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Author Topic: Do you have a "photographic style"?  (Read 87275 times)

AreBee

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Re: Do you have a "photographic style"?
« Reply #20 on: March 30, 2015, 06:24:47 am »

Russ,

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The idea of "a style" in photography, equivalent to a style in painting, is an absurdity on the face of it.

Please can you explain what you mean by the above?
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Tony Jay

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Re: Do you have a "photographic style"?
« Reply #21 on: March 30, 2015, 06:39:47 am »

...Please can you explain what you mean by the above?
I think what is mean't is that a truly individualistic style is possible when painting. It may so distinctive as to obviate the need for a signature.
A work may be copied stroke-for-stroke but a unique work will likely be picked as not of the original artist but a pretender.

I do not think that the comment is meant to say that a style is not possible in photography - just that it cannot be exactly the same as characterised in other art.
Style in photography is definitely an entity: choice of subject or theme, composition, and post processing (not an exhaustive list) all contribute to what could be termed style.
It is possible, however, for two individuals, having never met or be aware of one another, to have a virtually indistinguishable style with photography.

None of this means that style is not possible in photography or that one's style is not unique.

Tony Jay
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AreBee

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Re: Do you have a "photographic style"?
« Reply #22 on: March 30, 2015, 07:30:15 am »

Tony,

Thank you.

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It is possible, however, for two individuals, having never met or be aware of one another, to have a virtually indistinguishable style with photography.

...but not so with painting?
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RSL

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Re: Do you have a "photographic style"?
« Reply #23 on: March 30, 2015, 01:38:38 pm »

Russ,

Please can you explain what you mean by the above?

Hi Rob, I think Tony came closest. Look at Renoir's paintings. When you go into a museum and wander past the walls, can you spot a Renoir immediately? If you're familiar with Renior's style I think you can at least come close. There are others who've tried to duplicate Renoir's style, but they always fall short, and even when they fall short it's still a case of somebody trying to copy a Renoir style. I probably could spend the next half hour listing painters with a recognizable style.

Now, let's look at a photograph of a small African-American girl, all dressed up, fit to kill, in an obviously depressed neighborhood. Is that a Walker Evans, a Robert Frank, a Helen Levitt? No, turns out it's a Cartier-Bresson? I think I can spot a Cartier-Bresson right off the bat, not because Henri has a particular photographic "style," but because I think I'm familiar with his specific photographs. But every once in a while I spot something I can't identify as a Cartier-Bresson, because I've never seen it before, and there's nothing there that can tell me it was made by Henri, but, in the end it turns out to be by Henri.

Paintings by the world's greatest painters capture the essence of the painter's personality. That's a "style." Photographs don't do that.
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AreBee

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Re: Do you have a "photographic style"?
« Reply #24 on: March 30, 2015, 03:04:01 pm »

Russ,

Thank you for taking the time to respond so comprehensively.
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jjj

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Re: Do you have a "photographic style"?
« Reply #25 on: March 31, 2015, 11:47:04 pm »

Still not true though.
Many works by 'masters' may have done in fact by their studio and many forgers have successfully passed off fakes as genuine such as in this story in today's news
« Last Edit: April 01, 2015, 12:18:32 am by jjj »
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RSL

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Re: Do you have a "photographic style"?
« Reply #26 on: April 01, 2015, 08:05:33 am »

Thanks, Jeremy. You made my point. You can't do a "master's" work in a studio unless the master has a recognizable style, and you can't pass off a fake as genuine unless it has a recognizable style. Try doing that with a photograph. Do you think you can pass off a fake Cartier-Bresson on the basis of his "style?"
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NancyP

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Re: Do you have a "photographic style"?
« Reply #27 on: April 01, 2015, 05:34:50 pm »

One most certainly can have style in creatively composited photographs, eg, Jerry Uelsmann.
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RSL

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Re: Do you have a "photographic style"?
« Reply #28 on: April 02, 2015, 09:51:08 am »

Hi Nancy, You've got a point. I'm familiar with Jerry's stuff, and in fact I have a friend who worked with Jerry for a while. I think the problem lies with the definition of "style." That's a term that's almost as slippery as "art." As Nixon used to say, I'll say this about that:

By "style," I mean a way of producing art that uniquely reflects the personality of the artist. On another thread I mentioned Man Ray and "rayograms." On the same thread, Chauncey showed his latest translucency. If you accept constructions such as these as "styles," then you'd also have to call street photography and landscape photography "styles." I see what Man Ray and Chauncey do as photographic genres. John Constable had a style; Renoir had a style; van Gogh had a style. When you use your hand to draw or paint, there's something uniquely your own that comes through. When you use a camera, what comes through as unique is unique to the camera, not to the artist.

I realize one can push slippery definitions beyond reason, but anybody with eyes to see can spot the unique styles of people like van Gogh. Those with eyes to see would have a hard time identifying an Elliott Erwitt he's never seen before. Same thing with Jerry. Within Jerry's genre of compositing almost anybody with Photoshop on his computer could produce something with what you're calling Jerry's "style."
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Do you have a "photographic style"?
« Reply #29 on: April 02, 2015, 12:06:39 pm »

I find it interesting that although Jerry and his wife, Maggie Taylor, are both excellent photographic montage-builders, I've never seen an image from one of them that resembles the other's in the slightest.

Of course Maggie does all of hers in color using PhotoShop, while Jerry still does his in the wet darkroom with a bunch of enlargers.
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jjj

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Re: Do you have a "photographic style"?
« Reply #30 on: April 02, 2015, 04:51:56 pm »

Thanks, Jeremy. You made my point. You can't do a "master's" work in a studio unless the master has a recognizable style, and you can't pass off a fake as genuine unless it has a recognizable style. Try doing that with a photograph. Do you think you can pass off a fake Cartier-Bresson on the basis of his "style?"
Yes. Apart from the fact that his work is very recent and well documented, so next to impossible to find an undiscovered shot. Plus you would need to find a photographer that can shoot just like him and travel back in time to when he was shooting. Copying someone else's style is not that easy, if it was, anyone could shoot like a master.
BTW, people have said they seen my [uncredited] images on posters or whatever and guessed they were mine by their style.
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jjj

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Re: Do you have a "photographic style"?
« Reply #31 on: April 02, 2015, 04:59:52 pm »

By "style," I mean a way of producing art that uniquely reflects the personality of the artist. On another thread I mentioned Man Ray and "rayograms." On the same thread, Chauncey showed his latest translucency. If you accept constructions such as these as "styles," then you'd also have to call street photography and landscape photography "styles." I see what Man Ray and Chauncey do as photographic genres.
You can have a style within a genre. Martin Parr and Bruce Gilden both work in the same genre with similar techiques, but have quite different styles.


Quote
John Constable had a style; Renoir had a style; van Gogh had a style. When you use your hand to draw or paint, there's something uniquely your own that comes through. When you use a camera, what comes through as unique is unique to the camera, not to the artist.
That's the sort of thing said by someone who cannot create distinct works with a camera.

Quote
I realize one can push slippery definitions beyond reason, but anybody with eyes to see can spot the unique styles of people like van Gogh. Those with eyes to see would have a hard time identifying an Elliott Erwitt he's never seen before. Same thing with Jerry. Within Jerry's genre of compositing almost anybody with Photoshop on his computer could produce something with what you're calling Jerry's "style."
And people can also copy Van Gogh's style, doesn't make it any less his style. Funny how you do not see often composite work that looks like Jerry Uelsman's and if I do I tend to think, "oh that looks like Jerry's work".
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RSL

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Re: Do you have a "photographic style"?
« Reply #32 on: April 02, 2015, 07:38:32 pm »

I remain unrepentant, Jeremy. You can disagree, but if you're going to refute what I said, you'll need some evidence. I suspect most people are clear-headed enough to see, on the face of it, that what you're calling a photographic style is nothing of the sort.
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amolitor

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Re: Do you have a "photographic style"?
« Reply #33 on: April 02, 2015, 08:38:01 pm »

Not very many people DO try to copy the great painters, but when they do, they are often quite successful. A competent technician certainly CAN copy them. Students copy them with varying degrees of success, and forgers copy them (by definition) with great success. The thing is, there are few enough "well known" painters that there's room for distinctive styles.

Photography is so easy, there are so many photographers, and it is SO easy to copy someone else, that of course we have endless overlapping bodies of work that all blur together.

I do not think that it makes sense to think of "style" in the same way. My thinking is that the serious work in photography has to be portfolios. Any individual picture might be a copy of this or that, and look kind of like the other thing, and so on. But a complete portfolio can still have a distinctive look. Loads of people have done cinematic photos. Only Cindy Sherman would put together a set of 59 of the things, all with the same girl in them, all with the same general flavor (which flavor itself only becomes clear when you see multiples, really).
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RSL

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Re: Do you have a "photographic style"?
« Reply #34 on: April 03, 2015, 10:23:49 am »

Again, Thanks Andrew. We may not agree on some things, but we certainly agree on this thing. Yes, Cindy Sherman's collections might properly be called a "style." If there is such a thing in photography this probably is where it is.

I've given up on the argument because what I'm getting back has nothing much to do with the photographs or photographers involved but a great deal to do with the definition of "style." That's as much as dead end as is the definition of "art."
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Do you have a "photographic style"?
« Reply #35 on: April 03, 2015, 12:39:24 pm »

Russ, pardon me for not reading carefully the whole thread, so my question could have been already asked and answered, but here it is: "Isn't it enough to define a style if people can recognize the photographer just by looking at pictures?"

RSL

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Re: Do you have a "photographic style"?
« Reply #36 on: April 03, 2015, 03:51:25 pm »

Hi Slobodan. Yes and no. If you're talking about, say, Ulesmann's darkroom contortions I'd hesitate to call it a style. Instead I'd call it a genre. Outside of somebody making quickly recognizable distortions I don't see how anybody can look at a photography and say, for instance, "That's a Cartier-Bresson. I've never seen it before but I'm sure it's a Cartier-Bresson." I've been studying Henri's work since the middle 1950's and I can't do that. If the picture were of a dog doing something funny I'd suspect that it's by Elliott Erwitt, but it would only be a suspicion. Other people do funny dogs.

Renoir created a recognizable style. Other people can mimic Renoir's style, but it's still Renoir's style -- something his hand produced naturally. There's nothing similar in photography. But, as I said earlier, part of the problem is semantics. When you and I say "style" we may not be talking about the same thing, and I don't see anything in my dictionaries that really helps pin it down.
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elliot_n

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Re: Do you have a "photographic style"?
« Reply #37 on: April 03, 2015, 04:08:43 pm »

Presented with five prints, one each from Cartier-Bresson, Arbus, Friedlander, Gilden, and Winogrand, I'm fairly confident I could identify them all. If this is not evidence that photographers have an individual style, then what is it? 'Genre' won't work, as all five photographers are working in the same genre ('street', 'documentary' or some such).
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Do you have a "photographic style"?
« Reply #38 on: April 03, 2015, 04:23:51 pm »

... I don't see how anybody can look at a photography and say, for instance, "That's a Cartier-Bresson. I've never seen it before but I'm sure it's a Cartier-Bresson." I've been studying Henri's work since the middle 1950's and I can't do that...

It might simply mean that HCB did not have a style. Nothing wrong with that.

But there are others. For instance, when I see a close up portrait of a baby or kid crying, coupled with a distinctive post-processing, I can certainly recognize it as belonging to a certain photographer (who's name escapes me at the moment). Helmut Newton fashion images are rather recognizable too. Mapplethorpe's male nudes. Salgado's refugees.

I do agree with Andrew that a body of work makes a difference in recognizing one's style.

elliot_n

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Re: Do you have a "photographic style"?
« Reply #39 on: April 03, 2015, 04:35:18 pm »

I meant pictures I hadn't seen before, obviously.
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