Equivalence: The Perennial Trend

[pdmoylan]

Having just quickly reviewed Manifestations of the Spirit, I am taken with White' articulation of abstract images and of course his predilection for the male nude. There is some ruminating that White was a closeted homosexual and the choice of images in this books seems to support that notion, at least in part.

His choice of abstract material is interesting and perhaps this kind of work and his social isolation contributed to his intellectual perceptions of what the medium could offer. Another point is the amount of space he uses in his images. Not many are terribly cluttered if you will.

The book is worth another look in a few weeks for new discoveries.

PDM

[jcoldslabs]

It seems to me there are two primary approaches one can take when viewing a photograph:

1. React to what you perceive. (White's "photograph-as-mirror" idea.) If you see beauty, then for you the photograph is beautiful; if you see irony, then for you the photograph is ironic; if you see no meaning then for you the photograph is meaningless.

2. Try to determine what the photographer had in mind when he or she made the exposure. This approach feels like a guessing game, and one that ultimately may have no correct answer if, as Paul has pointed out, authorial intent is a moving target.

Number one assumes a photograph will be a reflection of the viewer's mind, while number two assumes a photograph will be a reflection of the photographer's mind. I suppose all photographs are both, but the photographer who expects viewers to successfully guess his or her intent is in for a lifetime of disappointment.

As Minor White put it: "The mental image in a viewer's mind is more important than the photograph itself."

Jonathan

[Darin Boville]

I think it's vital. It keeps you from falling into the Humpty-Dumpty trap of thinking your work means something just because you want it to. It enforces rigor. It encourages you to find a critical distance when evaluating your work—to try to step out of the mindset in which you're blinded by your intentions.

If you care about how your work is received, you'll want to look at it, to the best of your abilities, as if you're someone else who doesn't know your backstory. This is difficult. Probably impossible to do perfectly. Another, more thorough solution, is the workshop. Get feedback from a room full of people who aren't you.

If you think the apple is love, and the 9 other people in the room think it's death, that's valuable information. You can learn from that!

Three responses, in general:

1) One of the advantages of the Critical Theory approach (in what I might view as a Critical Theory vs Art situation) is that the battle takes place on the Critical Theorists' field of choice. In politics a key way to win an argument is to choose and control the framework and vocabulary of the debate. In battle, as I understand, the choice of battlefield is similarly important. In this debate the artist is at a major disadvantage since we are engaging in the debate with words, with fragments of philosophy, not images.

2) When I was much younger, in the late 1980s I suppose, I went through what I jokingly refer to as my "October Magazine period." I read many journals with an intellectual bent, gave them close study. Tried to incorporate those ideas into my work in some way. Then gradually a revelation began to grow in my mind--that the people writing these articles, that the people participating in the conference panels, that the people publishing these books didn't have *it.* That didn't have that mysterious thing that allows a person to *see,* to really feel a work, a photograph. It was all high-end grad school seminar, academic research to these people. They didn't see the beyond. That idea is a sort of shock when you are growing up, to realize that the "experts" on art really didn't get it, really weren't in love.

3) On authorship and authority: I crossed the country by land (yet again) this past summer. Somewhere in the middle of the Great Plains I'm playing a classic rock station and Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" comes on the radio. When it concludes the DJ comes on and says, "Ah, wouldn't it be nice to do just what the song says and kick back, light up, and just enjoy this beautiful day." I've been to a number of Roger Waters concerts and I can attest that perhaps 90% of the audience also feels that the song is a call to kick back, light up, and relax. Do you think the DJs interpretation of the work is equally valid as Roger Water's? Do you think Glenn Beck's interpretation of the song "Born in the USA" by Bruce Springsteen is also equally valid as the songwriter's? (Beck was certainly not alone in his "understanding" of the lyrics--I'll bet that same 90% thought the same way.)

Making the artist's intent in any way equal to that of others doesn't keep them from falling into any trap. It gives weak artists a shield to hide behind. After all, if the work will accrue meaning without reference to intent then really all you have to do is put work out that is "ambiguous"--how often do you hear that term in artist statements and descriptions by galleries?--and let the "meaning" the artist failed to feel and fail to provide be supplied by others. You can get good at that sort of thing--becoming more the catalyst than the reaction itself.

--Darin

[Drew Wiley]

Although there are a number of interesting images on this thread, damn few of them seem to remind me of any "equivalent" in the sense that Stieglitz and Minor White
used the expression. Those things could hit you in your Gestalt gut.

[paulr]

Three responses, in general:

1) One of the advantages of the Critical Theory approach (in what I might view as a Critical Theory vs Art situation) is that the battle takes place on the Critical Theorists' field of choice. In politics a key way to win an argument is to choose and control the framework and vocabulary of the debate.

Well, this presumes there's a theory approach and a non-theory approach. I think this is a common but mistaken notion. Theorists in many cases are just putting labels on what people do anyway. Some have advocated that there's a "naive" response to art, but this falls apart quickly. Once you inherit language, or the vocabulary of images of your culture, you are no longer naive. You are operating on layers of received ideas. You may be naive when it comes to discerning these ideas, but you are still putting them to use.

Listen to non-academic enthusiasts of art or literature talk about work, and you'll see people shift between approaches that are author-centric, work-centric, culture-centric, and viewer-centric. They may not be aware of those shifts, but they make them all the time. A little theory just makes you aware, so you understand the assumptions behind each angle, along with the strengths and weaknesses.

I think you're right that there are critics who use theory like bullies, to define the debate and further an agenda that's essentially political. Artists do the same thing (consider all the modern movements with their 'isms" and manifestos) but critics are probably worse. These are bad critics, not good ones. Good ones use theories like tools. A work will usually tell you what approach or approaches will be most fruitful, so it's handy to have more than just a hammer in your bag.

2) When I was much younger, in the late 1980s I suppose, I went through what I jokingly refer to as my "October Magazine period." I read many journals with an intellectual bent, gave them close study. Tried to incorporate those ideas into my work in some way. Then gradually a revelation began to grow in my mind--that the people writing these articles, that the people participating in the conference panels, that the people publishing these books didn't have *it.* That didn't have that mysterious thing that allows a person to *see,* to really feel a work, a photograph. It was all high-end grad school seminar, academic research to these people. They didn't see the beyond. That idea is a sort of shock when you are growing up, to realize that the "experts" on art really didn't get it, really weren't in love.

I've read some critics like that, mostly when doing research at the library for High School English term papers. I don't encounter it much these days. The critics I read are passionate about their subjects. Usually much more so than I am, to be honest. I mean, I like photography just fine, but I don't see all the shows and read everything available, I don't have a photo collection or floor-to-ceiling book cases, and I didn't go into debt to study this stuff. Are you sure the people you're talking about couldn't see? Is it possible they just didn't see things the way you do?

Do you think the DJs interpretation of the work is equally valid as Roger Water's? Do you think Glenn Beck's interpretation of the song "Born in the USA" by Bruce Springsteen is also equally valid as the songwriter's?

Ok, you're making an assumption which is really common and equally problematic. Taking authorial intent out of the equation does NOT imply relativism.

Not one little bit. Consider this: Stieglitz showed us that accepting authorial intent made us highly susceptible to relativism (which Stieglitz do we trust?)

Different critical theories look for the locus of meaning in different places: the work itself, language, culture, the viewer's response, etc. etc.. That last one, the viewer's response, is where charges of relativism are most often found, but even reader response theory applies rigor to the critical process and looks at what ranges of interpretations are in- or out-of-bounds based on cultural contexts (I recommend Stanley Fish's excellent essay, Is There a Text in this Class?").

At any rate, I don't know what Roger Waters said about "Comfortably Numb," and I don't have to, to think the DJ is an idiot. There's enough in the song itself, and its social context (and the context of the rest of The Wall) to tell me he's missing the point. And this kind of missing the point is common: it's simply a matter of missing irony. That's also why someone like Beck might think Born in the USA is about flag-waving patriotism (although with the Springsteen song you also have to ignore literally everything between the choruses, but I wouldn't put that past him).

[jcoldslabs]

Writing about the visual arts has always been fraught, hasn't it? Whatever critical framework you use, you are still using words to describe something that exists outside the realm of spoken or written language. Those concerned with the making of images may have trouble explaining in words what it is their photographs are "about." I know I do.

J.

[Miguel Coquis]

Equivalence and the sense of aliveness.
Flesh and bones of the process.
Perhaps it shows a possible path, a transition through the perennial trend and productive, evocative photography.
Here is an extract from a letter written 40 years ago by one of traditional pionners.
Having share it for long with my students, I am glad to post it here and now.

[Miguel Coquis]

front&shadows

[Darin Boville]

I wonder if we might differentiate between the words "evocative" and "Equivalent" in terms of this thread. To my way of thinking, if a photograph has a subject (or rather, depicts an object) that holds your visual attention then it probably isn't an Equivalent. (I like to think of "Equivalent" type photos as "subject-less" even though they depict *something.*) However, a picture of an object might evoke a feeling, thoughts, emotions, that are not "about" that object.

They are quite different things.

--Darin

[paulr]

I think "evocative," while more vague and wooly, is also more honest. A formal arrangement of objects might evoke a feeling, but it isn't the equivalent of that feeling (or of anything else).