Landscape photography: dead and forgotten at art museums?

[Darin Boville]

Are you sure you saw all the photography at MoMA and the Met? At MoMA, at least, there's always been a big couple of rooms housing 19th and 20th century work from the permanent collection. It rotates, but every time I've gone through there's been a healthy sampling of Weston, Strand, A. Adams, etc... Usually not the bigger, more bombastic late Adams stuff, but earlier, smaller stuff that came out of the beginnings of that tradition.

I thought so. There were two temporary photo exhibits there when I was there (Heinecken and the studio show) and a big Polke show. Also one exhibit area closed off (upcoming Toulouse-Lautrec show). The MOMA web page has a feature to find all photography works on view: http://www.moma.org/collection/brows...rt_order=1&UC=

Don't see any landscapes there.

The Met did have a hallway area where they put up a rotating selection from their photo collection. Plus the big Winogrand and Steichen shows.

--Darin

[Regular Rod]

I'd like to invert the thread : Forgotten Art Museums that no longer show anything we're interested in.

Brilliant and quite right too!

RR

[Drew Wiley]

I don't get it, Darin. Photography certainly is a prime theme in many public venues around the Bay Area here. I think it will be a big component to the huge new
UC museum going in up the street. But you do have to factor for certain generational changes. If we're smack dab in the artistic adolescence of flagrant digital
manipulation right now, the new frontier is going to drift into interactive images and artsified amateur-equip movies, now that video clips can be taken even by DLSRS, phones, and Dick Tracy secret decoder rings. I'm all for that in terms of proliferation of vision. But the kind of contemplative static imagery put into frames and viewed on a wall that many of us like (including me) is going to take a seat somewhere on the back of the bus. Sure, there will be a revival and rebellion back
to the future, meaning the past ... and it's already going on. "Real film" and "real cameras" are actually getting admiration in this area, especially from the very
high-tech industry itself which has put it at risk. Kind reminds me of how the railroad barons hired ES Curtis to go out a photograph the last of the wild Indians,
so they could preserve something for posterity, just before they deliberately had all the buffalo shot and plains Indians starved. (Not 100% historically accurate,
cause a lot of that was already going on, and Curtis was already too late for much authenticity, but it was the storyline). I've repeatedly related how people working in the digi imaging industry itself would rather shoot film on their own time. Maybe all that proves it that work and recreation are two different things.
But it is a factor.

[koh303]

You went to the recent SPE conference, didn't you attend any of the lectures? That entire conference was made up of people that hold an MFA, are getting an MFA, or hope to get an MFA. Many of the pieces were influenced by, or even contained painting, that were on display at the walk through.

I must say that after 5 minutes of trying to not step on peoples work, and trying not to notice the awesome noise all around me, i decided that was not a good way to show or look at work, and left. Before i did, what saw was lots of people looking for reassurance, in the "facts" and "common knowledge" which is expected of artists, who happen to be photographers. The photographers who just happened to be there, and whom are all art students, had nothing much to say (their work that is), but that is a limited point of view, as i really did not spent much time looking at work. Though after the many portfolio reviews and walk throughs i have done recently, this did not seem to be any different.

One of the icons of modern MFA programs, Van Deren Coke wrote a very influential book back in the 70's entitled "The Painter and the Photograph". It was hugely influential amongst MFA programs nationwide. I teach to MFA students and amongst MFA professors and your statement about "MFA Folks" is simply silly and inaccurate.

Well, let's ask Beaumont Newhall, Edward Steichen and John Zarkowski what they think about art, museums, MFA and their connection to painters, and i am fairly certain we will have the same answer Van Deren Coke - ask Zizek, baudrillard or Barthes, and you will get a totally different one, still that does not change anything. How do you measure benefit? In a leftfield reading of hostory, Jan Vermeer was the first photographer (or at least so thought peter greenway).

Where are you getting your "facts".

Probably at the same place you are, but perhaps i was less content say i am a success because i think i am or because someone of self imposed authority said so, which brings up the next issue:

You might not consider photography ART but the fact is that literally tons of photographs ARE in the permanent collections of ART museums. The first part of the statement is your opinion, fine. The second part is patently false. Even people at my level, I have many prints in Art museum permanent collections-the majority purchased. Your statement is simply wrong. The Art Institute of Chicago, under the classification "Works of Art", lists some 16,000+ photographs in their permanent collection. The High Museum lists 4,500 etc.

Just because a museum classifies something as art does not make it so. And besides, what is 16.5K pieces compared to the entire collection?

MFA's are a recent (less then 60 years), American invention, that perhaps at one point in time in history close to their inception (siskind, callahan etc.) might have had an education, moral agenda, but alas today all they are is a mega money maker. At SPE i learned that many schools have increased their once prestigious and thus tiny MFA programs from 7-9 students a year to 40-50 and more. After that was so sucsessful, some schools (notably UNM) started offering a PHD in photography as post to MFA in photo. More and more schools are adding such degrees, because why stop at a 100K$ MFA, when you can have the same people, sit in classes with the same professors, for the third time, learning the same nonsense, for the third time, for yet another 100K$ and even more prestige?
After all, what is it that you learn in an MFA program in the US, that was not (or could not have been) taught while attending a BFA program?, and asking that, only raises the question of what could anyone possibly LEARN when studying for a PHD in photo....?

But then again, i did not learn a thing during my MFA, other then how to be polite, and talk about other peoples work with admiration and praise even it was total crap, that did not change of the course of an entire, semester, and sometimes year, and sometimes people showed the same work they appllied with at their MFA thesis show.

So, my comment about MFA folk, was more of a cynical one, but that might have been hard to tell.

[Drew Wiley]

I've never read a word written by Van Deren Coke. But aside from the fact that he championed some pretty sicko work by some of his students, he was himself a
very capable tradition-esque photographer of pretty images, who otherwise have been considered passe by his own "art" standards.

[Kirk Gittings]

Just because a museum classifies something as art does not make it so. And besides, what is 16.5K pieces compared to the entire collection?

I knew Beaumont Newhall and studied with him for a few years. I don't recall anything from him directly or from his books that would have disagreed with Thomas' statement.

I'd take their opinion over yours I think. You just make stuff up to suit your POV. Who are you BTW? Besides I didn't criticize your opinion about photography not being art-just your lack of knowledge. Remember your statement? "photography isen't art, that's why it is not in an ART museums permanent collection". But it is in ART museums permanent collections and in huge numbers. You said it wasn't-period. Now you want to talk percentages?

[Maris Rusis]

I've had the privilege of idle time and used it to tramp the halls of Australian art museums and commercial galleries for years looking out for traditional landscape photography because that's what I do. And I've talked to professional curators from the national level on down. The impression I form is that the world of a producing artist, a photographer even, carries a vastly different mind-set to that of a curator.

Curators champion anything that gives them job security, pay rises, promotion within the organisation, and enhanced professional status among their peers. At the present time collecting landscape photography is not a career path for them. Maybe with a surge of global warming anxiety traditional landscape photography may become valued as a symbol of good times a changin'. Maybe not.

It has been said, and there is an element of truth in it, that when you are behind camera in the presence of evocative subject matter and you must photograph the total knowledge of the world's photography curators is not of the slightest use to you. I reckon the way forward is not to crave the endorsement of art museums. The way forward is not make a living in art photography but rather to make a life in art photography.

[mdarnton]

That's strikes me as a rather cynical way to say that curators do their jobs as their museums want them done. Nope, they aren't working for photographers. You pay their bills and they will do our your way, too, I imagine. . .

[koh303]

I knew Beaumont Newhall and studied with him for a few years. I don't recall anything from him directly or from his books that would have disagreed with Thomas' statement.

I'd take their opinion over yours I think.

, do you mean newhall/steichen? of course you would, and given a chance, you, and them might re-do "the family of man" and call that art, because you stuck it in an art museum... Then argue about percentages. I would take Zizek's opinion over yours, and newhall's, i am sure.

Who are you BTW?

I am not sure i understood the question (but feel free to PM me if you want to know something specific).

Besides I didn't criticize your opinion about photography not being art-just your lack of knowledge.
But it is in ART museums permanent collections and in huge numbers.

The term 'huge', a lot like quantifying knowledge is a subjective thing.