Strip malls and power lines: I just don't get this stuff

[cyrus]

I was watching a Netflix movie about William Eggleston and I just don't get his stuff - and it appeared neither did he. Friedlander's city scapes elude me too. Perhaps there's something interesting there from a nostalgia POV - what did this street corner look like 80 years ago. Otherwise...ho hum. I mean, lets face it - most of America is damned boring. Strip malls and powerlines and intersections. Yes? OK? What's the point?

Nor do I understand the attraction to the photos by this fellow (http://men.style.com/news/blog/2008/01/acts-of-tourism.html) though I would have liked to go on the same trip.

[Norm Buchanan]

Well you would really like the current issue of Aperture, which has Martin Parr's Parking Spaces. I must admit, I can't imagine hanging a collection of parking stalls on my walls...

[davidb]

well, there are more than a few photographers who made photographs around Albuquerque, where I live.

I kept seeing one made by Friedlander. So I took my gear out, and tried to see what he saw.

Once I looked through the viewfinder, I kind of got it.

Check this. (http://davidbram.blogspot.com/2006/09/chasing-lee-friedlander.html)

[paulr]

What about Walker Evans? Or later Weston (his pictures of road signs, abandoned cars, etc.)?

[Capocheny]

Hi Cyrus,

I'm not so sure I understand these kinds of images either. There was a brief movie of a fellow who photographed back alleys shown on U-tube (?) back awhile ago. They talked about the juxtaposition of this and that on this and that to create this and that emotion/look. Unfortunately, the explanation sounded like mumbo-jumbo to me and didn't make didn't make much sense to me.

But, I suppose it's interesting to look at all the ancillary "stuff" in the image and try to visualize the activity that was going on at the scene the minute the shutter was tripped? Or, perhaps, it's meant to be nothing more than just a recording of a split-second of time at that location?

As they say, "art is in the eyes of the beholder...." and, in some cases, a few glasses of wine really helps brings things into perspective! :)

Just my 2 cents worth.

Cheers

[Henry Ambrose]

The photos are simply one version of what is there. The rest is art babble.

[David A. Goldfarb]

well, there are more than a few photographers who made photographs around Albuquerque, where I live.

I kept seeing one made by Friedlander. So I took my gear out, and tried to see what he saw.

Once I looked through the viewfinder, I kind of got it.

Check this. (http://davidbram.blogspot.com/2006/09/chasing-lee-friedlander.html)

I think part of what Friedlander is seeing there is the juxtaposition of the dog and the fire hydrant.

[davidb]

also...if you look closely, the building in the back is a restaurant called "The Dog House".

[Walter Calahan]

I think they are all brilliant.

They get us to talk and write about ideas, not just focal lengths and f/stops.

My opinion is that they capture life more realistically then the idealized world of Ansel Adams or Edward Weston. Adams and Weston are both masters at what they did, and their art is breathtaking. But to capture the true syncopation of life the way it is acted out on the street, Freidlander, Winogrand, and Eggleston are just as brilliant.

Looking at their work makes me see the world in a more heightened state awareness.

[Gordon Moat]

I suppose the same viewpoint could be applied towards viewing oh-so-many landscape images. Obviously, there are few images that might appeal to all viewers. When I find something a bit lacking in an image, I try to see if any formal approaches are apparent in the image (Golden Section, interesting relationship of focal points, etc.).

When I went to a Basquiat exhibit a couple years ago, my mom didn't really like his stuff. Then when I pointed out various aspects that showed the formal approach in paintings that appeared quite random, she understood why Basquiat's paintings appealed to some . . . even though she did not like them.

So to dismiss images can mean missing a learning opportunity. There is understanding and clarity in all images, even if they don't appeal to you directly. Figure out why others "get it", and you gain some insight. Then you might decide why you never want to try making similar images, or you might find another direction to explore.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography (http://www.gordonmoat.com)

[Dick Hilker]

Another fireplug . . .

[Kirk Gittings]

Here is an odd one, one of those grand incongruities, I don't "get" Eggeston, but I get Robert Adams. Perhaps because I live in and have an emotional attachment to the landscapes that RA photographed.

[paulr]

i'm interested in a lot of things that i see in eggleston's work (and in stephen shore's, and robert adams', etc.).

most interesting to me is their ability to find something intriguing, and maybe even remarkable, in the kinds of scenes we walk by every day without noticing. or at least without noticing in a positive way.

with eggleston and shore, another part of what they did was use color in sophisticated ways that had previously been associated only with painting. they used it it create complex and subtle relationships and tensions within the frame. they also both looked at american culture in a way that previous photographers hadn't, or at least hadn't with as much depth.

if you're looking for classical prettiness in a photograph, you're not going to find much in their work. nor will you find much overt drama. their work is subtle. you could say that subtlety is central to it. if you prefer more overt kinds of images, then it makes sense that their work will strike you as merely boring or ugly. personally, i find it fascinating and beautiful--much more so than pictures that seem pretty without offering anything else.

[Ken Lee]

http://www.kenleegallery.com/images/forum/emerson2.jpg

When Emerson made this image around 100 years ago, some of his friends might have wondered what he saw in something so mundane as "just some chap at work".

A century later, the image conveys what was perceived clearly by Emerson, but likely overlooked by his contemporaries.

[Ken Lee]

http://www.kenleegallery.com/images/forum/C17.jpg

... which is why I make images like this one, from time to time.

[steve barry]

i think the distinction is (walker evans, eggleston, friedlander, winogrand, etc) are artists who use a camera, where most typical landscape/nature photographers think what they do is art, but a huge majority of the time - they miss the mark by a mile. they make no artistic statement - beyond "look at that beautiful sunset or stand of trees, here is a photo of it". they are separate things - the professional photographer and the art photographer. im not saying either is right or better, just they are different.

an artist's goal is to make something out of nothing - where, in my opinion those typical over saturated nature/landscape photographers, who seems to be highly regarded on this site, make nothing out of something.

there is a reason all these photographers you are talking about, and generally disregard by saying you don't "get" them - get put in MOMA. its funny to see people walking around a museum arms crossed and pouting "i just don't get it", waving it off like those of us who can appreciate it, are uninformed.

[paulr]

When Emerson made this image around 100 years ago, some of his friends might have wondered what he saw in something so mundane as "just some chap at work".

That's the kind of criticism the f64 photographers got in their day. "You guys didn't DO anything, it's just a picture of a lake; the camera did it; there's nothing to look at ... "

This was all reasonable criticism coming from people used to looking at heavily manipulated, heavily allegorical pictorialist pictures.

[paulr]

they make no artistic statement - beyond "look at that beautiful sunset or stand of trees, here is a photo of it"

well, sometimes.

there's certainly a ton of work out there that's pretty, but otherwise empty.

but i think there's a lot of work that's pretty, picturesque, or dramatic, and that's also about something more. ansel did a fair amount of work that was about more than just wowing us esthetically, and weston certainly did.

what guys like robert adams shore and eggleston did (and maybe walker evans before them) was to strip off the veneers of prettiness and drama. they would make pictures that had the formal complexity and underlying insights of a weston landscape, but you had to look hard to see why it's more than just a snapshot.

in a sense they did what the modern poets did ... guys like wallace stevens and william carlos williams started writing poetry in plain language, rather than the rhymed, metered, flourish-ladden verse that was expected before they came along. it was hard for people raised on the old stuff to see why the new writing was beautiful. paraphrasing williams, "i want to write poems that you can understand, but you got to try hard."

[Michael Graves]

Perhaps some of the above comments explain why I like David Plowden so much. His images have the technical quaility of Evans or Wynn Bullock, yet many of his scenes are everyday scenes. Small town villages, trains, and any one of the myriad of projects he tackled. Photographers like him show us the part of our world that we otherwise refuse to look at because it is so commonplace. If their art is good, they get our attention.,

[steve barry]

paulr, i agree with you, and while i think much higher of Weston than i do of Adams - i do like some of Adam's stuff, and I enjoy the technical side very much.

[cyrus]

Actually, as I have posted here before, I am not a big fan of your typical landscape, flower, rusted car in field, old barn, flower petals over a violin, or naked lady either (well, I'd have the look closely at that one just to be sure)

But surely the choices have to be more than either this stuff, or photos of powerlines and strip mall and parked cars. I mean, at the very least, the landscape stuff is "pretty" and not an eyesore even if it doesn't really "say" anything or challenge you or whatever photos are supposed to do.

Emerson's photo is interesting today because it connotes a sense of nostalgia. Perhaps the photos of stripmalls and parked cars and highway intersections will have a similar feel in abouit 80 years...long after I am gone though.

[cyrus]

Well you would really like the current issue of Aperture, which has Martin Parr's Parking Spaces. I must admit, I can't imagine hanging a collection of parking stalls on my walls...


Ah, but parking spaces represent the penultimate in the state of disengagement and disenchantment of the human spirit with the bourgeois social morays of post-deconstructionist modernists, sort of like meta-alien representations of the juxtaposition of impulsive existentialist gestures with large phallic symbols.

[steve barry]

except photos of stripmalls and parked cars are intentionally void of anything nostalgic, romantic, etc. - - so if, 80 years down the road, someone sees something nostalgic or romantic in them - they will be uninformed.

[Justin Cormack]

except photos of stripmalls and parked cars are intentionally void of anything nostalgic, romantic, etc. - - so if, 80 years down the road, someone sees something nostalgic or romantic in them - they will be uninformed.

Yes but was a rowing boat (carrying agricultural produce) romantic when Emerson photographed it?

Nostalgia isnt what it used to be...

[paulr]

it doesn't make much sense to be talking about these pictures as generalizations. "pictures of strip malls and parking lots" could include interesting ones and dull ones; beautiful ones and ugly ones.

and among interesting ones, a stephen shore photograph of a parking lot will probably be different in significant ways from an eggleston picture of one.

lumping all this work together makes the assumption that art can be understood as nothing but a product of its subject matter. if that's true, then we can talk about a van gogh painting of a cottage and a thomas kinkaide painting of a cottage as equivalents.

there is nothing innately interesting about a picture of a strip mall. just as there is nothing inately interesting about a picture of a mountain lake. the success or failure of either picture depends on how the artist shows us what's there.

[steve barry]

paul - but i think one has a much better chance of success, artistically, taking a picture of a strip mall rather than a mountain lake. the same way someone has a much better chance of artistic success taking self portraits rather than portraits of homeless people or rock stars. the later has just been so overdone, and badly - where the self portrait is something you know on many levels, and can really get in it and tear it apart.

[paulr]

It's certainly possible. but it's already been argued that vernacular landscapes are almost as old a saw nowadays as traditional ones! rob adams did his first famous work in the 60s and early 70s, so the idiom is pushing half a century now.

meanwhile, friedlander showed that it's possible to revisit old subject matter (like death valley and the teton range) and show it in a completely fresh way.

if there's anything fundamentally less tired about the vernacular landscapes, it's that they're about the world we actually spend most of our time in. when they succeed, they allow us to see our everyday world in a more affirmative light. this strikes me as a greater goal than simply providing a moment of escape to a prettier place (one that may in fact be carefully constructed through the cropping out of sidewalks, tourists, and telephone wires).

and i'll add to that a personal prejudice: i believe that with the best art, we actually prefer the art to the subect it depicts. as robert adams suggested, most of us would rather spend a half hour looking at edward hopper's Sunday Morning than a half hour hanging out on the street in the painting; hopper's magic helps us see more, and with more depth.

it's specifically because of my love of wild, beautiful places that i don't much like photographing them, or looking at photographs of them. for me those pictures are rarely more than a pale copy of the experience of being there. but when it comes to humbler landscapes, like the streets of brooklyn where i live, the challenge is very different. and it's more interesting to me. rather than trying to can the splendor of nature, i have to seek out much more elusive form and beauty, and do it in places that are more easily ignored or disparaged.

[Brian K]

I can well understand and appreciate the significance of taking a photo of something mundane, but elevating it to something special with composition, timing, lighting, etc. Those are often the most difficult and creative images one can produce.

I do not understand or appreciate poorly lit, poorly composed photographs of mundane things captured at their most mundane moment. To me this is an image that can be achieved by a robot or with a camera strapped to a monkey. Where the talent seems to come into play here is in the long accompanying essay that justifies this type of image.

After nearly a decade of doing landscape photography I have discovered that it is incredibly difficult to create real beauty that can stand the test of time. Whereas the opportunity to produce boring, mundane, pointless photographs surrounds us and is readily available. I know that my own pursuit of beauty limits my marketability among the higher echelons of collectors and will most likely exclude me from inclusion in museums. Whereas if I were to pursue images that shock, by containing the most meaningless content, I would be considered "cutting edge".

Today, art is fashion. And often, just as pointless.

[paulr]

I do not understand or appreciate poorly lit, poorly composed photographs of mundane things captured at their most mundane moment. To me this is an image that can be achieved by a robot or with a camera strapped to a monkey.

I don't know anyone who'd argue with this.

But people a lot of people will ague about what's well composed or not, what's well crafted or not, what's well seen or not.

There are pictures by Shore that strike me as immaculate examples of form, light, color, and exploration of a place ... but I've heard people blast them for being random and artless.

My best guess is that those people are applying standards born from a different time or different genre ... much like the critics who attacked the f64 photographers for similar reasons.

[steve barry]

I do not understand or appreciate poorly lit, poorly composed photographs of mundane things captured at their most mundane moment. To me this is an image that can be achieved by a robot or with a camera strapped to a monkey. Where the talent seems to come into play here is in the long accompanying essay that justifies this type of image.



there are no rules in art. the problem with rules or standards is, someone had to establish them, meaning, the rules have already been done. you can't approach art (doing/viewing) with rules or standards. when you do photography with rules or standards or whatever, you get stuck in a box, doing exactly whats already been done before. this is part of the reason photography spent so many years legitimizing itself as an art form - no one experiments in the darkroom, or with a camera. people do with pencil and paint, experiment, always have, but rarely does anyone experiment in the darkroom. i always find it funny, when someone who calls themselves an artists wants to take a class or read a how-to-book on how to technically use a darkroom or photoshop. anything beyond hints is crazy. the long accompanying essay is rubbish - serious art does not need justification. rarely does an artist possess the critical distance to accurately speak of their work anyway.

btw - Ed Ruscha published a book (in the late 60's or early 70's i think?) of continuous photos showing 2.5 miles of sunset strip - taken with an automatic camera mounted in the back of a pick up truck. the book and the photos are phenomenal.

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/sunset-strip/images/2/

[steve barry]

here is a bigger picture of the inside of Ruscha's book

http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/wp02/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/ruscha.png

[Paul Metcalf]

also...if you look closely, the building in the back is a restaurant called "The Dog House". A building called "The Dog House", a fire hydrant, a car tire, and a dog (sitting, apparently waiting to cross the street at the crosswalk).

Did the dog just "use" the fire hydrant (or tire or both, check it out, the tire looks like it has a wet spot on the bottom) and is now headed to "The Dog House?"

Brilliant. Wish I had the ability to create this kind of pictorial story out of chaos. Plus there's excellant use of triangles in the composition, FWTW.

[tim810]

I gravitate twards abandoned mills, alley ways, graffiti. This is something that is all over where I live. I try and find the beauty hidden in these things that otherwise would be considered "eyesoars". I am asked frequently by family members and the like: Why take photos of things people dont want in their environment? Especially when there is a beautifull beach just a few miles away!
Whenever I bring a new "mill" shot home and show it to my parents, they say that is a beautifull photograph, but I can't see that as being sellable!! Than they look at the stuff I shot of the 1700s congrigational church in the snow and say: Why don't you do more of these images!!
Honestly, I shoot what is around me. I find CT's old mills facinating. I have also found that most of the closed mills in CT have a corresponding WAL-MART!! I am working on pairing the two in a project I am working on (some of the images are on my webpage, as well as a brief summary of my intent).
I lived and worked in Stonington CT for the first few years of moving to CT and found that in every restaurant or gallery whenever there where photos hanging, they where of
"Sunsets and Sailboats" I got truly sick of sunsets and sailboats, There was just no heart put into most of the images. Generally a sailboat dead center with wavy water and pretty background. It would have been nice to see photos of the docks when a catch was being brought in or grungy sea worn fisherman. or the like..


My point being is, I feel that the photos have to match the environment. Whenever I look at photos I try and visualize the environment the photographer was in (physically and mentally). What does the photographer want you to see!!


2 pennies deposited.
Tim

[Brian Ellis]

Well you would really like the current issue of Aperture, which has Martin Parr's Parking Spaces. I must admit, I can't imagine hanging a collection of parking stalls on my walls...

That's the kind of thing that caused me to end my subscription to Aperture a few years ago, after about 12 years of subscribing just to support the magazine's efforts. As I quickly perused each issue and then tossed about 70% of them in the trash I couldn't help wondering what Minor White, Ansel Adams, et al would think of their creation today.

[Brian Ellis]

except photos of stripmalls and parked cars are intentionally void of anything nostalgic, romantic, etc. - - so if, 80 years down the road, someone sees something nostalgic or romantic in them - they will be uninformed.

Unless of course 80 years from now the U.S. looks something like the U.S. of Cormac McCarthy's book "The Road." In which case even well-informed people might look at those photographs of malls with a lot of nostalgia and think they look pretty damn romantic.

[Norm Buchanan]

That's the kind of thing that caused me to end my subscription to Aperture a few years ago, after about 12 years of subscribing just to support the magazine's efforts. As I quickly perused each issue and then tossed about 70% of them in the trash I couldn't help wondering what Minor White, Ansel Adams, et al would think of their creation today.

Couldn't agree more. I subscribed to keep up with the latest in contemporary photography and I am usually disappointed.

As for the thread topic, I am not in any way artistically schooled but what works for me is having a photograph that causes a visceral response. These are often photographs that have a temporal component to them - a saturated color photo of neighborhood lined 70's era cars for example. This is really the beauty of photography, it allows the artist to contain and capture a mood in an instance. Photographers that can achieve this are gifted and will be successful with any subject matter, I suppose even with parking spaces...

[Brian Ellis]

paul - but i think one has a much better chance of success, artistically, taking a picture of a strip mall rather than a mountain lake. the same way someone has a much better chance of artistic success taking self portraits rather than portraits of homeless people or rock stars. the later has just been so overdone, and badly - where the self portrait is something you know on many levels, and can really get in it and tear it apart.

I don't see why a strip mall has an inherently better chance of artistic success than a mountain lake (assuming you aren't equating "success" with sales price, publicity, etc). Seems to me that either has an equal chance for artistic success and which is artistically successful depends on the artist, not the subject matter (again, not equating "success" with money, fame, etc.).

[Brian K]

there are no rules in art. the problem with rules or standards is, someone had to establish them, meaning, the rules have already been done. you can't approach art (doing/viewing) with rules or standards. when you do photography with rules or standards or whatever, you get stuck in a box, doing exactly whats already been done before. this is part of the reason photography spent so many years legitimizing itself as an art form - no one experiments in the darkroom, or with a camera. people do with pencil and paint, experiment, always have, but rarely does anyone experiment in the darkroom. i always find it funny, when someone who calls themselves an artists wants to take a class or read a how-to-book on how to technically use a darkroom or photoshop. anything beyond hints is crazy. the long accompanying essay is rubbish - serious art does not need justification. rarely does an artist possess the critical distance to accurately speak of their work anyway.

btw - Ed Ruscha published a book (in the late 60's or early 70's i think?) of continuous photos showing 2.5 miles of sunset strip - taken with an automatic camera mounted in the back of a pick up truck. the book and the photos are phenomenal.

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/sunset-strip/images/2/


Steve, where did I mention any rules? But since you bring it up...

There are things that the eye, that is the entire human optical interpretation system finds interesting and even exciting. When you learn about lighting, composition and design from knowledgeable people you learn these things. These are not rules. They are having an understanding of what excites the eye. And most often those things are not based on learned behavior or exposure to prevalent fashions within a society, but are instinctual, hard wired responses. Just like an animal running away may elicit the prey/predator response in a carnivore, there are visual cues that elicit an emotional or behavioral response in people. Certain shapes, colors, line directions and lighting can create and cause a sense of movement in the viewers visual perception. Similarly they can influence the viewers emotions. Highlight and shadow can create the illusion of depth in a 2 dimensional object, a photograph. These are responses that are not learned in us but are inherent and passed along during our evolution.

BTW I have shot power lines, my take on it:

[tim atherton]

Steve, where did I mention any rules? But since you bring it up...

There are things that the eye, that is the entire human optical interpretation system finds interesting and even exciting. When you learn about lighting, composition and design from knowledgeable people you learn these things. These are not rules. They are having an understanding of what excites the eye. And most often those things are not based on learned behavior or exposure to prevalent fashions within a society, but are instinctual, hard wired responses. Just like an animal running away may elicit the prey/predator response in a carnivore, there are visual cues that elicit an emotional or behavioral response in people. Certain shapes, colors, line directions and lighting can create and cause a sense of movement in the viewers visual perception. Similarly they can influence the viewers emotions. Highlight and shadow can create the illusion of depth in a 2 dimensional object, a photograph. These are responses that are not learned in us but are inherent and passed along during our evolution.


yet that doesn't necessarily, or even, lead to "good" art - or good photogrpahs (the same goes for colour theories - people have often tried to make good art based on the current understanding of how our brains respond to colour - it rarely works very well).

[steve barry]

I don't see why a strip mall has an inherently better chance of artistic success than a mountain lake (assuming you aren't equating "success" with sales price, publicity, etc). Seems to me that either has an equal chance for artistic success and which is artistically successful depends on the artist, not the subject matter (again, not equating "success" with money, fame, etc.).

Brian - no I am not equating success with sale price or publicity. Here is all I'm saying. Say you give one person two different photo projects that were to last one month each. The first - to photograph homeless people, the second - to photography everything within one city block. So, without being, or becoming homeless, you have to see there is a better chance of artistic success with the city block project. no?

[Brian Ellis]

"this is part of the reason photography spent so many years legitimizing itself as an art form - no one experiments in the darkroom, or with a camera. people do with pencil and paint, experiment, always have, but rarely does anyone experiment in the darkroom."

I don't mean to be picking on you but there was plenty of experimentation in the darkroom and in the camera long before photography became accepted as a legitimate art form. Man Ray's Rayographs, Moholy-Nagy's photograms, and the collages and montages of people like Hannah Hoch and George Grosz come immediately to mind. Or how about Christian Schad, who exposed chance arrangements of found objects on photographic film in 1918? Or the experimentation with presenting the known world in unusual ways, e.g. using special mirrors or lenses to distort reflections as photographers were doing as early as 1880, or by photographing from unusual vantage points or odd angles of view as photographers such as Coburn, Steichen, Renger-Patzsch, Kertesz, Strand, and Moholy-Nagy were doing in the early 1900s? That kind of experimentation and much more has been a part of photography almost from its inception.

[Brian Ellis]

Brian - no I am not equating success with sale price or publicity. Here is all I'm saying. Say you give one person two different photo projects that were to last one month each. The first - to photograph homeless people, the second - to photography everything within one city block. So, without being, or becoming homeless, you have to see there is a better chance of artistic success with the city block project. no?

No, I really don't. It seems to me that both subjects have an equal potential for boredom or for artistic success and it all depends on the artist. But it's fine with me if we just agree to disagree on it.

[paulr]

Based on studying design, I'd go along with the idea that there are inherent sensibilities about visual form. But I don't see this leading to any timeless ideas about art.

If we were bound by any enduring principles, then we wouldn't see every generation shaking up audiences with new ways of seeing. We wouldn't have seen the Romantics causing so much trouble, or the Impressionists getting ridiculed, or the modernists completely freaking people out. We wouldn't have seen the American straight photographers (who invented the tradition that Brian K and other among us work in) getting dismissed as artless, and then after they became firmly entrenched we wouldn't have seen them dismissing the late American landscapists (like the New Topographics guys or Eggleston) for similar reasons, and after those guys became entrenched, we wouldn't have seen them dismissing the postmodernists for similar reasons ... and so on, and so on, and so on.

I don't understand why we have to continue this cycle of foolishness. It just takes a little shred of perspective to show us two things: our ideas about art were formed at some point in history; and prevailing ideas about art will diverge from ours, some day, whether we like it or not. the world changes, art changes. we can choose to continue learning about it, or not.

[steve barry]

Steve, where did I mention any rules? But since you bring it up...

There are things that the eye, that is the entire human optical interpretation system finds interesting and even exciting. When you learn about lighting, composition and design from knowledgeable people you learn these things. These are not rules. They are having an understanding of what excites the eye. And most often those things are not based on learned behavior or exposure to prevalent fashions within a society, but are instinctual, hard wired responses. Just like an animal running away may elicit the prey/predator response in a carnivore, there are visual cues that elicit an emotional or behavioral response in people. Certain shapes, colors, line directions and lighting can create and cause a sense of movement in the viewers visual perception. Similarly they can influence the viewers emotions. Highlight and shadow can create the illusion of depth in a 2 dimensional object, a photograph. These are responses that are not learned in us but are inherent and passed along during our evolution.

BTW I have shot power lines, my take on it:

Brian K - if what you say is true....than the opposite would also be true. the bad lighting/composition/etc. should effect the opposite emotions that the good lighting/compositions effect, whatever they are? so the bad lighting and composition should be as important as the good is when making decisions about lighting/composition - if what you are trying to do is effect a viewers emotions. but it sounds like you have dismissed them, as less worthy, cutting out at least half the possibilities the photo could be, or at least the emotions it could effect, with the rigidity of "correct" lighting and composition.

your photo of the power lines is killer.

[steve barry]

"this is part of the reason photography spent so many years legitimizing itself as an art form - no one experiments in the darkroom, or with a camera. people do with pencil and paint, experiment, always have, but rarely does anyone experiment in the darkroom."

I don't mean to be picking on you but there was plenty of experimentation in the darkroom and in the camera long before photography became accepted as a legitimate art form. Man Ray's Rayographs, Moholy-Nagy's photograms, and the collages and montages of people like Hannah Hoch and George Grosz come immediately to mind. Or how about Christian Schad, who exposed chance arrangements of found objects on photographic film in 1918? Or the experimentation with presenting the known world in unusual ways, e.g. using special mirrors or lenses to distort reflections as photographers were doing as early as 1880, or by photographing from unusual vantage points or odd angles of view as photographers such as Coburn, Steichen, Renger-Patzsch, Kertesz, Strand, and Moholy-Nagy were doing in the early 1900s? That kind of experimentation and much more has been a part of photography almost from its inception.

i didnt mean NO one experimented in the darkroom. but i mean is if you take 20 people who work in the darkroom, i bet you would be hard pressed to find one thats done anything outside whats been taught them. and pick away.

[steve barry]

No, I really don't. It seems to me that both subjects have an equal potential for boredom or for artistic success and it all depends on the artist. But it's fine with me if we just agree to disagree on it.

Brian - I think you are giving the general "artist" population way too much credit. yes homeless people can be photographed with artistic success (friedlander could do it, arbus could do it) but the vast majority of regular photographers would fail with the homeless. chances are it would be a sappy social commentary or a "giving these people a voice" document - simply because the photographer is not homeless himself. your an outsider. now a city block is a part of most of our lives - easy to get inside - easy to tear that apart. easy easy.

[steve barry]

Based on studying design, I'd go along with the idea that there are inherent sensibilities about visual form. But I don't see this leading to any timeless ideas about art.

If we were bound by any enduring principles, then we wouldn't see every generation shaking up audiences with new ways of seeing. We wouldn't have seen the Romantics causing so much trouble, or the Impressionists getting ridiculed, or the modernists completely freaking people out. We wouldn't have seen the American straight photographers (who invented the tradition that Brian K and other among us work in) getting dismissed as artless, and then after they became firmly entrenched we wouldn't have seen them dismissing the late American landscapists (like the New Topographics guys or Eggleston) for similar reasons, and after those guys became entrenched, we wouldn't have seen them dismissing the postmodernists for similar reasons ... and so on, and so on, and so on.

I don't understand why we have to continue this cycle of foolishness. It just takes a little shred of perspective to show us two things: our ideas about art were formed at some point in history; and prevailing ideas about art will diverge from ours, some day, whether we like it or not. the world changes, art changes. we can choose to continue learning about it, or not.

but to copy what someone else has already done is not art, and it will never be. so the element of change and struggle, and this conversation is a vital part.

[Brian Ellis]

i didnt mean NO one experimented in the darkroom. but i mean is if you take 20 people who work in the darkroom, i bet you would be hard pressed to find one thats done anything outside whats been taught them. and pick away.

True, if you just take 20 darkroom workers at random or 20 "average" people who happened to have a darkroom. But you were saying that a lack of experimentation is one of the factors that distinguished photography from painting and made it difficult for photography to be accepted as an art form. And I was disagreeing, by pointing out that a lot of experimentation went on by major figures in photography as long ago as the late 19th century. If you just pick any 20 people who own a paint brush and some canvas I doubt that you'll find a lot of experimentation there either. Experimentation of significance in either art form is the experimentation being done by significant artists, not a bunch of people who just happened to paint or photograph. And I think there was quite a lot of that going on by major figures in photography well before photography became an accepted art form.

[cyrus]

I gravitate twards abandoned mills, alley ways, graffiti. This is something that is all over where I live. I try and find the beauty hidden in these things that otherwise would be considered "eyesoars".
Tim

I guess I should not have used the word eyesore to refer to Eggleston photos. Derelict eyesores do indeed usually make interesting photos. Egglestons stuff isn't about that though - they're just stuff. A car. A tricycle. A perfectly boring suburban street. Not an eyesore, not Ansel Adams -- nothing in particular. Empty, devoid, mundane, banal, boring. The only thing that makes them interesting is that the passage of time has made some of the photos nostalgic (70's fashions and styles are fun to look at) but I doubt that Eggleston intentionally sought that effect.

The film said something interesting - Eggleston never said anythng that caused the least bit of controversy and his successwas attributed in some part to that - which really, is quite revealing.

There are two reactions to this observation that Eggleson-type photos are boring and mundane: one is to suggest that really, there's something very clever hidden in these otherwise banal-looking photos which you'll notice if you only look closely enough and are smart enough ("Oh see the little dog and the hydrant! Oh THAT'S what this photo is about!" - but is it?)

The other reaction to to proclaim that art is all subjective, relative and need not justify itself, that all new fads of art have been ridiculed by the old fads that they replaced, and that's just how the world works. This is just taking relativism to a vanishing point. After all the Cubists had an idea. The impressonists too. Someone explain to me what the idea of Eggleston-type photos are? Does this stuff really present a NEW way to see the world as the Cubists and Impressionists did? Or is it just a boring strip mall, nothing more, nothing less.

[cyrus]

Based on studying design, I'd go along with the idea that there are inherent sensibilities about visual form. But I don't see this leading to any timeless ideas about art.

If we were bound by any enduring principles, then we wouldn't see every generation shaking up audiences with new ways of seeing.

But do these sorts of Eggleston photos really represent a "new ways of seeing" -- or just boring snapshots of cars and powerlines which don't have anythng in particular new or interesting about them?

[cyrus]

i'm interested in a lot of things that i see in eggleston's work (and in stephen shore's, and robert adams', etc.).

most interesting to me is their ability to find something intriguing, and maybe even remarkable, in the kinds of scenes we walk by every day without noticing. or at least without noticing in a positive way.

If he did that then I wouldnt be complainng!
I keep looking and I still don't see anything particularly remarkable or intriguing. What's remarkable about them is the absence of anything remarkable. They're remarkably mundane.

[steve barry]

True, if you just take 20 darkroom workers at random or 20 "average" people who happened to have a darkroom. But you were saying that a lack of experimentation is one of the factors that distinguished photography from painting and made it difficult for photography to be accepted as an art form. And I was disagreeing, by pointing out that a lot of experimentation went on by major figures in photography as long ago as the late 19th century. If you just pick any 20 people who own a paint brush and some canvas I doubt that you'll find a lot of experimentation there either. Experimentation of significance in either art form is the experimentation being done by significant artists, not a bunch of people who just happened to paint or photograph. And I think there was quite a lot of that going on by major figures in photography well before photography became an accepted art form.

Brian - from my experience, people i see and watch in my BFA program - in general they learn to draw or paint by experiment. but with photography, by and large much more follow a set of steps and recipes. and want the "secret" to how this is done or that is done - instead of playing with it. and its that way with my friends in different art programs all over the country. just an observation though. and i guess whats it matter anyhow.

[Nathan Potter]

I dunno. I do not get overly excited about Egglestons' work but find it just interesting. My take always was that a degree of banality was what he was trying to show, That is his view of the suburban scene was sterility. He wanted to show simply how boring American life could be by shoving it down the viewers throat using visual elements that are so common as to infuriate serious critics of his work.

That's just my take.

Nate Potter

[Michael Gordon]

I don't understand why we have to continue this cycle of foolishness.

For the entertainment value it provides the LF Forum? :p

I don't always agree with you, Paul, but I almost always learn something from your words.

I'm enjoying everyone's perspectives and being enlightened. Thank you.

[Struan Gray]

Criticising photographs of the 'banal' just for being banal is a brave move: you are taking on some of the giants of art history. The truly ironic thing is that the people who get so upset about banal photography are usually the ones fetishing earlier art movements inspired by precisely the same concerns, and criticised by contemporaries for precisely the same things. Vermeer and Monet had banal subject matter too.

Which is not to say that any photograph of something banal is going to be good, but that basing your critique on the subject matter and generalities of the presentation is a losing proposition from the start - unless, of course, you are just trying to raise a laugh from the other dogs round the poker table.

There do seem to be instinctive reactions to symmetry and proportion, just as most children and untaught singers tend to sing in unison, but art pictures, like art music, tend almost by definition to seek to express more than the simple things that everyone can do in their sleep. I think of Friedlander's compositional style as being syncopated jazz to conventional landscape's romantic symphony. Velvia is a cheap boom box backbeat :-)

My favourite photographers show me the world as they find it, and do not go seeking out the last few places that look like the collective memory imagines they should. They do so with a sense of spatial rhythm that is informed by other traditions than only C18th and C19th landscape painting, and they are no less adept at composition and lighting than the canonical greats, they are merely different.

A final irony: the current art darlings of the photographic world really do construct perfect realities with readily comprehensible visual structure. They don't seem to be any more liked here at lf.info than the banal crew. What's a poor artist to do?

[Brian K]

Brian K - if what you say is true....than the opposite would also be true. the bad lighting/composition/etc. should effect the opposite emotions that the good lighting/compositions effect, whatever they are? so the bad lighting and composition should be as important as the good is when making decisions about lighting/composition - if what you are trying to do is effect a viewers emotions. but it sounds like you have dismissed them, as less worthy, cutting out at least half the possibilities the photo could be, or at least the emotions it could effect, with the rigidity of "correct" lighting and composition.

your photo of the power lines is killer.

Steve, bad lighting can be used for the proper affect in the right circumstances, however the biggest problem I have with this whole mundane, banal type of photographs is that they are just plain boring. If they managed to shoot something banal and make some interesting out of it that to me would be creative and interteresting, however the vast majority of the work i have seen of this genre doesn't do anything approaching that. All it does is say to the world that photography requires no talent or skill.

Affect the viewers emotions? Like by eliciting the emotion of boredom? To me generating the emotion of boredom in the viewers of one's work is not successful image making. I think that this type of work has gone a long way to make photography as an art seem like an oxymoron. Imagery that looks like anyone on the planet, without the slightest bit of skill, creativity or even intention, could produce on any day, at anytime, without any thought, does not elevate photography. All it is is more white noise imagery with which we are bombarded. And when the intelligentsia of the art world jump all over these images with lavish praise, it just seems to many, if not most people, that the Emperor has no clothes.

BTW thank you for the compliment about my Powerlines photo. It is my humble attempt to make something more out of a routine, mundane scene. Hopefully I succeeded and have not contributed to the mass of pointless images out there.

[Henry Ambrose]

I've seen Ruscha's strip photos in person - they're pretty fascinating. One of the things I enjoy about this type of deadpan photography is getting to stop and look at whatever it is the photographer is trying to show us. I think just stopping and looking has value even if we aren't moved by a particular photo.

If you look at a group of these you'll find something good there along with those you judge to be bad or that leave you shaking your head. Which is the whole point for me - that these photos make you think a little about something you might not consider otherwise.

My problem with this stuff is the interpretation that surrounds them, not the photos. I think its mostly B.S. or as I termed it earlier "art babble". The blather only does a disservice to the photos for me - I like to take this stuff straight as it is presented. I'm pretty sure that's what these photographers meant for us to do.

[paulr]

A final irony: the current art darlings of the photographic world really do construct perfect realities with readily comprehensible visual structure. They don't seem to be any more liked here at lf.info than the banal crew. What's a poor artist to do?

That's a fine point. Everyone's talking about Eggleston as if he's a cutting edge Big Thing ... which he was over 30 years ago. Now he's a cannonized old fart. Most of the contemporary work I see on the big white walls looks nothing like his.

[paulr]

IEgglestons stuff isn't about that though - they're just stuff. A car. A tricycle. A perfectly boring suburban street. Not an eyesore, not Ansel Adams -- nothing in particular. Empty, devoid, mundane, banal, boring.

I just wish you'd entertain the possibility that some of us get more out of it than that. Personally I find his work formally exquisite, and I find his use of color and color relationships to be amazing. Beyond that, I see them as being about something much greater than the individual bits of subject matter that fall within the frame of a print. I look at them as whole bodies of work, which are about a way of seeing, or more particularly about a way of looking. His work is about investigating the potential visual richness of anything in his world, and in the process a whole sensibility about place and about culture starts to come through.

I'm not telling you to like it. But it would be nice if you'd accept that some of us like it for reasons besides Szarkowski telling us to like it. I go back to it often, and each time I see more.

[Struan Gray]

The current big thing seems to be to take photographs of your friends lounging around in their underwear. As an advance on square-on industrial sidings it has it's attractions, but it gets tiresome almost as fast. And they're all so young :-)

There are those working with banal subject matter but with a more traditional sense of being obliged to try and attract the observer. Eric Fredine is one of my favourites (www.ericfredine.com).

[Brian K]

Photography is becoming more and more a Rorschach test. And that's understandable in the incredibly narcissistic society that we have become. Looking at an artist's work is no longer about what the artist is trying to communicate, instead it's all about US, and how it makes US feel and what WE think. And the advantage of ambiguous or deadpan or banal work is that we are better able to project ourselves more onto the art, it's like a blank canvas in a way.

So much of the work i see today impresses me. I am impressed with the length of the rationalizations required as to why it has meaning. Why is the boring poorly executed street scene, done by a famous photographer, that much more meaningful than exactly the same scene done by an 8 year old? If we were to strip the names off the images and view the work done by the "hot" photographers today and include it with the work of high school photo students, would the name photographer's work actually stand out?

[scott_6029]

I struggle with this type of imagery as well. It is interesting in art when you are first at something you obtain 'status' of some sort...not that he was necessarily 'first' - but I am always interested in how we treat 'firsts' in the art world. There is the creative element, the aesthetic and the historical element. This seems to lean more towards creative and historical rather than aesthetic...I do struggle with the creative and historical on this one though. An interesting test would be to post images like this with no reconizeable name attached and see the reaction. The challenge for me in my photography is to see many of the same things differently.

[Bruce Watson]

I don't see why a strip mall has an inherently better chance of artistic success than a mountain lake (assuming you aren't equating "success" with sales price, publicity, etc). Seems to me that either has an equal chance for artistic success and which is artistically successful depends on the artist, not the subject matter (again, not equating "success" with money, fame, etc.).

You just haven't met the photography curator at my local art museum yet. I think that she could explain why one has a better chance than the other. What she likes (judging from the exhibits she curates) are pictures of people, particularly of people doing weird and/or mundane things. I think what she really wants is something that looks like a still frame from a movie, only with higher production values and without the motion blur. One of these that sticks out in my mind was of a "family" eating dinner at a picnic table outside a mobile home at dusk. The information with the photo (which was at least 50 x 40 inches, but grainy enough that it was almost certainly MF) said that the photographer carted a tractor trailer load of lighting equipment and generators out to the trailer park that caught his eye and spent something like four days with a handful of assistants setting this scene up. It really looked more like an old diorama from the natural history museum than a photograph.

Being shown in an art museum is artistic success, yes? And it must sell to support the huge outlay of cash to make it happen, which means that the photographer can keep working. This is artistic success too, yes?

I've yet to see her hang an exhibit with any photographs that didn't show the "heavy hand of man" extensively. For her, photography is about humans, what they look like, what they do, and in particular the mess they make. Nothing else need apply. Clearly art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

[Terence McDonagh]

While I agree that I don't "get" their stuff, I think it's just different strokes for different folks.

Most of my friends can't understand why I photograph steel mills, tomb stones, etc. When I discovered Plowden and the Bechers, I was amazed to find others interested in the same topics. But while I love Plowden's stuff, the Bechers approach doesn't do much for me.

I'm sure in 50 years, it will all look nostalgic. Look at all the bland photography of NYC in the early 20th century (the Museum of the City of New York currently has a nice exhibit). It documented daily life, but wasn't necessarily meant to be art. But the nice technique of the photographers and the nostalgia inducing effects of time have meant museum exhibits examining them.

[paulr]

You just haven't met the photography curator at my local art museum yet. I think that she could explain why one has a better chance than the other. What she likes (judging from the exhibits she curates) are pictures of people, particularly of people doing weird and/or mundane things....

in defense of curators who show stuff that i don't like, i'll suggest that they're doing more than just showing stuff that they DO like.

if they work for a contemporary art museum, their job is to collect and show work that represent's significant movements in art, right now. the work isn't significant because the curator happens to like it; it's significant because there's an undercurrent of people doing it, and of other people responding to it.

of course the curators influence the process, but they get the job because they have a finger on the pulse, not because they've got magically good taste.

[tim atherton]

On Eggleston, one of the best (off beat) partial explanations of what he is doing is in Geoff Dyer's book The Ongoing Moment, where he says in part:


"William Eggleston's photographs look like they were taken by a Martian who lost the ticket for his flight home and ended up working at a gun shop in a small town near Memphis. On the weekends, he searches for that lost ticket - it must be somewhere - with a haphazard thoroughness that confounds established methods of investigation. It could be under a bed among a bunch of down-at-heel shoes; or in the Thanksgiving turkey that seems, somehow, to be 69ing itself; in the dusty forecourt of Roy's Motel; in the spiky ears of a cactus; in a microscopic tangle of grass and weed; under the seat of a kid's looming tricycle - in fact, it could be anywhere. In the course of his search, he interviews odd people - odd in the Diane Arbus sense - who, though polite, look at him askance. He suspects that some of them might once have been in a predicament similar to his own but have since put down roots. Not so the guy standing naked in the red haze of a graffiti-scrawled room: he's gonna find that thing if it kills him. Trouble is, he can't remember what that thing is..."

[tim atherton]

Ah - found a longer part of that chapter as an article in the Independent

very little "art speak" which is one of the good things about Dyers take on photography

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20020705/ai_n12634348

[Bruce Watson]

in defense of curators who show stuff that i don't like, i'll suggest that they're doing more than just showing stuff that they DO like.

if they work for a contemporary art museum, their job is to collect and show work that represent's significant movements in art, right now. the work isn't significant because the curator happens to like it; it's significant because there's an undercurrent of people doing it, and of other people responding to it.

of course the curators influence the process, but they get the job because they have a finger on the pulse, not because they've got magically good taste.

I'm not really questioning the curator. I don't doubt that she's doing the most professional job she can given the political and budgetary constraints she has to work with.

My point was just to illustrate "why a strip mall has an inherently better chance of artistic success than a mountain lake."

[tim atherton]

again, on Eggleston, there are a few good links here as well. There are a couple of quite good, fairly straightforward articles listed there in the Guardian

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

[Bruce Watson]

Nicely said.

[paulr]

My point was just to illustrate "why a strip mall has an inherently better chance of artistic success than a mountain lake."

Got it.

Though I think Struan is right that we should actually place our bets on the big color print of the girl sitting around in her underwear.

[Bruce Watson]

Got it.

Though I think Struan is right that we should actually place our bets on the big color print of the girl sitting around in her underwear.

We always lag about three years behind the "big cities" for this kind of thing. At least I've got something to look forward to, eh?

[cyrus]

I just wish you'd entertain the possibility that some of us get more out of it than that. Personally I find his work formally exquisite.

And I am happy for you! That's why I'm expressing frustration! Please explain it to me!:confused:

[Michael Alpert]

Struan Grey's response (#55) was perceptive and to the point. That is the kind of intelligent statement that makes reading this forum worthwhile. An historical understanding of photography (and art in general) leads one away from opinions based solely on any given photograph's subject matter. Art is sometimes hard to fathom because living is complex and always hard to fathom.

[ljb0904]

"My opinion is that they capture life more realistically then the idealized world of Ansel Adams or Edward Weston."

Why is a pile of trash or urban scene more realistic than a mountain lake or desert scene? Isn't it just that it's more immediate? Both are very real, tangible subjects. One is a statement of humanity, one is something humanity needs to protect. Where is the difference in realism?

"most typical landscape/nature photographers think what they do is art"

I think that statement should be corrected to most people with a camera think what they do is art. Have you seen the number of photoblogs out there? No need to pick on landscape/nature photography. It's a valid art form, just as photographing cars, people, mines, quarries, sidewalks, parking lots, etc.

[steve barry]

"most typical landscape/nature photographers think what they do is art"

I think that statement should be corrected to most people with a camera think what they do is art. Have you seen the number of photoblogs out there? No need to pick on landscape/nature photography. It's a valid art form, just as photographing cars, people, mines, quarries, sidewalks, parking lots, etc.

your right, i stand corrected.

[Hollis]

A photo doesn't have to say or do anything. It just is. Now, granted, the good ones 'do' something for the viewer (and not all viewers). Thats the beauty of it. Personally, I don't produce art for anyone but myself. Of course, the old adage of 'if you have the best photo in the world and no one sees it, is it still the best photo in the world?' My answer is I don't care. Its not yours to care about. So, make the photos you want and to hell with what people really think.

[jnantz]

i like streetscape photographs just because
they are a good way to see what a place looked like.
i liked the movie "smoke" too.
the world is mundane, most of what we do is the same thing over and over.
and most people are pretty much oblivious to their surroundings.
show a person a photograph of a place they pass every day ( for 5 or 10 years )
they probably don't even know where it is... too too busy to notice
chatting on the cell,
compaining about their latté being the wrong flavor,
getting harrassed by the tailgating suv
...

i like stripmalls, the first ones ( tax blocks ). their pre world war 1
architecture, crenelated or ziggaurat roofs and concrete block construction
are a nice contrast to the pre-fab world we live in today.
i don't really like the pre-fab world, seems too much like ephemera ...
but i guess if someone doesn't take photographs of that too, we'll forget
in 4 years when the building that replaced the ww1 tax block is also torn down
for another building that was meant to last 4 years.
seems that the photographs of strip malls and power lines are the only
things have permanence ...

[antiquark]

As an aside: occasionally when Stephen Shore is mentioned in a web forum, someone posts their own picture of a house or an intersection, and says, "look, I can take pictures like Shore too."

The interesting thing is that Shore's pictures are usually 100 times better than the imitation! I can't explain it, but something about Shore's artistry elevates his pictures beyond the mundane.

Just my 2 cents...

[Struan Gray]

Michael, thank you.

Brian: your photo of the birds on the power lines is my favourite :-)

[George E. Sheils]

One of the nicest portfolios I've seen in a while....


http://www.alan-george.com/root/index.php?gallery=Roaming&image=http%3A%2F%2Ffarm2.static.flickr.com%2F1262%2F921006736_d8a7c81643_o.jpg

and I wouldn't have normally thought too much about strip malls and power lines but when you a series of these pictures in context with each other I think they are very interesting.

Well done Alan!

[ageorge]

Thank you George, you made my day.

[paulr]

Yeah, thanks for the link. His other portfolios are nice too.

[steve barry]

"I am afraid that there are more people than I can imagine who can go no further than appreciating a picture that is a rectangle with an object in the middle of it, which they can identify. They don't care what is around the object as long as nothing interferes with the object itself, right in the center. Even after the lessons of Winogrand and Friedlander, they don't get it. They respect their work because they are told by respectable institutions that they are important artists, but what they really want to see is a picture with a figure or an object in the middle of it. They want something obvious. The blindness is apparent when someone lets slip the word 'snapshot'. Ignorance can always be covered by 'snapshot'. The word has never had any meaning. I am at war with the obvious."

-William Eggleston (from a conversation with Mark Holborn, at breakfast, Greenwood, Mississippi, February 1988)

its at the end of his book "The Democratic Forest"

[JBrunner]

In restaurants, downtown buildings, etc. Utah abounds with photographs entitled "Main Street, 1910" and such. In 1910, a photograph of main street was completely pedestrian to the lay person, and perhaps to other photographers. A hundred years later it is mezmerizing, and that fact that some photographer took the time, at that time, to see something interesting in the everyday, gives us that record.

I view many of these types of work in that context.

[cyrus]

"I am afraid that there are more people than I can imagine who can go no further than appreciating a picture that is a rectangle with an object in the middle of it, which they can identify. They don't care what is around the object as long as nothing interferes with the object itself, right in the center. Even after the lessons of Winogrand and Friedlander, they don't get it. They respect their work because they are told by respectable institutions that they are important artists, but what they really want to see is a picture with a figure or an object in the middle of it. They want something obvious. The blindness is apparent when someone lets slip the word 'snapshot'. Ignorance can always be covered by 'snapshot'. The word has never had any meaning. I am at war with the obvious."

-William Eggleston (from a conversation with Mark Holborn, at breakfast, Greenwood, Mississippi, February 1988)

its at the end of his book "The Democratic Forest"


That's not really fair now, is it?
I could just as easily say that the reason why people see something significant in Eggleston's photos is "because they are told by respectable institutions that they are important artists"...

[cyrus]

In restaurants, downtown buildings, etc. Utah abounds with photographs entitled "Main Street, 1910" and such. In 1910, a photograph of main street was completely pedestrian to the lay person, and perhaps to other photographers. A hundred years later it is mezmerizing, and that fact that some photographer took the time, at that time, to see something interesting in the everyday, gives us that record.

I view many of these types of work in that context.


Yes but do you think Eggleston sees his work in that context? I doubt that any of these photographers are thinking "Man, this parking lot will sure look interesting in a 100 years..."

[Kirk Gittings]

Everyone's talking about Eggleston as if he's a cutting edge Big Thing ... which he was over 30 years ago. Now he's a cannonized old fart. Most of the contemporary work I see on the big white walls looks nothing like his. Paul

I agree. Did you guys ever have these discussions 30 years ago when these artists were actually controversial? I find it curious that we have these heated discussions over photographers like Eggleston, Robert Adams, Meyerowitz, Gothke etc. All of whom are very old news, whose aesthetic should be viewed with some nostalgia rather than as a current threat to some vague traditional photographic aesthetic values that were established by even moldier older artists. What is really new to talk about? I am really out of what is currently hot.

[cyrus]

Paul

I agree. Did you guys ever have these discussions 30 years ago when these artists were actually controversial? I find it curious that we have these heated discussions over photographers like Eggleston, Robert Adams, Meyerowitz, Gothke etc. All of whom are very old news, whose aesthetic should be viewed with some nostalgia rather than as a current threat to some vague traditional photographic aesthetic values that were established by even moldier older artists. What is really new to talk about? I am really out of what is currently hot.

Just to clear up -- I'm not particularly threatened by this, I just don't get it.
I'm not sure what "traditional photographic aesthetic values" is, really.

Having tried my hand at a few nudes, I have to also complain about the whole "goth" and "Suicide Girls" and "Fetish" thing -- now done to death. How many semi-naked young Midwestern middle class White girls showing how fashionably rebellious they are by dyeing their hair pink and inserting pins in their lips can you see until it gets boringly repetitious?

Yawn.

[paulr]

Cyrus, have you looked at much Walker Evans?

[Struan Gray]

...what is currently hot.

1) People who copy Alec Soth
2) People who copy Candida Hofer (Struth and Gursky have gone commercial)
3) People who copy Nan Goldin, but who live in comfy suburbia.


My own personal landscape muses are Friedlander, Metzker and Gowin. They are all producing work that is different from the photographs that made them famous, but that's probably not enough to make them contemporary.

I am also intrigued by contemporary photographer-artists like Stephen Gill and Darron Almond who use photography as part of a wider art-making activity. They are more photographic than, say, the way Rauchenberg or Warhol incorporated photography in their work, but they are not as process-tied or fine-print oriented as most photographers.

[CG]

Why is the boring poorly executed street scene, done by a famous photographer, that much more meaningful than exactly the same scene done by an 8 year old?

Important question. Lets get rid of one pre-judgemental concept, "poorly executed", and ask again why an artist's work is more meaningful than an eight year old's. Of course, barring fearsome visual precocity, the eight year old wouldn't know where to point the camera, wouldn't have a sense of composition, wouldn't know why the mundane might be important, wouldn't know how to get a good exposure ... and so on. In brief, the eight year old would have not the art, the life experience, nor the craft to make a coherent and interesting statement. If enough people find work enduringly interesting, the work is probably pretty good. Not everyone will agree on every artist but that keeps it interesting.


If we were to strip the names off the images and view the work done by the "hot" photographers today and include it with the work of high school photo students, would the name photographer's work actually stand out?

A lot of the time yes. With some newly "hot" ones who may fade rather quickly, maybe not. I think quality has, or maybe is, a kind of staying power. In today's overheated gallery world, a lot of work may not do well thirty years from now. I suspect there will always be a few that withstand the test of time.

Eggleston, Rusha and Shore seem to hold up. Sometime it takes a long time to "get" it. I hated, HATED, Philip Guston's late work for the longest time. Now I think he's a monumental figure in American art. A lot of the new photographers I don't get, but in thirty years?

I think this is a really good discussion.

Best,

C

[domenico Foschi]

Yesterday afternoon I was looking at the distant mountains north of where I live and the smog had made for a wonderful visual where these mountains could faintly be visible.
I started to drive my car heading north for the right spot, I drove and I drove but power lines spitefully were always positioning themselves in front of me.
I had thought to find a vantage point, maybe at the top of a building, in the meantime the light was changing...nothing seemed approachable, I was furious.
I must have driven for 10 miles and I saw a downtown area.
Frustrated I stopped determined to take some pictures anyway, not of my original subject maybe, but driving in traffic for 10 miles and then going back with the tail between my legs wasn't an option.
I saw a very interesting angle close to a parking lot which in the ground glass looked even better. I made 2 exposures.
The irony of the story is that the main subject, the one that gives the most meaning to the image was actually a pole with power line.
These poor power lines, all they want is a little attention.