Luminous Landscape Forum
Site & Board Matters => About This Site => Topic started by: David Watson on August 08, 2015, 04:28:31 am
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This article struck a chord with me in presenting the concept of personal style as a way of protecting your photographic talents (great or small) from pollution. The author describes making photographs in order to earn praise as a surefire way to lose whatever ability you have. I don't disagree with that but there is a catch 22 in that it is necessary to subject your photographs to inspection by others in order to win accreditation (educational or otherwise) or, if professional, to earn a living.
Unless you want your photography to exist solely in your own private world it will inevitably be somewhere sometime subject to scrutiny or opinion. I guess it depends on how certain you are that your own personal view works and how well you can "sell" that idea through the images themselves, context, reputation or supporting text.
Imagine viewing some of the most famous photographs taken over the past 100 years without the associated narrative, history or prior accreditation - would they be viewed as great photographs? In some cases unquestionably; in some cases absolutely not. Take some war photographs without the context of war and suffering or some portraits of famous people without the fame and ask that question.
Great thoughtful article - thank you!
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I think the point would be what you take from the opinions received: do you change your style, such as it is at that point, in order to get more praise?
Or do you change it pragmatically in the short term because you need to pass some external criteria (studentship, sales...)?
Or do you refuse to change it at all?
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The very idea of a personal style is a silly one. Unserious amateurs often seem to want one, for some reason.
Whatever a style might be, it will suit some things and not others. Thus, if you do have a personal style, you're limiting yourself.
Portfolios, bodies of work, should usually be visually coherent. In this context, a style makes sense. Across all your work? Not so much.
This vague desire to develop a personal style is, I think, a version of the desire to stand out from the pack. As such, claiming to be able to help you develop one is a great sales pitch. But it's the same pitch as 'model nude for me and I'll get you in playboy'
That said, the advice to watch out for the temptation to shoot to please is a good one. I don't show unfinished work to anyone, for that precise reason.
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Ironically thinking or worrying about a personal style is the way to least likely to establish it since style is about knowing who you are, what you want to say and not worrying about saying it.
I think most people get stuck in the taking competent pictures phase. An article here by Arup Biswas illiterates this well:
“When I started photographing landscapes, I would go to dozens of gorgeous places and shoot the landscape from the most appealing angle. When lucky, I would get a very attractive photograph. But it would not carry any personal statement. I would just act like a composition machine, applying all the rules I had learned from various books and magazines.”
On the commercial side to get total freedom and fulfilment from paying work is rare indeed and why maintaining personal work is so important both as a photographer and also for marketing purposes to bring in work/clients closer to what you want to shoot.
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Whatever a style might be, it will suit some things and not others. Thus, if you do have a personal style, you're limiting yourself.
Portfolios, bodies of work, should usually be visually coherent. In this context, a style makes sense. Across all your work? Not so much.
What you say is true: a style is only adapted to some kind of images and not other and is therefore limiting. What you said next is also true: portfolios should be visually coherent.
So what happens for someone who wants to sell works on the fine arts market is that he or she will need to develop a coherent portfolio. Without a coherent portfolio, no gallery is ever going to be interested in your work.
Once one has a coherent portfolio, getting known from the market is still really hard work, which might take years and may even never happen. Most people can't do that twice.
So the idea of "personal style" is simply a consequence of the way the art market works: aspiring artists develop a consistent portfolio and, if they ever become marketable, find themselves stuck in that particular "style". Galleries will only take more of the same.
Look around you for famous photographers (or painters, etc...) and you will find that once they reached fame, their style stopped changing. Gursky only produces large abstract colour landscapes, Michael Kenna will only do B&W long exposures, Hiroshi Sumitomo will only photograph the sea in large B&W prints, etc... They won't produce anything else any more. However, if you knew a famous photographer personally (not necessarily amongst those 3), you would know that they sometimes experiment with other images for their own fun. It is just that they will not publish these other images, because it would actually lower their value on the market.
If you want to see a whole collection of "personal styles" in development, you may try the phases photography magazine: http://www.phasesmag.com (http://www.phasesmag.com)
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A cynic might wonder whether eg Gursky ever moved beyond the "competent photo" stage, or if he is simply the random result of art-world value gaming. In that view, there would be no coherent idea of the quality or competence of the photo, only the requirement that it be distinct.... rather like the tokens used for navigating a Monopoly board. In fact, disregarding "rules" of composition and the production of willfully boring, pedestrian work becomes in itself a mark of style and hence valuable.
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Sally Mann and Cindy Sherman come to mind as photographers who have done quite different work over the years
The gallerists would prefer artists to produce new work. Related to previous work, but not the same.
Getting stuck in a rut certainly happens but I'm not sure it's the Art Market driving it!
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A cynic might wonder whether eg Gursky ever moved beyond the "competent photo" stage, or if he is simply the random result of art-world value gaming. In that view, there would be no coherent idea of the quality or competence of the photo, only the requirement that it be distinct.... rather like the tokens used for navigating a Monopoly board. In fact, disregarding "rules" of composition and the production of willfully boring, pedestrian work becomes in itself a mark of style and hence valuable.
I don't think you have ever seen Gursky's work as prints or whether you have heard about the Düsseldorf school of photography. Gursky did not happen by mere chance. You may like what he did or not, but you cannot say that he is the random result of art-world value gaming.
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Sally Mann and Cindy Sherman come to mind as photographers who have done quite different work over the years
Not to me. And even if they were, a few counter examples are not sufficient change the way the art world runs.
The gallerists would prefer artists to produce new work. Related to previous work, but not the same.
As you said: "related to previous work". That is: "in the same personal style". Ring me up when Sally Mann starts to produce colour work or when Cindy Sherman stops to be obsessed by sex and gender.
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I agree with some other responders that the idea of trying to develop a personal style is silly and pointless. Some photographers do have their own style, but it developed organically over the years and not as a conscious attempt to "get a style." I got a good look at t alot of my photos last week during an effort to clean up and reorganize my Lightroom catalog, and if I have a person style it can only be described as "smorgasbord." That's fine with me.
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Not to me. And even if they were, a few counter examples are not sufficient change the way the art world runs.
I see plenty of variety in both Gursky and Sugimoto.
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Sally Mann did a bunch of color work earlier on. Cibachromes. Large format polaroid. And yeah Sherman's gig is gender and sex, but her recent work looks absolutely nothing untitled film stills.
I can, without effort, think of three wildly distinct (visually) bodies of work from these two women. The ideas and themes recur.
This is kind of the ideal modern artist. Different expressions of related ideas. It's still Sherman, look at all the sex, but it's fresh and new. Even I could sell that!
I don't know anything about Gursky. His popular fame seems to be built on exactly two pictures, although of course there's more to him than that.
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A cynic might…
A cynic is not someone known for unprejudiced clear thinking.
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Sally Mann did a bunch of color work earlier on. Cibachromes. Large format polaroid. And yeah Sherman's gig is gender and sex, but her recent work looks absolutely nothing untitled film stills.
Earlier work, that is work made before fame, obviously does not count. This is when one is supposed to "develop one's style". So you have one counter-example with Cindy Sherman (although I still think it is related since these film stills are all self portraits).
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No. You're simply wrong about Mann. I suggest that you either go do some research, or drop it.
Anyways, I am using 'style' in the common sense of a visual style. You appear to be using several definitions at once, including one in which 'style' includes ideas and themes.
I am confident that two portfolios with very different visual looks, that cover the same themes, would not be considered to be in the same style by most people.
You are, of course, free to use words in whatever way you like, however.
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Earlier work, that is work made before fame, obviously does not count. This is when one is supposed to "develop one's style". So you have one counter-example with Cindy Sherman.
Your own examples can be used as counter examples. Have a look at Gursky's recent Superhero pictures, or Sugimoto's out-of-focus images of modernist architecture. Or look at Jeff Wall, or Thomas Ruff.
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Even ignoring Mann's extensive portfolio of color work, anyone who thinks that "Immediate Family" and "At Twelve" in any way resemble "Southern Landscapes" and "Proud Flesh" is smoking something delicious. The look is completely different, the ideas and themes are quite different (there's a relationship, but it's subtle and so academic as to be almost not there, and certainly not relevant). The only connection, really, is that they're made by the same person.
If that's all it takes to be a "personal style" well them, congratulations, we're done. We all already have a personal style!
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The very idea of a personal style is a silly one. Unserious amateurs often seem to want one, for some reason.
Whatever a style might be, it will suit some things and not others. Thus, if you do have a personal style, you're limiting yourself.
Portfolios, bodies of work, should usually be visually coherent. In this context, a style makes sense. Across all your work? Not so much.
This vague desire to develop a personal style is, I think, a version of the desire to stand out from the pack. As such, claiming to be able to help you develop one is a great sales pitch. But it's the same pitch as 'model nude for me and I'll get you in playboy'
That said, the advice to watch out for the temptation to shoot to please is a good one. I don't show unfinished work to anyone, for that precise reason.
A personal style is unavoidable. It's called being alive and every human who has ever lived has had one. However, without the hard work of craftsmanship and a degree of talent in your chosen field, whether cookery or sculpture, it is never going to amount to very much (beyond friends and family of course). Key is not to become trapped by seeing a personal style as a fixed entity. Just like people, styles are fluid and change and develop all the time. It's an outcome not an input and I suspect that problems can emerge when "I need a personal style" is imposed at the start of the process because someone feels under pressure to do things in a certain way. Maybe best to start with another question: does this painting or photograph or film or whatever show the world in a fresh and very interesting way? To my eye, a lot of photographers who I am sure feel they have a personal style still end up taking photographs which look remarkably similar one to another.
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I specialise in photography of the nude. When I give workshops for people new to that field, I spend quite some time on personal style. Basically this comes down to me pointing out what I think is clichéd, trite, dubious and downright ugly in nude photography (and what is admirable), and discussing what I try to achieve in my own work and why. Many male beginners* seem content just to take what I call 'safari' photos - whole-body snaps of models the equivalents of whose poses can easily be found among lions, baboons, and giraffes, etc. Like hunters, photographers talk about 'good shots' and 'capturing images'. I feel duty-bound to discourage this 'safari' approach to photographing the nude. One of the most important lessons I try to teach is that the human body should be visually deconstructed, as it were, and new viewpoints sought by means of both careful poses and subtle lighting. As with landscape photography (with which nude photography shares some obvious characteristics), there would appear to be little new one can bring to photographing bodies, except more of the beautiful same. But this is not enough, if one takes one's art seriously. The aim should be to innovate, to see 'beyond'.
Perhaps personal styles cannot be taught, but they should be sought. And they should evolve.
*Female beginners are immediately more creative, I have noted, even if they have less experience with a camera. Male and female gazes, I suppose.
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Eric,
Female beginners are immediately more creative, I have noted, even if they have less experience with a camera. Male and female gazes, I suppose.
Does your experience still hold true when the nude is male?
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Eric,
Does your experience still hold true when the nude is male?
Rob,
To tell you the truth, I don't know. But my guess would be yes.
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One of the problems that photographers have to deal with is that, unlike other art forms, basic photography is pretty easy. To reach a level basic competence (by which I mean, your work has some commercial or artistic value) in other art forms, like painting, music, dance or architecture, typically takes years. A few hard weeks of work in photography will will generally get you to a level of competence that could even generate sales, if you pick the right commercial venue. IMHO, this tends to attract people who really don't care to work very hard at an art form, but yearn to be some kind of an artist...so they pick up a camera, and they eventually begin searching for things like style.
Again, this is my opinion, but I think that most serious artists or even businesslike commercial people tend to do things the other way around: that is, they have an interest, and then they adopt an art form that will capture that interest. That combination -- an interest that can be captured by a particular mechanism (dance, drawing, photography) leads almost automatically to what we call style. That doesn't mean that you always shoot the same thing, because you may be interested in more than one thing. But even in that case, in pursuing your first interest, you probably gravitated toward a particular "look" simply because you like it and think it's effective, and so you carry that over into other subjects. Robert Mapplethorpe was interested in sex, portraits, celebrities and flowers, but the "look" is very similar across all those categories, because he found that look appealing and to most accurately or effectively represent the way he saw things.
The push to develop a 'style," I think, is a problem mostly for those people who really aren't deeply interested in anything in particular (or at least, nothing in particular that can be photographed.) Although some people might not believe this (especially if you ARE an artist) I observed over quite an extensive career of reporting that many, many people really aren't deeply interested in much -- often not even deeply interested even in their families or in their jobs. That doesn't necessarily mean they're stupid, it just means that they aren't deeply interested in very much; I once briefly dated a woman who was interested in going to parties -- not documenting them, or commenting on them, but just being there. Having fun. She didn't even have a stereo, or read. She wasn't stupid, she just wasn't interested in much. If you look at all the millions of hours frittered away on Facebook, Twitter, messaging, browsing the net, etc., you realize that many people are quite content to eat, sleep, drink and message. If one of those people begins to feel a vague yearning to become an artist -- usually because he/she likes the idea, rather than the reality -- then photography is a natural choice, because you get to carry around some neat equipment and because, basically, it just isn't very hard. Until, of course, somebody tells you that you need a "style." Then, if you're not interested in much, you're sort of stuck. You wander around, doing a little street here, a landscape there, a portrait of friends, some snapshots of family...there's no style because you're just going through the motions of photography. If you get desperate enough -- photography equipment isn't cheap -- you start looking for articles that tell you how to develop a style.
In my opinion (I say again) if you really want to develop style, you should put the camera down, and spend some serious time thinking about what you're deeply interested in. If there is something, go shoot that. If the honest answer is "not too much," then maybe you should consider dropping photography for a faster internet connection and maybe a subscription to Netflix.
One subject matter, of course, is almost always of interest -- which is why we've seen the spectacular rise of the selfie. Not that anyone else wants to look at them.
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Even ignoring Mann's extensive portfolio of color work, anyone who thinks that "Immediate Family" and "At Twelve" in any way resemble "Southern Landscapes" and "Proud Flesh" is smoking something delicious.
That is probably the reason we do not understand each other. For me, all these works are in the same "personal style". I see strong similarities between them: the particular tonal and out of focus rendering of large format, the frequent use of aerial perspective, similarities in the way the pictures are composed, etc... I don't smoke, BTW.
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Re male nudes
To tell you the truth, I don't know. But my guess would be yes.
That's an interesting question : my impression is that male nudes are often more formulaic (largely about representations of strength, the cliché rear view of a muscular man turning something big and heavy). But then the number of male nudes available to see on a site like 500px must be about 1% of the number of female nudes... most of which are formulaic and boring (value judgements mine, of course). And I don't have the same hormonal involvement.
However I wonder if part of the problem of this discussion is that there seem to me to be two diverging definitions of "art photography": version A is linked to esthetics and the subliminal transmission of ideas that we tend to think of as beauty. Version B is about what will get sold at a Christey's auction, where the notion of beauty is given very short shrift.
I would think that most landscape photographers, photographers of the nude, and even the majority of street and and urbex photographers fall into category A. i'd be willing to argue (maybe not very well) that Diane Arbus's images are category A, since they are transmit (to me) some sort of emotional state.
In contrast, the Dusseldorf School, coming from a documentary philosopy, objectivism and so on, seems to want to be in category B: in fact that is my reading of the explicit attempt to rebel against the rejection of the Nazi appropriation of photography viz Leni Riefenstahl (I'll interject "baby with the bathwater").
Now against that background, it's unlikely that anyone is going to have a show in which they range across new objectivism and sensual nudes... (I'll count someone like Ion Grigorescu under "non-sensual nudes") and indeed I suspect that what comes out as a personal style is in some way one's relationship to the world: sensual, hedonist, critical, polemical... and that is something one develops from a lot of sources, without a camera in hand. And it might change over time, and/or one might have several concurrent interests expressed in distinct portfolios.
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One of the problems that photographers have to deal with is that, unlike other art forms, basic photography is pretty easy. To reach a level basic competence (by which I mean, your work has some commercial or artistic value) in other art forms, like painting, music, dance or architecture, typically takes years. A few hard weeks of work in photography will will generally get you to a level of competence that could even generate sales, if you pick the right commercial venue. IMHO, this tends to attract people who really don't care to work very hard at an art form, but yearn to be some kind of an artist...so they pick up a camera, and they eventually begin searching for things like style.
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This post is excellent and I think a real elephant in the room where photography is concerned. With the violin a week in I could only just about hold it and the bow correctly let alone play even one suitable note.
Your point about people not being interested in much is also very apt. A large majority of people are totally content to consume rather than be driven to create anything at all I have lot count of the amount of times people have been confused as to why I spend so much effort making photographs when I do not sell them - they are just not able to understand.
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…why I spend so much effort making photographs when I do not sell them - they are just not able to understand.
"Life is rather a lark, you knaow, fun is where you find it…"
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Yes, photography is basically easy.
As an Art, therefore, it distills are down to what we think of as its essence in these modern, degenerate, times. There is no real technical barrier. There is no requirement to master physical technique, or technically complex tasks. You needn't learn to grind pigments, mix colors, or judge marble. You just press the button.
This leaves us naked before the muse: we better have damned idea, or people are gonna notice.
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I wonder how different the range of student response (creative seeing) is in life drawing class versus life photography class. I loved my life drawing classes. One of the advantages of life drawing class is that multiple responses can be made to the same lighting conditions - emphasize or de-emphasize shadow, exaggerate shape for emphasis, etc. You can't do that with a camera, your main creativity is going to be in lighting, framing, posing - only choice in a classroom situation would be framing, since everyone is seeing the same lighting and posing.
Style? I look at this issue more as "what are you interested in, and how do you make it look good according to your taste?" I suspect that visual style must be developed before photographic style. One gets unconscious and conscious visual biases over a lifetime of looking.
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Jörg Colberg's latest piece is interesting in this respect: http://cphmag.com/ (http://cphmag.com/)
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Jörg Colberg's latest piece is interesting in this respect: http://cphmag.com/ (http://cphmag.com/)
That is an excellent commentary. Thanks for sharing the link.