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Thread: Liberation - Photography as Contemporary Art

  1. #1

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    Liberation - Photography as Contemporary Art

    Rambling over coffee before the Day Job.

    Diverging from the "NY Times Photography Article" thread where it was suggested that digital will be a liberation of photography as art... We have already established that photography can be Fine Art (decorative, literal, traditional craftsmanship), and has been for some time.

    tim atherton, Mark Sawyer, paulr and others have pointed out that photography has been accepted by the Contemporary Art trend. Now to speculate upon what liberation means.

    To date it seems the trend accepted as contemporary photographic art has been large format or at least exceedingly high resolution, high technical quality imaging (digital or not), for example Gursky's and others' works. It seems necessary at this time for the contemporary art paradigm to recognize the more difficult technical challenges in order to avoid blundering into accidental works that can arise from less intentional, less expert or considered images. That would be too nonacademic, embarrassing for Art.

    I speculate this will high-def trend continue for a while, then there will be exceedingly "low quality" images printed large, then some mixed media middle-ground to speak to "quality", then oscillations back and forth to include lensless photography, etc. as photography attempts, once again, to find a vocabulary or its own semiotics. As usual, in most cases, the works accepted to the more prestigious galleries will be from persons who have been working to make a name in contemporary art, persons who will be actively participating in the discourse, paying attention to the critics, curators, historians, and probably persons who have already evinced classic expertise in formats from miniature to ULF so that the transcendence of the work is clear, academically certified to be intentional.

    It will be an exciting time. Perhaps "Fine Art" photography will be cast in stone, or at least rocks and roots so that Ansel Adams' work is finally put properly into the realm of photodocumentary (evincing the finest technique for the subject-genre), and other photodocumentarians' work will find a comfortable home (imagine Capa's landing images - an extreme example of necessary technique to the image, event). And a lot of what is considered photographic art today will find its categories, some discarded very quickly, all for better or worse.

    So eventually there will be the (possibly intimidating) critical culture in which photography of all kinds will be under consideration. No medium will enjoy exclusivity due to it's nature, as LF has to some extent for a long time. Digital and LF and everything inbetween will enjoy parity.

  2. #2

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    Liberation - Photography as Contemporary Art

    Hear, hear.
    Wilhelm (Sarasota)

  3. #3

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    Liberation - Photography as Contemporary Art

    The word "Liberty" if taken as a synonym for "Freedom" would make me think that the art form would now be able to overcome some defect preventing it's ultimate goal or destiny. To apply this term to photography makes my head hurt.

    What is the ultimate goal or destiny of photography? It couldn't have anything to do with the photographer/artist since the photographer/artist determins not only what the picture is of, but what the picture never will be. A built in defect. The human who wields the camera, canvas or chisel is out of the picture (so to speak) For a picture to be "liberated" it would be able to determin it's own....it's own....what? ...It's own "look?" It's own ultimate destiny as well. Imagine if "The David" traips into your garden one fine day because thats where the statue determined that that is where it belonged?

    Hey, I can stutter in cyber space!

    Pictures (or art) that makes it's self. Sounds like "The Night Gallery" reruns or something from Heinlein.

    Does the NY Times pay it's writers by the word?

    Cheers!
    "I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority"---EB White

  4. #4
    Moderator Ralph Barker's Avatar
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    Liberation - Photography as Contemporary Art

    Parity? That's a nice thought, but somehow I doubt that it will come to pass. That would require the existing "Art Infrastructure" (composed of art teachers, critics and historians - let's call it AI, just to be sarcastic) to crumble. Those who control the art dictionary control what things are within "official" circles, and thus who steps inside that circle. Those folks have a vested interest in keeping things as they are, notwithstanding the occasional poke from a journalist outside their circle.

    For example, common folk (those outside the AI circle) understand immediately what is meant by "fine art photography", while the AI folks consider the phrase to be a lie, or at best an oxymoron. Even if there is a revolution, and the AI demigods are overthrown, existing definitions will only be replaced by a new set devised by a new set of demigods. That's human nature, and the definitional "rules" have their equivalents in virtually every industry.

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    Liberation - Photography as Contemporary Art

    The Jeff Wall / Gursky style is a natural response to the demand for Gallery Art: art which looks good in galleries and museums. Intimacy is hard to do well in 2000 sq.ft. of white-painted machine hall. Gwen John or Vermeer whould look just as out of place as 4x5 contact prints.

    To me, the current popularity of photography in the hard core art world is a symptom of a repressed yearning for figurative and representational art. Photography has finally settled down into the niche the impressionists condescended to allow it. I am not sure this should be a cause for self-congratulation.

    Digital offers new forms of distribution as well as expression. The $100 artbooks of yesteryear are the downloadable PDFs or $20 print-on-demand books of today. I think that is going to be more significant than the ability to fine tune colour balance or move pyramids. This is where intimacy has a chance, and an art that rewards contemplation may thrive.

  6. #6
    Kirk Gittings's Avatar
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    Liberation - Photography as Contemporary Art

    "To date it seems the trend accepted as contemporary photographic art has been large format or at least exceedingly high resolution, high technical quality imaging (digital or not), for example Gursky's and others' works."

    If you mean what is hot at the moment, this may be true but in my lifetime this is completely wrong. Go thru any survey book of contemporary photography and it is overwhelmingly smaller formats.
    Thanks,
    Kirk

    at age 73:
    "The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
    But I have promises to keep,
    And miles to go before I sleep,
    And miles to go before I sleep"

  7. #7
    tim atherton's Avatar
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    Liberation - Photography as Contemporary Art

    "To date it seems the trend accepted as contemporary photographic art has been large format or at least exceedingly high resolution, high technical quality imaging (digital or not), for example Gursky's and others' works."

    If you mean what is hot at the moment, this may be true but in my lifetime this is completely wrong. Go thru any survey book of contemporary photography and it is overwhelmingly smaller formats.


    precisely - I think this is a mistaken premise.

    While there is lots that is large format (film as opposed to printing) such as the Struthskys or Wall or Sugimoto etc (and for those lugging a huge camera around perhaps a little heartening to see), the is much - probably more - which is smaller formats. And much that is still shown in smaller formats as well as photographed using smaller cameras.

    I think fixing on size=art is a red herring. It's one strand (and a popular one right now) but it's by no means the only one at all

    The second part - the "speculation" has either already happened (e.g. Paul Graham was printing 35mm and MF at his local high street lab very large grainy and in colour 20-25 years ago for the art galleries and is now - along with others, well established in the major collections etc) or is happening right now. It's not really speculation it's more like where things have been headed for a good while now.

    And digital is probably seen much more of a contemporary photographic art medium than is LF anyway (or is that hat you were saying...?) :-)
    You'd be amazed how small the demand is for pictures of trees... - Fred Astaire to Audrey Hepburn

    www.photo-muse.blogspot.com blog

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    Liberation - Photography as Contemporary Art

    john kasaian The word "Liberty" if taken as a synonym for "Freedom" [...]

    To clarify, I used the term Liberation which I take to meaning to achieve parity, equal consideration. Freedom is something else.


    [...] What is the ultimate goal or destiny of photography? It couldn't have anything to do with the photographer/artist since the photographer/artist determins not only what the picture is of, but what the picture never will be. [...]


    That's a beautiful statement. Is it facetious or profound? Both? It would seem that the photographer's choice of what not to include is perfectly coupled with what he does include, therefore as important.

  9. #9

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    Liberation - Photography as Contemporary Art

    I am paying for the fact that I am not a good writer. Kirk Gittings and tim pointed to my use of the phrase "to date", when perhaps I should have written "Today" closely qualified with "contempoary photographic art" and qualified it further.

    True, the past includes a great range of work of smaller size and it also predates digital. (Going back far enough it was all LF but for technical reasons.)

    I was addressing critical Art, not a loosely defined and emerging Art that has flourished (or floundered) to today. I know, tomorrow today will be yesterday.

    Crap. I can't write or make pictures. Not a good way to start the week.

  10. #10
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
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    Liberation - Photography as Contemporary Art

    The intereesting question is "what can digital technology can liberate us from?"

    Photography itself liberated artists from the demands of realism. Photography was a big revolution in this sense and in a lot of others. I suspect digital technology is a smaller revolution.

    Most of the changes it brings are ones of degree. It makes a lot things easier and more accessible, but they are things that people were already able to do. These changes parallel the invention of the dry plate, the brownie, the leica ... all things that brought the medium into more people's hands.

    The one major change i see in digital technology is that the image now exists separately from any physical medium. It manifests itself on a computer screen, on a cell phone screen, on office paper, on mural paper, or all at once--but in essence it has an invisible form that can be infinitely duplicated and instantly transmited. This strikes me as fundamentally different from a traditional negative or chrome.

    With this in mind, you could say that digital media has liberated photography from the physical world. Some artists are probably taking advantage of this already.

    I'm not ... I work with some digital technology, but eveything I've been doing with it is quite traditional. I'm just using whatever tools seem best for the job at the moment. Some day I might wake up and really see the potential ... a convergence of something i've been wanting to say with a new possibility for how to say it. Until then I'll remain an ordinary artist with a scanner on his desk.

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