but it might just be an echo, or a pinprick to the memory for example - but over time, as more attention is paid to the image the viwer can go a little deeper. Which doesn't mean it's obtuse - in fact quite the opposite - it just isn't the visual equivelant of a 30 second sound bite.

The first is visual fluff, wallpaper (perhaps often "pretty" for want of a better word). The second is worth hanging on the wall for more than 30 days.

For me, this is what (among many others - but it's what I'm looking at right now) a lot of Friedlanders work does.

[tim atherton]

"the old problems of flabby concept and timid vision.." Szarkowski

[Erik Sherman]

>> On the contrary, for the longest period of time colour wasn't really considered "serious" it was either the domain of the commercial photographer or the amateur (and "snapshot" was a derogetory term in that context). <<

I would argue that the reason it wasn't considered "serious" was because the artistic photographers used b&w for greater control (and let's not forget that even people like Ansel Adams did shoot color as well as b&w) and that the up and coming decided that they had to do the same.

>> Even today there is more than a lingering echo of the "colour photography shows the clothes but black and white shows the soul" bias which goes back aeons. <<

Ah, now here I must disagree. Painters have literally worked over millennia primarily in color. Those making drawings were as likely to work in toned conte crayon as in charcoal or graphite. Heck, even Greek sculpture was originally painted.

[paulr]

"I would argue that the reason it wasn't considered "serious" was because the artistic photographers used b&w for greater control (and let's not forget that even people like Ansel Adams did shoot color as well as b&w) and that the up and coming decided that they had to do the same."

I think it's worth looking hard at why it took color photography so long to be accepted in fine art circles. Szarkowki's interpretation is that it just took a long time before someone (eggleston) came along and did something relevent with it. I'm guessing that there were also at least a few prejudices at work, on the part of artists and curators and also the public, that just required time to errode away.

After all, what Erik says is true: artists had been studying and working with color for ages before kodachrome came along, so there's no reason it should have taken decades to figure it out. Unless the best artists just weren't trying.

Looking at how prejudices might have held artists back for so long can help us avoid the same narrow thinking in the future.

[tim atherton]

">> Even today there is more than a lingering echo of the "colour photography shows the clothes but black and white shows the soul" bias which goes back aeons. <<

Ah, now here I must disagree. Painters have literally worked over millennia primarily in color. Those making drawings were as likely to work in toned conte crayon as in charcoal or graphite. Heck, even Greek sculpture was originally painted."

Actually Erik, that view goes back to Aristotle at least and the painted sculptures illustrate it perfectly - the colour was seen as surface, secondary and somewhat insignificant in comparison to line which was the most important aspect of art. Colour was (and is still often seen as) cosmetic or ornament, surface or worse

Again, if you follow through the history of art, the art establishment has always tended to have a fairly tight hold over colour in painting - what was acceptable and what wasn't (see for example the impact of the many 17th and 18th century academies vis a vis colour in painting, or in the 19th and 20th centiry the various colour "theorists" albers etc).

I've debated this numerous times in the past, so I won't bore veryone again, but there is an excellent little book called Chromophobia by Batchelor
http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/index/fyfe/fyfe2-13-01.asp
which gives a broad brush outline very well - you could follow it up with Gages two big books on colour Colour & Meaning and Colour & Culture.

I'll see if I can remeber this properly (so don't quote me if my memory is faulty andf i'm wrangling the 18 mth old...) - line (and in some senses form) dominate - the natural expressiveness of children, for e.g. with colour become limitied as they are told to make sure they "colour inside the lines". Line in drawing and painting (and obviously B&W) are, of course, closely related to writing and the power of language in our culture and human development - colour and colour perception though really pre-date language and in that sense is primary - although our tradition tends to have line usually trying to contain colour. Line and form are clearly within the realm of language - colour is generally pushing the bounds of language - or more likely it falls outside of it.

[paulr]

Tim,

do you really think that in the mid 20th century (which is when the issues of color photography were being fought out) color was still seen as a 2nd class citizen by the art world and the public at large? I realize there's a pre-history to the debate, but it seems to me that by the time we're talking about, oil painting was pretty much considered the archetype for high art in western culture.

I guess I'm wondering what would have happened if color photography had been invented around the same time as bw ... would it still have been a second class citizen (which would suggest lingering ghosts of the old prejudices). Or would have been at least as respected (which would suggest that we just got used to the idea of black and white being for art).

For what it's worth, I'm finding the prejudice to be reversed right now. So many NYC galleries are only showing color work (of contemporary artists). All but my newest work is black and white, and a lot of people that I show it to consider it to be anachronistic (and they come to this judgement quickly enough that I wonder if it's based on superficial impressions, like the fact that the prints are small and monochrome). I'll be curious to see if my color work, which i don't think is any more "evolved" gets a warmer reception.

[Erik Sherman]

>> Actually Erik, that view goes back to Aristotle at least and the painted sculptures illustrate it perfectly - the colour was seen as surface, secondary and somewhat insignificant in comparison to line which was the most important aspect of art. Colour was (and is still often seen as) cosmetic or ornament, surface or worse <<

In sculpture there are technical reasons, because it is generally applied at the surface and the material of the sculpture itself presents form. In painting, though, color theory gets complex and intrinsic to artistic expression because it is defining light, shadows, and mass. A monochromatic drawing lessens the difficulty, but is traditionally seen as only a first step to the mastery of the craft.

>> Again, if you follow through the history of art, the art establishment has always tended to have a fairly tight hold over colour in painting - what was acceptable and what wasn't (see for example the impact of the many 17th and 18th century academies vis a vis colour in painting, or in the 19th and 20th centiry the various colour "theorists" albers etc). <<

There has also been tight control over technique and subject. Color isn't an exception; just an example. In other words, artists all have their internal bureaucrats. <s>

Proper use of color is also just blazingly difficult, so artistic evolution has taken time. After all, it took centuries before even master artists stopped simply mixing black in with color to make shadows and noticed that what they really needed to do was start blending complementary color with the primary shade. How obvious is it that a shadow is not a dark area, but a shade of the complementary color of the light illuminating the object? It's not something that most people notice.

>> I'll see if I can remeber this properly (so don't quote me if my memory is faulty andf i'm wrangling the 18 mth old...) - line (and in some senses form) dominate - the natural expressiveness of children, for e.g. with colour become limitied as they are told to make sure they "colour inside the lines". <<

That's also because line is just easier to see and to experience. Remember, when traditional 2D artists are learning craft, the first step is retraining the eye and brain to see all sorts of things: line, shading, mass, and texture. They must connect sight with tactile sense. One might start with line drawings, particularly in the form of contour drawings, but more advanced exercises have people trying to capture a sense of movement (even for static models and objects) and mass. It takes a while before you can start on drapery because the majority of the information comes in the interplay of highlights and shadows that define the curves - in mass, not the lines that are easier to see and describe. I don't know that I'd agree that line is related to words; otherwise, I'd expect more writers to have an easier time adapting to visual representation, and many are terrible at it. When I draw, my entire sense of perception and thought is entirely different from when I write (and the latter is how I make my living, so I do a lot of it). Also, everything I've seen on the subject of art education suggests that drawing and writing involve two separate brain regions, not that they are intrinsically related.

I will agree that the problem with making lines contain color is a cultural one, related to the issues that make people try to draw what they expect to see in an object rather than exactly what is before their eyes, so perspective and point of view are obliterated, resulting in a "primative" representation. Ask a child, or even many adults, to draw a portrait, and you might see both eyes on the same side of the face along with the nose and mouth becasue they "know" that all must exist. That, to me, is related to writing and reason, and it's something that you must struggle with if you hope to even approach representative drawing.

But, it's an interesting discussion. I'll have to check on that reference.

[Scott Davis]

Perhaps in small part, the bias against color photography also stems from the fact that until VERY recently, color photography was not a particularly stable medium - color prints could begin to noticeably fade during the length of an exhibition if they were poorly placed in full sun. If you're buying "art" for hundreds, or thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars, you don't want to put money into something that will fade to illegibility within your lifetime.

[Calamity Jane]

I don't know from beans about "art" and I couldn't really explain what it is that seperates a captivating photo from the ho-hum but I know it when I see it.

Back in the 1980s when I was still married, my husband shot 35mm and I had recently moved into 120. We also raised Basset Hounds so they were frequently our photographic subjects. I'd shoot maybe 5 frames in a day where hubby would blow thru 2 or 3 rolls of 35mm. Of all the pictures produced, I would have maybe 3 nice ones and he (if he was lucky) might get 1 every few sessions. All of the photos were "technically correct" but very few would cause a person to stop and dwell in the image.

As others have said, the equipment does not a photographer make . . .

[Darin Boville]

>>Perhaps in small part, the bias against color photography also stems from the fact that until VERY recently, color photography was not a particularly stable medium - color prints could begin to noticeably fade during the length of an exhibition if they were poorly placed in full sun. If you're buying "art" for hundreds, or thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars, you don't want to put money into something that will fade to illegibility within your lifetime.<<

I'm not sure that archival issues are big market factors. Watercolors, all that mixed-medi stuff--heck even video art would have never made it into museums if that was the case. "Archivalness" is something of a photographer-fixation.

The bigger factor in any "bias" against color photography is that until very recently (late 1970s?) photography as a whole did not command high prices and therefore did not gain respect in the art world. Throughout most of photography's history color was hard to do, expensive, and not in demand by money-paying publications so the early stuff (vintage, rare, antique, and therefore now innately more valuable) was black and white. Since most of the color work on the art market (as it became accepted as an art form $$$) was of much more recent vintage it did not command those high prices.

And so, like today's art school sheep, yesterday's Ansel Adams Workshop sheep produced black and white because it was what sold.

But the art market grew in sophistication, albiet very slowly. They discovered color was o.k. Then they figured out--here's an insight--that the photograph really didn't depict reality. Lots of PhD dissertations there. Then they rediscovered documentary-style work. Recently the art world has discovered the primal thrill of seeing an image printed BIG--a "you are there" experience. Big prints, big as paintings. Big money. Turn a $5000 print into $250,000. Now * that* is a business model I like!

There's no bias in the art-market against color work based on technical issues. There is a bias, though, against that which doesn't sell.

Don't be sad. It is an art-MARKET, after all.

--Darin

www.darinboville.com

[paulr]

Darin, I'm not so sure about that conclusion. For one thing, it's not AN art market ... there are at least a few art markets, and the ones that have the greatest influence on the stature of work are non-profit ones (museums).

Besides, a lot of pioneering work in both color and black and white was done by people who were not making their money doing it. I don't believe that choice of material was determined by the market for most of the great artists working in photography. Many were doing color work for advertising or editorial jobs for years or decades while their personal work remained black and white.

The question still remains, why did three or so decades go by between when color photography became feasable and when it became respectable?

I think it's respectability more than profitability herding the flock of photographers into one pasture or another. The question is why did respectability take so long to come about. It seems to me other innovations and trends in photography took root much more quickly.

[Brian C. Miller]

And so, like today's art school sheep, yesterday's Ansel Adams Workshop sheep produced black and white because it was what sold.

And nobody makes reference to Adam's work in color (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0821219804/qid=1124490193/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-3097744-0992662?v=glance&s=books&n=507846). I remember reading that he wished that he had made dupes of some of his color work before they had faded. In this regard, I think Adams would have loved digital for what it does with color.

Ansel Adams, 1969, quoted in Color Photography : A Working Manual (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0316373168/qid=1124490193/sr=8-9/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i8_xgl14/103-3097744-0992662?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)

As yet we do not have much effective control in color photography except in control of subject matter and the applied lighting. However, were I starting all over again, I am sure I would be deeply concerned with color. The medium will create its own aesthetic, its own standards of craft and application. The artist, in the end, always controls the medium.<small>(emphasis added)</small>

[paulr]

"And nobody makes reference to Adam's work in color."

Likely because his color work was for the most part unremarkable and inconsequential ... suffering from either or both of the shortcomings of much similar work: obvious color, and irrelevent, incidental color.

Which is to say, neither applying nor building on any of what was learned about meaningful use of color by artists over the centuries. This is what Szarkowski was getting at when he credited Eggleston with "inventing" color photography in the early 1970s.

[tim atherton]

I think Adams is a perfect example of what Paul talks about above - Adam's colour work (or at elast what i have seen of it) so the problem of the tools and materials being there and available and yet display a complete lack of understanding of how colour works and how to use it. Adams applies all of his highly developed tools from B&W to his colour work and it just doesn't work (and you can still see the same approach repeated continually today from numerous lesser photographers). They are really B&W photographs with colour added. By contrast, Evan's colour work, although it was very limited and produced at very rroughly the same time shows much more of at least the beginnings of an exploration of colours potential.

You can see the same thing with the well known FSA photogropahers who experimented with colour during the depression - I don't think any really began to push the boundaries of what colour might be able to do.

Paul

"I guess I'm wondering what would have happened if color photography had been invented around the same time as bw ... would it still have been a second class citizen (which would suggest lingering ghosts of the old prejudices). Or would have been at least as respected (which would suggest that we just got used to the idea of black and white being for art). "

I think it was probably a combination of things. Partly the "chromophobia" I outlined - which still lingers (more than lingers) in some cases today, certainly in photography. And in the world of painting, with certain very obvious exceptions over the last four or 500 years, it really took until klimt, van gogh, gaugin (probably one of the most important) the various impressionists, kandinsky, klee etc to really break the colour barrier. At that time, colour wasn't really an option in photogrpahy as it struggled into modernism. Indeed modernism really came soemwhat later to photogorpahy than say paitnign or architecture or music - photography often seems a beat or so behind. The arrival of colour materials that were usable really cosnicided with photogrpahy trying to establish itself as serious art for museums - at which point B&W was what really seemed "respectable" form that point of view, especially as at the same time, the colour materials had burst forth into magaziens and advertising. It's as if photogorpahy was again a beat behind the painters who embraced commercial materials for their art and it took until Eggleston and that group of colour workers to really break that colour barrier in photography - and even then, until pretty recently (last 25+ years or so? maybe a bit longer) it was still burdened with the whole colour is vulgar/commercial/superficial thing. I don't think painters had quite the same problem at the time (hey I can paint your house bright yellow or Frank Stella can use it to make art) as photography - "that martin parr looks like a garish ad for something or a snapshot at the beach" . There was somethign of a change in the 60's in painting and similar art, with regard to the use of commercial materials - it took photography a little longer to catch up - maybe photography by it's nature always looks back, and that intertia can effect its progress? (unlike film which always moves forward and embraced colour much earlier on).

[tim atherton]

Corrected...

I think Adams is a perfect example of what Paul talks about above - Adam's colour work (or at least what I have seen of it) shows the problem of the tools and materials being there and available and yet displays a complete lack of understanding of how colour works and how to use it. Adams applies all of his highly developed tools from B&W to his colour work and it just doesn't work (and you can still see the same approach repeated continually today from numerous lesser photographers). They are really B&W photographs with colour added. By contrast, Evan's colour work, although it was very limited and produced at very roughly the same time shows much more of at least the beginnings of an exploration of colours potential.

You can see the same thing with the well known FSA photographers who experimented with colour during the depression - I don't think any really began to push the boundaries of what colour might be able to do.

Paul

"I guess I'm wondering what would have happened if color photography had been invented around the same time as bw ... would it still have been a second class citizen (which would suggest lingering ghosts of the old prejudices). Or would have been at least as respected (which would suggest that we just got used to the idea of black and white being for art). "

I think it was probably a combination of things. Partly the "chromophobia" I outlined - which still lingers (more than lingers) in some cases today, certainly in photography. And in the world of painting, with certain very obvious exceptions over the last four or 500 years, it really took until klimt, van gogh, gaugin (probably one of the most important) the various impressionists, kandinsky, klee etc to really break the colour barrier. At that time, colour wasn't really an option in photography as it struggled into modernism. Indeed modernism really came somewhat later to photography than say painting or architecture or music - photography often seems a beat or so behind. The arrival of colour materials that were usable really coincided with photography trying to establish itself as serious art for museums - at which point B&W was what really seemed "respectable" form that point of view, especially as at the same time, the colour materials had burst forth into magazines and advertising. It's as if photography was again a beat behind the painters who embraced commercial materials for their art and it took until Eggleston and that group of colour workers to really break that colour barrier in photography - and even then, until pretty recently (last 25+ years or so? maybe a bit longer) it was still burdened with the whole colour is vulgar/commercial/superficial thing. I don't think painters had quite the same problem at the time (hey I can paint your house bright yellow or Frank Stella can use it to make art) as photography - "that martin parr looks like a garish ad for something or a snapshot at the beach" . There was something of a change in the 60's in painting and similar art, with regard to the use of commercial materials - it took photography a little longer to catch up - maybe photography by it's nature always looks back, and that inertia can effect its progress? (unlike film which always moves forward and embraced colour much earlier on).

[Mark Sawyer]

Color vs. black-and-white vs. alternative processes...
Digital vs. analog...
Large format vs. holga vs. pinhole vs. 35mm...

All different paths. We can take the same paths to different destinations, or different paths to similar destinations. We take the paths that seem right for ourselves. Sometimes we know (or think we know) where we're going, sometimes we don't.

The historic paths of art seem logical in retrospect, always matching their times. Future paths are uncertain; people wander every which way and when enough get to the same place, someone in authority shouts "here we are!" and it's considered a movement.

Art schools, from the nineteenth cerntury academies through today, seem to wait until people get there, then hire them to give other people directions how to get there.

"If you want to be thought innovative and original, the last thing you'll do is go trailing after this bunch." -Struan Gray

But Struan, I want to be innovative and original, like everybody else...

[Brian C. Miller]

Tim Atherton wrote:
"unlike film which always moves forward and embraced colour much earlier on"

Yeah, with the Lumière Co. in 1903 producing Autochrome (http://www.ilford.com/html/us_english/autochrome_100.html)!

As for William Eggleston (http://www.masters-of-photography.com/E/eggleston/eggleston_articles.html), could somebody show me just one of his photos that really "break that colour barrier in photography" on the web? All of these photographs are of the banal. Major snooze material here. How can someone "invent" something by photographing inspid subjects? These photographs neither arrest my eye nor are something I'd ever want on my wall. I think that Galen Rowell (http://www.mountainlight.com/)'s photographs represent a far better "use" of color. Eggleston's photographs are about nothing with much prose to cover up the nothing. This is just art establishment crappola!

Perhaps what actually needs to be broken is the art establishment itself! Oh, that's right, its already broken, yet people still pay needless attention to it. Throw the trash in the dump, move on to something which is actually interesting, which embellishes the spirit.

[Mark_3899]

Some people like People magazine others like The New Yorker.
Some read Danielle Steele others Tom Wolf.
Some people go to the movies and see Alien Verses Predator others My Left Foot.

I for one like to be challenged. The reason Eggleston is important is because he started shooting in color what had up until that point had been the domain of black and white. Whether you like his work or not is meaningless. While I appreciate what Galen Rowell and Ansel Adams and Yussef Karsh did their work just doesn't interest me.

[paulr]

"As for William Eggleston, could somebody show me just one of his photos that really "break that colour barrier in photography" on the web? All of these photographs are of the banal. Major snooze material here. How can someone "invent" something by photographing inspid subjects? "

What you are calling banal and insipid subjects are what make up the landscape of everyday life. To use this as the raw material for art is a fundamentally different challenge than using, for example, the manicured and preserved environment of a National Park, which is separate from everyday reality, and selected because it already represents some kind of archetype of esthetics and cultural meaning. Photographers like Eggleston take on the larger challenge of finding form, beauty, and some kind of meaning to the world we tend to experience every day without really looking.

The subject matter is banal by definition (or vernacular to use a less judgemental term). And this is precisely why it's a challenge to find coherence of form and of color in it, and precisely why it helpful to us as a culture that somebody does so.

As far as what is great about his use of color, I don't know how to describe it in words. All I can suggest is that you spend some time looking at work from painters who are great colorists (maybe starting with a few that Tim mentioned) in order to get a feel for how they create and use color. And then look at how Eggleston's use of color fits in. Then go back to someone like Galen Rowel (who I admire a lot, especially as an alpinist) and I think you'll see there's a big difference between using color to convey prettiness and using it to create formal coherence.

[paulr]

this site is a great resource:

www.egglestontrust.com

[Brian C. Miller]

paulr: "As far as what is great about his use of color, I don't know how to describe it in words."

I looked at every photograph on that site. Would the phrase, "artificially intense," describe how Eggleston uses color?

He uses the dye transfer process specifically to intensify the colors. That's his "use" of color. His black & white pictures are just like his color pictures, the only difference is that one is black & white, and the other is saturated color. He calls what he does "photographing democratically," I call it pictures about nothing for the sake of nothing. He wanders around photographing stuff, and that's about it. Eggleston claims he's "at war with the obvious." He isn't at war with anything, he's just psyching up the marketing phrases for the art crowd.

I could produce Eggleston-like photographs just by wandering around town. So could you, so could everybody. Not hard, not difficult. And everybody could pass them off as Eggleston's. Without Eggleston's signature, I doubt that his photographs would stand out from anything at all. Let's say we had 100 mixed pictures, half are Eggleston's and you hadn't seen them before, and half were from amateur photographers. All are printed to Eggleston's criteria. Do you think that you could differentiate between them? Honestly?

I think the lure of this type of photography is in being a virtual tourist. Without having to actually get off your duff and go somewhere and just tool around and get lost and get gas and get lunch and finally look for a motel, someone has done it for you and put it in a book. You get a glimpse of somewhere else. But, like Eggleston himself said about Henri Cartier-Bresson's photographs, "I wouldn't have given ten cents for them."

It boils down to the fact that the photographs may be attractive, but they have no value.

[Darin Boville]

>> could produce Eggleston-like photographs just by wandering around town.<,

I know where you are coming from, here. Eggleston's work strikes everyone that way at first--it certainly did me. You need to see a lot of it at once to appreciate it more--maybe pick up one of his books?

For my part I thought your posts sort of funny in that it is Galen Rowell's popularity that I can't understand. His photos, in reproduction, in large prints in-person, strike me as little more than tourist photos (as a large format photographer you'd be horrified by the technical quality of these large blow-ups from hand-held slides). I could ask the same of Galen's work--what separates his work (then or now) from that of many other adventure photographers (aside from Galen's wealthy wife with a penchant for promotion)? The images are indistinguishable to me.

This is not to start a flame war about Rowell but to point out a similar perspective exists from the opposite vantage point.

--Darin

www.darinboville.com

[paulr]

"I could produce Eggleston-like photographs just by wandering around town. So could you, so could everybody. Not hard, not difficult. And everybody could pass them off as Eggleston's."

This is a common reaction from people who haven't yet seen past the surface of the work ... a lot like the "my 5 year old kid could do that" reactions to modern painters.

The truth is, hardly anyone can do it convincingly. At least not convincingly to anyone who's looked hard at the work and has become aware of the more subtle things happening below the surface. I tried many times over the last ten years--not specifically to do work like his, but to do expressive work in color, out in the world, at a level that seems acceptable after seeing his work. It's been very, very hard. After a half dozen abortive attempts I'm starting to get work that I'm compelled to continue with. But it's really been ten years in the making. I can only think of a half a dozen or so photographers who I think have really mastered color at his level.

"Would the phrase, "artificially intense," describe how Eggleston uses color"

that might describe the printing style of the work you looked at, but not his use of color. In my copy of the Democratic Forest, for example, the colors are actually quite muted. But in any case, it's the relationships between the colors, not their intensity, that's significant.

"he's just psyching up the marketing phrases for the art crowd."

If there has ever been a photographer who doesn't care about marketing or the art crowd, it's Eggleston. In interviews over the years he's been indifferent at best, and at other times outright hostile to concerns of marketing, trends, publicity, fame, and even of just getting his work in front of people. He's independently wealthy, a loner, does what he does because he loves doing it, and seems to consider fame to be an inconvenience.

The greatest champion of his work has been John Szarkowski, not Eggleston himself. And lest you think Szarkowski was just smoking too much loco weed, his enthusiasm has been echoed throughtout the world, and without the letup that you see with so many passing fad photographers.

Personally, I like Galen Rowell's work, but I look at it with the standards of climbing photography in mind, not serious art. As a climber who long ago gave up on taking decent pictures while in the mountains, I have a lot of respect for what he accomplished over the years.

[Brian C. Miller]

Actually, Darin, I do understand the limits of Galen's use of 35mm. I do wish that he'd used either the Fuji or Mamiya RF cameras, though. Those are quite light. Now, distinguishing one pro adventure photographer from another pro adventure photographer with similar pictures, I don't know about that, and I've seen amazing photos from amateur photographers, too. I doubt that I could distinguish similar photos between Adams and Weston (same criteria, though, that the photos were ones I hadn't seen before.) And as for seeing a lot of Eggleston's work at once, I did go through every single photo on that site. It took me well over an hour this morning, which is much longer than I'd spend with just one of his books.

I was told about a guy in Seattle who's photography consists of wandering the alleys of Seattle neighborhoods and photographing what he sees with Polaroids. One was a picture of a barbeque in somebody's back yard. From my point of view, that's in the same vein as Eggleston. Photographs about nothing for no reason. And that's how I view Winnogrand and others. Sure, its a nice slice of life, but there isn't a single one I'd want on my wall.

Paulr, I don't think that there is such a thing as serious art photography. Any time someone claims that they take their photography seriously, or someone is a serious photographer, or produces serious art, I immediately imagine a circus clown saying the same thing, or using the camera. And then the calliope starts up with Enter the Gladiators.

By the way, did you read Eggleston's afterword from The Democratic Forest?

Later, when I was having dinner with some friends, writers from around Oxford, or maybe at the bar of the Holiday Inn, someone said, 'What have you been photographing here today, Eggleston?'

'Well, I've been photographing democratically,' I replied.

'But what have you been taking pictures of?'

'I've been outdoors, nowhere, in nothing.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, just woods and dirt, a little asphalt here and there.'
Photographs about nothing, for no reason.

[paulr]

"Any time someone claims that they take their photography seriously"

I was talking about photography I see as worth taking seriously as art, not putting words into eggleston's mouth about his own work. Not that I see anything wrong with taking your work seriously. I take my own seriously, at least the act of making it, and the role it plays in my life.

No one can stop you from dismissing his work as being about nothing. I'm just not sure what you get out of doing so. Those of us telling you our lives have been enriched by his work aren't making it up. If you don't get something, there are different paths you can take: one is to make an effort to understand, the other is to insist there's nothing there worth getting. It should be obvious which path is likely to be more rewarding.

[Struan Gray]

Dan Otranto: ..but there is definite frustration if you want to say photograph a group of plants because you like the way they look- thats not acceptable

My own list of things to digest is currently topped by Friedlander's "Stems" and Ray Metzker's "Landscapes", both of which were enthusiastically welcomed by the art photography establishment. Then there's the revival of Meatyard and Summers' landscapes in a pair of big retrospectives. All of these are black and white, involve (fairly) straight uses of the camera, and avoid the postmodern sense of conceptual. It can be done.


Mark Sawyer: But Struan, I want to be innovative and original, like everybody else...

L'Audace! Toujours l'audace!

I'm not (just) being facecious. In the two areas I have taught the most, physics and climbing, my experience is that very, very few people actually want to do anything new. Only a small subsection of them will dare to do so. Nothing I have seen suggests that those who take photographs, or those who like to look at them, are any different. The herd mentality is incredibly strong. Even knowing that, I find that when I head out with a camera I still find myself looking for the things that I know will make good photographs, where 'good' means photographs like those that I or others have already taken. It is really hard to just look.

I like Eggleston's photos, but I have never thought of him as a colourist in the sense that I think of Klee or some of the colour field painters as colourists. He does have an intense stare, but what he stares at are the mundane things that have more significance than at first appears. Sometimes the colour is the point, such as that blood-red ceiling, or the gold trophies against a bilious duck-egg wall, but more often colour seems to be managed in the same way that excess detail or harsh lighting is managed: being kept under control so as not to distract.

As for kids, well, my kids do paint abstract and mundane images, which is part of the point when adults take and paint them too. My son (4.5 years) is in a Morris Louis phase, moving from vertical lines to horizontal ones as his hand-eye coordination improves. His twin sister is more Cy Twombly, full of vigorous gesture, with a few patches of bare paper and lots of randomly scrawled words and letters. The most remarkable thing is how I have always been able to tell instantly who did a particlar drawing, even with no external clues. The point, for an art lover, is not that Louis, Twombly and the rest make disposable or simplistic art, but that character, viewpoint and feeling can be expressed with the simplest of means. Childlike doesn't necessarily mean childish.

[John_4185]

"How can the new generation of art photographers make their mark when almost anyone with the latest equipment can take excellent pictures?" William A Ewing

If Ewing's use of of the term 'excellent' refers overcoming of some of the technical nuisances of photography, then it begs the question: Has he been judging by craft alone all this career? That is not a bad thing, but it would distinguish his critical view.

The problem Ewing describes is really a milestone for visual expression and liberates both digital image making and analog photography. If one has extraordinary control over an image through post manipulation, then he can be held perfectly accountable for every tiny nuance. The digital postmanipulation image-maker has entered the realm of the graphic designer, drawing artist and print maker. The New Critics, curators and historians have the challenge to find the semiotics of this 'new' art, and they will struggle dearly.

Now that digital post-processing clearly marks a transcendence from Being There, Analog photography which still fosters a relationship with the thing before the camera has been clearly distinguished from the same which does not. Analog photography has, ironically, been liberated!

[Struan Gray]

John, I think the challenge has already been met with one tactic: making everything 'documentary'. The job of interpretation and selection is thrust onto the viewer - or posterity. In many ways this is less about being liberated than being constrained by neighbours one does not wish to socialise with. I see a lot of reluctance to admit that photos can be - and always could be - altered.

I think it will be interesting to see how still-life photographers react to digital tools, but I suspect that most of them will simply embrace them. Jeff Wall was a perfectionist creater of tableaux before Photoshop, and successfully too, but digital montage lets him take his perfectionism to a new level.

[paulr]

" I see a lot of reluctance to admit that photos can be - and always could be - altered."

This is a point that rarely gets the attention it deserves. Since long before people had the visual sophistication to be suspicious of anything, photographs were being altered. Prints were being made from multiple negatives, prints and negatives were painted on, enemies of the party were retouched out, etc. etc.

Whether a photograph is left "straight" or not ... which I take to mean edited in fundamental ways only by the framing ... has always been decided by the photographer's ethos, and not by the tools, whether the tools are a 19th century darkroom wagon or the latest version of photoshop.

[tim atherton]

I recently read this about DeLillo's Underworld - but I think it possibly applies to Eggleston too.

"DeLillo is smart enough to avoid stating the obvious, that after losing his real father, Nick is sent to a school run by multiple ``fathers.'' One of the priests asks him to describe a shoe. ``A front and a top,'' he answers. ``You make me want to weep,'' the priest says, proceeding to name all the parts of a shoe including the flap under the lace, the tongue. ``I knew the name,'' Nick says. ``I just didn't see the thing.''

``You didn't see the thing because you don't know how to look,'' says the priest. Because ``everyday things lie hidden,'' he adds; ``everyday things represent the most overlooked knowledge.'' These are ``quotidian'' things -- ``an extraordinary word that suggests the depth and reach of the commonplace.'' This may be DeLillo's way of explaining how to read ``Underworld,'' but he's also telling us how to live. "

[Paddy Quinn]

"I could produce Eggleston
-like photographs just by wandering around town. So could you, so could everybody. Not hard, not difficult. And everybody could pass them off as Eggleston's."

this is what's known as the "my granny takes photos like that but throws them out when the prints come back from the lab" syndrome.

I wish I had a punt (euro I should say) for everyone who said what you say above the first time they saw Egglestons work. I've even known a good few who tried, yet none ever seem to be able to do it. They all come back with something that looks like the photographic equivalent of the faux cubist cushions I have on my settee - nice for decoration, but nowhere near the real thing. Eggelstons work is actually rather more sophisticated than it looks on first glance - but the sort of person who looks at a Picasso and says "if he's going to paint a horse, why doesn't he make it look like a horse?" probably has a hard time getting it.

As for Rowell, it's very nice work, but it's really art to match your sofa rather than art to make you think and feel deeply, and it isn't that different from a number of other very good adventure photographers. As has been said, it plays on the novelty aspect - it's photos from a vacation, where perhaps we spent (or would like to spend) two or three weeks. It's escapists, but has little to do with the other 99% of our lives - which is what Eggleston and others are looking at. Perhaps we find it hard to give value to our workaday every day lives and feel they are mundane and boring and dull and only the interlude between our exotic vacations (whether to Yosemite or Disneyland or Fiji) - one thing eggleston does is say - look - that everyday is actually pretty interesting in one way or another, if you take the time to really attend to it. (of course, some could take the other view, picked up on by Brian, that N American everyday life is so dull and mundane and lacking that it has lost any sense of real meaning or depth and that is what eggleston picks up on).

[Erik Sherman]

Being the ignorant guy I am, I was unaware of Eggleston's work. I took a look online and ran acros this: http://www.masters-of-photography.com/E/eggleston/eggleston_freezer_full.html.

When I looked, it seems on the surface like a "snapshot." But look a little closer and you notice that many of the goods have been added after the freezer was frozen over. In other words, what seems to be a discovered shot is, I suspect, something far more deliberate. The arrangement of the boxes is almost too tossed in. The use of "fresh" products without the ice creates an interesting play in color values, warms contrasting the iced cools. Even if it was exactly like that, then the photographer needs the curiosity to look in a freezer and see it as something other than a collection of food.

[tim atherton]

"this site is a great resource:
www.egglestontrust.com"

there are also some good links to articles etc here:

http://coincidences.typepad.com/still_images_and_moving_o/2004/08/excellent_readi.html

": "As far as what is great about his use of color, I don't know how to describe it in words."
I looked at every photograph on that site. Would the phrase, "artificially intense," describe how Eggleston uses color?

He uses the dye transfer process specifically to intensify the colors. That's his "use" of color."

Does eggleston say that about his use of dye transfer? (he may have). But from the prints I have ever seen in exhibition, I'd say I found the use of dye transfer gives colours that appear more realistic, and are often (though not always) quite muted, but the dye transfer gives a strong sense of depth and presence.

This is very different from the look of using soemthing like fuji velveeta, which is what I would consider "artificially intensifying" the colours and is usually quite the opposite of realistic

(n.b. - note "realistic" not "real" ).

[Mark Sawyer]

I would go along with those who find the intensity of banality in Eggleston's work an interesting dichotomy and commentary on the human condition. He has something to offer, but I do think his work *are* an acquired taste, requiring some fine-art orientation form the viewer. In that sense, Eggleston's work is somewhat elitist. Hence the "my granny takes photos like that but throws them out" reaction from some, (though I'd love to be at some future gallery opening where Sally Mann's grandaughter says it...)

In that sense, I find it odd that Eggleston uses the phrase " I've been photographing democratically" to describe his work.

[John_4185]

Responding to the assertion that photographs have always been manipulable, and often manipulated - Yes, of course. We all know that. But with the dawn of the digital, extreme manipulation is available to everyone with the software. It is perfectly clear that 'ease' has put many more people into photography, and from my personal experiences, most people who follow the easy path have no real concern for anything but their personal 'vision', for better and usually worse, and often from willfully uninformed motives.

I believe today's digital technology is the milestone that begins to distinguish at least one feature of photography (digital or not): the object photographed as a specific concern, with all its nuances that have generally been unappreciated as the language of photography.

Repeating the old mantra, "that almost any photograph can be faked or simulated " merely reinforces the division and clarifies each camp more clearly than ever. It is not an argument.

[paulr]

"In that sense, I find it odd that Eggleston uses the phrase " I've been photographing democratically" to describe his work."

My understanding is that the "democracy" has to do with selection of subject matter, not with any preconceived idea of who his audience is (and he really doesn't seem to care who likes the work and who doesn't). He's rejecting the idea of a heirarchy of subject matter, and embracing the idea that a meaninful image can be made anywhere, out of anything.

You're certainly right that his work is an acquired taste. He's institutionalized now, even considered conservative by contemporary tastes. But 30 years ago his work caused an uproar. Many, including Szarkowski, could see it for what it was, but other qualified critics (including the NY Times photography critic at the time) cried out with "my kid could do that" types of complaints. Much like the kinds of fights that cropped up when the world was introduced to Romantic Music, impressionism, modern painting, rock 'n roll, etc etc.

[Mark Sawyer]

"My understanding is that the "democracy" has to do with selection of subject matter, not with any preconceived idea of who his audience is..."

I think Eggleston is aware that he is photographing for a small, educated, art-oriented audience, whether he finds that audience important or not. (Actually, I'd love to know how much he does pursue exhibitions and publications. I suspect in the modern "look at me" art world, quite a degree of self-promotion is necessary to achieve his status. Then again, Szarkowski would make quite the champion.)

"...embracing the idea that a meaninful image can be made anywhere, out of anything," is one of photography's oldest traditions. Weston really brought out finding the formal beauty in the mundane in "Escusado," flaunting even more than Eggleston that something (in this case a formal organic beauty) resides unappreciated in the mundane. But where Weston used a mastery of the craft to make a beautiful print, Eggleston effectively hides his mastery (he is an excellent printer) as well as he hides his intent. What meanings reside in Eggleston's imagery, I'm not always sure. I'm not even sure he's sure...

(In my own work, I strive towards being "not unmeaningless...")

[paulr]

Mark, that's a good point that finding form and meaning in the mundane is nothing new. I think there's a steady continuum from early Weston to late Weston to Walker Evans to Robert Adams and Eggleston and Friedlander. What was evolving is just how much chaos can be allowed into the frame without losing a sense of cohesiveness. And of course, Eggleston brought his unique use of color to the party.

A lot of people have a hard time perceiving form unless it's distilled to a very pure state, as in Weston's earliest formal modernist work (shells, peppers, etc.). The challenge is seeing the difference between a loosened grip on form and mere formlessness. Szarkowski wrote about this in discussing Winogrand--as he put it, Winogrand was a master of conveying the essence of chaos, as opposed to capturing mere chaos. The first requires great sensitivity and abilitiy to find form without the heavy handedness that can squash the the richness and entropy out of a scene. The latter is the actual state of those snapshots that grandma throws out.

[Oren Grad]

What was evolving is just how much chaos can be allowed into the frame without losing a sense of cohesiveness.

That's precisely what I find interesting about Eggleston. I think his schtick ("I've been photographing democratically") is silly. (It may be authentic, but there's no reason authenticity can't be silly.) I don't care much for color photography, on the whole; I don't have any ideological problems with it, it's just that color prints usually don't do much for me. A lot of his pictures don't work for me at all, and I can't think of any individual one that would have "legs" for me if hung on the wall, in the way that a really good B&W print would.

And yet, I'm fascinated by the way that he plays with order and disorder in many of his snapshots, seeing what happens when you skate just on the edge of chaos. I picked up a copy of Democratic Forest a few years ago as a closeout, expecting to dismiss it but curious as to what all the fuss was about. In fact, I had a really good time browsing through the book, grooving on just how out-of-kilter the pictures could get while still holding together. And by out-of-kilter, I don't necessarily mean having lots of things flying around a la Winogrand, although sometimes that was it; some of the simpler ones were every bit as edgy.

[Mark Sawyer]

Agreed, Paul. Actually, I was just thinking that Elliot Porter's photographs in eastern forests bordered on chaos, yet kept themselves together formally more than any other work I could think of. Kinda strange, as I've never thought of Porter as an "avant garde" sort of photographer... I see Chris Burkett's work following the same avenue as Porter's landscapes, but returning a more traditional sense of organization, structure and form.

Just wandering thoughts...

[Brian C. Miller]

paulr wrote: "No one can stop you from dismissing his work as being about nothing. I'm just not sure what you get out of doing so."

I don't "get" anything from dismissing his photographs. No power trip here, nothing of the sort. His photographs simply posess no meaning (value) for me, and that's all there is to it. Fact is, my phrase, "Photographs about nothing, for no reason," echos Eggleston's own phrase, "I've been outdoors, nowhere, in nothing."

Imagine an empty box. If a person wants to fill that empty box with thoughts, ideas, words, and phrases, a person can do that. But the base fact is that the empty box remains an empty box, even if it should inspire you to global greatness. The box is still empty, and someone calling it an empty box does not lessen or exalt it.

I think that Eggleston makes photographs to have a certain "rightness" to them. He persues color, I think, exclusively. He says he sees no point in a black & white reproduction of his photographs. The rightness of the photograph is in the color, the actual subject matter is secondary, perhaps even tertiary to something else. He says that he doesn't title his photographs to keep them content neutral. Therefore, there is really no subject to the photograph, its about nothing.

I have very few photographs where I have persued color exclusively. While I do photograph in color, and most of those photographs would not work without color, its just not a goal in and of itself for me. The last thing that I want of my photographs is for them to be an aquired taste. Therefore, I consider Eggleston to be a polar opposite from me, someone who is on a path that I don't want to persue.

[Mark Sawyer]

"Therefore, there is really no subject to the photograph, its about nothing. "

That's not Eggleston. That's Seinfeld.

Could be some parallels, though...

[paulr]

"His photographs simply posess no meaning (value) for me"

This is the first time you've added the "for me" part, which makes it an entirely different statement.

Saying something has no meaning, period, is arrogant and dismissive, especially when you're talking to people who see a lot of meaning. Saying it means nothing to you is the equivalent of saying "I don't get it," which is personal, honest, and not something up for discussion. I don't think anyone would have questioned you if you said it that way in the beginning.

"The last thing that I want of my photographs is for them to be an aquired taste"

Why is that? It seems to me that the only way something can completely avoid being an acquired taste is by being familiar. And I'm not sure what the value is in creating work or looking at work that is already familiar. What can be learned?

Remember that all the work of the great modern masters, Stieglitz, Weston, and Strand among them, however familiar and comfortable it is to us now, was at first very new and very strange. It was absolutely an acquired taste for most people who hadn't benefited from growing up with it.

[Jellybaby]

Thank you Tim for the interesting article. Agree with the author that a fundamental change is going on in the world of photography.

However I don’t believe that digital cameras are the main driving force in this process. Digital p&s cameras produce the same technically mediocre results as their film counterparts decades ago and getting a great digital print takes the same amount of knowledge and dedication that it took in Edward Westons days.

In my opinion the real difference lies in how people share and distribute pictures today. Spend some time to explore pages like www.flickr.com and you will know what I mean. Digging a little deeper you will find a lot of very poetic wonderful pics that would do credit to any fine art gallery.

[paulr]

"the real difference lies in how people share and distribute pictures today"

I think that's true, and at the root of it is that with a digital photograph, the image can exist disembodied from any physical form. So its distribution and end use are really only limited by the imagination. This is the only fundamental difference i see between digital and analog photographic processes. All the other differences seem like ones of degree.

[Brian C. Miller]

Come on, paulr, do you always need to see a disclaimer in my posts that they only represent my opinion? Maybe that if I don't put in a disclaimer in an out-of-the-way thread on an out-of-the-way website, then suddenly world+dog will see Eggleston as a faker? Seriously, even if 6+ billion people (and the dog) stood up, thumbed their noses, wiggled their fingers (paw) and blew a raspberry at Eggleston, would that diminish what you find in his photography? Would you actually go along with the crowd?

Hardly, I should imagine. (At least I hope not!)

But I bet it would land the dog on television!

What I have posted about Eggleston has been noted before, by a NY Times art writer, and perhaps by people as influential in the art world as Mr. Szarkowski. Nothing new. It has also been noted by Eggleston himself. Nothing new there, either. You have "Democratic Forest," go read what Eggleston wrote. Read the interviews on the Eggleston Trust website. That's where I got all of my information on Eggleston. You don't like what Eggleston wrote or what he said in interviews? Take it up with him.

Saying that something has no meaning is not arrogant, it is a statement of perception. You know that I am not making the statement on behalf of world+dog, and to suggest otherwise is ludicrous.

Are you sure you're not making Eggleston as "Saint Eggleston?" I see every once in a while somebody complaining about "Saint Adams." These guys are photographers. If Adams hadn't written books on the craft of photography, I would enjoy a dozen or so of his photographs, and that's it. Eggleston hasn't written anything in depth concerning his photographs, just tidbits like, "I'm at war with the obvious."

I didn't grow up with photographs, I only became interested in photography when I was 34. Before then I couldn't have cared less about any of the "greats," or cameras, or whatever. All of Weston, Adams, Weegee, and on, came to me as alien territory. I want to pick up what I can for where I want to go with my photography. Just because I see Eggleston's photographs and they don't influence me doesn't mean that I don't understand them or that it diminishes Eggleston's influence in your life or anyone else's life. I also don't like Cindy Sherman, either, and that doesn't influence MoMA.

paulr wrote: "As far as what is great about his use of color, I don't know how to describe it in words."

Take some time, and find the words to explain it to the common man, and publish the article in Shutterbug or Popular Photography. Be one of Eggleston's champions! You'll have lots of fun with photographs you love so well.

I don't think that photography will be revolutionized by a photographer who only makes photographs. I think that a revolution in photography will come from a photographer who inspires other people to pick up cameras and make photographs that they care about. For a person to care about the photographs they make means that they must be concerned with the world around them. If they have enough concern, they will get off their butts and influence society around them.

[paulr]

"Saying that something has no meaning is not arrogant, it is a statement of perception."

ahhh, but it's perception stated as fact. saying that you don't see the meaning or don't get the meaning is perception stated as perception. saying you get it but don't care for it is likewise perception stated as perception.

this may seem like a small point, but i think it's a big one, and it's the only one i'm trying to make. it's not about defending eggleston, who certainly does it need it from me or anyone else. it's because i see a lot of people saying things like that (and so I can only assume they're actually thinking like that) and as i result i think they're screwing themselves out of a lot of the potential richness of the work they're dismissing.

when someone says "i don't see the meaning in that," they're still leaving open the possibility that they might see it later. which means they might look at it later, and might keep asking questions. if someone says "that has no meaning," the statement becomes a foregone conclusion. they remove any motivation to ever look at it or think about it again. their opinion has become absolute, sealed in stone.

if my annoying, prodding posts on the topic encourage anyone to look twice at something they had at one time written off, i'll be happy. i think it's an important thing. a lot more important than if any one person happens to like eggleston or not (which i don't care about at all).

"paulr wrote: "As far as what is great about his use of color, I don't know how to describe it in words."
Take some time, and find the words to explain it to the common man"

i'm working in color for the first time now. it is definitely taking some time. i hope to be able to talk intelligently about it some day. but i don't know how to right now.

[Brian C. Miller]

"i'm working in color for the first time now. it is definitely taking some time."

I've been working with color since I picked up a camera. I've finally managed to calm down when using it (took years). (meaning "think first, then shoot")

I have a series (several rolls) of shots of an outcropping of red rock (WA Hwy 542 to Mt. Baker, left hand side). I had one of the frames printed on Fujichrome Supergloss. This one frame taught me a number of things. #1: what you see on the slide and what is printed are very different. #2: Red at sunset plus E100SW plus enhancing filter makes something really red. #3: Something really red can be hard to frame. #4: Displaying something really red needs natural light (at least daylight tubes) or else it will look really bad. #5: Photographs can really divide people into two camps, love it or hate it.

The particular slide I printed I titled "An Ant Named Waldo." On an 11x14 the ant is life size, and its hard to spot a red ant on a red rock, so its like trying to find Waldo. Its framed with a black frame, dark grey mat and antireflective glass. I found out that using antireflective glass also cancels out the reflection of the Supergloss.

This photograph falls on its nose and does a very long skid without color. The comments were: "What is it? Mars?" "I think its ugly." "Its horrible." "I like it because it doesn't make any sense." "It really warms up the room."

Personally, I cringed from it but I didn't want an 11x14 on Fujichrome Supergloss to go in the wastebasket.

[Dan Smith]

"It is easy to consume, digest and move on "

Just what a Weston/Caponigro and similar works is not. They last & are kept and looked at over and over again.

A lot of the 'new' is nothing more than 'McPhotos'. Look, get indigestion and throw away.

[Mark Sawyer]

"A lot of the 'new' is nothing more than 'McPhotos'. Look, get indigestion and throw away."

I get this feeling sometimes, too. Under the pressure to produce now, produce constantly, and produce to the standards of the University, it's reasonable to expect some degree of formulaety (if that's a word) from younger BFA/MFA students. And with the current disdain for all-things-historical, the only bandwagon to jump on is the one passing by at the moment.

And gallery owners and professional artists have to pay the rent, so I suppose some degree of pandering to what sells is necessary, and always has been...

Maybe it's hard to find in the volume of photography being done today, but there is quite a bit of really creative, intelligent work out there.

[paulr]

just in time for some of the questions raised here ... a movie about Eggleston:

http://www.filmforum.org/films/eggleston.html

opening is at film forum in NYC on wednesday. both eggleston and the film maker will be there for a question session. sadly i'll be out of town but i plan to see it the following week.