Cognitive Dissonance= Crummy Photos

[John_4185]

from wikipedia:

In brief, the theory of cognitive dissonance holds that contradicting cognitions serve as a driving force that compels the human mind to acquire or invent new thoughts or beliefs, or to modify existing beliefs, so as to minimize the amount of dissonance (conflict) between cognitions.

One would think a wikipedia author would be more concise. What is implied by omission is that if one does not aquire, invent or modify, then he does nothing.

Or briefly, "You see something impossible then either rationalize or ignore it."

Everything can be made simpler. Even this.

[Annie M.]

If cognitive dissonance encompasses resolving the abiguities of the play between what is truly seen and what is known (our learned cultural consensual reality and the projection into nature of abstract ideas and images).... I do indeed find this dissonance a daily challenge with my photography.

I know that I bring with me to every sheet of film that timid hazy little painted landscape of the
Renaissance that elbowed it’s way past the Madonna into the foreground and all it’s later
strange incarnations and permutations within the rational side of the human mind, neatly shackled in perspective.... and all the shards of the landscape from when it had a rough time of it falling into the minds of the romantics and their way of seeing....(always peeking into that golden glowing middle distance those visual pleasure seekers!)
I am sure you are more versed in history of the landscape in art than I... I know very little of the nuances of changing vanishing points and the subtleties of horizon lines modulating up and down and then disappearing entirely into Turner’s smoke and behind Pollock’s Lavender Mist... you gotta love the abstract expressionists... (I’d probably be one myself except I don’t smoke and drink enough)... and then there are all those photographs.... my poor simple rational mind mesmerized by an endless flipbook of silver landscapes... it is a miracle I can see anything in the GG at all through that mountain of visual clutter I carry.

Photography with it’s inherent reductionist nature makes the simple act of seeing even more
difficult for me. However, gradually I am coming to the conclusion that striving for any kind of
photographic essentialism is a fallacy and that too much reliance on the rational mind will indeed spoil most photographs (the fact that I am relying less on my ‘rational mind’ will probably come as no surprise to some... they have probably assumed I had been doing that all along!)...

Anyway I keep trying to peek through the fog of dissonance hoping to see what is truly on the other side of the lens because I truly believe there is something wonderful and mysterious there worth seeing.

Cheers Annie

[Scott Fleming]

... "will sit in my filling cabinet until the day comes when my heirs will chuck it into a dumpster."

There but for the grace of God go we all. The plain truth, to me, is that we are a jaded lot ... the modern human race. But for the painters and photographers and other artists that actually stop .... and look .... we are so busy running to and fro that nothing so banal as a two dimensional representation of a scene or a nude or whatever is any longer able to reach us.

I used to be like that. Still am when I'm rushed or in a bad mood. I've just gotten old enough and slow enough to stop and smell the roses. Some of those photos we have in our file cabinets are well worth fame and respect. They'll just not be seen because there is not enough interest in the world regarding art.

Perhaps it is like Christianity. If one just reads the words of Christ ... the red parts ... and would follow that philosophy ... one would be happy AND what the world calls a saint. But that ole black book just sits there on the shelf and folks think its all too deep for them and impossible to understand anyway. Foolishness. Materialism and all it's roller coaster rides is what makes the world go round and our psyches twirl.

[John Flavell]

This is making my brain hurt. I asked the camera and it hurts, too.

[jim Ryder]

I keep trying to make a print of the fog and it's always a purple haze in silver.

[Steve J Murray]

Cognitive Dissonance is actually a theory from social psychology thought up by Leon Festinger in the 1950's. Its actually a very interesting theory and it turns out to be pretty accurate in real situations. It basically states that when confronted with two opposing views, which creates dissonance, a person will change his or her feeling or perception about one of the sides to reduce the dissonance.

For instance, if a valued photographer friend of mine dislikes a photo that I really like, it creates a dissonance in my mind. One of two things will happen to reduce my dissonance: my opinion of the photograph will diminish, or my opinion of my friend's artistic judgement will go down.

The theory is really about opinion and social interactions, not so much the internal dissonance created by a conflict between two opposing thoughts in one person, although you could certainly label that "dissonance" just as easily. The term "cognitive dissonance" refers to Festinger's idea.

I relate to what you are talking about John all the time when out photographing things. Do we want to please others and do the expected thing which will appeal to the masses, or do we please ourselves, and suffer the indignity of not being understood. Some people make a lot of money doing the first choice, and that's been discussed a lot in this forum through various issues. Others try to please the movers and shakers of the "fine art" market to make a living or a name for themselves in a more refined arena. Then there's those of us who just take photos of the things that excite them visually, and hope that someone else on the planet will also feel the same excitement when viewing the photo. I try to keep my mind clear from all the clutter and get real zen about it. More like meditation and just "see" and "feel" what's out there. If a great image results its a gonna be a product of good genes brought to fruition through the learning of a craft. I produce a lot of images I don't even like, but often enough a real stunner appears, and its all worth it. Intermittant reinforcement is the strongest you know. ;>)

[Michael Ting]

IMHO, there are more basic questions that should be discussed, before we attempt to answer the question above.

Is art objective, or subjective?

What is beauty, does it have any standards?

Answer these and you'll be able to answer 99% of the art questions out there.

I believe beauty is absolute. Beauty is not relative, and it is not unchanging. But the problem is too many people make themselves standards of beauty, when the fact is, people only lasts 70years, so will "beauty" disappear after they die? Beauty should be timeless, that is, it goes beyond time and history. I believe the sun still rises and sets the same way it did 2000 years ago when the greek philosophers were alive. I believe we all still find the scene beautiful today, as they did 2000 years ago. I believe human will always agree that beautiful women throughout ages have two eyes, not one, not three, and are walking on two legs. I believe harmonics in music is a real and solid rule. I believe there are harmonics in color too, and the same harmonics apply to paintings, photographs, fashion design, graphic design, interior design, and others. These are just some examples, I'm sure you've discovered many others throughout your photography years.

Discover what beauty is, and you'll have no questions doing your "art".

[Struan Gray]

Clement Greenberg called this "Alexandrism". I like his definition:

"...an academicism in which the really important issues are left untouched because they involve controversy, and in which creative activity dwindles to virtuosity in the small details of form, all larger questions being decided by the precedent of the old masters. The same themes are mechanically varied in a hundred different works, and yet nothing new is produced:..."

[Leigh Perry]

Can we be sure that we are not dedicating our energies to an endeavour in which all of the possible creative options were exhausted within a short time after the invention of the endeavour? Within a short period, photographers had exhausted most available subject matter: buildings, still life, landscapes, people in various states of undress, etc. Total originality thereafter is difficult.

What remains available is originality in (ever) reduced measure.

For instance, the wilderness landscapes have all been shot -- so many times that they have largely become trite. But then the interactions of man and nature have also all been shot, just not as many times as the former. It seems to me that we are destined to spend our photographic creative lives producing images that someone can uncharitably find an antecedent for, at least broadly, if they try hard enough.

Our options may therefore be reduced to exploring the margins, probing the gaps between the efforts of our predecessors, which, as you increase the viewing distance, probably looks more and more like Alexandrism. How depressing :-)

[Struan Gray]

If you look at photography as being more like journalism than poetry there is always fresh material. The point is that so few photographers take the trouble to use it. I'm not just talking about photojournalism, but about the herd mentality that produced all those pictures of red sandstone at sunrise.

Photography seems to attract those who are instinctively nostalgic and sentimental. Partly because photographing something makes you aware of how much it has changed next time you see it, but also because of a bull-headed reluctance to question cosy definitions of what makes a good photograph. Look at threads here about favourite subjects, and all the old buildings, rusting factories and third-world grannies that end up on film. How often in photographic circles do you find someone photographing wafer fabs, new housing estates or the modern urban young? Lots of those sorts of photographs in the world of art photography, but not in the Alexandrine world of the internet, mainstream magazines, camera clubs and - shudder - international salons.

That probably sounds snobbish. I'm not putting photography down. Really. It's just that I wish the established photography world was more open to new ideas and less concerned with erecting plinths and statues to people who should be copied.