Beautiful artwork! The picture with the woman riding the black stallion is spectacular.
Much more pleasing and infinitely more creative than those millions of creamy dreamy water images made with ND filters.
+1, but I excuse Michael Kenna from blame because, well, I like him, and he puts a lot of work into his art.
That said, I've been thinking a lot about this art topic these days, and I think I have to conclude that, as written and suspected before, there really is no photographic art as such. What there is is the personality of the artist, the ability and emotional slant that allows his work to contain another dimension which removes it from the prosaic by giving it a sense of containing more than its purely visible parts, something that is an additive process in that the more one learns of a photographer the more one can or can not see the extra quality that makes the difference. In other words, where the non-artist frames and makes his click, the artist is able to inject that something else which beggars description but is sensuously (not necessarily sexually) there. Of course that's not precise, but its presence or lack of makes the difference. Viewer sensitivity is thus challenged, too. Challenge, perhaps, in the sense of self-challenge, for I doubt the seasoned artist really cares that much about the viewer unless within a strictly commercial context. Which does not alter his blessed state of being an artist. I say blessed, yes, but that is far from implying that his life will essentially be one of comfort and ease.
Rob
