Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => But is it Art? => Topic started by: Rob C on October 01, 2009, 04:01:05 pm
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Had a funny little thought to myself this afternoon whilst watching the plumbers' bill rising: if you take a wonderful photograph of an even more wonderful piece of architecture, of a rock even or anything else that just happens to be sitting there waiting for you, can you claim to have created a new piece of art?
Extending the thought, as one sometimes does in times of stress, I concluded that perhaps the only true photographic art comes out of the transient, catching the instant that either you choreographed, co-creating it with another person either via stealth as in street or with money as in model. Either way, it's the result of intent to make something exist that did not exist before you tried to make it exist.
In short, unless you can lay claim to both the idea intrinsic to the shot as well as its execution, then all claims are off and you created nothing, just copied what was there and open to being copied by anyone else standing in your footsteps - or tripod holes, should you prefer the usual photographic expression.
Oh, as I knew they didn't care, I didn't broach the topic with the plumbers.
Rob C
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if you take a wonderful photograph of an even more wonderful piece of architecture, of a rock even or anything else that just happens to be sitting there waiting for you, can you claim to have created a new piece of art?
Rob C
Rob,
Let me take a stab at this...
Can we not consider the fact that you have captured a moment and preserved it AS creating art?
That rock will never look EXACTLY the same as it does in the instant you captured it. Its a unique moment in time, and your photograph of it is a unique piece of art.
I don't want to get involved in a "what is art" debate. Suffice it to say that I believe that anything you create is art (to me anyway)
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Rob,
Can we not consider the fact that you have captured a moment and preserved it AS creating art?
That rock will never look EXACTLY the same as it does in the instant you captured it. Its a unique moment in time, and your photograph of it is a unique piece of art.
Joe
On the first idea, that of capturing a moment, perhaps all you have been is quick at capturing what something/someone has been doing, or looking like, regardless of your input; would you be creating original art if you had happened to photograph a guy called Mike painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? What would have been your input, other than recording which, per se can hardly be called art; skill, yes!
On the second point, how the static subject looked at the moment of exposure, that again is but reportage and not something created by the camera operator. In fact, it's another version of 'f8 and be there!' which has never been touted a claim to artistic creation. Creation, after all, implies input to achieve the situation. The only creative talent at work in that scenario, unless you are doing something with the aid of a dump-truck or similar, has been your God or mine, who both made the shape and then lit it.
Rob C
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Joe
On the first idea, that of capturing a moment, perhaps all you have been is quick at capturing what something/someone has been doing, or looking like, regardless of your input; would you be creating original art if you had happened to photograph a guy called Mike painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? What would have been your input, other than recording which, per se can hardly be called art; skill, yes!
On the second point, how the static subject looked at the moment of exposure, that again is but reportage and not something created by the camera operator. In fact, it's another version of 'f8 and be there!' which has never been touted a claim to artistic creation. Creation, after all, implies input to achieve the situation. The only creative talent at work in that scenario, unless you are doing something with the aid of a dump-truck or similar, has been your God or mine, who both made the shape and then lit it.
Rob C
Rob,
The image itself is the art...regardless of the subject. Maybe I was not clear in my post.
YOU created the image, it did not exist before. The event or subject did, but the image of it did not.
Might sound simplistic or naive, but for me that's all that matters.
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Reminds me of when the Pope dropped in to Michaelangelo's studio while he was sculpting David, and marveling at the artistry of it said, "Michaelangelo, God has indeed given you a great gift. How do you know what to carve away?"
The great sculptor's response was, "It's very simple Your Holyness. If it doesn't look like David I remove it."
The "art" in photography lies in the knowing of what to include, what to exclude, and when to do one or the other. Otherwise it's monkeys and typewriters.
Michael
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Reminds me of when the Pope dropped in to Michaelangelo's studio while he was sculpting David, and marveling at the artistry of it said, "Michaelangelo, God has indeed given you a great gift. How do you know what to carve away?"
The great sculptor's response was, "It's very simple Your Holyness. If it doesn't look like David I remove it."
The "art" in photography lies in the knowing of what to include, what to exclude, and when to do one or the other. Otherwise it's monkeys and typewriters.
Michael
Well, I can't speak for the Pope, but I guess he would have been better to go visit Donatello if he wanted to rest his eyes upon the better Dave; having said that, I agree with your definition of art as being one definition, especially from a photographic perspective where reduction is almost ever necessary unless against a roll of Colorama, but by no means can I accept it as the definitive one. That does, of course, throw the game wide open to daydreams as mine. Incidentally, I wasn't offering the definitve definition either - just speculating on the thing and wondering whether we have generally put ourselves onto a little platfom of self-admiration or, at minimum, given ourselves titles we perhaps don't deserve. I certainly have suffered from such little attacks of hubris now and again, but experience has taught me to avoid them as they generally come before unavoidable and uncomfortable self-generated moments I would rather forget, even if I can forgive.
Of monkeys and typewriters, it's not generally known that Shakespeare had a pet Nilgiri Black Langur, if not an Olivetti, so who knows who influenced or wrote what; but Titian had no Photoshop, either, so speculation can be rife.
Rob C
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I think if you stand before your subject with the goal of creating a statement of visual art, and then execute your vision -- whether with camera & print, oil on canvas, fingerpaint on cardboard, chisel & stone, fruit compote on glass, steel & welding torch, motion picture film, spraypaint on stucco or fifty kilos of Silly Putty shaped by your naked feet -- if you have done the work of executing your vision, the result is a piece of visual art.
If you give a paint brush to a chimpanzee or an elephant and set them before a canvas, you're not doing the work, you're arranging a stunt.
Purely my opinion, informed by the number of chimpanzees I have known.
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The moment you take your photo, you have chosen a moment in time, a point of view, a composition, a depth of field, ... Others may watch the same rock, but they will not see the same photo. A photo freezes a moment in time, but it crops a part of the space, too.
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daws
Handing the chimp the paintbrush isn't art: it's (by) design. Which, I'm sure, those chimps you have known would be happy to accept. Actually, you have confused the issue, as did Michael, by including exercises other than the photographic, which was the entire point of the post.
EduPerez
Yes, they have frozen their moment, much as I might a piece of fish in the Bosch, but that does not prove claim to anything beyond reportage, I fear, which would possibly be pushing the definition of art a little far. I have recently wondered about HC-B et al and whether my original thinking of them as artists was flawed, more by my admiration of their reportage skills than anything else. Now, had they manipulated their models into their postures, then that could indeed be art and not pure reportage - the big, big Parisian kiss, anyone?
I think that even taking a photograph with intent and getting something close to your expectations isn't enough to be worthy of the name art. How about good try?
I have shot thousands of commercial pics, thought of some of them as quite artistic, yet on finding myself playing about with the scanner, even decades later, it is surprising just how few of them though technically good and suited to the shoot, are anything but what I feel, now, that I could fairly imagine to sell today under the guise of art. Great shots do not always equate with art. Neither, come to think of it, do they have to equate with the selling of art, as one can plainly see almost anywhere today.
Rob C
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Had a funny little thought to myself this afternoon whilst watching the plumbers' bill rising: if you take a wonderful photograph of an even more wonderful piece of architecture, of a rock even or anything else that just happens to be sitting there waiting for you, can you claim to have created a new piece of art?
Extending the thought, as one sometimes does in times of stress, I concluded that perhaps the only true photographic art comes out of the transient, catching the instant that either you choreographed, co-creating it with another person either via stealth as in street or with money as in model. Either way, it's the result of intent to make something exist that did not exist before you tried to make it exist.
In short, unless you can lay claim to both the idea intrinsic to the shot as well as its execution, then all claims are off and you created nothing, just copied what was there and open to being copied by anyone else standing in your footsteps - or tripod holes, should you prefer the usual photographic expression.
Oh, as I knew they didn't care, I didn't broach the topic with the plumbers.
Rob C
Interesting questions.
The first thing that comes to my mind is architectural photography. Certainly the subject matter can be an art form in its own right. But then I look at work by folks like Julius Schulman or Norman Carver, and it's clearly art, independent of the subject. Knowing precisely where to stand, where to focus, applying perfect technique and ideal natural or artificial light...
The 'conceit' of Ric Ergenbright's book The Art of God is that the natural world around us is God's art; we just enjoy it and catch it on film. Yet even Yosemite valley in dead light can seem a bit drab...well, okay, bad example. But you get my drift. The skill and persistence of the photographer in being at the right place at the right time, when weather and light are ideal for the artistic intent...surely there's some art there, beyond simply showing up.
Finally, I've had the experience of attending photography workshops where a bunch of us were at the same beautiful location, with access to precisely the same subject matter. Yet some of the participants took stunning photographs of an aspect of the site that I never even saw; like it was invisible to me. And I took some really nice shots that other folks overlooked completely. All of us may have access to the same subject; yet the individual hand and eye counts for a lot.
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Rob, You're kidding, of course...?
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Rob, You're kidding, of course...?
Russ, no; I am asking a question which came to me under stress, literally as in the original post, and which has been bothering me quite a lot ever since, even though the sink is working properly and the rats under the building that were partially responsible have been fed some poison that they apparently find most delightful, it being as invisible now as any dead rats.
In fact, the further I take this creative thing in my mind, the less certain I feel about much of anything that I did in the commercial world outwith some of the calendar shoots, where I wasn't selling anything other than the idea of beauty. Some confuse that with selling sex, which is as distant from the intent (if it succeeded) as much of what seems to be beautiful outdoor photography might be from artistic creation though I would have no reluctance to thinking of it as great skill and even perception, though I can not now totally accept either as art within the current context.
This is as crushing a blow to self-esteem (mine) as it might be to anyone else reading this with pretensions to being a photographic artist.
If anything, I think that it makes the painter ever more secure in his claim to artistic respect than ever before. No, I'm not hedging my bets because I have started to dabble a little bit again - it just seems that starting off with a blank canvas is not equivalent to starting off with a fresh film or newly formatted card!
Perhaps we have built a sort of tottering tower for ourselves, here in the photogaphic world; perhaps we are carrying the curse of past generations where there might really have been some kind of battleground of the two mediums - something necessary because the one saw the other as a direct challenge. So much later, maybe the truth might be found by way of a fresh look at the two sides - if they are still two opposed factions - and it could be that the best interpretation, though it can never be definitive, being a matter of opion, is that both can be art but based on different inputs which do not depend only on the physical in the sense of canvas and film/sensors but more so on the intent and the execution and how well the fuse is carried out. However, shooting a box of crayons or a bowl of fruit seems not to fit this at all well, regardless of the expertise that might be brough to bear on the project.
Could it be that photographers are simply chasing the wrong goal when they strive for artistic merit in the sense of recognition? Is it not a possibility that they should forget the connotations of art and look for gratification and success in something else, in that excellence of execution to which I have just referred above? The entire idea and mystique of art, not to mention its financial opportunities, might well be nothing but an enormous distraction from what photography could really be and probably is?
Had photography arrived on the scene before painting and sulpture, would the latter two be fighting the war for artistic acceptance that photography seems hell-bent to wage?
Rob C
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Rob,
Well, first of all, if you’re going to ask the question, “Is photography art?” or “Can photography be art?” or “Is this picture I just made art?” you have to define art. We all know you can’t really do that, and on that failure, it seems to me, the whole question crashes down.
To me, art is something that gives me a transcendental experience: a sudden flash of knowledge I can’t put into words. That’s my own definition, and it’s certainly not universal. Was Duchamp’s “fountain” a work of art? A urinal, however beautifully designed and satisfyingly functional is not art as far as I’m concerned because a urinal doesn’t give me a transcendental experience, though it may give me relief.
I keep coming back to Archibald MacLeish’s Poetry and Experience, because, in that book, he gives the best explanation of the experience of art I’ve ever found. I’m going to quote his explanation at length. He’s dealing with poetry, but as far as I’m concerned, photography and poetry are very close to each other. MacLeish uses this short, very old, English poem to illustrate the point:
O westron wind when wilt thou blow
That the small rain down can rain?
Christ that my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again.
[blockquote]Here the two little scenes of wind and weather and love and bed are left side by side to mean if they can. And they do mean. The poem is not a poem about the one or the other. It is not a poem about weather. And neither is it a poem about making love. The emotion it holds is held between these two statements in the place where love and time cross each other. Here, as in those old Chinese poems, the emotion, somehow contained in the poem, is an emotion which words cannot come at directly — which no words as words can describe. How can you “describe” in words the poignancy of the recognition of the obstacle of time — its recognition not on the clock face or among the stars but on the nerves of the body and in the blood itself? But if you cannot “describe” it in words how then can words contain it? Well, how do they contain it here? By not speaking of it. By not speaking of it at all. By speaking of something else, something off at the one side and the other as the man at the helm of a ship looks off and above to starboard and larboard to see the channel marker before him in the dark. By speaking of two things which, like parentheses, can include between them what neither of them says. (emphasis added) By leaving a space between one sensed image and another where what cannot be said can be — this sensuous, this bodily knowledge of the defeat of love by time — this When? When? Ah when? — When will the wind go west and the spring rain come to bring her back to me and me to her?[/blockquote]
[blockquote]But... is it only emotion which the coupled images in a poem capture? ...There is the west wind, the spring wind, and its small rain. There is a bed and a girl. And there is emotion certainly there between them, and ache of longing. But is that all? Or is there also, and on beyond, a recognition of something known, something known before and now, in the space between the bed and the west wind, realized? Are the bed and the girl and the wind and the rain in some way caught up together, not in the mind, which cannot understand these irrelevancies, but in the emotion which can? ...Has this hollow between the wind and the rain on the one side and the bed and the girl on the other filled, not with emotion only, but with something emotion knows — something more immediate than knowledge, something tangible and felt, something as tangible as experience itself, felt as immediately as experience? Is it human experience itself, in its livingness as experience, these coupled images and the emotion they evoke, have captured? And was it this that Wordsworth meant when he spoke of truth "carried alive into the heart by passion"?[/blockquote]
Now, are there photographs that can do the same thing? Can a photograph convey meaning beyond what the mind can grasp? Of course it can. But I think that with both photography and poetry you have to be open to the transcendental experience available in the art, and that kind of openness rarely comes naturally. You pretty much have to submerge yourself in the medium to achieve it. Cartier-Bresson’s “Lock at Bougival” is one photograph that gives me the kind of experience I’m talking about, but I suspect it leaves many people as cold as might “O Westron Wind” leave someone who’s never delved seriously into poetry. I could give several examples of the same thing in painting, especially among the Impressionists, though I must admit I’ve never had a transcendental experience from a Campbell’s soup can, real or painted.
So, in the end, we’re right back where we started. Art is in the eye of the beholder, and if you create a photograph someone can accept as art, you’ve created art. Once you get into this roundabout there are no exits.
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Once you get into this roundabout there are no exits.
Elegant... even after (perhaps more so?) after a few scotches.
John
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I was writing a long post to reply, but then I read RSL's post again, and realized that just one word will do: "AMEN";
I cannot agree more, and I cannot say it better.
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Rob,
Once you get into this roundabout there are no exits.
Russ, forgive me for a moment of being flip, but I just had to quote you above for the sake of EduPerez who lives in Barcelona.
Señor P, that line describes that first roundabout nightmare (of which I wrote earlier) as you come out of the ferry terminal in your city, your mind and energy intent on finding your way to the northern direction of the A7! You feel you'd like to stop right at the start and ask the frantic policeman directions, then you realise he hasn't the time and that his wish to stay alive is as strong as your own...
Russ, unfortunately for me, you beat me to it today because I was going to add a similar though more simple thought to my position, which was this: we have always had difficulty defining the condition of photography within the 'arts' and I have begun to wonder if this is not inevitable since, not only cannot we define art in photography, but neither can we in any other medium whose inclusion has, as far as I can see, been accepted on the basis of it not having ever been questioned.
There is the distinct possibility that painting, sculpture, music, all of those things never were art, that art is a false concept which has arisen from confusion and the difficulty of finding a common hook from which to hang the emotional responses such media create. Remember that a traffic accident also causes emotional response, so response from emotion is neither guarantee nor yardstick of something being or not being 'art' which, as I am starting to believe, simply does not have definition because it does not really exist.
That is not to be confused with design good or bad, with accomplishment and skill at whatever medium of choice which most certainly do exist.
Alternatively, could it be that all media constitute art and there is simply good art and bad art and that the kindergarten scribble is the same thing as La Gioconda, as valid but simply of a different order?
And think this: from this keyboard I now have to go and wash the remaining terrace persianas prior to varnishing the damn things in a couple of days time if they dry well and the weather holds. Is there no escape? Or is it really good therapy or, heaven forbid, is it art?
Rob C
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Elegant... even after (perhaps more so?) after a few scotches.
John
John, I've also found that Perfect Manhattans help.
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Russ, forgive me for a moment of being flip, but I just had to quote you above for the sake of EduPerez who lives in Barcelona.
Señor P, that line describes that first roundabout nightmare (of which I wrote earlier) as you come out of the ferry terminal in your city, your mind and energy intent on finding your way to the northern direction of the A7! You feel you'd like to stop right at the start and ask the frantic policeman directions, then you realise he hasn't the time and that his wish to stay alive is as strong as your own...
[...]
I think I know which roundabout you are talking about. It has a small exit only known to the very initiated, which apparently heads south; but then, just when you think you are in a dead alley at the middle of nowhere, it sharply turns north, and from there, then road to your destination is fast and direct. I am sure there is a beautiful analogy between that fact and the subject of this thread, I tried to find it for a couple of hours, but failed.
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I think I know which roundabout you are talking about. It has a small exit only known to the very initiated, which apparently heads south; but then, just when you think you are in a dead alley at the middle of nowhere, it sharply turns north, and from there, then road to your destination is fast and direct. I am sure there is a beautiful analogy between that fact and the subject of this thread, I tried to find it for a couple of hours, but failed.
¡Hola!
Yes, I think I know the one you mean: when you are almost out of the gates from inside the ferry terminal - or is it just outside them - (you see the problem?) there is a left-hand turn that you can easily miss because there is also a sign prohibiting the left-turning of trucks, and at a quick look - all you get - you can easily think that the sign is prohibiting cars, too. If you do take this little turning you come to another main set of roads and the challenge then is to go straight through and cross them and avoid traffic at the same time.
Once you do that, you are all alone and head on down to a U-turn which immediately offers you a choice: you can go up a ramp, the most left choice or take the other, parallel one which eventually takes you back into the port! I last took this road about six years ago - perhaps it has changed - but once you take that ramp you get onto the motorway system and it becomes a matter of following the signs for Gerona.
The way back is also difficult in those tunnels: you can very easily take the first port sign and end up in the puerto deportivo, the wrong port, which I did once and then had to face the horror of finding my way back and making a totally illegal crossing of the major dual-carriageway (Ramblas?) at a slowing down of traffic, hoping my luck would hold until I got across. It did.
I think the major problem is speed. There is just so much traffic behind, in front and at both sides that you do not have the time to think - you either know where you are going or you are done for.
I think that an analogy is indeed lurking in all of this, perhaps why it came into my mind in the first place!
Ciao
Rob C
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In short, unless you can lay claim to both the idea intrinsic to the shot as well as its execution, then all claims are off and you created nothing, just copied what was there and open to being copied by anyone else standing in your footsteps - or tripod holes, should you prefer the usual photographic expression.
Rob,
This argument is similar to that which was used by early 20th century pictorial photographers to dismiss "straight" photography. There are two fallacies with this argument:
The first is the assumption that there is a singular and universally accepted way in which to photograph each (static) subject. There is not. Each individual brings with them a varied set of personalities, experiences, tastes, abilities, preferences, and skills (to name but a few) that help to shape their personal vision, thus their unique take on any subject, no matter how "static" it may be.
The second fallacy, which is somewhat related to the first, is that the definition of "art" is entirely dependent upon the subject, which is something I am sure we can all agree is NOT true.
Good topic for discussion, though.
Chuck
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Rob,
This argument is similar to that which was used by early 20th century pictorial photographers to dismiss "straight" photography. There are two fallacies with this argument:
The first is the assumption that there is a singular and universally accepted way in which to photograph each (static) subject. There is not. Each individual brings with them a varied set of personalities, experiences, tastes, abilities, preferences, and skills (to name but a few) that help to shape their personal vision, thus their unique take on any subject, no matter how "static" it may be.
The second fallacy, which is somewhat related to the first, is that the definition of "art" is entirely dependent upon the subject, which is something I am sure we can all agree is NOT true.
Good topic for discussion, though.
Chuck
Chuck
"The first is the assumption that there is a singular and universally accepted way in which to photograph each (static) subject."
That wasn't my position at all, but it is quite possible that my writing wasn't explicit enough and that you could draw that interpretation, particularly with the mention of tripod holes! No, what I am worrying about is beyond holes - it is more basic than that and concerns the situation when the photographer has created neither the moment nor the subject. Walking a few yards to one side does not change the subject. It only changes the angle of shooting something that is already there and is not of the creation of the snapper. That holds for the tricks of light, weather or focal length: these simply vary the result of the recording and are a measure of the technical competence and/or imagination of the photographer but hardly constitute an act of creation. That's why I am tempted to the thought that it requires interaction between photographer and subject, as with a model, where both react as they do and create something, not necessarily great, but something that did not exist until that moment when they made it together. In essence, there has to be, in the photograph, something that did not exist before the photographer made it happen. A beautiful cloud sliding down a cliff isn't of the photographer's doing, an act of his creation - just his recording of it, however much skill that requires. Perhaps that's why there probably are creative still-life photographers - they do have to create the lighting or their photograph would not exist in the manner that it does.
"The second fallacy, which is somewhat related to the first, is that the definition of "art" is entirely dependent upon the subject, which is something I am sure we can all agree is NOT true."
And I would suggest that I have no fight with that - just as long as the photograph is more than a record - however exquisite - of something that's already there independently of the photographer. And that, for my mind, is the difficulty: if it would have existed without Mr Photographer, where then the art, the creation we all think we achieve with a great photograph? And I try to stress yet again that the confusion between technique and creativity is very easy to make: I fear I might have been making it much of my life!
Rob C
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Rob the problem with your assertion is that you seem to be saying that the subject or situation depicted is the work of art. I would argue that's absolutely not the case. It's the resulting photograph that is the artwork, and the photographer has plenty of control over that. Even in the case of a static subject the photographer plays a huge role in what the final photograph will look like. The photographer's choice of perspective, composition, what conditions to shoot in, along with any number of other decisions regarding exposure, filtration, etc, are all every bit as much of a creative act as telling a model which way to tilt her head. In fact I could argue that creating art from a subject or situation that you _don't_ have direct control over is a more challenging (and ultimately more satisfying) pursuit - whether it be a static subject such as a mountain which you cannot move or pose, or a 'decisive moment' unfolding on the street where you have no opportunity to direct the action.
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Hear, hear. Jeff's right. Let's go back to the poetry illustration. The words themselves aren't the art. It's the way the words are put together that creates the art. The same thing's true of photography. The objects you photograph aren't the art. It's the way you put the objects together that creates the art.
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The objects you photograph aren't the art. It's the way you put the objects together that creates the art.
Russ
And of that there can be no argument, but you have also delineated the flaw: with the mythical rock and the slipping cloud, you are not putting anything together, God is, as he is also doing a good, bad or indifferent job of the lighting. You are simply recording, not creating. How much of Hernandez was Adams? Rapid recognition and the educated guess of an exposure was all - everything else just more skill and manipulation; but the stage-management wasn't his; he created nothing. He just happened to come along, clippety-clop, just like Jones. And with the same sentence in your own definition you have confirmed my notion of photographing a model as an example of the creative act: the way you put things together. Of course, that interaction can be either good or bad, but it (what's in the picture) is still something that is not going to be there until the two people make something happen.
Poetry? Er... I think not! Unlike the magic of word and sound, the slipping and sliding, the ducking and the weaving within the tapestry of invisible imagery, photography, as drawing with light, is by accepted definition about (and limited to) the visible and claims to anything beyond that are suspect to say the least. Only my humble of course - but what else can I offer you that's true to me? It might not be popular and I can hardly claim to derive any personal gratification from the thought either - just some doubts about my own oeuvre - but once the thought has taken hold it's a harsh if hard one to throw.
I blame those damn plumbers and the rats.
Rob C
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A sculptor does not create his sculptures, he just destroys and then we admire the leftovers of that destruction;
a musician does not create anything, he just disrupts the air in the room;
a poet just rearranges pre-existing words;
...
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Russ
You are simply recording, not creating.
Rob C
Rob, Renoir was just recording when he painted "Le déjeuner des canotiers." The people in that painting are recognizable individuals, and a good art historian can tell you who they are. Was the result not creation?
Sounds as if you need to get away from the plumber and go shoot some pictures.
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You are simply recording, not creating.
Rob,
You speak of "recording" as if it were a bad thing. Isn't that the photography's core purpose and strength....recording? Isn't that what makes it unique among the art forms. That said, I'm sure you mean it more philosophically than that, so I'll try to address it on that level: IMHO, the very act of photography a subject, any subject, is a means of creation. Not simply because a photo was taken, but because it was taken by a person, a human being (no matter how banal the final product).
Chuck
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Poetry? Er... I think not! Unlike the magic of word and sound, the slipping and sliding, the ducking and the weaving within the tapestry of invisible imagery, photography, as drawing with light, is by accepted definition about (and limited to) the visible and claims to anything beyond that are suspect to say the least.
Rob, I should have dealt with this one in my last response, but I was in my office and actually had to do some work -- printing photographs from yesterday's street shoot in Manitou Springs.
I said earlier that to me poetry is very close to photography. Go back to "O westron wind" and look at what makes the poem. Images! Although recent poets seem to think they can write good poetry without vivid imagery, I can guarantee their work will soon be forgotten. especially since unlike a painting or a photograph you can't sell a copy of a poem, a good one or a bad one, at an ever increasing price. Here's another example -- one of my own:
[blockquote][blockquote] OVERTURE
I wait for you
at the foot of the stairway and
the morning air blooms
with bright smells of green sap
sounds of mowers
scent of sprinkled grass and
on the steps you pause
and smile.
The sunlight behind you
is in your hair.
You are so young.
And so was I.
But that was long ago
before our worlds
swept both of us
away from there,
away from then.
But on that stairway
you are there, so young
and so am I
and still the sunlight
holds us there.
Your smile is
starlight
from a thousand distant stars.
[/blockquote][/blockquote]
That poem is built on the same kinds of images I try to capture when I have a camera in my hands. The images are everything, though they're not all visual. But would you say that because I used images of common things like the smell of wet grass and sunlight in a girl's hair I haven't really created something new in that poem?
Come on. Grab a camera and go out among 'em. They're out there, just waiting for you to do something creative with them.
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"But would you say that because I used images of common things like the smell of wet grass and sunlight in a girl's hair I haven't really created something new in that poem?"
[/quote]
But Russ, that isn't at all what I am implying!
I am totally convinced that poetry is art; my statement was supposed to underline the fact that poetry is of the magic of words and its remit is the poetic painting of mental pictures. And that is almost totally the product, a creation from and of your mind, and if you have the talent it requires no other input than the stimulation.
And its enjoyment is also within the mind: a poem, looked at on a sheet of paper does nothing to you until it is read. Quite unlike a photograph which hits you first, often before you have time to get your mind into gear.
Where I disagree with you is in the idea that you can transpose that concept to photography which is not simply about pictures in the mind, but about pictures on paper (or screen etc. to keep everyone happy). Unless the poet is only rehashing previous work, he is making something new - creating. It has been said that once you get the great idea it may not be worth the effort of producing it - that the idea is sufficient and the picture superfluous; I don't think I'd go that far! But I do think that it isn't enough (in photography) just to recognize something and think that is creation.
Creation implies something now exists which did not exist before the action that brought it about. I have to repeat, simply recording with a camera whatever is already there, from whichever angle, is not creating it, unlike poetry where the words do, of course, exist already, but their meaning within the created context did not, precisely because the poet creates the context from scratch. In a sense, that words exist already is the same as saying that cameras and lenses exist already; yes indeed they do, but that doesn't preclude either set of tools from being creative tools if used in a creative manner.
I think we are at one of those stages where we all see our own point of view but have lost the position from where we could see another's with clarity!
Ciao
Rob C
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A sculptor does not create his sculptures, he just destroys and then we admire the leftovers of that destruction;
a musician does not create anything, he just disrupts the air in the room;
a poet just rearranges pre-existing words;
...
All very profound, but not of photography which might not ever be profound!
The original post was about a thought about photography and not the other arts, which have been brought into the discussion as comparators, which simply defeat the point of the discussion by avoiding it. This has nothing to do with painting, scupture, music, poetry or prose. Bringing them in has just altered the focus as well as the frame - derailing the conversation many posts back.
Ciao
Rob C
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All very profound, but not of photography which might not ever be profound!
Rob,
Extrapolating from your initial post and subsequent responses, one can infer that hands-off voyeuristic photographic pursuits such as photojournalism, documentary, and street photography would, in your eyes, also fail as an art form (be profound) because the photographer had no creative control over, nor communication with, the subject, but rather simply recorded what is in front of the lens. Other than motion, it's no different than shooting a landscape, rock, or tree.
Would you consider these other photographic avenues as not being profound or even art?
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Rob,
Extrapolating from your initial post and subsequent responses, one can infer that hands-off voyeuristic photographic pursuits such as photojournalism, documentary, and street photography would, in your eyes, also fail as an art form (be profound) because the photographer had no creative control over, nor communication with, the subject, but rather simply recorded what is in front of the lens. Other than motion, it's no different than shooting a landscape, rock, or tree.
Would you consider these other photographic avenues as not being profound or even art?
Chuck
Hoping not to detect a note of sarcasm, which would render this thread pointless, I think my reply to your first paragraph would be that you have been fairly accurate in your deduction, which has nothing to do with the profundity or otherwise of the sub-sections of the media at all.
So, in attending to your last sentence, one might need to define for one's self the difference between profound and self-absorption, the former's state depending somewhat on an outsider's opinion whilst the other most certainly does not. If something, in order to be art, requires creation, then possibly they are not art but its old companion artifice. Or great technique, fantastic vision, exemplary anticipation but not creativity.
But, to paraphrase Olde Hennery Vee, I think it time to sheathe my sword for lack of argument...
;-)
Rob C
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All very profound, but not of photography which might not ever be profound!
Rob,
I feel very sorry for you. It sounds to me as if you have never been moved deeply by a photograph. I agree that there is a vast quantity of photographic imagery in this world that is not profound in any way, but I also find much that is, to me, truly profound (Paul Caponigro, Edward Weston, Minor White, Cartier Brsson, Frederick Sommer are a few who come to mind).
I think we are at one of those stages where we all see our own point of view but have lost the position from where we could see another's with clarity!
Truly spoken. Do try to open your eyes a bit.
Eric
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Hoping not to detect a note of sarcasm...
None intended! Sorry it came out that way.
As I said earlier, I appreciate this discussion.
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if you have the talent it requires no other input than the stimulation.
No. In both cases it requires images, and in both cases it requires images people can grasp. Nowadays many poets -- especially the ones who are being published in little magazines like Poetry -- believe they can avoid images and substitute what amount to political arguments, but the thrust isn't there. It falls flat. The same thing is happening in photography magazines such as B&W and Color. The sorts of fuzzy photographs they seem more and more to be publishing are pretty, like a nicely woven tablecloth, but without concrete images universal enough to be recognized by their viewers, they're meaningless.
...a poem, looked at on a sheet of paper does nothing to you until it is read. Quite unlike a photograph which hits you first, often before you have time to get your mind into gear.
A really good photograph doesn't "hit" you before you have time to get your mind into gear. A really good photograph requires the same kind of reading a poem requires. HCB's "Lock at Bougival" doesn't "hit" you at all when you first see it. On first glance it's merely a nice picture of some people and dogs on and near a boat. You need to stop and read the photograph and let your eyes and your mind range over it before the meaning beyond what the mind can grasp "hits" you.
I have to repeat, simply recording with a camera whatever is already there, from whichever angle, is not creating it, unlike poetry where the words do, of course, exist already, but their meaning within the created context did not
Rob, I think you're confusing the objects being photographed with the image that results. The objects are three-dimensional and they exist at a point in what we see as time, but which actually is outside time. Think about it: How long ago is past? How soon is future? There aren't any answers to those questions. "Now" is a point, in other words, an imaginary thing. When you trip the shutter you cut a unique two-dimensional image out of reality as it exists at this point -- a reality that never again can exist. Even on a snapshot level though the result may not be art it's certainly creativity. Someone's going to argue that you don't really capture "now" because the shutter isn't truly instantaneous, but I'd argue that a 500th of a second is close enough. The image is not the reality before the camera any more than the painting on a plein air painter's easel is the reality before him. Both images are something new.
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Creation implies something now exists which did not exist before the action that brought it about.
The photograph is a creation. You didn't address the points from my previous post. The problem with your argument is that you're saying the object or scene photographed is the only creation, which essentially dismisses photography as a medium for art, limiting it to the role of a mere documentary record of the "real" art. I reject that argument.
If two photographers can photograph the same location at the same time (let alone at different times), and come away with completely different images, how can you say there is no creation in that? I just don't see how you can completely dismiss composition, framing, perspective, depth of field, and exposure decisions as not being part of the creative process. Finding a new way to look at and photograph a natural scene is just as much of a creative act as arranging a collection of objects into a still life.
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I suppose all these ideas exposed in this thread are restricted to realistic photographs... because the moment the photographer plays with B&W, long exposure, macro, you-name-it, the resulting photograph no longer reflects the reality that the viewer could see with his own eyes. Aren't those manipulated images are a new creation? Don't they show us something that we could not see with our naked eyes? Something that was not there for us to see?
Then, where is the limit? Isn't focus blur a manipulation of the context of the subject? And framing?
I think we are at one of those stages where we all see our own point of view but have lost the position from where we could see another's with clarity!
Here in Spain (the land of the weird roundabouts), copyright laws have a different treatment to photography: it is considered as a mere recording of an event, not a piece of original work, like a painting; so, perhaps you have a point, Rob... But I must refuse that idea: I have seem lots of photographs that truly moved me, and some of them pictured a scene that would have told me absolutely nothing if I had seen them by myself; that has to be art.
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I understand what most of you are saying, which is not really addressed at what I have been saying, but at something standing close by but independent of my position.
I don't think that I have stated photography cannot be art.
I think I have stated that photography is having a hard time being worthy of the description creative.
In the latter case I have made reference to the need for something to be created and not simply recorded. Moving the camera to a different spot, say in the case of landscape or architecture, isn't enough; catching the magic of great available light isn't either. Those sorts of things are simply, if only for me, making the most of what's already there. The landscape photographer who returns time after time to the same chosen spot, looking for the magic moment, isn't being creative: he awaits the moment when his God is feeling creative - otherwise, he should have been able to make his perfect snap on the first visit; but no, he awaits something that he, himself, cannot create. What that photographer is doing is using his experience to catch the moment that might come, not the one that he is able to create for himself. He exercises patience and experience but creates nothing. That is so basic and obvious to me that unless it is understood by others, there's zero that I can add to convince, not that I feel the need to so do - it's all in my own mind, the same place where any of this matters.
If I may answer EduPerez directly: you are right; but I never did say that there is no photographic art, that it cannot ever be creative. I simply put the point that I think it very seldom reaches either goal because there are not that many photographic avenues that allow it to happen. I cited the model/photographer co-operation as a distinct possibilty of both art and creativity, although that might as easily lead to both these things but not necessarily on a particularly high plane, which is another judgement altogether, but at least there is the chance. I also mentioned still-life photography, where the photographer is indeed creating the scenario as he is the lighting, neither of which existed before he put them together.
Focus tricks; blur? No, they are manipulation and technique. Nothing is created by them, it is manipulated; which does not, of course, prevent technique playing its part in the creation of something. Look, I have used differential focus a great deal - one of the reasons for my love of long lenses, and I was as convinced as the rest of us that I was being creative and the thrill of seeing different planes come and go into and from focus was magical and almost tangible; but was it creative? I used to think so, and with a vengeance! Now, I am far from so cocksure about all of that. Perhaps it was no more creative than riding a bicycle: just something I could do and enjoy.
Maybe we take photography too seriously, burden it with baggage it hardly needs.
Rob C
EDIT: My daughter is coming to stay for a few days, so I shall probably have to maintain radio silence: Please don't take that as offence.
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I think we have arrived to the core of this discussion: from your point of view, we are mere spectators watching a play, a play directed by God and played solely for His own amusement; in my books there is no God, and thus the play exists because we watch it. These two articles at the Wikipedia probably express my position better than my own words: from XVIII century philosophy "If a tree falls in a forest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_a_tree_falls_in_a_forest)", to quantum physics "Schrödinger's cat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat)".
Now, going back to photography... when I place my camera somewhere, I am not choosing a point of view, one of the many points of view created by God; I am creating the point of view: a point of view does not exists if nobody places his camera there. Not only that: I create a scene not only when I manipulate the model, I create the scene as soon as I watch the subject. That is, assuming God does not exists, of course: because as soon as He enters the room, the argument changes, completely.
Sadly, I think this is also the dead end of this discussion, as I will not argue about religion.
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I think we have arrived to the core of this discussion: from your point of view, we are mere spectators watching a play, a play directed by God and played solely for His own amusement
I think you took Rob's reference to God a bit too harshly. In his absence, I can only guess, but am assuming it had less to do with religious ideology than with his assertion that many of the things we photograph (be they created by God or by Nature or by Little Green Men) exist outside of our creative influence (thus his assertion regarding photography). He just happens to believe in the first.
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I think you took Rob's reference to God a bit too harshly. In his absence, I can only guess, but am assuming it had less to do with religious ideology than with his assertion that many of the things we photograph (be they created by God or by Nature or by Little Green Men) exist outside of our creative influence (thus his assertion regarding photography). He just happens to believe in the first.
At first, while I was reading his post, I had exactly the same thought: "well, I do not share his idea of God, but name it Nature and the argument makes perfect sense". But later, I realized that such 'other spectator' was fundamental in the argument: even if we are not watching a landscape, the fact that God watches it makes the landscape exist; when you take God out of the equation, as soon as we do not watch the landscape ceases to exist, because nobody else is watching it.
The images we see exist only when light hits our retina; so, we create the image as we watch the landscape.
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when you take God out of the equation, as soon as we do not watch the landscape ceases to exist, because nobody else is watching it.
Therefore, If something either cannot be observed or is not being observed, it does not exist.
Just playing Devil's advocate on this Eduperez....If you've done any reading and thinking on Modality, Epistemology and Schroedinger's cat and its philosophical possibilities, you'll know its not nearly as simple as you say
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Therefore, If something either cannot be observed or is not being observed, it does not exist.
The clouds and the rocks exist, of course.
But the landscape, as an image, it does not exist: there are millions of photons bouncing all around, but nothing more.
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Taking a preprandial break, so back on the internet again long enough to post. I did try some day or so ago and found I couldn't raise the show because of another glitch which seems to have deleted a post I think that I sent to Chuck regarding the suspicion of a light sarcasm in one of his replies. Anyway, to repeat myself if I did or to say so if I have not already, I reread the post and concluded that there was no sarcasm at all, that what I think I was reading was probably my own bewilderment at my apparent inability to articulate what struck me as a simple thought: the differences between photographic art, creation and reportage and the rarity of the creative element in much of it.
References to God were made in exactly the manner as has been suggested, where the substitution by Little Green Men would have been as suitable in the context of the post. For the record, I do have a belief in a God but not in any religion. I see no paradox. The problem, for me, is that however clever we become in maths, the other sciences, we are ever that series of steps behind, which sort of begs certain questions, does it not? Even the Big Bang doesn't seem to answer the basic problem of whence the materials and motivational forces to cause it to Big Bang in the first place. All I know for sure is that you couldn't pay me enough to temp me onto a space shuttle - having spent early years in both the engineering and then photo departments of an aero-engine factory I view flying with extreme distaste - in a personal sense. I once touched on this topic with a pilot (military) and he shared the dislike of civilian air travel, thinking the thing was never going to leave the ground, but carry straight on. I wonder is Russ shares any of that.
Anyway, thanks for the many replies to the topic!
Rob C
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"I seem to be a verb" - Bucky Fuller and R A Wilson.
I think that the reason I latched onto photography was an attempt to pickle a very brief instance in time/space in order to remember a much broader segment of the continuing running dialog that is the universe. And to impose my vision at that point.
Or it could just as well be a nervous tick.
In any case, nothing hanging on the walls matches the furniture.
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In any case, nothing hanging on the walls matches the furniture.
Don't give up! With time, anything is possible.
;-)
Rob C