Deadpan vs. Expressive

[Martin Miller]

“Adams and White are similar in one important but now highly suspect way: their use of drama. Sincere dramatic presentation is a sure way to get passed over these days. Make the irony obvious enough and you might get away with it, but in general, for now, it's best to avoid open enthusiasm about your subject.” –Struan Gray

I have been musing over Struan’s comment in the Feb 8th thread started by Dick Hilker. (Ok, so I’m a slow muser.) Yes, photography is the hen laying golden eggs in the high-end art market these days, but it has been observed many times that, for the most part, the photography accepted at that level is that which rejects the traditional art-photography print aesthetic, i.e., essentially the standard pioneered by Adams, Weston, et al. Adams frequently referred to this standard as the “expressive” print. I think this aesthetic is what Struan means by dramatic presentation. Deadpan, i.e., expressionless detachment, seems to be the reigning aesthetic in the high-end photography market today.

Presumably, the displacement of connoisseur by the conceptualist is implicated in this shift to deadpan and the snapshot aesthetic (the Duchampian distrust of “ocular” art). However, I can’t help thinking that the postmodernists’ reaction against the modernists was so strong that the expressive print aesthetic of Adams, Weston, and White was dumped along with their imagery. I have always felt that the “expressive” quality of a print was not only a way to intensify the meaning of a print but to break through to a different plane of meaning as well. Of course, this new plane of meaning, as I perceive it, does not lend itself to the current vogue of parsing its cultural implications. To me, much of the high-end contemporary work fails to achieve this break-through and leaves me dissatisfied. I can understand the visual fatigue that sets in after seeing the nth slot canyon, but what I have trouble understanding is why one should intentionally weaken the intensity of their vision. Why has passion and beauty become passe?

[Walter Calahan]

This too shall pass. Perhaps someday we'll forget the 'Prada look.'

[Gordon Moat]

I don't think it is the situation of passion and beauty becoming passé. Many observers can find passion and beauty in an image from Gursky, Struth, or even Burtinsky. I think what pains some people is the lack of traditional subject matter at the high end. Though why would a modern and working photographer want to be compared to Weston or Adams, or attempt similar works?

Consider in the 1800s when the various Academies controlled the world of art and the majority of works shown were very formulaic. Outside of those accepted exhibits were a bunch of rouges, who later became the impressionists and expressionists. It might even be considered that the reality of early photography allowed looser expressiveness in painting, an escape from formulaic conventions of the Academies.

So if we move into more modern times, we might consider Weston, Adams, et al to be more formulaic in their approaches. It might be a wonderful learning exercise to emulate what those photographers did, much like life drawing and other art foundations can lead one to their own expressiveness in painting. There will always be an audience for those early works, and for people who choose to stay with those earlier methods today.

Now with the prevalence in public of digital photography, the escape might be more traditional methods. Reviving difficult processes can be an escape from formulaic photography, or an attempt to separate one's works from that of others. In that are also those who embrace the newest methods and aesthethics, sometimes creating a new and unique direction. Unfortunately the terminology or major movements of a time are only determined in hindsight by art historians.

Then you have the enthusiasts who place toil and effort above creative vision. To them, the craft of the print can exceed the concept, perhaps being greater revered than the expression or idea behind the image. They are few, though sometimes quite vocal.

The other aspect which you seem to mention is the genre of subject matter. Sure, lots of people on this forum enjoy the great outdoors, wilderness treks, and escaping from more urban environments. No better way to do that than by taking along a camera and quietly contemplating a scene, then photographing that for later further contemplation, or to share with others. Absolutely there is a market for this work, though I agree about the visual fatigue aspect; go to some larger art shows and it seems like everyone must have went to several of the same locations; indeed many places are over-exposed.

Art is rarely about following, often about rebelling, and sometimes about innovation. In those extremes, an audience will be found for each. There are few rules in art, and most of those can (and should) be broken. Anyway, just my opinions.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio (http://www.allgstudio.com)

[Mark Sampson]

Perhaps it's just turning out that the work of Walker Evans has been more influential than most of the other 20th century "greats".

[paulr]

It's just like when people bemoan that contemporary music doesn't sound like Beethoven or Mahler. If it DID, something would be odd ... that music is the product of another time and place. Those forms have been thoroughly explored (they were radical in their day, prompting a lot of their contemporary, conservative critics to dismiss them). But now they're comfortable and thoroughly familiar ... not the most fertile ground for seeking new discoveries in the world today.

[Kirk Gittings]

"deadpan" is expressive unless it is based on incompetence.

[Bruce Watson]

Why has passion and beauty become passe?

A very interesting question. I wish I understood it myself. But passe it clear is.

In this age of FUD what I need hanging on my walls is beautiful and inspiring. Some of it I've been able to buy, but beautiful and inspiring work is very hard to find anymore. Mostly I find I have to make my own.

[paulr]

Perhaps it's just turning out that the work of Walker Evans has been more influential than most of the other 20th century "greats".

That's an interesting thought. If it's so, it might be because Evans' work was so much about the time he lived in (and the remains of the not so distant past). The style he developed was suited to this, and so became an almost infinitely renewable style ... it could be used to make relevent pictures of today, no matter what day it happens to be.

Ansel, on the other hand, was borrowing an esthetic and a tradition that was almost a hundred years old, and updating it with modern tools and processes. Not a formula with legs like what evans was doing.

Weston was doing something new. But his focus was on timeless aspects of his subjects (at least early in his career ... later on his work started looking a bit more like evans'!). It could be that it's easier for a movement to run dry when it's based on something timeless and unwavering than when it's based on something that civilization constantly reinvents.

[Steven Barall]

Education is the best camouflage for stupidity. If you don't believe that, just talk to people who work in the art business, whether it be in sales or collecting or criticism or yes, even production. Although it is possible to find people who do actually know of what they speak, they are few and far between.

All the nonsense just hides the fact that they are just lost in a Paris Hilton type of world where you are famous just for being famous. If you are expecting to find sanity and solace in the art world you had better find it within the reach of your two arms because anything further away than that is just going to be a sorry disappointment.

You really have to have your own reasons for doing things and you can't dwell on the fact that most everything in the art world is terrible. Be glad that they don't like you. Wear their distaste for your beliefs as a badge of honor. Very few employees of the major art magazines, newspapers or galleries are going to give any shrift to the craft of art. It just doesn't make them feel important.

[tim atherton]

wow - that's more than -what? A little bitter? Pretty broad brush there Steven. There's nothing to like?

[Struan Gray]

Martin, I'm flattered. Slow musing is like slow food: not necessarily better, but it does allow more complexity and subtlety into the mix.

I think that when I wrote that I was conflating several clearly-felt but not fully thought through issues. I certainly was not saying that there is no room for beauty or passion in the work of the current artworld darlings. My own tastes presently tend towards a refined formalism, and my favourite contemporary work combines the syncopated composition of Freidander at his best with a subtle - deadpan - sense of colour and shading in a way that strikes me as beautiful in the classical sense of the term, even if the photographs look nothing like classical models of beauty.

I think the radicalism of the 60s, and the success of that radicalism and its wholesale integration into everyday life, has led to a forgetfulness and even close-mindedness about the art of the 40s and particularly the 50s. Pop and conceptual post-modernism pushed analytic thought and contemplation to the margins, and with it went sincere, heartfelt enthusiasm, and the sort of drama that is easy to snigger at if you want to take a cheap shot.

I'm painting with a broad brush of course, but I see themes and concerns in the work of photographers like Siskind, Meatyard and Sommer that are relevant today but are not - or are rarely - touched upon by either the Guild members of the photography world or the art photographers of the gallery scene. It's partly parochial fashion and partly a zeitgeist that distains the idea of intellectual authority. The 50s were a serious time, when getting things right in an absolute sense seemed both possible and important. I think it would be good to let some of that rigour back into the art world, and not just because it favours my preferences.

[Helen Bach]

"deadpan" is expressive unless it is based on incompetence.

Quite. How about "Deadpan vs Inflected" instead?

Best,
Helen

[Brian Ellis]

Perhaps it's just turning out that the work of Walker Evans has been more influential than most of the other 20th century "greats".

If you limit their influence to their photographs that's probably true. But if you take their entire careers and contributions to photography into account there's no comparison between Evans and Ansel Adams. Adams was a moving force behind the founding of Aperture magazine, Group f64, the first Department of Photography at a major museum (MOMA), co-creator of the zone system, the first person or one of the first to sponsor workshops for learning purposes, the most popular author of photography instruction books of his day, a major contributor to the early days of the Sierra Club and the use of photography for environmental purposes, and other things that don't come immediately to mind. Evans spent much of his life trying to draw the biggest paycheck he could draw from Fortune magazine for doing the least amount of work possible (a slight exageration but only slight).

[Martin Miller]

Sorry, Struan, I didn’t mean to put you on the spot and interpret your words for you. Your words just struck a chord with my own perceptions and got me thinking. Unfortunately, with an activity as diverse as contemporary photography, even limited to the high-end market, its difficult to generalize without lots of exceptions jumping into your mind to spoil the insight. I did not mean to imply that I find nothing passionate or beautiful in this limited arena (though one could certainly infer that from what I too hastily wrote). And there is a wide range of deadpan work out there, some of it more “expressive” than others. The word “expressive” I am using in the Ansel Adams sense, not Ansel’s work itself but his rigorous approach to make the tonal scale work to communicate a vision more powerfully (dramatically?)

An example of what I was thinking about is the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher (arguably not at the highest end of the art market but at least an important influence on it). I have seen their water towers work in person and was struck by the lifelessness of it. I don’t think this is because they don’t know how to print. On the contrary, they worked hard at waiting for just the right flat lighting, etc. I think they were consciously striving for an expressionless rendering. Personally I think their subject matter is very interesting (at least potentially), so my complaint is not there. When you study the water towers in a group, with their intentionally similar perspectives, they tend to take on individual personalities, even attitudes. However these interesting and innovative qualities are attenuated by the snapshot-like tonal rendering. I can imagine two sets of water tower pictures side by side, one set printed with “expressiveness”, say, by Kirk Gittings, and the other as they did. I just find it hard to imagine why anyone would prefer their prints to Kirk's. Of course, their intended effect is conceptually motivated and maybe my real heartburn is with banality as an artistic concept. Also, maybe I am so subtly indoctrinated with modernist sensibilities that I don’t even recognize it, but I like my art to be “mystery and matter delivered in a rush of poetic illumination”, as Simon Schama wrote of Anselm Kiefer’s work, http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,1994471,00.html.

[Struan Gray]

I didn't feel on the spot: only that I hadn't really said what I thought I had said. I'm still not sure I have.

It's a real treat to know someone is reading.

As for the banal/deadpan/muted look: some messages are best delivered quietly. I think this is particularly true of messages that take some time to sink in. It may be an age thing:


Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.

I love Sargent portraits, but for my home I would like a Gwen John.

[Struan Gray]

PS: I am aware of the contradiction betwen my posts.

Consistency is the hobgoblin etc...

[Justin Cormack]

An example of what I was thinking about is the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher (arguably not at the highest end of the art market but at least an important influence on it). I have seen their water towers work in person and was struck by the lifelessness of it. I don’t think this is because they don’t know how to print. On the contrary, they worked hard at waiting for just the right flat lighting, etc. I think they were consciously striving for an expressionless rendering. Personally I think their subject matter is very interesting (at least potentially), so my complaint is not there. When you study the water towers in a group, with their intentionally similar perspectives, they tend to take on individual personalities, even attitudes. However these interesting and innovative qualities are attenuated by the snapshot-like tonal rendering.

Actually I think the Bechers' pictures (from what I have read) are generally taken when they get the opportunity, as the places are not accessible for long. Many of the areas are places of fairly flat light a lot of the time (the joy of central europe) but I did wonder last time I saw them if they printed them to make them more uniform, what you describe as expressionless, to bring out the repetition of the sets. A single Becher picture makes less sense than a multitude after all.

Also I cant remember (as my book doesnt mention it) but I believe most were shot on Agfa glass plates (13x18cm?), for a particular tonality, though they had to move to film when the plates were discontinued.

Slight sidetrack though...

[chris jordan]

Martin, I think you might be making a distinction without a difference. The Bechers' work is just as expressive as Ansel Adams' work; it's just expressive of something different. Adams was about spectacular high drama, which in the eyes of some people was all about his ego. Other people's work that you characterize as "deadpan" is just quieter, less about the ego and more about subtleties, like a good wine instead of rum and coke.

Also, just because the subject of a photograph has a deadpan expression, that doesn't mean the photographer is deadpan, or the photograph is deadpan. Consider the possibility that artists whose work is harder to "get" have more respect for their viewers than the artists who spoon-feed high drama and spectacle in their work. Artists like Thomas Struth or the Bechers expect their work to be met by a sophisticated viewer, so they don't throw a simple meaning at you because they respect you more than that. Think of dramatic photographs as being like a Hollywood movie, and the Bechers as a good European film that requires some reflection but is ultimately more rewarding.

And contrary to Steven's hilarious troll, there is an amazing amount of brilliant work being done out there. I had the good fortune to see lots of it last weekend, at the big art fairs in New York: the Armory Show, Pulse, Scope and a couple of others. There were several thousand artists represented there, and I couldn't believe the level of creativity and quality (with plenty of wacky stuff mixed in too). You might consider going to one of those events; the Chicago Art Fair is coming up in April and will be one of the biggest and best. Those shows are inspiring, and not a little bit intimidating too.

And by the way, Martin, your new work is fantastic. I can't believe you far you have come in such a short time. The Military Machines feels to me like a mature series; I would lead with that one, show the prints to some galleries and see what happens. I can help you with some introductions; drop a line and we can chat.

Cheers,

~cj

[Martin Miller]

Well, I can see that I picked a poor choice for a thread title. Of course, Chris is right about my making a “distinction without a difference”. All images are expressive of something and the deadpan aesthetic is no different in this respect. I was using the word “expressive” in a very narrow sense. Ansel used this word over and over because I think he didn’t know what else to call it either. In fact I think the word came to be emblematic of his Wagnerian style of landscape, and this association also makes it a poor word choice in which to couch my comment. And maybe it is misleading for me to connect my narrow use of “expressive” with “dramatic”. For example, I think John Sexton makes quiet images that are expressive (in my narrow sense) without being dramatic. For me, an expressive image is one that somehow transcends its subject and excites some mysterious psychological/emotional resonance. Here I get stuck. I have never been able to find the words to express it beyond this level of suggestive vagueness. From a scientific-materialism point of view, if you can’t express it in words and measure it, it doesn’t exist. However, I believe that reality may be a little more complicated than that. Art and music may well derive its power from the whole being greater than the sum of its measurable parts.

Thanks for your encouragement, Chris, and for your generous offer.

[Toyon]

I just saw an exhibition of Martin Schoellers work. See some of the images at: http://www.griffinmuseum.org/exhibitions_main_gallery.htm. What's interesting is that he has subject focus (or defocus) their eyes directly at the lens. The appearance of two giant lightboxes reflected in their eyes has the effect of eclipsing and real expression. It's almost as if they had all been imbedded with the same chip, although the faces are different. A very strange effect... on purpose of course, but playing on all lot of the themes you guys are discussing.