Why it may good that photography isn't a fine art [Archive]

clay harmon

13-Jun-2005, 17:04

Premise also seems to be that the camera and lens is an objective recording device that does not allow for 'transformation' and thus cannot be a legitimate tool of a 'creator'. Clearly the author is a color-blind non-primate who has never used a view camera or a portrait lens or photographed anything at an f-stop larger than 64. So I guess if you are a labrador retriever who uses a camera only at small fstops, you will not be able be able to create art. Otherwise, have at it.

Paul Butzi

13-Jun-2005, 17:09

I read it. It seems to have a lot of unsupported assertions, like "The formal arrangement of a photograph explains nothing." Ok, maybe, maybe not. But to state it baldly, without support of some kind strikes me a overwhelmingly unpersuasive.

Likewise, "People believe in property, but in essense they only believe in the illusion of protection which property gives".

I think that Tim calling Bill a 'wanker' is a little over the top. I don't think Tim is a troll, but neither do I think that sort of insult is warranted.

That said, this article strikes me as exactly the sort of intellectual/mental onanism that I've come to expect from the academic world in general, and from the academic art world in particular.

And here's my obligatory gripe: the typesetting of this particular article really, really, REALLY is LOUSY. It's the worst I've seen in a long, long time - and I spent some time studying typesetting, so I know what good typesetting looks like. This, to put it mildly, is rebarbative.

You'd think that Art Academics would be capable of realizing that presentation counts.

paulr

13-Jun-2005, 17:19

I don't think this is Berger's finest effort.

If it had been written in the 19th Century it would be interesting; but coming from 1968 it just seems naive. This is 22 years after Stieglitz died. It's four years after Roland Barthes' lengthy expositions on structuralist criticism, and two years after Derrida's most famost statements on post-structuralist criticism.

His definition of fine art, if I understand it (he presumes a common understanding of the term and so doesn't expound on it) is tied up with an object's rarity. This is a pre-modern notion, of course, and it wouldn't have been a challenge even in 1968 to find a roomful of counterexamples. And this draws attention to another presumption: the definition of photography. If we assume, as Berger does, that it's only photography if it is mechanical, instant, intrinsically about time and not form, and infinitely reproduceable by industrial means ... then some might say that his definition of photography only includes artless photography. I wouldn't go that far, but it's one of a few discussion that would need to addressed in order for Berger's argument to have much credibility.

His most philosophical sounding point is that "photography is the process of rendering observation self-conscious." But he fails to convince me of how photography is different in the regard form painting, or even writing. Wouldn't it be just as easy to say that "art is the process of rendering observation self conscious?"

paulr

13-Jun-2005, 17:22

sorry .. i butchered that last paragraph ... meant to say:

His most philosophical sounding point is that "photography is the process of rendering observation self-conscious." But he fails to convince me of how photography is different in this regard from painting, or even writing. Wouldn't it be just as easy to say that "art is the process of rendering observation self conscious?"

tim atherton

13-Jun-2005, 17:31

"Premise also seems to be that the camera and lens is an objective recording device that does not allow for 'transformation' and thus cannot be a legitimate tool of a 'creator'."

The tools open to a photographer in terms of transforamtion are pretty limited, and only really only allow us to "transform" what we are recording by realtively small degrees and not really in substance. Take one of Van Goghs sketches of a simple tree - he can chose which parts to emphasise, which parts to spend more time on and thus transform it from a more straightforward recording into his own rendering (such that it looks very little like the tree he viewed when making the drawing. The time inherrent in such a drawing isn't equal - some parts have had much more time spent on them than others. By comparison, the photographer is really stuck much more with at very best translating what he sees before the lens - and most time, much closer to quoting from the appearance of what is there. Each point on the negative corresponds with a similar point on the actual tree. Without going through some quite contorted (and most often meaningless) contortions, it is hard for the photographer to move outside of this. And comapred tot he drawing, the time inherrent int he photograph is all equal - the 1/15th of a second or whatever it took to make. Again, even darkroom manipulations can move little beyond that limitation.

Personally I found the ideas about what are really the limitations imposed by trying to apply "composition" to photogorpahy most itneresting.

paulr

13-Jun-2005, 18:07

"The tools open to a photographer in terms of transforamtion are pretty limited, and only really only allow us to "transform" what we are recording by realtively small degrees and not really in substance."

this is the old discussion of whether photography can be considered a plastic medium. some of the most convincing arguments in favor of it have pointed to the essentially infinite range of interpretations afforded through transformation. This demonstrated by the experiment of a room full of people to photograph the same flower. When comparing the range of expression possible through drawing vs. the range of expression possible through photographing, you are comparing two infinities.

however: even this argument concerns itself only with straight photography. the photographic process offers unlimited means of manipulating the world, many of which go well beyond transformation. These include, of course, photographs of any subject that is created or manipulated for the camera. Think of Julia Margaret Camerron, Man Ray, El Lisitsky, Joel Peter Witkin, Pavel Pecha, Francesca Woodman, or even Harold Edgerton.

Even the idea of trying to apply composition to photography strikes me as strange ... Berger makes the point that form and composition are not the natural domains of photography, but it always struck me that they are inseparable from photography. As Szarkowsky once commented, photography is the one medium where form and content are synonymous (I would say music is another example; the closeness of photography and music is one thing Berger and I agree on. Stieglitz too ...). The act of photographing, in the straight sense that Berger limits himself to, is the act of using the photographic frame (physical and temporal) to bring form to a subject. Berger suggests that we merely record the subject, but I think he's too quick to dismiss the HOW of recording a subject, and the ways we judge a picture, and the role that form plays in bestowing meaning upon the subject.

His assertions that photography has no language of its own (as painting does) and that the formal arrangement of a photograph explains nothing (in other words, photographic form=decoration) suggest to me that he hasn't looked hard enough at enough different kinds of photographs.

Eric Rose

13-Jun-2005, 18:23

Sontag initially spouted the same stuff but later recanted.

tim atherton

13-Jun-2005, 18:33

"His assertions that photography has no language of its own (as painting does) and that the formal arrangement of a photograph explains nothing (in other words, photographic form=decoration) suggest to me that he hasn't looked hard enough at enough different kinds of photographs"

he's really quoting Barthes there and his photography as "message without a code" and his assertion that photograpy and appearances have at best what he calls a half-language (which Berger elsewhere goes on to assert is actually what gives photogorpahs their strength and power)

paulr

13-Jun-2005, 18:42

I'm not surprised that's Barthe's idea. I always thought Barthes had interesting things to say about literary criticism, but the essay of his on photography that I've read (Camera Lucida) left me with a similar odd sense that the guy needed to look at some different pictures.

Jim Rice

13-Jun-2005, 18:49

I'm sorry, Tim, I've always admired your contributions to the forum, but here I go:

This is a fine example of why I rarely read criticism.

Berger loses me in the fourth graph when he asserts that photography is infinitely reproducible. While that can be the case, try asserting that to the many alternative (i.e. hand made) process workers out there. I also find the "property value" argument simply baffling.

I can't find a point at all in the fifth graph. I'll leave it to others more discerning than myself to interpret that one.

Oh, but in the sixth "(Unless we include those absurd studio works in which the photographer arranges every detail of his [sic] subject before he [sic] takes the picture) [corrected puntuation]. Composition in the profound, formative sense of the word cannot enter into photography." Well yes, photographs are not composed unless, of course, they are.

The seventh graph is the merest assertion without conceptual back up that I have had the opportunity to read in some time. And I have had some pretty crappy opportunities.

To me the eighth and ninth graphs are inseperable. The photographer isolates time while the (presumably artist and certainly not infinitely reproducable) movie director manipulates it. Now there's a distinction that has eluded me all this time.

I must admit that by this far into the piece my eyes had pretty much glazed over.

Forgive me, but this kind of stuff always makes me roll my eyes.

Jim Rice

13-Jun-2005, 18:55

Two amendments:

Appearently the man's name is Barthe (I told y'all that I don't read stuff like this) and Paul said it much better than I did anyway.

paulr

13-Jun-2005, 19:20

Tim, as much as I consider the article a troll (not by you ... by Berger. that Bastard!) I for one hope you keep the articles coming. I don't want to generalize about criticism any more than i do about art, and there's no reason to think i have to agree with something in order to get something out of it.

Do you have anything on The One True Faith?

Jim Rice

13-Jun-2005, 19:33

Excuse my ignorance......does troll mean stirring up shit?

clay harmon

13-Jun-2005, 19:36

To me, reading the vast majority of photo critics is akin to visiting the monkey house at the zoo. Very busy, very loud, but all in all they don't get much accomplished outside of pleasuring themselves and amusing the observers.

Jim Rice

13-Jun-2005, 19:42

I wasn't particularly amused. ;=)

Oh hell, yes I was.

Jim Rice

13-Jun-2005, 19:47

Though it wasn't nearly as much fun as the food thing.

paulr

13-Jun-2005, 20:06

i don't think the ratio of good critics to bad critics is much different from the ratio of good photographers to bad ones.

grim, but still worth looking.

Jim Rice

13-Jun-2005, 20:18

Fair enough, Paul. But at least some photographers speak english.

tim atherton

13-Jun-2005, 20:45

I was reading some transcribed talks and lectures by Wlaker Evans yesterday

"Do you have anything on The One True Faith?"

that would be what he said about Atget - he compares him to Blake as being almost unique. The only way he could describe what either of them did was to say they were like mediums, conveying to the rest of us something else only they could see.

(and on the rest of us, inlcuding himself, a photograph works when it transcends, when we know there is a wonderful secret in a certain place and only we, at that moment, can find and capture it. That's what he called having faith in our own work and vision - oh, and it doesn't come until you are at least 50...)

One other thing he says is that he couldn't have got by without the few generous people - some friends, some he barely knew, who at the right time saw and understood what he was doing and supported his work. Thankfully usually there at the most discouraging times. That seemed very apropos, as having just read that, I got one of John Szarkowsky's very encouraging and generous notes. That kind of thing at the right time will help carry you a fair way in my experience.

Jim Rice

13-Jun-2005, 21:49

Tim,

I don't boubt W. Evans was able to benifit from an itellectual perspective. I always figured that he was way smarter than I will ever be. As a mere mortal, alas I don't do as well.

Jim Rice

13-Jun-2005, 21:52

doubt, too

paulr

13-Jun-2005, 23:04

"But at least some photographers speak english"

ever read Robert Adams? John Szarkowsky? A.D. Coleman?

"I don't boubt W. Evans was able to benifit from an itellectual perspective. I always figured that he was way smarter than I will ever be. As a mere mortal, alas I don't do as well."

I actually think that the best criticism does something better than give an intellectual perspective. It can illuminate something for you, not so that you get it in an abstract sense, but so you really see it and feel it on a whole different level than you did before. It can be a kind of experience where you say "Of Course! It was right there in front of me all this time!"

The value isn't that they told you what a work was about, or gave you a new theory to bore your friends with ... it's more akin to them flipping on the light, so suddenly you see more. And if you internalize what you just learned, which you probably will, then you'll carry that light with you from that point forward.

It's a pleasure when someone can illuminate someone else's work; it's amazing when someone can illuminate your own for you. I've had a small handful of these experiences,--someone saying exactly what i needed to hear at exactly the right time--sometimes flattering, sometimes painful, but always forwarding.

Like Tim, one of them was with Szarkowsky. I had a message on my answering machine from him that i kept until the machine broke. It helped me see a little deeper, and gave a little inspiration on some late nights when hitting the play button was the closest source of hope.

Struan Gray

14-Jun-2005, 01:29

It's John Berger. In 1968.

A major social campaigner writing at the high water mark of photojournalism? And he doesn't think much of studio still lives? Blow me down with a feather.

I love the way he morphs "I have decided that seeing this is worth recording" into "The degree to which I believe this is worth looking at can be judged by all that I am willingly not showing because it is contained within it." and then immediately goes on to complain about obfuscation of everyday experience.

Things were better back then. I knew where I stood (http://web.telia.com/~u46133221/struan3yrs.jpg).

Struan Gray

14-Jun-2005, 01:45

Here's a quote I read recently that sums up the opposite view:

Blankness is not emptiness; we may skate upon an intense radiance we do not see because we see nothing else. And in fact there is a colour, a quiet but tireless goodness that things at rest, like a brick wall or a small stone, seem to affirm.

Both are right. Just not exclusively so.

Antonio Corcuera

14-Jun-2005, 02:34

Although I consider “Ways of Seeing” one of the most fascinating yet simple essays on image, Berger’s words here on “Understanding Photography” have no firm ground. Stating photography is not art because it can be reproduced “infinitely” is the dumbest thing I’ve heard/read from a critic/intellectual in a long time. He instantly kills Fluxus, Serial Art, Joseph Beuys and hell, he even kills Duchamp - who could have signed thousands of urinals. What about etchings, silkscreens, wood block prints and other multiple techniques used from the XVI century onwards?
So, the object might be reproducible x times, but definitely not the subject (“that unique moment of time”), which is what we are interested in. On the other hand, it is true artists limit their copies just to make the subject (and the object) more exclusive… and to keep market prices up.
Just some thoughts…
I’m sure Berger has never photographed for/with pleasure yet alone play with an 8x10”, but that’s a different story…

Nick_3536

14-Jun-2005, 06:09

The argument that photography is too true and therefore not art is interesting. If you use badly expired colour film then does it become art? How about if you can't focus the camera? Then does it become art?

Can't we go the other way? All past painting that tried to mimic reality are not art? Even if it failed we shouldn't reward the painter for failing to acheive reality. So the only paintings that are art are things like Robert Rauschenberg's " White Paintings" ?

Ken Lee

14-Jun-2005, 06:10

- Thanks Jorge -

"Photographs are recordings of things... and since they can be infinitly reproduced have no intrinsic exclusive value....therefore are not art......"

If that's what this fellow is saying, then what about works of literature ? They can be reproduced ad infinitum. He seems to be taking a rather weak position. I'm glad I didn't read all four pages of it. (I appreciate brevity).

This reminds me of the claim that Music can't be Art, since after all, Music is nothing but different combinations of the same set of notes.

paulr

14-Jun-2005, 07:13

"Music can't be Art, since after all, Music is nothing but different combinations of the same set of notes."

Wait a minute--and I paid WHAT for that last CD??

Ken Lee

14-Jun-2005, 08:01

Not to worry - The contents of the CD is only a combination of 1's and 0's. Nothing artistic there.

tim atherton

14-Jun-2005, 08:31

"I also find the "property value" argument simply baffling. "

well, I do think you would have to say (perhaps rather cynically) that photography's true acceptance as a fine art has only come once its auction value has beegun to approach that of the other fine arts (and a very good argument can and has been made that it isn't the other way around).

Steven Buczkowski

14-Jun-2005, 08:39

"Not to worry - The contents of the CD is only a combination of 1's and 0's. Nothing artistic there."

But CDs are written and read with light, so does that make them photographs and, thus, doubly devoid of the qualities of art.

Oh great, now my head hurts.

:-)

Alan Davenport

14-Jun-2005, 09:18

Excuse my ignorance......does troll mean stirring up shit?

That's close enough. I prefer to think of it as fishing for suckers.

tim atherton

14-Jun-2005, 09:36

Here's a slightly different take, with a viewpoint dear to many here:

Considering the Alternative: Are “Artists” Really Necessary?

"It has been clear for some time now that the American people love art—the museums are choked with visitors and the art market is booming—but hate artists, who are widely regarded as elitist troublemakers. In the old way of thinking, these two things were seen to be irrevocably linked; if we wanted art, we had to endure artists. In the new era, we can perhaps reconfigure. Globalization is providing answers to this dilemma in other fields, and will expand the possibilities in art as well. Art production in China, Turkey, South Africa, and elsewhere is up, and could easily meet the increased demand in the U.S. There is plenty of product out there already, and we can import whatever more we need. We’ve stopped making pencils, automobiles, and appliances in America. Why are we still making art?"... more at

http://www.thebrooklynrail.org/arts/april05/railingopinion.html

Paddy Quinn

14-Jun-2005, 09:42

"And here's my obligatory gripe: the typesetting of this particular article really, really, REALLY is LOUSY. It's the worst I've seen in a long, long time - and I spent some time studying typesetting, so I know what good typesetting looks like. This, to put it mildly, is rebarbative."

A good summary of a common approach - focus on the form, not the substance

tim atherton

14-Jun-2005, 10:39

One idea I find interesting is the "democratic" nature of photography (picked up by Eggleston and others)

Unlike almost any other "art" (painting, drawing, sculputre, music etc) just about anyone can make a "good" photograph. It's very easy to make a technically good image (even before digital, it was pretty easy with film). It's also not hard to make a fairly well composed image either. The same goes for making a meaningful photograph. Many, many "hobby amateurs" make such images, as do those who wouldn't even consider themselves up to being at that level of proficiency. Yes, some such photographs may only be meanigful to a particualr group or time. But there are equally many which can stand in their own right (and not just as lucky accidents or clever snapshots - because a certain amount of intent was certainly inherrent in their production).

All of this is aside from how it is comparatively technically (and in many ways creatively) easy to be a competent commercial photographer - product, wedding, portrait, news photographer or whatever.

So is there something that moves photography (or even a particular photograph) beyond that democratic nature?

Paul Butzi

14-Jun-2005, 11:12

A good summary of a common approach - focus on the form, not the substance

I just love the way this response IGNORES the main content of my post, and focuses on the one minor point made.

Were you trying to be ironic? Because if so, you succeeded.

If you weren't trying to be ironic, well... you were anyway. But my opinion of you would be markedly different.

Jon Wilson

14-Jun-2005, 11:32

In reading the article, it reminding me of a college philosophy course and the query of whether or not a tree makes noise when it falls in the middle of a forest without anyone around...it is a mental exercise intended to promote discussion without there being a right answer. As to my opinion, photography definitely can be fine art....albeit "art" like "beauty" is in the eye of the beholder.

Matt Powell

14-Jun-2005, 13:33

I think that a number of people are misreading Berger's statements and then placing far too much emphasis on the opening page in that context. He's not attacking photography as 'not-art' - he sets it in opposition to the fine art of the privileged, embodying "a way of life which excludes the mass."

The key sentence to the essay: "It is more useful to categorize art by what has become its social function." Redefining 'art' not debasing 'photography.' He's correct about 'property value' as well - it was well after 1968 that it became a mainstream practice for photographers to destroy their negatives in order to manufacture scarcity and improve standing in the fine art market.

paulr

15-Jun-2005, 09:05

"It is more useful to categorize art by what has become its social function." Redefining 'art' not debasing 'photography.' "

Or if not redefining it, giving it a new (and more democratic) social function. Which is an interesting set of ideas. It echoes the voices of outsider art movements, primitivist art, socialist art, etc. etc.

It's too bad he had to frame the essay with exhausted, ancient arguments over what is/isnt, or can/can't be art. Even in 1968 we were well past tying these questions about art to a medium. Is painting art? No. Painting is a category of media. It can be used for lots of things. One of those things is making art. Photography? Cardboard and dung? Same arguments apply.

It's easy for someone to lose his audience if he precedes the interesting points with tired old ones that have long since been categorically discredited.

robert_4927

16-Jun-2005, 05:48

Frederick H. Evans was a frequent contributor to Stieglitz's magazine, "Camera Work". In an article written by Evans, "What Constitutes An Artist" he offers some interesting insights. "Camera Work", no. 7 (July 1904), p. 21-24

Joseph O'Neil

16-Jun-2005, 07:29

For years I have been reading articles - like the one posted at the start of this thread.

Anyhow, just a few days ago, I am explaining to a friend what large format photography is, showing him one of my cameras, etc, etc. His comment after I finished was :

"Oh, I get it, you're not really doing photography, what you are doing is art."

I suppose art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

joe

Donald Brewster

16-Jun-2005, 13:54

I think Berger is having a bit of an argument with Walter Benjamin's 1936 essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Benjamin argued that when a work of art is reproduced it loses its cult value and becomes inherently political due to its sudden accessibility to a mass audience. Berger in his essay is trying to rescue photography from the fate of "High Art": its commodification. Berger can be criticized for saying photography is not characterized by composition or form, which of course it is -- but he was not saying this in a pejorative sense. Berger is saying the photograph is distinguished more by the photographers choice of time, the extraction of a single moment from a related chain of moments, i.e., a photograph may be judged effective when the moment it records contains a quantum of truth -- and I think this is an important connection to the making and the maker of the photograph. Regarding the art as property issue, keep in mind that Berger wrote this essay in 1972, when you could still by an AA photo for $50 -- merely expressing the economic circumstances for photography at that time.

Note that Berger wrote the book Fortunate Man in collaboration with the photographer Jean Mohr -- Berger is not an "enemy" of photography. And no, I'm not particularly fond of Berger's work in general.

I'm sorry if I sound like I have an art history degree, but I do.