Luminous Landscape Forum
Site & Board Matters => About This Site => Topic started by: LesPalenik on November 17, 2017, 10:36:47 pm
-
Great essay, with many interesting ideas. Thank you, Alain
-
I enjoyed reading the article, too. The essayistic style with personal notes is nice. Looking forward for the 2nd part.
-
Alain, if I am to take your opening paragraphs literally, the reasons you were unhappy with your black and whites are obvious: you shouldn't try to print with a red safelight - it's not for papers but for line film. You will never see a realistic tonality under such an illumination: RTFM for the papers! Also, you mention changing to different grades as a solution to a regular unhappiness: you don't do that as a routine choice of preferences, you do it to suit the individual negative and how you want a particular print to look. Thirdly, the feeling I get because of your concern with drying down changes is that you were not using glossy paper and glazing it. Use anything else and you lose much of the possible photographic tonality within any negative. Lastly, and unforgivably, you may have been making a hash of your exposure and development of the negative. (I am giving you the benefit of the doubt and assume you knew how to read a series of paper test strips!)
There is no intrinsic reason why black/white printing should have been beyond you, insofar as printing went; that has no bearing on the subject matter which is another thing altogether.
Printing in black and white was an art in itself, and took a lot of printing time to understand beyond the quick, instinctive first impressions that a darkroom can give you. In my own case, I thought I was a good printer (I made my own amateur's darkroom in the loft) until I managed to get my first pro job and realised that I knew far less about printing than anyone else in the unit's darkroom; they soon disabused me of my arrogance! After about six or seven years there I finally did know something about the process, which was just as well, for after that I went solo.
Rob
-
Alain, if I am to take your opening paragraphs literally, the reasons you were unhappy with your black and whites are obvious: you shouldn't try to print with a red safelight - it's not for papers but for line film. You will never see a realistic tonality under such an illumination: RTFM for the papers! Also, you mention changing to different grades as a solution to a regular unhappiness: you don't do that as a routine choice of preferences, you do it to suit the individual negative and how you want a particular print to look. Thirdly, the feeling I get because of your concern with drying down changes is that you were not using glossy paper and glazing it. Use anything else and you lose much of the possible photographic tonality within any negative. Lastly, and unforgivably, you may have been making a hash of your exposure and development of the negative. (I am giving you the benefit of the doubt and assume you knew how to read a series of paper test strips!)
There is no intrinsic reason why black/white printing should have been beyond you, insofar as printing went; that has no bearing on the subject matter which is another thing altogether.
Printing in black and white was an art in itself, and took a lot of printing time to understand beyond the quick, instinctive first impressions that a darkroom can give you. In my own case, I thought I was a good printer (I made my own amateur's darkroom in the loft) until I managed to get my first pro job and realised that I knew far less about printing than anyone else in the unit's darkroom; they soon disabused me of my arrogance! After about six or seven years there I finally did know something about the process, which was just as well, for after that I went solo.
Rob
Haysus Kristos, Rob, "RTFM" indeed! Alain is talking about way back in his history, where he eventually found that the complex "art in itself" of B/W printing wasn't his thing. Your dismissive and frankly insulting comment is way over the top, with the mindset of a wannabe Olympian god dropping in on and castigating his mere imperfect mortals coming to mind.
A deep red safelight has been used for eons for printing with the traditional B/W papers, which are sensitive to only the G & B spectrum. So how do you load and position your paper, then develop it, where it was pretty essential in my 30 year past experience to see WTF you're doing? And what is this "line film" that's not red-sensitive? Google's no help here, and every B/W 35mm film I've used required pitch-black to cannister-load for developing. Maybe you CAN somehow print in the dark...but your superior, dismissive assumptions and attitude eclipse any illumination you may have proffered.
Pete
I should have added that I enjoyed Briot's article very much, and have enjoyed collecting some lesser to un-knowns that intrigued me.
If you have stumbled upon great wealth recently, http://www.willemphotographic.com/artists.html in downtown Monterey, CA has one of the world's largest B/W original print collections from nearly 300 photographers, with the conspicuous absence of A.A. and Wynn Bullock, but with four gens. of Westons, some of HCB's most iconic, Steichen's from the 20's, etc.
-
Well, Peter, I'm talking way back in my own history, too: I started in professional photography back in 1960, which is probably further back in personal and relative times than did Alain.
Please don't tell me about darkroom procedure; I earned my crust in those places for, literally, decades and then managed to escape the dark art for the brighter one of Kodachrome.
Line film: for making high contrast negatives of print (in the sense of writing or line drawing) and similar original metarials. It came in sheets which you handled and developed under a red safelight. It could be used for anything, experimentally, where you wanted to lose mid-tones and have just black/white.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purkinje_effect
The above - from Wiki, so yes, Dr Google is your friend if you speak to him nicely - will give you an idea of why Kodak and Ilford recommended the colour of darkroom safelight that they did. Darkrook vision and, consequently, filter recommendation is not governed solely by paper safety: it is also governed by how the human eye adapts to the different forms of illumination within the paper's safety margins.
As to your question of how one handles paper under anything but a red safelight: in exactly the same manner, except that using the paper manufacturers' recommended yelllow/green/amber variations allow your eyes and brain to see the developing print more closely to the manner that those same human tools will perceive it in daylight.
I never did state you could not use a red safelinght. I indicated that nobody in his right mind does that, ignoring the paper makers' advice, and making life difficult where it need not be.
As for trying to stand on Mt O - disabuse yourself: I did that back in '60 when I got into this business (and remained in it the rest of my career) and within days learned that I knew nothing, relatively speaking. Do you own a mirror, by the way? ;-)
I am not dismissive of Alain and neither am I in awe. As artist he has his style and, if it sells, good for him. That's the name of the game.
Rob
-
I've been buying the work of artists ever since I left art college in 1970. I've always bought for the love of the work without so much as a thought of buying for investment. The pieces have inevitably influenced my own work as a painter, illustrator and photographer and although the purchases have been eclectic - ranging from Moroccan and Algerian pottery, naïve paintings, African artefacts and Cornish contemporary ceramics - I can see a commonality (is that a word or an Americanism?) between them all.
I've never bought a photograph and have no interest in so doing, I won't even put my own photographs on my walls. As to whether this is because I don't see the photograph as a work of art or see it as a poor relation to the other art forms that I do admire and buy, well, I haven't a clue and to be honest haven't much interest in exploring, but perhaps it's that love of the work, or lack of it, thang (another Americanism?).
-
I've been buying the work of artists ever since I left art college in 1970. I've always bought for the love of the work without so much as a thought of buying for investment. The pieces have inevitably influenced my own work as a painter, illustrator and photographer and although the purchases have been eclectic - ranging from Moroccan and Algerian pottery, naïve paintings, African artefacts and Cornish contemporary ceramics - I can see a commonality (is that a word or an Americanism?) between them all.
I've never bought a photograph and have no interest in so doing, I won't even put my own photographs on my walls. As to whether this is because I don't see the photograph as a work of art or see it as a poor relation to the other art forms that I do admire and buy, well, I haven't a clue and to be honest haven't much interest in exploring, but perhaps it's that love of the work, or lack of it, thang (another Americanism?).
Keith, you have just described the only valid reason for buying an "art piece" (US-derivate term too?). Everything else is a perversion of the art - or at least insofar as the honest mind is concerned. I intentionally exclude the investment factor, which in many ways, can be an artificial arbiter of values - relative ones, should relativity in art make any sense at all.
I'm sitting on the terrace on a sunny Mallorcan afternoon, deep in the shade of the toldo, having enjoyed (for once) my own version of an Inspector Montalbano lunch; the music through the 'phones is swamp pop rock - (what else is new?) and I question yet again my partly altruistic reasons for trying to sell... of course, come sundown, and my testes will freeze.
Problems or questions of whether art is art, whether or not somebody chooses the masochistic route or red in his safelight of choice really do appear to dip into the absurd. How fortunate the happy dentist/lawyer/accountant with nothing to concern him beyond the name of his next cocktail-to-try, which Sunday Times restaurant to check out next week.
But could that have made me happy. Wish I knew - maybe better not knowing.
;-(
Rob
-
Keith, you have just described the only valid reason for buying an "art piece" (US-derivate term too?). Everything else is a perversion of the art - or at least insofar as the honest mind is concerned. I intentionally exclude the investment factor, which in many ways, can be an artificial arbiter of values - relative ones, should relativity in art make any sense at all.
I'm sitting on the terrace on a sunny Mallorcan afternoon, deep in the shade of the toldo, having enjoyed (for once) my own version of an Inspector Montalbano lunch; the music through the 'phones is swamp pop rock - (what else is new?) and I question yet again my partly altruistic reasons for trying to sell... of course, come sundown, and my testes will freeze.
Problems or questions of whether art is art, whether or not somebody chooses the masochistic route or red in his safelight of choice really do appear to dip into the absurd. How fortunate the happy dentist/lawyer/accountant with nothing to concern him beyond the name of his next cocktail-to-try, which Sunday Times restaurant to check out next week.
But could that have made me happy.
;-(
Rob
Or which veblen optical device to buy next?
;-)
-
But could that have made me happy.
;-(
Rob
NO...Me Too
Peter
-
Keith, Peter - the wider world willl never understand us. My muse asked me if I'd shoot her wedding. I refused, for a plethora of reasons, and she laughed, remarking "you never do this for the money, do you?"
To an extent, she was right. I did need the money, but if I was going to make it through photography, it had to be photography I wanted to do. Anything else made me a whore. It took a moment of revelation to make me understand it, long before she asked. It was a big decision made in an instant: she came from Scottish high-society and the gig would have spun a lot of cash.
In the film "La Grande Bellezza" the main character, Jep Gambarella remarks: "the most important thing I discovered after turning sixty-five is that I can't waste time doing things I don't want to do."
Thankfully, I knew that by thirty.
As another kindred soul, Saul, remarked: "why would anyone spend their life doing something they don't want to do?" He paid the price too, right until he reached a ripe old age when the galleristas found him...
Rob
-
HI Rob, Keith,
Doing work that I wanted to do entered my life early on...when I was 30. However I was an illustrator raising a family. I could have made much more money doing work, that in all honesty, made me gag. Other people's ideas can truly kill one's soul. Since the age of 40 it's painting on my terms.
Happily covered in paint,
Peter
-
Rob, Peter, I concur.
I started my career as a freelance illustrator working in publishing, loved the work and had a very high degree of freedom and control. Typically I was given a book or an article to read and asked to deliver my own interpretation. I was working hard, the money was so so but at the time I wanted more. I swapped over to the advertising world where the money was incredible but the freedom and control went out the window. When working the pressure was constant and when I wasn't the pressure was still constant. It took it's toll. Eventually I switched to photography but swore I would always do my own thing and on my own terms.
We learn the hard way.
-
Rob, Peter, I concur.
I started my career as a freelance illustrator working in publishing, loved the work and had a very high degree of freedom and control. Typically I was given a book or an article to read and asked to deliver my own interpretation. I was working hard, the money was so so but at the time I wanted more. I swapped over to the advertising world where the money was incredible but the freedom and control went out the window. When working the pressure was constant and when I wasn't the pressure was still constant. It took it's toll. Eventually I switched to photography but swore I would always do my own thing and on my own terms.
We learn the hard way.
Hard or not, not all learn. But, perhaps not all have the need.
Peter
-
Hard or not, not all learn. But, perhaps not all have the need.
Peter
Need. That's an interesting thought. It's also why many fail to understand why others are willing to pay the price.
My wife's father ran a successful surveying business, and though we got along reasonably well, he couldn't understand why I wouldn't do everything that came along; I recall him saying that to him, whether he was measuring a palace or a shithouse was the same: the money had no scruples and looked exactly the same to the bank. Of course, he was right - for himself. To me, it did matter, a great deal. Thank God his daughter was happy enough with where we were at. Happy - she helped every step of the way where she was able, never once suggested we could have done better. That alone is enough to make somebody love somebody!
But yes, even within a specific occupation there are ever those who do it because they can, and those because they are driven to do it. The latter usually have no further choice to make but dedicate 100%.
:-)
Rob
-
I feel very lucky in that I was able to make a good living doing something I both enjoyed and was skilled at. And that I always chose my employers rather than the other way ‘round. Nonetheless I stopped as soon as I was able to afford it. This has given me more time and opportunity for the things that really matter: experiences and relationships.
-Dave-
-
Well, Peter, I'm talking way back in my own history, too: I started in professional photography back in 1960, which is probably further back in personal and relative times than did Alain.
Please don't tell me about darkroom procedure; I earned my crust in those places for, literally, decades and then managed to escape the dark art for the brighter one of Kodachrome.
your
Line film: for making high contrast negatives of print (in the sense of writing or line drawing) and similar original metarials. It came in sheets which you handled and developed under a red safelight. It could be used for anything, experimentally, where you wanted to lose mid-tones and have just black/white.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purkinje_effect
The above - from Wiki, so yes, Dr Google is your friend if you speak to him nicely - will give you an idea of why Kodak and Ilford recommended the colour of darkroom safelight that they did. Darkrook vision and, consequently, filter recommendation is not governed solely by paper safety: it is also governed by how the human eye adapts to the different forms of illumination within the paper's safety margins.
As to your question of how one handles paper under anything but a red safelight: in exactly the same manner, except that using the paper manufacturers' recommended yelllow/green/amber variations allow your eyes and brain to see the developing print more closely to the manner that those same human tools will perceive it in daylight.
I never did state you could not use a red safelinght. I indicated that nobody in his right mind does that, ignoring the paper makers' advice, and making life difficult where it need not be.
As for trying to stand on Mt O - disabuse yourself: I did that back in '60 when I got into this business (and remained in it the rest of my career) and within days learned that I knew nothing, relatively speaking. Do you own a mirror, by the way? ;-)
I am not dismissive of Alain and neither am I in awe. As artist he has his style and, if it sells, good for him. That's the name of the game.
Rob
Gawd, Rob, you're prob. even older than I am, staring 78 in the face! Thanks for your considered response and clarification of your red filter comments. But I think, if presented in your original comment, it would have been much more instructive and less pejorative.
I do have a quibbling question about your injecting Dr. Purkinje into the conversation (to whom I had a fleeting exposure in '62 first year med. school Physiology). Since his well documented Effect is a color shift of green toward blue in low ambient light, how does this relate to the viewing of a monochromatic B/W image which we view with primarily scotopic vision from the non-color sensing retinal rod cells? I can see that the wider bandwidth of an amber/brown filter will pass substantially more light than the narrower deep red, making for brighter ambient lighting for a brighter view of the developing print, but also an increased poss. of paper fogging with a too strong or close light source. And consulting Dr. Wiki again, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safelight he/she seems quite agnostic about red vs. amber/brown safelights with B/W photo paper.
The one thing we do know for sure is that the human eye is a marvelously adaptable organ to drastic light level changes. Maybe the legion of we who printed to our satisfaction under red safelights in ignorance of the F'ing manual would have had an easier time had we read it. But we would still have to do the test strips, and would the prints be any 'better"? I doubt it...
About the Gods thingy, I don't think I've risen to more than demi-god level since retirement from the MD/God days of years ago, and this reached only every now and then under the influence of a mind-expanding potion, such as the generous portion of the Oban 14 year single malt I'm enjoying now!
Pete
-
Peter, I can't discuss Purkinge on your level (I only know what worked out in a darkroom from years of doing it) - I'd need to consult my medical granddaughter on that, but she's more interested in obstetrics and my daughter has told me in the past that the girl's one dislike is eyes! Apparently, she delights in surgery. I have no idea where that comes from, as until my own heart problems the very thought of a hypodermic was enough to floor me. Now, I couldn't care less about them. And to think that I denied myself the choice of shooting in the Seychelles because I didn't fancy facing yellow fever shots... oh well, the Bahamas were a nice aternative too, though I never found those special rocks, of course. ;-(
You must have been born just after David Bailey and myself... he's one of the comforts of old age: it comes to us all, if we survive! Got to say, his continued activity is an inspiration.
Ciao -
Rob
-
Since his well documented Effect is a color shift of green toward blue in low ambient light,
My understanding is that it's a general shift of sensitivity towards the blue... so in particular, sensitivity to red is diminished in low light (as demonstrated by the geranium example in the wiki safelight page).
So, a given (small) number of lumens will enable better vision if it is more towards blue, and less towards red. Greeny-red amber is about as far as you can go towards blue without fogging blue-sensitive paper. Ergo, red is sub-optimal for looking at prints in low-light: everything will look rather dull. Under an amber safelight the high tones in a B&W print really seem to shine...
I have to say I immediately suspect anyone talking about red safelights as never actually having worked in adarkroom, and to have taken their impression from watching movies.
But hey, I wasn't even born until '62... :)
-
Getting back to the subject... I don't buy (groan) the argument for collecting art to improve your own. It's certainly important to look at a lot of art, which might be facilitated by buying art books or prints of paintings or jpg's off the internet. If you only look at what you can afford to buy, I'd say your art appreciation is seriously sub-optimal.
-
Perhaps unsurprising, but I tend to buy art which in some way resonates with my own, but often don't see this resonance until some time after the event.
For example This series (http://www.keithlaban.co.uk/foundpaintings.html) and The work of one of my favourite ceramicists, Sam Hall. (https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=sam+hall+pottery&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiK1PrB583XAhVKORQKHTv8C_AQsAQILA&biw=1339&bih=1075)
The series Found Paintings came first followed many years later by my admiration for Sam Hall's work. But it wasn't until after I'd bought a couple of pieces that I recognised the resonance.
-
Getting back to the subject... I don't buy (groan) the argument for collecting art to improve your own. It's certainly important to look at a lot of art, which might be facilitated by buying art books or prints of paintings or jpg's off the internet. If you only look at what you can afford to buy, I'd say your art appreciation is seriously sub-optimal.
I believe artists can be better served by looking in rather than looking at. Witness the amount of clowns clones to be seen here and there.
-
Where's the article? I only see two short paragraphs. And yes I am logged in
-
I think it's a mix: I believe that people have to do a lot of looking outside of themselves in their beginning if only to discover their primary genre. It's one thing to feel drawn to a camera, per se, but quite another to know what you'd like to do with it if you get one.
Only by looking at lots of pictures can you really know what you like enough to follow by yourself. By follow I do not mean ape.
In my era, that was achieved by magazines and a very few books, which were too expensive for me to buy. I remember getting Haskins' Five Girls and Cowboy Kate from the local library, and also David Hamilton's Dreams of young Girls - I know these raised Glaswegian librarian eyebrows at the time. Way beyond my young pockets then - the books, the librarians were not going to be interested.
However, those two photographers stuck with me for many years because of books, but before I'd ever heard of either, I had discovered fashion magazines and the Rollei tlr via my aunt, who bought Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. So yes, genres hit young, at least within my experience.
I think looking at publications let's you get the flavour of work that's good enough to make it to the top; you don't pick up on that down the local camera club. Maybe other cities offered more.
Come the time you have the chance, your mind already has a sort of subliminal idea of what's what, and then you're ready to go. This does not imply copying: I think it just means you lost the awkwardness of your virginity in private.
As Cooter would say, IMO.
Rob
-
I believe artists can be better served by looking in rather than looking at. Witness the amount of clowns clones to be seen here and there.
Rob, I did say that artists can be better served...
;-)
-
Peter, I can't discuss Purkinge on your level (I only know what worked out in a darkroom from years of doing it) - I'd need to consult my medical granddaughter on that, but she's more interested in obstetrics and my daughter has told me in the past that the girl's one dislike is eyes! Apparently, she delights in surgery. I have no idea where that comes from, as until my own heart problems the very thought of a hypodermic was enough to floor me. Now, I couldn't care less about them. And to think that I denied myself the choice of shooting in the Seychelles because I didn't fancy facing yellow fever shots... oh well, the Bahamas were a nice aternative too, though I never found those special rocks, of course. ;-(
You must have been born just after David Bailey and myself... he's one of the comforts of old age: it comes to us all, if we survive! Got to say, his continued activity is an inspiration.
Ciao -
Rob
Yep, Feb. '40; and I see David Bailey and yourself must be on the cusp of 80. David looks pretty good for having survived three divorces, And Catherine Deneuve - Damn!! Fortunately I remain with my one-and-only of 57 years.
The damn bodies though - slowly but relentlessly falling apart - that's the really hard one. So I do wonder how Louise and I do the month of Feb. land-traveling, hiking, photo'ing NZ's South Is. top to bottom. We meet our eldest daughter, hubby, 14 and 19 year old grandsons in Christchurch where I've rented a minivan and a number of Airbnb's. They're now in transit on their sailboat from Tonga to Opua, North Is., to wait out the cyclone season, and midway through an extended 18 month sabbatical from CA university positions.
Congrats to you budding MD granddaughter who seems to have found her path in medical school! Hopefully it's in the UK where higher education is actually supported, and she won't be burdened with the $150,000+ student loan debt most US med. graduates face. Back in '62 when I entered Duke U. med. the tuition was $4000 yearly. Now nearly $50,000.
Last, having sailed many months through most of the Bahamas between the early 70's and 2000, we never found those "special rocks" either, but we dind't realize there were any to look for! Dr. G no help, so what gives with these?
Pete
-
Peter,
The special rocks are not Bahamian: they belong to the Seychelles, and have been a staple for a zillion fashion and calendar photographer backgrounds. They are smooth, quite distinctively shaped and go very well with the curvatures of the female body...
Our best experience of the Bahamas was time on Rose Island, courtesy one Scott Saunders, who was building a house there. It was a bumpy Boston Whaler ride from Nassau which was memorable in that the two models, and my wife who worked with me, spent the trip holding onto their respective boobs in order to prevent them being shaken right off, which would never have done. My challenge was preventing the camera case from crashing into the boat at every bounce. The situation on Rose Island seems to have been that you were obliged to buy your strip of land right across from one shore to the one behind it, like a slice of sausage, if you will. I think his neighbour was a speedboat manufacturer.
Anyway, when we arrived, my heart sank: low cliff where I'd talked beach. We walked from the landing along a path to the location of his new house, which at that point, consisted of a beach-bar, which was a good sign. After we got everything settled, including a bathtub that was filled with ice cubes, he suggested we walk further down the path to the sea, which we did. Spirits soared: beautiful, pinkish sand!
Medical school. Yes, she studied in Edinburgh. She'd never had any questions in her mind about career: from as soon as she was able she got herself into first-aid things and never looked back. Her sister, on the other hand, was something quite else: she used to come on holiday to our place in Mallorca and when not deep in books, she'd argue with me about absolutely everything. Trouble was, even at eleven or twelve, she had this ability to think sideways, which always disconcerted and left me with my mouth open not knowing where to go next. No wonder she took to law and top honours at her uni! She now works in one of London's five or six so-called Golden Circle companies. Maybe she might supply my pension supplements if I end up needing them!
Yeah, I met my wife at school: she was fifteen and I seventeen; it clicked first date, and felt as if we'd known one another all our lives. I guess that there's a possibility that we had, but in a previous iteration of it. It's my hope for the future: the last nine years since cancer took her out seem to be a blank, with nothing to mark one from any of the others. Guess that's how things go, sometimes.
Bailey, by the look of him, has turned fat. He was a great looking cat in his prime, all that hair and cool! I was never fat - quite the opposite; trouble with that end of the physical spectrum is that it made me look ill much of the time, though I wasn't! I admired Bailey's work from the start, but in my opinion, he never again (from what I have seen) managed to go where his collaboration with Jean Shrimpton took them both. Lightning strikes, etc. But he is still in demand, lucky sod!
Rob
-
Rob, I am so, so sorry about your loss of your wife of many years. Though I've been through it with many patients in my internal med. practice, family and friends, I still can't imagine the enormity of grief with the loss of ones spouse and best friend. It seems to hit men even harder as women by nature seem much more adaptable to loss, looking outward for support from friends and community rather than turning inwards, spiraling down into the paralysis of depression. But it sounds like you're doing what you need to do to keep involved and living a fulfilling life.
Adolescent daughters can be challenging, and around 14 my oldest (crikey, now 54!) discovered women's "glass ceiling" reality of the times with endless arguments ensuing, and where I too often played Devil's advocate. "But who in their right mind would even WANT to be CEO of Exxon". Ended up with her doctorate in anthropology, following a Fulbright Fellowship supporting her fieldwork in NW India involving the burgeoning single women's movement, and now chairs the amalgamated department "Critical Studies in Gender, Race and Sexuality" .
I'm glad to know about "those rocks", but with the gorgeous gals undraped atop, besides the photographer who really looks at them?! Maybe a full torso Esther Williams carbon fibre/epoxy reinforced swimsuit for the ladies' Rose Is. Whaler ride?
-
Well, I guess I disagree with everybody.
I think Rob C was overly harsh in his evaluation of Alain's early years, inasmuch as Alain was working in a shared darkroom in which he didn't even have the usual membership privileges, complicated by the fact that he was just learning (in a student darkroom) and might not even have known about amber safelights. If they had a red safelight, they had a red safelight. Suck it up.
I also disagree with everybody who refused to do any work that didn't appeal -- i.e. refused to work for the money. I've found over a lifetime that you learn more by doing work that you don't want to do, than by doing work that you do want to do, whether or not money is involved. The Japanese produce some of the most skilled artists in the world, and the Japanese attitude toward learning can be summed up by, "Shut up and do what you're told." At some point, you may or may not reach mastery, depending on your drive and talent, but in any case, you spend a lot of time doing things you don't want to do, because doing what you want to do is easy. You do it because you can already do it, and that basically teaches you to do things the easy way.You never have the insights that derive from doing something you don't want to do, and then applying those insights to things that you do want to do.
As far as Alain's essay goes, I don't think that collecting art is particularly important. I think it's nice. It's like wall paper. Wallpaper is nice, at least sometimes. The art that most of us could afford to collect is generally crappy, and if you spend too much time looking at crappy art, you'll probably wind up making crappy art, because you'll find yourself accepting the cliches and faults that are found in crappy art. (I live in Santa Fe, a sinkhole of crappy art -- though there is a bit of decent art here. Not much, but a bit.) In any case, I'm on Santa Fe's Canyon Road almost daily, and believe me, the art sucks, but people collect it anyway. I don't see how that can be good. What is important is looking at a lot of really good art, usually found in museums. If I lived in NYC, I'd be at the Met or MOMA every friggin' day. I go to NY twice a year, and every trip, I visit the Pieter Bruegel at the Met, as well as a few others, and I see new things in them every time. The recent "Max Beckmann in New York" blew my socks off. Crappy art doesn't do that. Your socks stay on but your skin crawls.
I disagree with whoever said that he didn't really think of photography as art. I think it is, and a high form of art, and it's about the only art that is still affordable. I have a fine print of Paul Caponigro's Running White Deer on my bedroom wall and I look at it every day. I believe I paid $6,000 for it. Worth every penny. What you can't do is confuse that fact that photography is easy and cheap, with the idea that photographic masterpieces are easy. They're as hard and rare as masterpieces in any other art form. Ansel Adams devoted most of his life to photography, and is considered a great talent, yet how many genuine masterpieces did he produce in that lifetime? Maybe a dozen?
My biggest problem with all of Alain's essays is, it seems to me, is that he particularly appreciates things that sell, which is a requirement of his particularly difficult way of making a living. Because of my job, I recognize and appreciate that, but that mindset has a distorting effect on the way you value things. The question is -- which perhaps none of us can answer, maybe not even Alain -- does he collect art that's really good, or does he collect "art" that he simply appreciates because it appeals to the same set of problems and artistic decisions he has to make as a person who is fundamentally a commercial artist? Does that art say something important about the world, or does it say something about what tourists like and will buy? That is, ids it, or is it not, wallpaper?
-
I like what you said, John.
-
Well, John, I am not Japanese.
To spend my few years on Earth doing something I dislike strikes me as particularly perverse; if one finds the ability within oneself to do what one wants to do, well enough to get paid to do it, that looks like a good idea to me.
As for it being easy, well sometimes it is and then again, sometimes not. What it is not, is unpleasant.
Your notion totally disregards the point that people often do desire to improve the quality of what they are doing. That means that they do not actually stand still, churning out the same old same old every assignment; they could, but then they would soon find themselves losing interest, at which point it might make more sense to abandon photography right away and try for something more easy to make profitable.
As for photography being art. No, it doesn't seem to me to be art. The closest it gets is when a photograph is made by an artist, at which point it may or may not really have something intrinsically different to offer. I bought two prints (offset-litho) from a photographer in Sarlat, in France, along with a book of landscapes of his; the prints are on my bedroom wall. Now, art? I doubt it, but they reminded me of driving through a misty Dordogne, which was enough to please both my wife and myself.
The problem with photography from the is it or is it not perspective, is that a camera is a recording device and, as such, removes the skills that drawing and painting demand. Thus, all the photographer does is either edit reality or frame one of his own, and the trouble is, he doesn't need any hand or other highly tuned skills to shoot what's there. The advent of digital has removed the very last remaining requirements of talent that the darkroom demanded: you had to pay your dues and learn something. No more.
Of course, if suits most of us in photography to deny this, and yes, some of us still have the little (or huge) something extra about ourselves that makes us shine, but that's us doing the star impersonations, not the medium. Which brings me right back to my earlier point: when an artist makes a photograph, then it may be art, but what about when the guy makes a dud? Is he then no longer an artist, or is it just his dud that's not art?
We will never resolve this question. Of course, it would be rash to assume all that's done on paper or canvas is art!
Rob
-
Collecting art is perhaps a bit if a leap from the matter of photographs being or not being art themselves.
I don't collect much at all these days, and when I did, it was only magazines that I couldn't bring myself to trash. OTOH I trashed most of my own original negatives and transparencies over a period - maybe over a month? Why? Because at the time, digital didn't exist and it never entered my mind that all of that stuff would one day be called a back catalogue, and provide material enough to save me having to snap another girl ever again in order to find images to play with today. Of course that's not to say I wouldn't want to snap 'em again, just that until the time comes again where it's realistic, I could still have raw material with which to fashion new imagery. That's truly the miracle of digital: the magic it lets you weave if you are a weaver of dreams in the first place. If you are not, then it makes bugger all difference.
Collecting doesn't seem to be quite the same concept as studying images in order to decipher what they are doing to you; if they are not doing anything to you, they may either be poor ones or you can't get your head into the graphics world. I'm not saying that they have to affect you positively to have value: that some make you puke is also instructive. But, collecting per se?
Rob
-
I'll have to say I'm in John's "camp" regarding photography as an art form. I've wrestled with the "What is Art" question over the years and finally came to the simple conclusion that the only commonality I could find in the vast landscape of ART - from Lascaux to the current jumble of "anything goes" - is purely and simply intent. The intent to create something more personally or universally meaningful/beautiful/emotive/inspiring/shocking/whatever from the medium of choice - be it found materials as a urinal from the junkyard or an instant frozen in time on digital media - the bits and bytes we mold to our vision.
So when I turn critic, all I can legitimately say about a piece, medium or movement is whether I like it or not - not that it isn't ART. Which would just repeat the generational tendency toward rejection of the legitimacy of the new as did the French and British Royal Academies of Art at the dawn of Impressionism.
Though I have bought several framed photographs over the years from unknowns, the only thing I've collected is 19th century Japanese woodblock triptychs and singles, of which I have maybe sixteen. They continue to fascinate me.
Pete
-
Intent is a pretty generous datum!
You could then claim that a baby with a crayon is creating art even if it's really only succeeding in being as antisocial as its physical abilities permit. (Screaming doesn't count: this is about graphics, not music.)
Art, it seems to me, usually requires at least a reasonable level of artistic ability in the practitioner. Also, would you say that everything an artist you accept as an artist produces is art? I am more inclined to think that the actual achievement may be art if it is good enough to stand beside his better work, but if it can't, then will it be non-art or just bad art? Is bad art itself really not art, but just our unwillingness to admit it is rubbish?
Perhaps it is helpful to consider one's own photographic work and try to analyse it from the point of view of whether or not one considers it art. In pro life, I was often happy with pictures that worked out as I'd intended; some I thought were close to art, but really, they were effects that I knew I could get by doing this, that or the other, and by employing some particular lens. That instantly self-removed me from the conceit of being an artist because I was, essentially, using what has come to be called, probably from the film What's new, Pussycat, a cheap photographic trick! The art, if there was one, was about working with another person in order to make something photographable exist for a moment long enough for me to catch it. Without doubt, other than it paying the bills, that was the drug that made model work a passion yet also a nightmare if the collaboration was doomed. It would be insanity to claim the buzz was the cameras and lenses; those might give collectors a high, but not myself! But I don't deny some cameras were a pleasure to operate, and their longer lenses even more so.
(In the same way, but from the opposite direction, think of Van Gogh: his technique is as crude as you could humanly make it, but he had something going on inside his head that just couldn't remain bottled up and hidden from the external world. I have absolutely no problem with all of those people in the art world who thought him crap: he was just ahead of his time, which is not their fault but very much his misfortune, it just was as it was on the day.)
But on the other hand, today, devoid of commission-induced responsibility and expectations, there are indeed moments when I think to myself that somewhere along the line an image I've made now and then has touched the cheek of art.
But do I consider myself an artist? Possibly a wannabe.
Rob
-
I see collecting as a pejorative term. I get no thrill from forming a collection, the thrill lies with the individual pieces.
As for that baby with the crayon, well, he/she is displaying a level of self expression that will never be repeated. The ultimate artists. The only other people I've seen displaying similar levels of self expression were my wife's learning disabled clients.
-
I see collecting as a pejorative term. I get no thrill from forming a collection, the thrill lies with the individual pieces.
As for that baby with the crayon, well, he/she is displaying a level of self expression that will never be repeated. The ultimate artists. The only other people I've seen displaying similar levels of self expression were my wife's learning disabled clients.
I read your take on that baby as very true. And as totally nonsense, too. Achieving this state with words is an art.
-
Rob - you want to limit art. That's fine for you, but I don't think it's valid to do so for everyone else. Art might not be good art but if the intent is to create art, then art is created - good or bad.
-
I read your take on that baby as very true. And as totally nonsense, too. Achieving this state with words is an art.
Rob, define art.
;-)
-
Rob, define art.
;-)
I would, Keith, but being subjective it would soon become political, and you know where that would lead.
But I know it when I read, hear, see, smell, taste or run my fingers over it... we didn't get three leading senses for nothing, you know! They keep the world going round.
Rob
-
Rob - you want to limit art. That's fine for you, but I don't think it's valid to do so for everyone else. Art might not be good art but if the intent is to create art, then art is created - good or bad.
No, not at all. What I want to do is clarify relative values. I think it disgraceful that one might think it fair to put Dali and myself under the common label of artist.
Doing so is demeaning both to Dali and to any other real artist. It does nothing for me, since I know only too well my own graphic limitations. Applying the soubriquet to another mediocre talent is also ultimately harmful for the recipient who might well go on to harbour huge, misplaced illusions that will inevitably one day explode in his face.
Gotta stay real to survive.
Rob
-
Rob, your last two posts contradict each other.
Edward Weston's pepper might not be your cup of tea (it is mine) but it took no less vision or skill than someone using oils.
-
I would, Keith, but being subjective it would soon become political, and you know where that would lead.
But I know it when I read, hear, see, smell, taste or run my fingers over it... we didn't get three leading senses for nothing, you know! They keep the world going round.
Rob
And that's the problem, almost everything here is subjective or a matter of semantics.
Of course, as an artist I have my own subjective opinion, but it remains as just that, and an opinion of no particular importance.
http://www.tate.org.uk/search?type=artwork&aid=1244 (http://www.tate.org.uk/search?type=artwork&aid=1244)
-
And that's the problem, almost everything here is subjective or a matter of semantics.
Of course, as an artist I have my own subjective opinion, but it remains as just that, and an opinion of no particular importance.
http://www.tate.org.uk/search?type=artwork&aid=1244 (http://www.tate.org.uk/search?type=artwork&aid=1244)
This may be the time to consult Alexander McCall Smith's unforgettable Professor Herr Doctor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld at Germany's Institute of Romantic Philology, renowned of late for his for his ground-breaking treatise "Irregular Portuguese Verbs". But his competence lies far beyond that, with his new-found global fame bringing him to such disparate locals as Oxford, and Columbia. South America where he briefly became President through his heroic role in a burgeoning revolution "At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances".
His wisdom was revealed when he slipped out of the country in the dark of night soon after discovering that the average Columbian President's lifespan was an appallingly short three months. I can think of no more apt, courageous mediator to help sort the semantics here!
-
This may be the time to consult Alexander McCall Smith's unforgettable Professor Herr Doctor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld at Germany's Institute of Romantic Philology, renowned of late for his for his ground-breaking treatise "Irregular Portuguese Verbs". But his competence lies far beyond that, with his new-found global fame bringing him to such disparate locals as Oxford, and Columbia. South America where he briefly became President through his heroic role in a burgeoning revolution "At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances".
His wisdom was revealed when he slipped out of the country in the dark of night soon after discovering that the average Columbian President's lifespan was an appallingly short three months. I can think of no more apt, courageous mediator to help sort the semantics here!
Can you imagine the hoo-ha over the selection process for an adjudicator here on LuLa?
;)
-
Art is largely subjective (of course there are objective aspects regarding technique, for example), but in terms of artistic value it's almost entirely subjective. A couple of my most recently acquired artworks are from Nano Lopez (a couple of bronze Nanimals and associated "design prints"), Tim Yanke (a lithographic dragonfly), Slava Ilyayev (impressionist oil on canvas with brush, palette knife, brush), and Daniel Wall (intense impressionist, oil on canvas with a palette knife), and Donna Sharam (expressionist sublimated print on metal). All very different (even if the two impressionists fall into the same broad genre category).
We bought them because we like them and they hang or sit amongst other artworks, including inkjet prints of photos which I absolutely consider art - art in the vision of the shot, the composition, the lighting, the technical choices of shutter speed, ISO, aperture, and then the processing in Ps and the choice of substrate to print and so on. How is it less artistic to start with a photograph rather than a lump of clay or piece of canvas? All of them are bent to the will of the artist to represent something. Are all photos art? No. But if the intent of the photographer is to create art, who are we to say it isn't? We can say we don't like it, or that we think it's not very good - of course we can do that. But is a Nanimal, which can take 6 months to make, or an Ilyayev which can take a year because his technique requires drying of the paint for each layer before the next, more art than a canvas or a photo/photo-edit which take less time? Seems like an odd measure of artistic value - the effort involved. If someone is more talented, they may well require less effort than someone else - are they less of an artist? No way.
I'd wager that if we polled the users on this forum, a lot (most?) wouldn't like all of the art I bought most recently and mention above - some might even not like any of it, and perhaps one or two might enjoy it all. But the only people I'd say were wrong are those who might claim that some of it isn't art because it doesn't meet their definition. In all cases, the creators intended to create art, just as with the photos on my walls, too.
"the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination". If you think photos can't contain those aspects, then I have to wonder why you would ever take a photo!
-
Art is largely subjective (of course there are objective aspects regarding technique, for example), but in terms of artistic value it's almost entirely subjective. A couple of my most recently acquired artworks are from Nano Lopez (a couple of bronze Nanimals and associated "design prints"), Tim Yanke (a lithographic dragonfly), Slava Ilyayev (impressionist oil on canvas with brush, palette knife, brush), and Daniel Wall (intense impressionist, oil on canvas with a palette knife), and Donna Sharam (expressionist sublimated print on metal). All very different (even if the two impressionists fall into the same broad genre category).
We bought them because we like them and they hang or sit amongst other artworks, including inkjet prints of photos which I absolutely consider art - art in the vision of the shot, the composition, the lighting, the technical choices of shutter speed, ISO, aperture, and then the processing in Ps and the choice of substrate to print and so on. How is it less artistic to start with a photograph rather than a lump of clay or piece of canvas? All of them are bent to the will of the artist to represent something. Are all photos art? No. But if the intent of the photographer is to create art, who are we to say it isn't? We can say we don't like it, or that we think it's not very good - of course we can do that. But is a Nanimal, which can take 6 months to make, or an Ilyayev which can take a year because his technique requires drying of the paint for each layer before the next, more art than a canvas or a photo/photo-edit which take less time? Seems like an odd measure of artistic value - the effort involved. If someone is more talented, they may well require less effort than someone else - are they less of an artist? No way.
I'd wager that if we polled the users on this forum, a lot (most?) wouldn't like all of the art I bought most recently and mention above - some might even not like any of it, and perhaps one or two might enjoy it all. But the only people I'd say were wrong are those who might claim that some of it isn't art because it doesn't meet their definition. In all cases, the creators intended to create art, just as with the photos on my walls, too.
"the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination". If you think photos can't contain those aspects, then I have to wonder why you would ever take a photo!
Below, my "lump of clay" and final result: a single shot at med tele range through the cyan-tinted windows of a Rangoon trolley, a couple of years ago, but only lately worked into the current iteration. I saw the vaguely threatening contrast between a vulnerable young woman and the darker head in front, and my vision was to enhance the sense of danger by tight cropping, tone and color manipulation, while trying for the "bloom of youth" in her softened image. Edward Hopper came to mind while I was working...but I am no Hopper!
-
A good example of what I'm talking about, and definitely art! You had artistic intent when you took the shot and you applied imagination and creativity to get to where it is now, which is an image that evokes emotion and interest and consideration. I can't see how anyone could say it's not art.
-
Can you imagine the hoo-ha over the selection process for an adjudicator here on LuLa?
;)
Not a problem: the precedent was set in the Coffee Corner via self-nomination, followed by desperate sense of resignation from another, overarching stucture level... chore sub-contracting, if you will.
;-)
Rob
-
This may be the time to consult Alexander McCall Smith's unforgettable Professor Herr Doctor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld at Germany's Institute of Romantic Philology, renowned of late for his for his ground-breaking treatise "Irregular Portuguese Verbs". But his competence lies far beyond that, with his new-found global fame bringing him to such disparate locals as Oxford, and Columbia. South America where he briefly became President through his heroic role in a burgeoning revolution "At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances".
His wisdom was revealed when he slipped out of the country in the dark of night soon after discovering that the average Columbian President's lifespan was an appallingly short three months. I can think of no more apt, courageous mediator to help sort the semantics here!
Basically, I don't believe it's semantics at all: it's gut reaction and refusal to equate aspìration to art with its achievement, the real deal. Perhaps all of us have the desire to be abe to be creators, to produce some manifestation of art. It's painful to be denied.
It strikes me as a particulary modern trend, this: nobody can fail, everybody has equal talents, rights and expectations of greatness.
Until the advent of Swingin' London and the overload of imagery everywhere I, as a working professional photographer, had never met a fellow working pro who considered himself an "artist". We were either good at what we did and held our jobs, or we sucked, and discovered the employment exchange.
Like today's feminism, a popular perversion of what that word signifies, the rest of the world was fed, and took aboard, wholesale, US campus-inspired nonsense about gender equality, perversions of that, communism's credo of all things for all people, regardless of their abilities and even desires, one might conclude: consider the happy housewife condemned by her virulent sisters for not giving up family to slave in some goddam office instead. What we saw, if we kept our peepers open, was that self-determination and inner knowledge of ourselves was no longer valid: one had to subscribe to the new idea of superhuman capabilities apparently resident in us all, a belief that everyone was as capable of everthing as anyone else. Nobody had ever been that good, so the belief was bound to failure and the perpetuation of inner discontent due to dreaming the impossible dream.
It might be that this modern idea of what we are comes from too much affluence, too much leisure time to fill and the natural discontent with self that comes from realising that, really, there's not much there inside us when work and its needs are removed. I sense a sort of climaxing conceit in western mankind, a belief that we are almost gods, and that that damned Sun is but a waxy flap beyond.
Rob
-
Rob, I fear you're putting art on a pedestal and as something only the few can achieve. Fair enough, but that is your subjective opinion. Other folk, myself included, would have differing subjective opinions. Thankfully there will never be a definitive definition, which leaves us free to waste our time in pointless circular debate.
;-)
-
Rob, I fear you're putting art on a pedestal and as something only the few can achieve. Fair enough, but that is your subjective opinion. Other folk, myself included, would have differing subjective opinions. Thankfully there will never be a definitive definition, which leaves us free to waste our time in pointless circular debate.
;-)
But Keith, I do put it up on the highest of pedestals! It's why I admire those who have the gift so very much.
Rob
-
But Keith, I do put it up on the highest of pedestals! It's why I admire those who have the gift so very much.
Rob
Rob, rather than put it up on the highest pedestal I reserve that place for those people I see as deserving of the view. The vast majority of what I see described as art is piss poor and thoroughly undeserving.
-
Rob, rather than put it up on the highest pedestal I reserve that place for those people I see as deserving of the view. The vast majority of what I see described as art is piss poor and thoroughly undeserving.
No argument there! Yes, of course it's the people who make said art that deserve the view.
That vast majority of piss-poor "art" is where the semantic troubles begin. I find it impossible to look upon it as art, only as rubbish, and it's producer's pretensions in the same way. It's really why I agree with Sieff's dictum that there is no art, only artists. Which of course, is what my old tin drum has been banging out for days. Photography has a handful of artists (IMO, of course) who have made remarkable pictures, but in line with Sieff's observation, and giving it a further twist, that doesn't make the pictures art - it makes them great photographs. For me, the missing element is the manual dexterity: it's a machine that does the heavy lifting and so many are happy to think that if it's in focus, covers a zillion tones, then it's a great photograph.
Perhaps that's a thing that musicians have going for them: if they can walk into a room, sit down and make the place bounce, to me, that's talent and decidedly an art. On the other hand, as if to prove that even this litmus test is flawed, what about the concert situation, where the fat lady sings in theatrical Italian and my wish is to escape? Even as others may rise to their feet and clap for more?
And to think: musicians have nothing to show you unless they depend upon stagecraft, which they can't hit you with on the air - it's the music cuts it, or nothing. So yeah, I think it's talent that deserves the respect.
Rob
-
It strikes me as a particulary modern trend, this: nobody can fail, everybody has equal talents, rights and expectations of greatness.
I don't think it's the same by any means.
If your art is poor, you have less talent than someone who makes good art, and you will not be great and they may be. There's no attempt to say all art is the same or that by qualifying it as art it is rarified and perfect. A car is a car. Some are better than others, but all are cars. You're making art pretentious and denying it to all but a few who you think worthy.
-
There are photographers whose work resonates with me and IMO deserves to be called “art.” That’s really all I have to say on the subject. :)
I don’t take photos with any aspiration towards art. I do it to heighten my observing & discerning abilities, because I like to notice and be aware of things around me as I go through the day. Taking photos helps me keep myself sharp & aware, even sans camera. Of course, being a technogeek at heart, I also enjoy playing with the tools. It’s all fun and I have fun doing it. That’s enough.
I’ve found over the past couple years, concerning both photography and music, that younger folks are where it’s at. They’re not saddled with all our useless baggage. It’s fresh and new for them, and they respond to things as they are. As we once did before we became full of ourselves. IMO nostalgia is ultimately a fool’s endeavor. Time passes, things change. Today’s norms become tomorrow’s “What were they thinking?!” Today’s summit becomes tomorrow’s trench, and vice versa. And so it goes ‘til the universe runs outta juice. You and I will soon be forgotten, as we should.
-Dave-
-
I don't think it's the same by any means.
If your art is poor, you have less talent than someone who makes good art, and you will not be great and they may be. There's no attempt to say all art is the same or that by qualifying it as art it is rarified and perfect. A car is a car. Some are better than others, but all are cars. You're making art pretentious and denying it to all but a few who you think worthy.
Certainly not.
There need be nothing pretentious about art beyond artists' statements! (Or worse, their agent's.)
The few I think worthy; now there's a thought indeed... how come I can think of so many images that I think never could be worthy of anything at all beyond the generic title of photograph?
Like I said, before the late 50s - early 60s nowhere that I know of, outwith the US, thought photography art and/or exhibited it outwith camera clubs which probably didn't think it art either, just good or bad photography.
As suggested earlier, it strikes me as a particularly American thing to elevate almost anything to a higher level of hype than it naturally deserves or comfortably fits. Photography is one such victim, where a simple job or hobby has become messed up with all manner of nonsense to confuse, and otherwise cloud reality to the greater good of profit and commerce. And man, let's not forget ego!
I really am surprised at the idea of my denying somebody something; it's neither within my gift to give that credibilty nor to deny it; the reality is that the work is never more than a mechanically produced artifact: a photograph. Born of a camera, it bears that provenance forever. The best you can hope is that some guy with an artistic soul gets his hands on it and creates something interesting from what the camera captured. That is challenge enough, don't you think? And no, I'm not saying the camera makes the image; I'm saying the camera records. The same camera, in different hands, will do different things either better or worse.
Where the problem in just being a great or even simply a competent photographer? Why must so many crave being called artists? That, of itself, is relatively new: was a time artists were considered inferior to most tradesmen. I can give you a real life example: mine. When I moved to join my final school, I had already wanted to be a painter and, as a kid, was actually relatively good at drawing and watercolours. At the interview, when asked to state my subject preferences, art was first along with English. Unfortunately, the head honcho told my parental superior that that was silly, that I had the marks from the previous school to do much better than that, because art was a subject for those academically too poor to do "better" subjects. I think that was one of the biggest decisions ever made for me... Naturally, I didn't get to follow my love; apparently, it, art, was beneath me. Really? Funny how I devoted the rest of my post-scholastic life doing an ersatz version of it!
I have no problem living with the title photographer. Good photographer is better, and amazing would be really cool. Artist? Only in my dreams. Unfortunately, those gradings only matter within the client circle. Your wife or mother telling you you are wonderful cuts no mustard.
The best deal? Be a happy photographer, just doing what you wanna do. Leave the boxes for others who have nothing better to worry about than which one they may be thought to be inside. It's probably uncomfortably cramped in there, and be subject to violent disruptions you really can live without.
;-)
Rob
-
I don't understand either why some seem to be kind of obsessed to get that label "art" for their work (or even themselves).
I read a lot. This literature, both regarding "what is art" in general and "is this art" in a more particular view is enormous. Sometimes I find it entertaining to read about what others think about it and I get some new ideas out of it. But rather in a more philosophically sense. For myself I found it's rather inhibiting if I think of my work as art. Which probably shows, I'm too a victim of that myth (!), that art is something great and big, reserved for a few blessed. Anyway taking the "art" out of my mind and work did help a lot.
Also, I don't think one can "make art". Things (as you know, pretty much anything) _become_ art, in retrospect. It's a reception thing. So I don't think it's useful at all to think one can "create art". You just can't. If you put efforts into this, it's rather a marketing thing. Which might even work. But than the label "art" is rather just a buzzword like others. Maybe "art" really is only the key-buzzword for all the art-market.
So I agree, why not just stick to "photography"? It's much more fun.
All that said I agree, "collecting art" is a good thing. I just would call my own practice "collect pictures". And this is not just about ownership, but about looking at pictures. Only what you have in your mind is what you own. Having a comprehensive internal gallery in ones brain is a key for me. It need's to be refreshed and extended every now and than, that's where the actual pictures are needed. But basically it's all about what you remember and might got reminded of, when seeing and looking at the world. This is an exiting journey!
-
The place where I'd differ in the above is about consciously creating art in the moment.
I think most great painters did/do it every painting. It's right back to talent and ability. I can't imagine Bacon or Dali ever doing anything else but create pieces of eight art.
Unfortunately, I can't extend that faith to the latter day Picasso.
Rob
-
As an artist I'd be very suspicious about anyone setting out to consciously create art. Certainly I always set out to produce work and left others to worry over whether the resulting works were or were not art.
Moving on, I believe it is a conceit for anyone to confuse their own subjective opinion with fact.
-
As an artist I'd be very suspicious about anyone setting out to consciously create art. Certainly I always set out to produce work and left others to worry over whether the resulting works were or were not art.
Moving on, I believe it is a conceit for anyone to confuse their own subjective opinion with fact.
This latter is true; however, someone has to have the courage of his convictions or we'd never get anywhere.
Seems we never do, regardless of conviction, so maybe that long walk in the wilderness is a good idea.
-
There are photographers whose work resonates with me and IMO deserves to be called “art.” That’s really all I have to say on the subject. :)
I don’t take photos with any aspiration towards art. I do it to heighten my observing & discerning abilities, because I like to notice and be aware of things around me as I go through the day. Taking photos helps me keep myself sharp & aware, even sans camera. Of course, being a technogeek at heart, I also enjoy playing with the tools. It’s all fun and I have fun doing it. That’s enough.
I’ve found over the past couple years, concerning both photography and music, that younger folks are where it’s at. They’re not saddled with all our useless baggage. It’s fresh and new for them, and they respond to things as they are. As we once did before we became full of ourselves. IMO nostalgia is ultimately a fool’s endeavor. Time passes, things change. Today’s norms become tomorrow’s “What were they thinking?!” Today’s summit becomes tomorrow’s trench, and vice versa. And so it goes ‘til the universe runs outta juice. You and I will soon be forgotten, as we should.
-Dave-
Ne'er a truer word.
-
Rob C said:
It's really why I agree with Sieff's dictum that there is no art, only artists. <Snip> Which of course, is what my old tin drum has been banging out for days. Photography has a handful of artists (IMO, of course) who have made remarkable pictures, but in line with Sieff's observation, and giving it a further twist, that doesn't make the pictures art - it makes them great photographs. For me, the missing element is the manual dexterity: it's a machine that does the heavy lifting and so many are happy to think that if it's in focus, covers a zillion tones, then it's a great photograph.
More stuff I disagree with. I think there's art, but artists come and go, sometimes in the same person. Sometimes, a person who is not professional (or even amateur) artist will make a fine piece of art, essentially by accident. (And they'll usually do it only once -- the distinguishing thing about a professional artist is that he can do it repeatedly, although not everything he makes will be a masterpiece.)
Manual dexterity (IMO) doesn't mean much. That's just training. It's necessary (IMO) but it's the vision that makes art, not the training. I once knew a man who was both a distinguished artist and a distinguished art professor, who said that if you catch a kid before he's in his early 20s, and give him good serious training, he can learn to draw like Raphael. Not make art like Raphael, but draw like him. There are god-only-knows how many couch guitarists who can doodle the shit out of a guitar, but will never make it off the couch. There are all kinds of people who can draw *extremely* well -- entire schools of them, in fact -- who wouldn't know a piece of art if it jumped up and bit them on the ass.
So, in my opinion, you don't look at artists, you only look at the art. Georgia O'Keeffe is very important in the area where I live, but I have great doubts about her art. Most of it, to me, looks like possible postage stamps, or college art projects. But O'Keeffe herself was a beautiful, independent, sexy woman and a very distinguished looking older woman who became a role model for much of what is fashionable in today's culture. And it was her presence and personality (IMO) which brought her fame as an artist. The art itself, not so much. That's another reason why I like Caponigro's "Running White Deer" so much. I don't know shit about Caponigro, but I know art when I see it, and I've got a piece of it hanging on my bedroom wall.
-
"Photography has a handful of artists (IMO, of course) who have made remarkable pictures, but in line with Sieff's observation, and giving it a further twist, that doesn't make the pictures art - it makes them great photographs. For me, the missing element is the manual dexterity: it's a machine that does the heavy lifting."
In a world before Photoshop Jerry N Uelsmann (http://www.uelsmann.net/) proved that photography can be art.
Cheers,
-
There's a sense, in this thread, of folks being very close but also as distant from a common ground as ever - not that one could reasonably expect a changing of minds, one hastens to add!
John's "but I know art when I see it, and I've got a piece of it hanging on my bedroom wall" is as good a definition as any, and perhaps the most commonly shared, which in an essentially subjective situation, is the valid one - no?
His further "More stuff I disagree with. I think there's art, but artists come and go, sometimes in the same person. Sometimes, a person who is not professional (or even amateur) artist will make a fine piece of art, essentially by accident. (And they'll usually do it only once -- the distinguishing thing about a professional artist is that he can do it repeatedly, although not everything he makes will be a masterpiece) - italics mine - touches broadly the same nerve as I think I have isolated on the text of page 95 of my recent little venture in desk-bound masochism:
https://ssanse.weebly.com/issue-2.html
(eighth row down, last-on-the-right thumbnail)
it's about exposure to an "artist's" oeuvre over a protracted period that confirms or denies the belief in their artworthiness (neat little neologism for the day - I think).
But insofar as music, graphic arts, writing and most of these things go, I believe they have to be inborn. Of course a teacher can help to bring them to a more refined level, but without the seed already there, even dormant if you will, nothing grows, probably not even the weeds of a poor art. If that's to be labeled with tones of elitism, then so be it; I see it as glaringly obvious.
All of which, of course (and as usual), takes us on a long and interesting journey beyond the scope of the original premise of the thread. Which is one reason that I like sites that are not too rigidly controlled: they can lead to places just as interesting and unexectedly different.
Rob