When is a photo one's own art?

[tim atherton]

ed - once you work out for yourself what art really is, all the rest will fall into place one way or the other - but only you can do that.

as for scenario 3:

http://www.edwardmitterrand.com/artists/Sugimoto/indexarchitectures.php

done and done well (as have most of your other scenarios - some many times over).

Duchamp appropriated the urinal - if you get that, the rest will make sense - even if you don't agree or dislike it.

[Kirk Gittings]

I wouldn't worry about the ethics of such a person as you descibe. The career of someone who copied some elses images would be as short as their creativity.

This, in fact, has already been done. There was a woman some years ago, who to make a point copied some Walker Evans and printed them under her name to make the arguement that there were too many images in the world and it was time to recycle. It was a stupid, art school, kind of idea where dumb "new" ideas are sometimes recognized briefly as significant.

The fact that I cannot remember her name speaks volumes as to the value of her work.

[Percy]

As a visual artist ( drawing nudes, painting) who came to photography ultimately, I couldn't agree with your original statement more, Ed.

Photographing works of art of others is not art making.

[Nicholas F. Jones]

Kirk,

That would be Sherrie Levine. If you happen to have a copy of Andy Grundberg's Crisis of the Real (Aperture 1999) nearby, Levine's "After Walker Evans: 2, 1981" in reproduced on p. 10.

[Nicholas F. Jones]

As Percy says, photographing works of art of others is not art making.

Where Sherrie Levine is concerned, I'd add that making a critical point about art, however original or discerning, is not art itself necessarily. Much painting, sculpture, photography etc. can't help but be an implicit commentary, rejection or otherwise, on others' painting, sculpture, photography, ... whereas Levine seems simply to be making a very prosaic observation on the medium. Twenty five years ago, that observation may have possessed some in-your-face shock value .... a kind of emperor's new clothes revelation that everybody already understood but no one else until that point had had the guts or temerity to make explicit.

[Jim Ewins]

One may read David Vestal in this months PhotoTechnique. I know I'm visually illiterate, but I know what I smell.

[Kirk Gittings]

"Photographing works of art of others is not art making."

Would that include design arts like the Bay Bridge or the Ifel Tower or perhaps even Stonhenge? Would that include Steigltitz's image of the famous Flatiron building by the famous architect Daniel Burnham? What about images of prehistoric Native American petroglyphs?

Is Hendrix's version of Dylan's "All along the Watch Tower" not powerful art of Hendrix. Did he not use someone elses art but make it his own?

The point is not whether you photograph someone elses art but what you do with it.

If one was a true believer, then God's Art, i.e. nature would be off limits too.

[paulr]

"One shouldn't confuse ones personal taste in art with an attempt at defining what or what is not art. Ones personal taste merely defines for that person what is good art. For each of us there is good, bad and indifferent art. Bad art is still art."

This is one of the simplest ideas around, but I find myself beating my head against the wall getting people to even consider it.

One way I look at it is that anything can be made art if you recontextualize it in a way that asks people to look at it as art. On the one hand, this means anyone can be an artist any time the feel like it; on the other hand, it's a double-edged sword: if you ask people to look at your cocktail napkin sketch or your lawn clippings as art, they will evaluate it as art. And they will be looking at your work (and maybe your soul) with a set of standards that could easily subject you to the beating of a lifetime.

An example: I might show you a t-shirt I just tie dyed in the bathtub. If you're looking at it as a t-shirt, and if you're into that kind of thing, you might say "cool shirt." But if I mount the shirt to a piece of sheet metal and hang it in a white-walled gallery in SoHo, that recontextualization is asking you to look at it as art. By this shift in presentation (which has esthetic, cultural, and art-historical elements) you are probably going to see it as art. Unfortunately for me, you are also going to judge it as art. And very likely your judgement won't be a charitable one. Your critique might read something like "what is this #@%!*#? didn't we see enough of this b.s. quasi surrealism back in the 60s??" And instead of looking at me as some groovy dude who made a t-shirt, you'll be looking at me as a hack poseur.

As far as the specifics of the original question, it's hard to imagine an idea being explored to death more than this one. 80s postmodernism was all about the idea of appropriation. This hit its peak with Sherri Levine's rephotographed modernist masterpieces. She would take a picture we've all seen a million times, like a Walker Evans or an Alexander Rodchenko, and literally photograph it, as you would with a copy camera for reproduction. She would title them things like "After Alexander Rodchenko." The idea wasn't to show her vision or her skill; it was a commentary on the state of contemporary art, much as Duchamp's readymades were a commentary on the art of his time. Unfortunately for Levine (and for the rest of us) she didn't get it the way Duchamp did--she didn't realize that once you made your little point you had to move on. She kept doing this over and over until long after the horse was dead.

At any rate, the larger question is still alive: at what point are we copying, and at what point are we showing something in a fundamentally new way? this question has always been at the center of straight photography, and every new generation of photographers and viewers has to confront it on their own terms.

[Kirk Gittings]

As much as I hate Kincaid's work and the way it is assembly line reproduced by drones. It is however unquestionably art.

[Ed K.]

"At any rate, the larger question is still alive: at what point are we copying, and at what point are we showing something in a fundamentally new way? this question has always been at the center of straight photography, and every new generation of photographers and viewers has to confront it on their own terms"

Just because an unanswered question is alive doesn't mean that it's not worth at least some consideration as time passes and tools progress. Even if there is no clear answer for everyone, it seems that the subject serves some good if it helps us move on.

Paul, you mentioned presentation, which is at the core of it in so many ways. A series of mugshots on Polaroid might be just a pile of mugshots, or when culled and pasted into a collage with a commentary or story ( visual or otherwise ), a piece of fine art.

Another implied question might be "Why must photographers so often insist upon their status as artists?" Is there really any need to be an artist at all times when technology is so much a part of the 'art' ? At some point, isn't there any intrinsic value to something being merely a photograph without a classification?