Michael A. Smith in color

[walter23]

I came, I saw, I didn't like.

I didn't like the color tone.

I didn't like the subject matter, either: The reason big prisons are built far out in the hinterlands is so that we can flush these vermin out of our lives. Crime victims don't like to be reminded of the felons who have done them damage by driving by the prison holding their attackers every day on the way into work.

My advice to Michael, whose landscape work I admire: Don't quit your day job.

I suppose seriously traumatized crime victims wouldn't be going out of their way to look at portraits of felons, or if they were, it would be out of some kind of morbid fascination with the criminals anyway.

[domenico Foschi]

Actually I saw those images at Photo LA recently and they gave me a completely different impression.
I like them, not only because the ones we saw in the link were badly reproduced and the original looked great from a technical point of view, but also because I could see that Michael objective wasn't a morbid one or exploitive.

[Sylvester Graham]

Actually I saw those images at Photo LA recently and they gave me a completely different impression.
I like them, not only because the ones we saw in the link were badly reproduced and the original looked great from a technical point of view, but also because I could see that Michael objective wasn't a morbid one or exploitive.

I understand how from a technical standpoint the web images might have been a misrepresentation of the work, but I don't understand how actually seeing them in person could change your perception of their message.

If that's the case then art history professors all over the country need to stop showing classes mediocre slides and actually take students to go see works in museums.

[domenico Foschi]

"If that's the case then art history professors all over the country need to stop showing classes mediocre slides and actually take students to go see works in museums."

It seems you answered to your own perplexity.

[David A. Goldfarb]

Indeed, many art critics and art historians will not say they've "seen" a work unless they've seen the original in person. If you've ever tried to write about art based on reproductions, you quickly realize that no two are the same, and then if you go and see the work in person, usually there are effects of scale, surface, and color that are lost in reproduction.

[tim atherton]

If that's the case then art history professors all over the country need to stop showing classes mediocre slides and actually take students to go see works in museums.

Something every art professor and artisist I know would heartily recommend (every art and art history student absolutely needs to make trips to the Victoria and Albert, the Tate/Tate Modern, National Gallery, Met, MoMA, SFMoMA, Louvre or whatever).

There is no substitute for seeing the real thing and it is indeed the case that ones perception of the work often changes as a result

[domenico Foschi]

I am sorry I answered to you without really answering, amline.
But it's exactly what David and Tim said in a more eloquent fashion.
The most blatant example for me was when visitng a Van Gogh exhibit a few years back at LACMA.
Viewing the originals had a very profound effect on me that reproductions, even good ones never did.
I don't think that is only a matter of scale perspective and focus, but something more that can only be experienced being in front of the original.

[Sylvester Graham]

Thank you, Domenico, and everyone.

Of the art history classes I've taken I remember being pretty flabbergasted at how bad the reproductions were that the professor showed us, but to me it's just an inconvenience which doesn't subtract from understanding the meaning of a work. It isn't as "fun" but in terms of understanding the artists intentions, historical context, significance, it makes no difference.

Photography especially is a medium where viewing the image in it's "original" is less than necessary, since all photographs are reproductions.

I completely understand from experience that seeing a print or painting on a museum wall is an entirely different experience than seeing a reproduction in a book, but I don't think that that experience changes what the work is about.

Especially when talking about photographs, seeing the original print is an unnecessary luxury... unless of course what you’re discussing and studying is the art of printmaking itself, a subject that's prone to a certain glibness anyhow. From what I know, some of (by no means all of) the most preeminent photographic criticism has been generated by critics who weren't photographers themselves (Sontag, Barthes, etc). I really don’t think that, for each photograph discussed, these critics took a trip to whichever museum and then said “Now I’m ready to write.” In all likelihood, they probably based their observations on reproductions in books and elsewhere, and that didn’t stop them from writing some of the most intelligent work on the subject to date.

[Duane Polcou]

There is a trend in the art world to set up a backdrop, parade a group of people who fall into some category in front of it, and take their picture with a big camera.

Avedon did it with "In the American West", Michael Grecco did it with pornstars, Michael Smith has done it with convicts, and the New Jersey DMV does it with driver's licenses.

[scott_6029]

Wow, I completely disagree. Seeing the actual print is the full meaning...

I have seen reproductions and been unimpressed only to be very impressed upon seeing the actual print.

Have you seen a good Edward Weston shell print and an average one? VERY different feeling.