Aperture Magazine just set me an e-mail

[Struan Gray]

You simply *must* look at the video.

Been there. Done that. Can't see what all the fuss (here) is about.

Crosher is doing things that I find interesting. Mining archives for insights which were included unintentionally, or which only emerge when the archive is seen as a whole. Looking at how images condition behaviour, and at how we interact psychologically with images of all types and formats. The way that photographs present only part of the whole, and how recovery of what's missing becomes harder and harder as the physical archive deteriorates and the chance of interviewing the participants fades along with it.

The talk was typically insular, and included a certain amount of jargon - but then, it's a talk at the Aperture Foundation. Were I ever to give a talk there, I would assume people were mostly interested in the photographic aspects of my work. I would also assume a basic familiarity with the language in which these kinds of issues are usually discussed.

I do detect an odd sort of cultural cringe. I'm not sure if the motivation is ring-fencing a secure little territory, or a continuation of photography's traditional inferiority complex; but the way both participants insisted 'it's not about the content' seemed like protesting too much. Of course it's about the content. Michelle Dubois' life is much more interesting, titivating even, than most, and the narrative which lurks in the background is calculated to attract interest, even if only prurient.

Perhaps I'm only confirming my own biases, but there is a point where raising issues isn't enough: you need to address them. This project isn't like the Hilbert Problems in mathematics. There is no great merit in simply pointing out that there are contradictions expressed in women's lives in the era of mainstream feminism. It's an issue that's been identified time and time again.

I am not one to insist that art be as self-contained and complete as a well-crafted and fully-researched essay. However, if you're going to insist that the conceptual is important in your work, and draw authority and prestige from the respect accorded to good examples of academic archive mining and found object anthropology, then you open yourself up to judgment using the tools traditionally used in the academy to decide whether your ideas are any good or not.

I live and work in a world where ideas are taken seriously, and not just consumed, but assessed for worth. That makes me a sort of über-snob: snobbish about work that most people here already seem to find snobbish. So be it. In this case I feel like a supervisor with a student who has done a basic run through the archive, and a bit of background reading, but no real work. It's a good start, and there are some promising ideas, but it's not enough to get my respect.

[Brian Ellis]

I'm curious.. Can you list for me all the other techniques that you personally feel once done would then have no (or little) artistic merit if done subsequently?

All? Of course not. Two that come immediately to mind - Sherrie Levine's appropriation series, Zoe Crusher's material disappearance series.

[Daniel Grenier]

Years ago, Ansel Adams said of Aperture "It's a sorry mess". That is quite a lot to say for someone who had helped found the magazine!

I think he'd be forced to come to the same conclusion nowadays.

[Frank Petronio]

Ansel Adams, Minor White, Harry Callahan were responsible for the creation of modern American academic fine art photography programs and this is the sorry result. Poor guys just needed jobs with benefits and instead they got this bullshit arts culture. I mean it's great that Ansel sold a bunch of expensive prints before he died and all, but now we're saddled with the inadvertent consequences.

The schools are cranking out literally tens of thousands of photography graduates and only a handful are worth even considering as photographers. Yet people are continually duped into spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and going into life-long debt to get an MFA degree that often inhibits their artistic growth. Walk through an RIT or Arts Center or RISD faculty show and you'll cringe with embarrassment at how lame (and pretentious) much of the work is.

If schools weren't sacred cows in our society, we'd see them as they truly are: scams run by extortionists and flim-flam womyn.

Aperture is just one small part of this corrupt culture. It's a way that a professor can claim to be published, it's more akin to porn since the goal is mainly masturbation. When I see it on a magazine rack I turn that stinking rag upside down and backwards!

[Richard Mahoney]

Ansel Adams, Minor White, Harry Callahan were responsible for the creation of modern American academic fine art photography programs and this is the sorry result. Poor guys just needed jobs with benefits and instead they got this bullshit arts culture. ...

Aperture is just one small part of this corrupt culture. It's a way that a professor can claim to be published, it's more akin to porn since the goal is mainly masturbation. When I see it on a magazine rack I turn that stinking rag upside down and backwards!

As an admittedly meagre counterbalance -- really Frank -- one could perhaps pick up a copy of the following (I promise it's a good read):

Personal Name: Cravens, Richard H.
Main Title: Photography past forward : Aperture at 50, with a history / by R.H. Cravens and excerpts from aperture issues, 1952-2002.
Published/Created: New York : Aperture Foundation, Inc, 2002.


Best, Richard

[John NYC]

All? Of course not. Two that come immediately to mind - Sherrie Levine's appropriation series, Zoe Crusher's material disappearance series.

How about "New Topographics"? Or Uta Barth's out of focus work? Or Friedlander's continuing themes? Or the still life work of Laura Letinsky?

[paulr]

Wow ... I'm late to this party but glad I found it. Struan is in 2nd place only alphabetically and has said many things I would have tried to (and many that wouldn't have occurred to me), so thanks friend for doing the heavy lifting.

Jumping into this, I'll start by saying I'm reluctant to judge an unfamiliar artist by one piece of work (or especially by an interview or statement ... if she were expert at putting her ideas into words, she'd either be a rare bird among artists, or ... a writer). And I'm very reluctant to judge a whole movement / genre / period based on one or a few terrible examples.

That said, I agree that this is a pretty terrible example. I share Struan's disdain for work that's confirmative rather than exploratory. And even if this had been an unusual example of exploratory art in the sea of conceptualism, I can't see that it's exploring anything remotely interesting. It's a yawn even among the one-liners.

Do keep in mind that she doesn't bill herself as a photographer. She's of the breed of artists who happen to use photography, which rose to prevalence in the 1980s and 90s. Many of them came from a background in sculpture or painting or installation, and appreciated photography for everything it doesn't have in common with older media—which puts them squarely at odds with the traditional, craft-based photographers (like those odd fellows who have darkrooms and walk around with view cameras ...)

My personal biases don't make parsing this any easier. I'm increasingly bored with what I see in contemporary photography, to the point that it's an effort to get off the couch, get on the subway, and go to one of the bajillion galleries and museums right here in NYC.

But I'm not advocating a retreat to modernism. I'm also getting bored with the old stuff. Including my own!

I want to be challenged by art; I want to be pushed into seeing things in a way I haven't before. I want to feel compelled to wrestle with it, and I want big payoffs—belly laughs, epiphanies, new ideas. Sad to say, it's been a long time. I'm not having that experience in Chelsea, or on Zoe's site, or in my own dusty flat files.

I have been finding it in a whole generation of young poets, who are doing things with language that (at its best) has been rearranging my world. It's led me to a long (months!) thumb-sucking session, and a new project where I want to combine images with text. I'm hoping to do this in a way that inspires little nausea or outrage, but I'll have to dive in in order to find out. At any rate, I'm willing to risk failing miserably if it will buy me a chance at feeling that old excitement again.

[Darin Boville]

Do keep in mind that she doesn't bill herself as a photographer. She's of the breed of artists who happen to use photography, which rose to prevalence in the 1980s and 90s. Many of them came from a background in sculpture or painting or installation, and appreciated photography for everything it doesn't have in common with older media—which puts them squarely at odds with the traditional, craft-based photographers (like those odd fellows who have darkrooms and walk around with view cameras ...)

Just to push back a bit here, however she bills herself she is getting special billing by Aperture whose editorial staff presumably sees her as enough of a photographer to feature her and to offer her photos for sale in a limited edition.

Surely the well of non-traditional, non-crafts-based photographers has not run so dry?

--Darin

[paulr]

Just to push back a bit here, however she bills herself she is getting special billing by Aperture whose editorial staff presumably sees her as enough of a photographer to feature her and to offer her photos for sale in a limited edition.

Surely the well of non-traditional, non-crafts-based photographers has not run so dry?

--Darin

Sure, but my impression (based on glancing at aperture once or twice a year for the last decade ... ) is that it cross over pretty far into this world, where the artist has come to photography but has roots and possibly stronger allegiances elsewhere.

I'm not advocating for any particular approach in this case. Just making the possibly obvious observation that she's from a different world from most of us here.

[Oren Grad]

But neither do I think I can claim to have a reflective, contemplative approach to the landscape if my responses to it can be proven wrongheaded by a five minute browse of Google Scholar.

What attributes would qualify a response to a landscape as being "wrongheaded"?