Comments about my National Parks photographs

[tgtaylor]

A wonderful body of work QT. I think it fair to say that anyone on this forum would be proud to have been be its creator.

That said, I recently saw a Phillip Hyde Composition of Wonder Lake, Denali National Park, Alaska, at Scott Knowles Gallery in San Francisco that was printed by his son that was truly exquisite.

Thomas

[John T]

Your critic is free to buy a camera and photograph all the people he wants in the parks.

"Those who can, do. Those who can't, critique".

These are the kinds of quotes that show the ignorance of the role of the critic. Think about it his comment about what he considered to be a vital element of what National Parks have become has created dialog and questioning. (BTW, I'm not saying that Lachlan 617 and Dakotah are ignorant, but their responses demonstrate a lack of understanding of the critic).

The critic tries to get people to think and clarify their assumptions and opinions-to go beyond their comfort zone with regards to their feelings about the arts.

Because QT has brought this to the discussion, the critic has done his job. Ultimately, everyone may leave this topic without a change in opinion, but at least there is a conversation.

[Heroique]

The critic (who doesn't understand Blake) could have shared his view in a sentence:

The park photos communicate reverence well & artifice poorly – and w/o the tension, they’re sterile.

[Darin Boville]

Q.T., can you supply or point to the full text of this? Has it been published?

--Darin

[Darin Boville]

fyi, I found it. Didn't turn up in Google until I hit the additional results link. Weird.

http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_art...l_their_glory/

--Darin

[Darin Boville]

Now, after having read both the review and your web site...

Are what you and the critic are saying really that different?

In your intro the the images you describe your perspective as "celebratory" ("Although they would observe these natural wonders through my own celebratory perspective...").

The critic says, in a key piece bit left out in the original post the critic writes: "What Luong undertook when he set out to take these photographs was a pilgrimage, really, and these images might better be understood as specimens of religious art than nature photography."

That sounds about right, and fair, to me. I don't know about the claims that "reverence is a form of acceptance, not engagement" and "Awe, while certainly called for here, does not allow for the sort of back-and-forth that all art — good, bad, and mediocre — provokes." The critic seems to miss something key in the human experience here.

But perhaps the problem is the format of the exhibit rather than the project as a whole. Having one image per park on display--without all the other images available--it might feel a little superficial. I can see how that might be the case. Perhaps that is what the critic was reacting to--the tension between images obviously made out of a deep love and passion vs. the sense that only the thinest layer of that passion is coming through in this format?

--Darin

[Steve Gledhill]

These are the kinds of quotes that show the ignorance of the role of the critic. Think about it his comment about what he considered to be a vital element of what National Parks have become has created dialog and questioning. (BTW, I'm not saying that Lachlan 617 and Dakotah are ignorant, but their responses demonstrate a lack of understanding of the critic).

The critic tries to get people to think and clarify their assumptions and opinions-to go beyond their comfort zone with regards to their feelings about the arts.

Because QT has brought this to the discussion, the critic has done his job. Ultimately, everyone may leave this topic without a change in opinion, but at least there is a conversation.

Until I got to your post via all preceding I was minded to say something along the lines that most critics are self appointed and if they can't find anything critical to say then they don't say anything. So, occasionally we'll see critical comment that may even shock us. But you brought me up short. And you're right. If at least there's some rationale behind what a critic says and he/she can say it clearly and support it when challenged and is not downright offensive, then good for them for offering an alternative perspective. And I suspect that's what QT's critiquer is doing,

But I wholeheartedly disagree with his thesis.

[Doremus Scudder]

QT,

I've just spent some time reading the entire critique as well as looking at the 58 images on the tgartworks site. Your work is indeed a visual feast.

This seems to be precisely its problem in the eyes of Mark Feeny, who says "feasts aren't palatable," and, in essence, that your images are "too much of a good thing." He makes it clearer when stating that both you and Ken Burns are guilty of promulgating "exaltation fatigue." The critic might have been happier if you had included some "less beautiful" images....

While I do see the need for contrast in an exhibition (e.g., a slow movement amid the allegros) it seems more to me that the critic is simply approaching your exhibit, both as individual pieces and as a whole, from a preconceived notion of what an "exhibition" should be and do, and not on its own terms. Since your work intentionally avoids provocation and "engagement" (in the sense of "including the viewer" in a way other than as observer), and is not designed to have interplay between images, you get low marks for "conception."

While that may be a valid point of criticism for some, I, for one, do not necessarily feel a conceptual framework other than "here are a number of images that stand on their own" is necessarily required for a show. There may be no "back and forth" between images, and the viewer may feel slighted because his/her "presence," in the form of references to humanity or "civilization" is lacking, but, if I read your work correctly, this is precisely what you were attempting. I for one, like the absence of people in the work (I was once praised by an Austrian critic for the striking "Abwesenheit des Menschen" in my work... go figure).

Mr. Feeny also seems to have a problem with a what he views as a conflict between the title of your show, specifically the use of "National Parks," and the images you present. To him, a national park is all about man's interaction with nature and your images simply aren't (I see them as the opposite). The fact that he can't get past his own, unperceived preconception and feels uneasy about the images since they don't depict what "they are supposed to," really points out the effect of Post-Modern thought on art criticism today. The title and the text are accepted as "defining" and the works themselves are judged by how well they fit the definition. Many of us still feel that it should be the other way around. Perhaps if you had used the words, "wilderness," "uninhabited," "inaccessible," or "unfrequented" in your title, or even made a point of mentioning in the text that your goal was to show the nature preserved in the parks in a primordial state, your critic would have had a different lens to look through. Instead, you allude to an environmental cause in your text and, to his way of thinking, provide no visual reflection of that in your work.

I am not a critic, and am not going to critique your images. What I'm trying to do here is review the critic. A careful reading of the critique discloses many notions and points of view that the critic himself may not be aware that he has. I've pointed to a couple of them. (I don't even what to get started on what the critics ideas on the role of art in society are...) You need to simply ask yourself, "do I agree with those notions or not?" To the extent that you do, the critique is valid.

Best,

Doremus Scudder

[rdenney]

I like Doremus's comments.

It seems to me that a critic's purpose is to expand horizons, not tilt them to his own perspective. C. S. Lewis, in his book An Experiment in Criticism, writes about the relationship between the reader of literature (as the receiver of art) and the literature itself. He makes the case that if art is received as art, then it is art, whether or not a given critic is moved by it. So, the critic's job is to reveal it in such a way that those who might be moved by it are encouraged to explore it and those who might not will know to explore elsewhere.

The fact that Tuan's photos were part of a pilgrimage is a valid aspect of a critical review, because it's a part of the story of the emotional content. And imparting that story will encourage those who go to parks as a pilgrimage to know they are seeing the work of a kindred spirit and they will be encouraged to seek it out. Then, there are those who think parks are about people and showing the images without people somehow disengages them, and they'll know that these images are likely to be similar to most other images of parks that they don't like.

It would seem that the critic is in the latter camp and therefore undermines the value (as art) of the former camp. He might have said something like, "These photos are beautiful, but are almost too beautiful for me. I might have preferred to see the effects of such scenes on humans. But there is no doubt that these images will encourage the viewer to evaluate their own humanity in the context of the awe expressed so eloquently by Luong. So, maybe Luong is challenging viewers to provide the human aspect for themselves." That statement might be consistent with his own views, without imposing his views on the validity of the work as art. He may be opposed to awe, but that doesn't mean it can't be expressed with great artistic power.

Rick "wishing he could express awe so eloquently" Denney

[msk2193]

"No person is visible in any of the photographs, which is as it should be — except that it’s not. A national park is a human construction, a splendid and necessary one, but no less an artifice for that fact. A national park is not natural as, say, a glacier or canyon or waterfall is. "

I bet you this author has never wandered off the paved road in the one park he was forced to visit as a child. Verbose idiot is my critique of his piece!