Advert in teh UK Guardian

[drmike]

Well I couldn't read all that - mine is a simply typo made almost all the time (hah had to correct that one even though I was concentrating!)

[GrahamBy]

To point is to get it noticed.

Exactly. It will probably be a roaring success.

In fact I have a vague memory of a "clumsy collage" look being trendy once, long ago, before PS.

Or think South Park.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

I do not know the timing of the campaign, or the stages (if any) it was introduced, but the following thought occurred to me:

Given that, presented as a series, it clearly (for most of us) indicates a deliberate attempt, I wouldn't start with the simultaneous launching of all the photos, but just with the first one. Then wait for the Internet's sharp eyes to virally spread it as a Photoshop fail. Guerrilla marketing at its best. Nothing works like million clicks on the fake "fail." Then you hit them with the rest of the campaign.

[Telecaster]

IMO the ad is clearly using a style on purpose. (I also thought Mike was using teh ironically 'til I started reading.) I don't see it as sloppy at all…it's just a particular effect employed to a particular end. The point is to catch your eye and maybe grab your attention. Marketing.

-Dave-

[RobSuch]

I'd say it's meant to look like a clipping, cut out with scissors and pasted on a page.

[Robert Roaldi]

Celine seems to be a fashion house clothing, handbags, etc. The odds of this being a mistake are very long, I'd guess.

A bunch of photo geeks, whose daily concerns are whether a new 60 mp digicam has enough dynamic range for a photo they may never take, is not the target market of the ad. The fact that we don't get it may be exactly what they were hoping. The obvious scissors cut-and-paste look must be to attract someone's attention if that isn't stating the obvious since it's an ad, maybe using irony to do so. It would be interesting to hear what the designers' concept was.

It's interesting to me that the "cut" part, the model with handbag, probably had each of its pixels photoshopped to within an inch of their lives by experts, but was then crudely "pasted" onto a background in the most amateurish way. Fashion photography has never really been documentary, someone is trying to create some new myth here, maybe.

[Pete_G]

Am I the only one to like this and find it funny? Her expression and pose, the ridiculous lump of stone, the way they've left white areas inside her earrings and arm. It's anti- Vogue for the Instagram crowd.

[jeremyrh]

Celine seems to be a fashion house clothing, handbags, etc. The odds of this being a mistake are very long, I'd guess.

A bunch of photo geeks, whose daily concerns are whether a new 60 mp digicam has enough dynamic range for a photo they may never take, is not the target market of the ad.

+1

In fact, +100.

[muntanela]

I think that it's intended to be seen like a collage (first level reading), or like a photoshopped image that  imitates a collage (second level reading). I would like it very much if it were a real photograph of a real collage that imitates a photoshopped image that imitates a real collage.

[Rob C]

Coldly, dispassionately, it's plain ugly, and nothing more.

The rest, as witnessed here on the forum, is just snappers rationalising and having fun. So at least it works on that level.

Rob C

[Peter McLennan]

Come on guys, it screams "deliberate." And it is brilliant as a marketing idea.

And it got us all to look carefully at the image and discuss it at length.  Mission accomplished.

Reminds me of that ugly trend in fashion photography lighting from a few years ago where they blasted the models from directly beside the lens.  Yukh.

[Rob C]

And it got us all to look carefully at the image and discuss it at length.  Mission accomplished.

Reminds me of that ugly trend in fashion photography lighting from a few years ago where they blasted the models from directly beside the lens.  Yukh.

Not really: nobody seems to be buying anything. On that criterion - abject failure.

Rob C

[GrahamBy]

I would like it very much if it were a real photograph of a real collage that imitates a photoshopped image that imitates a real collage.

 

A local gallery has an exhibition of colour street photos from Glasgow which I can only interpret as an ironic comment on the banality of thoughtless photography. It didn't mention that in the catalogue, but I'm that was an intended ironic oversight.

[Rob C]

A local gallery has an exhibition of colour street photos from Glasgow which I can only interpret as an ironic comment on the banality of thoughtless photography. It didn't mention that in the catalogue, but I'm that was an intended ironic oversight.

Graham, would you be kind enough to fill me in as to who shot them? A visual link would be very interesting! I spent many years there.

Ta -

Rob

[GrahamBy]

Géraldine Lay. The expo is profiled here, although the couple of images they show are not really representative :

http://contemporaneitesdelart.fr/exposition-north-end-geraldine-lay-a-galerie-reverbere-lyon/

This is a bit more like it:

http://www.franceinter.fr/sites/default/files/imagecache/scald_image_max_size/2016/01/20/1224585/images/geralmdine-lay.jpg

These are more what I was thinking of, but it looks like they taken in various English cities :

http://www.telerama.fr/scenes/north-end,138636.php

[drmike]

A local gallery has an exhibition of colour street photos from Glasgow which I can only interpret as an ironic comment on the banality of thoughtless photography. It didn't mention that in the catalogue, but I'm that was an intended ironic oversight.

If I understand your follow up comment correctly the last link is an example of what you refer to above?

I'm not sure what your point is. They are a mixed bag of photographs, some work for me and some do not but it seems to me the photographer is always striving to create something from what is before her. Some seem clearly well composed while others to me seem to lack any merit such as the young man in front of a church with his mobile (if I recall it correctly). But as a body of work I'd say you can't just dismiss it as thoughtless photography.

However, I fully accept I have probably misunderstood your comment!

Mike

[GrahamBy]

My memory of the exhibition was that there was a lot of the type you describe as lacking merit: the links are rather the "best of". So I may have a rather jaundiced view after banging my head on the low rafters of the gallery mezzanine and seeing a lot of very ordinary photos asking 1200€ each. "Thoughtless" may be the wrong adjective, but I failed to see the sense of striving you mention. Purely subjective opinions of course.

[drmike]

That's it though - it's all subjective really. I think the lady you linked to is striving but not always winning. The shot of the mattress suggests she thinks about composition and the rather muddled shot of street lamp and wall, again I'd say she was striving there. I'd go to a local exhibition by her.

[Rob C]

"Géraldine Lay a par ailleurs l'audace de se confronter à la photographie de rue, catégorie reine de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle. Peu de professionnels osent encore s'y frotter. Que peut-on raconter après Robert Frank, William Klein, Garry Winogrand, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Daido Moriyama... ? Géraldine Lay trouve son chemin. Elle raconte notre monde contemporain à travers la solitude des gens. Lorsque le masque tombe, ils se découvrent déboussolés par les violentes mutations économiques et sociales. Ça, ce n'est pas du cinéma."



And that's the problem: there ain't nuttin' photographically to add, today, that ain't usually already been said ad nauseam.

Throwing in famous names doesn't change the actual work one iota - simply makes it seem absurd to anyone familiar with the work of the old guys.

The mention of Crewdson and Hopper in another write-up is simply more of the same hype.

It's really just the 'noods' dilemma all over again.  How surprising (or is it?) that grants get awarded to go shoot this stuff.

Rob

[drmike]

Are you saying there's nothing new under the sun? That's true everything has been done before but not the way each of us does it - by and large. I saw the nudes discussion and I don't agree with what I think you and others were saying. Sure 'artistic' nudes in dereliction and wilderness have been done ad nauseam until suddenly you see a great one. Nudes (for example not that I'm fixated in any way, not me) in the studio - hell they've been done to death until you see Michael's levitating models which personally I find wonderfully well executed and composed etc.

I agree naming names is silly and pointless, you do what you do and if pressed indicate the shoulders you try to stand on. But that's surely no reason not to do it. Surest way not to succeed is to not try.