That's interesting, and raises a few questions...
Couldn't this kind of "specialized documentary" be applied to eg Ansel Adams, Bradford Washburn or Ed Weston landscapes? I feel they document the mountains in the way not unlike someone like Plisson documents the sea?
And though, the latter did also start with a blank canvas and put a cabbage on a table or a pepper in a tin gutter?
Basically, what I'm asking to myself is - does that excludes art?
Coukld one say one the other hand say that it is not the same level of art?
Isn't art there to document things like feelings and emotions?
Niko
I think you have just written the same point of view as my own. As far as Adams is concerned, yes, he did exactly the same thing as PP but on the land and without the personal risk of being up in the air where only birds should venture. That he exercised a lot of skill and perseverance in getting a print to look just as he wished is not in dispute, however that mood might have changed over time, but it is not what makes or does not make something art (again, just for me); that’s skill.
People wax eloquent about the magnificent print talents that some ‘star’ art photographers display; I can tell you, they can’t hold a candle to some of the even more demanding skills that in-house printers used to display, day after day, where I began my career. We had to print, in both b/w and colour, photographs of damaged turbine blades, flame tubes etc. etc. where the correct rendition of colour and/or grey tonality was essential to the scientists using the photographs for investigative and/or research motives. There was simply no room for error. Compared with that precision, art photography prints are something to decorate the seaside fun-park. (You can bet the ranch that a lot of ultra hi-fi snaps are currently being made of engine parts at Rolls-Royce!)
Isn’t art there to document things like feelings and emotions, you asked or, rather, suggested.
Of course, and I think that’s where people shooters come into their own, and landscape takes the also-ran prize. With people shots, unless it’s stolen stuff, it is very much the putting onto paper of something that happened between minds. Which, of course, is why models are so vital: only the good can have the natural emotions and then express them physically, and the photographers have to have the connected ability of contributing to the intellectual game and also to illustrate the resulting conclusion from that meeting of minds. That sounds both very difficult, which it is not, and very simple, which it is, to those blessed with the talents.
I’ve tried landscape too - who hasn’t? – but any emotional wow! factor is there because it’s there, not because of anything I, as snapper, have brought to the meeting. It’s the existing glory that instructs the viewer, not the other way around, which is where art begins and ends: human creation. In such situations, landscape, the photographer can only be the editor of the landscape, and that’s hardly creative in the sense of taking that piece of clay and fashioning something with life. All he does is select, and that's pretty basic, within the scheme of things.
Photographing a pepper? Well, I have previously said that I believe the still-life shooter can also be a pretty damn good artist. He starts with just an idea and an empty table top, which is what it's all about.
Of course, one can take the word creative and twist it to mean most anything, as the gallery world proves time after time. But, at root, I think the fraud is always patently obvious.
Rob C