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Thread: Defense of the Pictorial Landscape Photograph

  1. #1

    Join Date
    May 2002
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    98

    Defense of the Pictorial Landscape Photograph

    I would like to recommend to the participants in this forum an essay in the current issue of Lenswork magazine by Katharine Thayer (who, I believe, contributes here from time to time). The piece is titled, "Embracing Beauty: The Post-Postmodern Pictorialist Landscape Photograph." If you don't subscribe to Lenswork (and you should), this article is worth the price of the magazine. Particularly, if you are a landscape photographer and feel--as I do--that your craft is unjustly under assault by the intelligentsia of the art world, you will surely appreciate Katharine's words.

  2. #2

    Join Date
    May 2004
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    115

    Defense of the Pictorial Landscape Photograph

    A gallery curator here in Vancouver looked at bunch of my landscape photos and said "hmmm i don't quite like them, there is no people in them"

    I was pretty speechless.. she really liked the pictures that my friend took where she pointed the camera at the mirror..

    i dunno anymore...

  3. #3

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    Defense of the Pictorial Landscape Photograph

    I find the writing in LensWork to be superb, far and away the best of any photography publication. Unfortunately, their choice of pictures, and the small size usually turns me off.
    Wilhelm (Sarasota)

  4. #4

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    Defense of the Pictorial Landscape Photograph

    Do you really care what the intelligentsia of the art world think? I don't give a fat rat's posteria whether they accept my art as meeting their criteria for deserving respect.

    People buy my pictures - that's what counts for me.

    Graeme

  5. #5

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    Mar 1999
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    Defense of the Pictorial Landscape Photograph

    Amen to that, Graeme! I shoot what feels good to me. If elitist gallery owners don't like it, screw 'em!

  6. #6

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    Defense of the Pictorial Landscape Photograph

    Ditto to what Graeme said. The intelligentsia are self-proclaimed.

  7. #7

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    Defense of the Pictorial Landscape Photograph

    Generally speaking, you know the old saying... "if you can't do, you teach!" Alternatively, "if you can't do, you curate!"

    As for the subject of "intelligentsia" that's a highly subjective topic. The National Art Gallery in Ottawa paid $US1M for a painting of 3 vertical stripes! Some curator (an esteemed member of the Intelligentsia) picked it... but we, the taxpayers, paid for it!

    But, seriously, I concur with Graeme... as long as folks buy your work, that's what really counts at the end of the day.

    In regards to LensWork Magazine... I think it's a first rate publication (albeit, it's small but the quality of the printing and subject matter is terrific.) In the last edition (No. 52 Apr - May 2004) they had a portfolio (Botanicals) of work done by Victoria Ryan, which I thought was absolutely brilliant. Take a peek at it...

    PS: Deniz... why am I NOT surprised by your experience?

    Cheers
    Life in the fast lane!

  8. #8

    Defense of the Pictorial Landscape Photograph

    "The greatest influence obscuring the field (of photography) has been pictorialism.... Pictorialism means chiefly the making of pleasant pretty pictures in the spirit of certain minor painters. What is more, the imitators of painting imitate the superficial qualities of painting... the only relationship between painting and photography is that of a two dimensional image on a flat surface within a certain area. Photography can never grow up and stand on it's own two feet if it imitates primarily some other medium. It has to walk alone. These latter day pictorialists - Strand, Steiglitz, Steichen, Adams - did not know they were pictorialists. They were, for want of a better word , the advance, or super-pictorialist scool.The individual picture like a painting was the thing, above all the perfect print. Subjectivity predominates and then we have the imitators of abstract painting, the pure design, the cracked windowpane or the cracked paint"

    IMO Atget, for example made some of the most sublime landscapes but most certainly wasn't a pictorialist (big or small "P"). I don't think you have to be a pictorialist to incorporate affection and reverence for nature, beauty or even forms of romaticism in your photography (even if Katherine Thayer is using pictorialism with a small p - it still can't be seperated from the movment which smothered photography for so long and is cited above).

  9. #9

    Defense of the Pictorial Landscape Photograph

    "As for the subject of "intelligentsia" that's a highly subjective topic. The National Art Gallery in Ottawa paid $US1M for a painting of 3 vertical stripes! Some curator (an esteemed member of the Intelligentsia) picked it... but we, the taxpayers, paid for it!"

    What did you actually think when you went and looked at it?

  10. #10

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    Defense of the Pictorial Landscape Photograph

    Mark,

    Personally, I didn't think much of the painting. I viewed it for a lengthy period of time thinking that it might stir something inside of me either spiritually or emotionally. However, it failed to move me in any way, shape, or form.

    As for the amount paid for it I think there are other pieces of art that would have made much more sense. For example, I would have invested in a Toni Onley, a Yosef Karsh, or any of the paintings done by The Group of Seven.

    But, at the end of the day, the painter of that piece managed to sell it for a goodly sum of money.

    BTW... what was your thoughts on it?

    Cheers
    Life in the fast lane!

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