Art is like foliage sprouting from the cultural landscape. There are many varieties, some live longer than others, some are popular, some are not, and whatever form they take you can't really say that they are going any place in particular.
Art just is.
FWIW, isn't the process of making "art" as much of an art as the "art" that is produced?
"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority"---EB White
john, In my opinion , no, it is just work, not "art". But one should take pride in one's work, in a job well done. The finished print or image or poem or book or painting or drawing or sculpture is "the thing."
Again, poping up to defend pictorialists, someone, anyone, look at a print from one. One by John Vanderpant caused an asthma atack. Don't take thoes kinds of pictures if you don't like them, but don't compare to a 2 year old please -- a 2 year old with a auto-everything camera can also take a clear photo. Also, folks, if you don't understand conceptual art and think Yoko Ono's only contribution to the 20th century was breaking up the Beatles, then learn more befor speaking, or just go out and take they photo's you take. I'm sure I'd like them if I saw them.
As for the back and forth, there isn't any anymore -- the Academy is dead -- Derrida killed it. Mead said we are in a constant fight with our artistic fathers, but as fatherhood seems dead, we all got to learn from our siblings here (too much Bly?). So let's all just learn from each other, and stop using thoes evil dead fuzzies as a bugbear. Or the gummies or the grainies.
Even St.A admits the pictorialits knew how to use light. He learned that from them. If you realy hate them, just search out a good print and look at it. Dean
Dean Lastoria
Art is defined as a leap of the imagination. In photography it may be a razor sharp or soft image. As Ellis said, the camera is only a tool, it is what is in your heart and mind that one will put on film. Some of my images fall into each category and I don't feel I have to create it a certain way someone says it should be unless I have been commissioned by them. At that point, it may be called art by them but it is just work by me.
I can tell when I've gotten firmly astride that horse again by the usually-delay ed acceptance that the photos I'm making "in the Adams tradition" are intensely, stultifyingly (is that a word?) _boring_.
What works for me is, as you cited, to get off that horse and make myself shoo t a roll of Delta 3200 in handheld 35mm, shoot a roll in the little cheap Horizo n panoramic whizzer, do something different. It's sort of like taking a break fr om religion and _sinning with abandon_.
Then when I do get back to the big camera and f64 there's usually a little zip in the photos that wasn't there earlier.
Photography, as much as people would like it to be, is not rocket science. We see a subject that speaks to us and we use the tools and techniques we have learned and put the image to paper. We hope we have created something that will resonate in others and convey a little something of ourselves. If ultra sharp total control gets you there great. I think people who get hung up on one format (especially LF) cheat themselves out of a lot of creative opportunities with the medium.
Their was a wonderful interview with Gordon Hutchings in the Nov/Dec 99 View Camera magazine where he talked about how he felt his work was getting to formulaic and static. He put the view camera away and shot 645 and 35mm for awhile. He talked of an "explosion of vision in all directions...I was able to do things visually that you can't do with a view camera. I loved it". Hutchings returned to the view camera with a "fresh eye", using a wider variety of lenses and subjcet matter.
He also said in the interview, "The interesting thing about the view camera it that because it is physically demanding, we slowly and subconsciously begin to play it safe. I think the images over time if you don't watch it, become classic and conservative. The photographer has to watch out for this entropic slide toward a static, repetitive formula. You've got to be on constant gaurd against it"
Would it not be refreshing, to worry less if a landscape photograph in the style of Adams, was more or less "artistic" than a soft focus version of the same. Surely we should strive for originality, even if we fail. I loved the Gordon Hutchings quotes above!
Keith
I've found I can do anything I want, except something completely new and different.
Yes Conrad, but its fun trying!
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