Defense of the Pictorial Landscape Photograph

[Witold Grabiec]

WE are the ultimate judges of what we photograph, how we do it, how we print it, and how we present it. EVERYBODY else is just an outsider to our decission making process, who may or (more frequently) may not have a valid critique of our work. Buying a virtual piece of aesthetic garbage is a quite common thing in the art world, and that should not affect our look on our (own after all) artistic progress. I will never forget a cleaned-up version of a used engine crank shaft, proudly displayed in a gallery and viewed by its owner as an innovative piece sculpture.

[michael waldron]

The intelligentia help determine pricing; they seem to like Gursky, Struth, Misrach -- prices are in the $x00,000, $x0,000, and $30,000+ respectively from what I have seen. While I don't think these artists cater to that public, their careers were advanced by accpetance. Misrach couldn't have done the golden gate series if couldn't have bought that hillside house in Berkeley!

[Kevin M Bourque]

I agree that people vote with their pocketbooks. I certainly feel vindicated when someone buys one of my prints.

On the other hand, not everything that sells is good. Thomas Kinkade has a shop in the mall here, and sells LOTS of prints…does that make him a great painter?

Certainly, there are people that that if ANYONE understands a piece of work, it can’t be any good (some of them are curators)! Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration. But, many classic works of art were scandalous when they were first released. It’s hard to say if the three stripes will ever be in that category.

Just for the record, I love a good landscape. I’ve shot plenty of ‘em myself.

[Brian Ellis]

I too thought Katherine's article was excellent.

One of the "in" things these days seems to be out-of-focus or partially out-of-focus photographs, e.g. a close up of half a face that's out of focus with a background that's in focus. I've never quite gotten the idea of why making an out-of-focus photograph is evidence of great creativity whereas an otherwise identical in-focus photograph wouldn't have been, so in addition to Katherine's article I also liked Bill Jay's comment on page 84 in the same issue: "If it is not an interesting picture when in focus, it is not going to be a better picture out of focus."

[Mark_3899]

Curators are not kingmakers, nor do they rule the "art world". Art is just their medium as photography is yours. The answer to why this person is hot or that movement is popular has to do with how much money some dealer can make for some rich person, Art = money. When someone asks me who I think the best artists are today, I like to say we'll never know their names.

[Paul Kierstead]

I *like* the three vertical stripes photograph. And I went in with a pretty poor attitude. I don't think it is worth $1M, but then I think Van Gogh is hugely over priced as well.

I don't know about the "intelligentsia", but don't some of you question it sometimes? Aren't you tired of pictures of some arch or another in Arizona? Lakes and mountains? Field of flowers, wide angle? "Pretty pictures"?

I was shooting lots of landscapes. I looked at my own pictures and thought they looked just like all the pretty pictures that everyone else had shot (well, ok not as good in most cases...), even though they were from different areas. IMO, 99% of popular landscape is largely due to some particularly famous and beautiful location which is too distant or difficult to visit for the viewer.

I quit shooting landscapes for quite a while. I am gradually finding my own view now, shooting a little more, seeing it differently with different elements. Interestingly, large format has been very instrumental in seeing it differently. I actually don't really care about huge prints, or the fantastic resolution, or alternative processes, or whether silver is involved. I really do care about how I see the world on that 4x5" ground glass, and the care that has to go in it, and the control I get out of it. But I digress...

I will go out and buy Lenswork today. But I have to be honest; at this point, I think the curators may have a point. They have probably gone too far (they almost always do), but they do have a point.

[John Kasaian]

The last four exhibitions I've seen were IMHO very worthwhile, with the emphasis on both landscapes and the abstract. Three were in commercial venues(two purely commercial, the other an artist's cooperative gallery) and the third in a state library (BTW, two were exhibitions by people who post on this forum!) The curators must have had some regards for landscapes in order for these exhibitions to "fly" so I don't think landscape photography is considered a lost cause---at least not on the West Coast.

OTOH, I just finished writing a presentation on Bauerschmidt's essay "The Lamb of God in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" on Van Eyck's altar piece in (or nowadays behind)Sint Baaf's Cathederal. Bauerschmidt gave a wonderful example of the thought process of the so-called "Art Intelligensia" citing Marcel Duchamp's 1917 sculpture ""Fountain" a ready-made urinal, signed "R. Mutt" and entered in an exhibition. The scultpure mysteriously vanished(my theory is that a well meaning janitor must have utilized it as it was originally intended for I cannot find any account that indicated the authorities looking for "Fountain" in the men's lavatory, hidden in plain sight as it were) What is really funny is that in 1964 Duchamp authorized Galleria Schwarz in Milan to produce a numbered, signed edition of "Fountain" Such a reproduction was not good enough for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art however, which determined that Arturo Schwarz' authorized by Duchamp replica was somehow not "art" enough---the artist had to somehow involved in the process---and announced It's (SFMOMA"s)"Fountain" is "...the only edition to be issued under the direct supervision of Duchamp at every stage of the project on the basis of a blueprint derived from the photos of the lost original." at http://www.sfmoma.org/collections/recent_acquisitions/ma_coll_duchamp.html

I just take my pictures and laugh;-)

[Kaatharine Thayer]

"Aren't you tired of pictures of some arch or another in Arizona? Lakes and mountains? Field of flowers, wide angle? 'Pretty pictures'?"

I rather hesitate to jump into this discussion, since most of it has very little or nothing to do with my essay, but the above quote struck a note in my mind and I went back and found something I wrote to an online forum on Sept 2, 1999, which was no doubt the earliest seeds of what eventually grew into this essay. Before I quote myself, let me add that arguing in defense of pictorial values hardly means the same thing as wanting to see more pictures of arches in Arizona or fields of flowers. One doesn't necessarily follow from the other, and some of the things you list actually fall more into the "documentary" camp than the "pictorial" camp, which was the distinction I was making. Anyway, this was my 1999 response to someone online who asserted that landscape is just way overdone, which will serve equally as my response to Paul's question:

"I've been puzzling for days about this assertion that landscape is so overdone, so boring, so everywhere. This seems to be conventional wisdom among the cogniscenti, but it's exactly counter to my own experience. Granted, I live in an out of the way corner of the world, but I try to attend every photography exhibit in the bigger cities in the region, and it's been many years since I've seen a landscape to be bored by. Sure, if you go to art fairs of the type where anyone can put up a booth, you see lots of mediocre color photos of mountains, streams, sunsets over the ocean and fall foliage, but that's not what we're talking about, is it? When I go to look at juried photography exhibits, I see not even a phallic tree stump, not a vista, not a sky, not a cloud, not a mountain, nothing I would even remotely call a landscape, (and, I might add, not a red dot in sight either.) What I see is everything ugly: urban blight, suburban blight, rural blight, chain link fences, street signs, people chosen deliberately for their ugly quotient, cars from the 60s, equivalents of Sally Mann's kid with the bloody nose, this kind of stuff is all I've seen for years and years. I find the assertion that barbed wire and electric lines are refreshing to see in the face of all the pristine wilderness we've been forced to look at for so long just inexplicable. Tell me where all those landscapes are; I'd like to see some please?"

Katharine Thayer

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

I don't know about the "intelligentsia", but don't some of you question it sometimes? Aren't you tired of pictures of some arch or another in Arizona? Lakes and mountains? Field of flowers, wide angle? "Pretty pictures"?



Well finally, I was afraid to post on this thread because I feel exactly like Paul. I find the rock/river/moving water/tree photographs boring now. Sure, in the times of Adams, or perhaps presently with Barbaum or Bond some of these images are still "fresh" but lets face it, it is time to move on.



As I was told by a magazine editor here in Mexico. "Being an excellent printer does not make you a photographer, you need to evolve your unique style that is readily identifiable" easier said than done, but I think it is good advice nonetheless.



The current crop of "accepted" photographers all have some kind of imprimatur in their images that one recognizes almost immediately. I dont think galleries are against craft or "pretty pictures" I just think they have gotten bored with the same ol, same ol.

[Kaatharine Thayer]

A couple of general comments:

1. About the intelligentsia: I had some doubts about submitting this essay, for the very reason that the intelligentsia have no influence on my own work or my own sales. So why make trouble for myself by arguing with them? But it seemed to me that the arguments they make against pictorialism are so ill-informed that someone should call them on it, so I did.

2. Anyone who thinks that I'm arguing for a kind of pictorialism that imitates painting hasn't read my article. Beaumont Newhall makes a clear distinction between "art photography" and pictorialism, and I honor that distinction. And by the same token, anyone who thinks that by pictorialism I mean fuzzy pictures also hasn't read the article; I mention how much P.H. Emerson, the father of pictorialism, detested fuzzy pictures and railed against later pictorialists who went crazy with the soft focus. He believed that photography should be an art in its own right based only on film and light, rather than an art that attempted to imitate other art. I am a pictorialist in the Emerson tradition; I can't help it that pictorialism has been loaded with other baggage that it never started with.

3. Thanks to all who read the article carefully; whether you agree or disagree is not so important to me (although I do appreciate hearing from those who understood and appreciated the article) but I have no patience with people who simply react to the word "pictorialist" with their own prejudices and with the very attitudes I was arguing against, instead of reading and considering the article in its own right.