(Semi) Minimalism (open thread)

[32BT]

Everybody has tried to be somebody else; everybody has.

To imitate or to emulate, that is the question!

[Rob C]

To imitate or to emulate, that is the question!

Or to sleep, and then hell only knows what dreams may come.

The problem with the photographic condition re the foregoing, is this: the more one learns about the past, then the more one is bound to realise that everything that one does - with or without conscious reference to another photograph (not photographer so much) fails to be new. (Maybe, for our sanity, we really should avoid the knowledge that it's all stale news.) I believe that the imaginable photographic genres and treatments were all done decades ago round about the mid/late-50s. By then, film was perfectly capable of letting a skilled photographer photograph anything anywhere he wanted to photograph and in any way he chose.

I chose that period, the - fifties - as the time by when it had all already done because the money was flowing in advertising and magazines were king. With the floods of cash came amazing competition and the brightest minds in photography were given licence to play. That lasted for another couple of decades or so, and then it all started to go backwards as print faded in importance and advertisers found they could use "the crowd" as source for much material around the lower edges. When you chop out the lower professional layers of any pyramid the top inevitably finds itself getting closer to the bottom.

The thing is, you can take pretty much any photograph that get's published in LuLa (probably anywhere, for that matter) and almost instantly point to a much older one almost exactly the same - at least in execution. It's one of the reasons that I don't indulge in critique: what's to comment when nothing is new - if pointing it out in specific cases can only cause unhappiness? To clap one's hands in faux appreciation is cynical, and ultimately harmful to the "artist".

Yet another way in which painting can smirk at photography calling itself an art.

Rob

[32BT]

But what's wrong then with praising a well executed copy?

[Rob C]

But what's wrong then with praising a well executed copy?

Were it a technical challenge, a project openly to ape another photographer, then not a problem. I don't see images posted under those terms. I see people thinking they are showing something new, that they have found a 'voice', as it were.

How many images has LuLa shown of somebody walking past an advertisement in such a manner as to look as if the subject in the ad poster is interacting with them; how many slow-shutter waterfalls or beaches do we need to understand that motion produces an overall water blurr... it always did and probably always will unless digi cameras all end up with crazed native ISOs that outwit ND filers... How many Suns do we have to see in order to understand that what rises also sets. How many birds does it take to prove they have wings and can move them pretty damned fast, but not faster than somebody's autofocus can track 'em; do you see the problem, the futility of it all without mission?

I can understand why some photographers end up crazed, alone and alcoholic or making arsenals. It can be a very destructive life if you get too close and in love with it.

[32BT]

do you see the problem, the futility of it all without mission?

Yes, i do.

But you can't blame todays fisherman for catching fish they don't actually need for nourishment or survival. We are all amateurs, but for some the result really is just a hobby.

[farbschlurf]

Were it a technical challenge, a project openly to ape another photographer, then not a problem. I don't see images posted under those terms. I see people thinking they are showing something new, that they have found a 'voice', as it were.

Well, I think a good share of the people here have some knowledge of photo-history and indeed strive to repeat something, somehow, more or less, even if they do not say so explicitly. But I assume there's more awareness about that, than in many other places.

(Maybe little OT: I'm a book-designer/ layouter and was really puzzled many years ago when I first visited the Gutenberg-Museum in Mainz. They have not only that famous first printed bibles, but a rather big collection of the first printed books dating before 1500, so called incunabulums. The interesting thing is, that the type-setters back than really "did it all" within few decades of the than new media. Some pages and spreads would perfectly fit in todays "fancy magazines" and such ...)

[GrahamBy]

(There is a museum of printing in Lyon that impressed me... perhaps because my father was a printer and the end stages of the museum were familiar from my childhood!
Also the fact that Lyon once had a flourishing printing industry because it was more liberal than Geneva, so free thinkers would publish in Lyon to avoid imprisonment at the hands of the Helvetic Catholics... then some years later, post-reformation the current reversed its flow.)

Back to "everything has been done."

Yes, but... if Doisneau and HCB and Peter Turner pretty much exhausted all the formal novelty possible within street photography... they were also photographing the human condition. If HCB turned his photos upside down to better see the abstract geometry, he wasn't making photograms, the formal structure was a scaffold on which he displayed people. So then Avedon got quite a bit of milage from sticking heads and bodies in front of white seamless, apparently eschewing formal structure in favour of capturing the individual... except his individuals were also "types".

That seems to me the real challenge of representational art, to capture something about the human condition which is neither so general that it is old news ("White trash woman high-school graduate from poor mid-west town #23") nor so specific that it is of interest only to Nora Bloggs and her closest relatives. In that sense, novels are also representational art facing the same struggle. It's tempting to say that people are still writing novels, but a visit to the second-hand book markets on Sunday morning is terrifying for anyone who imagines becoming a writer.

Maybe Warhol knew something when he said a good photo is one that is in focus and contains a famous person... that the only true remaining art is the performance of celebrity and its documenation. Or maybe that is irrelevant, and the answer is in Camus, of Sisyphus continually pushing his rock up the hill, in order to experience the pushing.

[Rob C]

Yes, i do.

But you can't blame todays fisherman for catching fish they don't actually need for nourishment or survival. We are all amateurs, but for some the result really is just a hobby.

Au contraire! I certainly do disapprove of needless killing; who are we to decide when something has to die for our "fun" and perverted sense of achievement? I have more than once sat down to an indifferent restaurant meal and thought: to think that a fish had to die for this! One bad fish dish and I never order fish there again. This partly accounts for the shortening list of places where I go to eat. And this a coastal town! Currently, I'm down to two. As both close over the winter, I shall be fighting more than the cold for the next few months. One old guy I sometimes see sitting on his stool by the entrance to the yacht club does it to pass the time as his wife plays cards within the clubhouse; he catches almost nothing, and what he does he throws back to the sea. Of course, the poor fish may have caught an infection from the hook removal, or simply have a temporary toothache - who am I to know?

And it's not just fish: one place I use does (usually) perfect calf's liver. Last week I had it as normal, but rather than calf, I think it was a veteran of seasons of bullfights. Of course, as poor animals are tortured to the death in those places - the rings, not the restaurants - to great cheers and pomp and circumstance, I know it couldn't really have been a successful fighter, but it still makes me wonder ever more about the human psyche and what kinds of monster we may all be hiding inside ourselves. Is it really any wonder that we spawn the terrorists that we do, when we all have religious histories built on mass murder in the name of greater beings?

But back to the pictures, or more accuarately, the postings: I think one could split the forum into two groups: a tiny, tiny one that lives for images and a vast majority membership that makes the ocassional image - just to test the equipment's a keeper, you understand, and in the case of it not meeting standards (personal), the added fun of recounting the return battles, the more the merrier.

I don't think it was ever so. I think this is a fairly recent development in photography. Was a time when it took skills and much learning (much, but not difficult at all); when to enter the world of photography meant you were going to spend your private time on it. Today, you can spend your employer's time on it instead, right there in your cubicle. How cute is that? Consequently, where folks once thought you sightly odd if you claimed to be a photographer, today everybody's doing it and so it means nothing at all.

Dedicated photographers are as socially disenfranchised today as is their skill and, sometimes, unexpected art.

[Rob C]

Well, I think a good share of the people here have some knowledge of photo-history and indeed strive to repeat something, somehow, more or less, even if they do not say so explicitly. But I assume there's more awareness about that, than in many other places.

(Maybe little OT: I'm a book-designer/ layouter and was really puzzled many years ago when I first visited the Gutenberg-Museum in Mainz. They have not only that famous first printed bibles, but a rather big collection of the first printed books dating before 1500, so called incunabulums. The interesting thing is, that the type-setters back than really "did it all" within few decades of the than new media. Some pages and spreads would perfectly fit in todays "fancy magazines" and such ...)

Typography is one of the greatest skills and talents in art. All our printed stuff depends on it for status and some added gravitas. It's what made Nova look so cool, and another reason why the international editions of Vogue are all somewhat different.

I ran into it first-hand when I started to produce bespoke company calendars as a living, and an additional outlet for my photography. The artwork was bloody difficult, and I soon found myself frozen into using Helvetica for almost everything! As for mixing faces, that was as terrifying as walking into the wrong neighbourhood (which I never did, my sense of self-preservation being far too strong. Or cowardice: it's a choice of attitude). Combining blocks of image and copy wasn't difficult - just an extension of the shape of the overall picture, I suppose, but the detail and signature that typeface creates of itself is something which, to handle well, I think is a gift apart.

https://www.pentagram.com/

The above worked miracles for the UK publishing and advertising industry.

[Rob C]

(There is a museum of printing in Lyon that impressed me... perhaps because my father was a printer and the end stages of the museum were familiar from my childhood!
Also the fact that Lyon once had a flourishing printing industry because it was more liberal than Geneva, so free thinkers would publish in Lyon to avoid imprisonment at the hands of the Helvetic Catholics... then some years later, post-reformation the current reversed its flow.)

Back to "everything has been done."

Yes, but... if Doisneau and HCB and Peter Turner pretty much exhausted all the formal novelty possible within street photography... they were also photographing the human condition. If HCB turned his photos upside down to better see the abstract geometry, he wasn't making photograms, the formal structure was a scaffold on which he displayed people. So then Avedon got quite a bit of milage from sticking heads and bodies in front of white seamless, apparently eschewing formal structure in favour of capturing the individual... except his individuals were also "types".

That seems to me the real challenge of representational art, to capture something about the human condition which is neither so general that it is old news ("White trash woman high-school graduate from poor mid-west town #23") nor so specific that it is of interest only to Nora Bloggs and her closest relatives. In that sense, novels are also representational art facing the same struggle. It's tempting to say that people are still writing novels, but a visit to the second-hand book markets on Sunday morning are terrifying for anyone who imagine becoming a writer.

Maybe Warhol knew something when he said a good photo is one that is in focus and contains a famous person... that the only true remaining art is the performance of celebrity and its documenation. Or maybe that is irrelevant, and the answer is in Camus, of Sisyphus continually pushing his rock up the hill, in order to experience the pushing.

You know what I think? HC-B's upside down trick was the result of an accident: he was caught looking at somebody's contacts that way by mistake, and he realised he'd better not admit it had been an error, that his eyesight wasn't shit-hot. It then became a myth-of-his-own-time and passed down into photographic history. Frankly, it's bullshit. If you want to prove that for yourself, just put your favourite image on the monitor, reverse it, and it looks terrible. You can't change the dynamic like that without huge penalty. Unless, of course, your favourite picture is of a telegraph pole in the centre of the image in the Nevada desert.

You wanted Sisyphus? We're old friends: my task is keeping together the fiscal and physical status quo. For the local farmer it's keeping the stone walls vertical rather than horizontal. For the local hotels it's trying to have the illegal lettings actually closed, when half of the local council owns such properties. It's like I mentioned elsewhere on LuLa in connection with Bexit: where Britain passes laws and tends to observe them, here they say yes, of course, and just look the other way. We should have learned to live the Communal way as well as our own. Instead, harakiri. Ours.

[GrahamBy]

just put your favourite image on the monitor, reverse it, and it looks terrible.

Now there's a theme: reversible images

It's true that even a simple triangle-pointing-up gives a different vibe that a triangle-pointing-down...

I think I read the upside-down story in an interview with René Burri, who may have been a dupe, or a co-conspirator... so your theory is credible

[pegelli]

I don't see images posted under those terms. I see people thinking they are showing something new, that they have found a 'voice', as it were.

Is that really true? Aren't people just trying to show something pleasing (for themselves and maybe also for other viewers) irrespective if it's been done before or not.

[Rob C]

Is that really true? Aren't people just trying to show something pleasing (for themselves and maybe also for other viewers) irrespective if it's been done before or not.

That's entirely possible, but if it is, I'd be rather surprised. It takes a bit of a strong belief in something to post it as your work. Or at least, it used to.

[32BT]

Au contraire! I certainly do disapprove of needless killing; who are we to decide when something has to die for our "fun" and perverted sense of achievement?

Well, yes, we are in agreement there. Better make that worthwhile. Moreover, the way we treat livestock prior to it serving as our food, is another indicator of our questionable indifference in superiority.

Even for the digital age one could wonder if all the energy required to serve irrelevant information which also requires additional effort to be curated and filtered, is actually a waste of significant proportions. And I'm not just talking pictures here.

[32BT]

I do believe that our day and age comes with different idiosyncrasies than yesteryears', and they may well be made visible by current photographers with true and tried methods of visualisation. But then again, that may be the "mission" mostly missing as mentioned.

[Rob C]

Well, yes, we are in agreement there. Better make that worthwhile. Moreover, the way we treat livestock prior to it serving as our food, is another indicator of our questionable indifference in superiority.

Even for the digital age one could wonder if all the energy required to serve irrelevant information which also requires additional effort to be curated and filtered, is actually a waste of significant proportions. And I'm not just talking pictures here.

You'd have my vote if you were running for President and we were Americans.

One of my first commissions on going freelance was to shoot the first run-through of a new, local abattoir, and show the various sections at work... I did it in a state of suspended horror, much as I think I'd have lived a life of being a war photographer. I had no idea what to expect.

The memory that I permit to resurface now and again is the face of a cow in a stockade outside the building as I walked away after my gig. She looked me in the eye and I blinked first. She knew everything. I apologised and went to the car and away from there as rapidly as I could. The stench of death remained in my nostrils for at least a week.  I am no vegetarian, but there has to be a better way of getting that steak. And yes, the nonchalance with which those guys in rubber aprons went about their work was also an eye-opener.

I found a link somewhere that worked out the electrical generation footprint that it takes to send and archive a simple e-mail. It is also horrific and asks the question: wouldn't life and the planet be a better place without the expense in reserves to provide all this digital shit called entertainment and social media?

Rob

[GrahamBy]

wouldn't life and the planet be a better place without the expense in reserves to provide all this digital shit called entertainment and social media?

Probably, but most of the voters are addicts...

Think about the failure of (alcohol) prohibition, the reasons no one has ever seriously attempted to ban tobacco, and the continued failure of every attempt to prohibit prostitution.

[farbschlurf]

Tonight (I couldn't sleep anyway) another metaphor for that "just copy others"-thing came to my mind; maybe coming back to the topic a little bit:

Imagine an athlete. Say 100m sprint. When he strives and practices he will get faster. But how likely is it, he will get the world record in his first race? Or the second ... zero chance. Obviously he will start slowly and will initially have times like 50 or even 150 years ago. If he would say: "that is what others did long time ago, it's not worth doing that again", he would never come to the point when he could, maybe, surpass his predecessors. He has to go through those stages where he is only as fast and good as somebody has been already, before. Only after that he is - if he is very lucky - able to reach new ground. There's just no way to avoid this. And many, many athletes never will come close to a world record. But they still strive and try and practice ...

Of course (and I guess that's what Rob C and others meant) it's absolutely dumb for an athlete to run, not to know about how fast others are, just claiming proudly "look, I'm the fastest".

The example is one-dimensional, so it's not fitting very good on something as multi-dimensional as photography (I don't take the word "art" in my mouth), but I hope it's possible to get the point.

(So much about what to think about in sleepless nights ...)

[GrahamBy]

it's absolutely dumb for an athlete to run, not to know about how fast others are, just claiming proudly "look, I'm the fastest".

I wonder what van Gogh thought about competing with other painters as he circulated in and around the asylum in Arles ?

[32BT]

I wonder what van Gogh thought about competing with other painters as he circulated in and around the asylum in Arles ?

He did discuss trends extensively with his brother, as well as with fellow artists, but eventually decided that what people wanted was not what he wanted (to paint).
Good for us, not so good for him, I suppose.