Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: Rob C on February 01, 2018, 06:10:37 am
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It sometimes seems to me that photography has been hi-jacked, that both the professional practitioner, as the amateur, have been thrust into a world where a photograph isn't any longer just a photograph, a pretty (or otherwise) picture, but a portent, a harbinger of things to come, a poisoned dart dashing at speed to the bubble of self.
Why can't images simply be the way each person manages to do what he/she is trying to do? Why is it a required factor in the summation of an oeuvre that it be cut up, diagnosed by witch doctors and consequently consigned to a particular basket or drawer, never again free to be simply what it was as that button was pressed?
Thinking about this was started again, today, by the e-mail I received from a publisher punting a new book. I enclose a link to the item that caused me to write this note.
https://www.damianieditore.com/en-US/product/661
One of the problems with this sort of written material is that it is infectious; it normalises its approach and many of us suddenly pause and realise that we, too, have been caught up in the game.
Sometimes I wonder whether it is an industry born but to perpetuate itself, or a true service to mankind. Jeanloup Sieff had his firm views on the matter, able to mock whilst managing both to enjoy and to use the benefits that the system could bestow once one was an accredited member deemed worthy of its attention.
Rob
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That's exactly why I stopped subscribing to Aperture after many years.
Eric
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Rob, I enjoy your high moral ground, but where does calendar photography fit in?
Something to think about,
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That's exactly why I stopped subscribing to Aperture after many years.
Eric
Interesting, Eric. I did the same thing. I also did it with Poetry magazine after many years of subscribing. I think both publications were hit with delusions of grandeur. At least they were hit with idiocy.
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Rob, I enjoy your high moral ground, but where does calendar photography fit in?
Something to think about,
It fits in a section of the commercial field.
There is no moral high ground, only care with style. It's purely commercial and has nothing to do with art-speak which is what my beef here is about: the fact that when the curatorial world gets its paws onto something it changes it and hides what it is under loads of pretentious guff. I buy the odd monograph now and again, and some do the compulsory intros quite well, whereas others trowel it on so thickly one has to skip and move on to the pix, returning later when the mind is reinforced and read to cope with it all.
It is, of course, but a mirror of the typical artist's statement that, often, has the grace to be silly enough to allow one a little giggle.
:-)
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Eric, Russ -
I think we feel much the same because we've been around the block often enough to have seen pretty much all that there is to be seen. Familiarity doesn't necessarily breed contempt, but it does sow the seeds of a tiny bit of that magical sense of proportion we need to get us safely through life. I think this might be illustrated to a degree by the fact that where we have a favourite movie star or musician, much of the emotion derives from days of impressionable youth, whereas later "stars" can't make us odopt the rosy tinteds quite as shamelessly.
Rob
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Interesting juxtaposition of the second listed merchandise (left hand list) from the supplier of the book discussed above!
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Interesting juxtaposition of the second listed merchandise (left hand list) from the supplier of the book discussed above!
Indeed, but they are referring to a publication that is supposed to be uber arty!
However, it may really amount to nothing more than a stiff, uncomfortable version of the generally understood occupant of that tile.
:-)
Rob
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Categorizing is something humans do by default. It's a fundamental part of how we make sense of the world. (It's also a way of keeping all the stuff we'd rather not deal with at arm's length.) We put stuff in boxes, literally and otherwise. We put each other in boxes, literally and otherwise. No surprise IMO that we do the same with photographs and photographers.
Categorizing is also a short-term phenomenon. The categories we create will mostly disappear along with us, to be replaced with new ones created by new people. So no need to fuss over it much, I think.
-Dave-
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It fits in a section of the commercial field.
There is no moral high ground, only care with style. It's purely commercial and has nothing to do with art-speak which is what my beef here is about: the fact that when the curatorial world gets its paws onto something it changes it and hides what it is under loads of pretentious guff.
I am reminded of a prank I once read about. A group of "expert" wine tasters were brought together and asked to give their knowledgeable impressions of some medium quality table wines. The joke was the hosts had slipped in a few bottles of some infamous "bum wines" into the mix. ;D The "experts" dutifully recorded their impressions of these as "Fruity, with a hint of ancient oak" etc. I was left with the impression that the whole California wine tasting culture was a bit of a willing hoax.
Kent in SD
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... Why can't images simply be the way each person manages to do what he/she is trying to do? Why is it a required factor in the summation of an oeuvre that it be cut up, diagnosed by witch doctors and consequently consigned to a particular basket or drawer, never again free to be simply what it was as that button was pressed?..l
If a picture is worth a thousand words, someone has to put those words on paper, no? ;)
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If a picture is worth a thousand words, someone has to put those words on paper, no? ;)
Only if you need to justify an MFA degree, Slobodan. ;)
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If a picture is worth a thousand words, someone has to put those words on paper, no? ;)
Those damned apples and oranges get everywhere!
:-)
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Another baffling (baffling for me that is) work from the world of photo art:
http://www.lafabrica.com/en/noticias_en/aruna-canevascini-wins-the-2017-bookk-dummy-awardwith-her-work-villa-argentina/
Tony :-\
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Another baffling (baffling for me that is) work from the world of photo art:
http://www.lafabrica.com/en/noticias_en/aruna-canevascini-wins-the-2017-bookk-dummy-awardwith-her-work-villa-argentina/
Tony :-\
Tony, it's another manifestation of the crap that surrounds the world of "art" photography. How much more simple and probably honest the world of commerce, where if your work sucked you were out in the street on your ass.
In my mind, it really doesn't matter what these curators are presented with because their employment is writing and pushing whatever it is that they are handed. It could be a heap of dung or a work by Richard Avedon or Sarah Moon, and it would make no difference: the verbiage would be in the same key. They do what they are paid to do. For decades I subscribed to the BJP, guilty party in all of this, and towards the end of the time I bought the magazine they had a feature every week with photographs, mainly from students, that for all the world were made during the process of winding on your film to No1.
These zones are best avoided in order to prevent indigestion.
Rob
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Not long ago a heap of dung was an important part of a museum "installation" put forward as art. Then there was "Piss Christ." When you're successfully putting excrement forward as art you're definitely a "curator."
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Not long ago a heap of dung was an important part of a museum "installation" put forward as art. Then there was "Piss Christ." When you're successfully putting excrement forward as art you're definitely a "curator."
Yes, I think it was elephant dung, which at least lends it a touch of the exotic; in extremis, it can be dried and used as fuel.
Then there was the infamous pile of bricks a few years prior to that. But hey, at least the bricks could be used as part of the foundations of a new museum somewhere, so in a sense, enabling a kind of perpetuation of the status quo. Creative thinking.
Rob
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Before you continue making fun of elephant dung ;)
https://www.amazon.com/Mr-Ellie-Pooh-Elephant-313-855301003546/dp/B0055QYK00
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There's more than one way to read the word "Dummy" in the phrase "Book Dummy Award." ;)
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Before you continue making fun of elephant dung ;)
https://www.amazon.com/Mr-Ellie-Pooh-Elephant-313-855301003546/dp/B0055QYK00
So, an elephant is about 140k, plus ou moins, full of retentive shit very day? Seems perfect mining material for galleristas, then. Amazing how there are now "facts" and figures for pretty much everything. I wonder who sits looking out of the window, dreaming up these "must do" calibration situations for themself.
Rob
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ROB! "Themself?" Don't tell me you're turning PC.
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I wonder who sits looking out of the window, dreaming up these "must do" calibration situations for themself.
Rob
Out of work or retired mathematicians maybe? But not me. I much prefer snaps to statistics.
Eric
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ROB! "Themself?" Don't tell me you're turning PC.
Russ, what can I say? It even felt awkward as I typed it...
:-)
Rob
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A couple years ago I wrote a review for Amazon on Katherine Hoffman's book: Stieglitz: A Beginning Light: The book was published by Yale university of all places.
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The word, "Pedestrian" hardly captures the quality of the writing in this book. "Wooden" comes closer, but the English language doesn't seem to have a word that adequately can describe how wretched Ms. Hoffman's plodding account really is.
The book's only, barely redeeming features are some early, though not very well printed Stieglitz photographs, but many seem to be missing. Ms. Hoffman will go on and on about a Stieglitz photograph, describing the "triangular relationships" produced by this feature and the "horizontal orientation" that produces a sensation of "vastness" in the viewer. But when you riffle through the pages to see whether or not you get the "sensations" she's describing, you find that the photograph isn't in the book. In addition, the text seems to have been bowdlerized by the Yale University Press editors. For instance, on page 204 she quotes Stieglitz as writing, "On the contrary, the individual is free to follow their own light,..." I don't believe for a minute that Stieglitz, writing at the turn of the twientieth century, made that kind of grammatical error. This is PC at its worst!
What does it mean to be a "professor of Fine Arts?" This book more or less bears out the old saying that "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."
All in all, this is a very disappointing book. It should have been much better than it is.
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If a picture is worth a thousand words, someone has to put those words on paper, no? ;)
Or, "As the Chinese say, 1001 words is worth more than a picture." - John McCarthy (http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/sayings.html)
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Or, "As the Chinese say, 1001 words is worth more than a picture." - John McCarthy (http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/sayings.html)
Hmm. The Chinese even write backwards. ;)
Kent in SD
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Hmm. The Chinese even write backwards. ;)
Kent in SD
It accounts for their economy; in a way, that underlines Slobodan's credo. But, thinking in terms of the numbers, perhaps they do all think alike and it's the rest of the world that thinks differently. I never was a numbers person; I never paid much attention to my numerical perspectives as I always found them wanting.
In the French crime series Engrenages, a judge goes for a medical/mind check and the guy asks him to start at 100 and subtact 7 every step backwards. I easily got to 93, but after that, I had to wait until the thing was over and I finally realised that, instead of subtracting 7, I should subtract 10 and then add 3. That was much easier to do. However, I got impossibly bored long before I reached the end of that particular mental process; bored, and under self-imposed stress. No wonder I though I'd rather be a photographer: the job requirement is always obvious!