Defense of the Pictorial Landscape Photograph

[Capocheny]

So, is it safe to say the following:

The amount of monies paid for a piece of "art" determines it's value/worth because "that someone" likes/enjoys/appreciates it enough to buy it in the first place. Therefore, to that purchaser... the piece of art is good.

Secondly, "Art is in the eyes of the beholder.... much like beauty. "Therefore, we're arguing a point that will be entirely determined on an individual basis. Paul liked the "Stripes"... I didn't! [The only difference between Paul's and my view as opposed to a curators is that we don't get to spend the taxpayer's dollars on what we like or don't like.)

At the end of the day, my determination in terms of art lies in the question, "Would I want it hanging on my walls day in, day out?"

I'm sitting here shrugging my shoulders and thinking, "to each their own."

Nuff said from me... :>)

Cheers

[the furies]

Many photographers tend to have this impression that art = pretty pictures. Which may have been the case in the 19th century but things have changed. The 20th century brought about great changes in the ideas of art. The way how painting becomes less about illustrating a scene and more about the qualities of a painting itself, the physicality of it, the energy, the colours, the strokes.

The idea of art itself has been brought into question and broken down thoroughly. You may laugh at people paying money for art from people like Duchamp, and many people cannot appreciate many of the art forms prevalent today, many which are more conceptual than in the past. A painting of 3 stripes for a million may seem ludicrous, but what's important to understand are the ideas that go into making the art too. It's not always about making a pretty picture. The importance of art nowadays is to further ideas, to give a new perspective on things, to push people's mental boundaries. Pop culture, MTV, things like that, have much to thank Andy Warhol for. But to most people of course they just equate his legacy to colourful prints of Marilyn Monroe. How about Duchamp? People laugh thinking "this guy sold a urinal for so much money?" when the IDEAS behind his art were much more important, and affected the course of culture and art in many ways. Many artists become famous posthumous because many of their ideas were too radical at that point in time. Not everyone has to understand it, if you go to an art exhibition to understand everything you're better off watching TV, get your brain pandered to. If you don't understand something, there may be a few reasons. 1) The concepts are too complicated for you to grasp. 2)The piece was badly done. 3)You refuse to open your mind to ideas that you're not used to. Not all art has to move you emotionally. Sometimes it is meant to just question and stimulate your thinking too.

My problem with many photographers is that their pictures are cliched, they are just churning out stock images that have been done before. Ansel Adams did beautiful pictures, and so you have a whole slew of people photographing the Yosemite, churning out similarly "beautiful" pictures. You're right, just because people buy your prints doesn't mean you're making art. It may just mean you're making something tasteful to other people, or something pretty and acceptable. Like muzak. Turn on the radio, listen to some Rod Stewart. everyone likes him, but no one is saying he's creating art.

I question the point of much of landscape photography. It is just another form of documentary photography with some aesthetics. A pretty picture. oh, here's another picture of a beautiful lake in scotland. Isn't it exactly the same as oh here's another sad picture of a starving child in Ethopia. Is there anything new you're telling us?

With regards to out of focus photographs, sometimes when things are out of focus, are ambiguous, it draws the viewer in more, like a mystery, allows th viewer to form his own opinions on what is going on. For lots of examples on good use of blurred, low resolution photographs, look to David Carson, an amazing graphic designer. What nonsense it is to say that if a picture is bad while it's in focus it's bad when it's out of focus. When you create an out of focus picture, it becomes something totally different. It becomes something different, it's no longer an "out of focus picture of a tree", it's an ambiguous form. If you can prevent yourself from jumping straight to what you're comfortable with, the idea straight away that "oh it looks like a tree", perhaps you can see other qualities in the image other than "that tree is out of focus". Just like alot of modern and contemporary art, people love to try to figure out "oh it looks like a moon and a car" when in truth the point of the painting is to emphasis colour and texture. What's the difference between a Van Gogh and a De Kooning and a Jackson Pollock piece? All three are much more similar than most people will admit. Van Gogh may have painted cornfields sunflowers and street scenes, but what makes his work similar to the others is that there is an amazing amount of tension and energy in his strokes. Just that his subjects are recognisable and the other two painting more abstractly.

If everyone, every artist was stuck in the mentality that art is about illustrating pretty pictures and scenes, we would have such narrow mindsets about many things.

Why don't I get to see more photographers doing something I've never seen before? Tackle subjects that I've never seen before? I think one must question the purpose of creating "art", are you just repeating someone else's vision or are you pursuing your own. Photographers like Nick Knight and Lachappelle excite me, they're not making traditional pretty pictures. Some are downright ugly. But they are exciting and stimulating. And they have their own vision. which is more than I can say for most other photographers.

[Capocheny]

Katherine,

I'll definitely go out and buy the latest copy of LensWork just to read your article... looking forward to it.

Cheers

[Donal Taylor]

Somehow the attribution to my quote got lost - it was Berenice Abbott in 1951 talking at a conference (that included Adams).

PS - "but I have no patience with people who simply react to the word "pictorialist" with their own prejudices and with the very attitudes I was arguing against, instead of reading and considering the article in its own right."

Unfortunately it is not available here and only one page is online - so we'll have to run with hearsay.... :-)

[Kaatharine Thayer]

P.S. Just to clarify something: it's not so much what the picture is of as the approach that is taken, that distinguishes the pictorial approach in my formulation. For example, I don't know if he would appreciate the label since it's considered so pejorative these days, but I consider Chris Jordan's Seattle urban landscapes to be perfect examples of a pictorial approach to picturemaking; this is the kind of sensibility that I am arguing for.

I'm going to bow out of here because so much of what's here is just kneejerk arguments against what people perceive as pictorialism and it seems silly to try to debate points that argue against things I didn't say and don't believe. So, carry on,

[E. U. Eichhorn]

"Some of the most complete and satisfying works of art have been produced when their authors had no idea of creating a work of art, but were concerned with the expression of an idea. Nature does not create works of art. It is we, and the faculty of interpretation peculiar to the human mind, that see art." -- Man Ray

[Donal Taylor]

"When I go to look at juried photography exhibits, I see not even a phallic tree stump, not a vista, not a sky, not a cloud, not a mountain, nothing I would even remotely call a landscape, (and, I might add, not a red dot in sight either.) What I see is everything ugly: urban blight, suburban blight, rural blight, chain link fences, street signs, people chosen deliberately for their ugly quotient, cars from the 60s, equivalents of Sally Mann's kid with the bloody nose, this kind of stuff is all I've seen for years and years. I find the assertion that barbed wire and electric lines are refreshing to see in the face of all the pristine wilderness we've been forced to look at for so long just inexplicable. Tell me where all those landscapes are; I'd like to see some please?"

From one of those who might on the one hand be accused of being in the forefront of "urban blight, suburban blight, rural blight, chain link fences, street signs,people chosen deliberately for their ugly quotient," etc?:

Thomas Struth - The Dandelion Room

Stunningly beautiful nature/landscapes

Or Geoffrey James' contribution to Viewing Olmsted for example (and even his book on Olmsteds Mt Royal Cemetary)or his Italian Gardens and Paris, or Michael and Paula Smith, Fay Godwin, George Tice, Elger Essers Cap Anferat (sic), even Joel Sternfeld's Walking the Highline (that beauty found in the midst of NYC). Basilico - his broader cityscapes, but also the way he approaches his detailed cityscapes too; much of John Davies work - especially the high viewpoint lanscapes - where to start.... so many. Surely most, if not all, are examples of the sort of pictorial approach you outline?

[Kaatharine Thayer]

Well, shoot, I didn't get out of here fast enough. It seems the misunderstandings have been compounded somehow by my own responses as well as by others'. My excerpt from a five-year old e-mail was an answer to Paul's question: haven't we seen enough landscapes already? It was not an excerpt from my essay, which absolutely does not say that art should be pretty, in fact I explicitly say in the essay that I'm NOT arguing that art should be pretty. And I also agree that there is much work that is beautiful that isn't of pretty subjects. I've never said otherwise.So call off your dogs, please. Now, I'm really out of here.

[Guy Tal]

Having been involved in this type of argument all too many times, I'll sit this one out. I'll just mention that a recent piece on the matter made me laugh so hard (at the apparent seriousness with which the windbag author seemed to take himself) that I no longer refer to myself as an artist. I shall henceforth be known as an eco-pornographer.

I make pretty pictures. It makes me happy. Deal with it!

Guy
Scenic Wild Photography

[Jan Van Hove]

My thoughts on what we should photograph :

Sure, landscapes have been done, nudes : done, portaits of old people with wrinkles that tell the story of their lives in some exotic country : done, fashion : done, cars : done, wars : done, insects : done, autoportraits in mirrors : done... every damn thing has been shot time and again in the last century and a half of photography. Anyone pretending to do something new just didn't look hard enough for the guy who took the exact same shot fifty years ago.... Cynic ? probably, but also liberating, since we don't have that stupid pressure of creating something new...

As for what gallery curators like ? well we can't do squat about that except mind our own damn business and keep on shooting whatever we like and not worry about it...

(wow, that almost sounded angry... probably just the rejected artist burried deep beneath the biologist, the photographer and the dad...)

Just my view, YMMV... ( and it should...)

PJ VH