By Reason, or by Faith?

When it comes to “Great” or “Classic” photographers, you might be able to name several, and believe you’re being fair and objective – but did you ever consider the true origins of your most heart-felt convictions?

To what extent did you reason-out such beliefs – or do you mainly accept them on faith?

I asked myself that question when I came across the quote below by Arnold Bennett (1867-1931), an English journalist and novelist who’s still remembered today and whose photo is below. The quote summarizes how a literary work becomes a “Classic,” but his argument – thoughtful & eloquent, if a touch naive – might apply to other arts too, such as photography.

I’ve excerpted it from his handbook Literary Taste: How to Form it (1909), so if it sounds old-fashioned or hopelessly dated – and it might not sound that way to everybody – it’s because the work is more than 100 years old. And besides, few would rank Bennett among top-tier thinkers of culture, certainly not up there w/ his more talented contemporaries, such as Matthew Arnold or George Bernard Shaw, but the man sure is quotable for our purposes. :rolleyes:

So try giving this a quick read w/ an open mind, as it might apply to your most cherished convictions about the art of LF photography:

...The passionate few only have their way by reason of the fact that they are genuinely interested in literature, that literature matters to them. They conquer by their obstinacy alone, by their eternal repetition of the same statements. Do you suppose they could prove to the man in the street that Shakespeare was a great artist? The said man would not even understand the terms they employed. But when he is told ten thousand times, and generation after generation, that Shakespeare was a great artist, the said man believes – not by reason, but by faith. And he too repeats that Shakespeare was a great artist, and he buys the complete works of Shakespeare and puts them on his shelves, and he goes to see the marvelous stage-effects which accompany King Lear or Hamlet, and comes back religiously convinced that Shakespeare was a great artist. All because the passionate few could not keep their admiration of Shakespeare to themselves. This is not cynicism; but truth. And it is important that those who wish to form their literary taste should grasp it...

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• When we’re discussing the best LF photography through the years – Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, etc. – are you one of the “passionate few,” or a “man of the street”?

• Do you go by reason, or by faith?

• Or perhaps by some other means that Bennett would be slow to recognize, but would be profitable for the rest of us to know?

I lost my faith years ago... and am rapidly losing my ability to reason. I see what I see... nothin' more... nothin' less... and that ain't nothin' more than nothin'...

IMO we don't know all the rules, nor do we have a complete knowledge of all that surrounds us socially or physically.

Our myths and stories and theories and postulates and hopes and dreams and various faiths fill in the blanks.

We can sway or be swayed and habit is a tool for that work employed by leaders of family, franchise, friar, or feudal realms.

We do learn though, and we can replace myth with knowledge, but that is a choice, and an emotional one.

Pitting physics and math against psyche and mother against profit and managers; is a war of titans.

While I may be faithful in other areas, Curiosity is the word when it comes to photo history.

We were shown who to like by posters and pop art.

Then anyone with formal education were told who is good predominately through Beaumont Newhall's material. As time went on, I realized that is a very incomplete overview of a vast and interesting topic that can't easily be summarized.

I don't mind disagreeing with someone about who is/isn't a great artist, but I'd rather be learning and shooting.

The statement in that paragraph is a bit vague to be really discussed. What I can glean from this is that Bennett believes in a dichotomy of "taste" and "tasteless" person, evidenced by the studied passionate person and the man on the street examples. For our purposes, and most likely Bennett's, we'll avoid the man on the street. (Also that it is a false dichotomy to start with...) Focusing on the man studied in critiques. How can we be certain of what is good? A pitfall to any critic is passing judgement on a piece, instead of just determining if the piece or body of work is worthy to be viewed critically. An opinion beyond that minimal amount of consideration towards the work should be approached carefully, or we may fall into faithfully following an opinion without objectively viewing for ourselves. With reason and good critics, we gain consensus among the critics to understand and define what has taste and who that taste is for, thus society can define how a work, or body of works, fits with its audiences.

imo, there are all to few good critics in all aspects these days. Too much pressure to define for the lazy audiences. Also just a lack of respect for decent critical thought in general. lol you can give a man fish, or teach him to catch his own...

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Originally Posted by Heroique

When it comes to “Great” or “Classic” photographers, you might be able to name several, and believe you’re being fair and objective – but did you ever consider the true origins of your most heart-felt convictions?

To what extent did you reason-out such beliefs – or do you mainly accept them on faith?

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Originally Posted by Mark Barendt

Pitting physics and math against psyche and mother against profit and managers; is a war of titans.

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Uh, Mark, Heroique is referring to the "greats" of photography, not the fundamental Questions and Answers of Everything.

Myself, I started photoraphing because I was inspired by moonlight, and nothing else. I found out about Adams because he wrote books on photography, not because of the photographs he made. I like some of Adams' photographs because they resonate with me. I don't pay attention to Weston's photographs because they don't resonate with me. I prefer Arthur Fellig (Weegee) over Weston.

So I would say that I "reason" that Adams is a great photographer because I have learned much from him, and that his photographs resonate with me. I haven't learned squat from Weston. From Fellig I learned confidence: "What I do, anybody can do." And to also look around, and see what's behind you.

Uh Brian,

Heroique actually asked a variety of questions, quite open ended too.

I answered from the perspective I saw at that moment and considered the questions in the context Heroique provided to help define his own.

We saw different things there, that's ok. We might see different compositions if we were standing beside each other on a day out shooting too.

To what extent did you reason-out such beliefs – or do you mainly accept them on faith?

Or ? Why not And ?

There are many equations with two solutions, where both solutions are true, and both solutions are real. For example, what is the square root of 25 ? The solution is both +5 and -5.

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Originally Posted by Ken Lee

To what extent did you reason-out such beliefs – or do you mainly accept them on faith?

Or ? Why not And ?

There are many equations with two solutions, where both solutions are true, and both solutions are real. For example, what is the square root of 25 ? The solution is both +5 and -5.

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Or neither. Is the square root of 25 3, or 7? We might neither reason about a photo, or adopt the views of others, but come to our own opinions by way of our idiosyncratic biases.

Faith and Reason are not opposite of each other but complimentary. The man in the street recognizes mountains, in particularly what mountains say and will likely choose an Ansel Adams print over a picture of a pile of garbage. If an art critic dictates that a photo of a pile of garbage has profound trancendental meaning, the man in the street will still choose the Adams, but museum curators the world over will likely clamor to buy the garbage.
I am not aware of any prehistoric cave paintings of piles of garbage so the link between man and beauty (just as the link between man and domesticated dog) predates modern times.

I love it, John...

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Originally Posted by Ken Lee

Or? Why not And?

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Yes, either “or,” or “and.” (!)

If I’m reading Bennett right, here’s what I think he’s getting at: On one hand, the so-called “passionate few,” in many cases, discover “Greatness” by their independent reasoning alone, in advance of anyone else. On the other hand, they also discover “Greatness” by starting w/ recommendations (or claims) by their respected peers – perhaps even the crowd – but they withhold judgment until applying their own experienced understanding to make a confirmation; that is, they start from a position of faith in their peers or the crowd, but proceed w/ reasoning of their own.

A critical process probably easier to “do” than “describe.” ;^)

I think this can be a “man-on-the-street” process, too; but more likely, he or she would start w/ faith and end w/ faith. (I probably discover & evaluate photographers this way, too often, for my own good.)

I also think one of Bennett’s key unstated assumptions about “Classics” and their origin – I could be wrong – is that there’s an idealized “benchmark” to which great art works aspire, some more successfully than others. And it’s the “passionate few” who can tell how well these works achieve those aspirations. Moreover, it’s their repeated confirmations, through time, about certain works – say by Weston, by Adams – that eventually turn these works into “Classics.” (This is, of course, an old critical tradition that goes back to Plato & his so-called “Forms,” an approach not for everyone, but it does seem to have proven legs.)

The remarks above about science or math make a lot of sense, for their methods seem to share a similarity, even if just a perceived one, w/ “classic” critical theory…

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Originally Posted by Old-N-Feeble

I love it, John...

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Thank you!

With another day to think about this i distilled a thought a bit more.

Reason (... logic, science, engineering, management, social narrative, religion, rules, common sense ...) is the product and the practical expression of faith (... Play, imagination, dreams, fears, love, uncertainty ...) .

Brian actually found a great expression of this idea http://www.largeformatphotography.in...-on-Creativity .

"On one hand, the so-called “passionate few,” in many cases, discover “Greatness” by their independent reasoning alone..."

That's unlikely. Reasoning and beliefs held that were not inferred from other beliefs aren't as independent as implied above. Reasoning usually means making inferences, and good reasoning consists of making good inferences, whereas bad reasoning amounts to making poor inferences. But inferences, deductive, inductive or abductive, will only get you some place if there is something to infer from, and if you follow the chains of inferences far enough back, and this applies to everyone, you'll eventually get to premises that were not reasoned to.

For instance, consider the deductive inference known as Modus Ponens, where 'A' and 'B' are elements of language that can be true or false:

If A, then B.
A is true.
Therefore B is true.

The first two statements are called premises, and the last one is the conclusion. It is what is inferred from the truth of the premises. Even this very simply type of inference shows an important point. Namely, an inference needs a premise. But where did these premises come from? Ultimately some of them arise, without any reasoning on our part, as we learn language. Our belief systems have to start someone, and if a belief is reasoned to, then it was not the start.

if I make a basket its either because Ive practiced or I was lucky
If I was lucky then making the basket means nothing
if ive practiced it means im mastering the skill

if im mastering the skill my opinion has merit

i don't ask those who I can tell have not seriously practiced what they believe is great
whether they pretend that watching tv etc makes them expert I don't care
they dont factor into my decisions


who cares whether someone/something is overrated if you know the truth




who goes around wondering how to reason out their beliefs?
only those who want to pretend to have knowledge and will do anything possible to dupe those who have not yet began to seriously practice so that by sheer force of number they may gain influence and power undeserved




Constipate yourself for a few weeks and when you take that massive dump tell me that it wasnt beautiful
Something has to be beautiful about it
maybe everything about it



I dont read so I have no real opinions on skakespeare
I accept that he was a master
since im not overly interested i dont much care
I'l form my own opinion when i do

I like ansel adams and weston better than most who post images here because you can tell that they were masters and those who post here are in general just mere practitioners of photography
I clearly like one over the other as I clearly like Michael Jordan over Harold Minor and yet can see that harold minor is much more a master of his craft than most if not almost all of those who post here



i cant seem to make this thread interesting
it seems very simple
perhaps blowhards make it difficult for job security

Re: By Reason, or by Faith?
Originally Posted by Ken Lee
Or? Why not And?
Yes, either “or,” or “and.” (!)

If I’m reading Bennett right, here’s what I think he’s getting at: On one hand, the so-called “passionate few,” in many cases, discover “Greatness” by their independent reasoning alone, in advance of anyone else. On the other hand, they also discover “Greatness” by starting w/ recommendations (or claims) by their respected peers – perhaps even the crowd – but they withhold judgment until applying their own experienced understanding to make a confirmation; that is, they start from a position of faith in their peers or the crowd, but proceed w/ reasoning of their own.


you are
and it not difficult to understand

i hate this thread

where does innovation come from then?
I dont think you can borrow, steal and glue earlier designs into something transformative

there has to be some original thought that is great


the wheel
where was it stolen from? may have been
but from what
the popular van gogh
how did he achieve greatness

good reasoning consists of making good inferences
dont think anyone would deny that
to me it seems there is a casual description/definition of these reason,belief, inference, faith words that make them seem to go hand in hand with one another
is faith the same as an inference
i dont understand whats being argued maybe

I don't believe in blind faith. I believe in questioning everything. Following without question is an indicator of a very closed mind. Without questioning open minds there is no innovation.

Since art and taste are entirely subjective anyway, reason doesn't enter into it. For reason to apply, there would have to be an objective standard for comparison which also excludes irrelevancies such as class, gender, nationality etc (all of which affect what we consider to be "good" art.) There is no such objective standard. Therefore there can be no reasonable, logical argument to say that a photo of mountains is better/worse than a photo of garbage. And once we start introducing issues like the "man on the street", then we get into questions of elitism versus crass consumerism and "low culture". What is trite and cliche no doubt sells more, but is it "good" depends on your taste. Similarly, pretentious and snobbish art may end up in a museum...but who can really say it is "better"?

I like Salgado, Araki, Pierre Molinier, Weegee, Jan Saudek and Joel-Peter Witkin. I'm not a big fan of Ansel Adams, Edward Curtis, Weston or Eggleston. I can justify it to myself because the photographers I like are transgressive, while the ones I don't particularly like are sentimentalists (i'm not sure what the heck Eggleston is all about!) Thats the extent of my reasoning. It's what I like, and nothing more. Purely subjective.

We humans tend to overestimate our ability to reason. Humans have always been influenced by the opinions of other, and have always confused familiarity with truth -- we believe statements that are repeated often enough as being true, simply because we,ve heard them often (which is why TV commercials are so repetitive. In fact, psychologists tell us that in such "low attention learning" situations, people are MORE likely to believe something the LESS they think about it.) Similarly, we tend to believe what apparent authority figures tell us -- which is why there are so many commercials showing spokesmen-actors dressed in white lab coats. So naturally if a particular artist gets that initial "critical mass" of exposure, and his name is mentioned enough by perceived authority figures, he becomes a "great artists" but that's by virtue of name recognition alone, not because his work is objectively better than someone else's. In fact many of the "great artists" were total nobodies when they were alive. If one of us met the real Toulous lautrec or Van Gough, how many of us would say, "There goes a great artist!" and how many would say "What a weirdo!"

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Originally Posted by cyrus

...I like Salgado, Araki, Pierre Molinier, Weegee, Jan Saudek and Joel-Peter Witkin. I’m not a big fan of Ansel Adams, Edward Curtis, Weston or Eggleston. I can justify it to myself because the photographers I like are transgressive, while the ones I don’t particularly like are sentimentalists. (I’m not sure what the heck Eggleston is all about!) That’s the extent of my reasoning. It’s what I like, and nothing more. Purely subjective...

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Cyrus, your remarks are thoughtful enough to leave a few of us curious – how did you find out about your favorite “transgressive” photographers?

Did Arnold Bennett’s “passionate few” (post #1) point them out to you in, say, books, exhibits, or personal communication?

Also, did Bennett’s passionate few bring the “sentimentalists” to your awareness?

Well I'm flattered you asked. This is going to sound a bit crazy and long-winded.
I have been thinking for a while now about this and I posted something on this forum a while back about it too: I've spent years accumulating the gear, the darkroom, the cameras, the technical know-how etc....but what's my "point"? WTF am I doing with my photography? How does the creation of one of my photos make the world into a different place? Yes I can take nice photos of rusting cars in fields, old barns, windswept canyons, fluffy dogs, naked chicks, pretty flowers, bell peppers, animal skulls, majestic mountains, etc just fine but does the world need yet another trite cliche? How many more long exposure shots of running rivers and waterfalls does anyone need? What's the "point" of my photography if not to reproduce more of this? So I've been thinking a lot about it lately. It has occurred to me that the kind of photos that attract me are (or were, in their time) transgressive in some way. (incidentally they also mostly involve staged still life shots -- sculpture, really.)

So after some thought it occurred to me that to figure out the answer, I had to strip photography back to its essence. I also realized that my photography education to that point was all wrong, thanks to Ansel and Cartier-Bresson. Their ideas of "previsualization" and a "decisive moment" contained a built-in but unjustified assumption that photography was about recording external reality in one way or another. And so the negative was a record of that external reality. Instead, it occurred to me that really, photography is just a medium, just like paint on canvas except the paint is light, and the canvas is the paper. Instead of taking pains to ensure the absence of dust or watermarks on the neg, I can stomp on it, scratch it, cut it and past it back, etc. etc. I can use light on a negative or a paper just like I can splatter paint on a canvas or draw a line on a plate with a burin. I can skip using a camera entirely (after all cliche verre is also photography.) I don't even have to "take" a photo "of" anything - I can make it all up. Even make my own emulsion just like mixing paint or etching ink.

So now my "photographs" consist of giant bands of jet black, mottled gray blobs, marks splattered or brushed on the print with fixer or stop before it is inserted into the developer, etc. The bare essence of photography, literally, "painting, with light". No majestic mountains or other identifiable external reality, no zone system, no previsualizing etc. No control, very random. I'm find this quite satisfying. I still do "regular" photos but I am not satisfied with my old work which I consider now to be trite and amateurish and cliche and embarrassing, which is also why I don't have a website. And I guess that's my transgression. Poeple can't even identify my photographs as photographs but instead think they're etchings or abstract ink drawings. I love that! One LF'er even accused me of not making "serious" photos because "serious" photography requires using fancy lenses and zone-modified Pentax spotmeters and climbing up mountains etc. I haven't even used my enlarger for a while and am instead experimenting with "drawing" on the paper with a laser pointer, then developing the paper.

Addendum: Yes I am aware that Ansel and friends were transgressive in their own way at the time. But why do so many modern photographers settle for recreating their stuff? I just wanted a bigger view of the possibilities of photography.

The 'point' in anything is that someone finds value in it. You've found a style of photography that you find satisfying, and that's a good thing. You should pursue it. But your justification as to why it is more meaningful in a non-subjective way than other genres of photography isn't very persuasive. How many images of anything do we need? None, as the pursuit of creating aesthetically valuable photographs is not about 'need'. After all, humanity made it for thousands of years without photography, and since 'need' means 'something we have to have', we don't need photography. Thus, you're right that we don't need a photo of another bell pepper, majestic mountain, naked chick...but we also don't need another abstract manipulated photo. At the level of generality that you're talking about, not only has that been done before, it's no more necessary for our thriving than any other type of photography.

Since photography, as an artistic activity, isn't about need, it's about something else. It's about each of us, as individuals, finding out what we find aesthetically valuable and attempting, more or less successfully, to make objects that reflect that ideal. Nonetheless, it's not even so much about the object produced, as we already have billions of images after all, and it's doubtful that any of them will have long-term value to others. Rather the value to be found in artistic photography is the extent to which, as individuals, the activity of pursuing it enriches our lives.

in reply to cyrus's last post.

imo, this thread is way off the rails of the original premise.

However for even more derailment, the purpose of art, as generally defined, is to create something that illicits an emotional response. In some ways you can measure the value art by the amount of response it gets, and the size of the audience. The purpose of it all is not to reshape the world. Not to be novel for it's own sake. Afterall we do rely on definitive paradigms, even if it is only to be novel. Without common defintion and precision we can not create anything. Another thread with the John Cleese video, which I don't particularly agree with most of, states well that, solemnity what good is it. There's a bit of truth to that, albeit with extreme hyperbole. Although, lol at relating this all back to the original topic and the fatal fallacies inherit with it. Either/or's and equivocations are rearing their ugly heads.

I will agree with you that photography does tend suffer from too much interest in the tools and their related precision rather than the end result. To that end many photograph's are merely an excersize. (imo, this exists heavily in all arts, is learning really that bad?) Photographers tend to have small niche audiences, rare is the large audience that an Ansel Adams et al enjoy. Yes, the world needs more of what has been done before and will be done again, because their is art for an audience. E.G. if I go to Yosemite and take all the "classic" shots, they will have more value to my audience, wether it is done with a point and shoot or the bestest whatever camera availible, than any Adams' shot. Even it is only the smallest possible audience of myself, or friends and family.

Honestly, for the rest of this thread it's getting into metaphysical territory... sometimes a chair is just a chair. Causality is way OT.

Of course you are right. I was speakibg entirely subjectively. For me, another bell pepper photo does nothing. I'm just trying to find my own point for it all. We each should have our own points.

cyrus... You're such a rebel!! :)

Cyrus, I went searching amidst the image forum. I have the same whine with you that I have with Rick Denny: Where's the images??

When you start talking about your images, honestly, I want to see them! Good, bad, indifferent. "My image is of the second coming of that which hasn't yet come the first time around." I wanna look! I wanna see it!

Naturally, we all have our own "points." Where do the points come from, where do they go? Were the points handed to us and we think they're good because a respected authority handed them to us, or did we spend some time figuring them out for ourselves?

From the photographers you've listed, a few are news photographers. A few are pictorialists, specializing in "grotesques." Shock value. Does photography need a hit of electricity before it's good? Or memorable? The shock value comes from your viewpoint based on the society in which you were raised. In average society, people don't get summarily executed in the street (link), or people get blown up on holiday (link). In another society, in another time, it happens.

While conventional photography hasn't worked for you, have you tried Chromoskedasic Sabatier process? That pepper might have a different light to it.

Well, for better or for worse I don't have an audience and would hate to think that I'm supposed to make other people happy with what I do. And I don't really shoot for eliciting an emotional response (aka sentimentalism.) In fact I doubt that was the primary motivating factor of any of the well-known artists either. After all, what the heck kinda emotional response was Jackson Pollack going for...confusion? LOL I suppose once these great artists settled into the life of a money-making career artist, they stuck to their "tried-'n-true" motifs and just repeated them over and over for the sake of the market but that sounds very unappealing to me personally especially since audiences tend to be fickle. When I kick the bucket and go to the great big darkoom in the sky, I want to have left a body of work that says something more than "Wow, what an interesting bell pepper!" or "Gee, he really knew the zone system and his lenses didn't have any schneideritis and just look at that great adjacency effect!"

Anyway enough about me on this thread -- back to the original issue. Yeah, I don't know where anyone gets any sort of "reasoned" way of looking at any art work. If there is some sort of objective, reasoned standard out there to determine the good from the bad, which does not depend on "faith" or the opinions of others, I'd sure like to know it too! In the meantime, I think I just like "transgressive" image-making. That's the extent of my "reasoned" approach. I don't know about others but some of my own best photos were "happy accidents" and reason played no role in creating them!

[And yes Brian the photogs I mentioned do grotesques and such but they also do 'fantasy' images (which is why I dig the "post your pixies" thread) which is just 'surprising' or 'novel' rather than 'grotesque'. That's what I find interesting, personally. For a while there I tried fetish but it has become passe now. Again, doesn't "say" anything, at least not to me. I haven't tried Chromoskedasic Sabatier but it certainly seems interesting. I have posted some of my "ordinary" stuff already but generally don't post my newer images for lots of reasons - not being happy with them since I really haven't become adept at the processes and am just experimenting, and not having a calibrated monitor, etc. But I'm going to try the Chromaskedasic thing with the photo of the two skulls I posted recently in the still life thread.]

cyrus... I'm trying to understand... "shock and "confusion" aren't emotional responses? The "artists" didn't intentionally illicit those responses?

Not one's I'm going for. Not even sure that Pollack was going for "confusion" either. I don't think artist predefine some intended emotional response and then aim for achieving it.

I respectfully disagree. IMHO, artists like "pushing others' buttons" more so than average folk. :)

Well I guess you're certainly right for some artists like the fella who put Christ in a bottle of pee!

^^^ Yes... that jerk is propogating hate. "Hate" is indeed an emotion. One which only sociopathic "artists" use.

Kinkade pushed some buttons....

Peter Lik is still pushing buttons.

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Originally Posted by Brian C. Miller

Peter Lik is still pushing buttons.

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Yes, very often the one that triggers my gag reflex.

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Originally Posted by Peter J. De Smidt

...Photography, as an artistic activity … is about each of us, as individuals, finding out what we find aesthetically valuable and attempting, more or less successfully, to make objects that reflect that ideal...

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Originally Posted by MrJim

...the purpose of art, as generally defined, is to create something that elicits an emotional response. In some ways you can measure the value art by the amount of response it gets, and the size of the audience...

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Well, these two (adjacent!) posts caught my attention since they seem to represent conflicting extremes – Peter stressing how photography should serve the individual at the (implied) expense of communication w/ others, and Mr. Jim stressing how important it is for art to communicate w/ others at the (implied) expense of the individual.

Probably most would discover a healthy share of each approach in their personal balancing act between these competing claims (for self & audience).

When it comes to “Classics” and how they are born, I think Arnold Bennett (in post #1 for people joining late) would choose a balance weighted toward Mr. Jim’s approach – for doesn’t the very term “Classic” necessarily imply an audience whose members share some sort of common ground of idealized standards? (Made manifest to the passionate few w/ the “reasoning” that Bennett opposes to “faith.”) Not exactly something that will ring true in all modern ears, but it seems necessary if Bennett is to make sense.

I’m curious if people here think that the closer a photographer comes to Peter’s important claims for expressing self, the less likely it becomes for a “Classic,” as Bennett understands the term, to come about? Similarly, would a “Classic” have increasingly poor chances of establishing itself, the closer it comes to Mr. Jim’s claims for audience?

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Originally Posted by cyrus

Not one's I'm going for. Not even sure that Pollack was going for "confusion" either. I don't think artist predefine some intended emotional response and then aim for achieving it.

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I do.

Other than as an educational or scientific exercise, in fact I find it hard to believe there much other motivation for a photo, or any other type of art, than emotion.

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Originally Posted by Heroique

Well, these two (adjacent!) posts caught my attention since they seem to represent conflicting extremes – Peter stressing how photography should serve the individual at the (implied) expense of communication w/ others, and Mr. Jim stressing how important it is for art to communicate w/ others at the (implied) expense of the individual.

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I'm not sure that following what one thinks is valuable is necessarily at odds with communication. Odds are that there are other people who value similar things, or at the least might come to do so by what you've shown them. If someone were to hold that one should pursue what one doesn't find most aesthetically valuable, i.e. if they value some other goal higher, such as making money, pleasing others,...., then wouldn't the type of communication involved be a bit deceitful?

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Originally Posted by Mark Barendt

I do.

Other than as an educational or scientific exercise, in fact I find it hard to believe there much other motivation for a photo, or any other type of art, than emotion.

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Whose emotion -- the artist' own or the intended audience. Because I really have hard time thinking that Jackson Pollack set out intending to solicit an emotion from anyone. Some people make art because they have a need for self-expression, even if no one sees/reads/understands it. That's also why people keep diaries.

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Originally Posted by Peter J. De Smidt

...If someone were to hold that one should pursue what one doesn't find most aesthetically valuable, i.e. if they value some other goal higher, such as making money, pleasing others,...., then wouldn't the type of communication involved be a bit deceitful?

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Yes, that’s an important clarification w/o easy answers...

I would also ask who’s the deceived one – in some cases, it might be both, photographer & audience.

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Originally Posted by cyrus

Whose emotion -- the artist' own or the intended audience. Because I really have hard time thinking that Jackson Pollack set out intending to solicit an emotion from anyone. Some people make art because they have a need for self-expression, even if no one sees/reads/understands it. That's also why people keep diaries.

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Whether the audience is someone else or my self makes no difference, when I shoot I expect an emotional response from the intended audience.

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Originally Posted by Heroique

Well, these two (adjacent!) posts caught my attention since they seem to represent conflicting extremes – Peter stressing how photography should serve the individual at the (implied) expense of communication w/ others, and Mr. Jim stressing how important it is for art to communicate w/ others at the (implied) expense of the individual.

Probably most would discover a healthy share of each approach in their personal balancing act between these competing claims (for self & audience).

When it comes to “Classics” and how they are born, I think Arnold Bennett (in post #1 for people joining late) would choose a balance weighted toward Mr. Jim’s approach – for doesn’t the very term “Classic” necessarily imply an audience whose members share some sort of common ground of idealized standards? (Made manifest to the passionate few w/ the “reasoning” that Bennett opposes to “faith.”) Not exactly something that will ring true in all modern ears, but it seems necessary if Bennett is to make sense.


I’m curious if people here think that the closer a photographer comes to Peter’s important claims for expressing self, the less likely it becomes for a “Classic,” as Bennett understands the term, to come about? Similarly, would a “Classic” have increasingly poor chances of establishing itself, the closer it comes to Mr. Jim’s claims for audience?

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I didn't specifically quantify want an audience is. E.G. for a stage actor, or comedian the audience has a large seperation from self, therefor how well the piece resonates and how far it reaches are easily measured. For a poet their greatest poem may be intended for the audience as self, and the value is unkown to the outside. The quantification of an audience are only two ends of a scale. The value of a piece or artist from the zero of complete apathy is largely irrelevant, unless discussing a comparitive of multiple artists in a similiar scale of balance. Most likely any piece of art will fall between the two extremes, while the value is irrelevant inside the audience beyond anything besides specific comparisons.

Then again my wife hates it when I say that we are not snowflakes, we are not absolutely unique. Most likely an audience of one can not exist and someone will come along that "gets its" as long as the bread crumbs are out. Which echoes back to one of the original premises of the passionate few. The problem is, the passionate few can exist for too many reasons to extrapolate beyond their existence without a rigourous academic and reasoned view to each case. I for one haven't read through Bennets work, and his detractors to completely understand his premise to really comment on it in great detail.