Contemporary vs. traditional

[Gordon Moat]

Emphasizing craft is purely marketing. If any work of art cannot stand on its own, without explanation of process, then I challenge the notion that it is compelling. That has nothing to do with whether or not I like a work of art.

I can make my own canvases, mix my own paints from raw materials, and even make my own brushes. However, it is more important for me to reach an end result, than it is to emphasize those aspects, and I enjoy the convenience of paints in tubes and ready-made high quality brushes (I still stretch my own canvases, but from bought components). In photography, I can do all aspects of darkroom work, yet I choose to pay labs to develop and print for me, with my direction. The end result is my goal, not the process of getting there. Unless I state something about process, the person viewing one of my paintings or photographs has no idea what effort I put into each work, and I don't think it should matter.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography

[paulr]

But in the mad rush "forward" (whichever direction that might be), use of traditional tools becomes an indicator of traditional vision, regardless of what the artist is really seeing and saying.

Yeah, I think that's definitely a risk. Especially when people aren't looking all that closely at the work. I think I've been branded as an "old fashioned" photographer more than once, because the prints I showed were warm toned black and white and had a kind of retro esthetic to them. Now--those people might be right about me, but their reasons for leaping to that judgement strike me as superficial, and could easily lead them to some wrong conclusions.

On the other hand, there are plenty of counter examples. 8 or 9 years ago it seemed like all the blue chip galleries were showing contemporary platinum and palladium prints that were superficially victorian looking. Linda Connor was among the first contemporary bigshots to revive that esthetic; artists like Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison continue with variations on it today. Possibly their stature helps get them seen as contemporary.

Of course, whether the work in question really IS contemporary is up for grabs. But I'm talking more about impressions right now.

[paulr]

To be as inspecific as possible, traditional photography is designed for you to look at the technique used in creating the photograph and less about what the photograph is of. The subject matter is secondary, the technique is primary.

I thnk that's being way too specific. Way, way too specific ... it discounts probably the majority of what most us would consider traditional.

If you look at the discussions and correspondence among the f64 people, most of their concerns were philosophical. They were talking about the nature of being, of form, of "quintessences," of the state of humanity in (their) contemporary world. Strand was an ardent socialist; Weston a formal modernist and eventually a late modernist; Minor White was a theosophist mystic; Walker Evans was an activist documentarian; Stieglitz reinvented himself at least a half a dozen times, but each invention was centered on philosophy, not craft. In all these cases, these artists used their mastery of craft in service to their visions. Except maybe for Evans, who you could argue never mastered craft nor cared much about it.

From the same general time period you can look across the ocean to the European modernists ... the surrealists, the constructivists, the expressionists, the socialists, the futurists, the Bauhaus school, the superficially retro and uncategorizeable Atget ...

How many of them could you say put craft before vision?

[jnantz]

How would you define a photograph as being "traditional" and how would you define a photograph as being "contemporary?" From what I'm seeing contemporary not only has to do with the time period work was created in, but also the style of the work...

i would guess that "traditional" photography has to do with imagery and methods
that speak about the photography of days gone by.

in the same way, i would guess that "contemporary" photography doesn't
pat on the back the "olde guard"

[Chris Jones]

What an interesting, polite and civil discussion this is making it a pleasure to read.

From my viewpoint this question is one of the big issues that seems to confront not only photography as art, but all the arts and in this era it seems far more insistent and urgent. I suspect what this entails is a heightened awareness, or perhaps more accurately, a far more intense and heightened encounter with history and so far, without any satisfactory resolution then what other eras may be able to express.

I generally get put into the contemporary box not so much as a photographer but as a poet and I have reached that more mature age when I begin to question what this may mean, whereas earlier it didn't worry me. (I was once called a Postmodernist, that was a worry.) My choice of media; 35mm, super 8, video and now 4x5 monorail and Mamiya TLR monochrome prints, I cannot alone see as an answer. I could stretch this further by questioning also why a poet instead of photographer? This is usually resolved as poet and media artist and yet I can remain contemporary with a monorail instead of computer multimedia. (I dropped multimedia simply because of the time it takes to learn software, deciding to stick with what I know, so may well return?)

So how may contemporary practice think images, it could be asked. To begin, it is simply no longer possible to think in terms of value judgements (in the strict sense rather then more colloquial usage) so what could be termed concerns become not a judgement but a way of thinking or a pragmatics, which is to say a pragmatic aesthetics which asks how can it be done. This entails a type of approach which is dialogic (using a term provided by M. M. Bakhtin's theory of the novel) whereas tradition has no need to enter into dialogues with other areas of thought but is able to sustain itself as a tradition and a way of producing images. In poetics it could be said that tradition can maintain itself as a monologue, whereas the idea of contemporary I am thinking about cannot, needing to be in some sort of dialogue with a variety of recent thinking. This is how I see the relation between photography, poetry and prose novels which I also write. What I am saying here is not that new, the idea of prose novels, poetry and photography as a dialogue can be traced back to the Beat writers and photographers and back to Christopher Isherwood and WH Auden. So, it follows that the monorail view camera using black and white film and silver prints cannot alone signify tradition and instead can be as contemporary as computer graphics and multimedia.

While traditionalist may live without the need for dialogue and be perfectly self sustaining, this cannot also be so for contemporary practice which needs to be able to make a dialogic link with what is termed traditional which means being at least conversant with the zone system, for example. So a value judgement (referring again to aesthetic theories) cannot be made here. It seems to me that traditional practice also is unable to make such a judgement. The question then seems to be one of concerns and this reminds me of Minor White's respectful concern for the snapshot aesthetics of Gary Winnogrand and Lee Friedlander, where White thought that the zone system placed the body of the photographer into the image more successfully then their practice. Of course, I am free to disagree or not accept this solution provided by White and seek another. So approaching tradition again, it seems that it has to be constructed or invented as a type of fiction which can sustain itself. Contemporary practice also needs fiction which can sustain it as a practice but this fiction is simply one of being a different way of approaching how images can be thought, that is as dialogic, rather then the monologic of tradition.

Better stop here before I write an entire book. Anyways, just giving back some of what I am thinking about in terms of how I seek another solution to a common problem.

[Gary L. Quay]

A few years ago, I attempted to get into a juried exhibition at a local gallery / workspace that had as a jurist the photography curator for the Portland Art Museum, if memory serves me correctly. I won't name the gallery. I didn't get into the show. I was somewhat bemused by the Willamette Week's (a local weekly newspaper) critique of the show a few days after it opened, which stated (I'm pararhrasing here), "Blurry, poorly composed, and self-important. Haven't these people heard of beauty?"

I don't pay attention to what's in or out, though. My subscription to American Photo ran out years ago. I think of myself as a traditional photographer, mostly due to the subject matter I choose, and my methodologies. I compose the way a landscape artist composes, even when I work with models. I want that strong foregrounds and the inverted 'V' lines that seem to give the image movement. I tend to think that comtemporary photographers don't concern themselves with such things, but maybe I'm confusing "contemporary" with "avante garde."

--Gary

[john borrelli]

I think contemporary photography is a reaction against what its proponents perceive as content that is at its core a reflection of an escapist's paradigm.

[cobalt]

The same thing is going on in the art world in general. What is art? What the artist says it is? Bullshit.

A few points to consider:

I think the fact that Mapplethorpe was what one might call a gifted classical photographer. Oddly enough, it is his work whose content was more controversial in terms of content that appears to be his claim to fame. Artist turned... contemporary artist...:-)

I read an article once on story illustration (i.e. making comic strips). The gist of the article was that it is much easier to support bad illustration with good writing than it is to support bad writing with good illustration.

Sally Mann famously made haunting images using glass many here would consider less than pedestrian, no meter, and an ancient view camera. Doesn't matter what the technique was, art was produced. Artist.

While shooting the Detroit International Jazz Festival this summer, I was constantly approached by press pass wielding "photographers" who were more interested in the fact that I was making photographs with a Hasselblad, and insisting that I was some sort of luddite because I don't want a digital back for it, than the business that they were supposed to be about. (Annoying as hell, pain in the ass) Technicians.

Mastering the technical skills needed to make an image on a negative is not rocket science. It takes a bit of practice of course. Making art is quite divorced from this procedure. There are a lot of good technicians out there; few great artists.

On the whole... I think I am in agreement with the Focus Mag guy, as well as the guy referenced by Maris.

I am sick to death of technically correct (and often lifeless) images of Monument Valley, churches, old barns and cala lillies (even when I make them, and I do). But I am also sick of fuzzy-for-the-sake-of-repudiating-tradition-Holga images as well. What is art lies somewhere twixt the two philosophies, if you will.

Calling oneself an artist means than one asserts the ability to express original (as well as borrowed) ideas via an original and unique language of (in this case visual) expression particular to that individual. Often, the new paradigm of rejecting paradigm out of hand as dogma throws the doors open to those who lack a certain amount of ... talent. Some even say talent is a myth. If it is, then I want to be Miles Davis when I grow up. Give me a horn. A few lessons, a couple of years practice, and surely I will surpass him... right?


I don't think so.

[Michael Wynd]

Very well done Maris. I'm going to give a copy of this to the head of our Visual Arts Department. He is an art critic and has several books to his name. Some of what he says makes sense to me, but some of it is (as far as I'm concerned) drivel. He is a bit of a snob who thinks that classic photography (Ansel Adams etc) is twee. I'll be very interested in finding out what he thinks of what you wrote.
Again well done
Mike