Best Writing on Photography Ever!

[Richard Wasserman]

As is my wont, I was wandering the web and came upon an article about a recent book of evidently really good and important photographs which I thought were utterly boring. I was instantly enthralled by the following tidbit (it goes on and on and on...). And I quote—

“It is this sand-blasted speculation or rather en-spectralization, the ghosting and subsequent miasma of capitalism as it exists in the economy of images that we regard as relative at the very least-namely the aptitude to regard photography if not truth, certainly as plausibly disagreeable in a shared system of acknowledged solutions for knowledge-based communication”

Who writes, and more interestingly, reads this stuff? Anyone other than MFA candidates and their professors? I'm a bit gobsmacked

[pepeguitarra]

Can anyone translate the quoted text?

[faberryman]

Can anyone translate the quoted text?

The quoted text is deliberate obfuscation. You can often read an artist statement and come to a conclusion about the quality of the images without looking at them.

[Tin Can]

I gots me MFA from School of the Art Institute and never wrote or spoke like that.

That's reserved for curators.

I have walked out of many curator 'talks', especially at Art Expo Chicago. At all four relocations.

The last one was a diatribe about how there was no local 'ART' worthy of hanging. This was said by 2 high end Chicago curatores.

I made sure my chair was knocked over as I stalked out. I am a performance artiste...they got off easy.

In the 90's we invaded the shrine of idiocy.

[Richard Wasserman]

Curators, I hadn't thought of curators—I think you could be right Randy.

Also some alleged critics.

[Robert Bowring]

It is just self important BS. This is why I never read the artist statement before I look at the pictures. Most of the time it is just this kind of BS that has nothing to do with the pictures.

[Tin Can]

Curator tops critic everytime.

Collectors are gamers.

I will never sell another art 'work'.

I did once 20 years ago and have regretted it ever since.

Curators, I hadn't thought of curators—I think you could be right Randy.

Also some alleged critics.

[Jim Becia]

As is my wont, I was wandering the web and came upon an article about a recent book of evidently really good and important photographs which I thought were utterly boring. I was instantly enthralled by the following tidbit (it goes on and on and on...). And I quote—

“It is this sand-blasted speculation or rather en-spectralization, the ghosting and subsequent miasma of capitalism as it exists in the economy of images that we regard as relative at the very least-namely the aptitude to regard photography if not truth, certainly as plausibly disagreeable in a shared system of acknowledged solutions for knowledge-based communication”

Who writes, and more interestingly, reads this stuff? Anyone other than MFA candidates and their professors? I'm a bit gobsmacked

I like to think of this as verbal diarrhea. I like to collect photography books and one of the sites I frequent is Photoeye. While not as convoluted, sometimes their descriptions of books border on this type of verbal mess.

[bloodhoundbob]

Having read thousands of Mental Status Exam reports by psychiatrists and psychologists and thousands of psychiatric hospital discharge summaries, I came to the conclusion many years ago that there is a fine line between high self esteem and delusions of grandeur.

[goamules]

Can anyone translate the quoted text?

That could be fun, I'll try:

“It is this sand-blasted speculation [abrasive guesswork]

or rather en-spectralization, [or colorizing]

the ghosting and subsequent miasma of capitalism [hard to see bad smell of success]

as it exists in the economy of images [photographs vs extreme logorrhea]

that we regard as relative at the very least- [it's important, to us anyway]

namely the aptitude to regard photography if not truth, [we can't say this photographers interpretation is correct]

certainly as plausibly disagreeable [but you can agree to disagree]

in a shared system of acknowledged solutions for knowledge-based communication” [in our pre-conceived world that recognizes intelligentsia only]

So if we massage it a little more, now we have:

"In our admittedly abrasive guesswork about this colorization, the hard to see (and bad smell) of success of these photographs (without being too wordy), is important to us. If you don't believe us, we can agree to disagree, because in our world, we will debate using big words."