Are museums collecting modern landscapers?

[paulr]

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.

It's interesting how a lot of developments that were seen as "reactions," given enough time, can start to look more like gentle evolutions. Comparing Robert Adams' early work with Weston's and Walker Evans' later work, it's hard for me to see anything but a continuum.*

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'd enjoy reading a longer post about the ins and outs of this.



*The words and other contexts surrounding Adams' images seem to be more different than the images themselves. In a sense, both Adams and Weston were dealing with loss. With Adams it was loss of a of a kind of connection to landscape. With Weston it seemed to be about his own impending death.

[Drew Wiley]

The whole notion of "Romanticism" in regard to anyone like Watkins, AA, et al, is basically utter flatlander nonsense. Same for describe-nothing-really pigeonholes like calling Watkins, Muybridgbe, Fiske, etc "frontier" photographers - they really weren't. Those days were already over, and it was railroad tourism at the fore. So yeah, all these guys had a commercial element, but also frequently managed to bend it into something much more. Watkins was a brilliant pre-Modernist in the sense he could weave together both structural elements (referring to line, not necessarily architecture, but indeed sometimes) and tapestries of organic landscape into some very sophisticated unified planes. I don't know any other photographer even to this day who could do this as well. So in this sense, he pushed the opportunities of blue sensitive film beyond what most had already learned. The emergence of pan film was a prerequisite for someone like AA to come into his own element. But to state that one was more a photographer of "light" than another is a pretty crude stereotype that doesn't work very long in front of an actual print.
Different strategies out there, for sure. But I'll be danged if I ever saw a monograph or biography about Watkins that ever even began to understand him from a
visual perspective, as opposed to simply a soap opera biography.

[Kevin J. Kolosky]

I suspect that Museums and such collect photographs not only for the photographs but also for the name of the person who made them.

Having seen work on here and many other places, there is no doubt, in my mind at least, that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of folks living and photographing today who can make very fine photographs, both technically and artistically, many of which are of much better (subjective) quality than those already hanging on the museum walls.

There is the stigma of the name.

After all, many on here are quite capable of traveling to a place, lets say Yosemite Park, and making the exact same image as one Ansel Adams made. The one by Ansel Adams will have significant value and will be collectible. The one by the member here not so much.

The point being that for new work to be collectible, a name has to go with the work (my opinion only). Some kind of hook that makes a curator feel like there is a value in the name as well as the work.

Of course, a lot of folks got their "name" by working for a large organization that put the name out there. Folks like Avedon, Irving Penn, Bert Stern, etc. But from what I have read, it seems as though the magazine business is going to the pooper, at least if sales are any indication.

I would think that if someone wanted to be collected in the future they might have to self publish to get their name out.

[paulr]

The whole notion of "Romanticism" in regard to anyone like Watkins, AA, et al, is basically utter flatlander nonsense.

Has anyone here called Watkins Romantic? I never would.

Adams is a different story. If you don't see a close connection between what he did and Romantic painting, I'd suggest revisiting your art history books.

[paulr]

After all, many on here are quite capable of traveling to a place, lets say Yosemite Park, and making the exact same image as one Ansel Adams made. The one by Ansel Adams will have significant value and will be collectible. The one by the member here not so much.

I think you're conflating some very different issues. One of them is a complicated philosophical one, that has to do with the value of attribution. A typical thought experiment might propose that you have a Da Vinci painting, and a forgery of it that is so perfect, no one can tell the difference. Is the original more valuable than the forgery? If so, what does that suggest about where the value lies? Clearly it lies somewhere outside the work itself—most likely in ideas we have about the work, since no one can tell the difference between the actual objects.

The other issue, less complex, is about influence and historical importance. It sidesteps the question above, and assumes there's value in attribution. But it's less about quality than about the influence an artist exerts on his or her contemporaries and followers. Weston's work is valued not just for its "quality," which itself is hard to define, but because of the enormous influence he exerted on artists that followed him. Of those followers, those who did nothing but follow were unable to influence anyone. They may have done Weston-like work to a very high standard, but they have no historical importance.

A more concise way to put it is to ask whose vision it really is. The standard goofball reaction to the modern art museum is "my kid could do that!" The standard answer is "yeah, but he didn't." And even if did, he'd just be copying.

[tgtaylor]

Drew, Watkins was an active photographer for several years before construction on the Transcontinental Railroad began (1863) and by the time it was completed in 1869 he had already gained a national reputation as a photographer. In fact it was his Mammoth photographs of Yosemite that spurred President Lincoln into signing the Yosemite Land Grant in 1864 that established the National Park system. It is interesting to note that Watkins was a childhood friend of Collis P. Huntington who boarded with the Watkins family in New York and both came to California during the gold rush. Huntington became one of the "big four" railroad tycoons and provided Watkins with a free railroad pass which Watkins used to transport his photographic wagon throughout the west on photo expeditions. Wherever the S&P went that Watkins wanted to go, it would deposit his car with the wagon and sometimes a sleeping car as well and pick him up on the way back.

As far as understanding Watkins from a visual perception, see the writing and various references cited by Peter E. Palmquist.

Thomas

[Drew Wiley]

I trust my eyes a lot more than any stupid art history book written by some flatlander who never bothered to really look at either Adam's work or ever personally
soaked in the same kind of light he worked in. A dumb, meaningless pigeonhole, that's all. Buying a set of rubber stamps doesn't make one proficient at any alleged
game.

[tgtaylor]

Has anyone here called Watkins Romantic? I never would.

Adams is a different story. If you don't see a close connection between what he did and Romantic painting, I'd suggest revisiting your art history books.

Paul, if you don't see a close connection between what Adams and Watkins, I'd suggest that you view their prints.

Thomas

[Drew Wiley]

Thanks, Tom. But I've been very disappointed by the monographs in general. They just don't seem to "get it". But regarding his sponsors ... I assume you've been up to Pioneer Basin. I always find it ironic how beautiful mountains get named for ruthless tycoons who would have willingly leveled them if there had been anything
resembling silver ore in them.

[Brian C. Miller]

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.

... whimper ... but I didn't mention postmodern! ... whimper ...

And I do think that, "pragmatic romanticism unhindered by ideological anchorage," is actually an apt description of Instagram! Snap a shot, apply filters, send it off, non impediti ratione cogitationis...

"Metamodernism, as we see it, is neither a residual nor an emergent structure of feeling, but the dominant cultural logic of contemporary modernity." (link) Oh, and catch the huge run-on sentence in the last paragraph. Oy, vay. Metamodernism could be summed up as a pinball machine. As they say, it's just trying to essentially pin a new label on a large herd of cats, not that the description is supposed to be breaking new ground.

I don't view artworks as needing to be a type of Rorschach test. I want distilled information. I just have no personal use for vacuous expressions claiming to be artwork.

While I was out this past July 4th weekend, I visited Craters of the Moon in Idaho. (Visit at dawn, and bring lots of water!) Anyways, on my way out I came across a section of brush that had been burned, and in the burnout there was a roadside memorial cross. I found it poignant, so I stopped and photographed it with my 8x10, Fujinon 300mm, yellow filter, and Ilford Delta 100. And that's just it: for me the scene had poignant meaning.