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Thread: Ross and Vitali

  1. #11
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
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    Ross and Vitali

    Incidentally, I just checked his bio page, and noted that his work is in about a dozen major museum and corporate art collections, and that his long list of recent solo exhibitions includes major galleries in New York, London, Paris, Milan, and Berlin.

    I don't believe for a minute that this should convince anyone to like a piece of art or a body of work ... but it should count as at least a few votes that there's something there to look at.

    By the way, has anyone checked out Chris Jordan's website? I think there's something there to loo at too.

  2. #12
    Yes, but why? David R Munson's Avatar
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    Ross and Vitali

    I like Vitali's shots, but I can easily see how one could get nothing out of them. Sometimes one has to have a certain base of knowledge or be in a particular mindset to really get a piece of art. But ultimately, if you don't get it, then so what. If there is other work that you do get and enjoy, then hell run with it. That's one great thing about art - there's something out there for everyone. There's a lot of art that I don't get or just don't like, but I don't deny that other people enjoy it or consider them morons for doing so.

  3. #13

    Ross and Vitali

    On the subject of acquired tastes, do you really believe that your own tastes were not acquired? Are the pictures you like to look at now the same ones you liked to look at when you were five years old? If not, then what happened between now and then? And is there some magical point at which that stopped happening, or at which you assumed it should stop happening?



    I dont buy it, as you mature your taste changes but it is not acquiared. This is a very different matter. What you talk about is tantamount to saying cancer is an acquired taste. As one matures one learns to give the benefit of the doubt, and as you say give things a second chance, but this in no way precludes having the ability to recognize on first glance something one dislikes. Yes I do really beleive my tastes are not acquired.

    I would not say to someone who does not "get" a work of art/literature/music that he/she does not get it. I would point out the things I see in an effort to show them what I see, but telling someone "ah, you just dont get it" is the typical reaction of the cognizante when one challanges their view.

    You have explained what you "get" out of these phtographs, frankly I dont see all that. What you see is shaped by your experiences and taste, but this in no way is proof that the rest of us dont "get" it.

    In the end time will tell who is right or wrong, but some how I dont think these prints will ever be mention with the same awe and reverence as Da Vinci's last supper...

  4. #14
    tim atherton's Avatar
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    Ross and Vitali

    "In the end time will tell who is right or wrong, but some how I dont think
    these prints will ever be mention with the same awe and reverence as Da
    Vinci's last supper... "

    I doubt there ae but one or two photographs that ever could - if that.... :-)
    You'd be amazed how small the demand is for pictures of trees... - Fred Astaire to Audrey Hepburn

    www.photo-muse.blogspot.com blog

  5. #15
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    Ross and Vitali

    " dont buy it, as you mature your taste changes but it is not acquiared. "

    this is a semantic dodge, Jorge. Come on. Tastes can change in a couple of basic ways: you can start to appreciate something you didn't used to appreciate, or you can stop appreciating something that you once did. Any time you do the former, that counts as acquiring a taste.

    I'm not belaboring this point to belittle you, Jorge. I'm doing it because your idea constitutes a limiting belief, and it's one that I hate to see people carrying around. It's not about Vitali's work, ultimately. I could care less if you like it or not. It's about you acknowledging the possibility that what you don't see now you might see tomorrow or the day after. It can only happen if you believe it can; because if not, then you'll just stop looking, and consider yourself proven right.

    I would never suggest that someone doesn't "get" art work simply because they don't like it or because it's not to their tastes. But when they tell me WHY they don't like it, they sometimes give clues.

    Some of the things you said before: implying that this work is nothing but ordinary pictures printed big; that they're 6 foot vacation shots; that they're merely examples of fine printmaking; that they were technically easy to make-- all suggest a profound missing of what these photographs offer.

    I posted a long description of what I see in the work, and you replied "frankly I don't see all that."
    THIS is precisely my point. You do not see all that. Which is not, of course, evidence that it's not there.
    There are a lot of reasons someone might not see all that. I see it for some pretty simple, mundane reasons: I look at a lot
    of photography from the last several decades; particulary photography in similar genres to Vitali's; I have books by William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Mike Smith, Robert Adams, and Walker Evans, and I've studied them; I've seen Andreas Gursky's work at the Modern about a half dozen times, I host a forum on contemporary landscape photography where people challenge me with ideas and pictures all the time; when people recommend a book on art history, I read it; I've had my own work critiqued, and sometimes shredded, by many of the top curators in the world.

    But above all, I've been open to the idea that what I like and what I think I know today are likely not the whole story. So I keep looking. It's enriched both my life and my work. And my appreciation for other people's work. My wish for any artist, here or anywhere else, is to discover the same openness. Know the difference between not liking something and not getting it. And be willing to do the work to get it. Who knows where it might lead you?

  6. #16

    Ross and Vitali

    I'm not belaboring this point to belittle you, Jorge. I'm doing it because your idea constitutes a limiting belief, and it's one that I hate to see people carrying around. It's not about Vitali's work, ultimately. I could care less if you like it or not. It's about you acknowledging the possibility that what you don't see now you might see tomorrow or the day after. It can only happen if you believe it can; because if not, then you'll just stop looking, and consider yourself proven right.



    You were doing fine until now, now you are pissing me off. This is a very patronzing statement. How about if I say you are seeing there things that are just not there but you do so in a effort to fall in line with the rest of the conizante. At least I am honest with myself and dont have to "work" at something I found totally ordinary. Do me a favor, dont do me any favors......



    You do not see all that. Which is not, of course, evidence that it's not there.



    On the same token, just because YOU see this it is not evidence that it is there. From the books you mention it is apparent you like this type of work, we could substitute Vitali for Gursky or any of the others you mention and you get the same reaction from many people. The fact that some of these people is in museums or collections does necessarily mean their work is good, museums are also known for collecting crap they think is good at the time.

    On this one I will stop here and say I disagree with you, I am not about to be patronized by the likes of you.

  7. #17

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    Ross and Vitali

    I looked again.

    I like the woman in the red bikini.

  8. #18
    Founder QT Luong's Avatar
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    Ross and Vitali

    Jorge, can you give us examples of what is NOT ordinary pictures or ordinary subjects, and explain why they are extraordinary
    in the same depth as Paul has explaned what he saw in those Vitale images ?

  9. #19

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    Ross and Vitali

    My wife keeps telling me that I dislike Mahler's music because I simply haven't listened to it properly. We've been together twenty years and she still won't accept that I have listened, repeatedly and well: I simply don't like it. I therefore have great sympathy for Jorge. Where we differ is that I don't call Mahler's music rubbish, not even late at night when the missus is safely asleep.

    Don't get hung up on canons. I could say the same about bits of Henze, or Reimann, or even Tippett.

    I'm surprised at the amount of flak that Ross and the Gigapixel project have drawn from LF folk here and on other forums. There is always a wealth of encouragment and support for people here who attempt to build their own cameras or modify some hunk of metal they turned up at a surplus depot. I don't see why that support should be withdrawn just because the person concerned doesn't post here, or because they have taken the extra step of trying to make a commercial success of their project. It's not even as if there are many other options for ULF colour work besides aerial films, so in many ways both Ross and Gigapixel are doing the commendably necessary. For my money Gigapixel gets the nod for technical excellence: the designers obviously know what real resolution is. Those who believe that their antique 20x24 blows them out of the water should re-read the notes on air MTF, the importance of alignment, and the 'inadequacy' of mainstream ULF wide angles.

    I like Massimo's photographs. It, and the Bas Princen book Tim referred to, have a feeling of understated authenticity that is missing from more conventional landscape work, particularly in the American tradition. I do love, for example, Ansel Adams, but his prints merely run the emotional gamut from A to B. He, and the Velvia-fuelled crowds that follow him, seem to think that there is only one appropriate reaction to a natural scene: Silent Awe. As a former climber, and as a European, I miss the sense of being at home in the wilderness, of *belonging* there; as well as the recognition that the changes humans have wrought on the landscape are not necessarily an aberration, but instead often define what the landscape really is, both physically and metaphorically. I also enjoy the quieter sense of presentation in the muted colour palette, non golden-hour light, and the finely-balanced yet undramatic composition. For me, Vitali isn't really all that radical or different, except in the polish and skill of his execution.

  10. #20
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
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    Ross and Vitali

    "My wife keeps telling me that I dislike Mahler's music because I simply haven't listened to it properly. We've been together twenty years and she still won't accept that I have listened, repeatedly and well: I simply don't like it. I therefore have great sympathy for Jorge. Where we differ is that I don't call Mahler's music rubbish, not even late at night when the missus is safely asleep."

    That's a big difference. It sounds like you've listened enough to be able to hear what your wife likes about it; it just doesn't happen to do the same for you. You're not declaring there's nothing there to hear. Personally, I can't stand Leonard Cohen. This puts me on the sh!t list of many of my friends, serious music heads among them. I've opened mymind to the possibility of liking him; I've listened to most of the albums. Still bums me out. But at least I feel that I "get" the music now, and can state what others like about him.

    I also hear plenty of music that I don't get, and possibly never will. A good friend is a new music composer. I go to group concerts that include his work from time to time. Some of what's being played is miles over my head in terms of sophistication. I'd have a lot of homework to do before I got from here to there. Ironically, I like some of it in spite of not getting it--but much of the rest is just a curiosity.

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