Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: Slobodan Blagojevic on January 25, 2020, 01:10:05 pm
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Well, inside my post at least: oil on canvas and photography. [size=78%]But one common subject: faces illuminated by a phone or computer screen.[/size]
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[size=78%]Wandering through downtown Belgrade the other day, I stumbled upon an exhibition opening by a young artist [/size]Ivan Milenković, [/font][/size]that seems to share the same fascination as myself with faces lit by a phone or computer screen. He uses oil on canvas, I photographs. [/font][/size]I am pairing some of his work with my photographs.[/font][/size]
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In the third pairing, the artist is posing if front of his self-portrait.[/font][/size]
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[font=system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, .sfnstext-regular, sans-serif]P.S. There is something absolutely funky going on with the forum software. Composing a post has become a nightmare.[/font]
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I've just posted without problems; perhaps a red star is watching you from above?
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[font=system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, .sfnstext-regular, sans-serif]P.S. There is something absolutely funky going on with the forum software. Composing a post has become a nightmare.[/font]
When all else fails, read the instructions
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When all else fails, read the instructions
Meaning?
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Meaning?
Hmmm... it's an old saying...
But:
Quod natura non dat, rabanito non praestat...
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One of the interesting things, in a bad way, about contemporary art (aside from non-representational art which simply isn't involved) is that it rarely shows things as they are. It all seems to look back -- to the impressionists, or perhaps to a variety of European expressionists, but you don't see much decent contemporary painting or photography showing computers or modern cars or the inside of a Starbucks or people walking along the street peering at their phones or doing many of the things that people do every day. I find both those paintings and your photography quite attractive -- the light is actually quite nice when reflected off a pensive face. It could become a cliche, but hasn't yet. I find it...perceptive.
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...you don't see much decent contemporary painting or photography showing computers or modern cars or the inside of a Starbucks or people walking along the street peering at their phones or doing many of the things that people do every day. I find both those paintings and your photography quite attractive -- the light is actually quite nice when reflected off a pensive face. It could become a cliche, but hasn't yet. I find it...perceptive.
Ever other street photograph is of someone looking at their iPhone. Done to death.
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When all else fails, read the instructions
I didn’t do anything different while composing that post (and another one on the same day) than what I’ve been doing all these years. It was a glitch in the forum software that exposed formatting that otherwise stays hidden and not user-selectable.
What instructions you think I didn’t read?
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Ever other street photograph is of someone looking at their iPhone. Done to death.
Indeed, but then that's the problem with the genre: it is what it has to be. Only when you remove it from straight street and add another dimension such as fashion (Peter Lindbergh R.I.P.), do you get something different that comes to life, shows some excitement. It's the addition of a motive (as distinct from motif) that allows the creation of a tension, a sense of something happening and caught at just the right instant. In real life, by the time you spot something happening it's already too late: you missed it. That relegates street to the happy accident, which is hardly skill, simply determinaton and a high boredom threshold. There appears to be something somewhat perverse about standing half-hidden behind a lamp post, your eyes trained relentlessly for hours upon a doorway or a poster, just waiting for the right person to walk past, especially if, at the end of the wait, there isn't even any pay dirt.
That's why I think Leiter was, and similar guys today are more inclined towards street art. You don't have to stand and lurk. You can use your eyes whilst walking, which is less challenging than chewing gum and walking. If more folks did the former than the latter, our streets would be safer, except for dog traps on which you can slip and break your leg - or worse - such as bringing them into the car or home. (You could always, of course, if you realise in time that a dog's had you, just abandon your shoes at the car or office door.)
Now there we are: the perfect target for some bright young street fellow: somebody taking that fatal step! Almost as much fun as a banana skin.
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Ever other street photograph is of someone looking at their iPhone. Done to death.
What that has to do with my post, which has nothing to do with street photography?
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What instructions you think I didn’t read?
Well I'll try to explain
This sentence is a piece of humor, a catch phrase, that has been around for more than 50 years.
I thought everybody has been acquainted with it in one form or other.
Nothing to get excited about. Just to ignore it with a smile perhaps and that's all.
You can replace "read the instructions" with "Ask the forum" ;)
Hope this helps
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It all seems to look back -- to the impressionists, or perhaps to a variety of European expressionists, but you don't see much decent contemporary painting or photography showing computers or modern cars or the inside of a Starbucks or people walking along the street peering at their phones or doing many of the things that people do every day.
Painting modern life, objects and people does not make the painting modern...nor necessarily good.
Peter
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Ever other street photograph is of someone looking at their iPhone. Done to death.
Forget how often it's done, look instead at how well it's done.
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Forget how often it's done, look instead at how well it's done.
Good point.
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Forget how often it's done, look instead at how well it's done.
There's a question behind that, though: why would you do it in the first place? On a street or in a bar, a café or even within a restaurant it is so commonplace as to be invisible.
Slobodan got something in his nightclub, but that's not street. That's good olde worlde candid à la Doisneau and Ronis.
Rob
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What that has to do with my post, which has nothing to do with street photography?
It's to do with John's interesting observation about contemporary art largely ignoring contemporary lifestyle.
Could it be that's the case because contemporary life motifs are basically very boring, with emotion and expression more and more achieved over a screen of some sort rather than face-to-face? There is illustration of this in the recent past, during the era of grunge fashion snappers and the birth of the Kate Moss phenomenon. I suspect that they captured a fairly accurate snapshot of their daily lifestyle, distance from which was a most welcome reality for many of us. Disillusioning enough in quick photographs, why would any but a disturbed painter choose to spend hours, if not days over such a canvas?
Rob
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There's a question behind that, though: why would you do it in the first place?...
Why shoot anything in the first place?
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There's a question behind that, though: why would you do it in the first place? On a street or in a bar, a café or even within a restaurant it is so commonplace as to be invisible.
Slobodan got something in his nightclub, but that's not street. That's good olde worlde candid à la Doisneau and Ronis.
Rob
Not doing so, whatever it is because it's commonplace, is the perfect excuse to sit on one's arse in front of a screen, which let's face it is all too commonplace.
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Why shoot anything in the first place?
Now that's contemporary thought and very interesting for me. Just this morning I found myself with about an hour or ninety minutes of spare time between my shower and lunch. My initial thought was ah, an opportunity to take some snaps. You know what? The next thought was a conclusion: this is all one helluva waste of my time. There really is but one genre for which I retain a thirst, and what I can do on my own is not it. As I realised when my printer stopped being serviced by HP, it might be a blessing in disguise and save me from mechanically churning out print after print, for no truly reasonable reason at all. Sitting at a computer for a couple of hours doing something for no better reason than that I can, is really somewhat perverse.
I suspected that something was up a couple of days ago when I found myself unable to walk back to the car to go home and fetch a camera to snap those twenty-four grounded yachts from Storm Gloria. Premonition of Damascene moment, then.
Asking why can sometimes be very illuminating.
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Not doing so, whatever it is because it's commonplace, is the perfect excuse to sit on one's arse in front of a screen, which let's face it is all too commonplace.
Keith, I think I have the reply in my answer to Slobodan, above.
Rob
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Rob, my friend, how can you be wasting your time when you're creating superb individualistic images?
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+1
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What that has to do with my post, which has nothing to do with street photography?
But one common subject: faces illuminated by a phone or computer screen.
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Faces illuminated by a phone or computer screen have nothing to do with street photography. In my examples, they are portraits or environmental portraits, again, nothing to do with street photography.
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Faces illuminated by a phone or computer screen have nothing to do with street photography. In my examples, they are portraits or environmental portraits, again, nothing to do with street photography.
People staring at their iPhones are boring regardless of what category you assign them to.
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Painting modern life, objects and people does not make the painting modern...nor necessarily good.
Peter
I know all that. That's why I never used the phrase "modern painting." The only time I used the word "modern" was in "modern cars," meaning cars of our time. Nothing in particular, including modern life, makes a painting good, but it would be nice to encounter more excellent painting that makes use of contemporary culture and is in some way representational and that evokes an emotion or sentiment rather than striving for intellectual purity as non-representational art usually does.
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People staring at their iPhones are boring regardless of what category you assign them to.
It's interesting that you apparently think that any photo of a person staring at their phone, in whatever light or whatever conditions or situation, is boring. I would certainly disagree. People are interesting, at least some of the time, even if what they are doing is most often boring.
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People staring at their iPhones are boring regardless of what category you assign them to.
"Bored Girl Waiting for the Call"
iPhones 500 years ago - Nothing new