Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => But is it Art? => Topic started by: JNB_Rare on November 19, 2018, 10:19:18 am
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8 Artists at the Paris Photo Fair Who Show Where Photography Is Going? (The question mark is mine)
The world’s largest photography show features works that go far beyond traditional two-dimensional prints. Some were even made without a camera.
NY Times Article with sample images (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/09/arts/design/paris-photo.html?fbclid=IwAR2FD3Zmy3qkuTAN1Jy27GfqPvu2lb92jRpC1JuZmM18zUFCY44iIbgJUl4)
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Not too impressed with any of them, but it's not entirely their fault.
Perhaps the problem that we, all of us, face is in the oversupply of imagery, as one of the photographers remarked.
Digital may well be responsible for the massive cellphone level of snapping, but the thing also touches photography that considers itself more ambitious than that. When you reach the point that everything can be done on a computer, you lose the sense of achievement that doing it the hard traditional film route gave. Was a time you were obliged to think ahead a little bit, not in the sense of drawing sketches - as some claim to be their MO - but in having at least a fairly clear idea of the type of image you wanted to produce. Lose direction and, guess what: you find yourself lost.
I think many of us have become a little bit lost.
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I like the one of the guy ironing on his rooftop lawn.
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Not too impressed with any of them, but it's not entirely their fault.
Perhaps the problem that we, all of us, face is in the oversupply of imagery, as one of the photographers remarked.
Digital may well be responsible for the massive cellphone level of snapping, but the thing also touches photography that considers itself more ambitious than that. When you reach the point that everything can be done on a computer, you lose the sense of achievement that doing it the hard traditional film route gave Was a time you were obliged to think ahead a little bit, not in the sense of drawing sketches - as some claim to be their MO - but in having at least a fairly clear idea of the type of image you wanted to produce. Lose direction and, guess what: you find yourself lost.
I think many of us have become a little bit lost.
This is entirely why I don't want to become an illustrator with a camera.
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This is entirely why I don't want to become an illustrator with a camera.
When I was young and not yet a photographer, I used to look in awe at those illustrations that acompanied the love stories in women's magazines. How I wished that I could create faces like that! Even when I did become a snapper I would look at the Vargas images in Playboy and dream of those skills.
I can never quite rid myself of the feeling that those who do it with pencil and brush are the real artists, the rest of us just kinda cheap fakers of it...
;-)
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When I was young and not yet a photographer, I used to look in awe at those illustrations that acompanied the love stories in women's magazines. How I wished that I could create faces like that! Even when I did become a snapper I would look at the Vargas images in Playboy and dream of those skills.
I can never quite rid myself of the feeling that those who do it with pencil and brush are the real artists, the rest of us just kinda cheap fakers of it...
;-)
The point is, Rob, I did it with pencil and brush for most of my career, but have no interest in wearing the illustrator hat when using a camera.
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The images in the OP article are a combination of photographers trying to create art, and artists using photography as a medium. Interesting in any case, and a welcome addition to the traditional.
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The images in the OP article are a combination of photographers trying to create art, and artists using photography as a medium. Interesting in any case, and a welcome addition to the traditional.
Agreed.
I particularly admired the series “Here or Elsewhere” by Lisa Sartorio.
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Interesting work, expanding the field. My favourite was the last one - Cai Dongdong, “Fountain”.
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I particularly admired the series “Here or Elsewhere” by Lisa Sartorio.
Me too.
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Not too impressed with any of them, but it's not entirely their fault.
I agree, Rob, especially with the word "entirely."
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I can never quite rid myself of the feeling that those who do it with pencil and brush are the real artists, the rest of us just kinda cheap fakers of it...
Me, too Rob. What takes them months, I do in 1/500th of a second at F8. Guilt ensues.
I disagree with your contention that the feeling of accomplishment is diminished by digital photographic techniques, either in the field or in front of the computer. I've accomplished more photographically with electrons than I ever did with Dektol and sodium thiosulfate.
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When I was young and not yet a photographer, I used to look in awe at those illustrations that acompanied the love stories in women's magazines. How I wished that I could create faces like that! Even when I did become a snapper I would look at the Vargas images in Playboy and dream of those skills.
I can never quite rid myself of the feeling that those who do it with pencil and brush are the real artists, the rest of us just kinda cheap fakers of it...
;-)
Hi Rob,
The woman's magazines was where I got my start as an illustrator. My very first job, while I was still a student, was for McCall magazine. A double page spread. It was 1976 and I was 20 years old. My career was launched. It was a Magical time for me.
Peter
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Hi Rob,
The woman's magazines was where I got my start as an illustrator. My very first job, while I was still a student, was for McCall magazine. A double page spread. It was 1976 and I was 20 years old. My career was launched. It was a Magical time for me.
Peter
That I can well believe!
I started ten years before you, and '66 was magical for me. Best of all, it was at a time of rebirth for Britain, what with music, the fashions and all the rest of it. Looking back at it today, it just seems like a brief dream of emancipation. Maybe we all knew it wasn't going to last, that something bleak and grey would come along and kill the hell out of it. For many it was AIDS and for many more the economy and the return to power of the mundane and flat. And the way to prove that to oneself is to look back at what one wore, and ask whether one could walk out into the street wearing those flamboyant clothes today? The belief is gone, like a lost religion.
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ParisPhoto is intimidatingly big - almost too big, and definitely too full of luvvies. This year and last the photographer I liked best was someone I'd never heard of before coming across her work there - Nelli Palomaki (https://www.nellipalomaki.com)
(https://static.wixstatic.com/media/e2b65d_749a723317f9488bab4243569149356d~mv2_d_2000_1650_s_2.jpg/v1/fill/w_912,h_754,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01/palomaki_myrsky_and_kukka.jpg)
My own feeble effort attached (maybe)