Why's it gotta be a series?

[Mark Sawyer]

" I have started to notice a few central themes to this more free form work (this is of course in the editing), and it seems to evolve, like "Art""

No, that's not the work evolving. It's you evolving. The work is just a symptom.

And I don't know who this guy "Art" is...

[Gary J. McCutcheon]

The process of working in series or through a theme has roots in "The New Bauhaus" which became the "Institute of Design" in Chicago of which Harry Callahan had an important teaching influence. Callahan had his students work and think in terms of theme and series as a process of exploration and growth which not only allowed an instructor to trace and observe student progress, but mimicked processes of the human mind. As a result of this influential process, many schools follow suit today with their teaching methods. Thematic traces can be found in the work of artists throughout history whether writers, painters, sculptors, musicians, and yes, photographers. These themes may be subconscious, internal processes that are only seen in a large body of work over a long period of time or may be observed on a more limited scale in condensed time scale as a relative limited series that is more conscious in nature. What is amazing is that these smaller acts of creativity may surface as larger themes or bits of a great bite so to speak over an entire lifetime.

The really wonderful thing about photography is that it is metaphore for so many larger things, as all forms of art can be. Photography encompasses science and art and life itself and is linked to everything. I don't mean to sound so esoteric, but photography seems to be able to cover subjects as far away as the heavens and as close as our hearts. What most of us know of the world today is because of photography in one form or other. It strikes the intellect as well as the spiritual, the physical and the metaphysical. It can't always be put in words, and words fail so miserably at times. Just then, a photograph says it all. Themes that seem to develop in an artists life are signs of growth and an inner resolving of questioning and exploration that can only be seen on an individual basis that somehow, when actualized and visualized and translated into form, relates to us all. This even moreso in the hands of a gifted artist.

[Mark_3899]

Interesting, I didn't realize Callahan was attributed to the "series" way of thinking. I would have thought it was Walker Evans. I just want to clarify, when I say series I mean a preconceived idea, which has a start and an end and where all the single images make up a whole. When I think theme, it is ties or common threads in a body of work. I am finding that when I start a project I almost always go off in another direction and sometimes what I end up with has nothing to do with the preconceived idea I started out with. Sometimes none of the images seem to relate and I can split the project into a few seperate themes. Do you guys experience this?

[paulr]

Callahan might have been the first to popularize the vocabulary in a photography teaching context, but these are ideas (or observations) that have been around forever. Evans' work was clearly intended as a whole (or at least worked even better as a whole than as individual images). Same for Weston, Timothy O'Sulllivan, Julia Margaret Cammeron, Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet, Turner, and story writers, songwriters, and poets going back hundreds of years.

I'm sure Callahan's contribution was significant, but to say he came up with the idea is a bit like crediting Ansel Adams with inventing exposure and development, simply because he came up with the vocabulary of the zone system.

[Mark Sawyer]

There have been many wonderful and influential bodies of photographs going way back. Emerson's "Life and Landscape of the Norfolk Broads," Frederick Evans' studies of cathedrals and attics, the work of the Civil War-then-western expeditionary photographers. Edward Curtis' photography of the North American Indian still stands today as one of the most beautiful and ambitious. Atget's gardens and street scenes, Strand at a given locale... (Sorry, I just love letting my mind wander...) But these were all primarily documentary bodies of work.

Callahan helped codify the vocabulary and value of the "art" series (however we define that), but Stieglitz' Equivalents were the first substantive, cohesive series of photographs I can think of that were consciously produced with "art" rather than "documentation" as the final goal.

There's a constant effort to define current trends and movements art photographers work in, but the phenomenon of working in series goes largely undiscussed, perhaps because it is so pervasive in nearly all styles of work these days.

[Mark_3899]

Ok, this is sort of getting away from my original question. I don't believe Picasso, Van Gogh, Edward Weston or Turner started with an idea to produce a series of something (as defined by me above) with the intent to publish or exhibit it.

"For me personally I am always working on a "series" though I may not realize it at the time. Sometimes years later I understand the thread of what I thought was an unrelated group of images and begin to work on it consciously. Sometimes someone from the outside brings this to your consciousness. Because of an article that Steve Simmons wrote about my work some years ago I realized that all my individual projects were part of a greater lifelong series and as a result of his insights I have been consciously working on ever since. "

What Kirk states above is what I think is probably the norm in the way most artists have worked from the beginning. Yes Edward Curtis was producing his work in series under the guise of documentation, but it was really a commercial venture. Walker Evans was working on an assignment for someone else. Stieglitz's Equivalents, there you go.

"There's a constant effort to define current trends and movements art photographers work in, but the phenomenon of working in series goes largely undiscussed, perhaps because it is so pervasive in nearly all styles of work these days."

Yes, this is one of the things that bother me about the art world. There is this notion about how you should work, what kinds of images you should make, how big you should print, not to mention the artist's statement. Picasso never had to worry about this crap.

[Mark Sawyer]

Sorry if we wandered, Mark, but an interesting thread winds its way around...

I do think Weston's "My Camera at Point Lobos" would qualify as at least a cohesive body, if not a series. His work really divides neatly into specific areas; still lifes, portraits, nudes, rocks, dunes, the ocean. But whether these qualify as a "series" really does depend on ones definition of the word and how one sees the work...

Regarding the original query, "I wonder whether or not there is any sense that an individual print from a series is somehow incomplete when seen w/o the rest," Weston certainly sold them as individual prints, so there I would say no. But in creating publications that were landmarks in their careers, photographers most often have a binding theme to the body of work.

There are a few examples I can think of where a photographer might object to a part of a series being separated. Adams did a series looking over a cliff at waves on a beach below, recording their changing patterns. I've seen these published a few times, always in series, never alone.

"Yes, this is one of the things that bother me about the art world. There is this notion about how you should work, what kinds of images you should make, how big you should print, not to mention the artist's statement."

Only if you're going for critical success as an artist, and then you're in the playground of the professional critics, gallery-owners, publishers, and collectors. It's not quite as specific as you wrote, but you have to meet their expectations if you want to be a success in their territory. Actually, a good thread would be defining the expectations and responsibilities of a "professional fine art photographer" trying to make it in the artworld today. Oops, wandering again...

[Mark_3899]

"Only if you're going for critical success as an artist, and then you're in the playground of the professional critics, gallery-owners, publishers, and collectors. It's not quite as specific as you wrote, but you have to meet their expectations if you want to be a success in their territory."

This has always been my dilemma. I would love to be a "professional fine art photographer" yet I work in the field and have to deal with these people all the time and I have such little respect for many of them (especially the gallery owners) that I don't want to play by the rules. Oh well, I guess it's a life of obscurity for me.

"Actually, a good thread would be defining the expectations and responsibilities of a "professional fine art photographer" trying to make it in the artworld today. "

That would be a good thread Mark.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Mark, photograph what you like without worrying about a "theme." After a while you will see there is a certain cohesion to your work and then all you have to do is come up with an art speak statement.

[Mark Sawyer]

"After a while you will see there is a certain cohesion to your work"

True. Humans are creatures of habit. We're all gonna do series work whether we choose to or not. In everything we do...