Hi Russ,
I don't have access to the original, so not sure what to make of the essay you have written.
However, I don't hold with the concept of technical excellence being key, either in 'art' photography or painting: nobody could have accused Vincent van G of being the world's greatest technician, yet his works assume a power based far more deeply in the emotional pull that comes from knowing a little bit about his life and career. Likewise with HC-B: not the greatest photographic technician in the world, either, but a master of instinct and emotional know-how. How much better (or worse) his work might have become had he done his own processing, is another matter that sometimes occupies my mind. It could either have bogged him down into proper metering and cost him spontaneity, or allowed him to shoot in exactly the same way but make more 'personal' prints. Breathing heavily behind a printer is not a way of endearing oneself to a printer; you have to be a printer to know what makes the hackles rise.
"complexity and difficulty are what define a fine art photograph." This seems a bit contrary: I'd have opted for the view that it, attraction, has nothing whatsoever to do with either difficulty or complexity, but is a spontaneous reaction to something we suddenly come across as we turn a page or look at a magazine cover, though the latter is probably no longer a good example because they (mag covers) have long become anything but clean works of graphic art, but mere catalogues, external contents pages ruining the best efforts of the cover photographer; a desperate attempt to hook the casual passer-by with something that might appeal... which shows the difference between such a buyer and a regular subscriber who needs no such scribbled hooks.
I also take a somewhat skeptical view of the assumption of understanding a photograph. This makes perfect sense in such things as industrial photography: I spent a few years printing, among other things, colour shots of damaged flame tubes, where colour fidelity was key to the understanding of problems by the technicians/engineers needing those prints. Remove industry and science from photography, and there is absolutely no need for 'understanding'; what's to understand about the gent leaping over a puddle behind a railway station? Nothing: it's just a good photograph that wouldn't mean a thing as a painting. Why? because a painter can do anything his skill and imagination allow, whereas a snapper has to be able to catch something on the hop. Different abilities; different options.
Cellphones killing photographic art? Maybe photograhic 'art' is just moving its violin across the room to stop in front of another table and engage with a different diner... Reminds me of a BBC interview with David Bailey where, on being asked what he thought of them (cellphones) and everybody being a photographer today, he said it was great, because it made him look better because he could do what the others could not.
However, none of the above is to deny the pernicious effect that the Internet age is having on the world of print. I hate the idea of reading books on a screen, and even worse the chore of trying to thumb the pages of a virtual magazine. How much has been lost! A magazine had a smell, offered a really tactile experience and held an excitement all its own. Picking one up from beneath the letterbox in the morning was a thrill all of its own - as if a wanted friend had just come round to say hello! Maybe web-based magazines offer thrills for the very young with no paper experience if only because they have nothing with which to compare. Maybe the act of changing real, physical money for the item had something to do with appreciating it.
Rob
