Contemporary Photography boom - digital or b&w?

[tim atherton]

Interesting (if slightly schizophrenic) editorial in Art News on the boom state of contemporary photography, the potential loss of materials, the growth of digital, but also the interest in traditional materials for contemporary work
(thanks joerg)

- a few excerpts for "academic discussion and criticism" (take the time to read the rest):

"The year 2005 may be remembered as a watershed in the history of photography, a crucial date when one generation of artists lifted off into blue sky while another was brought down to earth, left once again to ponder its slave-master relationship to technology."...

"“You can’t have a show about contemporary art anymore without having photography as a central element,” says Sandra Phillips, director of the photography department at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Art photographers are now gossiped about on television, with Cindy Sherman and Gregory Crewdson rating mentions by the snarky art students in the HBO series Six Feet Under. Larry Gagosian has added Alec Soth and Sally Mann to his roster of heavyweights. "...

"The history of photography, unlike that of painting and sculpture, is bound up, literally and figuratively, with books. William Henry Fox Talbot, Jacob Riis, Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Larry Clark, William Eggleston, and Nan Goldin are only a few of the artists whose original prints have exercised far less influence than the reproductions in their books."...

"New York dealer Lucy Mitchell-Innes, who ran the contemporary-art department at Sotheby’s in the 1980s, has observed that the multiple nature of photographic prints no longer bothers collectors. “People now want to own pictures that other people own,” she says. “That’s a major shift, and photography is one reason why.”"...

"But the independent British curator and critic senses that the mood is shifting again, thanks in part to technology—“I think there’s anxiety about digitization,” she says—and in part to the swinging pendulum of taste: “We’re coming out of ten years when big color and big prints were the norm.”

Bright predicts a revival of black-and-white photography, citing the work of Shannon Ebner and Markéta Othová, neither of whom is represented in her book. “Their work is quite poignant, not staged, and they make smallish prints,” she says. “There’s a desire to return to modernist esthetics, to what photography used to be and how we imagine it should be.”"...

"Papageorge has never made an exhibition-quality ink-jet print, and examples produced by his graduate students at Yale have yet in his eyes to “reach the level of poetry.”"...

PS - this issue of Art News is about photography

[medform-norm]

Thanks once more Tim (and Joerg) for posting something relevant. You have the nack of picking out the bits that caught my attention.

[David Crossley]

“I think there’s anxiety about digitization,” No kidding!

Nice find.

David Crossley/Crossley Photography....

[GPS]

Watershed, major shift, shifting again... Hmm. Media talk.

[Ken Lee]

Media talk.



Indeed.



If one writer can't dig up a new "story", then someone else will be found who can.

[Bruce Watson]

...to what photography used to be and how we imagine it should be.

Oy. Who is this "we" and how to I separate myself from "them?"

[paulr]

"Oy. Who is this "we" and how to I separate myself from "them?"

judging by the quote, it's someone who likes modernist, black and white photography ... like a lot of people on this board.

if you want to separate yourself, come to new york and i'll take you to chelsea ... you might end up wanting to join them again ;)

[medform-norm]

Oh please people, do none of you read this as a kind of marketing trend report for the art photography market? Compare it with an article in some business magazine, no more no less than that.

[Joe Davis]

I found this part intersting:

"Traditional black-and-white still dominates the fine-art photography auction market. Of the 241 lots sold last year for a total of almost $16 million at Sotheby’s New York, department head Denise Bethel estimates that less than 10 percent were color prints. Collectors still balk when offered digital prints of any kind. "

[Brian Ellis]

"Traditional black-and-white still dominates the fine-art photography auction market"

Not surprising, collectors tend to buy "names" and the "names" in photography for all of the 19th century and most of the 20th centuries were b&w photographers. Other than Eliot Porter (and I've read that he's very much out of favor in fine art circles because his work is too pretty and easy to "get") I can't offhand think of a really well-known photographer before roughly 1980 who worked primarily in color. Of course now someone will come up with a major color photographer before 1980 who I've forgotten about but the basic point is still valid I think - it's the famous photographers whose work tends to get collected and until the last twenty five or so years the vast majority of them were b&w photographers.

[paulr]

"collectors tend to buy "names" and the "names" in photography for all of the 19th century and most of the 20th centuries were b&w photographers."

and related to that ... old usually means more valuable. old and dead usually means much more valuable. color photography's only been around for a few decades as a serious art medium; digital versions less than that. it will be a while before there are a competitive number of names, and then old names, and then dead names. but you can be sure the collectors are waiting.

[Joe Davis]

I have heard the lastest colour materials are much better than they used to be, but weren't the colour dyes used in C prints fugitive? Even cibachromes prints can shift colours if it is exhibited for a long time.
What do the collector's do if the colour prints begin to shift? Would that be a factor for collectors choosing more B&W prints over colour prints?

[Rob Vinnedge]

Yes, I read the article the other day and was intrigued with the author's reference to various opinions from the photographic community. But I was also quite irritated by the misleading tone of the article, which suggests that photographers will have to "adapt or be left behind", because digital is taking over, Nikon has discontinued film cameras, Agfa and Ilford have lost markets, and Kodak has discontinued B/W paper.

The author does cite Susan Bright, who predicts a revival of B/W photography, and he does note that "traditional B/W still dominates the fine-art photography auction market." However, he completely ignores the groundswell movement toward alternative photographic processes and ultra large formats - not to mention the companies that now support this movement, such as Ilford, Kodak, Bergger, Schneider, Fuji, and all the distributors and large camera manufacturers who are now making their appearances. I certainly do not appreciate the suggestion that "Film will likely be the next to vanish, if the rest of the industry follows the example of Nikon....."

It seems to me that Artnews caters primarily to those interested in art forms other than photography (perhaps I'm wrong). I would really like to see the magazine offer its readers an expanded view of the current state of fine art photography. Let them (the readers) know that pixels and "pigmented ink" are not the only ingredients left in the making of fine art photographs.

[consolidated from duplicate thread - QT]

[paulr]

"It seems to me that Artnews caters primarily to those interested in art forms other than photography (perhaps I'm wrong)"

magazines like artnews cater to the high end of the art marked, broadly defined. they don't specialize in photography by any means, but as sandra phillips points out in this article, photography has become absolutely central in terms of importance and influence in the larger world of artists and dealers and collectors.

"artnews" is a pretty accurate name for the magazine .. it's about what's new, what's big, what the trends are. medform-norm is right that the article is like a marketing report. for people in the business--and at this level it's big business--marketing reports are pretty relevent.

how can you argue with "adapt or be left behind?" photographers have been facing that proposition ever since they first depended on manufactured materials. the modernists' switch to silver when platinum papers were discontinued was an adaptation. so is switching from kodak paper to something your friend makes in the garage. it doesn't have to mean embracing the latest process or gizmo, although for many it will be just that.

"I would really like to see the magazine offer its readers an expanded view of the current state of fine art photography"

i think this article does just that. it would be hard to pack a wider range of oppinions on the state of photography into so few paragraphs.

[Rob Vinnedge]

paulr,

I very much agree with Sandra Phillips that photography is a central element in the contemporary art world. I feel that an article featured on the front cover of a major art magazine entitled PHOTOGRAPHY - WHAT'S HOT should include all the major trends and not mislead the public into believing that the digital world is going to supplant the analog. I take your point that this a marketing report, incomplete though it may be.

I also agree that adaptation has been the theme throughout the history of photography. Woodward's final statement, "From now on, adapt or be left behind." implies, first, that we have never done so, and secondly, that we must now get used to the idea of digital replacing film. In my mind, this is erroneous.

I stand by my wish that the magazine offer an expanded view of the current state of fine art photography. A major photographic trend is completely overlooked in this article.

[tim atherton]

"However, he completely ignores the groundswell movement toward alternative photographic processes and ultra large formats"

thing is, I'm not really sure how much art photography is really being done with ULF or alternative processes - exept maybe for Sally Mann (and she gets a mention) or a few others?

[Rob Vinnedge]

Well, check out 1ststreetgallery.com or 21stphotography.com (which features Sally Mann platinum prints, by the way). These are two locations that promote alternative processes. There are many more. Many of the people who are spending thousands on large cameras and large sheet film from Kodak, Ilford, Bergger and others, and who are buying gallons of potassium chloroplatinite from Bostick & Sullivan have high artistic ambitions. They are starting to surface with great regularity.

[tim atherton]

21stphotography.com - those are all the usual suspects I would include in my list of "a few others" - most well established and been doing this for a good time now.

1ststreetgallery.com doesn't seem to work?

[Rob Vinnedge]

Sorry, 1streetgallery.com.

[paulr]

the question is, is this subculture of or ulf and alternative process photographers doing work that curators and critics see as contemporary and culturally significant? or is it people using century-old tools and doing work with a century-old esthetic?

there are certainly examples of ulf and alt process work being embraced by the world that artnews caters to--sally mann, as you mentioned, and lois connor. but i'm not sure i see evidence of a of groundswell movement in their work.

not to say that there won't be one. but there seem to be many more examples of people like todd papageorge, who in spite of lack of enthusiasm for the idea, has decided to get an inkjet printer rather than to coat his own paper. a lot of people are more interested in getting down to the business of image making--and adopting the new tools and materials that come along is often a more efficient path than adopting the more labor intensive tools of the 19th century. photographers of ansel adams' and edward weston's generation overwhelmingly made the same choice. when the platinum papers vanished, they were pissed! and they did have the option of coating their own, but mostly they chose to buy the silver paper and just get on with it.

[Rob Vinnedge]

Mapplethorpe, Penn, Kenro Izo, Michael Kenna, all contemporary or near contemporary photographers, have integrated platinum into their aesthetic. I could compile a long list of photographers who fall into this category. Age of process does not necessarily doom it to extinction.

Don't get me wrong. I welcome new tools and materials and agree that they often add to the efficiency of image making. My whole point in joining this thread was to say that the "subculture" of ULF and alternative process photographers is very much alive, but overlooked by Mr. Woodward in the Artnews article, though perhaps not by other curators and critics.

[adrian tyler]

in the contemporary art circuit, what i can see here at least, the mantra is "large format colour print", and i don't see a lot of "new" alternative fromats in the "market". neither in the galleries, nor the art fairs.

the emerging mantra, as far as i see it, is "digital" and i personally think that this is one of the reasons for photography's acceptance to art collectors, even "pure" photographers have to make large format prints digitally.

so given that scenario it's only a matter of time until the realisation that things that you are trying to say with a camera could be said much more eloquently with a trip through your imagination and the computer... exciting times... adapt or die?

[paulr]

"Age of process does not necessarily doom it to extinction."

no, certainly not ... oil painting is still alive and well after all. but this issue isn't about the extinction of a process. it's about the relevence (hopefully) or the trendyness (cynically) of the work being done in a process. so the age of a process doesn't doom it to extinction ... but the hipness of a process may doom it to marginalization. artists working in most of the esthetic or conceptual traditions that are most current seem to be moving away from the darkroom and towards a more mechanized approach. a little less steichen, a little more warhol. the pendulum is always free to swing back the other way, but this is what's going on right now.

the photographers you mentioned aren't really examples of the people driving contemporary photography (thought i don't know Kenro Izo's work). Mapplethorpe's long dead (and mostly famous for fairly conventional, 1980s style silver prints); Penn is almost 90 if he's still alive, and mostly famous for work he's done decades ago; and Kenna's famous mostly for silver prints, and has been doing the exact same thing for the last 30 years.

[paulr]

by the way, Rob, i should add that if part of what rubs you the wrong way is the melodramatic tone of the "adapt or die!" warning, i certainly agree. in this context dying might just mean reducing your chances of appearing on the cover of Artnews, which may not even be the ambition of most people we know.

but there's a kernel of truth behind the sentiment. i first heard this argument a little over ten years ago. i was discussing the issue with a few photographers, including Jock Sturgess. It turned into a pretty heated debate. At the time i was such a staunch traditionalist i couldn't even imagine photography that didn't involve some kind of 4:00 a.m. self-crucifixion in the darkroom. i was taking a digital-over-my-dead-body kind of stand .... and Jock, whose work was technically and esthetically very conservative, and who had never worked with a digital process in his life, took the opposite view. he said, "look, the history of photography is littered with the bones of photographers who refused to adapt, and i don't want to join them." he pointed out that for every Atget, who managed to change the world with an anachronistic approach, there were hundreds who we don't know about, because they stayed put and allowed history to steamroller them.

i thought he had some good points. i don't feel the pressures of change as strongly as he did (of course i'm not supporting myself by staying relevent to the art world, like him), but i've definitely become less dogmatic and more open to change.

[Don Wallace]

I think Paul has expressed my sentiments. The "survival of the fittest" is a little overstated, but for some, the changing realities of the art market are significant. Some of us should be so lucky as to have to worry about the status of our work in the high end art market.

At a more mundane level, and if this forum is any indication, there seems to be a fairly comfortable blending of digital and traditional processes. Currently, image capture remains to be largely traditional, perhaps mainly because of expense. However, there are many photographers use digital methods to clean up negatives for digital printing, and even for making new negatives. David Fokos, one of my favourite photographers, scans his negatives, works on them in PS, and gets new negatives made from the files for use in platinum printing. Digital processes may never be able to reproduce exactly what traditional black and white can do, but it will do other things, and materials and techniques will evolve, as they always do.

BTW, Paul, I was in New York last June (for the first time ever) and saw visited some of the Chelsea galleries (I think it might have been you who recommended a few to me in this forum). Among the treasures I saw were platinum prints by Cy Decosse at the John Stevenson Gallery. I have not quite caught my breath, even now.

[Jim Ewins]

What is sick is the validity that the above comments give to those shrill voices.

[paulr]

"Among the treasures I saw were platinum prints by Cy Decosse at the John Stevenson Gallery."

i haven't been there ... a friend just recommended that gallery to me yesterday. sounds like i need to take a look.

[Brian Ellis]

" . . . 4:00 a.m. self-crucifixion in the darkroom . . . "

Great line. As much as en entire essay could, it brings back the memories, feelings, smells, etc. of those marathon darkroom sessions.

[Oren Grad]

4:00 a.m. self-crucifixion in the darkroom

Did one of those last weekend. Still recovering...

[mrpengun]

I found this part intersting:

"Traditional black-and-white still dominates the fine-art photography auction market. Of the 241 lots sold last year for a total of almost $16 million at Sotheby’s New York, department head Denise Bethel estimates that less than 10 percent were color prints. Collectors still balk when offered digital prints of any kind. "

It is a bit of a misnomer as well, since a lot of the colour contemporary photographers get shifted "up" to the Contemporary art sales, especially in London (wherein I believe Gursky's 99 cents is the highest selling photographic work ever at auction). It also helps when you get to auction a huge Weston collection...