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Thread: Impressionist photographer?

  1. #11
    jp's Avatar
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    Re: Impressionist photographer?

    Quote Originally Posted by Stephen Willard View Post
    It is my belief the expressive images of AA’s work is the photographic version of impressionistic painting.
    I wouldn't say it is; there are many styles of photography and photographers that have something equivalent to impressionist painting. I'd even say there are many that far exceed AA in impressionism. group f64 was against pictorialism which was more related to impressionism than the f64 styles he is famous for.

    Quote Originally Posted by Stephen Willard View Post
    The only difference, other then one is done by brush and the other is done by camera, is the painter can use brush strokes to add texture to further amplify his emotional state of being. The photographer, on the other hand, can exploit the optical characteristics of his lenses to create optical compositions that are distinctly unique from what most painters create and can further amplify his emotional state of being. The only painter I know of that has come close to these kinds of optical compositions created by lenses is O’keeffe who most likely was influence by Stiglitz. Examples of optical compositions are achieved by using extreme wide angle lenses. closeup lenses, or extreme telephoto lenses.
    The characteristics of wide/tele views were old news in art when photography came along. Prior to the 1500's there was almost no use of perspective in art, so that would be emulated by what we'd call an extreme tele style. The last supper wasn't exactly inspired by the X-pan or circut camera. Van Eyck did a great job painting a wide-angle look. But to your credit, rembrandt lighting is attributed to photography. Pictorial and early modern photography shared a great deal of composition styles with painters of contemporary and previous generations. Pictorial photography used soft focus and imperfection rather than lens angles to lend to the emotion. I think Okeefe was influenced by pictorial style and the composition in photography might have been new to photography, but not art. If you read bios of dead photographers you can learn which paint artists they were inspired by.

    Quote Originally Posted by Stephen Willard View Post
    The photographer who practices pictorial or nature photography creates images that precisely replicate the original scene and instruct the viewer. They are literal interpretation of actual scene and lack any emotional content that is either expressive or impressionistic in nature. I do not consider this type of photography to be fine art because it lacks either emotional or intellectual (conceptual) content.
    You must be speaking of a different pictorial photography than pictorialism here?

    As far as literal photography, I think Eliot Porters's Maine color intimate landscapes are so literal some people would say they are simple snapshots, but they are full of emotion to me. lacking and subtle are two wildly different descriptors we have to be careful of.

    Quote Originally Posted by Stephen Willard View Post
    In particular, I consider myself to be an expressive plein air photographer. I do create expressive images of what I saw and FELT by altering the light contrast and color contrast scene to change the mood of the scene. I do NOT alter the elements of the scene. And I create my art in the field in the same manner as a plein air painter.
    Unless you shoot polaroids or wet plates, you don't have a finished product when you're on site. This is a difference AA would have promoted, as he was big on saying it's not finished till you're out of the darkroom.

  2. #12

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    Re: Impressionist photographer?

    Quote Originally Posted by SergeiR View Post
    Sorry. No. a big, fat no.

    noun
    noun: Impressionism
    1.
    a style or movement in painting originating in France in the 1860s, characterized by a concern with depicting the visual impression of the moment, esp. in terms of the shifting effect of light and color.
    a literary or artistic style that seeks to capture a feeling or experience rather than to achieve accurate depiction.



    AA & Co was denouncing pictoralists who were going after this , and not doing "accurate depiction"..
    As someone has already pointed out, "pictorialism" and "impressionism" are two different things practiced by two different groups working in two different media. While his criticisms of pictorialists might be equally applicable to impressionists if the impressionists (as the term is commonly used) had been photographers, his denunciation of "pictorialists" wasn't also a denunciation of "impressionists."
    Brian Ellis
    Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you do criticize them you'll be
    a mile away and you'll have their shoes.

  3. #13
    Stephen Willard's Avatar
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    Re: Impressionist photographer?

    First let be clear that my response was not intended to be a statement of fact, but rather defines a belief system that I choose to embrace. My beliefs I just shared with you provide me with a frame work of how I fit into the art world, and it also provides me with a blueprint that guides my artistic vision and how I make art. There is nothing more to it than that. Whether you agree with what I believe is of no importance. It is just an opinion and nothing more.

    I am an experiential visual artist. To have a visual experience one must first witness something profound and then he must have an emotional reaction to what he has just witnessed. Its a 2-tuple that is order dependent. You cannot have an emotional reaction until you first witness something. The experience occurs in a instance and very much resides in the moment.

    Once I have an experience of artistic importance, then I choose photography to record that experience. I could have also chosen painting, but I BELIEVE that no other media can record an instance in time like photography. That is photography’s defining virtue, and it is why I have chosen photography rather then painting to capture a visual experience.

    To create a visual experience on paper one must first accurately portray all of the elements of the original scene that triggered the experience. No fabrications of the physical reality are allowed otherwise it is no longer a record of the visual experience. Yes, photography records the physical reality more precisely than painting, but that is to be expected because they are different mediums.

    To record emotion, the artist changes the mood of the scene as an EXPRESSION or IMPRESSION of his emotional state of being. This is where the terms “expressive image” and “impressionistic painting” come from. Both are deeply rooted in the emotional experience of the artist, and both are equivalent in essence. The painter uses light, color, and brush strokes to inject emotion and create mood. The photographer uses light contrast, color contrast, and the optical reality of lenses to inject emotion and create mood. The former paints pigment on canvass while the latter paints light onto film. The outcome of both is the same in essence, but with a different feel because they are different mediums. Because of this realization, I model my lenses not as optical tools, but rather as paint brushes that allow me to paint light onto film in different ways. This realization has had a profound impact on my work.

    All of this is what I believe, and I use my beliefs to give me purpose and direction when I make an expressive image. It is that simple. Whether you choose to embrace my beliefs or not is up to you. My intent is to simply share them with you as possibly another way of bring order to your artistic life.

    Hope this helps...

  4. #14
    jp's Avatar
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    Re: Impressionist photographer?

    Quote Originally Posted by Stephen Willard View Post
    To create a visual experience on paper one must first accurately portray all of the elements of the original scene that triggered the experience.
    But there are items in a scene that are not part of what triggered that experience and will show up a photograph. Lets say the experience is your fiancé putting on her new engagement ring. The tree in the background of the photo growing out of her head is not part of that experience. A painter would have the tree maybe, but it would not be growing out of her head. An 8x10 camera's photo of the experience might blur out the tree, which would no longer be an accurate portrayal of the scene and experience. Creative lighting options also make me disagree. If you want to accurately portray all the elements of a scene, get a Nikon D600, kit lens, tape the flash down, and sell everything else. It might work for someone, but you are speaking generally using words like "the artist", which betrays your personalization of the explanation.

    Quote Originally Posted by Stephen Willard View Post
    Because of this realization, I model my lenses not as optical tools, but rather as paint brushes that allow me to paint light onto film in different ways.
    Very astute and good thing to understand.

  5. #15
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Impressionist photographer?

    Eliot Porter did take distinct liberties with the considerable variation of control which dye transfer printing allowed, including changes in saturation, color balance,
    and even painting blue dye into the sky sometimes. But the nominal subject was not altered, unlike a lot of today's Fauxtoshop work. But you might be surprised at
    AA. He was more flexible than you might think. Once his prints got above 20x24 he shifted completely out of the f/64 mode. He realized that the strong contrast and detail simply wouldn't hold up at a "mural" level of magnification (true, given his films and lenses of that era) - so he printed his really big prints soft, somewhat
    warm in tone, and with a deliberate poetic feel to them, not the bod dramatic or theatrical form generally associated with his work, even where the same original
    negs were involved. Right at the time of his death I was invited to share the largest exhibition of his large prints ever yet assembled, and these were 1:1 interspersed with my big color Cibachromes. The whole point of the theme was commonality in locale, but utter distinction in style. Many of my images at that time were pretty zen, or even inspired by how Impressionists use light, but otherwise complex, highly detailed, tack sharp, so not "impressionistic" whatsoever. An interesting experience, but due to the distinct contract terms of the print loan and the sky high value of AA's prints this size, they all went back into a huge private (civic) vault never to seen again, and the curator was legally restricted from turning this into a traveling venue.

  6. #16
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    Re: Impressionist photographer?

    jp498, I agree with removing unwanted elements of the scene. However, i believe it should be done before the shutter is tripped rather then in a post production environment. The reason I say this is because there is a perception that the former method defines a more accomplished photographer while the latter defines a more accomplished geek. Digital fabrication is suspect by many (but not all) who purchase visual experiential art such as landscape photography. I have a wealthy friend who buys lots of art and she shared my webpage at a dinner party in her 4000 square foot flat in Manhattan. All of them were dismissive of my images initially as digital manipulations. Only when she explained that I was a purist, did they become deeply intrigued with my work.

    In fact, I received two large orders from that dinner party along with a large number of changes that I needed to make to my website to clearly communicate how I practice my art. I implemented most of them.

  7. #17
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Impressionist photographer?

    That's good news, Stephen. Are you still using llamas to get your gear around?

  8. #18

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    Re: Impressionist photographer?

    Mien Gott, what Bokey!
    Wilhelm (Sarasota)

  9. #19
    Drew Wiley
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    Re: Impressionist photographer?

    Sergei - AA did have his pictorialist phase, replete with soft-focus lens. Some of these early images have become rather famous, though they might have been totally forgotten if AA did not evolve into something else afterwards. A far more proficient switch-hitter was Steichen. I have an old Encyclopedia Brittanica edition still around where the primary article on photography was actually written by Edward Weston, and it's basically a propaganda diatribe f64 manifesto, thoroughly
    condemning the backward pictorialist attempt to mimic painting. I found this rather hypocritical, since EW was himself a brilliant pictorialist at one point. But
    academically I find it impossible to classify photographic pictorialism with impressionism, which is inherently dependent upon the freedom of the paintbrush to reinterpret nature rather than just a general diffuse effect. And the best pictorialists like Clarence White and Gertrude K. really put it on a legitimate footing distinct from painters had done anyway - it wasn't just a wannabee effect like much of the Fauxtoshop stuff today.

  10. #20
    http://www.spiritsofsilver.com tgtaylor's Avatar
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    Re: Impressionist photographer?

    From the online dictionary:

    bokey
    Particular to the Sanford, FL location. This term relates to the nature in which a majority the locale's aesthetic appearance is unkempt, down-trodden, or ghetto. The term has been used for generations among the Sanford residents to describe themselves and their area inhabitance.
    Function: adjective
    Man, you just a broke - busted – bokey - bitch!


    Thomas

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