Are museums collecting modern landscapers?

[Lenny Eiger]

Lenny, this is a real meaningful post.

But don't disparge comics. Some comics express a great deal with as simple artwork as is possible, and it's somehow well understood by large audiences. We'd all do well to attain that goal, particularly with the conciseness that weekend comics in the newspaper provide. It's an art form I'd place far above Cindy Sherman or Gursky in terms of relevance and expression. For the most part, most movie plots aren't anything new anyway, coming from history or written fiction or older movies of some sort.

Thanks. What a minefield. OK, let's say there are comic books and then there are comic books. Some have plenty of substance and some are just fluff. Or, maybe just people with superpowers who get to show us how powerless we feel in today's world... It's true, I shouldn't disparage the better comics. I was referring to the fluff.

As to pragmatic romanticism, I'm not sure what that is. I do know that "liberating one's self from a century of modernist ideological naivety" is pure bull. There are some interesting ideas in there, but nothing to point a camera at. Maybe we should take pictures of people being fake and the same people being their "true" selves. Then we could oscillate. Such contrivance... nowhereosity.

Lenny

[TXFZ1]

After a perusal of various sites, some explicitly about metamodernism and some not, I really can't say what they're doing, and neither can they.



I read Shia LaBeouf's metamodernism manifesto, mentally comparing it with the f/64 manifesto. At least with the f/64 manifesto you kind of know where they're going with it. Metamodernism, coined in 2010, looks more like Dada and Surrealism.

If, "We propose a pragmatic romanticism unhindered by ideological anchorage," is as close to a succinct definition of metamodernism as there is likely to be, then Instagram and its ilk are the current photographic expression.

So: do you want your photographs to look like they came off Instagram?

Looks like they used artybollocks.com to generate their manifesto.

David

[Wayne Lambert]

I would like to see some photographs illustrating No. 8 of the manifesto.

Wayne

[tgtaylor]

"I went to the ground, and, when there, selected the spot which would give the best view..." Carleton Watkins testifying in U.S. vs Fossat, 27 August 1858.

Thomas

[paulr]

After a perusal of various sites, some explicitly about metamodernism and some not, I really can't say what they're doing, and neither can they.

I read Shia LaBeouf's metamodernism manifesto, mentally comparing it with the f/64 manifesto. At least with the f/64 manifesto you kind of know where they're going with it. Metamodernism, coined in 2010, looks more like Dada and Surrealism.

If, "We propose a pragmatic romanticism unhindered by ideological anchorage," is as close to a succinct definition of metamodernism as there is likely to be, then Instagram and its ilk are the current photographic expression.

So: do you want your photographs to look like they came off Instagram?

Brian, I don't know who Shia LaBeouf is, and I haven't yet encountered any artists who call themselves metamodernists. The term was originally coined by Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, who are a couple of theorists trying to make sense of what's going on in visual arts, literature, movies, music, architecture, and really across culture broadly. They're offering a general description, not a manifesto.

They're using the prefix "meta" not in the usual sense of a higher or secondary position, but in the sense of the Greek metaxy, suggesting an oscillation back and forth between extremes. In their theory, the extremes are high Modernism, where meaning, or at least a ground upon which to build it is can exist, and postmodernism, where it can't exist. They see artists nostalgically acknowledging the hunger for meaning from the modern era, but having lost faith in the ability to satisfy that hunger—because there aren't any easy answers to the questions posed by the postmodernists.

The most interesting site I've found is Vermeulen's and ven den Akker's own. It's not prescriptive. It's all about figuring stuff out. They don't boil things down to anything as goofy as "pragmatic romanticism unhindered by ideological anchorage," although I can imagine coming across a phrase like that ... hopefully with some context.

Just to be clear, in mentioning metamodernism I wasn't advocating for it (although I like a lot of the ideas). I was trying to illustrate that if you're complaining about these times we live in, you need to sling a better insult that "postmodern!" because those days are long over. The influence of postmodernism is with us ... as is the influence of modernism, romanticism, classicism, and a lot else. But we're still struggling to characterize our time, and metamodernism represents one attempt. This has been true for a lot of eras. It's easier come up with tidy labels and descriptions when you have some distance.

[paulr]

[COLOR="#0000CD"]Actually Watkins was very much concerned with the quality of the light...

Well, I think most photographers since the beginning have been concerned with the quality of light. For Ansel, the quality—more specifically, the ephemerality—of light and of weather, was a central subject. This just wasn't the case with Watkins. The materials of his day wouldn't have allowed exploring it anyway.

[Kirk Gittings]

Can a photographer not be concerned about the quality of light? I think They were both concerned about the light but I think you are saying (don't want to put words in your mouth ) that panchromatic films and contrast filters were necessary to be invented for AA to achieve his "emotional sky effects" and control of subject contrast etc. I totally agree and oddly enough wrote about this in my masters thesis in 83! Everyone learns to see and render light in the context of the materials available.

[paulr]

Yes Kirk, that's what I'm trying to say. Szarkowsky made the same point in an interview a few years before he died. He also talked about exposure times. I'm not the length of a typical landscape exposure with a wet plate in Watkins' time, but presumably it was too long to capture many typical Ansel subjects, like storm clouds rolling in around mountain peaks.

He spoke of Ansel and HCB as representatives of the first generation that could capture moments as they occurred in the world (Muybridge was the first to do it in a lab setting). S's larger point was that the history of photography is intimately tied up with the technology of the times. People's visions get formed, in some part, by the tools available to them.

[Kirk Gittings]

I want to chime in here about being an old photographer who feels young and how that effects how you see the art world.

I was very fortunate to accidentally end up at the University of New Mexico in the late 60's when it was an amazing center for photography worldwide and got to learn from people like Van Deren Coke, Beaumont Newhall, Ray K. Metzker, Betty Hahn etc. (as well as a few extraordinary teachers who were not so famous) as well as meet people like AA, Brett Weston, Imogene Cunningham, Paul Caponigro, Robert Adams, Wynn Bullock and graduate students like Joel Peter Witkin etc. etc. I started school as an economics major, knowing nothing about the photo program, took my first photo class at the end of my software year and it changed my life forever.

So I had direct ties with both the later part of "golden age" and the burgeoning vision of a whole new group of young photographers who were rejecting the expectations of their predecessors.

Obviously my work was very influenced by the old school west Coast Landscape Tradition, yet I also deeply appreciated the work of people who brought us New Topographics. I found both approaches fascinating and meaningful and NOT at odds with each other-but rather synergistic. Landscape Photography, in all its breath, was my religion and I found inspiration from many different diverse sources. This has always led me to an interest in and curiosity about all photographic directions. I go to every museum and opening I can. I may not like what I see but there is something to be learned about our society and art from all photographic endeavors.

I have many friends who are talented "old school" photographers my age who like Lenny are deeply disappointed by where photography has gone. I'm not. I accept it as a given. What we are experiencing happens to every aging generation of artists in the modern world. I have no interest in changing my art but every interest in learning where art is going and why art is changing. I do what I do and it is deeply satisfying. God forbid anything in art or society stands still. I think the contemporary world is fascinating and how young photographers see the world just as fascinating. I enjoy teaching photography to young people who look at the world very different than I do. It is an immense challenge for me that I find stimulating and rejuvenating. I have no desire to enter the later years of my life as a grumbling old fart photographer who thinks everything was better in some mythical "before" time.

[tgtaylor]

Kirk, “feeling young” doesn't imply that you have to eschew what turned you on when you were young and embrace or even appreciate the “new.” Foe example, if your heart truly lay within the West Coast Landscape Tradition then it would be absurd to think that embracing or even appreciating the New Topographics would make you “feel young.”

What makes one “feel young?” I believe it's that tingling sensation of desire that you get when considering something that you like which motivates you into action.

Thomas