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Thread: Hockney on photography's failings

  1. #1

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    Hockney on photography's failings

    I've just returned from a trip to the UK. While there I read an interview with David Hockney where he articulates many of the niggling problems I have with photography as an expressive artform.

    Hockney has, and has always had, a rather younger-brother resentment towards photography, and his criticisms tend to lack grace and generosity. He also has a tendency to absolutism about the ideas which drive him. But behind the grating of the plain-talking Yorkshireman, there's the ring of truth.

    Most people feel that the world looks like the photograph. I’ve always assumed that the photograph is nearly right, but that little bit by which it misses makes it miss by a mile. This is what I grope at.

    You can read the interview here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/a...d-Hockney.html

  2. #2

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    Re: Hockney on photography's failings

    Thanks Struan,

    This seems to be from the book listed at the end of the article. Just ordered it...There's also a DVD....

    --Darin

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    Re: Hockney on photography's failings

    I've ordered a copy too, but it's taking a roundabout route to get here.

    I see my own explorations in photography as an attempt to get at Hockney's little missing bit. If the book has more specifics that help to pin it down it'll be worth a read.

    An exhibition of Hockney's landscapes is coming up at the RA early next year. There's a lot of fluff about his use of iphones and ipads, but there is also some real meat in his landscape paintings, and he has an approach to re-interpreting the same well-loved places over the long term that I find very attractive - in any medium. His remarks on seeing are always worth hearing.

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    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Hockney on photography's failings

    I always seen him as an "idea" guy who got attention for intellectual novelty rather than any ability to translate this into solid photographs, sorta a flat tire in my opinion.
    But once you get your foot in the door as a painter, that's one of the perks.

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    Dave Karp
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    Re: Hockney on photography's failings

    I am wondering why the photograph "right" in the sense that it looks like the world.

    Does a bronze bust look like the world?

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    Format Omnivore Brian C. Miller's Avatar
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    Re: Hockney on photography's failings

    Struan, please do let us know if the book is good. I liked the interview quite a bit. I think Hockney made quite a few good points. "My argument is that there is a pictorial crisis in a way, but it’s in photography and film. That’s the twist. It’s not about painting."

    He sees photography as having been a blip in time, and digital photography as being more akin to drawing and painting than chemical-optical photography.

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    Re: Hockney on photography's failings

    The interview has a rather limited understanding of photography as something that is restricted to realism and naturalism and "claiming veracity" - the idea that the intention of a photograph is to depict "reality" but that it fails to do so according to Hockney because it supposedly fails to include the "psychological" aspects. His idea that the death of Kodak means the end of photography shows this rather restricted view of what photography is too. That view is quite a false and limited understanding of the breadth of photography. Some forms of photography set out to depict reality, others not (in fact a good argument exists that even "realist" photographers are actually manufacturing reality) Photojournalists, landscape photographers, documentary photographers, perhaps street photographers and snapshot takers may do so, but plenty strive to get away from it and do so quite well. I don't see what a photograph supposedly cannot show "psychological aspects" as well as painting - after all, whether we're talking about photographs or painting, it is also just a medium spread on a substrate - ink on paper, oil paint on canvas or emulsion on paper. Photography is "painting with light" not just "documenting with light". Like the paintings of the Pharoahs that Hockney mentions, photographs can and do reflect the thinking of the artists and do not merely attempt to reproduce "reality" nor do they "claim veracity"

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    Re: Hockney on photography's failings

    Interesting interview. I think Hockney's thoughts on photography, and the acts of seeing and depicting, are among the clearest I've read. I tend to agree that photography of the 20th century variety is dead as an art form, but I'm more optimistic about its future than Hockney seems to be. Photography is a powerful medium, and I think there will always be artist who use it in new and interesting ways.

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    Re: Hockney on photography's failings

    Quote Originally Posted by Struan Gray View Post
    Most people feel that the world looks like the photograph. I’ve always assumed that the photograph is nearly right, but that little bit by which it misses makes it miss by a mile. This is what I grope at.
    For landscape photographers, that "little bit" is what separates the wheat form the chaff. I think his assumption, that photography is nearly right, is wrong, and he knows it. He get's part of the way there in his next statement "I always knew that you couldn’t draw from them very well, because you couldn’t see and feel volume in the way you can in life" (duh, its a 2 dimensional medium so the photographer has to use skill to render the volume in the photo) and later with the "camera sees geometrically. We don’t. "

    There are so many reasons why photography isn't nearly right starting with 2d vs. 3d., dynamic range of the medium, focal length, field of view, depth of field,...

    It takes a fair amount of skill to get to nearly right. Then a lot more skill to get to right (not that photos are ever right, just the appearance of being right).

  10. #10

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    Re: Hockney on photography's failings

    Thanks for bringing this to our attention Struan. While reading the excerpt in the Telegraph I couldn't help thinking about Raymond Moore, and the conversations we had. I had the impression that photography had provided something that was missing in painting for Ray. That layer of plain reality that allowed things to be quietly odd.

    Best,
    Helen

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