Originally Posted by Kirk Gittings
And the dog is certainly the key. Without it the pict is just another of the many "order out of chaos" urban shots.
--Darin
And the dog is certainly the key. Without it the pict is just another of the many "order out of chaos" urban shots.
--Darin
I could be wrong, you're being kind of subtle here, but I think you perhaps are disagreeing with me. : - )
Szarkowski is by far my favorite author on photography subjects. I thought I had all his books and don't remember reading anything about Friedlander. I'll do some checking around and see what I can find.
Brian Ellis
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you do criticize them you'll be
a mile away and you'll have their shoes.
BULL!! The emperor is butt nekked! No bland photograph elevates anyone to cult hero without a load of salesmanship!
Anybody with a camera can make the above photographs! No talent required. Fact is, lots of people do make photographs like that! And they aren't "gods." They post their "masterpieces" all over the web, available 24/7 from any image sharing site. There is no reason for any photograph to cost more than the paper it's printed on when we are surrounded by such "glory."
John Szarkowski championed boring photographers. Hilton Kramer wrote in The Times, “Mr. Szarkowski throws all caution to the winds and speaks of Mr. Eggleston’s pictures as ‘perfect.’ Perfect? Perfectly banal, perhaps. Perfectly boring, certainly.” Kramer was right. (Eggleston did not pioneer color photography, the Lumière brothers did that with the Autochrome.)
Paul, I think your friend the collector is right, it was all done previously in the 19th century.
It's true. He's rubbish. He can't even take a simple pic of a kid without getting a tree growing out of her head.
For me, liking Friedlander is a pure gut reaction. It has nothing to do with his reputation, which I was unaware of when I first found the photograph I originally linked to, and it was mostly based upon his later work (the 'mess') not the jazz portraits and earlier, more admittedly mundane photos which established his reputation.
I came across Friedlander via Siskind, and the various Chicago/Rhode Island photographers who studied with Siskind and Callahan, particularly Ray Metzker. I was (am) interested in how to make sense of real world complexity in a photograph, and Metzker and R.E. Meatyard were among the very few who had seemed to do so successfully on a regular basis. Friedlander was a natural step from there.
Before I found *any* photographers working in this vein, I already had in my mental tool chest a love of abstract art, and, through my work as a physicist, with the beauty and formal mathematical qualities of aperiodic patterns and tilings. The idea of stochastic symmetry (symmetry that is true in its average properties, but not exact) was front and centre in my personal aesthetic sense.
Friedlander immediately struck me as having an innate, instinctive mastery of the sorts of spatial relationships and patterns that had become so important to me. He's not by any means alone in this as an artist (Briget Riley's colour work, or the anonymous ceramacists who formalised the rules for Girih tile patterns, are but two examples), but he's one of the few photographers who has internalised this sort of awareness, and who incorporates it into his work without making a great song and conceptual dance about it. There are plenty of others who lard their artists statements with half-digested guff about Fibonnacci sequences or fractal symmetry, but Friedlander just does it, and does it beautifully, and with just the refreshingly right amount of dry wit.
So for me at least, liking Friedlander was automatic. Biased by my tastes and interests, yes, but not led by fashion or any kind of intellectual inferiority complex. It is also worth stating that I do not see a mess in Friedlander's work. I see order, just not the order of Pythagorean symmetry or vanishing point perspective. There are other sorts of symmetry, with a mathematical respectability stretching back a century, and an artistic pedigree a millenium in age. You can respond to them - or miss them - without having to know their names.
And the dog is certainly the key. Without it the pict is just another of the many "order out of chaos" urban shots.
--Darin
"I love my Verito lens, but I always have to sharpen everything in Photoshop..."
Mark...I like it!
--Darin
On the issue of trying to take some meaning -- let alone an image -- from all the mess around us I find Herzog helpful (paying homage, I know, acknowledging inferiority, I know):
``It is simply a fact—there are only a few images left.
``When I look out here I see everything is cluttered up. There are hardly any images to be found. One has to dig deep down like an archaeologist; one has to search through this violated landscape to find something.
``Naturally, there is risk involved, one that I wouldn't avoid. I see only a few people who take risks in order to change this misery—the misery of having no images left, none that are adequate. We desperately need images, those images that are relevant and adequate to our level of civilization—ones that correspond to those deep inside ourselves.''
Werner Herzog (Tokyo-Ga, Wim Wenders, director, 1985)
Kind regards,
Richard
Yeah, it just needed a little "cleaning up"!
"I love my Verito lens, but I always have to sharpen everything in Photoshop..."
Your bland is some people's subtle.
And I don't see how "salesmanship" can keep an artist in the public and academic eye for four decades. Who's that good a salesman? And who are they working for ... the Friedlander Cartel?
There are educated people who think that, but guess who they like: Cindy Sherman and other conceptual photographers in her mold.John Szarkowski championed boring photographers.
If Szarkowski championed boring photographers, that would mean the photographic canon, circa 1826 to 1980. So if you're also bored by what came after, then I don't know. Maybe you prefer painting?
The problem with the cult of modernism for the sake of moderism is that it always
has to present something new. Otherwise neither you nor the museum earns its
merit badge. People who successfuly cater to this outlet often prove to be capable
of taking huge risks. In my immediate neigborhood it's Misrach. Do you know how
many complete bellyflops he landed before hitting the right chord? Friedlander was another one of these types; and the kinds of visual experiments he was doing, at least in the 70's, were pretty common here on the West Coast, but apparently came
across as new in certain influential circles. I find many of his images half-baked, or shoot-from-the-hip, even with 8X10,rather than profound, but sometimes interesting
nonetheless. He tried to take things maybe a step further than Harry Callahan, but compositionally left a much bigger mess in his wake. I'm particularly disappointed
in his failure to recognize the significance of the front/back pull of selective focus,
which is something even the then despised Photo-Sessesionists became quite skilled
at. And discussing what he was doing with a dog in the picture? There's no guarantee
he even saw it, or that it meant anything to him. Chopping it straight in half certainly isn't particulary effective.
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