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Frank Gohlke's new website
Frank Gohlke, a leading figure in American landscape photography just updated his website. The site now includes a few of the projects he has been working on, a listing of books he is in, as well as a few of his writings.
Frank is having a mid-career retrospective of his work which goes on tour in the US starting this fall with a new monograph. Take a look when you get a chance.
http://www.frankgohlke.com
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
OK I'm probably asking for it...but what is so great about his work and why is he a leading figure? I find it very mediocre and boring.
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
Doug, you may not be alone with your query.
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Doug Dolde
OK I'm probably asking for it...but what is so great about his work and why is he a leading figure? I find it very mediocre and boring.
Ditto
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
OK, this is one of those digital vs. traditional arguments, but here goes. In oversimplified, simple terms, there have been two major threads in American Landscape photography, romanticized and documentary. While I am a practitioner of the romanticized, I have a deep appreciation for the anti-romanticized, because I think it keeps the medium real and is capable of stimulating more profound political discussions of the plight of landscape, the environment etc. New Topographics, when it emerged was a revelation if you were around back then. It should be looked at from a different standard as documentary photography. Gohlke was one of the originals and had/has IMO a very refined and contemplative eye. I don't want to do it myself (I tried in graduate school), it is not my "aesthetic nature", but I am very glad it is out there.
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
Frank does wonderful work; he's also an excellent teacher. He taught as a visitor for years at my college. I never had the opportunity to study with him, but I met him a couple of times and found him to be wise and insightful. His recent solo show at MoMA (the mount saint hellens work) was stunning.
Kirk, it's interesting to look at the idea of un-romantic landscape work as anti-romantic, especially in light of Wallace Stevens' observations that anti-romanticism is actually a kind of romanticism. And possibly the purest kind of romanticism (even though many practitioners would shudder at the thought ...)
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
Ahh I get it...His website home page calls himself a "Leading figure in American landscape photography"
But I really DON't get it despite these sophist explainations. To me it's still boring and unimaginative.
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I don't get it either. Boring as hell IMHO no matter what it is called.
But if he makes a living doing it, them good for him.
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
Also, Frank is a leading landscape photographer by any standard, and by the fact that he is in virtually every history of photography that includes the 20th century. That is not an idle claim by any means. Look at his bio. He has a better track record than all of us combined x 20 going back to the 70's.
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
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Originally Posted by
Michael Kadillak
I don't get it either. Boring as hell IMHO no matter what it is called.
But if he makes a living doing it, them good for him.
Trying to take a non-boring shot of suburban USA landscape is plenty hard. All the strip malls, fast food joints and used car lots look the same.
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
Rather like the b/w shot on the front page as 4the rest.... 10/10 4 Mediocrity!
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
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Originally Posted by
cyrus
Trying to take a non-boring shot of suburban USA landscape is plenty hard. All the strip malls, fast food joints and used car lots look the same.
Yes, today, but in 25 or so years it will be historical. What will the landscape look like then?
Just goes to show you that opinions are like A..holes, everybody has one. Me, I don't get the out of focus poorly developed images that a lot of people like to swoon over.
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Hmmm ..... maybe I don't get the critiques. By this token is Todd Duncan boring?
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To me the images are boring, too!
Can`t see at all why he should be a leading figure!?
Leading to what?
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
I read all the posts before looking at the website, and we all are aware that contemporary fame in photography has little to do with the quality of the work. They look to me like the work of a very promising first year photography student. Not banal, just not particularly interesting (I don't know if Michael's use of "Boring" is too strong, or not strong enough).
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
In their day, the 19th century documentary landscape photographs by photographers like O"Sullivan were considered useful information but boring aesthetically compared to a real artist like the romantic landscape painter Thomas Moran. Because of the battle to establish photography as a unique art form we now look back at O'Sullivan's work with a different attitude. We see it as a quintessential photographic aesthetic. The work of Gohlke, Robert Adams etc. are very much in that O'Sullivan tradition, which was "rediscovered" in the 70's by a young generation of landscape photographers with New Topographics.
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
Kirk has referrenced New Topographics. This was a major show at George Eastman House (I believe) in the late 60's or early 70's. What the show was getting at was a new school of landscape photographer who was not so interested in the "What a great view that is", "Isn't this pretty","Ain't nature grand" style that predominated at the time, but rather an interest in showing what things really look like more often than not in America and the affects of humans upon the landscape. Consequently, since the subject matter tendes to be our everyday surroundings rather than National Parks and the great wide-open West, the images may seem banal, indeed. That does not mean they are poinless or lacking in beauty ("Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty" in Keat's words.)
Other photographers featured in the show (who may be undeserving in the opinion of some on this forum) were, if memory serves, Robert Adams, Lewis Boltz, Stephen Shore, Nicholas Nixon and the Bechers.
I took a class from Frank in Minneapolis for about two months in the early 70's. He is a wonderful teacher - I got a lot from him. He did not try to make me make pictures like his. From my contact with him, I can attest that the pictures he makes are all very carefully considered and are not random, nor do I think that the average (or even above average) first year photography student could come close to producing a body of work like his.
While his prints do not look like standard West Coast photographer fine prints, this is a concious decision on his part. He did, after all, study with Paul Caponigro but did not want to become a pale imitator of his master.
Having said all this, I admit that I do not like all of his work, but I believe he has an individual vision that he has pursued consistenly for nearly forty years.
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
For non-traditional landscapes (perfectly composed, extremely intellectually stimulating, elegant without an excess of "visual beauty") I prefer the work of David Plowden. He has something to say, and does it well.
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
If one looks at all the "series" in the web site, we see many of the photographs were taken in the 70s and 80s. So I can buy what Kirk is saying that these are examples of documentary landscape that is telling us "hey, what AA et al are doing is outside the norm, this is our reality!" Having said that, I don't see why documentary photographs cannot also be aesthetically pleasing. For example, the grain eleveator shots. I have seen far, far better grain elevator shots that those presented in the web site, in fact for my taste the best shot is the one in the home page, the rest are mediocre at best.
In the end, it is a matter of taste and maybe historical relevance. What really dissappointed me were the photographs in the series 43.50 N. These are contemporary photographs taken in 2002 and they show the exact same vision. In other words it seems to me there has been no growth and he is doing the same ol' thing just in color this time.
Anybody who is not aware of environmental/consumerism issues presently is either living on a cave or too poor to afford a TV and has bigger things to worry about than the environment. The documentary landscape photography showing us these issues has become a tired cliche and is manily used by some present day photographers to garner notoriety. For Mr. Gohlke to continue in the same vein it seem to me he has fallen in a rut.
OTOH, if these are just projects, like "well, I will take pics along this parallel" without any relevance to environmental issues then I don't get it, why take such banal shot?
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I am with Jorge, my favorite image is the homepage one.
I understand where Gohlke is going and I admire what he, Robert Adams and others have done to show our world as most people see if everyday. But this everyday realism is why the images seem boring and out of date, in my opinion. We see these scenes day in and day out and so images of them tend to pass through our memory pretty quickly.
I agree with Jorge also in that I wish his new work was different than the old ( other than being in color). It would be nice to see an important and established artist push into new directions and take chances with their work. I know I would learn a great deal more about the artist and their work if I could see this.
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hmmmm? whatever...not my cup of tea...
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
Kirk, I believe that I understand your point, and as a teacher you are more knowledgeable than I on this subject. However, O'Sullivan, and his contemporaries Watkins and Vroman, were documenting the West with artistry to their work. I do not believe that the passage of time has made their work any better than it was at conception; for the most part the work was well seen and surely not boring or mundane.
Anyway, my two cents; your work is much more to my liking!
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His Mount St. Helens foto's do not turn me on , He has nothing on Weston or ansel with that series: My two Cents
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
Thanks Merg, for those kind words.
Quote:
So I can buy what Kirk is saying that these are examples of documentary landscape that is telling us "hey, what AA et al are doing is outside the norm, this is our reality!" Having said that, I don't see why documentary photographs cannot also be aesthetically pleasing.
Jorge
I came to the same conclusion Jorge for my own work after exploring an aesthetic similar to Robert Adams, who was my mentor for awhile in the early 1980's. Not to say that I don't find much of RA's work aesthetically pleasing, I do, and I deeply respect what he did, but for myself I need more personal drama in my landscapes, which more reflects my relationship with the American West. Ultimately I found I was not an observer of landscape but instead landscape became a vehicle for expressing personal ideas about spirituality etc.
All that being said, I am forever grateful that LF photography is not all AA/Weston all the time.......
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
For you book collectors, try finding a copy of the original show catalog.
If you can, they cost about $1200.
I've seen it and a relative owns it. To me it wasn't very impressive.
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
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Originally Posted by
Kirk Gittings
but for myself I need more personal drama in my landscapes, which more reflects my relationship with the American West. .....
Which is the key point here. Kirk acknowledges that drama is ONE possible goal for a landscape photograph. Without coming out and saying it, a lot of people are suggesting that if if it's not dramatic, it's not interesting.
Gohlke and others like him have shown bodies of work based on more subtle relationships of forms, and more subtle relationships between the artist and the subject. It's not fair to say their work is "just documentary." I happen to be drawn to the esthetics of the work as much as to any other aspect of it. It just happens that this work requires more quiet reflection than some of the more bombastic, romantic types of landscape.
If work bores you, it might be because it doesn't have much to say. But it might also be because you haven't looked closely enough. I think of William Carlos Williams, the grandfather of anti-romantic American Poets, who said, "I want to write poems that you can understand, but you got to try hard."
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"If work bores you...it might also be because you haven't looked closely enough."
I always worry about that -- a lot.
I come from an older generation where a good image should whack you in the face. But the new generation is a lot more image conscious, from being exposed continuously to TV, and advertisements, and video games, etc. I wonder if they are able to discern visual messages in an image that I can't see -- or, instead, if they are so blase that they must be REALLY whacked over the head?
I don't know the answer to that -- I just know that this work does nothing for me.
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
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Originally Posted by
Greg Lockrey
Yes, today, but in 25 or so years it will be historical. What will the landscape look like then?
Just goes to show you that opinions are like A..holes, everybody has one. Me, I don't get the out of focus poorly developed images that a lot of people like to swoon over.
I suspect that the used car lots, fast food joints and strip malls will all look pretty much the same in 50 years.
People & fashions though change. I have spent a few rolls simply shooting people standing at a pedestrian crosswalk here in NYC and other such mundane shots. Right now, there's nothing interesting about the photos. However I suspect a lot of my street photos will only start to be "interesting" in oh, say, 30 years. I'll be the Atget of NYC I tell you!!!
But maybe I should shoot a set of similar photos...out of focus...with peppers! Lotsa peppers!
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
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Originally Posted by
cyrus
I'll be the Atget of NYC I tell you!!!
But maybe I should shoot a set of similar photos...out of focus...with peppers! Lotsa peppers!
:D :D :D Don't forget to use that lens you dropped on the concrete too or you won't get THAT effect that sells till your 30 year old Atget like prints get discovered.
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
paulr, I always appreciate your thoughtful posts; this one is no exception.
I believe that the work under discussion fails to move me simply because it has little to say. I have looked closely and "tried hard", believe me.
My life in photography spans a few decades and I recall an afternoon spent with John Szarkowski at MOMA in 1963. John looked at my portfolio, and suggested that perhaps I should make round prints rather than my traditional West Coast 8x10 format. I enjoyed the afternoon with him, but did not resort to the idea of gimmickry to advance my career.
So, what is my point? I am suggesting that much of the work we see is promoted by museum curators, directors and teachers, and with their stamp of approval becomes work of great artistic and social significance. And, if the images cannot deliver the message, ample wall space is reserved for rhetoric.
Just my thought after a long career, but I keep an open mind and try to understand.
Regards,
Merg
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kirk Gittings
Jorge
I came to the same conclusion Jorge for my own work after exploring an aesthetic similar to Robert Adams, who was my mentor for awhile in the early 1980's. Not to say that I don't find much of RA's work aesthetically pleasing, I do, and I deeply respect what he did, but for myself I need more personal drama in my landscapes, which more reflects my relationship with the American West. Ultimately I found I was not an observer of landscape but instead landscape became a vehicle for expressing personal ideas about spirituality etc.
All that being said, I am forever grateful that LF photography is not all AA/Weston all the time.......
Isn't this what photographic art is all about? To infuse a personal sensibility into the work and create something outside reality? Here is where the problem lies IMO. When a viewer sees this kind of pictures which are proclaimed to be of great relevance by curators etc, but which seem to have little PERSONAL involment they are left wondering "WTF, I can do that!" And in many cases is true, they CAN do that. IMO this is what has hurt photography as an art medium.
I understand this kind of photography as a reaction to the "pretty picture" phase, but when you see the same photographer doing the same kind of work after 30 years with no growth in vision and execution then you can't fail to wonder if this is not some kind artistic con being perpetrated.
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
I looked through his images and they do not do a thing for me. Nada, zero, zip. I found nothing intriguing or exciting about any of them.
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
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Originally Posted by
Jorge Gasteazoro
... When a viewer sees this kind of pictures which are proclaimed to be of great relevance by curators etc, but which seem to have little PERSONAL involment they are left wondering "WTF, I can do that!" And in many cases is true, they CAN do that. IMO this is what has hurt photography as an art medium. ...
In this case it's even worse: My first thought was "WTF, I can do that - better"!
After looking at some hunderds of photos by Bernd und Hilla Becher, i was really impressed that the "Grain Elevator" series was so incredibly boring and liveless. i thought I was immune...
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
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Originally Posted by
Merg Ross
I believe that the work under discussion fails to move me simply because it has little to say.
Another likely possibility is that it simply doesn't speak to you. Which is different from it having nothing to say. There's room for acknowledging personal taste in these discussions, and even personal visual vocabularies. We're all going to understand or connect with a different subset of the good work out there. Art is personal on a lot of levels, so it only makes sense that we experience it differently. Looking at/talking about art would be pretty dull if it were otherwise!
As an aside, I suspect that if Szarkowsky suggested printing your work round, it was for some reason implicit in the work, and not because he wanted you to be gimmicky. I've never seen him promote gimmicks in anyone's work. This isn't to say that you should have taken his advice; only that that there was probably an interesting observation behind it that was worth thinking about.
I had a similar situation with him. He suggested that I print one of my images "meaner, and less luxurious." I didn't end up doing it, but in light of his other comments this helped me see the image in a new way.
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
paulr- Points well taken. Thanks.
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
Hmm. None of the images here appeal to me, but it's clear nonetheless that they appeal to someone, otherwise I doubt this person would have ever been that successful.
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Jorge Gasteazoro
What really dissappointed me were the photographs in the series 43.50 N. These are contemporary photographs taken in 2002 and they show the exact same vision. In other words it seems to me there has been no growth and he is doing the same ol' thing just in color this time.
These look different to me (though I'm unfamiliar with the project outside of the few pics on the website). The 43.50 N. stuff seems much more 'conceptual' than the 70s work. I'm guessing it had to do with exploring within some kind of preconceived constraint. If so, I think it would benefit from some more information than just the handful of pics he gives us.
I think the Sudbury river pics are quite different as well ... I'd never seen these either, and like them very much. Maybe more than I like the more familiar work of his from the 70s.
By the way, it seems the O.P. is one of Frank's students at MassArt ... would be nice if he told us his own persectives, besides quoting from the site.
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
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Originally Posted by
Ben Chase
Hmm. None of the images here appeal to me, but it's clear nonetheless that they appeal to someone, otherwise I doubt this person would have ever been that successful.
Ah, the fallacy of "confirming the consequent."
If A then B
Since B, then A
If his work was appealing, the artist would be successful.
Since he's successful, then his work was appealing.
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
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Originally Posted by
cyrus
If his work was appealing, the artist would be successful.
Since he's successful, then his work was appealing.
Well, that criticism might work for some arguments ... like, "millions of people use magnet therapy, so magnet therapy must work."
But in the world of art, you're not going to be succesful unless your work appeals to a lot of people. There have been thousands of photographers with stronger academic credentials and connections that Gohlke who competed for the same exhibitions, books, public collections, and grants and fellowships. He got them. The only way he did is because his work appealed to those curators and gallerists and publishers and peer juries.
This doesn't objectively prove his work "good" (what could?) ... just that there are a lot of people out there who like it. And it's people who for the most part have a deeper involvement in art than the populist Thomas Kinkaide and Franklin Mint customers.
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
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Originally Posted by
Merg Ross
Kirk, I believe that I understand your point, and as a teacher you are more knowledgeable than I on this subject. However, O'Sullivan, and his contemporaries Watkins and Vroman, were documenting the West with artistry to their work.
but at the time, the opposite was generally considered to be the case. Their work was mostly seen to be lacking in serious artistry
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
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Originally Posted by
Bill_1856
"If work bores you...it might also be because you haven't looked closely enough."
I always worry about that -- a lot.
I come from an older generation where a good image should whack you in the face.
you're older than Walker Evans?
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
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Originally Posted by
paulr
I think the Sudbury river pics are quite different as well ... I'd never seen these either, and like them very much. Maybe more than I like the more familiar work of his from the 70s.
.
came across the Sudbury River book in a local bookstore and grabbed it - it's a very personal lovely little book
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
He is smart and his pictures are as well. That is not to say that all his pictures are just as good as each other, it is to say however that they all are very deliberate. His pictures often have a subtle beauty to them and require more than just a brief glance on a computer screen. A good picture doesn't have to be some striking image that knocks you over with it's content within the first seconds of looking at it, instead perhaps it could be a photo where only once you have had a chance to really look long and closely at it does it really start to suck you in.
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
I would like to ratify what paulr has said - he captured my thoughts pretty well.
The only other point that surprises me is that apparently for many people on this forum, Frank Gohlke is news. He's had two one-man shows at MoMA - one within the last couple of years. As has been pointed out, he has been included in a large number of shows and collections and has had several books published. While that does not mean you have to like his work, I should think that for people interested in large format and landscape he would at least be a known quantity.
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As a proud owner of a beautiefull but small Frank Gohlke print of a grain elevator and after having recived his help in editing a exhibition some ten years ago I feel obliged to come to his defence. - He belongs to a groupe of photographers that renewed the american landschape photography in the seventies and eighties. This groupe was noted and had influence internationally. They showed us in a way that odinary things in our surrondings can be just as interesting as AA’s Wagnerian vistas, and that those things needed to photographed too. The old arguments; “this is something my child would do better” or “even I could do better that this” were prooven obsolite by Mr. Adolf Hitler in the 1930ies when he showed art by many of the greatest artists of the tventieth century as beeing “degenered art” (“Entartete Kunst”).
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
Posted again after some spelling corrections:
As a proud owner of a beautiful but small Frank Gohlke print of a grain elevator and after having received his help in editing a exhibition some ten years ago I feel obliged to come to his defense. - He belongs to a group of photographers that renewed the American landscape photography in the seventies and eighties. This group was noted and had influence internationally. They showed us in a way that ordinary things in our surroundings can be just as interesting as AA’s Wagnerian vistas, and that those things needed to photographed too. The old arguments; “this is something my child would do better” or “even I could do better that this” were proven obsolete by Mr. Adolf Hitler in the 1930ies when he showed art by many of the greatest artists of the twentieth century as being “degenerated art” (“Entartete Kunst”).
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
Mein Führer could take a better picture than that!
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Re: Frank Gohlke's new website
Quote:
Originally Posted by
tim atherton
you're older than Walker Evans?
Tim I am, as they say, "Older than dirt."
When I was starting my collection of photographs (in the '70s), I could not decide on any particular images by Walker Evans. There were many which appealed, but none which said to me that it was the essence of his work. In a sense, that is what makes him so different from the other Masters.
If I were to choose now, it would be his "Citizen of Havana," a tall, thin black man in white suit standing beside a newspaper kiosk. That is my favorite, but I think that there is no such thing as either a typical or definitive piece of his work.
I find it interesting, as well as somewhat puzzling, that Evans doesn't seem to be particularly highly regarded outside the US.