The first person to split the frame vertically was Stieglitz. He probably wasn't the first, but it caused such a great stir, with people asking how he could do such a thing, etc., that he is considered the first...Originally Posted by paulr
The first person to split the frame vertically was Stieglitz. He probably wasn't the first, but it caused such a great stir, with people asking how he could do such a thing, etc., that he is considered the first...
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One who have to be quite a researcher with hard dates to figure out who influence who, and even then a lot of guessing involved. I was a bit
shocked the other nite when a PBS documentary "discovered" an allegedly brilliant mid-century muralist and half the signature pieces were literally copied from my aunt's work a decade earlier. In this case, I've seen the work sketches and could hypothetically prove outright
plagiarism. But why rain on anyone's parade at this point. My aunt would have been flattered anyway, if she were still alive. But in terms
of these photo genres, I've seen prints where Carleton Watkins divided space like this a century before (though finding copies in a book aren't
likely), and gosh, painters decades and decades earlier. Harry Callahan was doing things in color reminiscent, if a bit tentatively. A flood of it
was happening here on the West Coast, mostly in color. Most of that has been forgotten, even if it got academic attention at the time. As usual,
New Yorkers think they invented or discovered everything there and nowhere else. Or perhaps more fairly, the demographic latches more onto
pictures with human subjects in the composition, while so much done in the West utilizes landscape themes, even when the compositional
strategies are analogous.
Then you're seeing imitations of Friedlander.
I think you'll find examples this in the 19th century if you look for a little bit. At any rate, this only hints at the spatial and perspective games played by Mike Smith and Friedlander.
FWIW, bisecting the frame isn't so uncommon or interesting (except that it goes against what grade school art teachers advise), but creating compositions that confuse spatial rendering with the picture frame offers a lot of possibilities. Stieglitz does that a bit here. Smith and Friedlander get it going on several levels at once.
Doubt that very very much, Paul. I think it's the other way around. Sure, he put his own tricks into it. But once these things get in the air, they catch on like wildfire, so hard to say who influenced who. Just like Pop art slightly before, which partially inspired this poke fun of the establishment thing. Now it's the establishment, the oppressive Ottoman Empire ripe to be forgotten. Anyway, what did it ever do that Dada didn't?
Show some evidence. I don't think you're respecting the influence Friedlander had on all his contemporaries.
Here are some places to start, if you want clues: Atget. Walker Evans. And F's contemporaries ... Callahan (who you mentioned), Shore, Eggleston, and Winogrand. You'll find some similarities and antecedents, but I don't think you're going to find anyone who took things as far as he did, did it at well as he did, did it with his sophistication, or with his consistency.
If you disagree, share some links. You've already confessed to not getting F's work, so you can understand my skepticism toward your having anything to add here.
I got into a discussion about rules with another forum member once. He felt that they exist only for neophytes. I feel that they exist for everyone. I see them as guidelines to help but as you become a better photographer or artist you learn when to break the rules. Sometimes breaking the rules just looks right like the photographs in this thread.
Anyway, rules or no rules it's all opinion. What looks good looks good.
Pontificating has its limits, Paul. I was thinking more of late 19th C and early 20th precedents. But trends do get forgotten and reinvented. But not much is truly
original or creative for the sake of creativity worships, as in Western Modernism (which you'll no doubt have fifty shades of convoluted alternate terms for).
But per photographic constructivism long before Friedlander - Sheeler, conspicuously. Then Watkins well before that, though those particular images might not have
gain enough currency to become a wide influence. Like I already pointed out, the best of them might never have been published. In New York, anything without
stomped bubble gum on it gets dismissed as Rock's n' Trees these days. Fine with me - rocks will still be around even if there's a nuke war.
Show me the Sheeler images you're talking about. Or the Watkins images. I'm very familiar with their work and can't think of anything that prefigures the Friedlander esthetic under discussion.
This "the rest of them might not have been published" hedge stinks of your usual retreat when anyone asks for evidence.
Paul.. I entered this arena as a color photographer, so might not be correct about the timing of Friedlander's influence in the monochrome "street photographer"
sense. Color allows certain other spatial strategies, which painters were obsessed with long before Friedlander was ever born. And plays on spatial ambiguity were
common with certain photographers in ca. the 1920's. If you're not aware of that, then do your own homework. I was doing big color prints with very complex
spatial ambiguities before I ever heard of ANY of the above - even displaying them, but will probably never show them on the web, because that would castrate
every nuance that make them work to begin. As usual, you're displaying the typical NYC arrogance that if it's not the current conversation in a Starbucks there,
it must not exist.
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