Still life = sentimentalist BS?

[paulr]

OK, to all the "sentimentalist BS" crowd, please, PLEASE show us some of your brilliant, groundbreaking, thought provoking work that is unlike anything ever done before. IOW, put your money where your m-f-ing mouth is! Honestly, I am dying to see it!!

Hi Kerik!

I won't exactly bite that bait, but I'll suggest that it creates a false dichotomy. The possibilities for art aren't a black and white division between b.s. clichés and work that's "unlike anything that's been done before."

There's a whole range of work that has ties to traditions, that may be familiar in some ways, but that also shows us SOMETHING we haven't seen before. That something may (in rare cases) be an unfamiliar subject, but it's more likely to be a perspective or sensibility that strikes us as fresh and original. In most cases this something doesn't suggest a desperate grab for novelty, but rather the natural course of events when an individual, who is not quite like any other individual, finds a way to give a voice to his or her own perceptions of the world.

One simple test for this is if people can easily recognize a person's work. "That looks like a Minor White photograph" Is a great complement to Minor. It's not a great complement to me if someone points to one of my pictures and says it. If my work looks too much like someone else's, then the chances are that I'm not really doing MY work. Imitation can be a helpful exercise, but for anyone interested in making art, it will eventually reveal itself to be as empty as any other wrote exercise.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with still life pictures. It just happens to be a genre that's produced a lot of popular clichés; ones that some people seem content to repeat over and over. It's certainly not a unique genre in this regard.

[Brian K]

I'm tired of seeing flowers. They are usually shot on black or white environments with barely anything distinguishing them from eachother except the the choice of black or white backgrounds. Flower photos are perhaps the most unintrusive, apolitical, innocuous, predictable and overdone subject matter there is. They are the "beige" of photography. And as such sell in huge numbers as room decoration. Few photographers bring anything new to them, they don't have to, they're self selling which is why most galleries have a flower photographer.

[paulr]

I'm tired of seeing flowers. ... And as such sell in huge numbers as room decoration. Few photographers bring anything new to them, they don't have to, they're self selling which is why most galleries have a flower photographer.

You could probably make a good sized list of subjects or genres that compete for bottom of the beige barrel.

One way to look at this is as a challenge. It's really hard to work in some idioms and do anything that hasn't been a cliché for almost forever. Painters of the figure and painters of fruit face this challenge too. Most of them fail, but that just means it's difficult!

It might be difficult because the genres offer limited possibilities, or maybe because we've been looking at them for so long that it's hard to see the subjects through our own eyes and not through the eyes of those who have already beaten the horse to death.

I was about to say that I don't take pictures of flowers, because I'm not up to the challenge, but then realized that a few had snuck into my flatfiles. If they escape from being clichés it might be because I wasn't thinking of them as flower pictures when I made them ...

[Kerik Kouklis]

Hi Kerik!

One simple test for this is if people can easily recognize a person's work. "That looks like a Minor White photograph" Is a great complement to Minor. It's not a great complement to me if someone points to one of my pictures and says it. If my work looks too much like someone else's, then the chances are that I'm not really doing MY work. Imitation can be a helpful exercise, but for anyone interested in making art, it will eventually reveal itself to be as empty as any other wrote exercise.

Hi back Paul!

I absolutely agree with you.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with still life pictures. It just happens to be a genre that's produced a lot of popular clichés; ones that some people seem content to repeat over and over. It's certainly not a unique genre in this regard.

The last line makes my point. Urban landscape, portraiture, figure studies, natural landscapes, etc. all have their popular cliches that are overdone. In fact, I'm tired of seeing landscapes. They are usually shot on environments with barely anything distinguishing them from each other except the choice of backgrounds. Landscape photos are perhaps the most unintrusive, apolitical, innocuous, predictable and overdone subject matter there is. They are the "beige" of photography. And as such sell in huge numbers as room decoration. Few photographers bring anything new to them, they don't have to, they're self selling which is why most galleries have a landscape photographer.

[Brian K]

Paul, I realize that nearly all subject matter has been shot before, however nothing has been so overdone and done in nearly identical and non creative ways as flowers. I agree that one needs to look at it as a challenge, the problem is that no one who shoots flowers does. They put them against black, or white, light them with a softbox on one side and call it art. Part of the attraction I guess is that you need almost no technical or lighting ability to produce a flower shot that most people would consider acceptable. The only person doing flowers with any sense of original style that I have seen in the past few years is Kuriya.

[Brian K]

Hi back Paul!

I absolutely agree with you.



The last line makes my point. Urban landscape, portraiture, figure studies, natural landscapes, etc. all have their popular cliches that are overdone. In fact, I'm tired of seeing landscapes. They are usually shot on environments with barely anything distinguishing them from each other except the choice of backgrounds. Landscape photos are perhaps the most unintrusive, apolitical, innocuous, predictable and overdone subject matter there is. They are the "beige" of photography. And as such sell in huge numbers as room decoration. Few photographers bring anything new to them, they don't have to, they're self selling which is why most galleries have a landscape photographer.

Kerik, I agree with you that landscape is overdone, too many people copying the work of Ansel, Weston, etc. However landscape is what exists in real life. You can't move that lake next to that mountain, there are more limitations imposed on landscape than on still life. When it comes to still life you are actually placing objects of your own choosing together, you are usually in a very controlled environment, you can move closer or further or frame the image any way you want with ease. It is an environment that is completely at the control of and open to any manipulation that the photographer choses. Instead what we usually get are flowers, or flowers in a vase, on black or on white.

[cyrus]

"Yawn"

Perhaps this should turn into a "challenge thread" - where people approach cliche subjects, but do them well - nay, better than they have ever been done before.

As I recall, several of the sons of JS Bach were composers as well, and considered their father's work as trite and cliche. Even so, I'd be surprised if many us could even name the sons, without looking them up somewhere - never mind humming one of their compositions.

Ans I;m complaining about too many "sons of Bach" are in fact putting out more repetitive sentimentalist cliches. (as I do myself - but I don't claim to be a "photographer")

And no I'm not putting other peoples work down but only expressing frustration at the ubiquity of cliches even in the most artifificial and controlled field of photography (Still life)

Surely there;s nothing wrong with trying to break the cliches?

[Ken Lee]

You're right. There's nothing wrong with trying to break repetitive patterns. By the same token, if people want to make artistic cliches, there's nothing wrong with that either. Better that, than blowing up their neighbors.

It's good to complain about cliches. At the same time, it's OK to understand the people who make them, smile, and look the other way.

Some times, change is made by the sharing of intelligent criticism. Some times, it's made by artistic inspiration. You're free to share whatever you like.

There's nothing new about a rose, or a human female, but I never tire of seeing a lovely specimen. I recently strolled through the Metropolitan Museum in New York, whose collections includes pieces from remote antiquity and more recent times. The subjects are perennial, and the great works are so wonderful, that the repetition doesn't bother me at all. I suspect that people will be admiring flowers and the human form, long after our visit to this world is over.

I'm fairly confident that in the pursuit of Beauty, I will not discover anything really new - but as the old saying goes: "Dig we must".

[Jack Flesher]

Lots of good comments here, but I'll add a few of my own. First off, I feel any photograph is by definition a "still life" -- after all, isn't it simply a brief enough slice of life to be considered still? Beyond that, I do think the issue at heart is that to be good, one needs to be different. And applying one's individual creativity to generate fresh visions is a way to accomplish that. It's why copying landscapes that Ansel, Muench, Rowell, White, Porter, etcetera already did generally don't impress us as the photographer or the viewer. The exception is pehaps when something really unique and magical happening with the light; a common thing seen in an unusual way. In the end, I think this is probably why alternative process and/or 19th century lenses are gaining in popularity -- we see something unique from them and appreciate the novelty...

Here is an example of a contemporary B&W landscape photographer I think is novel. Moreover, many of his images come from California's central valley, about the most boring local for scenics I know of -- and I speak with some authority since I've lived near it and travelled through it my entire life! Yet Roman continues to capture scenes of incredibly distinctive vision... See: http://www.romanloranc.com/ and be sure to check out his central valley portfolios.


Cheers,

[vann webb]

^Very nice, indeed.