Luminous Landscape Forum

The Art of Photography => Street Showcase => Topic started by: amolitor on January 05, 2019, 06:01:38 pm

Title: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 05, 2019, 06:01:38 pm
Josh has put up an interview with a street photographer friend of his from Toronto, one Adam Krawesky.

What say ye, street fans?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: RSL on January 05, 2019, 07:49:00 pm
Sorry, Andrew. I don't know where to go to read the interview. You didn't tell us.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 05, 2019, 07:57:36 pm
On the front page! I admit, I just mentioned it in the title which one tends to  gloss over.

Here is the direct link. I don't think you even need to be a subscriber to read it?

https://luminous-landscape.com/profile-looking-for-light-with-adam-krawesky/
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: John R on January 06, 2019, 01:45:35 am
I like the work overall. What strikes me is the light seems to be perfectly suited to each subject within each image. I think Adam Krawjesky makes reference to light being his primary consideration, and this shows. Good overall balance of elements within the images. And many compositions seem to be well considered while still appearing spontaneous. I would agree, there is good rhythm and play of light in the images. And the work is interesting, not just some random looking images of urban street elements!!!

JR
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 06, 2019, 04:19:54 am
I like this a lot.
This is an intellectual approach to street Photography.
The elements are not only graphically placed but as example the humans are placed according to the photographer humanist insights.
The images are nicely layered, light, composition, color, division of the surface, timing.
Great work.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 06, 2019, 04:34:02 am
I must have ice in my veins.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: TommyWeir on January 06, 2019, 04:58:07 am
Interesting piece and work, enjoyed that, I'm liking this new approach here.   Adam has an unusual site with other interesting photographs, it doesn't appear to have been updated in a while but social media can do to a lot of photographers.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 06, 2019, 05:20:30 am
I must have ice in my veins.

You don’t have ice in your veins, Rob.

I think I recognize a pattern in what you like and what not.
Am I correct to say you are more into romanticism (in its broadest form) as visual language?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 06, 2019, 05:48:32 am
I like the work overall. What strikes me is the light seems to be perfectly suited to each subject within each image. I think Adam Krawjesky makes reference to light being his primary consideration, and this shows. Good overall balance of elements within the images. And many compositions seem to be well considered while still appearing spontaneous. I would agree, there is good rhythm and play of light in the images. And the work is interesting, not just some random looking images of urban street elements!!!

JR

+1

It seems a good play and rhythm on light and color, more so than an emphasise on storytelling narrative.

From these few images though, this one stands out for me. Utterly powerful streetphotography.

(https://luminous-landscape.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Adam5.jpg)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 06, 2019, 05:54:07 am
+1

It seems a good play and rhythm on light and color, more so than an emphasise on storytelling narrative.

From these few images though, this one stands out for me. Utterly powerful streetphotography.

(https://luminous-landscape.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Adam5.jpg)

I sometimes call this: stills of life.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: brianrybolt on January 06, 2019, 06:39:09 am
I must have ice in my veins.


Get a few hot water bottles.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 06, 2019, 07:12:24 am
You don’t have ice in your veins, Rob.

I think I recognize a pattern in what you like and what not.
Am I correct to say you are more into romanticism (in its broadest form) as visual language?


Romantic, as against brutal, and without positive visual emotion?

However, some street turns me on whereas much of it seems, to me, not to be about street at all, but simply about wanting something to be about street even when it's not.

Quite why anyone would imagine that a sunny picture of a person with a deformity is street beggars belief - for me. I would never have felt I wanted to make such an image and outwith medical phography, I think it gratuitous and invasive, whether or not the subject is willing. The exhibiting is as bad as the shooting, if not worse. But hey, I'm old-fashioned and don't understand the anything goes concept.

When in doubt, my mind goes to Klein's New York, and then I am sure of my ground again, and also about the fraudulent.

Rob
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 06, 2019, 07:14:48 am

Get a few hot water bottles.

I have an electric blanket, and the bed is like an oven when I get in, but my feet and hands remain fozen. Raynaud's

;-(
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 06, 2019, 07:20:19 am

Romantic, as against brutal, and without positive visual emotion?

However, some street turns me on whereas much of it seems, to me, not to be about street at all, but simply about wanting something to be about street even when it's not.

Quite why anyone would imagine that a sunny picture of a person with a deformity is street beggars belief - for me. I would never have felt I wanted to make such an image and outwith medical phography, I think it gratuitous and invasive, whether or not the subject is willing. The exhibiting is as bad as the shooting, if not worse. But hey, I'm old-fashioned and don't understand the anything goes concept.

When in doubt, my mind goes to Klein's New York, and then I am sure of my ground again, and also about the fraudulent.

Rob

I mean romantic as in romantic, not as the only choice against brutalism. Their is more between earth and sky than only air.
Different is not synonym to fraudulent.
It is good you say for yourself you are old fashioned. I guess we all come to that point. It’s just a matter of time.



.

Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: RSL on January 06, 2019, 08:36:06 am
I’m  with Rob on this one. To make a show out of somebody’s deformity sort of eliminates the shooter as a serious street photographer. This is a shooter going for a shock reaction.

But the other thing that bothers me about this guy is the fact that there’s a kind of un-photographic stasis in all his pictures. It’s almost as if he’s trying to do Edward Hopper with a camera, and not managing it.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 06, 2019, 09:14:57 am
I am also not seeing it. These pictures strike me as exactly the kind of thing hipsters shoot as "street", graphically pretty strong, but from a safe distance and generally there's not much going on. They appeal because of the graphical qualities, the strong color, and because of timing - the shutter opens at the top of the jump, the instant the foot steps off the curb, and so on.

They're appealing pictures, for sure. But this stuff is pretty easy to knock out, and doesn't say much about anything.

As you can see from Adam's web site, the main difficulty with taking these photos is finding an uncluttered frame to put people in to. Cities are very inconveniently cluttered. When you can find an uncluttered wall with whatever light you favor in play, just stand there and shoot everyone who goes by.

Title: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 06, 2019, 09:52:24 am
I am am also not seeing it. These pictures strike me as exactly the kind of thing hipsters shoot as "street", graphically pretty strong, but from a safe distance and generally there's not much going on. They appeal because of the graphical qualities, the strong color, and because of timing - the shutter opens at the top of the jump, the instant the foot steps off the curb, and so on.

They're appealing pictures, for sure. But this stuff is pretty easy to knock out, and doesn't say much about anything.

As you can see from Adam's web site, the main difficulty with taking these photos is finding an uncluttered frame to put people in to. Cities are very inconveniently cluttered. When you can find an uncluttered wall with whatever light you favor in play, just stand there and shoot everyone who goes by.

It is not that easy, Amolitor.

What you call ‘safe distance’ is in fact ‘observation’

Question:

Does you description also apply on this picture of a famous hipster?

(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20190106/c267ecea41a62107eaff99fd3604bb9a.jpg)

You do have a point about the style of street you are describing, check out the ‘esp’ group at Flickr.

https://www.flickr.com/groups/extremestreet/ (https://www.flickr.com/groups/extremestreet/)

 But there are differences in this kind of catchy street Photography.
One image will be only the trick, and the other will carry a story, be it literally or abstract.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 06, 2019, 10:01:08 am
There is a great deal more going on in the HCB picture than in Krawesky's pictures. I could go on at length, but there are already millions of words of analysis of Behind the Train Station out there already, waiting to be read.

It is not merely the "safe distance" that is the trouble. One can make good pictures from any distance. The point is that when you shove "safe distance" in with a few other properties, you get a genre that is lightweight, appealing, and easy.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 06, 2019, 10:09:47 am
There is a great deal more going on in the HCB picture than in Krawesky's pictures. I could go on at length, but there are already millions of words of analysis of Behind the Train Station out there already, waiting to be read.

It is not merely the "safe distance" that is the trouble. One can make good pictures from any distance. The point is that when you shove "safe distance" in with a few other properties, you get a genre that is lightweight, appealing, and easy.

Nono, Amolitor, not the generic reference to what is already said about this HCB picture. That’s to easy.

What is going on in this picture of HCB, and leave out the projection, please.
The issue is that there is a lot to read, but much less to see. (Blasphemy, I know)

If the same willingness to see would be applied to contemporary street Photography, men could fill another million of pages.

If we don’t see it (I often have the same reaction) it is because we look with expectations.

Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: faberryman on January 06, 2019, 10:14:52 am
Meh to the article; meh to the images. This is not content worth paying for.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: OmerV on January 06, 2019, 10:25:49 am
I'm glad this work isn't parroting Klein, Frank, Levitt, etc. Hell would be the inability to leave the past, plus romanticizing what was is as corrosive as rust. And photographing people with deformities is not novel or new.

Adam Krawesky's work has a quietness that makes it contemplative, a respite from the freneticism of much public photography, past and present.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 06, 2019, 10:29:51 am
HCB's photograph embraces the clutter of the city and works with it, graphically, in a way that at most one of Krawesky's does, rather than carving it all out of the frame to simplify the problem of taking a picture.

HCB's photograph blurs the motion of the man, abstracting him into everyman. In to, it turns out, a representation of all the people who were making that same jump that day, but we don't know that offhand. We do see the abstract figure leaping.

HCB's photograph shows the man leaping to... somewhere? Nowhere? We don't know. We are free to guess, to extrapolate, to imagine, to spin allegories.

HCB's photograph distills a real event, albeit a tiny one, to its essence, places it in a frame that feels realistic by embracing the clutter of the city, and abstracts that event into something we are free to enlarge in our own minds.

Krawesky's pictures, on those rare occasions when anything at all is happening, feel unreal because he tends to crop out the clutter, and abstract nothing at all, leaving nowhere for us to go. We fall back the appeal of graphics and the color, and that is about it.

There are bits and pieces. The woman with her hair blowing over her eyes strikes me as having an element of something, but the rest of the frame is just a mess. The man standing low down by the window with LINC printed on it feels more realistic, more urban-cluttered, but it is utterly static. Nothing is happening, where do I go with this? The boy leaping for the sign feels like something. Maybe it wants to be an expression of childhood or something, but somehow there is a sterility to the frame that sabotages that -- all that empty space.

And so on. There are flashes of something here and there, but nothing comes together.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 06, 2019, 10:46:01 am
HCB's photograph embraces the clutter of the city and works with it, graphically, in a way that at most one of Krawesky's does, rather than carving it all out of the frame to simplify the problem of taking a picture.

HCB's photograph blurs the motion of the man, abstracting him into everyman. In to, it turns out, a representation of all the people who were making that same jump that day, but we don't know that offhand. We do see the abstract figure leaping.

HCB's photograph shows the man leaping to... somewhere? Nowhere? We don't know. We are free to guess, to extrapolate, to imagine, to spin allegories.

HCB's photograph distills a real event, albeit a tiny one, to its essence, places it in a frame that feels realistic by embracing the clutter of the city, and abstracts that event into something we are free to enlarge in our own minds.

Krawesky's pictures, on those rare occasions when anything at all is happening, feel unreal because he tends to crop out the clutter, and abstract nothing at all, leaving nowhere for us to go. We fall back the appeal of graphics and the color, and that is about it.

There are bits and pieces. The woman with her hair blowing over her eyes strikes me as having an element of something, but the rest of the frame is just a mess. The man standing low down by the window with LINC printed on it feels more realistic, more urban-cluttered, but it is utterly static. Nothing is happening, where do I go with this? The boy leaping for the sign feels like something. Maybe it wants to be an expression of childhood or something, but somehow there is a sterility to the frame that sabotages that -- all that empty space.

And so on. There are flashes of something here and there, but nothing comes together.


I appreciate to take the time and effort to tell your story about the HCB, thanks Amolitor.

There is a huge forgiveness in the reading of the HCB picture and a lack of it in the reading of Krawesky’s.
It’s a lot projection I’m afraid. And a lot of after talk. I would not exclude the possibility your ‘abstract every man’ would be tack sharp if HCB had faster film at hands.

I got your point about the clutter of the city. That’s a fair point.

I remember a comment on a series I made in Paris, one suggestion was to go back and retake the shots and avoid the clutter that exposed the era. Here is the glitch, some wants to see the city as is, but the expectation is to see as it was. That is not possible.

For me there is nothing wrong to esthetically make different choices and exclude clutter of time, it is not that easy. 




Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 06, 2019, 10:47:49 am
If HCB had had faster film, or if the slot in the fence he shot through had been less fortuitously placed, the pictures would all have been junk and (I suppose) he wouldn't have published them.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Martin Kristiansen on January 06, 2019, 10:48:21 am
What I find incredibly difficult to understand with photographers criticizing the work of others is how many photographers seem to think that other photographers should subscribe to their vision. I think that most photographers are anchored in a way of seeing that they believe to be an objective reality that we all must see and share in and if that viewpoint isn’t reflected in the work then the work is deemed to be a failure, wrong in some way.

If a photographer shows us a city scene that appears sterile, unwelcoming, constructed of rigid geometric shapes then perhaps that is that photographers vision of it. Perhaps that is how he sees it, how it makes him feel, what he wishes to communicate. Alienation, people as intruders, transient.

How about we look at the work of others and rather ask, what is this person trying to say. How do they see things. Could I perhaps learn something, add something to my visual vocabulary?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 06, 2019, 10:54:20 am
What I find incredibly difficult to understand with photographers criticizing the work of others is how many photographers seem to think that other photographers should subscribe to their vision. I think that most photographers are anchored in a way of seeing that they believe to be an objective reality that we all must see and share in and if that viewpoint isn’t reflected in the work then the work is deemed to be a failure, wrong in some way.

If a photographer shows us a city scene that appears sterile, unwelcoming, constructed of rigid geometric shapes then perhaps that is that photographers vision of it. Perhaps that is how he sees it, how it makes him feel, what he wishes to communicate. Alienation, people as intruders, transient.

How about we look at the work of others and rather ask, what is this person trying to say. How do they see things. Could I perhaps learn something, add something to my visual vocabulary?

Exactly.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: OmerV on January 06, 2019, 10:58:17 am
What I find incredibly difficult to understand with photographers criticizing the work of others is how many photographers seem to think that other photographers should subscribe to their vision. I think that most photographers are anchored in a way of seeing that they believe to be an objective reality that we all must see and share in and if that viewpoint isn’t reflected in the work then the work is deemed to be a failure, wrong in some way.

If a photographer shows us a city scene that appears sterile, unwelcoming, constructed of rigid geometric shapes then perhaps that is that photographers vision of it. Perhaps that is how he sees it, how it makes him feel, what he wishes to communicate. Alienation, people as intruders, transient.

How about we look at the work of others and rather ask, what is this person trying to say. How do they see things. Could I perhaps learn something, add something to my visual vocabulary?

Agreed.

Perhaps expectation born out of conditioning.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: stamper on January 06, 2019, 11:01:50 am
What I find incredibly difficult to understand with photographers criticizing the work of others is how many photographers seem to think that other photographers should subscribe to their vision. I think that most photographers are anchored in a way of seeing that they believe to be an objective reality that we all must see and share in and if that viewpoint isn’t reflected in the work then the work is deemed to be a failure, wrong in some way.

If a photographer shows us a city scene that appears sterile, unwelcoming, constructed of rigid geometric shapes then perhaps that is that photographers vision of it. Perhaps that is how he sees it, how it makes him feel, what he wishes to communicate. Alienation, people as intruders, transient.

How about we look at the work of others and rather ask, what is this person trying to say. How do they see things. Could I perhaps learn something, add something to my visual vocabulary?

You have written what I have been thinking for a long time but better than I could possibly express.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 06, 2019, 11:03:10 am
What I find incredibly difficult to understand with photographers criticizing the work of others is how many photographers seem to think that other photographers should subscribe to their vision. I think that most photographers are anchored in a way of seeing that they believe to be an objective reality that we all must see and share in and if that viewpoint isn’t reflected in the work then the work is deemed to be a failure, wrong in some way.

If a photographer shows us a city scene that appears sterile, unwelcoming, constructed of rigid geometric shapes then perhaps that is that photographers vision of it. Perhaps that is how he sees it, how it makes him feel, what he wishes to communicate. Alienation, people as intruders, transient.

How about we look at the work of others and rather ask, what is this person trying to say. How do they see things. Could I perhaps learn something, add something to my visual vocabulary?

The logical conclusion of this is that there's no such thing as good or bad, truth or beauty, it's all just subjective. This is the postmodern experiment, an experiment which I consider to be an abject failure. A position many a successful academic would fight me on.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 06, 2019, 11:03:46 am
If HCB had had faster film, or if the slot in the fence he shot through had been less fortuitously placed, the pictures would all have been junk and (I suppose) he wouldn't have published them.

That’s interesting. It brings us to the question: How far are photographers a product of their gear, but that’s the start of a flame war in another thread.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: KLaban on January 06, 2019, 11:09:02 am
That’s interesting. It brings us to the question: How far are photographers a product of their gear, but that’s the start of a flame war in another thread.

Gosh, I hope not, if it were true I'd be labelled as simple.

;-)
Title: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 06, 2019, 11:10:28 am
The logical conclusion of this is that there's no such thing as good or bad, truth or beauty, it's all just subjective. This is the postmodern experiment, an experiment which I consider to be an abject failure. A position many a successful academic would fight me on.

I believe in cases like this, subjectivism is superior to objectivism.
It does put a lot stress on the premise.
Objectivism is always an attempt.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: RSL on January 06, 2019, 11:12:27 am
What I find incredibly difficult to understand with photographers criticizing the work of others is how many photographers seem to think that other photographers should subscribe to their vision. I think that most photographers are anchored in a way of seeing that they believe to be an objective reality that we all must see and share in and if that viewpoint isn’t reflected in the work then the work is deemed to be a failure, wrong in some way.

If a photographer shows us a city scene that appears sterile, unwelcoming, constructed of rigid geometric shapes then perhaps that is that photographers vision of it. Perhaps that is how he sees it, how it makes him feel, what he wishes to communicate. Alienation, people as intruders, transient.

How about we look at the work of others and rather ask, what is this person trying to say. How do they see things. Could I perhaps learn something, add something to my visual vocabulary?

It’s a fair point, Martin. And it goes to the question of how art grabs you. Obviously, how hard a grip a particular photograh, painting, or poem exerts depends to a very large extent on your life experiences. Some artworks that grab you may not grab me, and vice versa. There’s a superficial level at which the grabbing takes place, and at that level there’s wide diversity in the strength of the grip. Fads come and go. But there also are deeper levels that account for the fact that after a time certain artworks retain their grabbing power and sometines even increase it while others lose their grip.

The problem with asking what an artist is trying to say is that what the artist is trying to say doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. Either the work he produced says something – hopefully the thing he was trying to say – or it doesn’t. Or, as I said long ago in the preface to my poetry collection: “. . .the effectiveness of a work of art has no more to do with the artist’s intent and state of mind than the effectiveness of a human has to do with the umbilical cord that sustained him before birth. The result is the result is the result. If it hasn’t a life of its own then it’s dead and ought to be buried.”
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Martin Kristiansen on January 06, 2019, 11:14:27 am
The logical conclusion of this is that there's no such thing as good or bad, truth or beauty, it's all just subjective. This is the postmodern experiment, an experiment which I consider to be an abject failure. A position many a successful academic would fight me on.

Not at all. You miss my point. I do see truth, beauty, good and bad. However I believe they are all worth commenting on. And non of them exist in isolation. No good without the potential of bad. The concept of truth cannot exist if there is not the possibility of untruth.  Because things are relative doesn’t mean they don’t exist. It means they don’t exist in quite the way we think they do.

This photographer is saying something. It’s not what BCB was saying. Perhaps he doesn’t see things as HCB saw them. That’s fine. He still has something to say. I think he says it skillfully and coherently.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 06, 2019, 11:15:27 am
If it hasn’t a life of its own then it’s dead and ought to be buried.”

Or it is kept alive with all the blabla about it, see the piles of blabla about work that should already be long forgotten.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Martin Kristiansen on January 06, 2019, 11:44:08 am
At least the article and images provoked a serious discussion. That’s good right?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 06, 2019, 11:46:28 am
At least the article and images provoked a serious discussion. That’s good right?

Yep
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: RSL on January 06, 2019, 12:03:08 pm
Or it is kept alive with all the blabla about it, see the piles of blabla about work that should already be long forgotten.

Just saying that is meaningless, Ivo. Which work? Give us at least one example to illustrate the point you're trying to make.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: OmerV on January 06, 2019, 12:30:49 pm
Just saying that is meaningless, Ivo. Which work? Give us at least one example to illustrate the point you're trying to make.

Gene Smith's Walk to Paradise Garden.

https://huxleyparlour.com/w-eugene-smith-hope-and-innocence-2/
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 06, 2019, 12:45:19 pm
Just saying that is meaningless, Ivo. Which work? Give me at least one example to illustrate the point you're trying to make.

Yes I can Russ.

The image of HCB here above.

This image lives his life thanks to all the cinema around it. 

I don’t say it doesn’t have it’s merits and I don’t want to minimize it’s impact , but they are not in proportion with the hysteria around it.

HCB is a lot of fantastic images, but also a lot of blabla generated by wannabes who think having to say something about HCB increases their seriousness.

Did you had the chance to visit the HCB foundation in Paris? Loaded with only the after talk and pompous reflections of all so called HCB specialists, you run into a massive deception.

On the other side of the spectrum I could point to Gursky’s ‘The Rhine’. It is an impressive picture, but hyped to sky by all who feel great by joining the hype.

Or Vivian Maiers hyped œuvre that would never had surfaced without the smart marketing of John Maloof.

Lartigue’s œuvre, the snapshots of jumping, racing or tennis playing woman, only made possible because he had the money to buy the newest gear / technical possibilities. Also here it was the curator of MOMA who hyped the early works of Lartigue to the status it is now.

Etc etc




Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 06, 2019, 12:45:59 pm
Gene Smith's Walk to Paradise Garden.

https://huxleyparlour.com/w-eugene-smith-hope-and-innocence-2/

+1
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 06, 2019, 12:57:46 pm
Nono, Amolitor, not the generic reference to what is already said about this HCB picture. That’s to easy.

What is going on in this picture of HCB, and leave out the projection, please.
The issue is that there is a lot to read, but much less to see. (Blasphemy, I know)

If the same willingness to see would be applied to contemporary street Photography, men could fill another million of pages.

If we don’t see it (I often have the same reaction) it is because we look with expectations.

No, no!

The HC-B shot has a whole pile of visual stuff going down, even without any written explanations from the man.

We were informed that the angle was forced upon him, that he shot through a fence or similar obstruction, forcing him to crop (may he be forgiven!) and that's bourne out by the negative; what we - or at least I - don't know is whether the guy jumping was forced to do that as consequence of using that route from wherever to wherever and there was no dry walk-around; whether he was a one-off, or whether it was a frequently used route and so gave HC-B the opportunity to visualise the shot well before making it. Many of the shooters of the time spoke about choosing the stage and waiting for the actors to pop around and do their thing. Was the guy a paid actor, as with Doisneau's kissing lovers before the Hôtel de Ville (reads like a Cadillac advertisement)?

Did he note the reversed image of his main action in the poster at the back? Did it come first? Did it even register until he had the negative printed? Did the cat get his shoes wet or did he have enough momentum to land dry?

Was he, HC-B the originator of the puddler-jumper ethic, which has even been utilised in fashion photography, never mind by several other notable street names?

But Ivo, nearly all of that's in the photograph, not in a personal projection. Hence, ambiguity that's visible as well as that which can spawn from our own imaginations. Of course, as with everything, the viewer does have to have at least a reasonably developed curiosity about life.

Rob
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Martin Kristiansen on January 06, 2019, 12:58:28 pm
Gene Smith's Walk to Paradise Garden.

https://huxleyparlour.com/w-eugene-smith-hope-and-innocence-2/

That image amazed me when I first saw it. Must have been 15 years old. I just didn’t understand it. It always seemed overly romantic and something that belonged on a chocolate box.
Title: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 06, 2019, 01:00:06 pm


Of course, as with everything, the viewer does have to have at least a reasonably developed curiosity about life.

Rob

And this does not count for contemporary photography?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: faberryman on January 06, 2019, 01:04:19 pm
It always seemed overly romantic and something that belonged on a chocolate box.
It is what my art history professor would refer to as a bonbon.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 06, 2019, 01:08:15 pm
To Rob e.a.,

Does it make sense if you look at these as streetart images where the color collage is an essential part of the typographical narrative?

The hunchback image for example is explicitly about color, me thinks, and the shape is used to represent a shape of dance, not a shape of deformation.

The jumping person on the other hand is entirely about the metaphorical narrative. The little kid, almost literally standing in the shadow of his taller brother/father, replicating his behavior in a quest to reach ever higher goals, in the line of life. The extended arm and widespread hand in the shadow clearly depicting an inviting gesture of friendly support. Anybody who says this is merely about clicking at the high jump is severely missing the point.
Title: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 06, 2019, 01:13:09 pm
To Rob e.a.,

Does it make sense if you look at these as streetart images where the color collage is an essential part of the typographical narrative?

The hunchback image for example is explicitly about color, me thinks, and the shape is used to represent a shape of dance, not a shape of deformation.

The jumping person on the other hand is entirely about the metaphorical narrative. The little kid, almost literally standing in the shadow of his taller brother/father, replicating his behavior in a quest to reach ever higher goals, in the line of life. The extended arm and widespread hand in the shadow clearly depicting an inviting gesture of friendly support. Anybody who says this is merely about clicking at the high jump is severely missing the point.



And that’s all in the picture if you look at it with a reasonable developed curiosity about live.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 06, 2019, 01:38:27 pm
"Of course, as with everything, the viewer does have to have at least a reasonably developed curiosity about life."

Rob

And does this not count for contemporary photography?


Not on that level. First if all, the work has to have the power to engage. For me, the stuff in the article does not engage at all - in a positive manner. If you posit that contemporary photography should somehow be absolved from the requirement of interesting content, then you win: I could have nothing further to add to the conversation.

And you may well be right: my daughter has been a fully qualified teacher for more years than she may like to realise, and she tells me that today's standards have dropped from her days at school, never mind from mine, all those years before her. Grades are lowered and methods of testing changed to influence the pass figures - Owellian 1984 ethics? Successive governments of different colours afraid to show things are sinking under their watch? In a society where an abject scholastic failure still has a certificate at the end of the day just for turning up, says as much about the system as of the poor guy without the ability. Political correctness dictates that it's not the kid's fault but that of society. Crap. I have two kids, each entirely different in abilities, yet each coached after school to the exent of my wife's power so to do. And she was no slouch. None of which means that the kid with less scholastic ability is barred from making a success of his/her life: it depends on what he/she decides to do with it after school. Back to the individual's responsibility.

Anyone with the ability to write a sentence can write a load of nonsense about any collection of pictures; many do that in their own websites via their artist's statement, a key that really does open the door to my judgement when I get to see the images. In order to preclude such judgments from forming within my own mind and colouring my view of the photography, I tend to look at the shots first and reserve the "statement" lollipop for last.

So really, having that curiosity about life in spades (which is at least one reason I still engage with people online) has not led me to appreciate empty exposures; I'd rather enjoy absolute abstracts!

;-)
Title: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 06, 2019, 01:54:18 pm
"Of course, as with everything, the viewer does have to have at least a reasonably developed curiosity about life."

Rob


Not on that level. First if all, the work has to have the power to engage. For me, the stuff in the article does not engage at all - in a positive manner. If you posit that contemporary photography should somehow be absolved from the requirement of interesting content, then you win: I could have nothing further to add to the conversation.

And you may well be right: my daughter has been a fully qualified teacher for more years than she may like to realise, and she tells me that today's standards have dropped from her days at school, never mind from mine, all those years before her. Grades are lowered and methods of testing changed to influence the pass figures - Owellian 1984 ethics? Successive governments of different colours afraid to show things are sinking under their watch? In a society where an abject scholastic failure still has a certificate at the end of the day just for turning up, says as much about the system as of the poor guy without the ability. Political correctness dictates that it's not the kid's fault but that of society. Crap. I have two kids, each entirely different in abilities, yet each coached after school to the exent of my wife's power so to do. And she was no slouch. None of which means that the kid with less scholastic ability is barred from making a success of his life: it depends on what he decides to do with it after school. Back to the individual's responsibility.

Anyone with the ability to write a sentence can write a load of nonsense about any collection of pictures; many do that in their own websites via their artist's statement, a key that really does open the door to my judgement when I get to see the images. In order to preclude such judgments from forming within my own mind and colouring my view of the photography, I tend to look at the shots first and reserve the "statement" lollipop for last.

So really, having that curiosity about life in spades (which is at least one reason I still engage with people online) has not led me to appreciate empty exposures; I'd rather enjoy absolute abstracts!

;-)

Could it be possible we loose the openness to be curious by getting older?

About school. If the success of kids depends on individual responsibility and after school sensibilisation, more than on scholastic abilities, is it not a good evolution to lower the importance of scholastic education?

In short, what you say in a lot of words: We, older generation, have the key to understand the important things of life, you, younger generation are not able to grasp it because you are a bunch of intellectual and emotional retards.

(And If younger generations are putting the bar lower, which I think is not incorrect on certain matters, it’s probably the fault of the ones who raised that generation)

Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 06, 2019, 01:58:57 pm
To Rob e.a.,

Does it make sense if you look at these as streetart images where the color collage is an essential part of the typographical narrative?

The hunchback image for example is explicitly about color, me thinks, and the shape is used to represent a shape of dance, not a shape of deformation.

The jumping person on the other hand is entirely about the metaphorical narrative. The little kid, almost literally standing in the shadow of his taller brother/father, replicating his behavior in a quest to reach ever higher goals, in the line of life. The extended arm and widespread hand in the shadow clearly depicting an inviting gesture of friendly support. Anybody who says this is merely about clicking at the high jump is severely missing the point.

Okay, Oscar, you've brought out the generosity in my soul.

The very last shot, the guy with the orange sack of something makes a nice composition with good internal framing. It might even get into the street art genre [ ;-) ] which some might question exists, but as "street", it does nothing for me other than show a guy opening or locking a door. Street is supposed to have ambiguity beyond asking whether a door is opening of closing. It's no longer enough to make a technically competent photograph. Nor to parody Parr. (In another shot.)

;-)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 06, 2019, 02:08:59 pm
Just because you can always whip up some arty bollocks for any picture doesn't mean that it's always applicable to the picture.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 06, 2019, 02:12:42 pm
Just because you can always whip up some arty bollocks for any picture doesn't mean that it's always applicable to the picture.

Correct, which has already been mentioned: whether we are merely projecting or whether it is more universally recognisable by an average (but educated) viewer. There certainly exists a broad gray area...
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 06, 2019, 02:14:10 pm
Okay, Oscar, you've brought out the generosity in my soul.

The very last shot, the guy with the orange sack of something makes a nice composition with good internal framing. It might even get into the street art genre [ ;-) ] which some might question exists, but as "street", it does nothing for me other than show a guy opening or locking a door. Street is supposed to have ambiguity beyond asking whether a door is opening of closing. It's no longer enough to make a technically competent photograph. Nor to parody Parr. (In another shot.)

;-)

Well, only one shot in the article struck me as true street in the narrow sense of the word.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 06, 2019, 02:16:07 pm
What does it mean when a body of work consists of pictures of a sort that are easily, and are commonly, knocked out by anyone with a modicum of technical ability and patience?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 06, 2019, 02:18:26 pm
Could it be that if you're firmly grounded in b&w, the images may not have the same appeal as for someone raised in colorimaging?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 06, 2019, 02:40:39 pm
1. Could it be possible we loose the openness to be curious by getting older?

2. About school. If the success of kids depends on individual responsibility and after school sensibilisation, more than on scholastic abilities, is it not a good evolution to lower the importance of scholastic education?

3. In short, what you say in a lot of words: We, older generation, have the key to understand the important things of life, you, younger generation are not able to grasp it because you are a bunch of intellectual and emotional retards.

4. (And If younger generations are putting the bar lower, which I think is not incorrect on certain matters, it’s probably the fault of the ones who raised that generation)



1. For some, yes; my own curiosity grows by the day as I discover more people I'd never heard of prior to the Internet. Patricia's introduction to Anne Brigman comes instantly to mind. Technology, on the other hand, drives me away.

2. No, of course not; I never suggested that. It (life success) depends very much on all the kid's abilities, and when he/she has earned some worthwhile certificates those bits of paper open doors to other educational facilities and opportunities perfectly reasonably denied the less capable child. Those further opportunities, in turn, lead to far better adult opportunities.

3. No, I'm saying some photographs have real value whereas others do not. You are just consciously, and for the sake of argument, extrapolating to the near absurd. There are perhaps nearly as many old idiots as young ones; there might never be as many old ones because the old, idiots or otherwise die off. The number of young and middle-aged ones could vary from land to land, depending on reproduction rates...

4. It is certainly the fault of some of them. Back to education: much of it depends on keeping control of a classroom. When my daughter came home for lunch on her first day of promotion to senior school - early 70s - she told us that her teacher had started out by saying to the class: "I suppose I'd better advise you of your rights..." And that cat expected to control a class? I could hardly control my lunch on hearing the news!

From her own experiences as a teacher, today, she can't take cellphones from the pupils, and they use them all through the class. If that is not political correctness gone mad, and cart before horse, then what is? How can education compete with chat? As that precludes using proper words, how can these kids learn to spell or express themselves clearly? I saw an item on the news yesterday about kids in China: many are becoming myopic because of constant gaming, and most now require glasses. (I could be a bit adrift here, though, because I was also listening to music at the time, but I think the point thought more worrying than the eyesight was its possible effect on the Chinese gaming industry.

Rob






















Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 06, 2019, 03:04:10 pm
Could it be that if you're firmly grounded in b&w, the images may not have the same appeal as for someone raised in colorimaging?


That could be a valid point, but it doesn't explain lack of emotional content beyond the obvious: here is a big guy jumping higher than can a little kid - wow, no shit! but as white guys can't jump... or I am the one with the lack of sufficient visual insight? Could be; it's all a judgement call at the best of times.

I'll give you a personal example of calls: during my years with stock, my best sales invariably came from France, but the images were all edited in London. I asked the agency if my submissions could go directly to the French branch for editing, as my eye was clearly more in tune with the continent than with life in the British media. I was refused. It was the start of a lot of doubts in my mind about the system, and I contacted TIB in Paris with the intention of switching to them, only to be told that as I lived in Spain, I'd have to submit to Madrid and could not do so to Paris. Hey ho. Both agencies missed the point, but established systems are clearly stronger than some realities.

Rob
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 06, 2019, 03:14:27 pm
What does it mean when a body of work consists of pictures of a sort that are easily, and are commonly, knocked out by anyone with a modicum of technical ability and patience?

It means exactly what you have asked!

The problem is not really with the individual photographer here, and I feel uncomfortable writing my comments because they are actually aimed at a generic condition; it's just this chap's bad luck to be the current exponent of the thing right here and now, and the altenative course would be for the membership to lapse into silence, achieving nothing much at all for itself and neither, for that matter, for the photographer.

At least it is generating conversation and thought. Which might well be the objective of the exercise, for all I know.

;-)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 06, 2019, 03:30:45 pm
Rob, thanks for the clarification.

If you’re daughter started to teach in ‘70, she’s old generation.
Our youngest son is 18 (my wife and I have together 5 kids, oldest 29) and uses smart boards, iPads, smartphones since elementary. Home work is distributed over internet ‘smart school’ we even get his points by message before the kid gets home. How unfair! He even doesn’t have the chance to learn how to duplicate my signature to hide low grades from his parents. Poor lad.

He doesn’t have a clue how to use a calculation table book and he doesn’t have an idea how to calculate X cubed without smartphone.
But the stuff he knows about where to get the information he needs to do what he wants is beyond belief.
His social skills, despite all horror stories about iPad generation, are amazing.

It’s us who cannot deal with technological progress, the youth can and have it nicely placed into their world.

When I see my daughter, despite here smartphone addiction she graduated as social counselor and here real live social contacts are an exponent of the contacts I had in my time.

I had a ersatz Sony Walkman and a handful of cassettes.  A pile of magazines with pictures (some of them with clothes) and Happy days on TV. That was it.
Of course I valued and weighted that scarce information differently than my daughter handles here overflow of information coming to here on line.
It didn’t make her an emotional disabled person, in the contrary.

All this probably leads into a fragmentation of focus but not necessarily into an impoverishment of the total scale of emotional and intellectual intelligence.
Maybe for younger peoples photography and possibly also literature is not anymore the view on the world as it was for me and you and it’s function is changed over the past decades. That could explain shifts in visual language.

My point is: different is not lesser.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 06, 2019, 03:31:09 pm

That could be a valid point, but it doesn't explain lack of emotional content beyond the obvious: here is a big guy jumping higher than can a little kid - wow, no shit! but as white guys can't jump... or I am the one with the lack of sufficient visual insight? Could be; it's all a judgement call at the best of times.

That particular image is very specifcally not about color. It could work equally well, if not better, in b&w. It's one of those images where color may distract. It does have emotional content though, and lots of it. I almost feel like you're pulling our leg about this one.

A kid looking up to his big brother or father, wanting to be like him, replicating his behavior, an extended  hand, we'll do it together. That teaches us something about life. That is proper street in any sense of the word. It even has a street in it, ffs... ;-)

The accupuncture image could work in b&w because its primary interest is graphics. If there is some kind of ambiguous meaning in a frozen strenuous posture that therefore requires accupuncture, it would still fly in b&w. But true, no emotion, no life's teachings there.

The hunchback is one to be decided. I distinctly get the impression that the colorscheme and shape helps us to think beyond it being merely about some random deformation. By thinking of it as a dancing shape with quircky colors it tells us there is an odd sort of beauty in even a deformed quircky life. And yes, that is a projection, but I'm fairly certain that the image is specifically NOT about "hey, look at this deformed dude!".
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: OmerV on January 06, 2019, 03:37:44 pm
What does it mean when a body of work consists of pictures of a sort that are easily, and are commonly, knocked out by anyone with a modicum of technical ability and patience?

Well Andrew, it depends on whose opinion that is.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: RSL on January 06, 2019, 04:29:58 pm
Yes I can Russ.

The image of HCB here above.

This image lives his life thanks to all the cinema around it. 

I don’t say it doesn’t have it’s merits and I don’t want to minimize it’s impact , but they are not in proportion with the hysteria around it.

HCB is a lot of fantastic images, but also a lot of blabla generated by wannabes who think having to say something about HCB increases their seriousness.

Did you had the chance to visit the HCB foundation in Paris? Loaded with only the after talk and pompous reflections of all so called HCB specialists, you run into a massive deception.

On the other side of the spectrum I could point to Gursky’s ‘The Rhine’. It is an impressive picture, but hyped to sky by all who feel great by joining the hype.

Or Vivian Maiers hyped œuvre that would never had surfaced without the smart marketing of John Maloof.

Lartigue’s œuvre, the snapshots of jumping, racing or tennis playing woman, only made possible because he had the money to buy the newest gear / technical possibilities. Also here it was the curator of MOMA who hyped the early works of Lartigue to the status it is now.

Etc etc

Interesting, Ivo. I finally got you to support one of your off-the-wall opinions. Strangely enough, to some extent I agree with you. There’s been an awful lot of hype around HCB’s stuff. But the most important thing about HCB is that he was one of the first (Kertesz probably was the first) photographer to use the Leica to catch life in progress rather than life suspended while we take a picture. He certainly was the guy who defined street photography.

I agree with Rob about “Behind the Gare.” There’s a great deal in that picture, though I agree it’s probably been over-hyped. The point is, it’s just one of the pictures that was a masterpiece in its time. You show ignorance of the historical background when you criticize the work of people like HCB. Yes, HCB’s work has been over-hyped in general, but he certainly was the most influential photographer of the twentieth century, and today’s best photography owes him a lot.

Gursky’s Rhine, along with the work of people like Cindy Sherman, is centered on museum hype. It’s based on hyper-marketing but it hasn’t much to do with photography as fine art.

In general I agree with you about Vivian Maier. She’s been hyped as a street photographer, and she did a few good street shots, but most of her stuff that’s been held up as street isn’t street.

You can knock Lartigue if you want to, but your critique comes across as envy of Lartigue’s financial situation rather than on the quality of his work, which was quite astonishing for its time.

As far as “Walk to Paradise Garden” is concerned, why focus on that less-than-fantastic shot when Gene did things like Dr. Ceriani smoking after losing a patient, and like the Haitian asylum inmate, and like Tomoko Uemura in her bath? Gene Smith was one of the greatest photographers of all time. When you try to reduce his stature by picking one of his weaker works, all you do is expose your envy.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: OmerV on January 06, 2019, 04:52:25 pm
Interesting, Ivo. I finally got you to support one of your off-the-wall opinions. Strangely enough, to some extent I agree with you. There’s been an awful lot of hype around HCB’s stuff. But the most important thing about HCB is that he was one of the first (Kertesz probably was the first) photographer to use the Leica to catch life in progress rather than life suspended while we take a picture. He certainly was the guy who defined street photography.

I agree with Rob about “Behind the Gare.” There’s a great deal in that picture, though I agree it’s probably been over-hyped. The point is, it’s just one of the pictures that was a masterpiece in its time. You show ignorance of the historical background when you criticize the work of people like HCB. Yes, HCB’s work has been over-hyped in general, but he certainly was the most influential photographer of the twentieth century, and today’s best photography owes him a lot.

Gursky’s Rhine, along with the work of people like Cindy Sherman, is centered on museum hype. It’s based on hyper-marketing but it hasn’t much to do with photography as fine art.

In general I agree with you about Vivian Maier. She’s been hyped as a street photographer, and she did a few good street shots, but most of her stuff that’s been held up as street isn’t street.

You can knock Lartigue if you want to, but your critique comes across as envy of Lartigue’s financial situation rather than on the quality of his work, which was quite astonishing for its time.

As far as “Walk to Paradise Garden” is concerned, why focus on that less-than-fantastic shot when Gene did things like Dr. Ceriani smoking after losing a patient, and like the Haitian asylum inmate, and like Tomoko Uemura in her bath? Gene Smith was one of the greatest photographers of all time. When you try to reduce his stature by picking one of his weaker works, all you do is expose your envy.

Russ, you asked for one example of an over-hyped photo. Well, only well known photographers will have work that becomes iconic, and obviously one image does not define any photographer. As for Gene Smith, he was indeed a very good photographer, though in my opinion it is his Pittsburgh work that is his best.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 06, 2019, 04:53:38 pm
Rob, thanks for the clarification.

If you’re daughter started to teach in ‘70, she’s old generation.
Our youngest son is 18 (my wife and I have together 5 kids, oldest 29) and uses smart boards, iPads, smartphones since elementary. Home work is distributed over internet ‘smart school’ we even get his points by message before the kid gets home. How unfair! He even doesn’t have the chance to learn how to duplicate my signature to hide low grades from his parents. Poor lad.

He doesn’t have a clue how to use a calculation table book and he doesn’t have an idea how to calculate X cubed without smartphone.
But the stuff he knows about where to get the information he needs to do what he wants is beyond belief.
His social skills, despite all horror stories about iPad generation, are amazing.

It’s us who cannot deal with technological progress, the youth can and have it nicely placed into their world.

When I see my daughter, despite here smartphone addiction she graduated as social counselor and here real live social contacts are an exponent of the contacts I had in my time.

I had a ersatz Sony Walkman and a handful of cassettes.  A pile of magazines with pictures (some of them with clothes) and Happy days on TV. That was it.
Of course I valued and weighted that scarce information differently than my daughter handles here overflow of information coming to here on line.
It didn’t make her an emotional disabled person, in the contrary.

All this probably leads into a fragmentation of focus but not necessarily into an impoverishment of the total scale of emotional and intellectual intelligence.
Maybe for younger peoples photography and possibly also literature is not anymore the view on the world as it was for me and you and it’s function is changed over the past decades. That could explain shifts in visual language.

My point is: different is not lesser.

No! Don't let her see that! She went to secondary school during the 70s and finished university in the early 80s. Teaching came some years after uni, after she had a lot of other experiences in different countries.

Yes, Scottish schools also use all the electronic devices, but that doesn't mean that the kids should get away with playing with their cellphones instead of paying attention to the lesson.

Being able to access information via an electronic device does not mean that's always going to be a good idea: what happens when you can't get access to that device and have to know, for example, your seven or nine times tables by heart, right up to sixteen? You are sunk, as truly as the sailor in acute electrical distress who can only use satnav.

You see another illustration of that problem right here on LuLa: Dr Google allows everyone to have a perfect (instant) knowledge of everything, even if three minutes later they remember none of it; it's often a case of faux and immediate expertise. No, I will not point a finger, but it does make a mockery of a lot of stuff, and those people usually do give themselves away in the end.

You should have seen my first studio umbrella setup. It was a gents black umbrella with a zillion coats of white emulsion paint on the inside; the modelling light was a domestic bulb suspended from the wooden shaft, and the flash head a shoulder unit one that I slid into an accessory shoe screwed to the same shaft. Actually, it was better for fashion than the real monobloc I bought to replace it. Why? Because the shoulder unit had a very short flash, but the monobloc got its power through having a long duration, making it pretty lousy for stopping motion.

Rob
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 06, 2019, 04:55:45 pm
As usual with good narrative photography, you sometimes have to look twice.

At first I didn't quite get the "people diving off of the pier" image. There is clearly the circular relation that was captured well. People diving off, then crawling back up.

I only now noticed the bird flying out of the scene.

Godd*mn. Now it suddenly falls into place. Bloody brilliant. People trying to fly, falling down, crawling back up. Absolutely ridiculously fantastic. Requires all elements to be understood. Great metaphore, great ambiquity, great street.

(But yeah, sure, it must be just projection, and everyone can churn out images like these... not. )
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 06, 2019, 04:56:49 pm
The surprise is on my side, you finally recognize my arguments. It’s not the first time I explain my opinions, it is the first time you pay attention. But let’s not spoil this moment of mutual understanding.

It’s not about envy, Russ. How could it be. It’s about observation and place things in its timeframe.
You are correct we should see HCB and others in their time, for same reason we should see contemporary photographers in this time and not in HCB’s time.

I mention Lartigue because in his case the gear factor in his early work is practically all there is. Ok, he did have access to tennis courts, race circuits and other posh locations, that increased the interest in his work later on.

I could have mentioned Henri Talbot, here it is even more clear his work is of great interest due to the pioneering in photography and not due to the content or visual impact of the images.

You can make a chain from Paris to Amsterdam with all the photographers who had a bit of success thanks to Kodachrome or Velvia. Not mentioning the crowd tributary to Leica optics, Hasselblad glass and Polaroid.

Is it not safe to say it’s only a niche in photography that cares about the artistic content of an image?


Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 06, 2019, 04:59:18 pm
No! Don't let her see that! She went to secondary school during the 70s and finished university in the early 80s. Teaching came some years after uni, after she had a lot of other experiences in different countries.

Yes, Scottish schools also use all the electronic devices, but that doesn't mean that the kids should get away with playing with their cellphones instead of paying attention to the lesson.

Being able to access information via an electronic device does not mean that's always going to be a good idea: what happens when you can't get access to that device and have to know, for example, your seven or nine times tables by heart, right up to sixteen? You are sunk, as truly as the sailor in acute electrical distress who can only use satnav.

You see another illustration of that problem right here on LuLa: Dr Google allows everyone to have a perfect (instant) knowledge of everything, even if three minutes later they remember none of it; it's often a case of faux and immediate expertise. No, I will not point a finger, but it does make a mockery of a lot of stuff, and those people usually do give themselves away in the end.

You should have seen my first studio umbrella setup. It was a gents black umbrella with a zillion coats of white emulsion paint on the inside; the modelling light was a domestic bulb suspended from the wooden shaft, and the flash head a shoulder unit one that I slid into an accessory shoe screwed to the same shaft. Actually, it was better for fashion than the real monobloc I bought to replace it. Why? Because the shoulder unit had a very short flash, but the monobloc got its power through having a long duration, making it pretty lousy for stopping motion.

Rob

Nothing can replace good old experience, Rob, I can only agree.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 06, 2019, 05:06:28 pm
Russ, you asked for one example of an over-hyped photo. Well, only well known photographers will have work that becomes iconic, and obviously one image does not define any photographer. As for Gene Smith, he was indeed a very good photographer, though in my opinion it is his Pittsburgh work that is his best.

I think you could be right: I first came across him and bits of the Pittsburgh opus in the pages of one of the Popular Photography Annuals, along with some copy to support the story. However, the thing did unfold as very political which might have been one of the reasons it didn't make it into Life as expected and commissioned...

The stuff in other spheres is also pretty amazing, but it doesn't grab my attention as strongly, possibly because I remember being fascinated by his use of bleach in exactly the same way as did the fashion magazines with their white faces and highlights that I could never quite get for myself in camera. PS just had to be invented.

There is also the fact that the first encounter can sometimes be the strongest.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 06, 2019, 05:13:43 pm
The interpretation of the boy jumping to tap the sign might make sense if the picture were given to us by itself, although it's a bit of a stretcher.

But then we look at his other pictures. A theme that appears multiple times is the motion arrested at something like the peak of action, but the metaphor of the boy doesn't work. So, ok, you make up new allegories for each of those arrested motions. Perhaps the artist sees motion frozen at the peak as a way to express various allegories, fine.

Ooops, now we have a bunch of static photos of people standing there. Um. Maybe those are a counterpoint to the arrested motion studies? Do these each express their own allegories? Are any of these allegories related to one another, or are they all just cut to fit whatever is in the picture?

Eventually you have a sort of Ptolomaic solar system of epicycles going on, struggling to make sense of this portfolio.

An alternative take, much simpler, is that the photographer thought it looked cool.

Even if you discard the relevance of the artist's intent, saying "I don't care what Adam intended, what I see is.." you're still stuck with the mess of epicycles and incoherent pile of tortured metaphors.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 06, 2019, 05:16:06 pm
I would like the record to show this: I think it's a very bold move, bordering on crazy, to call into question the weight of "The Walk to Paradise Garden" in the art-history of photography. Great claims demand great evidence, and simply hand-waving "overhyped" isn't going to convince me.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 06, 2019, 05:22:25 pm
I would like the record to show this: I think it's a very bold move, bordering on crazy, to call into question the weight of "The Walk to Paradise Garden" in the art-history of photography. Great claims demand great evidence, and simply hand-waving "overhyped" isn't going to convince me.

And that is perfectly fine. Bold moves bordering on crazy, it makes the world move on.

Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 06, 2019, 05:24:06 pm
I'm not saying it's an insupportable position, just that it's a very bold move and that making it without the ability to back would be, hmm, a bit fraught perhaps.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on January 06, 2019, 05:26:03 pm
... Bloody brilliant. People trying to fly, falling down, crawling back up. Absolutely ridiculously fantastic. Requires all elements to be understood. Great metaphore, great ambiquity, great street...

Pass that bong, dude!  ;)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 06, 2019, 05:31:11 pm
Pass that bong, dude!  ;)

Ah, so that's why you moved to Florida, because it'd be legalised there... ;-)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: OmerV on January 06, 2019, 05:47:39 pm
I'm not saying it's an insupportable position, just that it's a very bold move and that making it without the ability to back would be, hmm, a bit fraught perhaps.

No Andrew, it is not a bold move.The picture is a clear attempt to solicit Disney like sentimentality, grossly so. I'm not faulting Smith for trying to make work that would sell to the public, but as someone else on this thread said, it belongs on packaging for candy or dolls. And I am sure Smith was amused by the seriousness with which it was regarded. By some.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on January 06, 2019, 05:54:05 pm
No Andrew, it is not a bold move.The picture is a clear attempt to solicit Disney like sentimentality, grossly so. I'm not faulting Smith for trying to make work that would sell to the public, but as someone else on this thread said, it belongs on packaging for candy or dolls. And I am sure Smith was amused by the seriousness with which it was regarded. By some.

That's a bit harsh. Sentimentality has no place in "serious" art? Children's innocence and hope neither?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: OmerV on January 06, 2019, 06:16:26 pm
That's a bit harsh. Sentimentality has no place in "serious" art? Children's innocence and hope neither?

Ah yes, children, innocence, and hope. But sentiment is not sentimentality. The second is often a contrivance and manipulative. It is not a coincidence that art–not Disney or Hallmark–made of children often portrays them as complicated, difficult and serious. Both Diane Arbus and Sally Mann understood it.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 06, 2019, 06:21:35 pm
"too much sentimentality and some guy in this thread whose name I cannot be bothered to look up agrees with me" is not a very strong argument.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on January 06, 2019, 07:13:46 pm
... It is not a coincidence that art–not Disney or Hallmark–made of children often portrays them as complicated, difficult and serious. Both Diane Arbus and Sally Mann understood it.

But surely freakish children are not the whole truth about children? Both artists have expanded our understanding of children, but reducing art to freaks and “complicated, difficult, and serious” is rather extreme.

P.S. Did I just use the Oxford comma when you didn’t? ;)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Alan Klein on January 06, 2019, 09:56:09 pm
His pictures all seem planned, not off the cuff.  That wouldn't be so bad for one or two shots.  But it seems his style is to frame a great composition first with great lighting and then wait for the people to walk through.  It becomes sterile after a while because it's not about the people or their feelings or "the condition of man" but rather the composition. 
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Alan Klein on January 06, 2019, 09:56:37 pm
He does have my initials on the other hand. :)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 06, 2019, 10:17:43 pm
His pictures all seem planned, not off the cuff.  That wouldn't be so bad for one or two shots.  But it seems his style is to frame a great composition first with great lighting and then wait for the people to walk through.  It becomes sterile after a while because it's not about the people or their feelings or "the condition of man" but rather the composition.

No! It works like this: https://petapixel.com/2018/09/13/the-essence-of-the-street-photographer/
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: OmerV on January 06, 2019, 11:07:17 pm
But surely freakish children are not the whole truth about children? Both artists have expanded our understanding of children, but reducing art to freaks and “complicated, difficult, and serious” is rather extreme.

P.S. Did I just use Oxford comma when you didn’t? ;)

Helen Levitt. Beautiful work without being sentimental.

...Diane, Sally, and Helen!

Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Alan Klein on January 07, 2019, 12:13:26 am
No! It works like this: https://petapixel.com/2018/09/13/the-essence-of-the-street-photographer/

Exactly my point. That link as well as Krawesky are about the composition and lighting rather than the people and emotions.  No feelings in that. No feelings is OK for some street photography, but not a constant diet.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 07, 2019, 05:17:02 am
No! It works like this: https://petapixel.com/2018/09/13/the-essence-of-the-street-photographer/

Are you the author, Andrew?

Do you photograph 2 years? And is this the equivalent of ‘experienced photographer’ ? I probably misunderstood it...

Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: rabanito on January 07, 2019, 05:26:29 am
[quote author=Martin Kristiansen
How about we look at the work of others and rather ask, what is this person trying to say. How do they see things. Could I perhaps learn something, add something to my visual vocabulary?
[/quote]
Hey I like that!
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: OmerV on January 07, 2019, 07:17:16 am
Are you the author, Andrew?

Do you photograph 2 years? And is this the equivalent of ‘experienced photographer’ ? I probably misunderstood it...


Exactly my point. That link as well as Krawesky are about the composition and lighting rather than the people and emotions.  No feelings in that. No feelings is OK for some street photography, but not a constant diet.

Guys, the PetaPixel article is a joke, Andrew’s attempt at humor.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 07, 2019, 08:38:00 am
I have been at this a little longer than two years, I am not and never have been a professional photographer, and I do not own an absurd medium format camera.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: faberryman on January 07, 2019, 08:52:16 am
If you read the About the Author, you will see that the Petapixel article was intended as satire. I don't think it rose to that level. I thought it was just drivel, like most Petapixel articles.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 07, 2019, 08:53:31 am
I have been at this a little longer than two years, I am not and never have been a professional photographer, and I do not own an absurd medium format camera.

You got me, Andrew, for sure.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 07, 2019, 08:55:15 am
The point is that it is the standard conceit of your basic hipster street photographer that he (always he) simply walks, observing, seeing, and in that decisive moment raises the camera to his eye and shoots BAM, but the reality is that they all set up across the street from someplace with a good railing, a good shadow, a good bit of graffiti, a good sign, and they wait while people walk through the frame.

ETA: And once you get the hang of it, you can stamp these things out like cookies all day long. It is almost mind-bogglingly boring work, though.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 07, 2019, 08:57:18 am
It isn't my intention to fool anyone, to be honest. It is startling the number of native english speakers who treat it as serious, and to be savagely blunt, I have exactly zero sympathy for them. They simply can't be bothered to read it with the slightest care.

People for whom english is a second language, well, I am sorry! But humor always has trouble across language barriers, and while I sympathize, I see no way to help it.
Title: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 07, 2019, 09:08:22 am
The point is that it is the standard conceit of your basic hipster street photographer that he (always he) simply walks, observing, seeing, and in that decisive moment raises the camera to his eye and shoots BAM, but the reality is that they all set up across the street from someplace with a good railing, a good shadow, a good bit of graffiti, a good sign, and they wait while people walk through the frame.

Ok, fair enough. Only, I don’t get your irritation of the so called ‘hipster’ photographers.
You are probably right about the process, but so what?

I could go even further in purifying this photographic process and bring those situations in a studio. Does that pull down the result? Should all photography be the result of difficult hunting. Why can it not be the fruit of careful preparation?
For myself, I beware for this kind of intellectual obligations.

Maybe you want to check Erwin Olaf

https://www.erwinolaf.com (https://www.erwinolaf.com)

(I know it isn’t street in the broadest sense)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 07, 2019, 09:10:32 am
His pictures all seem planned, not off the cuff.  That wouldn't be so bad for one or two shots.  But it seems his style is to frame a great composition first with great lighting and then wait for the people to walk through.  It becomes sterile after a while because it's not about the people or their feelings or "the condition of man" but rather the composition.

It's the very technique that HC-B recommended.

However, you had to be he, Doisneau or Ronis to pull it off.

If I tried that, you could guarantee that nobody would walk past that shop and I'd ruin their business. Just this morning I went to the new Italian shop to buy my gnocchi for the week, and the place was closed. I'm sure it was open last Monday; what have I done? I'll try again tomorrow and hope somebody just had a cold.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 07, 2019, 09:13:32 am
Oh, I don't care how anyone takes pictures. There are two problems with the standard hipster "street tog" story.

1. It's untrue, and an untruth designed to make the work seem more important.
2. The truth is that cranking the material out is easy, as long as you ignore the fantastical story the man tells.

Since it is easy, and similar work is cranked out by legions of people across the globe using the same methods, this leads us back around to my earlier rhetorical question:  "What does it mean when a body of work consists of pictures of a sort that are easily, and are commonly, knocked out by anyone with a modicum of technical ability and patience?"

I have an answer to this question, I think, but it is quite long, complex, and I don't think it's well suited to a forum discussion. I do think it's an important question of photography, though, and one it's worth pondering for oneself.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 07, 2019, 09:14:44 am
Exactly my point. That link as well as Krawesky are about the composition and lighting rather than the people and emotions.  No feelings in that. No feelings is OK for some street photography, but not a constant diet.

You do realise that you're the one consuming the images, no?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 07, 2019, 09:19:40 am
ETA: And once you get the hang of it, you can stamp these things out like cookies all day long. It is almost mind-bogglingly boring work, though.

Perhaps that's why he stopped doing it. I'll readilly admit that he seems to have favorite spots where he "waits it out", and that does indeed result in boring work eventually. But there are enough images in the article alone that transcend that type of boring and most certainly will not be churned out by any average hipster.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 07, 2019, 09:34:51 am
Oh, I don't care how anyone takes pictures. There are two problems with the standard hipster "street tog" story.

1. It's untrue, and an untruth designed to make the work seem more important.
2. The truth is that cranking the material out is easy, as long as you ignore the fantastical story the man tells.

Since it is easy, and similar work is cranked out by legions of people across the globe using the same methods, this leads us back around to my earlier rhetorical question:  "What does it mean when a body of work consists of pictures of a sort that are easily, and are commonly, knocked out by anyone with a modicum of technical ability and patience?"

I have an answer to this question, I think, but it is quite long, complex, and I don't think it's well suited to a forum discussion. I do think it's an important question of photography, though, and one it's worth pondering for oneself.

You seem rather incessant (incessive?) for someone who doesn't care. While you raise a mildly interesting point, the hipstastreettog thingy seems to simply be one of the techniques used by this artist. He doesn't seem to base his entire body of work on it.

And if you really feel this issue is important enough to be discussed, why not open a new thread specifically for this question? This forum could use lengthy but engaging discourse imo.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: OmerV on January 07, 2019, 10:44:47 am
You seem rather incessant (incessive?) for someone who doesn't care. While you raise a mildly interesting point, the hipstastreettog thingy seems to simply be one of the techniques used by this artist. He doesn't seem to base his entire body of work on it.

And if you really feel this issue is important enough to be discussed, why not open a new thread specifically for this question? This forum could use lengthy but engaging discourse imo.

Oh please, no! Hipsters or whoever they are have become the token targets of disdain by frustrated photographers. Do we really need a thread in which to indulge in pettiness?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 07, 2019, 10:48:09 am
You seem rather incessant (incessive?) for someone who doesn't care. While you raise a mildly interesting point, the hipstastreettog thingy seems to simply be one of the techniques used by this artist. He doesn't seem to base his entire body of work on it.

It's possible that I care about some things and not about others, and that my dozens and dozens of tedious words are actually about the things I care about. If only there was some way of determining which things I cared about and which I do not. Some sort of mode of communication, perhaps.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: KLaban on January 07, 2019, 10:54:33 am
... but the reality is that they all set up across the street from someplace with a good railing, a good shadow, a good bit of graffiti, a good sign, and they wait while people walk through the frame.

ETA: And once you get the hang of it, you can stamp these things out like cookies all day long. It is almost mind-bogglingly boring work, though.

Given certain situations it's a working methodology that I use from time to time and make no pretence that I'm doing anything more or less than as you describe. If that makes me a hipster then so be it. You make it sound facile and I suppose if you want to bang 'em out regardless then you could be right, but there again perhaps there's a little more to it than your cynicism would suggest.

A few images whilst in hipster mode.

(http://www.keithlaban.co.uk/Boy.jpg)

(http://www.keithlaban.co.uk/Beware_the_Cat.jpg)

(http://www.keithlaban.co.uk/Into_the_Light.jpg)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 07, 2019, 10:58:31 am
Doing it doesn't make you a hipster, any more than wearing pants makes you a hipster.

But hipsters do wear pants, and the ones that do this style of street photography do work this way (many of them lie about it, though)
Title: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 07, 2019, 11:18:29 am
I thought Hipsters are the kind of peoples hiding a sx70 under the beard.

I tried google, but the result is different from this discussion.

http://visualcultureblog.com/2013/10/what-is-hipster-photography/ (http://visualcultureblog.com/2013/10/what-is-hipster-photography/)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 07, 2019, 11:22:45 am
Doing it doesn't make you a hipster, any more than wearing pants makes you a hipster.

But hipsters do wear pants, and the ones that do this style of street photography do work this way (many of them lie about it, though)

Ok,

And what exactly is your problem with this?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 07, 2019, 11:27:42 am
I do not think I can do a better job of explaining my problem with that than I have already done in post #94, Ivo.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Martin Kristiansen on January 07, 2019, 11:31:07 am
I read an interview with HCB where he said he went back to certain locations over and over waiting for just the right person or people to move through the scene. Apparently he defined Street so if it was good enough for him why can’t the hipsters work that way?

Quite honestly I gave this method a go many years ago. I didn’t realize it was a recognized technique and was rather pleased with myself for “discovering” it.  I had a few minor successes with the technique but it never really clicked for me. I was more successful roaming an area and trying to anticipate movements and flows.

I don’t hate this technique under discussion. I hate cheesy juxtapositions and pigeons.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 07, 2019, 11:46:35 am
I do not think I can do a better job of explaining my problem with that than I have already done in post #94, Ivo.

You said it was long and complex to explain.

I don’t give a damn if photography is true or not. (As long it is not journalism, and even then, a lens is so subjective)

For leisure purposes or for art, I believe strongly in following statement:

“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story”
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 07, 2019, 11:54:04 am
No.

The thing that is long and complex to explain isn't the problem to which you refer, it is the answer to the question I posed.

The explanation of my problem, which explanation you have asked for, is in post #94, and is both complete and clear.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: KLaban on January 07, 2019, 11:58:42 am
Doing it doesn't make you a hipster, any more than wearing pants makes you a hipster.

But hipsters do wear pants, and the ones that do this style of street photography do work this way (many of them lie about it, though)

How does one determine if it is a hipster using this methodology? Is it just the lie and if it is then surely wouldn't that make them a liar rather than a hipster photographer?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 07, 2019, 12:06:48 pm
It's the "being a hipster" that makes them hipsters.

The technique of setting up and waiting is ubiquitous, and a good idea. Wildlife photographers use it. Sports photographers. Street photographers. Nothing wrong with it.

Some self-styled street photographers do it and lie about it, possibly to themselves as well. Some of those people are probably hipsters. Hipsters, by definition, view themselves, strive to be, cool. The flaneur is widely seen as cooler than the sniper. A hipster, then, prefers to be identified as the former rather than the latter.

The hipster who sets up and snipes, therefore, is more likely than average to invent a flaneur fantasy for himself.

I intend only the logical implications which are actually present in the words I've written, not their converses, not any similar sounding implications, not implications that rhyme with the ones I state. Why I have to state this explicitly is beyond me, but there it is.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on January 07, 2019, 12:17:01 pm
I read an interview with HCB where he said he went back to certain locations over and over waiting for just the right person or people to move through the scene. Apparently he defined Street so if it was good enough for him why can’t the hipsters work that way?...

Precisely because it was good for him. They are then just copycats. it is the same logic as "HCB used a Leica, so to shoot like HCB I must use a Leica." Or, in other words, "HCB was doing it that way, so I need to do it the same way to get the same level of images as him."
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Martin Kristiansen on January 07, 2019, 12:22:40 pm
Precisely because it was good for him. They are then just copycats. it is the same logic as "HCB used a Leica, so to shoot like HCB I must use a Leica." Or, in other words, "HCB was doing it that way, so I need to do it the same way to get the same level of images as him."

Odd logic. He used a camera so if we use cameras we copy. He used a standard lens so we better not use that. Ultimately he shot street so we better not copy him and do that. Actually I think that’s all that would satisfy some people but you get my drift Slobadan. We are told repeatedly that t9 understand street we must study HCB.

But you could be making a joke. I suspect that is most likely.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 07, 2019, 12:31:32 pm
Maybe it just demonstrates that many people simply expect too much from photography, investing it with far too much mystique for both its and their own good.

At the end of the day, you either get an interesting shot or you do not. If you base interesting on any sense of originality then you are onto a loser. The best you should hope for is that something interesting happens, but usually nothing does. People walking into your framed theatre of the absurd do not make an image for you unless they lend themselves to the spirit of that absurd.

As was kinda indicated earlier, it was HC-B's talent to understand and find the surreal; in fact, he thought of himself as a surrealist before a photographer. Most try to do it the opposite way around; no wonder they fail dismally. You need to be an artist before you can create any art. Failing that, all you do is make photographs.

;-)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 07, 2019, 12:41:19 pm
It depends on what you want to do, Rob.

As evidenced by this thread, it's an excellent way to make pictures that appeal to people. My experiments in this same line of work were precisely to that point, and demonstrated to my satisfaction that, yes, even I could use this approach to stamp out moderately broadly appealing photographs more or less by the gross.

Adam Krawesky is no exception, he stamped out a bunch of them and won some appeal. People like these photos, and not just Josh Reichmann and the readers of this forum. They appear in a couple of other places on the web, as other people have discovered them, found them appealing, and published them.

The trouble is that when anyone can do it, a lot of people do. Josh R. finds his Adam Krawesky, as do two or three other people. You might find another fellow churning out more or less the same pictures. Millions of photography fans can, in fact, "discover" 100,000 different artists all doing more or less this same thing. Each artist has a handful of fans who think he's great. A few people, who make it their business to churn through rather more of the photographic internet than is perhaps healthy, notice that there are actually a ton of these artists out there, each with a small handful of fans.

And that, for the record, is quite wonderful. Enjoy the photos, everyone! They are appealing, they are enjoyable.

But the fact that they are appealing does not make Adam Krawesky a notable photographer. That doesn't matter a damn in most contexts -- but one of the contexts in which is does matter if when you're offering up global exposure on what you rather hope is an important, substantial, media outlet.

In that case what you want is a notable photographer, someone who is not only making appealing photographs, but who has a distinctive voice, a distinctive artistic vision, something that makes them different from the herd. There's already any number of bush-league web sites posting appealing, fun, photos from random friends and relatives.

I don't think Josh seeks to become one of them.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on January 07, 2019, 12:41:41 pm
Odd logic. He used a camera so if we use cameras we copy. He used a standard lens so we better not use that. Ultimately he shot street so we better not copy him and do that...

But you could be making a joke. I suspect that is most likely.

I wasn't making a joke. You are reducing my logic to absurd.

I was about to add a sentence to my post above, while in the draft stage, to the effect of "but, of course, not everyone who uses a Leica or stalking is HCB copycat."  I just thought that it is superflues and self-evident.

I was talking about people who think that buying camera X just because famous photographer Y used it is going to make them better photographers. I then extended the logic to technique Z.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Martin Kristiansen on January 07, 2019, 12:51:33 pm
I wasn't making a joke. You are reducing my logic to absurd.

I was about to add a sentence to my post above, while in the draft stage, to the effect of "but, of course, not everyone who uses a Leica or stalking is HCB copycat."  I just thought that it is superflues and self-evident.

I was talking about people who think that buying camera X just because famous photographer Y used it is going to make them better photographers. I then extended the logic to technique Z.

OK. I misunderstood. Then I definately don’t agree with you. When someone comes up with a technique that works and speaks about it then others will follow. It happens all the time. We all do it.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: elliot_n on January 07, 2019, 01:03:45 pm
But the fact that they are appealing does not make Adam Krawesky a notable photographer. That doesn't matter a damn in most contexts -- but one of the contexts in which is does matter if when you're offering up global exposure on what you rather hope is an important, substantial, media outlet.

In that case what you want is a notable photographer, someone who is not only making appealing photographs, but who has a distinctive voice, a distinctive artistic vision, something that makes them different from the herd.

Any suggestions?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 07, 2019, 01:06:14 pm
But the fact that they are appealing does not make Adam Krawesky a notable photographer.

Okay, so are you or are you not implying that Adam Krawesky is not a notable photographer?

And if you find him not notable, is that on the basis of applying a lazy technique for some of his images?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 07, 2019, 01:08:09 pm
Apart from the usual list of currently living notables that I'm sure we could collectively construct easily, I'm rather fond of Frédérick Carnet and Karel Kravik.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 07, 2019, 01:10:15 pm
Okay, so are you or are you not implying that Adam Krawesky is not a notable photographer?

And if you find him not notable, is that on the basis of applying a lazy technique for some of his images?

This is insane. It's like I am speaking Latin or something, except I am not.

I am implying nothing, I have stated very very clearly that Adam Krawesky is not a notable photographer, because he produces pictures that are very much like the pictures produced by something on the order of 100,000 similar photographers.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on January 07, 2019, 01:10:43 pm
... When someone comes up with a technique that works and speaks about it then others will follow. It happens all the time. We all do it.

That is precisely why I do not care much about the articles where someone explains their technique (artistic, not technical): it makes me and others want to copy it, consciously or not. Some might eventually rise above copying.

Or as Jean-Luc Godard said, “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take things to.” By all means use a Leica and stalking technique, just produce something above a copy. Or the other quote, often misattributed to Picasso: "Good artists copy, great artists steal." Yes, steal a technique (stalking in this case) but take it to a higher or different level.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 07, 2019, 01:29:03 pm
This is insane. It's like I am speaking Latin or something, except I am not.

I am implying nothing, I have stated very very clearly that Adam Krawesky is not a notable photographer, because he produces pictures that are very much like the pictures produced by something on the order of 100,000 similar photographers.

I do understand your point, Andrew.

Only, since when is Lula ‘the’ location where the lesser photographers doesn’t deserve a small platform?
The as Hipster condemned photographer is not hanging in the MOMA. I would understand your upset if that was the case.

Last time I visit centre Pompidou I spent more than one hour to admire one of Picasso’s ceramic portraits.
The week after, I was in a local art academy and got upset by the low quality of the clay contraptions made by somebodies grandma with too much time. I had Picasso in mind.
I had to correct myself and admitted I had a wrong kind of elitist misplaced feeling.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 07, 2019, 01:29:59 pm
This is insane. It's like I am speaking Latin or something, except I am not.

I am implying nothing, I have stated very very clearly that Adam Krawesky is not a notable photographer, because he produces pictures that are very much like the pictures produced by something on the order of 100,000 similar photographers.

Oh, so just the fact that he ALSO is able to churn out similar pictures, that makes him not notable? Like saying that Chopin wrote etudes, but because every other composer did so as well, it makes him not notable.

Dumb logic that, but that may be my ignorance.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on January 07, 2019, 01:35:08 pm
... Dumb logic that, but that may be my ignorance.

Not ignorance, just sophism.

On the previous page, I was arguing against Martin's similar accusation of "dumb logic" as basically a reductio ad absurdum fallacy.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 07, 2019, 01:37:56 pm
To suppose that Chopin's etudes are pretty much the same as other composer's etudes is absurd. At this point you're obviously just baiting, and clumsily at that.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Martin Kristiansen on January 07, 2019, 01:45:28 pm
Not ignorance, just sophism.

On the previous page, I was arguing against Martin's similar accusation of "dumb logic" as basically a reductio ad absurdum fallacy.

Except I never said dumb logic did I? Nope I just checked. I said odd. Anyway I wasn’t following what you were getting at and I usually find myself in agreement with many of your posts so I was questioning what you had said to try to understand it.

I think I understand what you meant now. Although I like to read people’s descriptions of how they work. I hope I don’t end up totally copying but I often find useful ideas. Years ago I experimented with adding film grain to my images. I was finding digital a little clinical for my taste and after reading this article I might revisit that idea. See how I feel about it now. That type of thing.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: elliot_n on January 07, 2019, 01:52:46 pm
Apart from the usual list of currently living notables that I'm sure we could collectively construct easily, I'm rather fond of Frédérick Carnet and Karel Kravik.

Thanks. Carnet's work is very good - http://www.frederickcarnet.com - but it's full of familiar tropes.

I think you're being rather harsh on Adam Krawesky.

(Is this all he has in way of a website? http://inconduit.com/set/ )
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 07, 2019, 01:55:33 pm
To suppose that Chopin's etudes are pretty much the same as other composer's etudes is absurd. At this point you're obviously just baiting, and clumsily at that.

Well, excuse me for being both ignorant and clumsy then.

Your argument seems to be: this photographer churns out SOME bad pictures, therefore he is not a notable photographer. Because SOME of his images show the application of an all too familiar technique which you dislike because the results are mostly empty, his results are therefore also empty and he is not a notable photographer.

I'm sure you can't be bothered to educate us on how to view the given examples in the article so we can draw the same conclusion, no? That would possibly allow us to understand your judgement, which btw doesn't mean we have to agree on that judgement, just that it might enable us to understand your observations.



Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 07, 2019, 02:04:13 pm
No, opgr. I will not be drawn into an endless cycle of re-explanation.

It's clear that you're irritated that I will neither shut up, nor fall into line with your assessment of Krawesky's pictures, and that you intend to snipe, nitpick, invent fantastical readings of things I have said, and generally campaign to waste my time and attempt to make me look bad.

No. I disagree with you. Grow up and get over it.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on January 07, 2019, 02:04:29 pm
Martin, that's why I said "similar" :) I was aware that you used a more polite term.

On copying... sure, we all do it. One has to start somewhere, unless one is as talented as little Mozart. The technique that initially blew me away by its originality, and which I tried to copy, was the Ernst Haas' one, where he would do a double exposure on film of an intricate bush or tree, first by rendering it sharp, then adding the second exposure totally out of focus (in the book "The Creation"). Once that technique was popularized by Orton, and millions started using it in the digital era, I lost interest.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 07, 2019, 02:15:10 pm
Krawesky's web site is depressingly suggestive, yes, and as far as I know that's all there is.

I suspect that he is in fact Josh's new web guy, and possibly is best described as a former photographer, but that's fairly sketchy guesswork at best.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 07, 2019, 02:16:37 pm
There's an unspoken problem with all of this.

If a photographer decides to work in any given style/genre (I'm not saying they are the same thing), the point is reached when he runs out of himself, usually at about the same time that he realises that his physical location possibilities have run out of offers.

I have seven galleries (Glimpsed Parallels) in my website that are basically all around one sort of ethic or visual thinking mode. I have realised that my current lack of shooting interest boils down to what Andrew has been suggesting: I came to see that I was doing the same shot over and over, even when it looked entirely different to its neighbour; the similarity lives within the photographer's own mindset, and there the critical problem we come to face if we shoot enough. i've been shooting since the 50s, one way or the other, the best of those years with models which gave the perfect means to avoid seeing that same image every time. But, I have come to believe other, older snappers who have declared that we all shoot the same photograph all of our lives. In a deeper sense, it's an unavoidable consequence of being who we are, which is one person only.

Blessed is he who only dabbles: he will never come to discover who he is.

:-(
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 07, 2019, 02:26:04 pm
Rob, I think there are people who derive genuine and honest pleasure from making more or less the same pictures over again.

I take delight in every good pot of soup I make, every good loaf of bread I bake, and it is not because I am naive, or simpleminded. Photography, alas, works somewhat differently for me.

I am passable fake in a variety of genres. I can bang out decent landscapes, still lifes, portraits, product shots. Am I good at any of them? Not really. Having got to the point where i realized that, with a year of concerted labor, I could get good at one or another of these, at the point where the path was pretty clear, I lost interest. I didn't want to make the same damned thing over and over, incrementally better, until I could make really good ones.

And yet, with soup, with bread, I am perfectly happy with precisely the same path. People are funny.

It took me most of a decade to figure out what I actually wanted to do with a camera (I think), and it involves a lot more words than I would have guessed.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: elliot_n on January 07, 2019, 02:30:28 pm
I like Krawesky's work because it reminds me of Jeff Wall. For example this shot:

http://inconduit.com/set/1024/v.php?i=16

Or this one:

http://inconduit.com/set/1024/v.php?i=13

Which gets me wondering whether the images are more staged than simply hanging out on a street corner and waiting for something to happen?

(I'm with you on the soup and the bread.)

Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 07, 2019, 02:34:33 pm
Martin, that's why I said "similar" :) I was aware that you used a more polite term.

On copying... sure, we all do it. One has to start somewhere, unless one is as talented as little Mozart. The technique that initially blew me away by its originality, and which I tried to copy, was the Ernst Haas' one, where he would do a double exposure on film of an intricate bush or tree, first by rendering it sharp, then adding the second exposure totally out of focus (in the book "The Creation"). Once that technique was popularized by Orton, and millions started using it in the digital era, I lost interest.


I had Ernst down as one of my favourite photographers for many years. I bought the Steidl Ernst Haas Color Correction and pretty soon wished that I had not. The thing is, there was not a lot wrong with the pictures, just that as far as the street art stuff went, I felt Leiter did it far better. Leiter didn't do the wildly successful books (though he did get some published during his lifetime, but via the art world circuit rather than the public one), and neither as much advertising. That said, in retrospect, I think Haas shines even more brightly than Leiter in black and white, as his work on the The Misfits movie with Marilyn shows; a great eye for catching the personal and sensitive moments of human revelation.

Of course, you can't soar with the eagles when you work with turkeys, and all of us in the amateur condition should realise that in order to avoid heartbreak.

Rob
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 07, 2019, 02:35:57 pm
Carnet's work, by the way, seems to be to be entirely in sequencing. Taken individually his pictures don't really speak to me at all, they're rather boring. Put in a row, however, they become something much greater than the sum of the parts. To me, at any rate, and there is some evidence that I am not alone on this.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: KLaban on January 07, 2019, 02:43:42 pm
There's an unspoken problem with all of this.

If a photographer decides to work in any given style/genre (I'm not saying they are the same thing), the point is reached when he runs out of himself, usually at about the same time that he realises that his physical location possibilities have run out of offers...

At that point the photographer needs to move on: cerebrally would do.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: elliot_n on January 07, 2019, 02:45:49 pm
Carnet's work, by the way, seems to be to be entirely in sequencing. Taken individually his pictures don't really speak to me at all, they're rather boring. Put in a row, however, they become something much greater than the sum of the parts. To me, at any rate, and there is some evidence that I am not alone on this.

Indeed. He has good sequences and a substantial body of work. But his sequences feel very familiar. Alex Soth and Jem Southam come to mind, as do many of the contributors to Fraction magazine - http://www.fractionmagazine.com . It's a way of doing things.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 07, 2019, 05:14:42 pm
Thank you for that link: some very interesting takes on contemporary work. I have not done more than look at the last two selections of people, so far, but intend to go back for more.

It would be nice if LuLa published a similar department, but perhaps it would be killed in the crossfire that accompanies everything. Guess it's the price to be paid for conversation.

Thanks again for the link.

Rob
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 07, 2019, 05:21:44 pm
Fraction Magazine may not be 100% gold, and maybe not more than half to any particular person's taste, but I don't see how you could spend 10 minutes on that web site and then come back to LuLa's current lead article and still think "Oh yeah, Adam Krawesky, he's amazing."

But, you know, it's a big world and it contains multitudes.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 07, 2019, 05:27:06 pm
At that point the photographer needs to move on: cerebrally would do.


The mind bits are always the difficult bits. My mind turns out to have a mind of its own, which is confusing for me, as host to both.

:-)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: elliot_n on January 07, 2019, 06:45:19 pm
Fraction Magazine may not be 100% gold, and maybe not more than half to any particular person's taste, but I don't see how you could spend 10 minutes on that web site and then come back to LuLa's current lead article and still think "Oh yeah, Adam Krawesky, he's amazing."

But, you know, it's a big world and it contains multitudes.


I like Fraction Magazine, but it's a very specific take on contemporary photographic practice. After a while, it starts to feel same-y (or Soth-y).

I don't think Karawesky's work is amazing, but I do quite like it. I also like that Lula is publishing contemporary, urban photography, rather then pictures of icebergs.

Jeff Wall doesn't shoot series.

Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 08, 2019, 03:14:55 am
I like Fraction Magazine, but it's a very specific take on contemporary photographic practice. After a while, it starts to feel same-y (or Soth-y).

I don't think Karawesky's work is amazing, but I do quite like it. I also like that Lula is publishing contemporary, urban photography, rather then pictures of icebergs.

Jeff Wall doesn't shoot series.

+100 on the bold, +1 to the rest. (And no, i don't mind an occasional iceberg).

Additionally, for what this site is or may become, I prefer an artist who is willing to share his/her thoughts over one who may produce exceptional work but can't be reached to talk about it. Alternatively, I wouldn't mind if somebody with reasonable writingskills would write about one of their preferred artists. (Yes, that includes Rob and Andrew too).

I do have a bit of a problem with the comparisons made in this thread. It doesn't seem to be comparing the same "genres". Not that I want to get in another genre war.

Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 08, 2019, 03:22:28 am
Indeed. He has good sequences and a substantial body of work. But his sequences feel very familiar. Alex Soth and Jem Southam come to mind, as do many of the contributors to Fraction magazine - http://www.fractionmagazine.com . It's a way of doing things.

Tx for the link, I like it.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: rabanito on January 08, 2019, 05:57:39 am

I don't think Karawesky's work is amazing, but I do quite like it. I also like that Lula is publishing contemporary, urban photography, rather then pictures of icebergs.

Well I started not long ago at LuLa because of those "Luminous" and the "Landscape" words.
I've been here for a short time and all those "icebergs" and the like have inspired me to re-take photography with new elan, learn from many people who know their metier and are more than willing to help and I feel that my dollar a month is worth it.
In my youth my models were HCB, Robert Capa, Ernst Haas, Rene Burri and such.
Somehow they touched my soul.
I still like to see modern urban photography but it doesn't impress me that much. Probably I'm getting older. Or colour killed the spirit. I don't know.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 08, 2019, 01:45:23 pm
Well I started not long ago at LuLa because of those "Luminous" and the "Landscape" words.
I've been here for a short time and all those "icebergs" and the like have inspired me to re-take photography with new elan, learn from many people who know their metier and are more than willing to help and I feel that my dollar a month is worth it.
In my youth my models were HCB, Robert Capa, Ernst Haas, Rene Burri and such.
Somehow they touched my soul.
I still like to see modern urban photography but it doesn't impress me that much. Probably I'm getting older. Or colour killed the spirit. I don't know.

I think you do know, and have just nailed it! Colour prettifies everything, even war; it has no place in visual Tamla Motown.

;-)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Martin Kristiansen on January 08, 2019, 11:38:35 pm
I think you do know, and have just nailed it! Colour prettifies everything, even war; it has no place in visual Tamla Motown.

;-)

I was firmly in the camp of Black and White. Never liked R14 or Cibachrome. Now I tend to think of Black and White as romantic and burdened with nostalgia, I’m not a fan of nostalgia.

Sometimes when I have an image I’m attached to and I can’t get it to work I convert to Black and White in a last desperate effort to drag something out of it. I never show these efforts anymore

I have noticed that the older more traditional members of LuLa, those most concerned about the sanctity of the genre, tend to prefer black and white.

Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Jeremy Roussak on January 09, 2019, 03:01:59 am
I don't think Karawesky's work is amazing, but I do quite like it. I also like that Lula is publishing contemporary, urban photography, rather then pictures of icebergs.

Absolutely. A site called luminous-landscape.com is publishing landscape photographs! Whatever next? Pornography at youporn.com?

Jeremy
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 09, 2019, 03:14:58 am
Absolutely. A site called luminous-landscape.com is publishing landscape photographs! Whatever next? Pornography at youporn.com?

Jeremy

Ha, just another example of the loose morality regarding genre definitions around here. What are you trying to tell us: don't f**k with the icebergs?

;-)   <---------
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 09, 2019, 03:16:50 am
Absolutely. A site called luminous-landscape.com is publishing landscape photographs! Whatever next? Pornography at youporn.com?

Jeremy

‘They ‘ told me there is also a contemporary and vintage section on youporn.com. If there is an area where firm genre segregation is a must........

Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: KLaban on January 09, 2019, 04:46:49 am
I think you do know, and have just nailed it! Colour prettifies everything, even war; it has no place in visual Tamla Motown.

;-)

(http://www.keithlaban.co.uk/shi.jpg)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: rabanito on January 09, 2019, 06:03:24 am

I have noticed that the older more traditional members of LuLa, those most concerned about the sanctity of the genre, tend to prefer black and white.

Just for the sake of the argument:

If a great painter has a talent of, say, 100T(Talent Units) or more (to set a benchmark)
The most talented photographers I know have - I would say - about 50T
B&W photography manages way less parameters than colour photography (It is easier to manage)

For a great painting you need at least 100T (Velazquez, Rubens, Rembrandt...)

For a truly great B&W photography you need at least 50T.
That's why there are many great B&W photographs. Some people reach 50T

For great colour photography you would need much more talent (all those colours...) than for B&W.
That's why there is so little great colour photography. Great color photography looks like out of gamut for photographers

And really talented people would paint instead of photographing (much more freedom), color or whatever
Although the race of great painters is as extinct as the dinosaurs I guess  ;D

Am I right?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: KLaban on January 09, 2019, 06:14:51 am
As has already been said, photography is at best a secondary art form. Could be that as such it relies heavily on artifice to succeed.

;-)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Martin Kristiansen on January 09, 2019, 07:11:12 am
As has already been said, photography is at best a secondary art form. Could be that as such it relies heavily on artifice to succeed.

;-)

It’s not the medium thats artistic. It’s the artist. An artist can work in any medium. Some creative people dance, some sing or play musical instruments, some paint or print or sculpt.

The problem with photography is that uncreative people can produce a plausible result and then they confuse themselves for a while. They think they are artists of high ability. Eventually they figure out somewhere in their subconscious that they don’t actially have anything to say but they just like shiny gear. With nothing to say you cannot be an artist. The next step is the ego wakes up to all of this and in order to defend itself it is forced to condem the entire endevour as futile.

How many photographers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? It takes all of them, one to do the screwing and the rest to stand around explaining how they could have done it.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: elliot_n on January 09, 2019, 07:17:37 am
Am I right?

No — but you get 1T (Talent Unit) for trying.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: JNB_Rare on January 09, 2019, 07:24:57 am
Just for the sake of the argument:

If a great painter has a talent of, say, 100T(Talent Units) or more (to set a benchmark)
The most talented photographers I know have - I would say - about 50T
B&W photography manages way less parameters than colour photography (It is easier to manage)

For a great painting you need at least 100T (Velazquez, Rubens, Rembrandt...)

For a truly great B&W photography you need at least 50T.
That's why there are many great B&W photographs. Some people reach 50T

For great colour photography you would need much more talent (all those colours...) than for B&W.
That's why there is so little great colour photography. Great color photography looks like out of gamut for photographers

And really talented people would paint instead of photographing (much more freedom), color or whatever
Although the race of great painters is as extinct as the dinosaurs I guess  ;D

Am I right?

If an image resonates with me, it doesn't matter what the medium might be. However, medium and technique can certainly affect how much that image resonates. When I look at (for example) some of Wynn Bullock's work (I'm referencing his B&W photographs, although he did experiment in colour), I can't imagine them having the same impact in another medium (or in colour).
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: KLaban on January 09, 2019, 07:29:03 am
As has already been said, photography is at best a secondary art form. Could be that as such it relies heavily on artifice to succeed.

;-)
It’s not the medium thats artistic. It’s the artist. An artist can work in any medium. Some creative people dance, some sing or play musical instruments, some paint or print or sculpt.

The problem with photography is that uncreative people can produce a plausible result and then they confuse themselves for a while. They think they are artists of high ability. Eventually they figure out somewhere in their subconscious that they don’t actially have anything to say but they just like shiny gear. With nothing to say you cannot be an artist. The next step is the ego wakes up to all of this and in order to defend itself it is forced to condem the entire endevour as futile.

How many photographers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? It takes all of them, one to do the screwing and the rest to stand around explaining how they could have done it.

Indeed, and just like to be clear, I don't believe secondary art forms exist, just secondary artists.

;-)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: rabanito on January 09, 2019, 07:36:56 am
No — but you get 1T (Talent Unit) for trying.
That could explain why so few people like my pictures. Thanks.

But this topic is not about "rabanito" but about photography
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: rabanito on January 09, 2019, 07:46:03 am
It’s not the medium thats artistic. It’s the artist. An artist can work in any medium. Some creative people dance, some sing or play musical instruments, some paint or print or sculpt.

The problem with photography is that uncreative people can produce a plausible result and then they confuse themselves for a while. They think they are artists of high ability. Eventually they figure out somewhere in their subconscious that they don’t actially have anything to say but they just like shiny gear. With nothing to say you cannot be an artist. The next step is the ego wakes up to all of this and in order to defend itself it is forced to condem the entire endevour as futile.

How many photographers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? It takes all of them, one to do the screwing and the rest to stand around explaining how they could have done it.

I agree with most of this.

But if the artist inside the person chooses photography instead of painting (or dancing or cooking...) he sets limits for himself because of the medium
You cannot make much music with a piece of clay. Some with a flute and a lot with an orchestra.
Imagine "Las Meninas" done by a photographer.
Impossible IMHO, besides that not everyone is Velazquez.
Photography lets you obtain some good results but not the greatness. The medium itself is restricting.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: RSL on January 09, 2019, 07:51:21 am
It’s not the medium thats artistic. It’s the artist. An artist can work in any medium. Some creative people dance, some sing or play musical instruments, some paint or print or sculpt.

Well said, Martin. Right on.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 09, 2019, 08:03:42 am
Just for the sake of the argument:

If a great painter has a talent of, say, 100T(Talent Units) or more (to set a benchmark)
The most talented photographers I know have - I would say - about 50T
B&W photography manages way less parameters than colour photography (It is easier to manage)

For a great painting you need at least 100T (Velazquez, Rubens, Rembrandt...)

For a truly great B&W photography you need at least 50T.
That's why there are many great B&W photographs. Some people reach 50T

For great colour photography you would need much more talent (all those colours...) than for B&W.
That's why there is so little great colour photography. Great color photography looks like out of gamut for photographers

And really talented people would paint instead of photographing (much more freedom), color or whatever
Although the race of great painters is as extinct as the dinosaurs I guess  ;D

Am I right?

 No.

There are great colorists among photographers.

Just a few:

Saul Leiter
William Eggleston
Harry Gruyaert
David LaChapelle
Sarah Moon
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 09, 2019, 08:05:28 am
It’s not the medium thats artistic. It’s the artist. An artist can work in any medium. Some creative people dance, some sing or play musical instruments, some paint or print or sculpt.

The problem with photography is that uncreative people can produce a plausible result and then they confuse themselves for a while. They think they are artists of high ability. Eventually they figure out somewhere in their subconscious that they don’t actially have anything to say but they just like shiny gear. With nothing to say you cannot be an artist. The next step is the ego wakes up to all of this and in order to defend itself it is forced to condem the entire endevour as futile.

How many photographers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? It takes all of them, one to do the screwing and the rest to stand around explaining how they could have done it.
You forget the brigade that shout about the poor light after screwing up (in)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: OmerV on January 09, 2019, 08:16:08 am
I agree with most of this.

But if the artist inside the person chooses photography instead of painting (or dancing or cooking...) he sets limits for himself because of the medium
You cannot make much music with a piece of clay. Some with a flute and a lot with an orchestra.
Imagine "Las Meninas" done by a photographer.
Impossible IMHO, besides that not everyone is Velazquez.
Photography lets you obtain some good results but not the greatness. The medium itself is restricting.

Well, you may enjoy one over another, but all mediums are restrictive.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: rabanito on January 09, 2019, 08:23:00 am
No.

There are great colorists among photographers.

Just a few:

Saul Leiter
William Eggleston
Harry Gruyaert
David LaChapelle
Sarah Moon

De gustibus non est disputandum
I would never compare the works by those I named with the work of those you name, however good they may be.
But again, I am just a lowly consumer, not an artist myself.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 09, 2019, 08:24:47 am
No.

There are great colorists among photographers.

Just a few:

Saul Leiter
William Eggleston
Harry Gruyaert
David LaChapelle
Sarah Moon

And David Hamilton was pretty damned good in both b&white and colour, as with our Sarah Moon.

I can't stomach Mr LaChapelle.

Somebody mentioned artists choosing a medium: I don't quite think so - I think it chooses them.

Rob
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: KLaban on January 09, 2019, 08:26:11 am
Well, you may enjoy one over another, but all mediums are restrictive.

I found watercolour to be restrictive, oil less so, but having said that enjoyed and benefited from those restrictions.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 09, 2019, 08:26:38 am
De gustibus non est disputandum
I would never compare the works by those I named with the work of those you name, however good they may be.
But again, I am just a lowly consumer, not an artist myself.

The problem is, as said before, photography is not art, like painting or sculpting.

Don’t make the mistake by comparing apples with lemons.
Title: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 09, 2019, 08:29:08 am
And color photography is a new form, compared with the centuries evolution in painting.


Photography is a purely technical thing that can be used on a virtuoso way. But it remains a very technical application.

You will never put the soul of Picasso’s single lines in a photo, never.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: rabanito on January 09, 2019, 08:36:40 am
The problem is, as said before, photography is not art, like painting or sculpting.

Don’t make the mistake by comparing apples with lemons.

Careful- I'm not comparing the media.
I enjoy Elvis and Bach. Not at the same time :-)
My walls are full of "Rabanitos". No Turners or Adams
But I enjoy the superior works of art in an exhibition or museum

Painting and photographing have some things in common. If you have the genius, you choose the most adequate medium and in this case it is painting. Provided that you can paint :-)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 09, 2019, 08:38:55 am
Careful- I'm not comparing the media.
I enjoy Elvis and Bach. Not at the same time :-)
My walls are full of "Rabanitos". No Turners or Adams
But I enjoy the superior works of art in an exhibition or museum

Painting and photographing have some things in common. If you have the genius, you choose the most adequate medium and in this case it is painting. Provided that you can paint :-)

Correct, they have ‘some’ things in common
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: OmerV on January 09, 2019, 08:45:29 am
And color photography is a new form, compared with the centuries evolution in painting.


Photography is a purely technical thing that can be used on a virtuoso way. But it remains a very technical application.

You will never put the soul of Picasso’s single lines in a photo, never.


Ivo, I can’t tell if you’re being sincere or a gadfly. Still, I’ll assume sincerity. Picasso never saw the way a shopping window reflection could interpret the world in surrealism the way Atget did:

https://medium.com/vantage/old-paris-through-the-lens-of-eugène-atget-9b6890fdca9a

Trying to equate differences between writing, photography, painting et al., is, I think, a Sisyphean endeavor.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 09, 2019, 08:58:11 am

Ivo, I can’t tell if you’re being sincere or a gadfly. Still, I’ll assume sincerity. Picasso never saw the way a shopping window reflection could interpret the world in surrealism the way Atget did:

https://medium.com/vantage/old-paris-through-the-lens-of-eugène-atget-9b6890fdca9a

Trying to equate differences between writing, photography, painting et al., is, I think, a Sisyphean endeavor.

I even don’t know what a gadfly is, I had to Google.

In your last sentence you say exactly what I said before . You can’t compare apples with lemons.

Why should I not be sincere? Do you think I would put time in this if I didn’t find it a usefull discussion?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 09, 2019, 09:15:19 am
People who claim photography isn't art, or is a lesser art, are generally (I find) doing a poor job of separating the conceptual side of art from the execution of art.

Executing a photograph is easy. Despite claims to the contrary, there isn't really a "making" step necessary to call into being a photograph. Yes, you can do all the work you like on it afterwards, or beforehand, but that's not the part that makes it a photograph.

Executing a painting or sculpture or a novel is considerably more demanding, you actually do "make" something, with a long and involved series of mechanical steps, each with your brain pretty well engaged, over a period of time.

But that doesn't mean the conceptual part isn't just as difficult and just as valuable. I have argued in the past that photography is essentially an act of "selection" and not of "creation" as such, but that selection should be treated as an equal to creation.

The justification for that equality could come from several places, I dare say, but at any rate you can remark that a photograph can produce results in the viewer just as well as a painting does.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Martin Kristiansen on January 09, 2019, 09:21:08 am
People who claim photography isn't art, or is a lesser art, are generally (I find) doing a poor job of separating the conceptual side of art from the execution of art.

Executing a photograph is easy. Despite claims to the contrary, there isn't really a "making" step necessary to call into being a photograph. Yes, you can do all the work you like on it afterwards, or beforehand, but that's not the part that makes it a photograph.

Executing a painting or sculpture or a novel is considerably more demanding, you actually do "make" something, with a long and involved series of mechanical steps, each with your brain pretty well engaged, over a period of time.

But that doesn't mean the conceptual part isn't just as difficult and just as valuable. I have argued in the past that photography is essentially an act of "selection" and not of "creation" as such, but that selection should be treated as an equal to creation.

The justification for that equality could come from several places, I dare say, but at any rate you can remark that a photograph can produce results in the viewer just as well as a painting does.

I like this view point.
Title: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 09, 2019, 09:22:07 am
People who claim photography isn't art, or is a lesser art, are generally (I find) doing a poor job of separating the conceptual side of art from the execution of art.

Executing a photograph is easy. Despite claims to the contrary, there isn't really a "making" step necessary to call into being a photograph. Yes, you can do all the work you like on it afterwards, or beforehand, but that's not the part that makes it a photograph.

Executing a painting or sculpture or a novel is considerably more demanding, you actually do "make" something, with a long and involved series of mechanical steps, each with your brain pretty well engaged, over a period of time.

But that doesn't mean the conceptual part isn't just as difficult and just as valuable. I have argued in the past that photography is essentially an act of "selection" and not of "creation" as such, but that selection should be treated as an equal to creation.

The justification for that equality could come from several places, I dare say, but at any rate you can remark that a photograph can produce results in the viewer just as well as a painting does.

I think I misplaced a comma in a previous post.

Photography is not an art like painting, it is different. You explained it very well here above.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: KLaban on January 09, 2019, 09:25:12 am
...Executing a painting or sculpture or a novel is considerably more demanding, you actually do "make" something, with a long and involved series of mechanical steps, each with your brain pretty well engaged, over a period of time...

That could apply equally when using photographic processes, but admittedly, in many, most, cases, does not.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 09, 2019, 09:35:05 am
I’m not propagating following, but I find it worth mentioning.

I had long discussions with colleagues in art academy, mostly painters.
The point of discussion was if art’s center of gravity is in the cerebral effort, in the concept, or in the craft.

On one side, the technical skillful painter claimed it was in the craft, the ‘not so good’ technical painter tended more to the conceptual. And the one who didn’t saw a difference between the tip and end of his brush swore it was al cerebral.

The summum in cerebral art is the description of a piece of art in text without making it.

......
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: RSL on January 09, 2019, 09:37:00 am
Sounds a lot like a discussion in philosophy 101.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on January 09, 2019, 09:48:09 am
I like this view point.

+1
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: petermfiore on January 09, 2019, 09:50:04 am
No.

There are great colorists among photographers.

Just a few:

Saul Leiter
William Eggleston
Harry Gruyaert
David LaChapelle
Sarah Moon

I like them all...However Sarah Moon, If a painter, would be considered a tonalist. I love tonalism.

Peter
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 09, 2019, 09:52:13 am
Sounds a lot like a discussion in philosophy 101.

And it was in a smoky pub.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: petermfiore on January 09, 2019, 09:54:57 am
Painting without an idea... Is a wrist in search for an idea. Can be a daunting journey for the artist. Many never get there.

Peter
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 09, 2019, 10:12:39 am
Painting without an idea... Is a wrist in search for an idea. Can be a daunting journey for the artist. Many never get there.

Peter

Of course, because for a lot of people, no matter how deep they search, emptiness is all they find. If they do manage to hear the faint sound of an echo in the wishingwell, it probably isn't the echo of their own voice.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 09, 2019, 10:14:34 am

The summum in cerebral art is the description of a piece of art in text without making it.

......

Is there a forum for that somewhere? I'd be famous in no time...
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on January 09, 2019, 10:14:42 am
Of course, because for a lot of people, no matter how deep they search, emptiness is all they find. If they do manage to hear the faint sound of an echo in the wishingwell, it probably isn't the echo of their own voice.

Oh, Lord  ;D
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: rabanito on January 09, 2019, 10:22:00 am

The justification for that equality could come from several places, I dare say, but at any rate you can remark that a photograph can produce results in the viewer just as well as a painting does.

I don't believe that all viewers are equivalent. Go to the Louvre and check the viewers of the Mona Lisa  :P :P

You give me a glass of very good wine and one of the best wine and I probably can't distinguish
You give me a glass of bad wine and I can
Give them to a connoisseur and he can always (or says he can :-)  )
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: OmerV on January 09, 2019, 10:27:38 am
I even don’t know what a gadfly is, I had to Google.

In your last sentence you say exactly what I said before . You can’t compare apples with lemons.

Why should I not be sincere? Do you think I would put time in this if I didn’t find it a usefull discussion?

Sorry Ivo, it can be difficult to tell sometimes.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: OmerV on January 09, 2019, 10:32:10 am
People who claim photography isn't art, or is a lesser art, are generally (I find) doing a poor job of separating the conceptual side of art from the execution of art.

Executing a photograph is easy. Despite claims to the contrary, there isn't really a "making" step necessary to call into being a photograph. Yes, you can do all the work you like on it afterwards, or beforehand, but that's not the part that makes it a photograph.

Executing a painting or sculpture or a novel is considerably more demanding, you actually do "make" something, with a long and involved series of mechanical steps, each with your brain pretty well engaged, over a period of time.

But that doesn't mean the conceptual part isn't just as difficult and just as valuable. I have argued in the past that photography is essentially an act of "selection" and not of "creation" as such, but that selection should be treated as an equal to creation.

The justification for that equality could come from several places, I dare say, but at any rate you can remark that a photograph can produce results in the viewer just as well as a painting does.

You are mistaken, Andrew. First off, saying 'selection' is equal to 'creation' completely disregards the effort in creating. Yes, I understand your context is within photography, which leads to the second point. There are multiple choices, options and decisions that go into making the initial exposure. Lens choice, perspective, depth of field, shutter speed, quality of light, all of which are considered in a composition. Thirdly, pointing a lens at a subject, scene, action, depends wholly on how the photographer is interpreting or feeling what he/she sees. The infinite subject matter that has been included in photographs clearly illustrates that anything, and as such, nothing is 'selected' but the vision of the photographer. What is the difference between a green pepper and a Big Wheels? Nothing, only the vision of each photographer is different.

Pedantically, it could be argued that vision ‘selects’ but considering the ubiquity of stuff in even one photographer’s images, that is a specious idea. As near as I can tell, Lee Friendlander is guided by everything and nothing, just what's inside him.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 09, 2019, 10:54:38 am
First off, saying 'selection' is equal to 'creation' completely disregards the effort in creating.

Yes. This is deliberate, not an error. It is consistent with the last 100 years or so of contemporary thinking in Art, that effort required to make a thing plays no role in the artistic value of the thing. You are welcome to disagree with this, of course. But it is nonetheless a widely held opinion among people whose job it is to decide these things, and a great deal of widely respected art required little to no effort on the part of the artist.

There are multiple choices, options and decisions that go into making the initial exposure. Lens choice, perspective, depth of field, shutter speed, quality of light, all of which are considered in a composition. Thirdly, pointing a lens at a subject, scene, action, depends wholly on how the photographer is interpreting or feeling what he/she sees. The infinite subject matter that has been included in photographs clearly illustrates that anything, and as such, nothing is 'selected' but the vision of the photographer. What is the difference between a green pepper and a Big Wheels? Nothing, only the vision of each photographer is different.

Pedantically, it could be argued that vision ‘selects’ but considering the ubiquity of stuff in even one photographer’s images, that is a specious idea. As near as I can tell, Lee Friendlander is guided by everything and nothing, just what's inside him.

I don't understand your point here. Are you arguing that photography is an act of "creation" rather than "selection" or what? This is simply a litany of things everyone knows to be true about photography without, as far as I can tell, any statement of a thesis or logical progression.

I realize that you have made a little hobby out of disagreeing with me, and I do appreciate that you've put a little more effort into this one than your usual airy handwave of dismissal, but I confess that I am unable to make much out of it.

Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Alan Klein on January 09, 2019, 11:26:45 am
I've walked around great museums and seen great pieces of work.  After seeing a few of them as I walk, I walk faster and spend about as much time on most of them as I would on a photo - just a few seconds.  If the art moves me, I spend more time looking.  If not, I brush right past it.  Same as with photos.  Art tingles our aesthetic ganglia.  But one piece of anything wears thin.  Frankly, if you want to compare art types, you spend a heck of a lot more time listening to one song by one artist than looking at any piece of art or photo you've ever seen.  Of course music, dance, movie, books, etc are linear, like a video, not like a photo which is singular.  Unless you have to write a critique on a photo or painting, who spends more than a few seconds looking, regardless how great the art is?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 09, 2019, 11:34:48 am
Is there a forum for that somewhere? I'd be famous in no time...

There are museums full of it.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 09, 2019, 11:38:19 am
Sorry Ivo, it can be difficult to tell sometimes.

That is because some deserve to have a Gadfly on the back.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 09, 2019, 11:47:44 am
Unless you have to write a critique on a photo or painting, who spends more than a few seconds looking, regardless how great the art is?

I do.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: rabanito on January 09, 2019, 11:56:40 am
  Unless you have to write a critique on a photo or painting, who spends more than a few seconds looking, regardless how great the art is?

Well I do that. If I go to the Prado, I go for one or two paintings.
I can not digest more in one session.
For looking for seconds I better buy a well printed book.
Maybe you're missing something. I don't believe that anyone can experience great art just by passing by.
Every stroke is there for some reason, IMHO
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: rabanito on January 09, 2019, 12:02:43 pm
That is because some deserve to have a Gadfly on the back.

Gadflies don't live long  ;D
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Martin Kristiansen on January 09, 2019, 12:04:02 pm
I do.

Yes. So do I. A great pleasure in life.
Title: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 09, 2019, 12:08:24 pm
Yes. So do I. A great pleasure in life.

A museum without decent chair in the middle of the room is avoidable.

The longest time I spent looking at a painting was at an exhibit of Anselm Kiefer. I can sit for hours in front of some of his work.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: faberryman on January 09, 2019, 12:09:34 pm
Unless you have to write a critique on a photo or painting, who spends more than a few seconds looking, regardless how great the art is?
Have you not noticed a person standing in front of a painting as you walk by?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: OmerV on January 09, 2019, 12:21:03 pm
Yes. This is deliberate, not an error. It is consistent with the last 100 years or so of contemporary thinking in Art, that effort required to make a thing plays no role in the artistic value of the thing. You are welcome to disagree with this, of course. But it is nonetheless a widely held opinion among people whose job it is to decide these things, and a great deal of widely respected art required little to no effort on the part of the artist.

I don't understand your point here. Are you arguing that photography is an act of "creation" rather than "selection" or what? This is simply a litany of things everyone knows to be true about photography without, as far as I can tell, any statement of a thesis or logical progression.

I realize that you have made a little hobby out of disagreeing with me, and I do appreciate that you've put a little more effort into this one than your usual airy handwave of dismissal, but I confess that I am unable to make much out of it.

Yes, there is a difference between the craft, technique, or the manual effort in building art, and its artistic or aesthetic value. I've heard lovely music played by self taught fiddlers, and by Itzhak Perlman (who has said that missing practice for a few days diminishes his playing. Go figure.)

Yep, the initial exposure of a photograph is an act of creation, whether using a Hasselblad or a cell phone. Very much like painting, writing, sculpture, etc. Whether shallow or interesting.

'Selection' means nothing.

EDIT: Or 'select' means, 'select.'

 :P


Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 09, 2019, 01:37:30 pm
Yep, the initial exposure of a photograph is an act of creation, whether using a Hasselblad or a cell phone. Very much like painting, writing, sculpture, etc. Whether shallow or interesting.

As someone who has applied pigment to flat surfaces, placed words in quantity on to paper, and shaped materials into objects, I have to say that I find very little similarity between those activities and the gentle press of a button. But, perhaps you mean something more abstract, more general.

The fact remains that there is a widely held idea that photography is qualitatively different from the painting, sculpture, writing, dance, musical composition, and so on. I am not alone in holding this, and many many millions of words have been written on the subject which you are free to peruse. I understand it in a particular way which seems to a) be consistent with contemporary ideas surrounding Art and b) resonate with many people.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: rabanito on January 09, 2019, 02:54:44 pm
As someone who has applied pigment to flat surfaces, placed words in quantity on to paper, and shaped materials into objects, I have to say that I find very little similarity between those activities and the gentle press of a button. But, perhaps you mean something more abstract, more general.

You seem to believe that making a print is just gently pressing a button.
Not my experience
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 09, 2019, 03:47:08 pm
You can print things which are not photographs, and conversely a photograph need not be printed to be a photograph.

Printing, therefore, is not photography, any more than stretching canvas is painting.

ETA: You can, and people do, argue that "photography" justly applies to the whole process, the whole mesh of possible threads of activity, from set decorating and lighting, to direction, through the gentle press of the shutter button, onwards to potentially endless post-processing. And, in a sense, that's fine. Painting, you can equally well argue, does include stretching canvas, grinding pigments, varnishing, framing. Any individual painting might be done with or without doing some of those steps, just as one might take a picture and either clone out the power line -- or not.

Still, it begs the question "so what is the essential thing that makes a painting? or photograph?"

The answer to these questions are something fairly close to: applying colored goo to a surface, and gently pressing the button on a camera, respectively.

These are thing irreducible things that make a painting a painting, a photograph a photograph.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: RSL on January 09, 2019, 04:01:14 pm
As someone who has applied pigment to flat surfaces, placed words in quantity on to paper, and shaped materials into objects, I have to say that I find very little similarity between those activities and the gentle press of a button. But, perhaps you mean something more abstract, more general.

No, Andrew. It doesn't matter whether you're applying paint to a flat surface or shaping materials into objects or putting words on paper, or gently pressing a button. What matters is seeing -- in all these activities. You may be technically superb as a painter, sculptor, writer, photographer, but if you don't see, you're dead in the water.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. I had all of two seconds to make this picture -- with a camera. But if I'd simply seen it and then painted it or written about it or made a sculpture about it, the result would have been the same. The important thing was seeing it and responding.

Which, incidentally, is why real street photography is the highest and best use of a camera. With landscape and similar kinds of photography you pretty much have as long as you want to take to make the picture. With street you see it and snap it as a single thing: I'd call it a gestalt, but that would be pushing the word a bit too far. But you see it, snap it, and it's gone. It's gone forever.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 09, 2019, 04:07:58 pm
That is in fact my point, Russ.

Photography distills away (essentially) all of the activity, all motion, all the physical acts which make an object. Photography distills the job to simply seeing. The words I use to describe this are: photography is, essentially, an act of selection not of creation but you could as well say (nearly) pure seeing if you like.

And my underlying point is that it is that act of more or less pure seeing that, when successful, is the important thing, not the various physical motions that you can choose to do or not do. Which, I think, is more or less exactly what you just said?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: RSL on January 09, 2019, 04:10:48 pm
Looks as if we're on the same wavelength.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Robert Roaldi on January 09, 2019, 04:32:49 pm
After 11 pages of discussion (I haven't read every post), it might be awkward to argue that the article and the site in general aren't delivering the content that people want.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: OmerV on January 09, 2019, 04:42:40 pm
As someone who has applied pigment to flat surfaces, placed words in quantity on to paper, and shaped materials into objects, I have to say that I find very little similarity between those activities and the gentle press of a button. But, perhaps you mean something more abstract, more general.

The fact remains that there is a widely held idea that photography is qualitatively different from the painting, sculpture, writing, dance, musical composition, and so on. I am not alone in holding this, and many many millions  ???of words have been written on the subject which you are free to peruse. I understand it in a particular way which seems to a) be consistent with contemporary ideas surrounding Art and b) resonate with many people.

Well Andrew, we finally have something in common. I too painted, drew and have played a little music.

From my experience, it’s all the same in effort. Work and perserverence. But I’m not sure what you mean by “qualitatively different.” Of course there are differences. Photography can do what no other medium can, and vice versa. I mean, I’ve yet to see a photo that can get me dancing, and I’ve yet to read a poem that can levitate a small dog.

But what does that mean? Nothing unless being in the “right” clique is important, which in case being a friend of Ai Weiwei is better than befriending Alec Soth.
Title: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 09, 2019, 04:57:33 pm
That is in fact my point, Russ.

Photography distills away (essentially) all of the activity, all motion, all the physical acts which make an object. Photography distills the job to simply seeing. The words I use to describe this are: photography is, essentially, an act of selection not of creation but you could as well say (nearly) pure seeing if you like.

And my underlying point is that it is that act of more or less pure seeing that, when successful, is the important thing, not the various physical motions that you can choose to do or not do. Which, I think, is more or less exactly what you just said?

Your point is and was very clear.
I understand your point and can follow your discourse, it’s not new to me. However in time I developed second thoughts about it. 


The one (cerebral, seeing) doesn’t mean a thing without the other (the craft, the output). The latter is of no chance without the former. If you are not able to give output on what you see, it risks to be intellectual masturbation.

Following the spiral of arguments you land at conceptual art, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain by R.Mutt or even further: the telephone instructions of Sol LeWitt.

I’m very open to this art, but I have to be fair and I ‘m more visual and auditory oriented. I need input from my senses to enjoy a piece of art.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 09, 2019, 05:07:49 pm
Omer: I admit that I am still unable to discern any coherent thesis in your remarks beyond the by-now inevitable "you're wrong, Andrew"

Ivo: Indeed. Conceptual Art arguably occurred as a result of/reaction to photography. The basic problem as seen in the 19th century was "photography is simply too easy to be Art" which was wrestled over extensively, but in the end Art changed into, eh, in rough terms what we know today: the concept is what matters, the execution is secondary.

So, yes, you get Art which is just a description of how one might do it (Keith Smith has a conceptual book made out of his own body, frozen, sliced, and bound. Obviously he has not yet made this book.) You get Art that is actually executed by hired hands rather than The Artist (quite a bit of that). And you get Photography. Which is much much easier than it was when the Victorians were thundering at one another in the relevant various journals.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 09, 2019, 05:14:10 pm
As a consequence of this, I guess, the use of Art has also changed.

Victorian art was decorative and occasionally kind of preachy, but mainly it was intended to be "sublime" which is rather too close to "pretty" for modern tastes. It's not quite the same, but it's alarmingly similar. It was all designed to be enjoyable, to be pleasurable to consume.

Purely conceptual art isn't all that enjoyable. Reading Smith's descriptions of his conceptual books is at best a moment of amusement. There simply isn't much there to take in, to enjoy, to be entertained by. What there is, though, is some mind expansion. Reading these descriptions, as a guy who makes books himself, I am enlarged in my understanding of what might reasonably be considered a book.

The use of Art has, in some ways, come full circle to the early religious art. Art has many functions now, including decoration, but Serious Art now, (like Serious Art in, say, the 12th century) is expected to enlarge us, to improve us, to expand our minds and our spirits.

Mozart does that for some people. da Vinci does it for some people. Keith Smith's weird conceptual books do it for a somewhat smaller audience of people.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 09, 2019, 05:19:44 pm
Omer: I admit that I am still unable to discern any coherent thesis in your remarks beyond the by-now inevitable "you're wrong, Andrew"

Ivo: Indeed. Conceptual Art arguably occurred as a result of/reaction to photography. The basic problem as seen in the 19th century was "photography is simply too easy to be Art" which was wrestled over extensively, but in the end Art changed into, eh, in rough terms what we know today: the concept is what matters, the execution is secondary.

So, yes, you get Art which is just a description of how one might do it (Keith Smith has a conceptual book made out of his own body, frozen, sliced, and bound. Obviously he has not yet made this book.) You get Art that is actually executed by hired hands rather than The Artist (quite a bit of that). And you get Photography. Which is much much easier than it was when the Victorians were thundering at one another in the relevant various journals.

Then why are we discussing about the good or bad of a image. It may be that the viewer doesn’t understand the artists  cerebral effort ....

I really can follow yours point of view. And I don’t have a reason to think you would judge art without the openness in trying to understand what the artist saw or want to bring over.

I hope more could do so. Keeping the curiosity to understand what the artist want to say or show. It is about humility.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 09, 2019, 05:40:40 pm
Quote
You know what the difference is between Painting, Writing, Composing, and Photography?

With the latter, you will instantly know that your done.

Da Beat, early 2019
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: rabanito on January 09, 2019, 05:47:32 pm
You can print things which are not photographs, and conversely a photograph need not be printed to be a photograph.

Printing, therefore, is not photography, any more than stretching canvas is painting.


That is not the point.

Printing is the end product of photography.
As a painting by Goya is of his work.

A picture of a picture of a Goya in the Internet is just that. A pic of a pic.
A picture of a print or future print in the screen is just that.
It is not a negative, it is not the *.jpg, it is not a collection of zeros and ones in the file, it is not the contact copy.
The end product is the print, or the painting, or the statue, or the cake

That is my humble opinion  8)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 09, 2019, 06:08:28 pm
Then why are we discussing about the good or bad of a image. It may be that the viewer doesn’t understand the artists  cerebral effort ....

As I've noted in the past, I don't entirely subscribe to the post-modernist experiment. I think there is good and bad, but also I do not think the artist's intent is necessarily the ultimate guide. Nor do I think it is irrelevant. When I put on my critic hat, I am doing something quite specific, which I will now outline!

A critic renders judgement, their own judgement. That is literally the job. This judgement, though, is tempered, it is not merely "I like it" or "I don't like it.'

The critic places themselves into the shoes of some hypothetical audience, and attempts to answer the question "what will that audience get out of this?" The audience could be, and altogether too often is, merely other critics. It might also be average citizens. The audience could be, and probably sometimes is, "Malians with a university education."

The judgement of what the audience might or might not get out might only be "will they like it?" or it might Be (ideally is) more nuanced, more complete.

Roger Ebert wrote movie reviews not for critics, nor for average rubes. He wrote reviews for more or less normal people who like movies, who are attentive to movies, who will approach a movie with an open heart and give the movie a chance. I try to do the same with photography. If you don't like photography, I'm not writing for you. If you're not willing to approach a group of pictures with an open mind and an open heart, I'm not writing for you either. If you only "like" photographs that grab you instantly with glib splashes of color or strong graphics, again, not for you.

I write for a relatively narrow audience of people who like photographs, who find photographs interesting, who have some slight familiarity with photographs (at least), and who are willing to take the time to look, to think, to see, to struggle, to try to understand. For those people, I offer my best guess at what they will get out of the pictures. I offer my guess as to whether they will like pictures or not, but also and more importantly, what art-like experience will they have. What directions will their minds likely grow, what new insights might they seek out in the work, what enlarging experience they might find in it.

For those people, I offer this on Krawesky's picture as my guess:

You'll like them. They are glib, graphical, pleasing.
You will, most likely, find nothing enlarging, nothing illuminating.


Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 09, 2019, 06:22:29 pm

For those people, I offer this on Krawesky's picture as my guess:

You'll like them. They are glib, graphical, pleasing.
You will, most likely, find nothing enlarging, nothing illuminating.

I find that somewhat intriguing for the following reasons:
1. What does it mean then if one does find several images enlarging?
2. Shouldn't good images be "glib, graphical, pleasing" first and foremost in order to engage the audience so they will actually take the time and find whatever is enlarging?

Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 09, 2019, 06:28:16 pm
I find that somewhat intriguing for the following reasons:
1. What does it mean then if one does find several images enlarging?

There are a number of possibilities.

a. my guess could be wrong, and in fact most of the people I imagine I represent will find enlargement
b. you are an outlier, and while most of the aforementioned will find no enlargement you are one of the rare people that does
c. you are not one of the people I imagine I represent

there may be more, but those three possibilities at least are in play.

2. Shouldn't good images be "glib, graphical, pleasing" first and foremost in order to engage the audience so they will actually take the time and find whatever is enlarging?

No. I do not care about people who require glibness before they're willing or able to examine work seriously. There are other critics you might want to read, but I am not one you should.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 09, 2019, 06:42:19 pm
That is not the point.

Printing is the end product of photography.
As a painting by Goya is of his work.

Yeah, I figured that would be the response.

Doesn't change the fact that printing something doesn't make it a photograph, and it doesn't change the fact that pretty much everyone else thinks that those JPEG files on their phones count as "photographs."

If you want to stick to your guns and say "photography absolutely includes printing" you're welcome to do that. It's not exactly a mainstream usage of the word, though.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 09, 2019, 07:05:13 pm
There are a number of possibilities.

a. my guess could be wrong, and in fact most of the people I imagine I represent will find enlargement
b. you are an outlier, and while most of the aforementioned will find no enlargement you are one of the rare people that does
c. you are not one of the people I imagine I represent

there may be more, but those three possibilities at least are in play.

Or perhaps I haven't seen enough images yet so I will find enlargement more easily than someone who has seen more images.

No. I do not care about people who require glibness before they're willing or able to examine work seriously. There are other critics you might want to read, but I am not one you should.

Well okay, not glibness of course, but a pleasing composition for example helps to first engage the viewer superficially. If you don't manage to attract the viewer to your image, how can one expect them to take the time to look for enlargement. I realise it is an effort requested of the viewer, but something has got to trigger the effort. I'm fairly sure that trigger isn't you or I telling them to. (Although I maintain that this is exactly why society needs curators: to prefilter the images worth viewing for the lazy rest of us.)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 10, 2019, 01:17:09 am
As I've noted in the past, I don't entirely subscribe to the post-modernist experiment. I think there is good and bad, but also I do not think the artist's intent is necessarily the ultimate guide. Nor do I think it is irrelevant. When I put on my critic hat, I am doing something quite specific, which I will now outline!

A critic renders judgement, their own judgement. That is literally the job. This judgement, though, is tempered, it is not merely "I like it" or "I don't like it.'

The critic places themselves into the shoes of some hypothetical audience, and attempts to answer the question "what will that audience get out of this?" The audience could be, and altogether too often is, merely other critics. It might also be average citizens. The audience could be, and probably sometimes is, "Malians with a university education."

The judgement of what the audience might or might not get out might only be "will they like it?" or it might Be (ideally is) more nuanced, more complete.

Roger Ebert wrote movie reviews not for critics, nor for average rubes. He wrote reviews for more or less normal people who like movies, who are attentive to movies, who will approach a movie with an open heart and give the movie a chance. I try to do the same with photography. If you don't like photography, I'm not writing for you. If you're not willing to approach a group of pictures with an open mind and an open heart, I'm not writing for you either. If you only "like" photographs that grab you instantly with glib splashes of color or strong graphics, again, not for you.

I write for a relatively narrow audience of people who like photographs, who find photographs interesting, who have some slight familiarity with photographs (at least), and who are willing to take the time to look, to think, to see, to struggle, to try to understand. For those people, I offer my best guess at what they will get out of the pictures. I offer my guess as to whether they will like pictures or not, but also and more importantly, what art-like experience will they have. What directions will their minds likely grow, what new insights might they seek out in the work, what enlarging experience they might find in it.

For those people, I offer this on Krawesky's picture as my guess:

You'll like them. They are glib, graphical, pleasing.
You will, most likely, find nothing enlarging, nothing illuminating.

I can live with that, Amolitor. Thanks for this comprehensive explanation. I hope a lot of Lulaneers will take it at heart.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Martin Kristiansen on January 10, 2019, 03:59:02 am
As I've noted in the past, I don't entirely subscribe to the post-modernist experiment. I think there is good and bad, but also I do not think the artist's intent is necessarily the ultimate guide. Nor do I think it is irrelevant. When I put on my critic hat, I am doing something quite specific, which I will now outline!

A critic renders judgement, their own judgement. That is literally the job. This judgement, though, is tempered, it is not merely "I like it" or "I don't like it.'

The critic places themselves into the shoes of some hypothetical audience, and attempts to answer the question "what will that audience get out of this?" The audience could be, and altogether too often is, merely other critics. It might also be average citizens. The audience could be, and probably sometimes is, "Malians with a university education."

The judgement of what the audience might or might not get out might only be "will they like it?" or it might Be (ideally is) more nuanced, more complete.

Roger Ebert wrote movie reviews not for critics, nor for average rubes. He wrote reviews for more or less normal people who like movies, who are attentive to movies, who will approach a movie with an open heart and give the movie a chance. I try to do the same with photography. If you don't like photography, I'm not writing for you. If you're not willing to approach a group of pictures with an open mind and an open heart, I'm not writing for you either. If you only "like" photographs that grab you instantly with glib splashes of color or strong graphics, again, not for you.

I write for a relatively narrow audience of people who like photographs, who find photographs interesting, who have some slight familiarity with photographs (at least), and who are willing to take the time to look, to think, to see, to struggle, to try to understand. For those people, I offer my best guess at what they will get out of the pictures. I offer my guess as to whether they will like pictures or not, but also and more importantly, what art-like experience will they have. What directions will their minds likely grow, what new insights might they seek out in the work, what enlarging experience they might find in it.

For those people, I offer this on Krawesky's picture as my guess:

You'll like them. They are glib, graphical, pleasing.
You will, most likely, find nothing enlarging, nothing illuminating.

I agree with much that you write, and you write very lucidly so I hope I have a fairly clear understanding of the points you make and the negative criticism of this photographers work.

By now I you are most likely anticipating a "but". You could see this as that "but" although I prefer to see its as a small point of departure, or even a slightly different perspective that can lead to a different reading.
I assume any art work in any medium is intended to communicate something, even if not clearly realised by the artist. That intention supposes the existence of an audience and of course no audience is homogenous. In fairness to your criticism of this work I believe the intended audience of these images is located in Europe and North America. Of course I could be wrong since the work ended up on a photographic site that is increasingly viewed by a wider audience. I of course do not think that this first world audience is homogeneous but there will inevitably be more shared experiences among this group than if we extended outside of it.

I am from Africa, I have travelled extensively in Africa and to a lesser degree in Asia. I have lived for brief periods in the Middle East, Europe and North America. I live in a Third World country, or perhaps what has become known as an arsehole country. I actually like it despite certain challenges and things that annoy me.

When I lived in North America I was discomforted by the sterility and groomed appearance of the environment. Where I live is chaos, litter everywhere, abandoned and hijacked buildings, no one follows road rules, people range from being dressed in filthy rags to designer clothes, frequently all mixed up together. I have no desire to enter into a debate about how there are poor areas all over the world. The environment in Europe and North America is fundamentally different to where I live, trust me on this.

When I saw the photographs by Adam Krawesky they immediately resonated with me. To me has has perfectly described the manicured, freshly painted pristine city environment I experienced when I lived in North America. The well dressed people with space all around them, no one selling roasted chicken feet on the side of the road, no piles of rotting vegetables, no hordes of people. Also no threatening environment, no danger but also no life, no fizz. A sense of alienation, a surreal disconnectedness. Cold and unwelcoming, lonely. The man stepping onto the road in a clearly demarcated crossing area even with no one around. Never see that where I live. Here people run across 5 lane freeways dodging cars doing 120KM/H, frequently resulting in spectacular accidents.

My point to all this is I got a lot from this article. It has made me look at where I live and how wild it can actually get. Made me wonder how I could portray all that. Most importantly Adam has pointed out to me what I felt living in North America. When I saw the images my reaction was, "Yes, like that".
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: rabanito on January 10, 2019, 04:57:20 am

If you want to stick to your guns and say "photography absolutely includes printing" you're welcome to do that. It's not exactly a mainstream usage of the word, though.

As you well point out elsewhere, we write for a specific audience (myself of course at a much humbler level).
In my case what I perceive the public of LuLa to be.
Let mainstream be mainstream  :)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: KLaban on January 10, 2019, 06:59:22 am
With a background as a painter, illustrator and photographer I've always thought of photography as simply another creative medium. Using the various photographic processes, still and motion, can produce anything from mind numbing dross to life affirming, life changing works. The resulting dross and works have done more to shape the world in which we live today than all the rest of the creative mediums combined.

If writers, curators, critics, and even those here on LuLa who may or may not see themselves allied to, or in some way aligned to those professions, believe that dismissing the photographic processes as secondary to other creative mediums is valid and that photography is but a secondary art form then that is their subjective opinion and they are entitled to their view, as are we all.

Most pics and videos are not life affirming or life changing works, but this is not the fault of the medium.

The above is my subjective opinion, for what it is worth.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 10, 2019, 07:15:48 am
Tripping the shutter is the easy part, and if common parlance decides the act of photography to mean tripping a shutter, then there is some validity here. The hard part of course, is to have the camera pointing at something interesting when tripping the shutter. That interesting bit may be preconceived and by design, or on the street. Neither is easy, imo.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 10, 2019, 07:27:33 am
Tripping the shutter is the easy part, and if common parlance decides the act of photography to mean tripping a shutter, then there is some validity here. The hard part of course, is to have the camera pointing at something interesting when tripping the shutter. That interesting bit may be preconceived and by design, or on the street. Neither is easy, imo.


That's not hard to accept, but also easy to deny. A paradox, then.

When I make a photo that pleases me, or that I just want to make, I hardly think of it as being something hard to do, in the sense of difficult. It just comes together, mostly as something that Sarah Moon calls the unexpected gift, often as an alternative to one's own original idea, or even direction.

Photography, when done for yourself and not involving many lights etc. is bloody simple: it just happens that day, or it does not. When it does not, you go home and hope for something to happen the next time. Hardly hard to do... patience is the main external quality.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 10, 2019, 07:38:46 am

That's not hard to accept, but also easy to deny. A paradox, then.

When I make a photo that pleases me, or that I just want to make, I hardly think of it as being something hard to do, in the sense of difficult. It just comes together, mostly as something that Sarah Moon calls the unexpected gift, often as an alternative to one's own original idea, or even direction.

Photography, when done for yourself and not involving many lights etc. is bloody simple: it just happens that day, or it does not. When it does not, you go home and hope for something to happen the next time. Hardly hard to do... patience is the main external quality.

If you're the sole reference for "interesting", I'd agree. Additionally, since you've been a professional photographer, it will be a lot easier for you to naturally find a more universal form of interesting, and intuitively knowing how to capture it.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: KLaban on January 10, 2019, 07:48:51 am
I should add that I don't accept the making of something argument, the producing of an object: I see that as craft.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Patricia Sheley on January 10, 2019, 08:33:59 am
Quoting Martin:
[When I saw the photographs by Adam Krawesky they immediately resonated with me. To me has has perfectly described the manicured, freshly painted pristine city environment I experienced when I lived in North America. The well dressed people with space all around them, no one selling roasted chicken feet on the side of the road, no piles of rotting vegetables, no hordes of people. Also no threatening environment, no danger but also no life, no fizz. A sense of alienation, a surreal disconnectedness. Cold and unwelcoming, lonely. The man stepping onto the road in a clearly demarcated crossing area even with no one around. Never see that where I live. Here people run across 5 lane freeways dodging cars doing 120KM/H, frequently resulting in spectacular accidents.

My point to all this is I got a lot from this article. It has made me look at where I live and how wild it can actually get.


Made me wonder how I could portray all that


. Most importantly Adam has pointed out to me what I felt living in North America. When I saw the images my reaction was, "Yes, like that".]


Out of chaos, Martin, you have discovered peace of awareness. The speed at which we travel today too easily masks the speed at which the curve of earth we all inhabit moves us in unison. From the flat earth under our personal feet a deeper vision from beyond the curve seems to open ever more rarely. Savour your ability and willingness to be open to that peace of chaos.
Lumine!

( It is all too easy to not even be aware that our driver, having deposited us within the gated , lushly planted, landscaped, and irrigated confines of our known place of habitation,  has at the very same time stripped us of the ability to see the rusting, metal sheets of roofing just outside and below the walls of our view, disguising the true curve of place and life. )

Thank you for sharing your thoughts Martin~
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Martin Kristiansen on January 10, 2019, 08:43:02 am
Thank you Patricia. I really believe you understood what I was trying to say.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 10, 2019, 08:54:55 am
Thank you,Martin. That is a very interesting take!
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: OmerV on January 10, 2019, 08:57:45 am

That's not hard to accept, but also easy to deny. A paradox, then.

When I make a photo that pleases me, or that I just want to make, I hardly think of it as being something hard to do, in the sense of difficult. It just comes together, mostly as something that Sarah Moon calls the unexpected gift, often as an alternative to one's own original idea, or even direction.

Photography, when done for yourself and not involving many lights etc. is bloody simple: it just happens that day, or it does not. When it does not, you go home and hope for something to happen the next time. Hardly hard to do... patience is the main external quality.

I disagree Rob. Personal work can be very difficult. But our definition of “personal” may be different.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: KLaban on January 10, 2019, 09:24:45 am
I disagree Rob. Personal work can be very difficult. But our definition of “personal” may be different.

I've often found personal work  far more difficult than commissioned work or other work that had the sole purpose of earning a buck. Could be that I cared more about the personal stuff.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Robert Roaldi on January 10, 2019, 11:00:42 am
When I lived in North America I was discomforted by the sterility and groomed appearance of the environment. Where I live is chaos, litter everywhere, abandoned and hijacked buildings, no one follows road rules, people range from being dressed in filthy rags to designer clothes, frequently all mixed up together. I have no desire to enter into a debate about how there are poor areas all over the world. The environment in Europe and North America is fundamentally different to where I live, trust me on this.

This is unrelated to the rest of this thread, for which I apologize to the group, but I thought you might be entertained by this: https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia (https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia).
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 10, 2019, 12:49:12 pm
I've often found personal work far more difficult than commissioned work or other work that had the sole purpose of earning a buck. Could be that I cared more about the personal stuff.



Interesting; my personal work, back then, was my professional work. I have several times mentioned here my early (thank God!) Damascene moment on wet church steps when I said enough, already (I like Woody Allen a lot)! either you do what took you to this goddam business or you quit and keep your sanity and self-respect.

From then on in, pro equated with personal; didn't make me as rich as a high-class camera hooker, but I did, overall, have a helluva good time from it.

Quite why anyone in the arts (I think I currently believe applied photography may be an art, if only because of the required art of making a living with it) will put up with all the shit that blows into their face from day to day unless they love what they get to do, is totally beyond me; that sort of self-defeating form of self-deception and self-sacrifice smacks of madness.

But as my wife sometimes said, how can we judge the sanity or otherwise of our own minds?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 10, 2019, 01:39:52 pm
This is unrelated to the rest of this thread, for which I apologize to the group, but I thought you might be entertained by this: https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia (https://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia).


That was a good video to watch; trouble is, in harking back to what I suppose is an essentially old European ideal, it doesn't take into account the huge rise in population figures. Those lovely old city layouts exist all right, but are so expensive in many cities that only wealthy foreigners seem capable of buying up the habitable slots as they come to market.

Paris, London, you name it - there has to be the largely dormitory sprawl outwith the classical central areas to provide space for living. That leads to the next problem, which is that of transport costs for those unable to afford city space but obliged to go there in order to earn their daily bread. Even where suburbs were already extant in the form of older villages outwith the original metropolis, replete with their own shops and other normally essential services, those same services have been constantly eroded and forced out due to competition for space and the rise of larger marketing outlets that exist (for now) because of their ability to strong-arm farmers and other small people into selling them their produce at stupidly low prices.

A quick look at today's business news shows that some of those mega chains are no longer doing all that well; some also run an online presence, but it fails to maintain the profit level, creating, in fact, its own form of internecine warfare.

Were everyone paid so much more than it costs them to live, everything would be different, but that might actually mean the desirable places becoming even more exclusively priced than less.

Basically, we have made too many copies of ourselves without figuring out, first, how we are going to keep ourselves alive.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: KLaban on January 10, 2019, 02:29:58 pm


Interesting; my personal work, back then, was my professional work. I have several times mentioned here my early (thank God!) Damascene moment on wet church steps when I said enough, already (I like Woody Allen a lot)! either you do what took you to this goddam business or you quit and keep your sanity and self-respect.

From then on in, pro equated with personal; didn't make me as rich as a high-class camera hooker, but I did, overall, have a helluva good time from it.

Quite why anyone in the arts (I think I currently believe applied photography may be an art, if only because of the required art of making a living with it) will put up with all the shit that blows into their face from day to day unless they love what they get to do, is totally beyond me; that sort of self-defeating form of self-deception and self-sacrifice smacks of madness.

But as my wife sometimes said, how can we judge the sanity or otherwise of our own minds?

As Omer said "our definition of “personal” may be different".
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 11, 2019, 04:50:13 am
As Omer said "our definition of “personal” may be different".

I didn't think that, in the context of work vs self-motivated stuff, personal meant anything but stuff done because one wanted to do it regardless of getting paid to do it or not.

;-(
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: KLaban on January 11, 2019, 05:40:51 am
I didn't think that, in the context of work vs self-motivated stuff, personal meant anything but stuff done because one wanted to do it regardless of getting paid to do it or not.

;-(

As Omer said...

;-)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 11, 2019, 09:18:02 am
As Omer said...

;-)


Fair enough, but he doesn't offer anything that shows what such differences can be other than those that exist simply between commissioned and self-motivated work. Stuff is either done because you enjoy doing it - the personal, or stuff that you do because it feeds you. In some cases, such as I eventually managed to procure for myself, the two combine. What other scenario is there?

Rob
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 11, 2019, 09:35:06 am

Fair enough, but he doesn't offer anything that shows what such differences can be other than those that exist simply between commissioned and self-motivated work. Stuff is either done because you enjoy doing it - the personal, or stuff that you do because it feeds you. In some cases, such as I eventually managed to procure for myself, the two combine. What other scenario is there?

Rob

There is that stuff dat you do, just because you’re beloved one asks you to do.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: KLaban on January 11, 2019, 09:36:19 am

Fair enough, but he doesn't offer anything that shows what such differences can be other than those that exist simply between commissioned and self-motivated work. Stuff is either done because you enjoy doing it - the personal, or stuff that you do because it feeds you. In some cases, such as I eventually managed to procure for myself, the two combine. What other scenario is there?

Rob

I think of personal artworks as those that are in the sole command of the individual creating those artworks and commissioned artworks as those artworks that are partially or wholly in the command of and for others.

One is not better than the other, just different.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: OmerV on January 11, 2019, 09:44:21 am

Fair enough, but he doesn't offer anything that shows what such differences can be other than those that exist simply between commissioned and self-motivated work. Stuff is either done because you enjoy doing it - the personal, or stuff that you do because it feeds you. In some cases, such as I eventually managed to procure for myself, the two combine. What other scenario is there?

Rob

Well, what do consider William Klein to be? (No, I don't compare myself to him.) Some icons of fine art photography did some commercial work, Saul Leiter for one, but most are known for their personal photography, or better yet, art. I guess it is possible that Klein just stepped out on to a sidewalk and without much thought made photographs that hang in museums, but it's doubtful.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Martin Kristiansen on January 11, 2019, 09:52:52 am
A lot of pros never shoot unless commissioned. Some even take pride in that. I know quite a few that are clueless without a brief. Tell them to shoot whatever they want and they don’t know where to start. And these are not bad photographers at all. They really know what they are doing.

I know very few pros that shoot for the sheer love of it in off time from work. But I do know a few. They have certain advantages I suppose since the tools are all financed by work. They also obviously have technical skills that make camera handling largely instinctive. They do have certain disadvantages. Easy to become jaded, the commercial work style intrudes in the personal vision, technical aspects can become more mportant than vision. People like Nadav Kander come to mind. Also Harry De Zitter, Michael Meyersfeld. People I have met and some know fairly well
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: RSL on January 11, 2019, 10:14:17 am
The guy who did fantastic pro work, but whose off-time shooting will be remembered long after his professional stuff, even the great shot of the kerfuffle between Khrushchev and Nixon, is forgotten is Elliott Erwitt: a pro with an all-encompassing sense of humor.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Martin Kristiansen on January 11, 2019, 10:16:51 am
The guy who did fantastic pro work, but whose off-time shooting will be remembered long after his professional stuff, even the great shot of the kerfuffle between Khrushchev and Nixon, is forgotten is Elliott Erwitt: a pro with an all-encompassing sense of humor.

You get them and that a top level example.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: KLaban on January 11, 2019, 11:14:11 am
Many years ago I asked a fine art tutor - a well respected painter - to define 'fine art'. He didn't thank me for the question - there was considerable hesitation before answering - but eventually he did, making the distinction between applied art and fine art, saying that applied art was central to the application rather than self.

I think he nailed it.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: OmerV on January 11, 2019, 11:15:53 am
The guy who did fantastic pro work, but whose off-time shooting will be remembered long after his professional stuff, even the great shot of the kerfuffle between Khrushchev and Nixon, is forgotten is Elliott Erwitt: a pro with an all-encompassing sense of humor.

Indeed. Glad you mentioned Erwitt, to whom I made an allusion in another post (levitating dog.) Yes, his humor is incomparable. Still, Erwitt continues to take pictures while also chastising those of us who switched to the dark side (digital.) Forever Elliot Erwitt.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: petermfiore on January 11, 2019, 12:25:48 pm
The guy who did fantastic pro work, but whose off-time shooting will be remembered long after his professional stuff, even the great shot of the kerfuffle between Khrushchev and Nixon, is forgotten is Elliott Erwitt: a pro with an all-encompassing sense of humor.

Yes, much more in photography. But not always in the arts is it the case...Household legendary illustration giants Norman Rockwell, NC Wyeth, and Maxfield Parrish to name but a few, failed to garner fame of their personal work. Very much passed over!

Peter
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Martin Kristiansen on January 11, 2019, 12:35:53 pm
Yes, much more in photography. But not always in the arts is it the case...Household legendary illustration giants Norman Rockwell, NC Wyeth, and Maxfield Parrish to name but a few, failed to garner fame of their personal work. Very much passed over!

Peter

Andy Warhol? Kind of worked for him I think
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: petermfiore on January 11, 2019, 12:40:37 pm
Andy Warhol? Kind of worked for him I think

Andy walked away from his illustration very early...but he used illustration to dominate in Pop Art. He led the movement. It's good to be first.


Peter
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: KLaban on January 11, 2019, 12:44:09 pm
He was one of the few who successfully borrowed other's iconography and made it his own.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Martin Kristiansen on January 11, 2019, 12:46:47 pm
Here is a big ceiling. A really big ceiling. I will pay you paint it full of bible stuff. Take your time. Ring any bells?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: KLaban on January 11, 2019, 12:50:19 pm
Here is a big ceiling. A really big ceiling. I will pay you paint it full of bible stuff. Take your time. Ring any bells?

Yet another genius.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: petermfiore on January 11, 2019, 01:00:15 pm
Here is a big ceiling. A really big ceiling. I will pay you paint it full of bible stuff. Take your time. Ring any bells?
]

Yes, in a time when all art was made by commission. One of the world's biggest illustration jobs.

Peter
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 11, 2019, 02:42:02 pm
Well, what do consider William Klein to be? (No, I don't compare myself to him.) Some icons of fine art photography did some commercial work, Saul Leiter for one, but most are known for their personal photography, or better yet, art. I guess it is possible that Klein just stepped out on to a sidewalk and without much thought made photographs that hang in museums, but it's doubtful.


Klein. He left the American forces and as part of the GI Bill, got himself into Paris and became an art student under Fernand Léger. He was primarily an artist in the painter/designer sense of the term, and then moved over to photography where he did good work in fashion (possibly starting the craze for long lenses after some striking shots in Rome) after discovering how he could use photography to illustrate movement of tones and turn them into something quite other than what they had first appeared to be. This was as the serendipitous result of seeing some large, painted screens being moved whilst they were suspended from above. His interest in film led to other work too.

But this is all beside the point: he is an artist in various mediums, and I have no more idea about the ins and outs of his work than anyone here. His street work for New York was done whilst he was living courtesy a grant/contract from Vogue which, eventually, was stopped because of the perceived anti-Americanism of that body of work and it was only published in America because the French published it first. Robert Frank redux? Now, are you willing to call that street work personal or commissioned? It was done on Vogue time but not to their pleasure. He went to Rome, Fellini offered him a job as an assistant, but the movie was delayed or scrubbed, so Klein spent the time there making another book: Rome. Again, what category would that fit? Nobody commissioned it.

The truth, insofar as I can glean it to be, is that Klein was ever his own man, and whatever he did, paid or otherwise, was to his own tastes. I consider that to prove that the two positions are certainly not in permanent conflict, as I found for myself in a far more modest way. I produced calendars for various companies, but they were created mainly to give me the photography I wanted to do, and earn a buck at the same time. Waiting for the 'phone to ring wasn't going to get that done - I had to arrange all those balls. If I'd relied on the 'phone, I'd have ended up shooting babies and bloody weddings!

Don't forget: photography as art, in the gallery sense, has been a relatively new concept that was quite well established in America by the 70s or so, but struggled elsewhere.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: OmerV on January 11, 2019, 04:31:42 pm

Klein. He left the American forces and as part of the GI Bill, got himself into Paris and became an art student under Fernand Léger. He was primarily an artist in the painter/designer sense of the term, and then moved over to photography where he did good work in fashion (possibly starting the craze for long lenses after some striking shots in Rome) after discovering how he could use photography to illustrate movement of tones and turn them into something quite other than what they had first appeared to be. This was as the serendipitous result of seeing some large, painted screens being moved whilst they were suspended from above. His interest in film led to other work too.

But this is all beside the point: he is an artist in various mediums, and I have no more idea about the ins and outs of his work than anyone here. His street work for New York was done whilst he was living courtesy a grant/contract from Vogue which, eventually, was stopped because of the perceived anti-Americanism of that body of work and it was only published in America because the French published it first. Robert Frank redux? Now, are you willing to call that street work personal or commissioned? It was done on Vogue time but not to their pleasure. He went to Rome, Fellini offered him a job as an assistant, but the movie was delayed or scrubbed, so Klein spent the time there making another book: Rome. Again, what category would that fit? Nobody commissioned it.

The truth, insofar as I can glean it to be, is that Klein was ever his own man, and whatever he did, paid or otherwise, was to his own tastes. I consider that to prove that the two positions are certainly not in permanent conflict, as I found for myself in a far more modest way. I produced calendars for various companies, but they were created mainly to give me the photography I wanted to do, and earn a buck at the same time. Waiting for the 'phone to ring wasn't going to get that done - I had to arrange all those balls. If I'd relied on the 'phone, I'd have ended up shooting babies and bloody weddings!

Don't forget: photography as art, in the gallery sense, has been a relatively new concept that was quite well established in America by the 70s or so, but struggled elsewhere.

Klein’s New York street work is personal, no matter who supported it. And though I’m not familiar with the commercial licensing of the ‘50s, I would think those pictures could not have been used commercially without model releases. Surely he and Vogue understood that.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: faberryman on January 11, 2019, 04:32:52 pm
Boy, are we far afield.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Rob C on January 11, 2019, 05:22:14 pm
Klein’s New York street work is personal, no matter who supported it. And though I’m not familiar with the commercial licensing of the ‘50s, I would think those pictures could not have been used commercially without model releases. Surely he and Vogue understood that.


Model releases.

These had been very flexible concepts; sometimes you got models to sign releases headed as such, and at other times your signing of their model sheet showing time worked etc. was all you had or needed. Their turning up for a shoot was considered enough: why else would they have been there? Further, it wasn't the cutthroat business that it became with the mega agencies of the 80s and the huge fees.

Regarding the street shots in the books - could any of those people hire a lawyer even if they got as far as seeing the books? Remember, there was no Internet and books were bloody expensive! It was a different world back then.

Vogue was probably happy to get him off that freewheeling contract that Liberman gave him on whim, and because they saw something special before he'd made a single fashion pic for them. That said, he did go on to do them proud.

It wasn't Vogue put out the NY tome. They just had him on contract to do pretty much what he felt like during that period; the book was first published in France.

https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2000/apr/22/weekend7.weekend1

Just found the above, which is quite detailed and answers a lot of stuff better than I can.

:-)
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Slobodan Blagojevic on January 11, 2019, 08:18:16 pm
If you're the sole reference for "interesting", I'd agree...

Off topic: who is this guy, 32BT? Oscar that used to use the handle "opgr"? What happened?
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: fdisilvestro on January 11, 2019, 09:00:52 pm
Off topic: who is this guy, 32BT? Oscar that used to use the handle "opgr"? What happened?

It seems so. You can change your name, but cannot change your history (unless you delete all your previous posts).
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 12, 2019, 02:53:26 am
Off topic: who is this guy, 32BT? Oscar that used to use the handle "opgr"? What happened?

Maybe Oscar uses his Tapatalk login and his PC login? I have the same and I don’t find a way to make the names equal.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: 32BT on January 12, 2019, 04:05:02 am
Off topic: who is this guy, 32BT? Oscar that used to use the handle "opgr"? What happened?

Yes, it's me, Oscar. (Or actually, my artistic alter ego, da beat. I always sign physical work with 32BT. It's a coming out of sorts... Cool hé!)
To Ivo: you can set your display name under profile->account settings
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: Ivophoto on January 12, 2019, 08:06:01 am
Yes, it's me, Oscar. (Or actually, my artistic alter ego, da beat. I always sign physical work with 32BT. It's a coming out of sorts... Cool hé!)
To Ivo: you can set your display name under profile->account settings

Cool, I will set my Lula display name same as my Tapatalk name!
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: adam_krawesky on January 13, 2019, 05:04:43 pm
hi everyone. i've enjoyed reading the discussion, feels like a throwback to the old streetphoto mailing list and forum days. it's increasingly rare to find lengthy and considered conversation online and i appreciate the attention focussed on my work and the digressions it seems to have spawned. thanks to everyone who has taken the time to write something.

i don't disagree with much of the negative criticism about the photos; i've expressed simliar doubts to myself about the work at times. ultimately i've come to understand that i don't care to make photos in that critical context but i still believe it can serve to improve the work if i listen to it.

i'd be remiss to not address a few things i took issue with:

i don't hang out in front of a location and wait for people to come through a frame. i've tried doing that and the result is even more boring than some already find the photos to be. i'm always on the move and many of these photos are shot while i'm walking, in mid stride myself. it adds some necessary kinetic energy to the frame. i understand that not everyone sees that or cares about it, but i do.

these kinds of photos are not easy to make, or at least it's not easy to do well. i too was dismissive of these kinds of photographs when i first saw them, and then i tried to make them. to be able to quickly make a reasonable facsimilie of this style is not sufficient to dismiss it. at the same time nothing is 'good' just because it's hard to do, i'm not saying that. if a photo doesn't pass the "who cares" test then it doesn't, but saying it's because the photo was 'too easy' is the actual thing that is too easy in that situation.

hopefully my tone is not too defensive, as i especially appreciate negative feedback because it's the most instructive and takes the most effort to write well. again my thanks to all who have taken the time to respond to the photos.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: adam_krawesky on January 13, 2019, 05:07:36 pm
HCB's photograph embraces the clutter of the city and works with it, graphically, in a way that at most one of Krawesky's does, rather than carving it all out of the frame to simplify the problem of taking a picture.

HCB's photograph blurs the motion of the man, abstracting him into everyman. In to, it turns out, a representation of all the people who were making that same jump that day, but we don't know that offhand. We do see the abstract figure leaping.

HCB's photograph shows the man leaping to... somewhere? Nowhere? We don't know. We are free to guess, to extrapolate, to imagine, to spin allegories.

HCB's photograph distills a real event, albeit a tiny one, to its essence, places it in a frame that feels realistic by embracing the clutter of the city, and abstracts that event into something we are free to enlarge in our own minds.

Krawesky's pictures, on those rare occasions when anything at all is happening, feel unreal because he tends to crop out the clutter, and abstract nothing at all, leaving nowhere for us to go. We fall back the appeal of graphics and the color, and that is about it.

There are bits and pieces. The woman with her hair blowing over her eyes strikes me as having an element of something, but the rest of the frame is just a mess. The man standing low down by the window with LINC printed on it feels more realistic, more urban-cluttered, but it is utterly static. Nothing is happening, where do I go with this? The boy leaping for the sign feels like something. Maybe it wants to be an expression of childhood or something, but somehow there is a sterility to the frame that sabotages that -- all that empty space.

And so on. There are flashes of something here and there, but nothing comes together.

this is really thoughtful and useful criticism amolitor, thank you.
Title: Re: from the front page: adam krawesky
Post by: amolitor on January 13, 2019, 05:30:58 pm
My pleasure, Adam. Good luck to you.