Camera Clubs and Fine Art Photography

[tim atherton]

Not a light hearted paper... but an interesting read none the less:

"YOU PRESS THE BUTTON and We Do the Rest"; George Eastman used this advertising slogan in the 1890s to promote a new invention, the Kodak camera. Entrepreneurs have emphasized the ease of making photographs since Eastman's time. Nikon's ad copy reads, "We take the world's greatest pictures." The Pentax Program Plus "has a mind of its own, so it all but takes the easy shots for you." Cokin Creative Filter System advertises, "With my filter system, creating beautiful, one-of-a-kind photos is child's play." The New York Institute of Photography asserts, "now it's easier-than-ever" for serious amateurs to become skilled pros. The invention of photography democratized picture making, and people without formal training or specific aesthetic concerns have been drawn to photography (with the help of aggressive marketing strategies), making photographs alongside their professional counterparts.

Whereas the photographic industry has worked diligently toward making the medium more and more accessible to a broad mass market (through successive simplifications of equipment and processes), fine art photographers have moved further and further from the conventions of amateur and commercial photography. Photographers concerned with establishing the medium's parity with other fine arts have sought to separate artists' photographic activity from all other uses of this popular medium, both commercial and amateur.....Full paper:



http://sjmc.cla.umn.edu/faculty/schwartz/contents/Camera_clubs/body_camera_clubs.html

[Oren Grad]

Considerable entertainment value, despite the occasionally painful prose. Thanks for the link...

[paulr]

Interesting article. A bit limited in scope in its description of "art photography" ... i think it covers a fairly narrow range of mindsets. But the ones it covers it covers well. It seems spot on regarding the cameral club mentality.

The camera club vs. high art comparison reminds of Oscar Wilde's remark ... that "Britain and America are two nations divided by a common language." There's this assumption that everyone running around with a camera is doing something similar, which greatly confounds the actual deep divisions.

The terminology is a bit confusing in the article ... particularly since the phrase "fine art photography" has become adopted by so many with within the camera club community that now its meaning has been shifted. It used to mean photography that's intended as fine art (as opposed to commercial art). Now it means almost the opposite ... finely crafted imitations of hundred year-old pictorialism or modernism, done to rigid and uniform standards--much like basket weaving or traditional furniture making.

I'd never thought of this, until someone smarter than me suggested I remove the phrase from my resume and anything else i ever send to a serious institution.

[Steve J Murray]

I liked the article. It described the differences between the two mindsets nicely. It also shows why so many photographers are somewhat confused as to what they are striving for. I myself, wonder about where craft, creativity, originality, norms, expectations, audience, etc, all fit into the act of picking up a camera and taking a photograph. I don't seem to "fit" into either camp very well. I don't have the "artist" mentality, nor do I want to duplicate cliches all the time. I strive for spontaneity, but dont' like "randomness," and so on.

[Bill_1856]

"In the United States, Alfred Stieglitz, a member of the New York Camera Club, led the movement toward a photographic elite. Stieglitz promoted "pictorialism, a soft focus style of photography that emulated the surface characteristics of paintings or etchings, utilizing conventionalized subjects and techniques of composition borrowed from oil painting. By making photographs that resembled paintings, Stieglitz showed that photography could be a fine art medium."

I haven't finished reading the whole piece yet, but stopped when I came to this incredible piece of misinformation. It was exactly what Steiglitz was fighting AGAINST.
The author is so ill informed about this, that I sincerely doubt anything else in the article is factual.
PS, I'm not a Steiglitz fan.

[clay harmon]

It is correct if you are talking about the correct time period. Stieglitz originally showed much pictorical style work and only changed his viewpoint toward such work near the end of Camera Work. The promotion of Paul Strand's new visual style in the last two issues of Camera Work was an indication of Stieglitz's changing attitude toward artistic photography. Late in his career and life, he was an ardent advocate of the newer sharp modernist style. Around 1900, that was not the case.


"In the United States, Alfred Stieglitz, a member of the New York Camera Club, led the movement toward a photographic elite. Stieglitz promoted "pictorialism, a soft focus style of photography that emulated the surface characteristics of paintings or etchings, utilizing conventionalized subjects and techniques of composition borrowed from oil painting. By making photographs that resembled paintings, Stieglitz showed that photography could be a fine art medium."

I haven't finished reading the whole piece yet, but stopped when I came to this incredible piece of misinformation. It was exactly what Steiglitz was fighting AGAINST.
The author is so ill informed about this, that I sincerely doubt anything else in the article is factual.
PS, I'm not a Steiglitz fan.

[tim atherton]

you mean like these:

http://www.artsmia.org/mia/images/10/mia_10024g.jpg

http://www.artsmia.org/mia/images/10/mia_10050g.jpg

Although Stieglitz later renounced Pictorialism (1910? 1916? when he adopted Purism) but before that, with Clarence White et al, he was one of its High Priests.

His involvement with the New York Camera Club dates from this period. He moved on to found the Photo-Secession - which embodied the whole hearted spirit of Pictorialism.

In essence, the article is correct (it's not a biography of Stieglitz). Along with a few others, he was one of the most important figures in Pictorialism and heavily involved with its promotion despite his later renunciation of the movement.

[darr]

A quote from Stieglitz's earlier position on pictorial photography that eventually evolved to the creation of The Photo-Secession:

" ...This protest, this secession from the spirit of the doctrinaire, of the compromiser, at length found its expression in the foundation of the Photo-Secession. Its aim is loosely to hold together those Americans devoted to pictorial photography in their endeavor to compel its recognition, not as the handmaiden of art, but as a distinctive medium of individual expression."
The Photo-Secession, by Alfred Stieglitz (from Stieglitz On Photography, Richard Whelan)

--

I found the "Camera Clubs and Fine Art Photography" article to be informative and entertaining. Thank you Tim for the post. :)

[Brian Ellis]

"In the United States, Alfred Stieglitz, a member of the New York Camera Club, led the movement toward a photographic elite. Stieglitz promoted "pictorialism, a soft focus style of photography that emulated the surface characteristics of paintings or etchings, utilizing conventionalized subjects and techniques of composition borrowed from oil painting. By making photographs that resembled paintings, Stieglitz showed that photography could be a fine art medium."

I haven't finished reading the whole piece yet, but stopped when I came to this incredible piece of misinformation. It was exactly what Steiglitz was fighting AGAINST.
The author is so ill informed about this, that I sincerely doubt anything else in the article is factual.
PS, I'm not a Steiglitz fan.

There were two incarnations of Alfred Steiglitz. The author of the article is talking about the first one, you're thinking of the second one.

[Mark Sawyer]

A bit off-topic, but it's worth noting in this turn of the discussion that Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, indeed, most of the pioneer "Straight Photography/Group f/64" photographers were soft-focus pictorialists early in their careers.

[paulr]

A bit off-topic, but it's worth noting in this turn of the discussion that Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, indeed, most of the pioneer "Straight Photography/Group f/64" photographers were soft-focus pictorialists early in their careers.

Absolutely true. And Stieglitz was just about the last of them to ditch pictorialism (he became a modernist in his rhetoric and in his curating and teaching long before he became one in his work). It's often been noted that his young protege Paul Strand more than anyone else actually showed him the path to the formal modernist esthetic.