Foto3 contest and traditional/conceptual divide

[gr82bart]

So where does a guy like me and perhaps a significant number of Steve Simmons readership go where there is a bias for traditional photographic art forms?

Luminous Landscapes and your local Camera Clubs?

Regards, Art.

[jnantz]

so what exactly is a "traditional photographic art form" ?
created with camera and film?
or more specific than that --- "landscape photography" ?

whose tradition you are talking about ?

john

[George Kara]

I must confess - this is the oddest thread I've ever muddled through on this forum.

Perhaps we should contact the Bush administration and request a new mandate for all the baby crying around here.

How about "No photographer left behind". Everybody wins a prize for trying.

If I were the people working this event, I would just quit helping in the future.

Oh and the suggestion that to have a popular vote to determine the winner? This would be a disaster and pander to the lowest common denominator of the voters - We already now what would win - Tits and Ass.

[Kirk Gittings]

George,
T&A would make the same point without offending some people.

[mrladewig]

Let me rephrase my last request. Can anyone out there list a serious competition where the prize was NOT awarded to a conceptual photographer.

Here is one:

http://www.icpawards.com/

I know one of the winners from last years contest.

[steve simmons]

Let me see if I understand this argument. If you think about your work, if you have a concept behind what you do it is not traditional and a sellout?! However, if you don't think about what you do, have no concept behind what you, do then it is traditional and acceptable?!

I am willing to bet that Adams, all the Westons, Cunningham, Lange, Callahan, Siskind, etc., etc. all thought about what they were doing. Does this mean we should think less of their work, that they sold out traditional photography, that any museum or gallery that shows their work should be verbally abused, etc., etc. Does this mean that a judge, curator, etc. who selected their work to be hung, published, etc. is a fraud?!

This is a totally artificial argument and would not hold any value or integrity in most places where photographic history is taught or discussed, it would not be taken as a serious argument in just about anyplace I can think of. Camera club people think about what they do, commercial photographers think about what they do, photo journalists think about what they do, landscape photographers think about what they do, alt process printers think about what they do, etc., etc.

The term 'traditional' photography had been used to describe tradtional methods. Even that is somewhat of an artificial designation or description. If an entry of a stunning and well done black and white landscape is printed digitally does that make it not traditional and therefore worthy of being trashed, of being automatically rejected, thrown in the waste basket, etc?

Educate me here.

steve simmons

[mrladewig]

Most of the entries never stand a chance because it is all about conceptual art. Of course, that little detail is never shared with the public.

Stephen,

You need to look at the work of the jurors or other shows they've juried. They are individuals and have particular tastes. If your work does not appear to align with their tastes, perhaps this is not the contest to enter. Then again, if you don't try, you'll never know.

Google will often return some results for previous competitions juried by the juror(s) or at least a gallery they are involved with. Pretty much every show or art fair I've seen uses the same format. Announce the show, say who the jury will be, publish the call for entries with the rules, run the jurying segment, choose winners, maybe do something, maybe return the images (if not electronic), maybe keep the rights to all images submitted and use them as they wish.

[jetcode]

I would think conceptual photography would be centered along the lines of Jerry Uelsmann or some of the more esoteric forms of image manipulation and processes. I also think pictorialist photography was conceptual in it's time as it competed with the art world to become recognized as a legitimate form of image generation.

[Nick_3536]

Isn't the zone system conceptual by defination?

[Mark Sawyer]

"Conceptual Art" is art wherein the conception, execution, and presentation of the piece is concerned solely with the concept, abandoning all concerns for craft, aesthetics, and as much as possible, the art object itself.

DuChamp's "Fountain" (a found and displayed-as-is urinal) is usually considered the first important work of "Conceptual Art". Prints pulled from government files and put on display in very rough form is an example of photographic "Conceptual Art".

Having a concept as part of a piece doesn't make a piece "Conceptual". If value is placed on the craft or aesthetic value of the piece, it is not "Conceptual Art".

BTW, I was at Foto3 and saw maybe two dozen of the entries, including the reproduction of the winner. I didn't see anything even close to Conceptual Art. Wikipedia has a pretty good description of Conceptual Art, including a pretty long list of examples. If you read it, you'll quickly see what is being talked about in this thread is a far cry from "Conceptual Art".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_art

A few examples:

2005: Simon Starling wins the Turner Prize for Shedboatshed, a wooden shed which he had turned into a boat, floated down the Rhine and turned back into a shed again.

2001: Martin Creed wins the Turner Prize for The Lights Going On and Off, an empty room in which the lights go on and off.

1970: Douglas Huebler exhibits a series of photographs which were taken every two minutes whilst driving along a road for 24 minutes.

1961: Robert Rauschenberg sent a telegram to the Galerie Iris Clert which said: "This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so." as his contribution to an exhibition of portraits.

1960: The artist Stanley Brouwn declares that all the shoe shops in Amsterdam constitute an exhibition of his work.

1953 : Robert Rauschenberg exhibits Erased De Kooning Drawing, a drawing by Willem De Kooning which Rauschenberg erased.