arguably the visual art of choice for the masses

[Isaac]

"In a new book, Photography Today, writer, artist and lecturer Mark Durden analyses more than 500 works by 150 artists from the past 50 years, exploring the impact of various genres, from pop art to documentary.

Here Durden offers his insight on ten important photographic works from the book."

[DF1]

Boring conceptual tripe. Most of this stuff harps on the same weary themes of alienation, self pity and political correctness that tend to get recycled over and over again by art school graduates clutching their MA degrees and fawned over ad nauseum by academics who need something to analyze to death so they can justify their tenure. Strip these works of the tired old "concepts" that spawned them and all you have left is crappy photography that no one but effete curators would want on their walls.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Amen, brother!

[DF1]

Waste of time.

[PeterAit]

Amen, brother!

Amen and a half! Seems to be a parallel with those who cannot enjoy a glass of wonderful wine without blathering on about nuances of tobacco, leather, and gorilla crotch.

[amolitor]

Firstly, there are some pretty good pictures in that lot. They're not Ansel Adams wannabes, nor oversaturated landscapes about nothing, to be sure. Which leads us to:

Secondly, it's art photography. Its job is to say something. Denigrating work for having the temerity to be about something is narrow minded, at best.

Thirdly, note the dates on the pictures. This isn't modern rehash of old ideas, in many cases it's the original hash or at any rate contemporary with it.

[DF1]

I'm not denigrating these photographs for saying something. I'm denigrating them because what they're saying is trite and if you take that away you're left with garbage.

[amolitor]

As noted, I disagree on several points.

[DF1]

Art is 100% about opinions 100% of the time.

[Iluvmycam]

Boring conceptual tripe. Most of this stuff harps on the same weary themes of alienation, self pity and political correctness that tend to get recycled over and over again by art school graduates clutching their MA degrees and fawned over ad nauseum by academics who need something to analyze to death so they can justify their tenure. Strip these works of the tired old "concepts" that spawned them and all you have left is crappy photography that no one but effete curators would want on their walls.

There are a couple of pix in the lot that are interesting to me. But most are boring to me. I liked the house burning shot more before I read the backstory on it and found out it was not what I thought it to be.

Here is the thing. This forum is not known for doing great work when it comes to interesting humanist photos. So be careful with being so harsh. If you got something better...send it in. If you can't do better, then they are better than you with their ‘boring’ work.

I get trashed a lot for my work on the forums from these 'cowards behind the keyboards' that can't shoot a great street shot to save their lives. I was recently amused at how they trashed this photo. (NSFW)

http://zonefocused.tumblr.com/image/87592272229

75% of the viewers polled think my photo is staged.

Answer: Photo was not staged or posed...he didn't even know i shot him

Although I just shot it last week, it is already placed in a museum. Many more museum placements for it as well.

A lot of the criticism that floats around seems to stem from jealousy. One anon guy on a forum told me ALL my work should be trashed and it was ALL very boring. Well, he couldn't produce a damn thing with his cam and was jealous. So all his ego let him do was to tear down others.

Isn't it funny that EVERY photo people have told me to trash ends up in museums?

If you want to be successful, this is the best advice when it comes to critics.

“Never give up, don’t listen to the haters. Don’t try to be an artist unless you can work and live in isolation, without any thanks. Bleak advice, but needed until you get to the much lauded place.  - Scape Martinez  

I look forward to you all sending in your 'intersting' street photos.

[Gulag]

There are those who can feel and who can't. That's all.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... Although I just shot it last week, it is already placed in a museum. Many more museum placements for it as well...

I heard there is a Museum of Sex in LV and some other cities. Is that it?

It took certain museum artifacts millions of years to end there. Some take hundreds of years, and for some artists, they are lucky if it happens in their life time. Your ultra compression of time into merely days is indeed making museum history. A suggestion: with today's wi-fi technology, your shots might end up in museums within seconds of being taken. Think about it. You are welcome!

[mezzoduomo]

Art is 100% about opinions 100% of the time.

Yes, it is.

And, I'm finding that there are lots of 'ideas', opinions,and concepts put forward about even so-called 'masters' that are simply piling on, and playing 'follow the leader'. Once someone achieves a certain amount of notoriety, there comes a tipping point after which everything and anything certain people produce is lauded and the explanations for why the praise is deserved are, of course, subjective....but also often seem completely contrived and seem to be not in good faith. Nan Goldin comes to (my subjective) mind...

[RSL]

The main problem with Durden's "insight," Isaac, is that it's just plain silly.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

The main problem with Durden's "insight," Isaac, is that it's just plain silly.

+10.
Most of his "insights" have little or nothing to do with the images he has selected to comment on.

[elliot_n]

+10.
Most of his "insights" have little or nothing to do with the images he has selected to comment on.

Ok. Let's take his first example, Thomas Struth's 'Audience 1 Florence, 2004'. What's wrong with his commentary?

[petermfiore]

Ok. Let's take his first example, Thomas Struth's 'Audience 1 Florence, 2004'. What's wrong with his commentary?


Nothing. He's spot on.

Peter

[amolitor]

The commentary is general on target, but it's a bit florid, and strikes me as trying too hard to make the picture seem important and weighty.

There's a basic problem here, in that most of these pictures are part of a larger body of work. Pulled out, they seem random, banal, trite. Within the larger body there is at least the chance that one might see what the artist is "up to" and the pictures make more sense. The commentator, having rudely extracted the picture from that context, feels the need to re-establish the context with a torrent of words.

These words are genuinely useful, he's simply telling us what the artist is up to. It's a shabby substitute for the missing pictures, though.

[elliot_n]

The commentator, having rudely extracted the picture from that context, feels the need to re-establish the context with a torrent of words.

Who's being florid now?

I'm looking forward to reading Durden's book. It's refreshing to see so many British photographers represented. The likes of Peter Fraser and Anna Fox deserve to be more widely known.

[luxborealis]

Great discussion here.

I think I'm on the side of: they may be great photographs in someone's eye, but they'd never make it on my wall. I love being intellectually stimulated by a number of different media - music, visual art, even BBC news on a daily basis - but if I don't enjoy what I am looking at (or don't understand why it even makes the initial cut, never mind the final cut) then I'll leave it to others to enjoy and write massifs about.

These photographs remind me of the notion that works of art should be able to stand on their own without commentary. I'm not sure many of these photographs fit into that category, at least not from my perspective.

That being said, art is meant to challenge us and our perceptions which is how we have "grown" as a civilization. We may not understand or agree with contemporary art (as I'm sure many have felt about Picasso, Renoir or Matisse in their day), but that doesn't mean it shouldn't have a forum. Luminous Landscape, by it's very nature, is perhaps the wrong forum for enthusiastic acceptance of the genre of photography shown.

Thank goodness art doesn't only cater to the masses, otherwise we would only have black velvet Elvis paintings to look at. Now where is that old cranberry glass in the cupboard that I should photograph!